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43Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2015.Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. The chapters in this volume explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti- representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the r…Read more
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14Language and the Border between Perception and CognitionAnalysis 83 (3): 541-554. 2023.Ned Block’s (2022)The Border Between Seeing and Thinking synthesizes a vast array of experimental results to argue that there is a ‘joint’ – a fundamental expla.
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28Meaning Without Representation: Expression, Truth, Normativity, and Naturalism (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the …Read more
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4Linguistic Judgments as EvidenceIn Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey (eds.), A Companion to Chomsky, Wiley. 2021.The prominence of judgment data in contemporary linguistics is crucially tied to Chomsky's mentalist reconception of the field. Judgment data are meta‐linguistic judgments – judgments about specific linguistic items, construed broadly to include language‐like items (e.g. ungrammatical strings). A judgment of unacceptability provides stronger evidence of ungrammaticality – insofar as reasonable alternative explanations can be ruled out (pragmatic oddity, processing difficulties, memory constraint…Read more
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1282InnatenessIn Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.A survey of innateness in cognitive science, focusing on (1) what innateness might be, and (2) whether concepts might be innate.
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58What’s Within? Nativism ReconsideredPhilosophical Review 110 (1): 94-97. 2001.Fiona Cowie’s What’s Within consists of three parts. In the first, she examines the early modern rationalist-empiricist debate over nativism, isolating what she considers the two substantive “strands” that truly separated them: whether there exist domain-specific learning mechanisms, and whether concept acquisition is amenable to naturalistic explanation. She then turns, in the book’s succeeding parts, to where things stand today with these issues. The second part argues that Jerry Fodor’s view …Read more
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38Representation of pure magnitudes in ANSBehavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.According to Clarke and Beck (C&B), the approximate number system (ANS) represents numbers. We argue that the ANS represents pure magnitudes. Considerations of explanatory economy favor the pure magnitudes hypothesis. The considerations C&B direct against the pure magnitudes hypothesis do not have force.
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1162Can resources save rationality? ‘Anti-Bayesian’ updating in cognition and perceptionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 143. 2020.Resource rationality may explain suboptimal patterns of reasoning; but what of “anti-Bayesian” effects where the mind updates in a direction opposite the one it should? We present two phenomena — belief polarization and the size-weight illusion — that are not obviously explained by performance- or resource-based constraints, nor by the authors’ brief discussion of reference repulsion. Can resource rationality accommodate them?
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448Linguistic Judgments As EvidenceIn Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Chomsky, Wiley-blackwell. forthcoming.An overview of debates surrounding the use of meta-linguistic judgments in linguistics, including recent relevant empirical results.
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682Probabilistic representations in perception: Are there any, and what would they be?Mind and Language 35 (3): 377-389. 2020.Nick Shea’s Representation in Cognitive Science commits him to representations in perceptual processing that are about probabilities. This commentary concerns how to adjudicate between this view and an alternative that locates the probabilities rather in the representational states’ associated “attitudes”. As background and motivation, evidence for probabilistic representations in perceptual processing is adduced, and it is shown how, on either conception, one can address a specific challenge Ne…Read more
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448Linguistic Intuitions: Error Signals and the Voice of CompetenceIn Samuel Schindler, Anna Drożdżowicz & Karen Brøcker (eds.), Linguistic Intuitions: Evidence and Method, Oxford University Press. 2020.Linguistic intuitions are a central source of evidence across a variety of linguistic domains. They have also long been a source of controversy. This chapter aims to illuminate the etiology and evidential status of at least some linguistic intuitions by relating them to error signals of the sort posited by accounts of on-line monitoring of speech production and comprehension. The suggestion is framed as a novel reply to Michael Devitt’s claim that linguistic intuitions are theory-laden “central …Read more
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2679Linguistic IntuitionsPhilosophy Compass 8 (8): 714-730. 2013.Linguists often advert to what are sometimes called linguistic intuitions. These intuitions and the uses to which they are put give rise to a variety of philosophically interesting questions: What are linguistic intuitions – for example, what kind of attitude or mental state is involved? Why do they have evidential force and how might this force be underwritten by their causal etiology? What light might their causal etiology shed on questions of cognitive architecture – for example, as a case st…Read more
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490Perceptual Consciousness and Cognitive Access from the Perspective of Capacity-Unlimited Working MemoryPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. forthcoming.Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue-based “overflow” arguments, according to whi…Read more
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461A reply to commentators -- Jake Beck, Nico Orlandi and Aaron Franklin, and Ian Phillips -- on our paper "Does perceptual consciousness overflow cognitive access?".
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1416Are linguists better subjects?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (4): 721-736. 2009.Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposu…Read more
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924Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? The Challenge from Probabilistic, Hierarchical ProcessesMind and Language 32 (3): 358-391. 2017.Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues that it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post-stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling's classic partial report studies, change-detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics' i…Read more
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108The Metaphysics of Meaning: Hopkins on WittgensteinInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (4): 518-538. 2015.Jim Hopkins defends a ‘straight’ response to Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, a response he ascribes to Wittgenstein himself. According to this response, what makes it the case that A means that P is that it is possible for another to interpret A as meaning that P. Hopkins thus advances a form of interpretivist judgment-dependence about meaning. I argue that this response, as well as a variant, does not succeed
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50The claims are grounded in a wealth of fascinating data, particularly on primate and young child communication and social cognition, much produced by Tomasello’s own lab. But there is certainly no dearth of stimulating speculation. Tomasello’s story is rich and complex. In what follows, I focus on aspects of the three hypotheses listed above, offering some commentary as I go.
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10There is a long tradition of drawing metaphysical conclusions from investigations into language. This paper concerns one contemporary variation on this theme: the alleged ontological significance of cognitivist truth-theoretic accounts of semantic competence
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139Book review. Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong Jerry Fodor (review)Mind 110 (438): 469-475. 1998.
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931Problems for the Purported Cognitive Penetration of Perceptual Color Experience and Macpherson’s Proposed MechanismBaltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication. 2014.Fiona Macpherson (2012) argues that various experimental results provide strong evidence in favor of the cognitive penetration of perceptual color experience. Moreover, she proposes a mechanism for how such cognitive penetration occurs. We argue, first, that the results on which Macpherson relies do not provide strong grounds for her claim of cognitive penetrability; and, second, that, if the results do reflect cognitive penetrability, then time-course considerations raise worries for her propos…Read more
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80What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered (review)Philosophical Review 110 (1): 94-97. 2001.Fiona Cowie’s _What’s Within_ consists of three parts. In the first, she examines the early modern rationalist- empiricist debate over nativism, isolating what she considers the two substantive “strands” (67)1 that truly separated them: whether there exist domain-specific learning mechanisms, and whether concept acquisition is amenable to naturalistic explanation. She then turns, in the book’s succeeding parts, to where things stand today with these issues. The second part argues that Jerry Fodo…Read more
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49Should a theory of meaning state what sentences mean, and can a Davidsonian theory of meaning in particular do so? Max Ko¨lbel answers both questions affirmatively. I argue, however, that the phenomena of non-homophony, non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, semantic mood, and context-sensitivity provide prima facie obstacles for extending Davidsonian truth-theories to yield meaning-stating theorems. Assessing some natural moves in reply requires a more fully developed conception of the task …Read more
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212Putnam, Context, and OntologyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (4). 2004.When a debate seems intractable, with little agreement as to how one might proceed towards a resolution, it is understandable that philosophers should consider whether something might be amiss with the debate itself. Famously in the last century, philosophers of various stripes explored in various ways the possibility that at least certain philosophical debates are in some manner deficient in sense. Such moves are no longer so much in vogue. For one thing, the particular ways they have been made…Read more
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697Davidson, first-person authority, and the evidence for semanticsIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental, Oxford University Press. pp. 228-48. 2012.Donald Davidson aims to illuminate the concept of meaning by asking: What knowledge would suffice to put one in a position to understand the speech of another, and what evidence sufficiently distant from the concepts to be illuminated could in principle ground such knowledge? Davidson answers: knowledge of an appropriate truth-theory for the speaker’s language, grounded in what sentences the speaker holds true, or prefers true, in what circumstances. In support of this answer, he both outlines s…Read more
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1584Revisited Linguistic IntuitionsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (3). 2011.Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with…Read more
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514Descriptive Semantic ExternalismIn Nick Riemer (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Semantics, Routledge. pp. 13-29. 2015.This chapter examines the “externalist” claim that semantics should include theorizing about representational relations among linguistic expressions and (purported) aspects of the world. After disentangling our main topic from other strands in the larger set of externalist-internalist debates, arguments both for and against this claim are discussed. It is argued, among other things, that the fortunes of this externalist claim are bound up with contentious issues concerning the semantics-pragmati…Read more
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98The nature of semantics: On Jackendoff's argumentsLinguistic Review 22 249-270. 2005.Jackendoff defends a mentalist approach to semantics that investigates conceptual structures in the mind/brain and their interfaces with other structures, including specifically linguistic structures responsible for syntactic and phonological competence. He contrasts this approach with one that seeks to characterize the intentional relations between expressions and objects in the world. The latter, he argues, cannot be reconciled with mentalism. He objects in particular that intentionality canno…Read more
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842Review of Ray Jackendoff, Language, Consciousness, Culture (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 20095. 2009.
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989Knowledge of Meaning, Conscious and UnconsciousThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication. 2010.This paper motivates two bases for ascribing propositional semantic knowledge (or something knowledgelike): first, because it’s necessary to rationalize linguistic action; and, second, because it’s part of an empirical theory that would explain various aspects of linguistic behavior. The semantic knowledge ascribed on these two bases seems to differ in content, epistemic status, and cognitive role. This raises the question: how are they related, if at all? The bulk of the paper addresses this qu…Read more
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