•  98
    William James and the Politics of Moral Conflict
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 40 (1). 2004.
  •  14
    It’s hardly news that settler culture normalizes ecocide. Those of us raised as settlers who are nevertheless ecoconscious routinely blame ourselves for our failure to live up to our own best expectations when it comes to challenging the norms and practices of our culture. This leads us to overlook that we’re also—and, I think, much more so—among its victims. I outline five manifestations of victimhood routinely exhibited by the ecoconscious settler activists, scholars, and students with whom I …Read more
  •  104
    Cross-Situational Learning: An Experimental Study of Word-Learning Mechanisms
    with Kenny Smith and Richard A. Blythe
    Cognitive Science 35 (3): 480-498. 2011.
    Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to the word's true meaning. We present experimental evidence showing that humans learn words effectively using cross-situational learning, even at high levels of referential uncertainty. Both overall success rates and the time taken to learn words are affected by the degree of referential uncertainty, with greater referential uncertainty leading to le…Read more
  •  84
    Learning Times for Large Lexicons Through Cross‐Situational Learning
    with Richard A. Blythe and Kenny Smith
    Cognitive Science 34 (4): 620-642. 2010.
  •  102
    Equality and Justice: Remarks on a Necessary Relationship
    with Birgit Christensen
    Hypatia 20 (2): 155-163. 2005.
    The processes associated with globalization have reinforced and even increased prevailing conditions of inequality among human beings with respect to their political, economic, cultural, and social opportunities. Yet-or perhaps precisely because of this trend-there has been, within political philosophy, an observable tendency to question whether equality in fact should be treated a as central value within a theory of justice. In response, I examine a number of nonegalitarian positions to try to …Read more
  •  99
    Ecofeminism through an anticolonial framework
    In Karen Warren (ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, Indiana Univ Pr. pp. 21--37. 1997.
  •  3
    Andrew F. Smith argues that citizens of divided societies have three powerful incentives to engage in public deliberation_in free, open, and reasoned dialogue aimed at contributing to the establishment of well-developed laws. When contesting for political influence, or pursuing the enshrinement of one's convictions in law, deliberating publicly is a necessary condition for taking oneself to be a responsible moral, epistemic, and religious agent
  •  33
    Pluralism and Political Legitimacy
    Social Philosophy Today 19 155-177. 2003.
    In recent writings, both John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas address how to ensure that all reasonable citizens have the capacity to live a good life when there exist in modern society a wide variety of competing conceptions thereof. Yet, according to James Bohman, both thinkers in fact fail to resolve this “dilemma of the good.” He offers a deliberative conception of democracy intended to make up for their shortcomings. I argue, however, that Bohman’s conception covertly relies upon moderately perfe…Read more
  •  46
    Secularity and biblical literalism: confronting the case for epistemological diversity (review)
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71 (3): 205-219. 2012.
    Stephen Carter argues that biblical literalism is predicated on an epistemological position drastically different than that maintained by mainstream scientists inasmuch as it operates on the basis of a “hermeneutic of inerrancy” with respect to the ideas laid out in the Bible. By relying on considerations offered by Charles Taylor and recent sociological studies, I contend that Carter’s thesis is incorrect. The divide between proponents and opponents of biblical literalism is ethical rather than…Read more
  •  90
    In Defense of Homelessness
    Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (1): 33-51. 2014.
    In this essay, I offer a twofold defense of homelessness. First, I argue that specifiable socio-economic forms of organization that are common among the homeless and that operate at least partially independently of state and philanthropic institutions embody valuable and worthwhile ways to live and to make a living. Second, the norms underlying the current institutional response to homelessness facilitate psychological distress and social fragmentation not just among the homeless but among the h…Read more
  •  13
    Word learning under infinite uncertainty
    with Richard A. Blythe and Kenny Smith
    Cognition 151 (C): 18-27. 2016.
  •  52
    Political deliberation and the challenge of bounded rationality
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (3): 269-291. 2014.
    Many proponents of deliberative democracy expect reasonable citizens to engage in rational argumentation. However, this expectation runs up against findings by behavioral economists and social psychologists revealing the extent to which normal cognitive functions are influenced by bounded rationality. Individuals regularly utilize an array of biases in the process of making decisions, which inhibits our argumentative capacities by adversely affecting our ability and willingness to be self-critic…Read more
  •  20
  •  27
    Commentary on Ben Berger’s Attention Deficit Democracy
    Social Philosophy Today 29 153-158. 2013.
    In this review I argue that while Berger makes out a good argument that the language of civic engagement covers too much (and hence too little) and that education plays a vital role in developing civic-minded sensibilities, I am less sanguine that the strategies for the reform of our “attention deficit democracy” will achieve the desired effect in a political society dominated by the corrupting influence of corporations who actively seek to undermine just such sensibilities as anathema to their …Read more
  •  48
    Truth, Negation, and the Limit of Inquiry
    Southwest Philosophy Review 25 (2): 79-94. 2009.
  •  2
    Protolanguage reconstructed
    Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies / Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies 9 (1): 100-116. 2008.
    One important difference between existing accounts of protolanguage lies in their assumptions on the semantic complexity of protolinguistic utterances. I bring evidence about the nature of linguistic communication to bear on the plausibility of these assumptions, and show that communication is fundamentally inferential and characterised by semantic uncertainty. This not only allows individuals to maintain variation in linguistic representation, but also imposes a selection pressure that meanings…Read more
  •  21
    Closer But Still No Cigar
    Social Theory and Practice 30 (1): 59-71. 2004.
  •  110
    I here argue against the viability of Peter Ludlow’s modified version of Paul Boghossian’s argument for the incompatibility of semantic externalism and authoritative self-knowledge. Ludlow contends that slow switching is not merely actual but is, moreover, prevalent; it can occur whenever we shift between localized linguistic communities. It is therefore quite possible, he maintains, that we undergo unwitting shifts in our mental content on a regular basis. However, there is good reason to accep…Read more
  •  17
    Pluralism and Political Legitimacy
    Social Philosophy Today 19 155-177. 2003.
    In recent writings, both John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas address how to ensure that all reasonable citizens have the capacity to live a good life when there exist in modern society a wide variety of competing conceptions thereof. Yet, according to James Bohman, both thinkers in fact fail to resolve this “dilemma of the good.” He offers a deliberative conception of democracy intended to make up for their shortcomings. I argue, however, that Bohman’s conception covertly relies upon moderately perfe…Read more
  •  9
    Commentary on Ben Berger’s Attention Deficit Democracy
    Social Philosophy Today 29 153-158. 2013.
    In this review I argue that while Berger makes out a good argument that the language of civic engagement covers too much (and hence too little) and that education plays a vital role in developing civic-minded sensibilities, I am less sanguine that the strategies for the reform of our “attention deficit democracy” will achieve the desired effect in a political society dominated by the corrupting influence of corporations who actively seek to undermine just such sensibilities as anathema to their …Read more
  •  32
    Religion in the public sphere
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 40 (6): 535-554. 2014.
    Commonplace among deliberative theorists is the view that, when defending preferred laws and policies, citizens should appeal only to reasons they expect others reasonably to accept. This view has been challenged on the grounds that it places an undue burden on religious citizens who feel duty-bound to appeal to religious reasons to justify preferred positions. In response, I develop a conception of democratic deliberation that provides unlimited latitude regarding the sorts of reasons that can …Read more
  •  63
    Epistemic Responsibility and Democratic Justification Content Type Journal Article Pages 297-302 DOI 10.1007/s11158-011-9147-1 Authors Andrew F. Smith, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Journal Res Publica Online ISSN 1572-8692 Print ISSN 1356-4765 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 3