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520Scientific Imperialism and explanatory appeals to evolution in the social sciencesIn Uskali Mäki, Adrian Walsh & Manuela Fernández Pinto (eds.), Scientific Imperialism: Exploring the Boundaries of Interdisciplinarity, Routledge. pp. 224-236. 2018.
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13Evolutionary psychology is not the only productive evolutionary approach to understanding consumer behaviorJournal of Consumer Psychology 23 (3): 400-403. 2013.I respond to Vladas Griskevicius and Douglas T. Kendrick (G&K) and Gad Saad's (S) defenses of the view that Consumer Studies would benefit from the appeal to evolution in all work aimed at understanding consumer behavior. I argue that G&K and S's reliance on one theoretical perspective, that of evolutionary psychology, limits their options. Further, I point out some specific problems with the theoretical perspective of evolutionary psychology. Finally, I introduce some alternative evolutionary a…Read more
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38Variability of AggressionIn Todd K. Shackelford & Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, Springer Verlag. 2018.Variability of aggression: human aggressive behavior varies on a number of dimensions. We argue that this variability is best understood through an interdisciplinary evolutionary approach.
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Prospects for a Cognitive Science of ScienceDissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 1990.Cognitive science of science attempts to explain a range of phenomena familiar to philosophers of science, such as theory choice and scientific discovery. The appeal to cognitive science may be seen as an attempt to naturalize the philosophy of science. I examine and criticize several of the most important contributions to this new field. I argue that an unrecognized common defect of this work is its reliance on an explanatory approach that takes individuals' cognitive capacities as its units of…Read more
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106Human Nature: An OverviewIn Richard Joyce (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 155-166. 2016.Debates about human nature inform every philosophical tradition from their inception (see Stevenson 2000 for many examples). Evolutionarily based criticisms of human nature are of much more recent origin. Ironically, most evolutionarily based criticisms of human nature are directed at work whose avowed goal is to biologicize human nature and even to place human nature within an evolutionary frame. Here I will focus on accounts of human nature that begin with and come after E.O. Wilson’s sociobio…Read more
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3Diversifying Tenure-Line FacultyBlog of the American Philosophical Association. 2020.A blog post in the APA series on diversity in the profession. This post outlines some suggested practices for hiring and retention of tenure-line faculty with a particular focus on hiring women.
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Beautiful and sublimeIn Stephen C. Downes (ed.), Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives, Routledge. 2014.
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IntroductionIn Stephen C. Downes (ed.), Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives, Routledge. 2014.
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600Evolutionary PsychologyIn Lee C. McIntyre & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science, Routledge. pp. 330-339. 2016.
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63HeritabilityStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.Lucas Matthews and I substantially revised my SEP entry on Heritability. This version includes discussion of the missing heritability problem and other issues that arise from the use of Genome Wide Association Studies by Behavioral Geneticists.
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19How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism by Livingstone Smith, David (ed.) (review)Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture 1 (2): 149-152. 2017.
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166Conditional variabilityCalgary Working Papers in Linguistics 13 1-14. 1987.In this paper it will be shown that when a conditional statement is understood or known to be true, a number of implicitly specified variables are given more or less concrete values. Each of the variables will be defined and examples will be employed to demonstrate their use in conditional evaluation. From time to time this analysis in terms of variables will be contrasted with a 'possible worlds' analysis of conditionals. The purpose of this paper is not to argue against the possible worlds ana…Read more
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19Book Review: Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being, The Worst Enemy of Science? Essays in Memory of Paul Feyerabend (review)Science, Technology, and Human Values 27 (1): 160-167. 2002.
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20Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives (edited book)Routledge. 2014.Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Approaches is an anthology of fourteen essays, each addressing a single key concept or pair of terms in the aesthetics of music, collectively serving as an authoritative work on musical aesthetics that remains as close to 'the music' as possible. Each essay includes musical examples from works in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century. Topics have been selected from amongst widely recognised central issues in musical aesthetics, as well as those that have be…Read more
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1Similarity: A Cognitive Foundation for Artificial IntelligenceEidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy 12. 1994.
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6516Learning Networks and Connective KnowledgeIn Harrison Hao Yang & Steve Chi-Yin Yuen (eds.), Collective Intelligence and E-Learning 2.0: Implications of Web-Based Communities and Networking, Igi Global. 2010.The purpose of this chapter is to outline some of the thinking behind new e-learning technology, including e-portfolios and personal learning environments. Part of this thinking is centered around the theory of connectivism, which asserts that knowledge - and therefore the learning of knowledge - is distributive, that is, not located in any given place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interaction…Read more
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328An Introduction to Connective KnowledgeIn Theo Hug (ed.), Media, Knowledge & Education - Exploring new Spaces, Relations and Dynamics in Digital Media Ecologies, Innsbruck University Press. 2008.This paper provides an overview of connective knowledge. It is intended to be an introduction, expressed as non-technically as possible.
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Cynthia Macdonald, Mind-Body Identity Theories Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 14 (6): 409-410. 1994.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |