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184Doing 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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158Measurement‐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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144The 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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104Can connectionists explain systematicity?Mind and Language 12 (2): 154-77. 1997.Classicists and connectionists alike claim to be able to explain systematicity. The proposed classicist explanation, I argue, is little more than a promissory note, one that classicists have no idea how to redeem. Smolensky's (1995) proposed connectionist explanation fares little better: it is not vulnerable to recent classicist objections, but it nonetheless fails, particularly if one requires, as some classicists do, that explanations of systematicity take the form of a‘functional analysis’. N…Read more
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98That ‐clauses: Some bad news for relationalism about the attitudesMind and Language 37 (3): 414-431. 2020.Propositional relationalists about the attitudes claim to find support for their view in what they assume to be the dyadic relational logical form of the predicates by which we canonically attribute propositional attitudes. In this paper I argue that the considerations that they adduce in support of this assumption, specifically for the assumption that the that-clauses that figure in these predicates are singular terms, are suspect on linguistic grounds. Propositional relationalism may nonethele…Read more
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79Measurement and Computational SkepticismNoûs 51 (4): 832-854. 2017.Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything,…Read more
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73Three-concept Monte: Explanation, implementation, and systematicitySynthese 101 (3): 347-63. 1994.Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor and McLaughlin (1990) and McLaughlin (1993) challenge connectionists to explain systematicity without simply implementing a classical architecture. In this paper I argue that what makes the challenge difficult for connectionists to meet has less to do with what is to be explained than with what is to count as an explanation. Fodor et al. are prepared to admit as explanatory, accounts of a sort that only classical models can provide. If connectionists are to mee…Read more
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66Could 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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47Are 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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47Describing and interpreting a work of artJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36 (1): 5-14. 1977.
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34The 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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28Book Review:Inquiries and Provocations: Selected Writings, 1929-1974 Herbert Feigl (review)Philosophy of Science 50 (2): 339-. 1983.
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27Can Connectionists Explain Systematicity?Mind and Language 12 (2): 154-177. 1997.Classicists and connectionists alike claim to be able to explain systematicity. The proposed classicist explanation, I argue, is little more than a promissory note, one that classicists have no idea how to redeem. Smolensky's (1995) proposed connectionist explanation fares little better: it is not vulnerable to recent classicist objections, but it nonetheless fails, particularly if one requires, as some classicists do, that explanations of systematicity take the form of a‘functional analysis’. N…Read more
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22Epistemic 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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22Arthur F. Smullyan 1912-1998Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 72 (5). 1999.
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21On the hypothesis that grammars are mentally representedBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (3): 405-406. 1983.
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20Does cognitive science need “real” intentionality?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4): 616-617. 1990.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |