• Reality and Humean Supervenience confronts the reader with central aspects in the philosophy of David Lewis, whose work in ontology, metaphysics, logic, probability, philosophy of mind, and language articulates a unique and systematic foundation for modern physicalism
  •  197
    A nonclassical framework for cognitive science
    with John L. Tienson
    Synthese 101 (3): 305-45. 1994.
      David Marr provided a useful framework for theorizing about cognition within classical, AI-style cognitive science, in terms of three levels of description: the levels of (i) cognitive function, (ii) algorithm and (iii) physical implementation. We generalize this framework: (i) cognitive state transitions, (ii) mathematical/functional design and (iii) physical implementation or realization. Specifying the middle, design level to be the theory of dynamical systems yields a nonclassical, alterna…Read more
  •  32
    Representations don't need rules: Reply to James Garson
    with John Tienson
    Mind and Language 9 (1): 1-24. 1994.
  •  42
    Levels of description in nonclassical cognitive science
    with John Tienson
    Philosophy 34 159-188. 1992.
    David Marr provided an influential account of levels of description in classical cognitive science. In this paper we contrast Marr'ent with some alternatives that are suggested by the recent emergence of connectionism. Marr's account is interesting and important both because of the levels of description it distinguishes, and because of the way his presentation reflects some of the most basic, foundational, assumptions of classical AI-style cognitive science . Thus, by focusing on levels of descr…Read more
  •  41
    Evidentially embedded epistemic entitlement
    Synthese 197 (11): 4907-4926. 2020.
    Some hold that beliefs arising out of certain sources such as perceptual experience enjoy a kind of entitlement—as one is entitled to believe what is thereby presented as true, at least unless further evidence undermines that entitlement. This is commonly understood to require that default epistemic entitlement is a non-evidential kind of epistemic warrant. Our project here is to challenge this common, non-evidential, conception of epistemic entitlement. We will argue that although there are ind…Read more
  •  88
    Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology
    with John Tienson
    MIT Press. 1996.
    In Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology, Horgan and Tienson articulate and defend a new view of cognition.
  •  3
    Sobreveniência
    Critica -. 2008.
  •  237
    Mary Mary, quite contrary
    Philosophical Studies 99 (1): 59-87. 2000.
  •  104
    Cognitive systems as dynamic systems
    with John Tienson
    Topoi 11 (1): 27-43. 1992.
  •  131
    On What There Isn’t (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3): 693. 1993.
  •  38
    Settling into a new paradigm
    with John Tienson
    Southern Journal of Philosophy Supplement 26 (S1): 97-113. 1987.
  •  66
    How to be realistic about folk psychology
    Philosophical Psychology 1 (1): 69-81. 1988.
    Folk psychological realism is the view that folk psychology is true and that people really do have propositional attitudes, whereas anti-realism is the view that folk psychology is false and people really do not have propositional attitudes. We argue that anti-realism is not worthy of acceptance and that realism is eminently worthy of acceptance. However, it is plainly epistemically possible to favor either of two forms of folk realism: scientific or non-scientific. We argue that non-scientific …Read more
  •  143
  •  51
    Supervenient bridge laws
    Philosophy of Science 45 (2): 227-249. 1978.
    I invoke the conceptual machinery of contemporary possible-world semantics to provide an account of the metaphysical status of "bridge laws" in intertheoretic reductions. I argue that although bridge laws are not definitions, and although they do not necessarily reflect attribute-identities, they are supervenient. I.e., they are true in all possible worlds in which the reducing theory is true
  •  24
    Modelling the noncomputational mind: Reply to Litch
    Philosophical Psychology 10 (3): 365-371. 1997.
    I explain why, within the nonclassical framework for cognitive science we describe in the book, cognitive-state transitions can fail to be tractably computable even if they are subserved by a discrete dynamical system whose mathematical-state transitions are tractably computable. I distinguish two ways that cognitive processing might conform to programmable rules in which all operations that apply to representation-level structure are primitive, and two corresponding constraints on models of cog…Read more
  •  28
    Transglobal reliabilism
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 17 171-195. 2006.
  •  111
    Consciousness and intentionality
    with George Graham and John L. Tienson
    In Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Blackwell. pp. 468--484. 2007.
  •  97
    Themes in my philosophical work
    In Johannes L. Brandl (ed.), Essays on the Philosophy of Terence Horgan, Atlanta: Rodopi. pp. 1-26. 2002.
    I invoked the notion of supervenience in my doctoral disseration, Microreduction and the Mind-Body Problem, completed at the University of Michigan in 1974 under the direction of Jaegwon Kim. I had been struck by the appeal to supervenience in Hare (1952), a classic work in twentieth century metaethics that I studied at Michigan in a course on metaethics taught by William Frankena; and I also had been struck by the brief appeal to supervenience in Davidson (1970). Kim was already, in effect, con…Read more
  •  4
    On What There Isn'tMaterial Beings
    with Peter van Inwagen
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3): 693. 1993.
  • Authors' replies
    with John L. Tienson
    Acta Analytica 144 275-287. 1999.
  •  7
    Epistemology has recently come to more and more take the articulate form of an investigation into how we do, and perhaps might better, manage the cognitive chores of producing, modifying, and generally maintaining belief-sets with a view to having a true and systematic understanding of the world. While this approach has continuities with earlier philosophy, it admittedly makes a departure from the tradition of epistemology as first philosophy
  •  136
    The phenomenology of first-person agency
    with John L. Tienson and George Graham
    In Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation, Imprint Academic. pp. 323. 2003.
  •  34
    Lehrer on 'could'-statements
    Philosophical Studies 32 (4). 1977.
  •  125
    Cognition needs syntax but not rules
    with John L. Tienson
    In Robert J. Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 147--158. 2006.
    Human cognition is rich, varied, and complex. In this Chapter we argue that because of the richness of human cognition (and human mental life generally), there must be a syntax of cognitive states, but because of this very richness, cognitive processes cannot be describable by exceptionless rules. The argument for syntax, in Section 1, has to do with being able to get around in any number of possible environments in a complex world. Since nature did not know where in the world humans would find …Read more