•  41
    Computation as the boundary of the cognitive
    Mind and Language 39 (1): 123-128. 2024.
    Khalidi identifies cognition with Marrian computation. He further argues that Marrian levels of inquiry should be interpreted ontologically as corresponding to distinct semi‐closed causal domains. But this counterintuitively places the causal domain of representations outside of cognition proper. A closer look at Khalidi's account of concepts shows that these allegedly separate Marrian domains are more tightly integrated than he allows. Theories of concepts converge on algorithmic‐representation…Read more
  •  337
    The plurality of concepts
    Synthese 169 (1): 145-173. 2009.
    Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind of mental representation. But no single kind of representation can explain all of the empirical data for which concepts are responsible. I argue that the assumption that concepts are uniformly the same kind of mental structure is responsible for these theories’ shortcomings, and outline a pluralist theory of concepts that rejects this assumption. On pluralism, concepts should be thought of as being …Read more
  •  421
    The Predictive Turn in Neuroscience
    Philosophy of Science 89 (5): 1213-1222. 2022.
    Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions rather than explanations. This “predictive turn” has swept across domains including law, marketing, and neuropsychiatry. Yet the norms of prediction remain undertheorized relative to those of explanation. I examine two styles of predictive modeling and show how they exemplify the normative dynamics at work in prediction. I propose an account of how predictive models, conceived of as technological devi…Read more
  •  43
    Representing and coordinating ethnobiological knowledge
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 84 (C): 101328. 2020.
    Indigenous peoples possess enormously rich and articulated knowledge of the natural world. A major goal of research in anthropology and ethnobiology as well as ecology, conservation biology, and development studies is to find ways of integrating this knowledge with that produced by academic and other institutionalized scientific communities. Here I present a challenge to this integration project. I argue, by reference to ethnographic and cross-cultural psychological studies, that the models of t…Read more
  •  752
    In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivar…Read more
  •  729
    Ethnoontology: Ways of world‐building across cultures
    Philosophy Compass (9): 1-11. 2019.
    This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as b…Read more
  •  36
    An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology
    with Daniel Weiskopf and Fred Adams
    Cambridge University Press. 2015.
    Psychology aims to give us a scientific account of how the mind works. But what does it mean to have a science of the mental, and what sort of picture of the mind emerges from our best psychological theories? This book addresses these philosophical puzzles in a way that is accessible to readers with little or no background in psychology or neuroscience. Using clear and detailed case studies and drawing on up-to-date empirical research, it examines perception and action, the link between attentio…Read more
  •  197
    Anthropic Concepts
    Noûs 54 (2): 451-468. 2020.
    Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind‐independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to f…Read more
  •  2
    A Defense of Conceptual Pluralism
    Dissertation, Washington University. 2003.
    Philosophers have historically been concerned with concepts and their analysis, and in recent decades psychologists have also begun to speculate on what kinds of structures concepts might be. I take concepts to satisfy three core desiderata: they are mental representations, they are the constituents of thoughts, and they are centrally employed in categorization. There are four major theories of concepts currently in play: definitionism, prototype and exemplar theory, the 'theory theory', and con…Read more
  •  106
    An ideal disorder? Autism as a psychiatric kind
    Philosophical Explorations 20 (2): 175-190. 2017.
    In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of its behavioral symptoms and the underlying genetic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms that produce them. This has led some to propose eliminating the category altogether. The eliminativist inference relies on a conception of psychiatric categories as kinds defined by their underlying mechanistic structure. I review the evidence for eliminativism and propose an alternative model of the family of autis…Read more
  •  118
    First thoughts
    Philosophical Psychology 21 (2). 2008.
    Jean Mandler proposes an original and richly detailed theory of how concepts relate to sensory and motor capacities. I focus on her claims about conceptual representations and the processes that produce them. On her view, concepts are declarative representations of object kind information. First, I argue that since sensorimotor representations may be declarative, there is no bar to percepts being constituents of concepts. Second, I suggest that concepts track kinds and other categories not by re…Read more
  •  251
    Atomism, pluralism, and conceptual content
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (1): 131-163. 2009.
    Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show sever…Read more
  •  90
    The theoretical indispensability of concepts
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3). 2010.
    Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provocatively argues that concepts should be eliminated from our best psychological taxonomy. I argue that the constituency view has much to recommend it (and is presupposed by much of his own theory), and that the evidence gives us grounds for pluralism, rather than eliminativism, about concepts
  •  100
    Mental mirroring as the origin of attributions
    Mind and Language 20 (5): 495-520. 2005.
    A ‘Radical Simulationist’ account of how folk psychology functions has been developed by Robert Gordon. I argue that Radical Simulationism is false. In its simplest form it is not sufficient to explain our attribution of mental states to subjects whose desires and preferences differ from our own. Modifying the theory to capture these attributions invariably generates innumerable other false attributions. Further, the theory predicts that deficits in mentalizing ought to co-occur with certain def…Read more
  •  87
    Compound Nominals, Context, and Compositionality
    Synthese 156 (1): 161-204. 2007.
    There are good reasons to think natural languages are compositional. But compound nominals (CNs) are largely productive constructions that have proven highly recalcitrant to compositional semantic analysis. I evaluate existing proposals to treat CNs compositionally and argue that they are unsuccessful. I then articulate an alternative proposal according to which CNs contain covert indexicals. Features of the context allow a variety of relations to be expressed using CNs, but this variety is not …Read more
  •  99
    The Functional Unity of Special Science Kinds
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (2): 233-258. 2011.
    The view that special science properties are multiply realizable has been attacked in recent years by Shapiro, Bechtel and Mundale, Polger, and others. Focusing on psychological and neuroscientific properties, I argue that these attacks are unsuccessful. By drawing on interspecies physiological comparisons I show that diverse physical mechanisms can converge on common functional properties at multiple levels. This is illustrated with examples from the psychophysics and neuroscience of early visi…Read more
  •  83
    Integrative Modeling and the Role of Neural Constraints
    Philosophy of Science 83 (5): 647-685. 2016.
    Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. Here I consider whether mechanistic analysis provides a useful way to integrate models of cognitive and neural structure. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive systems map onto overlapping, distributed networks of brain regions. These highly entangled networks often depart from stereotypical mechanistic behaviors. While this casts doubt on the prospects for classical mechanistic integration of psych…Read more
  •  148
    Concepts and the modularity of thought
    Dialectica 64 (1): 107-130. 2010.
    Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought requires is obeying the Generality Constraint: concepts ought to be freely recombinable with other concepts to form novel thoughts, independent of what they are concepts of. Having concepts, then, constrains cognitive architecture in interesting ways. In recent years, spurred on by the rise of evolutionary psychology, massively modular models of the mind have gained prominence. I argue that these archi…Read more
  •  63
    Understanding is not simulating: a reply to Gibbs and Perlman
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3): 309-312. 2010.
    In this response, I do four things. First, I defend the claim that the action compatibility effect does not distinguish between embodied and traditional accounts of language comprehension. Second, I present neuroimaging and neuropsychological results that seem to support the traditional account. Third, I argue that metaphorical language poses no special challenge to the arguments I gave against embodied theories of comprehension. Fourth, I lay out the architecture of language I advocate and sugg…Read more
  •  276
    Patrolling the Mind’s Boundaries
    Erkenntnis 68 (2). 2008.
    Defenders of the extended mind thesis say that it is possible that some of our mental states may be constituted, in part, by states of the extra-bodily environment. Often they also add that such extended mentation is a commonplace phenomenon. I argue that extended mentation, while not impossible, is either nonexistent or far from widespread. Genuine beliefs as they occur in normal biologically embodied systems are informationally integrated with each other, and sensitive to changes in the person
  •  24
    Concepts, Theory-Theory of
    In James Fieser & Bradley Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge. 2011.
  •  336
    The origins of concepts
    Philosophical Studies 140 (3). 2008.
    Certain of our concepts are innate, but many others are learned. Despite the plausibility of this claim, some have argued that the very idea of concept learning is incoherent. I present a conception of learning that sidesteps the arguments against the possibility of concept learning, and sketch several mechanisms that result in the generation of new primitive concepts. Given the rational considerations that motivate their deployment, I argue that these deserve to be called learning mechanisms. I…Read more
  •  50
    Language and mechanisms of concept learning
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (3): 150-151. 2011.
    Carey focuses her attention on a mechanism of concept learning called I argue that this form of bootstrapping is not dependent upon language or other public representations, and outline a place for language in concept learning generally. Language, perception, and causal reasoning are all sources of evidence that can guide learners toward discovering new and potentially useful categories
  •  218
    Concept empiricism and the vehicles of thought
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (9-10): 156-183. 2007.
    Concept empiricists are committed to the claim that the vehicles of thought are re-activated perceptual representations. Evidence for empiricism comes from a range of neuroscientific studies showing that perceptual regions of the brain are employed during cognitive tasks such as categorization and inference. I examine the extant neuroscientific evidence and argue that it falls short of establishing this core empiricist claim. During conceptual tasks, the causal structure of the brain produces wi…Read more
  •  130
    Words, Images and Concepts
    Analysis 75 (1): 99-109. 2015.
    Christopher Gauker proposes that all cognition can be divided into nonconceptual image-based thought and conceptual language-based thought. The division between the two hinges on the representational powers of their respective mediums. I argue that a richer variety of representational states and processes is necessary in order to explain both human and nonhuman cognition. There are aspects of nonhuman cognition that cannot be explained simply by images, and there are aspects of human conceptual …Read more
  •  349
    Remarks on Fodor on having concepts
    with William Bechtel
    Mind and Language 19 (1): 48-56. 2004.
    Fodor offers a novel argument against Bare-bones Concept Pragmatism (BCP). He alleges that there are two circularities in BCP’s account of concept possession: a circularity in explaining concept possession in terms of the capacity to sort; and a circularity in explaining concept possession in terms of the capacity to draw inferences. We argue that neither of these circles is real.
  •  86
    Embodied cognition and linguistic comprehension
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3): 294-304. 2010.
    Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer’s perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representation…Read more
  •  146
    A critical review of Jerry A. Fodor's the mind doesn't work that way (review)
    Philosophical Psychology 15 (4). 2002.
    The "New Synthesis" in cognitive science is committed to the computational theory of mind (CTM), massive modularity, nativism, and adaptationism. In The mind doesn't work that way , Jerry Fodor argues that CTM has problems explaining abductive or global inference, but that the New Synthesis offers no solution, since massive modularity is in fact incompatible with global cognitive processes. I argue that it is not clear how global human mentation is, so whether CTM is imperiled is an open questio…Read more