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856Bayesian Cognitive Science, Unification, and ExplanationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2). 2017.It is often claimed that the greatest value of the Bayesian framework in cognitive science consists in its unifying power. Several Bayesian cognitive scientists assume that unification is obviously linked to explanatory power. But this link is not obvious, as unification in science is a heterogeneous notion, which may have little to do with explanation. While a crucial feature of most adequate explanations in cognitive science is that they reveal aspects of the causal mechanism that produces the…Read more
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3Paul M. Churchland: Plato’s Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals : MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012, x+289, $35.00, ISBN 9780262016865 (review)Minds and Machines 23 (2): 263-268. 2013.
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94Moving forward (and beyond) the modularity debate: A network perspectivePhilosophy of Science 80 (3): 356-377. 2013.Modularity is one of the most important concepts used to articulate a theory of cognitive architecture. Over the last 30 years, the debate in many areas of the cognitive sciences and in philosophy of psychology about what modules are, and to what extent our cognitive architecture is modular, has made little progress. After providing a diagnosis of this lack of progress, this article suggests a remedy. It argues that the theoretical framework of network science can be brought to bear on the tradi…Read more
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70Experimental Philosophy of Explanation Rising: The Case for a Plurality of Concepts of ExplanationCognitive Science 41 (2): 503-517. 2017.This paper brings together results from the philosophy and the psychology of explanation to argue that there are multiple concepts of explanation in human psychology. Specifically, it is shown that pluralism about explanation coheres with the multiplicity of models of explanation available in the philosophy of science, and it is supported by evidence from the psychology of explanatory judgment. Focusing on the case of a norm of explanatory power, the paper concludes by responding to the worry th…Read more
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88The predictive mind and chess-playing: A reply to ShandAnalysis 74 (4): 603-608. 2014.In a recent Analysis piece, John Shand (2014) argues that the Predictive Theory of Mind provides a unique explanation for why one cannot play chess against oneself. On the basis of this purported explanatory power, Shand concludes that we have an extra reason to believe that PTM is correct. In this reply, we first rectify the claim that one cannot play chess against oneself; then we move on to argue that even if this were the case, Shand’s argument does not give extra weight to the Predictive Th…Read more
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67Explanatory Judgment, Moral Offense and Value-Free ScienceReview of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (4): 743-763. 2016.A popular view in philosophy of science contends that scientific reasoning is objective to the extent that the appraisal of scientific hypotheses is not influenced by moral, political, economic, or social values, but only by the available evidence. A large body of results in the psychology of motivated-reasoning has put pressure on the empirical adequacy of this view. The present study extends this body of results by providing direct evidence that the moral offensiveness of a scientific hypothes…Read more
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131Conformorality. A Study on Group Conditioning of Normative JudgmentReview of Philosophy and Psychology (4): 751-764. 2013.How does other people’s opinion affect judgments of norm transgressions? In our study, we used a modification of the famous Asch paradigm to examine conformity in the moral domain. The question we addressed was how peer group opinion alters normative judgments of scenarios involving violations of moral, social, and decency norms. The results indicate that even moral norms are subject to conformity, especially in situations with a high degree of social presence. Interestingly, the degree of confo…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
General Philosophy of Science |