-
2A Puzzle about EmpathyEmotion Review 3 (3): 278-280. 2011.Is empathy important for moral behavior? To answer this we will have to be conceptually clearer, empirically more detailed, and pay attention to the neural mechanisms underlying empathy-related phenomena.
-
6NeuroscienceIn Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.This article examines whether, and in what ways, neuroscience can illuminate those questions associated with neurophilosophy. It begins by discussing the relation between philosophy and neuroscience, in particular how they can each influence each other. It then considers how neuroscience can illuminate philosophical questions about mind, including metaphysical questions about the relation of mind and brain, questions about the nature of mental representation and content, consciousness, and even …Read more
-
43What Happens After a Neural Implant Study? Neuroethics Expert Workshop on Post-Trial ObligationsNeuroethics 17 (2): 1-14. 2024.What happens at the end of a clinical trial for an investigational neural implant? It may be surprising to learn how difficult it is to answer this question. While new trials are initiated with increasing regularity, relatively little consensus exists on how best to conduct them, and even less on how to ethically end them. The landscape of recent neural implant trials demonstrates wide variability of what happens to research participants after an neural implant trial ends. Some former research p…Read more
-
89Language-of-thought hypothesis: Wrong, but sometimes useful?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.Quilty-Dunn et al. maintain that language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH) is the best game in town. We counter that LoTH is merely one source of models – always wrong, sometimes useful. Their reasons for liking LoTH are compatible with the view that LoTH provides a sometimes pragmatically useful level of abstraction over processes and mechanisms that fail to fully live up to LoT requirements.
-
241Moral MotivationIn John Doris (ed.), Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford University Press. 2010.In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosop…Read more
-
114. Triangulation and Objectivity: Squaring the Circle?In Maria Cristina Amoretti & Gerhard Preyer (eds.), Triangulation: From an Epistemological Point of View, De Gruyter. pp. 97-102. 2011.
-
116Brain Images as Legal EvidenceEpisteme 5 (3): 359-373. 2008.This paper explores whether brain images may be admitted as evidence in criminal trials under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, which weighs probative value against the danger of being prejudicial, confusing, or misleading to fact finders. The paper summarizes and evaluates recent empirical research relevant to these issues. We argue that currently the probative value of neuroimages for criminal responsibility is minimal, and there is some evidence of their potential to be prejudicial or misleading.…Read more
-
87Mele's Effective Intentions: The power of conscious will (review)Philosophical Books 51 (3): 127-143. 2010.
-
88Hypnotizing Libet: Readiness potentials with non-conscious volitionConsciousness and Cognition 33 (C): 196-203. 2015.The readiness potential (RP) is one of the most controversial topics in neuroscience and philosophy due to its perceived relevance to the role of conscious willing in action. Libet and colleagues reported that RP onset precedes both volitional movement and conscious awareness of willing that movement, suggesting that the experience of conscious will may not cause volitional movement (Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983). Rather, they suggested that the RP indexes unconscious processes that may…Read more
-
1173“Local determination”, even if we could find it, does not challenge free will: Commentary on Marcelo FischbornPhilosophical Psychology 30 (1-2): 185-197. 2017.Marcelo Fischborn discusses the significance of neuroscience for debates about free will. Although he concedes that, to date, Libet-style experiments have failed to threaten “libertarian free will”, he argues that, in principle, neuroscience and psychology could do so by supporting local determinism. We argue that, in principle, Libet-style experiments cannot succeed in disproving or even establishing serious doubt about libertarian free will. First, we contend that “local determination”, as Fis…Read more
-
404Bringing moral responsibility down to earthJournal of Philosophy 105 (7): 371-388. 2008.Thought experiments have played a central role in philosophical methodology, largely as a means of elucidating the nature of our concepts and the implications of our theories.1 Particular attention is given to widely shared “folk” intuitions – the basic untutored intuitions that the layperson has about philosophical questions.2 The folk intuition is meant to underlie our core metaphysical concepts, and philosophical analysis is meant to explicate or sometimes refine these naïve concepts. Consist…Read more
-
48Moral Status or Moral Value? The Former May Require Phenomenal Consciousness, But Does It Matter?American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2): 175-177. 2023.Shepherd (2023) is concerned about the moral status of nonhumans and argues that consciousness-based approaches to moral status are inadequate to guide policy decisions. Consciousness-based approac...
