•  50
    Inner speech and the body error theory
    Frontiers in Psychology 15 1360699. 2024.
    Inner speech is commonly understood as the conscious experience of a voice within the mind. One recurrent theme in the scientific literature is that the phenomenon involves a representation of overt speech, for example, a representation of phonetic properties that result from a copy of speech instructions that were ultimately suppressed. I propose a larger picture that involves some embodied objects and their misperception. I call it “the Body Error Theory,” or BET for short. BET is a form of il…Read more
  •  184
    Functional reduction follows two familiar steps: a definition of a higher-level or special science property in terms of a functional role, then a statement describing a physical property that plays or occupies that role. But Kim (2005) adds a third step, namely, an explanation regarding how the physical property occupies the functional role. I think Kim is correct. But how is the third step satisfied? An examination of the pertinent scientific explanations reveals that the third step is best sat…Read more
  •  655
    Developing the explanatory dimensions of part–whole realization
    Philosophical Studies 173 (12): 3347-3368. 2016.
    I use Carl Gillett’s much heralded dimensioned theory of realization as a platform to develop a plausible part–whole theory. I begin with some basic desiderata for a theory of realization that its key terms should be defined and that it should be explanatory. I then argue that Gillett’s original theory violates these conditions because its explanatory force rests upon an unspecified “in virtue of” relation. I then examine Gillett’s later version that appeals instead to theoretical terms tied to …Read more
  •  871
    Flat Versus Dimensioned: the What and the How of Functional Realization
    Journal of Philosophical Research 36 191-208. 2011.
    I resolve an argument over “flat” versus “dimensioned” theories of realization. The theories concern, in part, whether realized and realizing properties are instantiated by the same individual (the flat theory) or different individuals in a part-whole relationship (the dimensioned theory). Carl Gillett has argued that the two views conflict, and that flat theories should be rejected on grounds that they fail to capture scientific cases involving a dimensioned relation between individuals and the…Read more
  •  190
    This is a largely expository review of Thomas Polger’s and Laurence Shapiro’s The Multiple Realization Book (Oxford Press 2016).
  • Physicalism and Psychology
    Dissertation, University of Michigan. 1989.
    My thesis is a study in the ontology of psychology, and in particular the status of the entities it is willing to countenance vis-a-vis the physical sciences. The overriding theme which guides the present work is that psychology is an autonomous discipline, autonomous not only in the sense that it utilizes its own distinctive concepts and classification schemes, but in the much stronger sense that it has its own distinct and irreducible ontology which sets it apart from the physical sciences. In…Read more
  •  482
    Nomic-Role Nonreductionism: Identifying Properties by Total Nomic Roles
    Philosophical Topics 35 (1&2): 217-240. 2007.
    I introduce "nomic-role nonreductionism" as an alternative to traditional causal-role functionalism in the philosophy of mind. Rather than identify mental properties by a theory that describes their intra-level causal roles via types of inputs, internal states, and outputs, I suggest that one identify mental properties by a more comprehensive theory that also describes inter-level realization roles via types of lower-level engineering, internal mental states, and still higher-level states genera…Read more
  •  741
    Resolving arguments by different conceptual traditions of realization
    Philosophical Studies 159 (1): 41-59. 2012.
    There is currently a significant amount of interest in understanding and developing theories of realization. Naturally arguments have arisen about the adequacy of some theories over others. Many of these arguments have a point. But some can be resolved by seeing that the theories of realization in question are not genuine competitors because they fall under different conceptual traditions with different but compatible goals. I will first describe three different conceptual traditions of realizat…Read more
  •  613
    Philosophers almost universally believe that concepts of supervenience fail to satisfy the standards for physicalism because they offer mere property correlations that are left unexplained. They are thus compatible with non-physicalist accounts of those relations. Moreover, many philosophers not only prefer some kind of functional-role theory as a physically acceptable account of mind-body and other inter-level relations, but they use it as a form of “superdupervenience” to explain supervenience…Read more
  •  680
    Searle, Syntax, and Observer Relativity
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 101-22. 1996.
    I critically examine some provocative arguments that John Searle presents in his book The Rediscovery of Mind to support the claim that the syntactic states of a classical computational system are "observer relative" or "mind dependent" or otherwise less than fully and objectively real. I begin by explaining how this claim differs from Searle's earlier and more well-known claim that the physical states of a machine, including the syntactic states, are insufficient to determine its semantics. In …Read more
  •  13
    On physical multiple realization
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 70 (3): 212-24. 1989.
    Peer Reviewed.
  •  915
    Realization Reductios, and Category Inclusion
    Journal of Philosophy 107 (4): 213-219. 2010.
    Thomas Polger and Laurence Shapiro argue that Carl Gillett's much publicized dimensioned theory of realization is incoherent, being subject to a reductio. Their argument turns on the fact that Gillett's definition of realization makes property instances the exclusive relata of the realization relation, while his belief in multiple realization implies its denial, namely, that properties are the relata of the realization relation on occasions of multiple realization. Others like Sydney Shoemaker h…Read more
  •  62
    Review of Cynthia MacDonald, Mind-Body Identity Theories (Routledge 1989) (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 25 (1): 94-94. 1993.
  •  78
    The refutation by analogous ectoqualia
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (1): 19-30. 1995.
    In this paper I offered a friendly amendment to Paul Churchland’s a well-known criticism of Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument. According to Jackson’s argument, a hypothetical Mary, living in her darkened stimulus-impoverished environment, knows all information from physical science about the perception of color but still does not know everything, e.g., what it is like to experience the color red. Churchland offered a refutation by analogy whereby Mary is an ectoplasmologist who knows all the su…Read more
  •  402
    I critically evaluate Bickle’s version of scientific theory reduction. I press three main points. First, a small point, Bickle modifies the new wave account of reduction developed by Paul Churchland and Clifford Hooker by treating theories as set-theoretic structures. But that structuralist gloss seems to lose what was distinctive about the Churchland-Hooker account, namely, that a corrected theory must be specified entirely by terms and concepts drawn from the basic reducing theory. Set-theoret…Read more
  •  1017
    Collapse of the new wave
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 53-72. 1998.
    I critically evaluate the influential new wave account of theory reduction in science developed by Paul Churchland and Clifford Hooker. First, I cast doubt on claims that the new wave account enjoys a number of theoretical virtues over its competitors, such as the ability to represent how false theories are reduced by true theories. Second, I argue that the genuinely novel claim that a corrected theory must be specified entirely by terms from the basic reducing theory is in fact too restrictive …Read more
  •  587
    Philosophers of science have offered different accounts of what it means for one scientific theory to reduce to another. I propose a more or less friendly amendment to Kenneth Schaffner’s “General Reduction-Replacement” model of scientific unification. Schaffner interprets scientific unification broadly in terms of a continuum from theory reduction to theory replacement. As such, his account leaves no place on its continuum for type irreducible and irreplaceable theories. The same is true for ot…Read more
  •  39
    Many-many mappings and world structure
    American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (3): 267-280. 1998.
  •  590
    Multiple Realizability
    In D. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale, Macmillan Reference. 2005.
    Multiple realizability has been at the heart of debates about whether the mind reduces to the brain, or whether the items of a special science reduce to the items of a physical science. I analyze the two central notions implied by the concept of multiple realizability: "multiplicity," otherwise known as property variability, and "realizability." Beginning with the latter, I distinguish three broad conceptual traditions. The Mathematical Tradition equates realization with a form of mapping betwee…Read more
  •  310
    Constructival plasticity
    Philosophical Studies 74 (1): 51-75. 1994.
    Some scientists and philosophers claimed that there is a converse to multiple realizability. While a given higher-level property can be realized by different lower-level properties (multiple realizability), a given lower-level property can in turn serve to realize different higher-level properties (this converse I dubbed the unfortunately obscure "constructival plasticity" to emphasize the constructive metaphysics involved in this converse to multiple realizability). I began by defining multiple…Read more
  •  394
    In light of the phenomenon of multiple realizability, many philosophers wanted to preserve the mind-brain identity theory by resorting to a “narrow reductive strategy” whereby one (a) finds mental properties which are (b) sufficiently narrow to avoid the phenomenon of multiple realization, while being (c) explanatorily adequate to the demands of psychological theorizing. That is, one replaces the conception of a mental property as more general feature of cognitive systems with many less general …Read more