•  1
    How do people evaluate causal relationships? Do they just consider what actually happened, or do they also consider what could have counterfactually happened? Using eye tracking and Gaussian process modeling, we investigated how people mentally simulated past events to judge what caused the outcomes to occur. Participants played a virtual ball‐shooting game and then—while looking at a blank screen—mentally simulated (a) what actually happened, (b) what counterfactually could have happened, or (c…Read more
  •  54
    According to theoretical work on epistemic injustice, baseless discrediting of the knowledge of people with marginalized social identities is a central driver of prejudice and discrimination. Discrediting of knowledge may sometimes be subtle, but it is pernicious, inducing chronic stress and coping strategies such as emotional avoidance. In this research, we sought to deepen the understanding of epistemic injustice’s impact by examining emotional responses to being discredited and assessing if m…Read more
  •  10
    On the frequency and nature of the cues that elicit déjà vu and involuntary autobiographical memories
    with Ricardo Morales-Torres
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
    Barzykowski and Moulin suggest that déjà vu and involuntary autobiographical memories recruit similar retrieval processes. Here, we invite the authors to clarify three issues: (1) What mechanism prevents déjà vu to happen more frequently? (2) What is the role of semantic cues in involuntary autobiographical retrieval? and (3) How déjà vu relates to non-believed memories?
  •  2
  •  293
    Simulationism and Memory Traces
    In Sara Aronowitz & Lynn Nadel (eds.), Space, Time, and Memory. forthcoming.
    In the philosophy of memory there is a tension between a preservationist and a constructivist view of memory reflected in the debate between causalism and simulationism. Causalism is not only committed to the claim that there must be an appropriate causal connection between the remembered event and the content represented at retrieval but also that such connection is possible because of a content-preserving memory trace. Simulationism, by contrast, rejects the need for an appropriate causal cond…Read more
  •  23
    Neuroscience and philosophy (edited book)
    The MIT Press. 2022.
    State-of-the-art collection on how neuroscience and philosophy can mutually illuminate each other on core psychological concepts. An interdisciplinary collection in the best sense.
  •  398
    “Repressed Memory” Makes No Sense
    Topics in Cognitive Science. forthcoming.
    The expression “repressed memory” was introduced over 100 years ago as a theoretical term purportedly referring to an unobservable psychological entity postulated by Freud’s seduction theory. That theory, however, and its hypothesized cognitive architecture, have been thoroughly debunked—yet the term “repressed memory” seems to remain. In this paper I offer a philosophical evaluation of the meaning of this theoretical term as well as an argument to question its scientific status by comparing it …Read more
  •  491
    Norms Affect Prospective Causal Judgments
    with Paul Henne, Kevin O’Neill, Paul Bello, and Sangeet Khemlani
    Cognitive Science 45 (1). 2021.
    People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm- conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm- violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as …Read more
  •  753
    Cause by Omission and Norm: Not Watering Plants
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 270-283. 2017.
    People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories,…Read more
  •  150
    An Empirical Refutation of ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’
    with Paul Henne, Vladimir Chituc, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
    Analysis 76 (3): 283-290. 2016.
    Most philosophers assume that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, and most of them hold that this principle is true not only universally but also analytically or conceptually. Some skeptics deny this principle, although they often admit some related one. In this article, we show how new empirical evidence bolsters the skeptics’ arguments. We then defend the skeptical view against some objections to the empirical evidence and to its effect on the traditional principle. In light of the new evidence, we conclud…Read more
  •  86
    Many philosophers claim that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In light of recent empirical evidence, however, some skeptics conclude that philosophers should stop assuming the principle unconditionally. Streumer, however, does not simply assume the principle’s truth; he provides arguments for it. In this article, we argue that his arguments fail to support the claim that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.
  •  961
    Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures
    with Julian De Freitas, Hagop Sarkissian, George E. Newman, Igor Grossmann, Andres Luco, and Joshua Knobe
    Cognitive Science 42 (S1): 134-160. 2018.
    People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question…Read more
  •  80
    People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly su…Read more
  •  241
    Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that “ought” implies “can,” which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that…Read more
  •  151
    Moralization and self-control strategy selection
    Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 30 (4). 2023.
    To manage conflicts between temptation and commitment, people use self-control. The process model of self-control outlines different strategies for managing the onset and experience of temptation. However, little is known about the decision-making factors underlying strategy selection. Across three experiments (N = 317), we tested whether the moral valence of a commitment predicts how people advise attentional self-control strategies. In Experiments 1 and 2, people rated attentional focus strate…Read more
  •  273
    Not Every Thing Must Go
    with Trey Boone and Nina Van Rooy
    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. forthcoming.
    In The Entangled Brain, Pessoa criticizes standard approaches in cognitive neuroscience in which the brain is seen as a functionally decomposable, modular system with causal operations built up hierarchically. Instead, he advocates for an emergentist perspective whereby dynamic brain networks are associated, not with traditional psychological categories, but with behavioral functions characterized in evolutionary terms. Here, we raise a number of concerns with such a radical approach. We ultimat…Read more
  •  747
    Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing
    with Samuel Murray, Kristina Krasich, Zachary Irving, and Thomas Nadelhoffer
    Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. forthcoming.
    Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others’ menta…Read more
  •  13
    The Efficacy of Downward Counterfactual Thinking for Regulating Emotional Memories in Anxious Individuals
    with Natasha Parikh and Kevin S. LaBar
    Frontiers in Psychology 12. 2022.
    Aversive autobiographical memories sometimes prompt maladaptive emotional responses and contribute to affective dysfunction in anxiety and depression. One way to regulate the impact of such memories is to create a downward counterfactual thought–a mental simulation of how the event could have been worse–to put what occurred in a more positive light. Despite its intuitive appeal, counterfactual thinking has not been systematically studied for its regulatory efficacy. In the current study, we comp…Read more
  •  11
    Confidence and gradation in causal judgment
    with Kevin O'Neill, Paul Henne, Paul Bello, and John Pearson
    Cognition 223 (C): 105036. 2022.
  •  837
    Multivariate pattern analysis and the search for neural representations
    with Bryce Gessell and Benjamin Geib
    Synthese 199 (5-6): 12869-12889. 2021.
    Multivariate pattern analysis, or MVPA, has become one of the most popular analytic methods in cognitive neuroscience. Since its inception, MVPA has been heralded as offering much more than regular univariate analyses, for—we are told—it not only can tell us which brain regions are engaged while processing particular stimuli, but also which patterns of neural activity represent the categories the stimuli are selected from. We disagree, and in the current paper we offer four conceptual challenges…Read more
  •  31
    Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement
    with Matthew L. Stanley, Roberto Cabeza, and Rachel Smallman
    Cognitive Science 45 (6). 2021.
    In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participa…Read more
  •  30
    Making moral principles suit yourself
    with Matthew Stanley, Paul Henne, Laura Niemi, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
    Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1. 2021.
    Normative ethical theories and religious traditions offer general moral principles for people to follow. These moral principles are typically meant to be fixed and rigid, offering reliable guides for moral judgment and decision-making. In two preregistered studies, we found consistent evidence that agreement with general moral principles shifted depending upon events recently accessed in memory. After recalling their own personal violations of moral principles, participants agreed less strongly …Read more
  •  106
    Do We Need Another Kind of Memory?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (11-12): 134-144. 2020.
  •  23
    Phenomenology of counterfactual thinking is dampened in anxious individuals
    with Natasha Parikh and Kevin S. LaBar
    Cognition and Emotion 34 (8): 1737-1745. 2020.
    Counterfactual thinking, or simulating alternative versions of occurred events, is a common psychological strategy people use to process events in their lives. However, CFT is also a core com...
  •  431
    Prediction and Topological Models in Neuroscience
    with Bryce Gessell, Matthew Stanley, and Benjamin Geib
    In Fabrizio Calzavarini & Marco Viola (eds.), Neural Mechanisms: New challenges in the philosophy of neuroscience., Springer. forthcoming.
    In the last two decades, philosophy of neuroscience has predominantly focused on explanation. Indeed, it has been argued that mechanistic models are the standards of explanatory success in neuroscience over, among other things, topological models. However, explanatory power is only one virtue of a scientific model. Another is its predictive power. Unfortunately, the notion of prediction has received comparatively little attention in the philosophy of neuroscience, in part because predictions see…Read more
  •  2
    Neuroscience & Philosophy (edited book)
    MIT Press. forthcoming.
  •  643
    The Explanatory Indispensability of Memory Traces
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 27 23-47. 2020.
    During the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers of memory opposed the postulation of memory traces based on the claim that a satisfactory account of remembering need not include references to causal processes involved in recollection. However, in 1966, an influential paper by Martin and Deutscher showed that causal claims are indeed necessary for a proper account of remembering. This, however, did not settle the issue, as in 1977 Malcolm argued that even if one were to buy Mart…Read more