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Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David LewisLanham: Rowman &Amp; Littlefield. 2001.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
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197A nonclassical framework for cognitive scienceSynthese 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
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4Against the token identity theoryIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Ernest LePore (eds.), Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Blackwell. 1985.
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3Internal-world skepticism and mental self-presentationIn Uriah Kriegel & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Mit Press. pp. 41-61. 2006.
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42Levels of description in nonclassical cognitive sciencePhilosophy 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
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41Evidentially embedded epistemic entitlementSynthese 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
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88Connectionism and the Philosophy of PsychologyMIT Press. 1996.In Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology, Horgan and Tienson articulate and defend a new view of cognition.
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71What does it take to be a true believer? Against the opulent ideology of eliminative materialismIn Christina E. Erneling & D. Johnson (eds.), Mind As a Scientific Object, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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66How to be realistic about folk psychologyPhilosophical 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
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51Supervenient bridge lawsPhilosophy 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
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24Modelling the noncomputational mind: Reply to LitchPhilosophical 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
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82Sensations and grain processesIn Gregory R. Mulhauser (ed.), Evolving Consciousness, John Benjamins. 1998.
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111Consciousness and intentionalityIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Blackwell. pp. 468--484. 2007.
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97Themes in my philosophical workIn 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
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7Simulation and epistemic competenceIn H. Kobler & K. Steuber (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Social Sciences, Westview. 2000.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
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136The phenomenology of first-person agencyIn Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation, Imprint Academic. pp. 323. 2003.
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125Cognition needs syntax but not rulesIn 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
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |