Eindhoven University of Technology
Department of Philosophy and Ethics
PhD, 2008
Eindhoven, North Brabant, Netherlands
  •  3151
    The cognitive bases of human tool use
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 203-262. 2012.
    This article has two goals. First, it synthesizes and critically assesses current scientific knowledge about the cognitive bases of human tool use. Second, it shows how the cognitive traits reviewed help to explain why technological accumulation evolved so markedly in humans, and so modestly in apes.
  •  958
    Evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists have been considerably successful in modelling the cumulative evolution of culture, of technological skills and knowledge in particular. Recently, one of these models has been introduced in the philosophy of science by De Cruz and De Smedt (Philos Stud 157:411–429, 2012), in an attempt to demonstrate that scientists may collectively come to hold more truth-approximating beliefs, despite the cognitive biases which they individually are known to be s…Read more
  •  955
    The rise of logical empiricist philosophy of science and the fate of speculative philosophy of science
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (2): 000-000. 2022.
    This paper contributes to explaining the rise of logical empiricism in mid-twentieth century (North) America and to a better understanding of American philosophy of science before the dominance of logical empiricism. We show that, contrary to a number of existing histories, philosophy of science was already a distinct subfield of philosophy, one with its own approaches and issues, even before logical empiricists arrived in America. It was a form of speculative philosophy with a concern for specu…Read more
  •  865
    Giere's (In)Appropriation of Distributed Cognition
    Social Epistemology 25 (4). 2011.
    Ronald Giere embraces the perspective of distributed cognition to think about cognition in the sciences. I argue that his conception of distributed cognition is flawed in that it bears all the marks of its predecessor; namely, individual cognition. I show what a proper (i.e. non-individual) distributed framework looks like, and highlight what it can and cannot do for the philosophy of science
  •  732
    How norms in technology ought to be interpreted
    Techne 10 (1): 117-133. 2006.
    This paper defends the claim that there are — at least — two kinds of normativity in technological practice. The first concerns what engineers ought to do and the second concerns normative statements about artifacts. The claim is controversial, since the standard approach to normativity, namely normative realism, actually denies artifacts any kind of normativity; according to the normative realist, normativity applies exclusively to human agents. In other words, normative realists hold that only…Read more
  •  650
    Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of executive control
    Biology and Philosophy 27 (1): 115-124. 2012.
    Dubreuil (Biol Phil 25:53–73, 2010b , this journal) argues that modern-like cognitive abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance most likely evolved in Homo heidelbergensis , much before the evolution of oft-cited modern traits, such as symbolism and art. Dubreuil’s argument proceeds in two steps. First, he identifies two behavioral traits that are supposed to be indicative of the presence of a capacity for inhibition and goal maintenance: cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding.…Read more
  •  613
    On the emergence of American analytic philosophy
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (4): 772-798. 2017.
    ABSTRACTThis paper is concerned with the reasons for the emergence and dominance of analytic philosophy in America. It closely examines the contents of, and changing editors at, The Philosophical Review, and provides a perspective on the contents of other leading philosophy journals. It suggests that analytic philosophy emerged prior to the 1950s in an environment characterized by a rich diversity of approaches to philosophy and that it came to dominate American philosophy at least in part due t…Read more
  •  605
    The functional bias of the dual nature of technical artefacts program
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1): 190-197. 2011.
    In 2006, in a special issue of this journal, several authors explored what they called the dual nature of artefacts. The core idea is simple, but attractive: to make sense of an artefact, one needs to consider both its physical nature—its being a material object—and its intentional nature—its being an entity designed to further human ends and needs. The authors construe the intentional component quite narrowly, though: it just refers to the artefact’s function, its being a means to realize a cer…Read more
  •  582
    This book is the first volume featuring the work of American women philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. It provides selected papers authored by Mary Whiton Calkins, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Grace Neal Dolson, Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Marjorie Silliman Harris, Thelma Zemo Lavine, Marie Collins Swabey, Ellen Bliss Talbot, Dorothy Walsh and Margaret Floy Washburn. The book also provides the historical and philosophical background to their work. The papers focus on the nature of …Read more
  •  577
    Robust! -- Handle with care
    with Wybo Houkes
    Philosophy of Science 79 (3): 1-20. 2012.
    Michael Weisberg has argued that robustness analysis is useful in evaluating both scientific models and their implications and that robustness analysis comes in three types that share their form and aim. We argue for three cautionary claims regarding Weisberg's reconstruction: robustness analysis may be of limited or no value in evaluating models and their implications; the unificatory reconstruction conceals that the three types of robustness differ in form and role; there is no confluence of t…Read more
  •  435
    Cultural Relativism and Science
    with Grace Andrus de Laguna and Joel Katzav
    In Joel Katzav, Dorothy Rogers & Krist Vaesen (eds.), Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers, Springer. pp. 149-166. 2023.
    In this chapter, Grace Andrus de Laguna examines cultural relativism and its bearing on science.
  •  434
    This chapter provides the background to the American women philosophers’ works that are introduced and collected in Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers. We describe the institutional context which made these works possible and their methodological and theoretical background. We also provide biographies for their authors.
  •  375
    Pluralism and Peer Review in Philosophy
    with J. Katzav
    Philosophers' Imprint 17. 2017.
    Recently, mainstream philosophy journals have tended to implement more and more stringent forms of peer review, probably in an attempt to prevent editorial decisions that are based on factors other than quality. Against this trend, we propose that journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be less restrictive about whom is to decide what is admitted into the debate. We start by arguing, partly on the basis of the history of peer review in the journal Mind, that past and curr…Read more
  •  318
    Knowledge without credit, exhibit 4: Extended cognition (review)
    Synthese 181 (3): 515-529. 2011.
    The Credit Theory of Knowledge (CTK)—as expressed by such figures as John Greco, Wayne Riggs, and Ernest Sosa—holds that knowing that p implies deserving epistemic credit for truly believing that p . Opponents have presented three sorts of counterexamples to CTK: S might know that p without deserving credit in cases of (1) innate knowledge (Lackey, Kvanvig); (2) testimonial knowledge (Lackey); or (3) perceptual knowledge (Pritchard). The arguments of Lackey, Kvanvig and Pritchard, however, are e…Read more
  •  258
    Chapter 2 Introduction
    In Joel Katzav, Dorothy Rogers & Krist Vaesen (eds.), Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers, Springer. pp. 23-34. 2023.
    This chapter uses the distinction between speculative and analytic philosophy as a background against which to present the summaries of the articles on the nature of philosophy by Mary Whiton Calkins, Dorothy Walsh and Marjorie Glicksman. Calkins and Walsh (in her first contribution) examine the relationship between philosophy and metaphysics: Calkins identifies philosophy with speculative metaphysics while Walsh argues that any ethical theory requires some underlying speculative metaphysics. In…Read more
  •  220
    Chapter 12 Introduction
    In Joel Katzav, Dorothy Rogers & Krist Vaesen (eds.), Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers, Springer. pp. 117-129. 2023.
    This chapter introduces the articles by Marie C. Swabey, Thelma Z. Lavine, Grace A. de Laguna and Dorothy Walsh on the objectivity of scientific knowledge. We will see Swabey placing herself outside the historicist traditions of (later) authors (e.g., Thomas Kuhn), and arguing that the rationality and objectivity of science are grounded in synthetic a priori justified logical principles. Lavine and de Laguna, by contrast, embrace socio-historical approaches to the study of science, thus anticipa…Read more
  •  124
    The Reliability of Armchair Intuitions
    with Martin Peterson and Bart Van Bezooijen
    Metaphilosophy 44 (5): 559-578. 2013.
    Armchair philosophers have questioned the significance of recent work in experimental philosophy by pointing out that experiments have been conducted on laypeople and undergraduate students. To challenge a practice that relies on expert intuitions, so the armchair objection goes, one needs to demonstrate that expert intuitions rather than those of ordinary people are sensitive to contingent facts such as cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, or educational background. This article does exactly t…Read more
  •  119
    Extended cognition and epistemology
    Philosophical Explorations 15 (2). 2012.
    Philosophical Explorations, Volume 15, Issue 2, Page 87-90, June 2012
  •  115
    Elsewhere, I have challenged virtue epistemology and argued that it doesn’t square with mundane cases of extended cognition. Kelp (forthcoming, this journal) and Greco (forthcoming) have responded to my charges, the former by questioning the force of my argument, the latter by developing a new virtue epistemology. Here I consider both responses. I show first that Kelp mischaracterizes my challenge. Subsequently, I identify two new problems for Greco’s new virtue epistemology
  •  71
    Optimality vs. intent: Limitations of Dennett's artifact hermeneutics
    with Melissa van Amerongen
    Philosophical Psychology 21 (6). 2008.
    Dennett has argued that when people interpret artifacts and other designed objects ( such as biological items ) they rely on optimality considerations , rather than on designer's intentions. On his view , we infer an item's function by finding out what it is best at; and such functional attribution is more reliable than when we depend on the intention it was developed with. This paper examines research in cognitive psychology and archaeology , and argues that Dennett's account is implausible. We…Read more
  •  61
    Dewey on extended cognition and epistemology
    Philosophical Issues 24 (1): 426-438. 2014.
    There is a surge of attempts to draw out the epistemological consequences of views according to which cognition is deeply embedded, embodied and/or extended. The principal machinery used for doing so is that of analytic epistemology. Here I argue that Dewey's pragmatic epistemology may be better fit to the task. I start by pointing out the profound similarities between Dewey's view on cognition and that emerging from literature of more recent date. Crucially, the benefit of looking at Dewey is t…Read more
  •  56
    What exists in the environment that motivates the emergence, transmission, and sophistication of tool use?
    with Tetsushi Nonaka
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 233. 2012.
    In his attempt to find cognitive traits that set humans apart from nonhuman primates with respect to tool use, Vaesen overlooks the primacy of the environment toward the use of which behavior evolves. The occurrence of a particular behavior is a result of how that behavior has evolved in a complex and changing environment selected by a unique population
  •  52
    The National Science Foundation and philosophy of science's withdrawal from social concerns
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 78 (C): 73-82. 2019.
    At some point during the 1950s, mainstream American philosophy of science began increasingly to avoid questions about the role of non-cognitive values in science and, accordingly, increasingly to avoid active engagement with social, political and moral concerns. Such questions and engagement eventually ceased to be part of the mainstream. Here we show that the eventual dominance of 'value-free' philosophy of science can be attributed, at least in part, to the policies of the U.S. National Scienc…Read more
  •  49
    How Norms in Technology Ought to Be Interpreted
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 10 (1): 95-108. 2006.
    This paper defends the claim that there are — at least — two kinds of normativity in technological practice. The first concerns what engineers ought to do and the second concerns normative statements about artifacts. The claim is controversial, since the standard approach to normativity, namely normative realism, actually denies artifacts any kind of normativity; according to the normative realist, normativity applies exclusively to human agents. In other words, normative realists hold that only…Read more
  •  47
    French Neopositivism and the Logic, Psychology, and Sociology of Scientific Discovery
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 183-200. 2021.
    This article is concerned with one of the notable but forgotten research strands that developed out of French nineteenth-century positivism, a strand that turned attention to the study of scientific discovery and was actively pursued by French epistemologists around the turn of the nineteenth century. I first sketch the context in which this research program emerged. I show that the program was a natural offshoot of French neopositivism; the latter was a current of twentieth-century thought that…Read more
  •  44
    Complexity and technological evolution: What everybody knows?
    with Wybo Houkes
    Biology and Philosophy 32 (6): 1245-1268. 2017.
    The consensus among cultural evolutionists seems to be that human cultural evolution is cumulative, which is commonly understood in the specific sense that cultural traits, especially technological traits, increase in complexity over generations. Here we argue that there is insufficient credible evidence in favor of or against this technological complexity thesis. For one thing, the few datasets that are available hardly constitute a representative sample. For another, they substantiate very spe…Read more
  •  40
    From individual cognition to populational culture
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 245-262. 2012.
    In my response to the commentaries from a collection of esteemed researchers, I reassess and eventually find largely intact my claim that human tool use evidences higher social and non-social cognitive ability. Nonetheless, I concede that my examination of individual-level cognitive traits does not offer a full explanation of cumulative culture yet. For that, one needs to incorporate them into population-dynamic models of cultural evolution. I briefly describe my current and future work on this.