•  1252
    How to think about mental content
    Philosophical Studies 170 (1): 115-135. 2014.
    Introduction: representationalismMost theorists of cognition endorse some version of representationalism, which I will understand as the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are representational capacities. Of course, notions such as ‘representation’ and ‘information-using’ are terms of art that require explication. As a first pass, representations are “mediating states of an intelligent system that carry information” (Markman and Dietrich …Read more
  •  1145
    A Deflationary Account of Mental Representation
    In Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołrega & Tobias Schlicht (eds.), What Are Mental Representations?, Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Among the cognitive capacities of evolved creatures is the capacity to represent. Theories in cognitive neuroscience typically explain our manifest representational capacities by positing internal representations, but there is little agreement about how these representations function, especially with the relatively recent proliferation of connectionist, dynamical, embodied, and enactive approaches to cognition. In this talk I sketch an account of the nature and function of representation in cog…Read more
  •  1019
    Representationalism
    In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press. 2012.
    Representationalism, in its most widely accepted form, is the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are to be understood as representational capacities. This chapter distinguishes several distinct theses that go by the name "representationalism," focusing on the view that is most prevalent in cogntive science. It also discusses some objections to the view and attempts to clarify the role that representational content plays in cognitive model…Read more
  •  781
    Much of computational cognitive science construes human cognitive capacities as representational capacities, or as involving representation in some way. Computational theories of vision, for example, typically posit structures that represent edges in the distal scene. Neurons are often said to represent elements of their receptive fields. Despite the ubiquity of representational talk in computational theorizing there is surprisingly little consensus about how such claims are to be understood. Th…Read more
  •  666
    Nicholas Shea offers Varitel Semantics as a naturalistic account of mental content. I argue that the account secures determinate content only by appeal to pragmatic considerations, and so it fails to respect naturalism. But that is fine, because representational content is not, strictly speaking, necessary for explanation in cognitive science. Even in Shea’s own account, content serves only a variety of heuristic functions.
  •  468
    Wide Content
    In A. Beckerman, B. McLaughlin & S. Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.
  •  451
    Function-Theoretic Explanation and the Search for Neural Mechanisms
    In Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science 145-163.. pp. 145-163. 2017.
    A common kind of explanation in cognitive neuroscience might be called functiontheoretic: with some target cognitive capacity in view, the theorist hypothesizes that the system computes a well-defined function (in the mathematical sense) and explains how computing this function constitutes (in the system’s normal environment) the exercise of the cognitive capacity. Recently, proponents of the so-called ‘new mechanist’ approach in philosophy of science have argued that a model of a cognitive capa…Read more
  •  302
    What's wrong with the syntactic theory of mind
    Philosophy of Science 56 (December): 664-74. 1989.
    Stephen Stich has argued that psychological theories that instantiate his Syntactic Theory of Mind are to be preferred to content-based or representationalist theories, because the former can capture and explain a wider range of generalizations about cognitive processes than the latter. Stich's claims about the relative merits of the Syntactic Theory of Mind are unfounded. Not only is it false that syntactic theories can capture psychological generalizations that content-based theories cannot, b…Read more
  •  285
    The elusive role of normal‐proper function in cognitive science
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (2): 468-475. 2022.
    Comments on Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental
  •  278
    The Structure of Perceptual Experience: A New Look at Adverbialism
    In Deflating Mental Representation (The 2021 Jean Nicod Lectures), . forthcoming.
    In the philosophy of perception, representationalism is the view that all phenomenological differences among mental states are representational differences, in other words, differences in content. In this paper I defend an alternative view which I call external sortalism, inspired by traditional adverbialism, and according to which experiences are not essentially representational. The central idea is that the external world serves as a model for sorting, conceptualizing, and reasoning surrogativ…Read more
  •  245
    The We-Perspective on the Racing Sailboat
    In Roberto Casati (ed.), The Sailing Mind, Springer. forthcoming.
    Successful sports teams are able to adopt what is known as the 'we-perspective,' forming intentions and making decisions, somewhat as a unified mind does, to achieve their goals. In this paper I consider what is involved in establishing and maintaining the we-perspective on a racing sailboat. I argue that maintaining the we-perspective contributes to the success of the boat in at least two ways: (1) it facilitates the smooth execution of joint action; and (2) it increases the chance that individ…Read more
  •  184
    Doing cognitive neuroscience: A third way
    Synthese 153 (3): 377-391. 2006.
    The “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches have been thought to exhaust the possibilities for doing cognitive neuroscience. We argue that neither approach is likely to succeed in providing a theory that enables us to understand how cognition is achieved in biological creatures like ourselves. We consider a promising third way of doing cognitive neuroscience, what might be called the “neural dynamic systems” approach, that construes cognitive neuroscience as an autonomous explanatory endeavor, aim…Read more
  •  179
    Folk psychology and cognitive architecture
    Philosophy of Science 62 (2): 179-96. 1995.
    It has recently been argued that the success of the connectionist program in cognitive science would threaten folk psychology. I articulate and defend a "minimalist" construal of folk psychology that comports well with empirical evidence on the folk understanding of belief and is compatible with even the most radical developments in cognitive science
  •  154
    Computational models: a modest role for content
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3): 253-259. 2010.
    The computational theory of mind construes the mind as an information-processor and cognitive capacities as essentially representational capacities. Proponents of the view claim a central role for representational content in computational models of these capacities. In this paper I argue that the standard view of the role of representational content in computational models is mistaken; I argue that representational content is to be understood as a gloss on the computational characterization of a…Read more
  •  146
    In defence of narrow mindedness
    Mind and Language 14 (2): 177-94. 1999.
    Externalism about the mind holds that the explanation of our representational capacities requires appeal to mental states that are individuated by reference to features of the environment. Externalists claim that ‘narrow’ taxonomies cannot account for important features of psychological explanation. I argue that this claim is false, and offer a general argument for preferring narrow taxonomies in psychology
  •  142
    Naturalistic inquiry: Where does mental representation fit in?
    In Louise M. Antony (ed.), Chomsky and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 89--104. 2003.
    This chapter contains section titled: Methodological Naturalism Internalism The Limits of Naturalistic Inquiry Computation and Content Intentionality and Naturalistic Inquiry.
  •  132
    Must psychology be individualistic?
    Philosophical Review 100 (April): 179-203. 1991.
  •  131
    Propositional Attitudes and the Language of Thought
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (3). 1991.
    In the appendix to Psychosemantics, entitled ‘Why There Still has to be a Language of Thought,’ Jerry Fodor offers several arguments for the language of thought thesis. The LOT, as articulated by Fodor, is a thesis about propositional attitudes. It comprises the following two claims: propositional attitudes are relations to meaning-bearing tokens — for example, to believe that P is to bear a certain relation to a token of a symbol which means that P; and the representational tokens in question a…Read more
  •  131
    The Elusive Role of Normal-Proper Function in Cognitive Science
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 468-475. 2022.
    Comments on Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental
  •  123
    The content of color experience (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2). 2008.
  •  106
    Explaining representation: a reply to Matthen
    Philosophical Studies 170 (1): 137-142. 2014.
    Mohan Matthen has failed to understand the position I develop and defend in “How to Think about Mental Content.” No doubt some of the fault lies with my exposition, though Matthen often misconstrues passages that are clear in context. He construes clarifications and elaborations of my argument to be “concessions.” Rather than dwell too much on specific misunderstandings of my explanatory project and its attendant claims, I will focus on the main points of disagreement.RepresentationalismMy proje…Read more
  •  58
    Individualism and vision theory
    Analysis 54 (4): 258-264. 1994.
  •  58
    Milkowski, Marcin., Explaining the Computational Mind (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 67 (2): 436-438. 2013.
  •  49
    Review: Thought and World (review)
    Mind 115 (457): 152-156. 2006.
  •  44
    The moon illusion
    Philosophy of Science 65 (4): 604-23. 1998.
    Ever since Berkeley discussed the problem at length in his Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision, theorists of vision have attempted to explain why the moon appears larger on the horizon than it does at the zenith. Prevailing opinion has it that the contemporary perceptual psychologists Kaufman and Rock have finally explained the illusion. This paper argues that Kaufman and Rock have not refuted a Berkeleyan account of the illusion, and have over-interpreted their own experimental results. The moo…Read more