-
18Self-consciousness and "Split" Brains: The Mind's I by Elizabeth SchechterReview of Metaphysics 72 (3): 612-613. 2019.
-
23The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed Everything by Linda Trinkaus ZagzebskiReview of Metaphysics 75 (3): 613-615. 2022.
-
33Bioethics, EarlyView.
-
48Dimensions of Agency: Conceptual and Data-Driven ApproachesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 12 (2-3): 189-191. 2021.
-
94Representational similarity analysis in neuroimaging: proxy vehicles and provisional representationsSynthese 199 (3-4): 5917-5935. 2021.Functional neuroimaging is sometimes criticized as showing only where in the brain things happen, not how they happen, and thus being unable to inform us about questions of mental and neural representation. Novel analytical methods increasingly make clear that imaging can give us access to constructs of interest to psychology. In this paper I argue that neuroimaging can give us an important, if limited, window into the large-scale structure of neural representation. I describe Representational S…Read more
-
27Memory Deletion Threatens Authenticity by Destabilizing ValuesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 12 (1): 52-54. 2021.
-
50Can the Law Do Without Retributivism? Comments on Erin Kelly’s The Limits of BlameCriminal Law and Philosophy 15 (2): 217-222. 2020.Erin Kelly’s The Limits of Blame presents a critique of our current overly-punitive legal system and champions a system of criminal justice that does not traffic in moral blame and is free of retributivist elements. This commentary questions the viability of such a system, and ultimately suggests that there is not much distance between a more perfect retributivist system and the kind of nuanced and humane system of criminal justice that Kelly envisions.
-
34Rationalization and the status of folk psychologyBehavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.Cushman's theory has implications for the philosophical debate about the nature of folk psychological states, for it entails realism about propositional attitudes. I point out a tension within his view and suggest a different view upon which rationalization emerges as a consequence of the adaptiveness of mentalizing. This alternative avoids the strong metaphysical implications of Cushman's theory.
-
26Neuroethics: Considering Its Scope and LimitsAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 1 (4): 1-2. 2010.
-
76Catching the Prediction Wave in Brain ScienceAnalysis 77 (4): 848-857. 2017.© The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Clark is usually among the first in philosophy to ride a new and important wave on the frontiers of cognitive science research. His Microcognition and Associative Engines chronicled connectionism, Being There explored embodied cognition, Natural Born Cyborgs deals with BCIs and environmental and technological scaffolding, a…Read more
-
72Saving Subtraction: A reply to Van Orden and PaapBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (3): 635-665. 2010.Van Orden and Paap argue that subtractive functional neuroimaging is fundamentally flawed, unfalsifiable, and cannot bear upon the nature of mind. In this they are mistaken, although their criticisms interestingly illuminate the scientific problems we confront in investigating the material basis of mind. Here, I consider the criticisms of Van Orden and Paap and discuss where they are mistaken and where justified. I then consider the picture of imaging science that Van Orden and Paap seem to espo…Read more
-
219A New Argument for Nonconceptual ContentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3): 633-659. 2008.This paper provides a novel argument against conceptualism, the claim that the content of human experience, including perceptual experience, is entirely conceptual. Conceptualism entails that the content of experience is limited by the concepts that we possess and deploy. I present an argument to show that such a view is exceedingly costly—if the nature of our experience is entirely conceptual, then we cannot account for concept learning: all perceptual concepts must be innate. The version of na…Read more
Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |