•  23
    Introduction
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (Supplement): 7-13. 2004.
  •  42
    Troubles with Rey's linguistic Eliminativism
    Mind and Language 37 (2): 261-273. 2022.
    We focus on Folieism, Rey's brand of Eliminativism about languages, according to which words, sentences, phonemes, and such, and consequently languages, do not exist; they are intentional inexistents, on a par with unicorns that speakers, under an ineluctable illusion, mistake as real. We present a simplified reconstruction of his argument, challenge what we take to be its presuppositions, and argue that its conclusion has unwanted social/ethical consequences and construes linguistics writ large…Read more
  •  13
    The philosopher’s paradox
    with Carl Hoefer and Daniel Viger
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 34 (3): 407-421. 2019.
    We offer a novel argument for one-boxing in Newcomb’s Problem. The intentional states of a rational person are psychologically coherent across time, and rational decisions are made against this backdrop. We compare this coherence constraint with a golf swing, which to be effective must include a follow-through after the ball is in flight. Decisions, like golf swings, are extended processes, and their coherence with other psychological states of a player in the Newcomb scenario links her choice w…Read more
  •  8
    The possibility of subisomorphic experiential differences
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 975-975. 1999.
  • Mental Content in a Physical World: An Alternative to Mentalese
    Dissertation, Mcgill University (Canada). 1999.
    In an attempt to show how rational explanation of human and animal behaviour has a place in the scientific explanation of our physical world, Fodor advances the language of thought hypothesis. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that, contrary to the language of thought hypothesis, we need not possess a linguistic internal representational system distinct from any natural language to serve as the medium of thinking. I accept that we have an internal representational system, but by analy…Read more
  •  2
    Frame problem
    In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Elsevier. pp. 610--613. 2006.
  •  92
    Sort-of symbols?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 613-613. 1999.
    Barsalou's elision of the personal and sub-personal levels tends to conceal the fact that he is, at best, providing the “specs” but not yet a model for his hypothesized perceptual symbols.
  •  127
    Jerry Fodor's argument for an innate language of thought continues to be a hurdle for researchers arguing that natural languages provide us with richer conceptual systems than our innate cognitive resources. I argue that because the logical/formal terms of natural languages are given a usetheory of meaning, unlike predicates, logical/formal terms might be learned without a mediating internal representation. In that case, our innate representational system might have less logical structure than a…Read more
  •  95
    Locking on to the language of thought
    Philosophical Psychology 14 (2): 203-215. 2001.
    I demonstrate that locking on, a key notion in Jerry Fodor's most recent theory of content, supplemented informational atomism (SIA), is cashed out in terms of asymmetric dependence, the central notion in his earlier theory of content. I use this result to argue that SIA is incompatible with the language of thought hypothesis because the constraints on the causal relations into which symbols can enter imposed by the theory of content preclude the causal relations needed between symbols for them …Read more
  •  41
    The possibility of subisomorphic experiential differences
    Brain and Behavioral Sciences 22 (6): 975-975. 1999.
    Palmer=s main intuition pump, the Acolor machine, @ greatly underestimates the complexity of a system isomorphic in color experience to humans. The neuroscientific picture of this complexity makes clear that the brain actively produces our experiences by processes that science can investigate, thereby supporting functionalism and leaving no (color) room for a passive observer to witness subisomorphic experiential differences
  •  4
  •  104
    St. Anselm's ontological argument succumbs to Russell's paradox
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52 (3): 123-128. 2002.
  •  1
    New Essays in the Philosophy of Language of Mind (edited book)
    with Maite Ezcurida and Robert J. Stainton
    University of Calgary Press. 2005.
    This volume contains fourteen essays discussing recent issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. The collection is arranged into three sections: one on language, one on the intersection of language and mind, and a final section on mind. The topics include the context-sensitivity of semantics, anaphora, proper names, the nature of understanding, folk psychology and the Theory of Mind, self-awareness, the structure of the human mind and the extent to which it is modular, amo…Read more
  •  10
    Presentations and Symbols
    ProtoSociology 22 40-59. 2006.
    I consider how several results from cognitive science bear on the nature of representation and how representations might be structured. Distinguishing two notions of representation, presentations, which are cases of direct sensing, and symbols, which stand in for something else, I argue that only symbols pose a philosophical problem for naturalizing content. What is required is an account of how one thing can stand in for another. Milner and Goodale’s dual route model of vision offers a model fo…Read more
  •  40
    The acquired language of thought hypothesis
    Interaction Studies 8 (1): 125-142. 2007.
    I present the symbol grounding problem in the larger context of a materialist theory of content and then present two problems for causal, teleo-functional accounts of content. This leads to a distinction between two kinds of mental representations: presentations and symbols; only the latter are cognitive. Based on Milner and Goodale’s dual route model of vision, I posit the existence of precise interfaces between cognitive systems that are activated during object recognition. Interfaces are cons…Read more
  •  42
    In "The pitfalls of heritability," a review of Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience Times Literary Supplement, Feb 12, 1999, p33], Jerry Hirsch claims to have convicted Wilson of a "confusion about genetic similarity and difference." In his book, Wilson claims that if we assume that "a mere one thousand genes out of the fifty to a hundred thousand genes in the human genome were to exist in two forms in the population," the probability of any two humans--excluding identical siblings--having the same ge…Read more
  •  32
    I met Ernie in 1965 on the wrestling mats of our high school in North Bergen, New Jersey, a township on top of the plateau overlooking Hoboken and across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Hoboken then was still the Hoboken of Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” (1954).1 Even though the Hudson was less than a mile across at that point, it was a wide spiritual divide. We were Jersey boys, not New Yorkers. Ernie was as ambitious as I was about wrestling, and, so, after the season was over, we used to t…Read more