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Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (edited book)Routledge. forthcoming.This chapter wades into the growing discussion surrounding embodied cognition and predictive processing. After surveying a recent debate between Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, it articulates two outstanding issues facing discussions of compatibility. It argues that headway on these issues can be made by drawing on the resources of philosophy of science.
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110The Puzzling Resilience of Multiple RealizationMinds and Machines 33 (2): 321-345. 2023.According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but…Read more
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46Theories of multiple realizationAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 57 (1): 17-30. 2020.Philosophers look to the realization relation as a way to make sense of the possibility that special science kinds are physical, yet not reducible to kinds in physics. A realized property fails to reduce because it can be realized in multiple ways, thus blocking its identification with lower-level properties. One prominent analysis of realization, subset realization, distinguishes multiple realizers on the basis their “left-over powers,” that is, those that don’t contribute to the individuative …Read more
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21Embodied CognitionRoutledge. 2010.Embodied cognition is a recent development in psychology that practitioners often present as a superseding standard cognitive science. In this outstanding introduction, Lawrence Shapiro sets out the central themes and debates surrounding embodied cognition, explaining and assessing the work of many of the key figures in the field, including Lawrence Barsalou, Daniel Casasanto, Andy Clark, Alva Noë, and Michael Spivey. Beginning with an outline of the theoretical and methodological commitments of…Read more
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117Nature from within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical WorldviewMind 114 (455): 739-743. 2005.
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55Structural and indicator representations: a difference in degree, not kindSynthese 198 (8): 7647-7664. 2020.Some philosophers have offered structural representations as an alternative to indicator-based representations. Motivating these philosophers is the belief that an indication-based analysis of representation exhibits two fatal inadequacies from which structural representations are spared: such an analysis cannot account for the causal role of representational content and cannot explain how representational content can be made determinate. In fact, we argue, indicator and structural representatio…Read more
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8Adapted MindsCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 27 85-104. 2001.Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it’s a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product of evolution by natural selecti…Read more
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120Flesh matters: The body in cognitionMind and Language 34 (1): 3-20. 2019.Embodied cognition emphasizes the importance of the body to cognition, but what is the nature of this importance? For some advocates, the body provides a computational resource within the context of a larger cognitive system. For others, the body constrains cognition, such that differently embodied organisms will differ cognitively as well. I examine these distinct conceptions of embodiment, defending the greater interest of the second. I argue as well that judgments of the body's significance i…Read more
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14The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural is UnjustifiedColumbia University Press. 2016.There are many who believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus came back from the dead. Others are certain that exorcisms occur, ghosts haunt attics, and the blessed can cure the terminally ill. Though miracles are immensely improbable, people have embraced them for millennia, seeing in them proof of a supernatural world that resists scientific explanation. Helping us to think more critically about our belief in the improbable, The Miracle Myth casts a skeptical eye on attempts to justify belief …Read more
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Presence of mindIn Valerie Gray Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology, Mit Press. pp. 83--99. 1999.
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40Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World, by Zenon PylyshynMind 118 (472): 1168-1174. 2009.(No abstract is available for this citation).
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9A review of Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition: REVIEW OF: The Bounds of Cognition, Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, 2008, Malden: Blackwell Publishing (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (2): 267-273. 2009.In The Bounds of Cognition, Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa treat the arguments for extended cognition to withering criticism. I summarize their main arguments and focus special attention on their distinction between the extended cognitive system hypothesis and the extended cognition hypothesis, as well as on their demand for a mark of the mental.
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113The Multiple Realization BookOxford University Press UK. 2016.Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated…Read more
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156Review of Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (6). 2009.Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind begins as a manifesto in which the components of an embodied theory of mind are carefully moved into place, proceeds to a defense of these components from recent critical attacks, and ends with words of caution to those who would seek to extract too much from the embodied perspective. Readers unfamiliar with Clark's earlier works are likely to find the result dazzling -- an exciting, novel, and coherent conception of the mind that dares one to abandon nearly eve…Read more
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109Mental Manipulations and the Problem of Causal ExclusionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3). 2012.Christian List and Peter Menzies 2009 have looked to interventionist theories of causation for an answer to Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion problem. Important to their response is the idea of realization-insensitivity. However, this idea becomes mired in issues concerning multiple realization, leaving it unable to fulfil its promise to block exclusion. After explaining why realization-insensitivity fails as a solution to Kim's problem, I look to interventionism to describe a different kind of sol…Read more
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64Behavior, ISO functionalism, and psychologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (2): 191-209. 1994.
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350Epiphenomenalism - the do's and the don 'ts'In G. Wolters & Peter K. Machamer (eds.), Thinking About Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern physics, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 235-264. 2007.When philosophers defend epiphenomenalist doctrines, they often do so by way of a priori arguments. Here we suggest an empirical approach that is modeled on August Weismann’s experimental arguments against the inheritance of acquired characters. This conception of how epiphenomenalism ought to be developed helps clarify some mistakes in two recent epiphenomenalist positions – Jaegwon Kim’s (1993) arguments against mental causation, and the arguments developed by Walsh (2000), Walsh, Lewens, and …Read more
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201Against proportionalityAnalysis 72 (1): 89-93. 2012.A statement of the form ‘C caused E’ obeys the requirement of proportionality precisely when C says no more than what is necessary to bring about E. The thesis that causal statements must obey this requirement might be given a semantic or a pragmatic justification. We use the idea that causal claims are contrastive to criticize both
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60Arguing About the Mind (edited book)Routledge. 2007._Arguing About the Mind_ is an accessible, engaging introduction to the core questions in the philosophy of mind. This collection offers a selection of thought-provoking articles that examine a broad range of issues from the mind and body relation to animal and artificial intelligence. Topics addressed include: the problem of consciousness; the nature of the mind; the relationship between the mind, body and world; the notion of selfhood; pathologies and behavioural problems; animal, machine and …Read more
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52Responses to criticsPhilosophical Psychology 31 (3): 446-457. 2018.In response to points raised by our critics in this book symposium, we offer some clarifications about how to understand the role of science in assessing the multiple realization thesis. We also consider the connection between functionalism and multiple realization in the contexts of both psychological and biological sciences.
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90In defense of interventionist solutions to exclusionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 68 51-57. 2018.Mental and physical causes do not competedthe presence of one does not exclude the efficacy of the other. This point is obvious from the perspective of an interventionist theory of causation, but only when this theory gets its proper due. Doubts about the interventionist justification for concluding that there is both physical and mental causation, we have argued, rest on misunderstandings of interventionism. When looking to interventions to reveal causal structures, care must be taken to consid…Read more
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37Mechanism or Bust? Explanation in PsychologyBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2016.
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1Representational Content in Cognitive PsychologyDissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 1992.Against Stich's recommendation that we purge cognitive psychology of content I argue that ascriptions of representational content are both scientifically legitimate and essential to the continuing success of the cognitive sciences. Yet it is not the ordinary folk notion of content that informs many of these sciences, e.g. experimental cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and theory of perception. I develop an approach to representation that builds upon a Dretske-style analysis of representa…Read more
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8Saving the PhenomenalPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 5. 1999.Qualitative states are no threat to physicalism. They have a causal effect upon the world in virtue of their qualitative nature. This effect is exploited in biological mechanisms for representing the world. Representation requires differential responsiveness to different perceived properties of things. Qualia are taken to be tagged properties of internal representation models. These properties are properties for-the-organism. Such for-the-organism properties are to be expected in beings which pe…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |