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44Semantic determinants and psychology as a scienceErkenntnis 49 (1): 57-91. 1998.One central but unrecognized strand of the complex debate between W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson over the status of psychology as a science turns on their disagreement concerning the compatibility of strict psychophysical, semantic-determining laws with the possibility of error. That disagreement in turn underlies their opposing views on the location of semantic determinants: proximal (on bodily surfaces) or distal (in the external world). This paper articulates these two disputes, their wider …Read more
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Meaning and Understanding: Epistemology in SemanticsDissertation, Columbia University. 1991.Foundationalism and direct realism are the two poles between which epistemology has continually swung and found unsatisfying, and with good reason; neither holds out much chance of plausibility. The epistemology of understanding is no exception, and in this dissertation an attempt is made to steer between these two poles by diagnosing and dissolving motivations for recent versions of them and meeting the challenges they set for the possibility of a middle position. Skepticism about the intelligi…Read more
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25Causation in the Argument for Anomalous MonismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 183-226. 1998.Donald Davidson has two central aims in his celebrated paper ‘Mental Events.’ First, he argues for the impossibility of ‘strict … laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’ (ME, 208). I shall call the resulting view ‘mental anomalism.’ Second, he argues, based partially on this impossibility, for a version of monism which holds that every (causally interacting) mental event is token-identical with some physical event. This second aim puts constraints on how the argu…Read more
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31A Dispositional Account of Self-KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2): 249-278. 2000.It is widely thought that dispositional accounts of content cannot adequately provide for two of its essential features: normativity and non-inferentially-based self-knowledge. This paper argues that these criticisms depend upon having wrongly bracketed the presumption of first-person authority. With that presumption in place, dispositional conceptions can account for normativity: conditions of correctness must then be presumed, ceteris paribus, to be successfully grasped in particular cases, an…Read more
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46Alspector-Kelly, M., 93 Alter, T., 345 Ben-Yami, H., 155 Bernstein, M., 329Philosophical Studies 102 (360). 2001.
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128Individualism, normativity, and the epistemology of understandingPhilosophical Studies 102 (1): 43-92. 2001.
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35Semantic Determinants and Psychology as a ScienceErkenntnis 49 (1). 1998.One central but unrecognized strand of the complex debate between W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson over the status of psychology as a science turns on their disagreement concerning the compatibility of strict psychophysical, semantic-determining laws with the possibility of error. That disagreement in turn underlies their opposing views on the location of semantic determinants: proximal (on bodily surfaces) or distal (in the external world). This paper articulates these two disputes, their wider …Read more
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100Causation in the argument for anomalous monismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 183-226. 1998.Donald Davidson has two central aims in his celebrated paper ‘Mental Events.’ First, he argues for the impossibility of ‘strict … laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’. I shall call the resulting view ‘mental anomalism.’ Second, he argues, based partially on this impossibility, for a version of monism which holds that every mental event is token-identical with some physical event. This second aim puts constraints on how the argument for mental anomalism can pla…Read more
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312A dispositional account of self-knowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2): 249-278. 2000.It is widely thought that dispositional accounts of content cannot adequately provide for two of its essential features: normativity and non-inferentially-based self-knowledge. This paper argues that these criticisms depend upon having wrongly bracketed the presumption of first-person authority. With that presumption in place, dispositional conceptions can account for normativity: conditions of correctness must then be presumed, ceteris paribus, to be successfully grasped in particular cases, an…Read more
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |