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513A proper understanding of MillikanActa Analytica 21 (40): 23-40. 2006.Ruth Millikan’s teleological theory of mental content is complex and often misunderstood. This paper motivates and clarifies some of the complexities of the theory, and shows that paying careful attention to its details yields answers to a number of common objections to teleological theories, in particular, the problem of novel mental states, the problem of functionally false beliefs, and problems about indeterminacy or multiplicity of function.
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67In this paper we argue that while a full-blown virtue-theoretical account of argumentation is implausible, there is scope for augmenting a conventional account of argument by taking a character-oriented turn. We then discuss the characteristics of the good epistemic citizen, and consider approaches to nurturing these characteristics in critical thinking students, in the hope of addressing the problem of lack of transfer of critical thinking skills to the world outside the classroom.
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133How Can We Get Students to Think Critically about Intransigent Beliefs?Teaching Philosophy 40 (4): 395-405. 2017.Part of the job of the philosophy teacher, and in particular the critical thinking teacher, is to encourage students to critically examine their own beliefs. There are some beliefs that are difficult to think critically about, even for those who have critical thinking skills and are committed to applying them to their own beliefs. These resistant beliefs are not all of a kind, and so a range of different strategies may be needed to get students to think critically about them. In this paper we su…Read more
Areas of Specialization
| Naturalizing Mental Content |
| Reasoning |
| Aesthetics |
Areas of Interest
| Naturalizing Mental Content |
| Informal Logic |
| Reasoning |
| Aesthetics |