•  16
    Relatives of the living dead
    Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (10): 607-608. 2006.
    Death has a social meaning in every culture. It is not something that concerns only the person who dies, but also his or her family, friends and other people in the community. Most people have an idea of what counts as a good death—for the person concerned or for those who survive. Some people would prefer to die suddenly and painlessly, in their sleep if possible. But for many people, a good death is a process in which they gradually lose their hold on life, become reconciled to their end and s…Read more
  •  53
    Objectives: To discover the current state of opinion and practice among doctors in Victoria, Australia, regarding end-of-life decisions and the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. Longitudinal comparison with similar 1987 and 1993 studies.Design and participants: Cross-sectional postal survey of doctors in Victoria.Results: 53% of doctors in Victoria support the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. Of doctors who have experienced requests from patients to hasten death, 35% have administered d…Read more
  •  8
    Narrative Fictions
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (4): 84-85. 2012.
    What Walker describes as the “epistemological” features of narratives are the very elements that open the door for the threat of the discrepancy. What I have tried to show is that even with some blurry boundaries, and some fallibilism, and some occasional indeterminacy, lots of [normals] will be living their lives in an acceptable fashion, telling self-narratives that misdescribe the causes not just of their casual behavior, but even some of their most moral or existentially important features.…Read more
  •  16
    On Behalf of the Eliminativist
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 1 (4): 39-40. 2010.
    Chris Kaposy raises an important point about possible interpretations of advances in neuroscience. Specifically, he argues that certain advances may pose a problem for the folk conception of the mind, and he explains that this has crucial implications for our views of what makes a person rational, free, or responsible. In this commentary, I press Kaposy’s position from an eliminativist perspective. Although he may be correct in believing that advances in neuroscience may be difficult to squa…Read more
  •  26
    Comprising 31 chapters by a superb international team of contributors, the Handbook will be of great interest to students and researchers in philosophy of psychology, moral psychology and philosophy of mind as well as related disciplines such as psychology and cognitive science.
  •  20
    Believe It or Not: On Multiplying Classes of Belief-like States
    Studia Philosophica Estonica 9 (1): 79-110. 2016.
    This paper explores whether it is justified to add any new taxa concerning informational states to our psychological taxonomy. Such exploration will not lead to a straightforward decision between remaining steadfast with the taxonomic _status quo_ and adding only one new taxon. A careful analysis of when one would be warranted in positing a new taxon for informational states will reveal similarly compelling reasons to posit all sorts of additional taxa. As an antidote to such proliferation, I su…Read more
  •  116
    Grades of meaning
    Synthese 161 (2): 283-308. 2008.
    In this paper, I lend novel support to H. P. Grice’s account of speaker meaning (GASM) by blunting the force of a significant objection. Stephen Schiffer has argued that in order to make GASM sufficient, one must add restrictions that are psychologically impossible to fulfill, thereby making GASM untenable. In what follows, I explain the elements of GASM that require it to invoke these psychologically unrealizable restrictions. I then accept Schiffer’s criticism, but modify its significance to G…Read more
  •  16
    Speech acts and sub-sentential speech
    Critica 43 (129): 65-91. 2011.
    In this paper, I compile some reasons for resisting Stainton's analysis of sub-sentential speech. My resistance stems from considerations about the intentions and expectations of those who communicate using sub-sentential speech. I challenge Stainton's reasons for thinking that some sub-sentential utterances have the status of full-fledged speech acts and argue that they turn out to be degenerate speech acts. After offering my own analysis of sub-sentential speech, I recommend that by revisiting…Read more
  •  85
    Meaning and Mindreading
    Mind and Language 29 (2): 167-200. 2014.
    In this article, I defend Neo-Gricean accounts of language and communication from an objection about linguistic development. According to this objection, children are incapable of understanding the minds of others in the way that Neo-Gricean accounts require until long after they learn the meanings of words, are able to produce meaningful utterances, and understand the meaningful utterances of others. In answering this challenge, I outline exactly what sorts of psychological states are required …Read more
  •  53
    Signature Limits in Mindreading Systems
    Cognitive Science 38 (7): 1432-1455. 2014.
    Recent evidence that young children seem to both understand false belief in one sense, but not in another, has led to two-systems theorizing about mindreading. By analyzing the most detailed two-systems approach in studying social cognition—the theory of mindreading defended by Ian Apperly and Stephen Butterfill—I argue that that even when dutifully constructed, two-systems approaches in social cognition struggle to adequately define the mindreading systems in terms of signature processing limit…Read more
  •  25
    Causing Trouble: Theories of Reference and Theory of Mind
    Philosophy of Science 83 (1): 119-130. 2016.
    Michael and MacLeod’s paper on theories of reference for intentional concepts addresses neglected connections between theories of reference and Theory of Mind debates. Unfortunately, their paper neither shows the negative effects of descriptivism on theories of reference for intentional concepts nor provides an adequate picture of how the sort of theory they advocate might explain either the reference of intentional concepts or the puzzles of development on which they focus. In this article, I g…Read more
  •  24
    Still relevant: HP Grice's legacy in psycholinguistics and philosophy of language
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 77-109. 2007.
    In this paper, I outline evidence of Paul Grice’s enduring influence in Psycho-linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. I focus on two particular cases: the role of intentions within developmental psycholinguistics and the notion of what is said within current debates over the notion of semantic content and the semantic-pragmatic boundary. I end the paper with a brief discussion of a possible difficulty facing those who hope to square Grice’s stance on naturalism with this work.
  •  92
    Implicit mindreading and embodied cognition
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (4): 449-466. 2012.
    Abstract   In this paper, I examine the plausibility of Embodied Accounts of Social Cognition by finding fault with the most detailed and convincing version of such an account, as articulated by Daniel Hutto ( 2008 ). I argue that this account fails to offer a plausible ontogeny for folk psychological abilities due to its inability to address recent evidence from implicit false belief tasks that suggest a radically different timeline for the development of these abilities. Content Type Journal A…Read more