-
53Review of J. T. Ismael, The Situated Self (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (10). 2007.
-
292Minding one's cognitive systems: When does a group of minds constitute a single cognitive unit?Episteme 1 (3): 177-188. 2005.The possibility of group minds or group mental states has been considered by a number of authors addressing issues in social epistemology and related areas (Goldman 2004, Pettit 2003, Gilbert 2004, Hutchins 1995). An appeal to group minds might, in the end, do indispensable explanatory work in the social or cognitive sciences. I am skeptical, though, and this essay lays out some of the reasons for my skepticism. The concerns raised herein constitute challenges to the advocates of group minds (or…Read more
-
455
-
67Coining Terms In The Language of ThoughtJournal of Philosophy 98 (10): 499-530. 2001.Robert Cummins argues that any causal theory of mental content (CT) founders on an established fact of human psychology: that theory mediates sensory detection. He concludes,
-
718Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (review)Journal of Mind and Behavior 30 (4). 2009.For well over two decades, Andy Clark has been gleaning theoretical lessons from the leading edge of cognitive science, applying a combination of empirical savvy and philosophical instinct that few can match. Clark’s most recent book, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, brilliantly expands his oeuvre. It offers a well-informed and focused survey of research in the burgeoning field of situated cognition, a field that emphasizes the contribution of environmental and …Read more
-
968The Sufficiency of Objective RepresentationIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, Routledge. 2013.
-
134According to the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC, hereafter), human cognitive processing extends beyond the boundary of the human organism.1 As I understand HEC, it is a claim in the..
-
137Dispositions Indisposed: Semantic Atomism and Fodor’s Theory of ContentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (3): 325-349. 2000.According to Jerry Fodor’s atomistic theory of content, subjects’ dispositions to token mentalese terms in counterfactual circumstances fix the contents of those terms. I argue that the pattern of counterfactual tokenings alone does not satisfactorily fix content; if Fodor’s appeal to patterns of counterfactual tokenings has any chance of assigning correct extensions, Fodor must take into account the contents of subjects’ various mental states at the times of those tokenings. However, to do so, …Read more
-
924Ceteris paribus laws, component forces, and the nature of special-science propertiesNoûs 42 (3): 349-380. 2008.Laws of nature seem to take two forms. Fundamental physics discovers laws that hold without exception, ‘strict laws’, as they are sometimes called; even if some laws of fundamental physics are irreducibly probabilistic, the probabilistic relation is thought not to waver. In the nonfundamental, or special, sciences, matters differ. Laws of such sciences as psychology and economics hold only ceteris paribus – that is, when other things are equal. Sometimes events accord with these ceteris paribus …Read more
-
1228Embodied Knowledge, Conceptual Change, and the A Priori; or, Justification, Revision, and the Ways Life Could GoAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2): 169-192. 2016.
-
147Review of Mark Rowlands, The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (3). 2011.In recent years, much has been written about situated cognition, a movement in cognitive science that appears to have important philosophical implications (Robbins and Aydede 2009). Agents of this situated turn expound a variety of positive views; thus, at least initially, the movement may be best explained in terms of what its practitioners reject. The great majority of situated theorists direct their philosophical ire at a computer-based vision of human thought that came to prominence in the 1…Read more
-
626Mental Representations and Millikan’s Theory of Intentional Content: Does Biology Chase Causality?Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 113-140. 1999.In her landmark book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (Millikan1984),1 Ruth Garrett Millikan utilizes the idea of a biological function to solve philosophical problems associated with the phenomena of language, thought, and meaning. Language and thought are activities of biological organisms, according to Millikan, and we should treat them as such when trying to answer related philosophical questions. Of special interest is Millikan’s treatment of intentionality. Here Millikan…Read more
-
1197Functionalism, mental causation, and the problem of metaphysically necessary effectsNoûs 40 (2): 256-83. 2006.The recent literature on mental causation has not been kind to nonreductive, materialist functionalism (‘functionalism’, hereafter, except where that term is otherwise qualified). The exclusion problem2 has done much of the damage, but the epiphenomenalist threat has taken other forms. Functionalism also faces what I will call the ‘problem of metaphysically necessary effects’ (Block, 1990, pp. 157-60, Antony and Levine, 1997, pp. 91-92, Pereboom, 2002, p. 515, Millikan, 1999, p. 47, Jackson, 199…Read more
-
415Causal theories of mental contentPhilosophy Compass 3 (2). 2008.Causal theories of mental content (CTs) ground certain aspects of a concept's meaning in the causal relations a concept bears to what it represents. Section 1 explains the problems CTs are meant to solve and introduces terminology commonly used to discuss these problems. Section 2 specifies criteria that any acceptable CT must satisfy. Sections 3, 4, and 5 critically survey various CTs, including those proposed by Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, Ruth Garrett Millikan, David Papineau, Dennis Stampe, D…Read more
-
121The best test theory of extension: First principle(s)Mind and Language 14 (3). 1999.This paper presents the leading idea of my doctoral dissertation and thus has been shaped by the reactions of all the members of my thesis committee: Charles Chastain, Walter Edelberg, W. Kent Wilson, Dorothy Grover, and Charles Marks. I am especially grateful for the help of Professors Chastain, Edelberg, and Wilson; each worked closely with me at one stage or another in the development of the ideas contained in the present work. Shorter versions of this paper were presented at the 47th Annual …Read more
-
61Massively representational minds are not always driven by goals, conscious or otherwiseBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (2): 145-146. 2014.
-
207Realization, Completers, and C eteris Paribus Laws in PsychologyBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (1): 1-11. 2007.University of Colorado, Boulder If there are laws of psychology, they would seem to hold only ceteris paribus (c.p., hereafter), i.e., other things being equal. If a person wants that q and believes that doing a is the most efficient way to make it the case that q, then she will attempt to do a—but not, however, if she believes that a carries with it consequences much more hated than q is liked, or she believes she is incapable of doing a, or she gets distracted from her goal that q, or she sudd…Read more
-
527LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3): 559-562. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
-
197Empirical Arguments for Group Minds: A Critical AppraisalPhilosophy Compass 6 (9): 630-639. 2011.This entry addresses the question of group minds, by focusing specifically on empirical arguments for group cognition and group cognitive states. Two kinds of positive argument are presented and critically evaluated: the argument from individually unintended effects and the argument from functional similarity. A general argument against group cognition – which appeals to Occam’s razor – is also discussed. In the end, much turns on the identification of a mark of the cognitive; proposed marks are…Read more
-
1319Cognitive systems and the supersized mind (review)Philosophical Studies 152 (3). 2011.In Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Clark, 2008), Andy Clark bolsters his case for the extended mind thesis and casts a critical eye on some related views for which he has less enthusiasm. To these ends, the book canvasses a wide range of empirical results concerning the subtle manner in which the human organism and its environment interact in the production of intelligent behavior. This fascinating research notwithstanding, Supersizing does little to assuage my…Read more
-
672This is a long-abandoned draft, written in 2013, of what was supposed to be a paper for an edited collection (one that, in the end, didn't come together). The paper "Group Minds and Natural Kinds" descends from it.
-
48Review of Raymond W. Gibbs, jr., Embodiment and Cognitive Science (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (8). 2006.
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Social Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Intentionality |