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2Dewey, continuity, and McDowellIn Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism and Normativity, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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67Dewey and the Subject-Matter of ScienceIn John R. Shook & Paul Kurtz (eds.), Dewey's enduring impact: essays on America's philosopher, Prometheus Books. pp. 73--86. 2011.
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1Darwinian individualsIn Frédéric Bouchard & Philippe Huneman (eds.), From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality, Mit Press. 2013.
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33Representationalism reconsideredIn Dominic Murphy & Michael A. Bishop (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 30--45. 2009.
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212Petition to Include Cephalopods as “Animals” Deserving of Humane Treatment under the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory AnimalsHarvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Clinic. forthcoming.
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31The Scientific Imagination (edited book)Oup Usa. 2019.This book looks at the role of the imagination in science, from both philosophical and psychological perspectives. These contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of this under-explored subject.
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115Is 'no' a force-indicator? Sometimes, possiblyAnalysis 72 (2): 225-231. 2012.Some bilateralists have suggested that some of our negative answers to yes-or-no questions are cases of rejection. Mark Textor (2011. Is ‘no’ a force-indicator? No! Analysis 71: 448–56) has recently argued that this suggestion falls prey to a version of the Frege-Geach problem. This note reviews Textor's objection and shows why it fails. We conclude with some brief remarks concerning where we think that future attacks on bilateralism should be directed
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134Review of P. Maddy, Defending the Axioms: On the Philosophical Foundations of Set Theory (review)Mind 121 (481): 195-200. 2012.
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417Rejection and valuationsAnalysis 70 (1). 2010.Timothy Smiley’s wonderful paper ‘Rejection’ (1996) is still perhaps not as well known or well understood as it should be. This note first gives a quick presentation of themes from that paper, though done in our own way, and then considers a putative line of objection – recently advanced by Julien Murzi and Ole Hjortland (2009) – to one of Smiley’s key claims. Along the way, we consider the prospects for an intuitionistic approach to some of the issues discussed in Smiley’s paper.
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Untangling the evolution of mental representationIn António Zilhão (ed.), Evolution, Rationality and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. 2005.
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578Theory and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of scienceUniversity of Chicago Press. 2003.How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality , Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reali…Read more
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186Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1996.This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of…Read more
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219Theories of Theories of Mind (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1996.Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other species? The volume's four parts together offer a state …Read more
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Quine and PragmatismIn Gilbert Harman & Ernest LePore (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.
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11Metazoa: animal minds and the birth of consciousnessWilliam Collins. 2020.Expands an inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of experience with the assistance of far-flung species. Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the first animal body form well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path.
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19Meaning, Models and Selection (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (3): 673-678. 1996.
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130Darwinian Populations and Natural SelectionOxford University Press. 2009.The book presents a new way of understanding Darwinism and evolution by natural selection, combining work in biology, philosophy, and other fields.
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51Explaining ChaosCambridge University Press. 1998.Chaotic dynamics has been hailed as the third great scientific revolution in physics this century, comparable to relativity and quantum mechanics. In this book, Peter Smith takes a cool, critical look at such claims. He cuts through the hype and rhetoric by explaining some of the basic mathematical ideas in a clear and accessible way, and by carefully discussing the methodological issues which arise. In particular, he explores the new kinds of explanation of empirical phenomena which modern dyna…Read more
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21The Dimensions of SelectionPhilosophy of Science 60 (3): 373-395. 1993.Proponents of genic selectionism have claimed that evolutionary processes normally viewed as selection on individuals can be "represented" as selection on alleles. This paper discusses the relationship between mathematical questions about the formal requirements upon state spaces necessary for the representation of different types of evolutionary processes and causal questions about the units of selection in such processes
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232Theories and Models in MetaphysicsThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 14 (1): 4-19. 2006.Metaphysics is once again a thriving subdiscipline within philosophy, despite a long tradition of challenges to the very viability of the metaphysical enterprise. The criticisms have not so much been satisfactorily answered, as shouldered aside by the vigorous development of the field. Some focused meta-theoretic discussion has recently arisen within mainstream metaphysics.1 The present paper is written more from an outsider's vantage point. I attempt to give a new meta-theory for some parts of …Read more
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318Triviality arguments against functionalismPhilosophical Studies 145 (2). 2009.“Triviality arguments” against functionalism in the philosophy of mind hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed. I survey several earlier arguments of this kind, and present a new one that overcomes some limitations in the earlier arguments. Resisting triviality arguments is possible, but requires functionalists to revise popular views about the “autonomy” of functional descr…Read more
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102Sender-Receiver Systems within and between OrganismsPhilosophy of Science 81 (5): 866-878. 2014.Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some puzzles about “genetic information” can be resolve…Read more
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83Senders, receivers, and genetic information: comments on Bergstrom and RosvallBiology and Philosophy 26 (2): 177-181. 2011.
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53Senders, Receivers, and Symbolic ArtifactsBiological Theory 12 (4): 275-286. 2017.A “sender–receiver” framework based on models developed in several fields can provide a general treatment of communicative and symbolic phenomena, replacing traditional semiotic theories that have failed to live up to the hopes of their advocates. Sender–receiver models have mostly been applied to linguistic behavior, gestures, and other ephemeral interactions between individuals. I look at the application of this framework to enduring artifacts, including pictures, using indigenous rock art in …Read more