•  4597
    Eugenics: positive vs negative
    Eugenics Archives. 2014.
    The distinction between positive and negative eugenics is perhaps the best-known distinction that has been made between forms that eugenics takes. Roughly, positive eugenics refers to efforts aimed at increasing desirable traits, while negative eugenics refers to efforts aimed at decreasing undesirable traits. Still, it is easy to fall into confusion in drawing and deploying the distinction in particular contexts. Clarity here is important not only historically, but also for appeals to the disti…Read more
  •  3320
    Primary and Secondary Qualities
    In Matthew Stuart (ed.), A Companion to Locke, Blackwell. pp. 193-211. 2016.
    The first half of this review article on Locke on primary and secondary qualities leads up to a fairly straightforward reading of what Locke says about the distinction in Essay II.viii, one that, in its general outlines, represents a sympathetic understanding of Locke’s discussion. The second half of the paper turns to consider a few of the ways in which interpreting Locke on primary and secondary qualities has proven more complicated. Here we take up what is sometimes called the Berkeleyan inte…Read more
  •  2845
    Sociobiology
    Eugenics Archives. 2014.
    This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics. Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic de…Read more
  •  2560
    Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics
    In Maria Kronfeldner (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, Routledge. pp. 173-186. 2021.
    This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.
  •  2554
    Ugly Laws
    with Susan Schweik
    Eugenics Archives. 2015.
    So-called “ugly laws” were mostly municipal statutes in the United States that outlawed the appearance in public of people who were, in the words of one of these laws, “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” (Chicago City Code 1881). Although the moniker “ugly laws” was coined to refer collectively to such ordinances only in 1975 (Burgdorf and Burgdorf 1975), it has become the primary way to refer to such laws, which targeted the overl…Read more
  •  2386
    In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider’s influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non-subject” (1972:51). Schneider’s critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio-essentialis…Read more
  •  1727
    Extended Mind and Identity
    with Bartlomiej A. Lenart
    In Jens Clausen & Neil Levy (eds.), Handbook of Neuroethics, Springer. pp. 423-439. 2014.
    Dominant views of personal identity in philosophy take some kind of psychological continuity or connectedness over time to be criterial for the identity of a person over time. Such views assign psychological states, particularly those necessary for narrative memory of some kind, special importance in thinking about the nature of persons. The extended mind thesis, which has generated much recent discussion in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, holds that a person’s psychological stat…Read more
  •  1611
    A conceptual and empirical framework for the social distribution of cognition: The case of memory
    with Amanda Barnier, John Sutton, and Celia Harris
    Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1): 33-51. 2008.
    In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of soci…Read more
  •  1374
    Well-being, Disability, and Choosing Children
    Mind 128 (510): 305-328. 2019.
    The view that it is better for life to be created free of disability is pervasive in both common sense and philosophy. We cast doubt on this view by focusing on an influential line of thinking that manifests it. That thinking begins with a widely-discussed principle, Procreative Beneficence, and draws conclusions about parental choice and disability. After reconstructing two versions of this argument, we critique the first by exploring the relationship between different understandings of well…Read more
  •  1269
    Philosophy
    In Robert A. Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, . 1999.
    This is an introduction to the 80 articles on philosophy in MITECS.
  •  1269
    Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science: Meeting the Challenge of Indigenous Expertise
    with David Ludwig, Charbel El-Hani, Fabio Gatti, Catherine Kendig, Matthias Kramm, Lucia Neco, Abigail Nieves Delgado, Luana Poliseli, Vitor Renck, Adriana Ressiore C., Luis Reyes-Galindo, Thomas Loyd Rickard, Gabriela De La Rosa, Julia J. Turska, and Francisco Vergara-Silva
    Philosophy of Science 1. 2023.
    Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of tra…Read more
  •  1251
    Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (edited book)
    MIT Press. 1999.
    This collection of original essays--by philosophers of biology, biologists, and cognitive scientists--provides a wide range of perspectives on species. Including contributions from David Hull, John Dupre, David Nanney, Kevin de Queiroz, and Kim Sterelny, amongst others, this book has become especially well-known for the three essays it contains on the homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds, papers by Richard Boyd, Paul Griffiths, and Robert A. Wilson.
  •  1217
    What Computations (Still, Still) Can't Do: Jerry Fodor on Computation and Modularity
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (sup1): 407-425. 2004.
    Fodor's thinking on modularity has been influential throughout a range of the areas studying cognition, chiefly as a prod for positive work on modularity and domain-specificity. In _The Mind Doesn't Work That Way_, Fodor has developed the dark message of _The Modularity of Mind_ regarding the limits to modularity and computational analyses. This paper offers a critical assessment of Fodor's scepticism with an eye to highlighting some broader issues in play, including the nature of computation an…Read more
  •  1075
    Cohesion, Gene flow, and the Nature of Species
    Journal of Philosophy 107 (2): 59-77. 2010.
    A far-reaching and influential view in evolutionary biology claims that species are cohesive units held together by gene flow. Biologists have recognized empirical problems facing this view; after sharpening the expression of the view, we present novel conceptual problems for it. At the heart of these problems is a distinction between two importantly different concepts of cohesion, what we call integrative and response cohesion. Acknowledging the distinction problematizes both the explanandum…Read more
  •  1073
    John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke’s work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive conclusions – Sahlins’ about cultural relativism,…Read more
  •  1060
    Eugenics and Disability
    with Joshua St Pierre
    In Megan Strickfaden Steven E. Brown Beatriz Mirandaa-Galarza Patrick Devlieger (ed.), Rethinking Disability: World Perspectives in Culture and Society, . pp. 93-112. 2016.
    In the intersection between eugenics past and present, disability has never been far beneath the surface. Perceived and ascribed disabilities of body and mind were one of the core sets of eugenics traits that provided the basis for institutionalized and sterilization on eugenic grounds for the first 75 years of the 20th-century. Since that time, the eugenic preoccupation with the character of future generations has seeped into what have become everyday practices in the realm of reproductive ch…Read more
  •  980
    While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run tog…Read more
  •  886
    Incest, Incest Avoidance, and Attachment: Revisiting the Westermarck Effect
    Philosophy of Science 86 (3): 391-411. 2019.
    This article defends a version of the Westermarck Effect, integrating existing clinical, biological, and philosophical dimensions to incest avoidance. By focusing on care-based attachment in primates, my formulation of the effect suggests the power of a phylogenetic argument widely accepted by primatologists but not by cultural anthropologists. Identifying postadoption incest as a phenomenon with underexplored evidential value, the article sketches an explanatory strategy for reconciling the eff…Read more
  •  840
    When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds
    Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2): 189-215. 2007.
    Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has receiv…Read more
  •  837
    Annotated bibliography of works on externalism and internalism in the philosophy of mind.
  •  815
    Promiscuous Realism
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2): 303-316. 1996.
    This paper is a critical discussion of John Dupré's recent defence of promiscuous realism in Part 1 of his The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. It also discusses some more general issues in the philosophy of biology and science. Dupré's chief strategy of argumentation appeals to debates within the philosophy of biology, all of which concern the nature of species. While the strategy is well motivated, I argue that Dupré's challenge to essentialist and unifi…Read more
  •  804
    Individualism, causal powers, and explanation
    Philosophical Studies 68 (2): 103-39. 1992.
    This paper examines a recent, influential argument for individualism in psychology defended by Jerry Fodor and others, what I call the argument from causal powers. I argue that this argument equivocates on the crucial notion of "causal powers", and that this equivocation constitutes a deep problem for arguments of this type. Relational and individualistic taxonomies are incompatible, and it does not seem in general to be possible to factor the former into the latter. The distinction between powe…Read more
  •  799
    Contemporary Forms of Eugenics
    eLS Wiley Online. 2017.
    Eugenics is commonly thought of as having endured as science and social movement only until 1945. With the advance of both reproductive and enhancement technologies, however, concern has arisen that eugenics has resurfaced in new forms. In particular, the eugenic potential of the Human Genome Project led to talk of the rise of ‘newgenics’ and of a backdoor to eugenics. This article focuses on such concerns deriving from the practice of prenatal screening and technologies that increase our abilit…Read more
  •  756
    The concept concept: The wayward path of cognitive science (review)
    with Frank C. Keil
    Mind and Language 15 (2-3): 308-318. 2000.
    Critical discussion of Jerry Fodor's Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (1998).
  •  739
    The Westermarck Effect posits that intimate association during childhood promotes human incest avoidance. In previous work, I articulated and defended a version of the Westermarck Effect by developing a phylogenetic argument that has purchase within primatology but that has had more limited appeal for cultural anthropologists due to their commitment to conventionalist or culture-first accounts of incest avoidance. Here I look to advance the discussion of incest and incest avoidance beyond cultur…Read more
  •  729
    Intentionality and phenomenology
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (4): 413-431. 2003.
    This paper is a critique of some ideas about narrow content owing to Horgan and Tienson and Brian Loar.
  •  712
    Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes…Read more
  •  701
    How to situate cognition: Letting nature take its course
    with Andy Clark
    In Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 55--77. 2009.
    1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course