•  234
    Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi stud…Read more
  •  12
    Why Perceptual Experiences cannot be Probabilistic
    with Nir Fresco
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    Perceptual Confidence is the thesis that perceptual experiences can be probabilistic. This thesis has been defended and criticised based on a variety of phenomenological, epistemological, and explanatory arguments. One gap in these arguments is that they neglect the question of whether perceptual experiences satisfy the formal conditions that define the notion of probability to which Perceptual Confidence is committed. Here, we focus on this underexplored question and argue that perceptual exper…Read more
  •  82
    Bayesian Cognitive Science. Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
    Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. 2023.
    Bayesian cognitive science is a research programme that relies on modelling resources from Bayesian statistics for studying and understanding mind, brain, and behaviour. Conceiving of mental capacities as computing solutions to inductive problems, Bayesian cognitive scientists develop probabilistic models of mental capacities and evaluate their adequacy based on behavioural and neural data generated by humans (or other cognitive agents) performing a pertinent task. The overarching goal is to ide…Read more
  •  1269
    Andy Clark and his Critics (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    In this volume, a range of high-profile researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and empirical cognitive science, critically engage with Clark's work across the themes of: Extended, Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, and Affective Minds; Natural Born Cyborgs; and Perception, Action, and Prediction. Daniel Dennett provides a foreword on the significance of Clark's work, and Clark replies to each section of the book, thus advancing current literature with original contributio…Read more
  •  9
    Where does a probabilistic language-of-thought (PLoT) come from? How can we learn new concepts based on probabilistic inferences operating on a PLoT? Here, I explore these questions, sketching a traditional circularity objection to LoT and canvassing various approaches to addressing it. I conclude that PLoT-based cognitive architectures can support genuine concept learning; but, currently, it is unclear that they enjoy more explanatory breadth in relation to concept learning than alternative arc…Read more
  •  1
    Constitutive relevance and the personal/subpersonal distinction
    Philosophical Psychology 26 (4): 547-570. 2013.
    Can facts about subpersonal states and events be constitutively relevant to personal-level phenomena? And can knowledge of these facts inform explanations of personal-level phenomena? Some philosophers, like Jennifer Hornsby and John McDowell, argue for two negative answers whereby questions about persons and their behavior cannot be answered by using information from subpersonal psychology. Knowledge of subpersonal states and events cannot inform personal-level explanation such that they cast l…Read more
  •  30
    10. Referees for Philosophy of Science Referees for Philosophy of Science (pp. 479-482)
    with Justin Garson, Yasha Rohwer, Collin Rice, Peter Brössel, Davide Rizza, Simon M. Huttegger, Richard Healey, Alyssa Ney, and Kathryn Phillips
    Philosophy of Science 80 (3): 334-355. 2013.
    Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim …Read more
  •  102
    Sleeping Beauty Goes to the Lab: The Psychology of Self-Locating Evidence
    with Jun Lai and Vincenzo Crupi
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (1): 173-185
    Analyses of the Sleeping Beauty Problem are polarised between those advocating the “1/2 view” (“halfers”) and those endorsing the “1/3 view” (“thirders”). The disagreement concerns the evidential relevance of self-locating information. Unlike halfers, thirders regard self-locating information as evidentially relevant in the Sleeping Beauty Problem. In the present study, we systematically manipulate the kind of information available in different formulations of the Sleeping Beauty Problem. Our fi…Read more
  •  801
    HIT and brain reward function: a case of mistaken identity (theory)
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 64. 2017.
    This paper employs a case study from the history of neuroscience—brain reward function—to scrutinize the inductive argument for the so-called ‘Heuristic Identity Theory’ (HIT). The case fails to support HIT, illustrating why other case studies previously thought to provide empirical support for HIT also fold under scrutiny. After distinguishing two different ways of understanding the types of identity claims presupposed by HIT and considering other conceptual problems, we conclude that HIT is …Read more
  •  11
    Complying with norms. a neurocomputational exploration
    Dissertation, University of Edinburgh. 2012.
    The subject matter of this thesis can be summarized by a triplet of questions and answers. Showing what these questions and answers mean is, in essence, the goal of my project. The triplet goes like this: Q: How can we make progress in our understanding of social norms and norm compliance? A: Adopting a neurocomputational framework is one effective way to make progress in our understanding of social norms and norm compliance. Q: What could the neurocomputational mechanism of social norm complian…Read more
  •  23
    Bruineberg and collaborators distinguish three philosophical positions about the status of Markov blankets in the context of active inference modelling, namely: literalism, realism, and instrumentalism. They criticize the first two positions and suggest that instrumentalism is “less problematic but also less interesting” (sect. 6.1.2, para. 5) Here, I sketch how literalists and realists might reply to Bruineberg et al.'s criticisms, and I explain why instrumentalism is more interesting and conte…Read more
  •  4
    Climate change, nutrition, poverty and medical drugs are widely discussed and pressing issues in science, policy and society. Despite these issues being of great importance for the quality of our lives it remains unclear how well people understand them. Specifically, do particular demographic and socioeconomic factors explain variation in public understanding of these four concepts? To what extent are people’s changes in understanding associated with changes in their behaviour? Do people judge s…Read more
  •  105
    Computational Modelling for Alcohol Use Disorder
    Erkenntnis 1-21. forthcoming.
    In this paper, I examine Reinforcement Learning modelling practice in psychiatry, in the context of alcohol use disorders. I argue that the epistemic roles RL currently plays in the development of psychiatric classification and search for explanations of clinically relevant phenomena are best appreciated in terms of Chang’s account of epistemic iteration, and by distinguishing mechanistic and aetiological modes of computational explanation.
  •  29
    Serotonin, Predictive Processing and Psychedelics
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. 2022.
    Letheby’s "Philosophy of Psychedelics" relies on Predictive Processing to try and find unifying explanations relevant to understanding how serotonergic psychedelics work in psychiatric therapy, what subjective experiences are associated with their use and whether such experiences are epistemically defective. But if Predictive Processing lacks genuinely explanatory unifying power, Letheby’s account of psychedelic therapy risks being unwarranted. In this commentary, I motivate this worry and sketc…Read more
  •  3
    Catherine Elgin's True Enough (review)
    BJPS Review of Books. 2019.
  •  66
    According to the free energy principle, life is an “inevitable and emergent property of any random dynamical system at non-equilibrium steady state that possesses a Markov blanket” :20130475, 2013). Formulating a principle for the life sciences in terms of concepts from statistical physics, such as random dynamical system, non-equilibrium steady state and ergodicity, places substantial constraints on the theoretical and empirical study of biological systems. Thus far, however, the physics founda…Read more
  •  40
    What is the relationship between the concepts of the predictive processing theory of brain functioning and the everyday concepts with which people conduct and explain their mental lives? To answer this question, we focus on predictive processing explanations of mental disorder that appeal to false inference. After distinguishing two concepts of false inference, we survey four ways of understanding the relationship between explanations of mental phenomena at the personal and sub-personal level. W…Read more
  •  13
    Lieder and Griffiths introduce resource-rational analysis as a methodological device for the empirical study of the mind. But they also suggest resource-rationality serves as a normative standard to reassess the limits and scope of human rationality. Although the methodological status of resource-rational analysis is convincing, its normative status is not.
  •  43
    Intuitions About the Reference of Proper Names: a Meta-Analysis
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (4): 745-774. 2020.
    The finding that intuitions about the reference of proper names vary cross-culturally was one of the early milestones in experimental philosophy. Many follow-up studies investigated the scope and magnitude of such cross-cultural effects, but our paper provides the first systematic meta-analysis of studies replicating. In the light of our results, we assess the existence and significance of cross-cultural effects for intuitions about the reference of proper names.
  •  30
    Intellectually Humble, but Prejudiced People. A Paradox of Intellectual Virtue
    with Kevin Strangmann, Lieke Houkes, Zhasmina Kostadinova, and Mark J. Brandt
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (2): 353-371. 2020.
    Intellectual humility has attracted attention in both philosophy and psychology. Philosophers have clarified the nature of intellectual humility as an epistemic virtue; and psychologists have developed scales for measuring people’s intellectual humility. Much less attention has been paid to the potential effects of intellectual humility on people’s negative attitudes and to its relationship with prejudice-based epistemic vices. Here we fill these gaps by focusing on the relationship between inte…Read more
  •  158
    Veissière and collaborators ground their account of culture and social norms in the free-energy principle, which postulates that the utility of an outcome is equivalent to its probability. This equivalence would mean that their account entails that complying with social norms has always adaptive value. But, this is false, because many social norms are obviously maladaptive.
  •  48
    Editors’ Review and Introduction: Levels of Explanation in Cognitive Science: From Molecules to Culture
    with Markus Knauff
    Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (4): 1224-1240. 2020.
    Cognitive science began as a multidisciplinary endeavor to understand how the mind works. Since the beginning, cognitive scientists have been asking questions about the right methodologies and levels of explanation to pursue this goal, and make cognitive science a coherent science of the mind. Key questions include: Is there a privileged level of explanation in cognitive science? How do different levels of explanation fit together, or relate to one another? How should explanations at one level i…Read more
  •  83
    Leges sine moribus vanae: does language make moral thinking possible?
    Biology and Philosophy 28 (3): 501-521. 2013.
    Does language make moral cognition possible? Some authors like Andy Clark have argued for a positive answer whereby language and the ways people use it mark a fundamental divide between humans and all other animals with respect to moral thinking (Clark, Mind and morals: essays on cognitive science and ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000a; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000b; Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford Universit…Read more
  •  34
    Computational approaches dominate contemporary cognitive science, promising a unified, scientific explanation of how the mind works. However, computational approaches raise major philosophical and scientific questions. In what sense is the mind computational? How do computational approaches explain perception, learning, and decision making? What kinds of challenges should computational approaches overcome to advance our understanding of mind, brain, and behaviour? The Routledge Handbook of the C…Read more
  •  42
    The rise of Bayesianism in cognitive science promises to shape the debate between nativists and empiricists into more productive forms—or so have claimed several philosophers and cognitive scientists. The present paper explicates this claim, distinguishing different ways of understanding it. After clarifying what is at stake in the controversy between nativists and empiricists, and what is involved in current Bayesian cognitive science, the paper argues that Bayesianism offers not a vindication …Read more
  •  625
    There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main conce…Read more
  •  480
    The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship betwe…Read more