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90Understanding when it is acceptable to interrupt a joint activity is an important part of understanding what cooperation entails. Philosophical analyses have suggested that we should release our partner from a joint activity anytime the activity conflicts with fulfilling a moral obligation. To probe young children’s understanding of this aspect, we investigated whether 3-year-old children (N = 60) are sensitive to the legitimacy of motives (selfish condition vs. moral condition) leading agents t…Read more
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13To Think or Not To Think: The apparent paradox of expert skill in music performanceEducational Philosophy and Theory 46 (6): 674-691. 2014.Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus an…Read more
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16Book reviews (review)Philosophical Psychology 10 (1): 113-137. 1997.Kinds of minds, Daniel Dennett. New York: Basic Books, 1996. ISBN 0–465–07350–6Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life, Daniel C. Dennett. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0–684–80290–2The cognitive neurosciences, Michael S. Gazzaniga (Ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0–262–07157–6Lessons from an optical illusion: on nature and nurture, knowledge and values, Edward M. Hundert. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0–674–52540‐XWittgenstein on mind…Read more
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2Marc De Mey, The Cognitive Paradigm: An Integrated Understanding of Scientific Development, reprint, with a new introduction (review)Minds and Machines 10 (1): 165-168. 2000.
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145Cognition in Skilled Action: Meshed Control and the Varieties of Skill ExperienceMind and Language 31 (1): 37-66. 2016.We present a synthetic theory of skilled action which proposes that cognitive processes make an important contribution to almost all skilled action, contrary to influential views that many skills are performed largely automatically. Cognitive control is focused on strategic aspects of performance, and plays a greater role as difficulty increases. We offer an analysis of various forms of skill experience and show that the theory provides a better explanation for the full set of these experiences …Read more
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281Cognitive control, intentions, and problem solving in skill learningSynthese 200 (6): 1-36. 2022.We investigate flexibility and problem solving in skilled action. We conducted a field study of mountain bike riding that required a learner rider to cope with major changes in technique and equipment. Our results indicate that relatively inexperienced individuals can be capable of fairly complex 'on-the-fly' problem solving which allows them to cope with new conditions. This problem solving is hard to explain for classical theories of skill because the adjustments are too large to be achieved b…Read more
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23The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (3): 547-573. 2020.The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presen…Read more
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17Correction to: The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (3): 575-575. 2020.A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00520-7
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463The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology (3): 547-573. 2020.The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presen…Read more
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117Skilled actionPhilosophy Compass 14 (11). 2019.I focus on problems defining skill and a core theoretical dispute over whether skilled action is largely automatic or consciously controlled. The dominant view in philosophy and psychology has been that skills are automatic, but an emerging body of work suggests that conscious cognition plays a significant role.
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15Using episodic memory to gauge implicit and/or indeterminate social commitments—ADDENDUMBehavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.
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57Memory systems and the control of skilled actionPhilosophical Psychology 32 (5): 692-718. 2019.ABSTRACTIn keeping with the dominant view that skills are largely automatic, the standard view of memory systems distinguishes between a representational declarative system associated with cognitive processes and a performance-based procedural system. The procedural system is thought to be largely responsible for the performance of well-learned skilled actions. Here we argue that most skills do not fully automate, which entails that the declarative system should make a substantial contribution t…Read more
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15Churchland SymposiumThe Engine of Reason, the Seat of Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the BrainPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (4): 871. 1998.
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22Using episodic memory to gauge implicit and/or indeterminate social commitmentsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
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43Autonomy and the emergence of intelligence: Organised interactive constructionCommunication and Cognition-Artificial Intelligence 17 (3-4): 133-157. 2000.
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M IIIII IIn Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid & G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 255. 2007.
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3693Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes: embodied skills and habits between Dreyfus and DescartesJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42 (1): 78-103. 2011.‘There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping’, writes Hubert Dreyfus, ‘for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body’1. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In thi…Read more
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77Natural sources of normativityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1): 104-112. 2012.
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487Expanding Expertise: Investigating a Musician’s Experience of Music PerformanceASCS09: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 106-113. 2010.Seeking to expand on previous theories, this paper explores the AIR (Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes) approach to expert performance previously outlined by Geeves, Christensen, Sutton and McIlwain (2008). Data gathered from a semi-structured interview investigating the performance experience of Jeremy Kelshaw (JK), a professional musician, is explored. Although JK’s experience of music performance contains inherently uncertain elements, his phenomenological description of an ideal performa…Read more
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54In this paper, I discuss connections between self-directedness, integration and higher cognition. I present a model of self-directedness as a basis for approaching higher cognition from a situated cognition perspective. According to this model increases in sensorimotor complexity create pressure for integrative higher order control and learning processes for acquiring information about the context in which action occurs. This generates complex articulated abstractive information processing, whic…Read more
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4232Putting pressure on theories of choking: towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performancePhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (2): 253-293. 2015.There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting …Read more
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A general interactivist-constructivist model of intentionalityContemporary Naturalist Theories of Evolution and Intentionality, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Special Supplementary Volume. forthcoming.
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110Mindreading as social expertiseSynthese 191 (5): 1-24. 2014.In recent years, a number of approaches to social cognition research have emerged that highlight the importance of embodied interaction for social cognition (Reddy, How infants know minds, 2008; Gallagher, J Conscious Stud 8:83–108, 2001; Fuchs and Jaegher, Phenom Cogn Sci 8:465–486, 2009; Hutto, in Seemans (ed.) Joint attention: new developments in psychology, philosophy of mind and social neuroscience, 2012). Proponents of such ‘interactionist’ approaches emphasize the importance of embodied r…Read more
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139The organization of knowledge: Beyond Campbell's evolutionary epistemologyPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 249. 1999.Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is op…Read more
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92Self-directed AgentsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (Supplement): 19-52. 2001.Wayne D. Christensen and Cliff A. Hooker.
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62Ian Apperly, Mindreaders: the cognitive basis of theory of mind: Psychology Press, 2011, 232 pages, $80.00 (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4): 907-914. 2013.
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Adaptiveness and adaptation: There's more than selectionBiology and Philosophy. Submitted. forthcoming.
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1315To Think or Not To Think: The apparent paradox of expert skill in music performanceEducational Philosophy and Theory (6): 1-18. 2013.Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus an…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |