•  1264
    Innateness
    In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    A survey of innateness in cognitive science, focusing on (1) what innateness might be, and (2) whether concepts might be innate.
  •  420
    What’s Really Going On in Searle’s “Chinese room‘
    Philosophical Studies 50 (September): 169-85. 1986.
  •  394
    When Other Things Aren’t Equal: Saving Ceteris Paribus Laws from Vacuity
    with Paul Pietroski
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1): 81-110. 1995.
    A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statements vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antecedents of ?real? laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformulations are rare; and they are not, we argue, to be expected in general. So we defend an alternative sufficient condition for the non-vacuity of ceteris paribus laws: roughly, any counterinstance of the law must be independently explicable, in a sense we make explicit. Ceteris paribus laws …Read more
  •  138
  •  118
  •  112
    We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as…Read more
  •  105
    Toward a projectivist account of conscious experience
    In Thomas Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience, Ferdinand Schoningh. pp. 123--42. 1995.
  •  96
    A Naturalistic A Priori
    Philosophical Studies 92 (1/2). 1998.
  •  89
    Wittgenstein’s views invite a modest, functionalist account of mental states and regularities, or more specifically a causal/computational, representational theory of the mind (CRTT). It is only by understandingWittgenstein’s remarks in the context of a theory like CRTT that his insights have any real force; and it is only by recognizing those insights that CRTT can begin to account for sensations and our thoughts about them. For instance, Wittgenstein’s (in)famous remark that “an inner process …Read more
  •  84
    Fodor's ingratitude and change of heart?
    Mind and Language 19 (1): 70-84. 2004.
    One would have thought that Fodor's justly famous computational views about the mind and his covariation approaches to content owed a lot to the twentieth century that he now reviles. On the other hand, a number of lines he pursues in the target article make one wonder whether he hasn’t perhaps changed his mind about those famous views. Specifically, I argue that his own theory of content is open to the very same objections he raises against ‘sorting’ theories, and that the supposed circularity …Read more
  •  83
    Conventions, Intuitions and Linguistic Inexistents: A Reply to Devitt
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (3): 549-569. 2006.
    Elsewhere I have argued that standard theories of linguistic competence are committed to taking seriously talk of “representations of” standard linguistic entities (“SLEs”), such as NPs, VPs, morphemes, phonemes, syntactic and phonetic features. However, it is very doubtful there are tokens of these “things” in space and time. Moreover, even if were, their existence would be completely inessential to the needs of either communication or serious linguistic theory. Their existence is an illusion: …Read more
  •  82
    In her recent (2009) book, The Origins of Concepts, Susan Carey argues that what she calls ‘Quinean Bootstrapping’ and processes of analogy in children show that the expressive power of a mind can be increased in ways that refute Jerry Fodor's (1975, 2008) ‘Mad Dog’ view that all concepts are innate. I argue that it is doubtful any evidence about the manifestation of concepts in children will bear upon the logico-semantic issues of expressive power. Analogy and bootstrapping may be ways to bring…Read more
  •  77
    Mind, Intentionality and Inexistence
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 389-415. 2005.
    The present article articulates the strategy of much of my work to date, which has been concerned to understand how we can possibly come to have any objective understanding of the mind. Generally, I align myself with those who think the best prospect of such an understanding lies in a causal/computational/representational theory of thought (CRTT). However, there is a tendency in recent developments of this and related philosophical views to burden the crucial property of intentionality with what…Read more
  •  72
    XV*—Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Competence
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92 (1): 315-334. 1992.
    Georges Rey; XV*—Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Competence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 315–334, https
  •  70
    Concepts versus conceptions (again)
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 221-222. 2010.
    Machery neglects the crucial role of concepts in psychological explanation, as well as the efforts of numerous of the last 40 years to provide an account of that role. He rightly calls attention to the wide variation in people's epistemic relations to concepts but fails to appreciate how externalist and kindred proposals offer the needed stability in concepts themselves that underlies that variation
  •  69
    Resisting Primitive CompulsionsA Study of Concepts (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (2): 419. 1996.
    I’m sympathetic to a great deal of Peacocke’s project: that possession of a concept should require it playing a certain role in thought; that semantic determination should be treated separately from concept possession; that certain concepts are defective by virtue of eluding sufficient determination or specification: such claims seems to me right, important, and too little appreciated on my side of the Atlantic.
  •  66
    Fodor and LePore's attack on conceptual role semantics relies on Quine's attack on the traditional analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, which in turn consists of four arguments: an attack on truth by convention; an appeal to revisability; a claim of confirmation holism; and a charge of explanatory vacuity. Once the different merits of these arguments are sorted out, their proper target can be seen to be not the Traditional Distinctions, but an implicit assumption about thei…Read more
  •  63
    Taking Consciousness Seriously-- as an Illusion
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12): 197-214. 2016.
    I supplement Frankish's defence of illusionism by pressing a point I've made elsewhere regarding how actual computational proposals in psychology for conscious processes could be run on desktop computers that most people wouldn't regard as conscious. I distinguish the w-consciousness of such a desktop from the s-consciousness people think humans but no such machines enjoy, which gives rise to an explanatory gap, invites first scepticism, unwanted analgesia, and is not supported by Cartesian intr…Read more
  •  63
    Digging deeper for the a priori (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (3). 2001.
    For all the inadequacies of empiricism that BonJour admirably sets out in his first three chapters, one wonders whether rationalism is any better off. I’m afraid I don’t find BonJour’s account reassuring. It seems to be precisely the one that has led so many to be wary of the a priori in the first place. I want here to reiterate the reasons for that wariness, and sketch what seems to me a more promising approach.
  •  61
    This volume is an introduction to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. In particular, the author focuses on the controversial "eliminativist" and "instrumentalist" attacks - from philosophers such as of Quine, Dennett, and the Churchlands - on our ordinary concept of mind. In so doing, Rey offers an explication and defense of "mental realism", and shows how Fodor's representational theory of mind affords a compelling account of much of our ordinary mental talk of beliefs, hopes, and d…Read more
  •  58
    Book reviews (review)
    with David L. Kemmerer, Kenneth Aizawa, Donald H. Berman, Stacey L. Edgar, James E. Tomberlin, J. Christopher Maloney, John L. Bell, Stuart C. Shapiro, Morton L. Schagrin, Robert A. Wilson, and Patrick J. Hayes
    Minds and Machines 5 (3): 411-465. 1995.
  •  57
    The Unavailability of What We Mean
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 46 61-101. 1993.
    Fodor and LePore's attack on conceptual role semantics relies on Quine's attack on the traditional analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, which in turn consists of four arguments: an attack on truth by convention; an appeal to revisability; a claim of confirmation holism; and a charge of explanatory vacuity. Once the different merits of these arguments are sorted out, their proper target can be seen to be not the Traditional Distinctions, but an implicit assumption about thei…Read more