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190Doing cognitive neuroscience: A third waySynthese 153 (3): 377-391. 2006.The “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches have been thought to exhaust the possibilities for doing cognitive neuroscience. We argue that neither approach is likely to succeed in providing a theory that enables us to understand how cognition is achieved in biological creatures like ourselves. We consider a promising third way of doing cognitive neuroscience, what might be called the “neural dynamic systems” approach, that construes cognitive neuroscience as an autonomous explanatory endeavor, aim…Read more
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161Measurement‐Theoretic Accounts of Propositional Attitudes (review)Philosophy Compass 6 (11): 828-841. 2011.In the late 1970s and early 1980s a number of philosophers, notably Churchland, Field, Stalnaker, Dennett, and Davidson, began to argue that propositional attitude predicates (such as believes that it’s sunny outside) are a species of measure predicate, analogous in important ways to numerical predicates by which we attribute physical magnitudes (such as mass, length, and temperature). Other philosophers, including myself, have subsequently developed the idea in greater detail. In this paper I s…Read more
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146The measure of mind: propositional attitudes and their attributionOxford University Press. 2007.A prospective introduction -- The received view -- Troubles with the received view -- Are propositional attitudes relations? -- Foundations of a measurement-theoretic account of the attitudes -- The basic measurement-theoretic account -- Elaboration and explication of the proposed measurement-theoretic account.
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70Could Competent Speakers Really Be Ignorant of Their Language?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (3): 457-467. 2006.This paper defends the commonsense conception of linguistic competence according to which linguistic competence involves propositional knowledge of language. More specifically, the paper defends three propositions challenged by Devitt in his Ignorance af Language. First, Chomskian linguists were right to embrace this commonsense conception of linguistic cornpetence. Second, the grammars that these linguists propose make a substantive claim about the computational processes that are presumed to c…Read more
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48Are the grammatical sentences of a language a recursive set?Synthese 40 (2). 1979.Many believe that the grammatical sentences of a natural language are a recursive set. In this paper I argue that the commonly adduced grounds for this belief are inconclusive, if not simply unsound. Neither the native speaker's ability to classify sentences nor his ability to comprehend them requires it. Nor is there at present any reason to think that decidability has any bearing on first-language acquisition. I conclude that there are at present no compelling theoretical grounds for requiring…Read more
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36The Elusive Case for Relationalism about the Attitudes: Reply to RattanPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2): 453-462. 2017.The question I address here is whether there is anything about what Rattan describes as the normative and perspectival aspects of propositional attitudes that demands a relational account of the attitudes, specifically anything that cannot equally well be explained on measurement-theoretic accounts of the sort that I (and others) have defended which do not incorporate or presume a cognitive relation to a proposition. I argue that there is not.
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28Epistemic Heresies: Reply to John Collins’ ReduxCroatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 45-55. 2008.Elaborating on views I have expressed elsewhere, I argue that the common-sense notion of linguistic competence as a kind of knowledge is both required by common-sense explanatory and justificatory practice and furthermore fully compatible with the non-intentional characterization of linguistic competence provided by current linguistic theory, which is itself non-intentional.
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25On the hypothesis that grammars are mentally representedBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (3): 405-406. 1983.
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24Does cognitive science need “real” intentionality?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4): 616-617. 1990.
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6Inquiries and Provocations: Selected Writings, 1929-1974Philosophy of Science 50 (2): 339-344. 1983.
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Is there vindication through representationalism?In Barry M. Loewer (ed.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
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Belief and Belief’s PenumbraIn Nikolaj Nottelmann (ed.), New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure, Palgrave. 2013.