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496Systematicity and the Cognition of Structured DomainsJournal of Philosophy 98 (4). 2001.The current debate over systematicity concerns the formal conditions a scheme of mental representation must satisfy in order to explain the systematicity of thought.1 The systematicity of thought is assumed to be a pervasive property of minds, and can be characterized (roughly) as follows: anyone who can think T can think systematic variants of T, where the systematic variants of T are found by permuting T’s constituents. So, for example, it is an alleged fact that anyone who can think the thoug…Read more
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33Traits have not evolved to function the way they do because of a past advantageIn Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 72--88. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Functional Attribution: Meeting the Explanatory Constraint Functional Attribution: Normativity Postscript: Counterpoint Notes References.
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98Two tales of functional explanationPhilosophical Psychology 27 (6): 773-788. 2014.This paper considers two ways functions figure into scientific explanations: (i) via laws?events are causally explained by subsuming those events under functional laws; and (ii) via designs?capacities are explained by specifying the functional design of a system. We argue that a proper understanding of how functions figure into design explanations of capacities makes it clear why such functions are ill-suited to figure into functional-cum-causal law explanations of events, as those explanations …Read more
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379The Lot of the Casual Theory of Mental ContentJournal of Philosophy 94 (10): 535. 1997.The thesis of this paper is that the causal theory of mental content (hereafter CT) is incompatible with an elementary fact of perceptual psychology, namely, that the detection of distal properties generally requires the mediation of a “theory.” I shall call this fact the nontransducibility of distal properties (hereafter NTDP). The argument proceeds in two stages. The burden of stage one is that, taken together, CT and the language of thought hypothesis (hereafter LOT) are incompatible with NTD…Read more
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89What Systematicity Isn’tJournal of Philosophical Research 30 405-408. 2005.In “On Begging the Systematicity Question,” Wayne Davis criticizes the suggestion of Cummins et al. that the alleged systematicity of thought is not as obvious as is sometimes supposed, and hence not reliable evidence for the language of thought hypothesis. We offer a brief reply.
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5Mind in Science: A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics. Richard L. GregoryIsis 73 (3): 441-441. 1982.
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2Artificial Intelligence and Scientific MethodBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4): 610-612. 1997.
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35A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Jerry Fodor (review)Philosophy of Science 60 (1): 172-174. 1993.
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290The Nature of Psychological ExplanationMIT Press. 1983.In exploring the nature of psychological explanation, this book looks at how psychologists theorize about the human ability to calculate, to speak a language and the like. It shows how good theorizing explains or tries to explain such abilities as perception and cognition. It recasts the familiar explanations of "intelligence" and "cognitive capacity" as put forward by philosophers such as Fodor, Dennett, and others in terms of a theory of explanation that makes established doctrine more intelli…Read more
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44Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface (edited book)MIT Press. 1991.Philosophy and AI presents invited contributions that focus on the different perspectives and techniques that philosophy and AI bring to the theory of ...
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275Innate modules vs innate learning biasesCognitive Processing. 2005.Proponents of the dominant paradigm in evolutionary psychology argue that a viable evolutionary cognitive psychology requires that specific cognitive capacities be heritable and “quasi-independent” from other heritable traits, and that these requirements are best satisfied by innate cognitive modules. We argue here that neither of these are required in order to describe and explain how evolution shaped the mind
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Why there is no symbol grounding problem?In Robert Cummins (ed.), Representations, Targets, and Attitudes, Mit Press. 1996.
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2The role of mental meaning in psychological explanationIn Brian P. McLaughlin (ed.), Dretske and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
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Comments on Smith on CumminsIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Clarendon Press. 2002.
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3Interpretational semanticsIn Steven P. Stitch & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), mental representation: a reader, Blackwell. 1994.This is a condensed version of the material in chapters 8-10 in Meaning and Mental Representation (MIT, 1989). It is an explanation and defence of a theory of content for the mind considered as a symbolic computational process. It is a view i abandoned shortly thereafter when I abandoned symbolic computatioalism as a viable theory of cognition.
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290Connectionism and the rationale constraint on cognitive explanationsPhilosophical Perspectives 9 105-25. 1995.
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119Methodological reflections on beliefIn R. Bogdan (ed.), Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Common Sense Psychology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 53--70. 1991.
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391"How does it work" versus "what are the laws?": Two conceptions of psychological explanationIn Robert A. Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), The Shadows and Shallows of Explanation, Mit Press. 2000.In the beginning, there was the DN (Deductive Nomological) model of explanation, articulated by Hempel and Oppenheim (1948). According to DN, scientific explanation is subsumption under natural law. Individual events are explained by deducing them from laws together with initial conditions (or boundary conditions), and laws are explained by deriving them from other more fundamental laws, as, for example, the simple pendulum law is derived from Newton's laws of motion
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113The role of representation in connectionist explanation of cognitive capacitiesIn William Ramsey, Stephen P. Stich & D. Rumelhart (eds.), Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 91--114. 1991.
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100Representation and indicationIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind, Elsevier. pp. 21--40. 2004.This paper is about two kinds of mental content and how they are related. We are going to call them representation and indication. We will begin with a rough characterization of each. The differences, and why they matter, will, hopefully, become clearer as the paper proceeds
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238Meaning and Mental RepresentationMIT Press. 1989.Looks at accounts by Locke, Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan concerning the nature of mental representation, and discusses connectionism and representation
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73Connectionism, computation, and cognitionIn Terence E. Horgan & John L. Tienson (eds.), Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 60--73. 1991.
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35The language faculty and the interpretation of linguisticsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1): 18-19. 1980.
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38Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface (edited book)MIT Press. 1991.Philosophy and AI presents invited contributions that focus on the different perspectives and techniques that philosophy and AI bring to the theory of ...
Davis, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |