•  813
    Interacting mindreaders
    Philosophical Studies 165 (3): 841-863. 2013.
    Could interacting mindreaders be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers? This paper argues that they could. Mindreading is sometimes reciprocal: the mindreader’s target reciprocates by taking the mindreader as a target for mindreading. The paper explains how such reciprocity can significantly narrow the range of possible interpretations of behaviour where mindreaders are, or appear to be, in a position to interact. A consequence …Read more
  •  451
    Joint action goals reduce visuomotor interference effects from a partner’s incongruent actions
    with Sam Clarke, Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, and John Michael
    Scientific Reports 9 (1). 2019.
    Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represen…Read more
  •  363
    Tool use and causal cognition: An introduction
    In Teresa McCormack, Christoph Hoerl & Stephen Andrew Butterfill (eds.), Tool Use and Causal Cognition, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-17. 2011.
    This chapter begins with a discussion of the significance of studies of aspects of tool use in understanding causal cognition. It argues that tool use studies reveal the most basic type or causal understanding being put to use, in a way that studies that focus on learning statistical relationships between cause and effect or studies of perceptual causation do not. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
  •  326
    Intention and Motor Representation in Purposive Action
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 119-145. 2012.
    Are there distinct roles for intention and motor representation in explaining the purposiveness of action? Standard accounts of action assign a role to intention but are silent on motor representation. The temptation is to suppose that nothing need be said here because motor representation is either only an enabling condition for purposive action or else merely a variety of intention. This paper provides reasons for resisting that temptation. Some motor representations, like intentions, coordina…Read more
  •  288
    Cue competition effects and young children's causal and counterfactual inferences
    with Teresa McCormack, Christoph Hoerl, and Patrick Burns
    Developmental Psychology 45 (6): 1563-1575. 2009.
    The authors examined cue competition effects in young children using the blicket detector paradigm, in which objects are placed either singly or in pairs on a novel machine and children must judge which objects have the causal power to make the machine work. Cue competition effects were found in a 5- to 6-year-old group but not in a 4-year-old group. Equivalent levels of forward and backward blocking were found in the former group. Children's counterfactual judgments were subsequently examined b…Read more
  •  239
    Motor representations live a kind of double life. Although paradigmatically involved in performing actions, they also occur when merely observing others act and sometimes influence thoughts about the goals of observed actions. Further, these influences are content-respecting: what you think about an action sometimes depends in part on how that action is represented motorically in you. The existence of such content-respecting influences is puzzling. After all, motor representations do not feature…Read more
  •  207
    Joint Action and Development
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 23-47. 2012.
    Given the premise that joint action plays some role in explaining how humans come to understand minds, what could joint action be? Not what a leading account, Michael Bratman's, says it is. For on that account engaging in joint action involves sharing intentions and sharing intentions requires much of the understanding of minds whose development is supposed to be explained by appeal to joint action. This paper therefore offers an account of a different kind of joint action, an account compatible…Read more
  •  196
    Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states?
    with Ian A. Apperly
    Psychological Review 116 (4): 953-970. 2009.
    The lack of consensus on how to characterize humans’ capacity for belief reasoning has been brought into sharp focus by recent research. Children fail critical tests of belief reasoning before 3 to 4 years (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001; Wimmer & Perner, 1983), yet infants apparently pass false belief tasks at 13 or 15 months (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Surian, Caldi, & Sperber, 2007). Non-human animals also fail critical tests of belief reasoning but can show very complex social behaviour (e.…Read more
  •  188
    How to Construct a Minimal Theory of Mind
    with Ian A. Apperly
    Mind and Language 28 (5): 606-637. 2013.
    What could someone represent that would enable her to track, at least within limits, others' perceptions, knowledge states and beliefs including false beliefs? An obvious possibility is that she might represent these very attitudes as such. It is sometimes tacitly or explicitly assumed that this is the only possible answer. However, we argue that several recent discoveries in developmental, cognitive, and comparative psychology indicate the need for other, less obvious possibilities. Our aim is …Read more
  •  164
    Is goal ascription possible in minimal mindreading?
    with Ian A. Apperly
    Psychological Review 123 (2): 228-233. 2016.
    In this response to the commentary by Michael and Christensen, we first explain how minimal mindreading is compatible with the development of increasingly sophisticated mindreading behaviours that involve both executive functions and general knowledge, and then sketch one approach to a minimal account of goal ascription.
  •  127
    Seeing causings and hearing gestures
    Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236): 405-428. 2009.
    Can humans see causal interactions? Evidence on the visual perception of causal interactions, from Michotte to contemporary work, is best interpreted as showing that we can see some causal interactions in the same sense as that in which we can hear speech. Causal perception, like speech perception, is a form of categorical perception.
  •  108
    Children’s Selective Learning from Others
    with Erika Nurmsoo and Elizabeth Robinson
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (4): 551-561. 2010.
    Psychological research into children’s sensitivity to testimony has primarily focused on their ability to judge the likely reliability of speakers. However, verbal testimony is only one means by which children learn from others. We review recent research exploring children’s early social referencing and imitation, as well as their sensitivity to speakers’ knowledge, beliefs, and biases, to argue that children treat information and informants with reasonable scepticism. As children’s understandin…Read more
  •  104
    Reflection on testimony provides novel arguments for anti-individualism. What is anti-individualism? Sanford Goldberg's book defends three main claims under this heading: first, facts about the contents of beliefs do not supervene on individualistic facts about the believers ; second, an individual's epistemic entitlement to accept a piece of testimony depends on facts about her peers ; third, processes by which some humans acquire knowledge from testimony includes activities performed for them …Read more
  •  98
    Editorial: Joint Action: What Is Shared? (review)
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (2): 137-146. 2011.
    Editorial: Joint Action: What Is Shared? Content Type Journal Article Pages 137-146 DOI 10.1007/s13164-011-0062-3 Authors Stephen A. Butterfill, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Natalie Sebanz, Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, & Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 2 Journal Issue Volume 2, Number 2
  •  91
    Two kinds of purposive action
    European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2). 2001.
    It is normally assumed that there is only one kind of purposive action. This article argues that there are two kinds of purposive action, which require different models of explanation. One kind of action is done without awareness of reasons; another kind of action is done because the agent is aware of reasons for that action. The argument starts by noting that philosophers disagree about what explains action. Some claim that actions are explained by impersonal facts, such as facts about how thin…Read more
  •  83
    Thinking Without Words (review)
    Mind 113 (452): 733-736. 2004.
  •  82
    Modules are widely held to play a central role in explaining mental development and in accounts of the mind generally. But there is much disagreement about what modules are, which shows that we do not adequately understand modularity. This paper outlines a Fodoresque approach to understanding one type of modularity. It suggests that we can distinguish modular from nonmodular cognition by reference to the kinds of process involved, and that modular cognition differs from nonmodular forms of cogni…Read more
  •  82
    Infants' representations of causation
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (3): 126-127. 2011.
    It is consistent with the evidence in The Origin of Concepts to conjecture that infants' causal representations, like their numerical representations, are not continuous with adults', so that bootstrapping is needed in both cases
  •  64
    Tool Use and Causal Cognition (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2011.
    What cognitive abilities underpin the use of tools, and how are tools and their properties represented or understood by tool-users? Does the study of tool use provide us with a unique or distinctive source of information about the causal cognition of tool-users? Tool use is a topic of major interest to all those interested in animal cognition, because it implies that the animal has knowledge of the relationship between objects and their effects. There are countless examples of animals developin…Read more
  •  49
    Shared Emotions, Joint Attention and Joint Action, Centre for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Denmark, 26 October 2010
  •  45
    Lucy O'Brien, Self Knowing Agents (review)
    Philosophical Review 118 (3): 413-415. 2009.
  •  33
    Are these different requirements, in the sense that someone could satisfy one without satisfying the other? No one could meet the Truth Requirement without meeting the Variation Requirement, because understanding that a belief is false involves realising one should not believe it and appreciating the possibility of having other beliefs in its place. But could someone meet the Variation Requirement without meeting the Truth Requirement? In other words, is it possible to be aware of beliefs which …Read more