Here are some papers. A few have been published (see cv for their ultimate resting place), a few are in progress. I'd be glad to hear comments on any of them. Please do not quote from unpublished drafts of papers without consulting me first; the published versions are canonical.
The origins of concepts
Certain of our concepts are innate, but many others are learned. Despite the plausibility of this claim, some have argued that the very idea of concept learning is incoherent. I present a conception of learning that sidesteps the arguments against the possibility of concept learning, and sketch several mechanisms that result in the generation of new primitive concepts. Given the rational considerations that motivate their deployment, these deserve to be called learning mechanisms in our broader sense of the term. I conclude by replying to the objections that these mechanisms cannot produce genuinely new content and cannot be part of genuinely cognitive explanations.
Philosophical Studies, 140 (2008), 359-384 (Download PDF)
Atomism, pluralism, and conceptual content
Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79 (2009), 130-162 (Download PDF)
The plurality of concepts
Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology presuppose that they are a single, uniform kind of mental representation. I argue that this assumption is principally responsible for these theories’ shortcomings. I outline and motivate a pluralist theory of concepts. Concepts should be thought of as belonging to multiple representational kinds, with the particular kind of concept used on an occasion being determined by the context. I argue that endorsing pluralism does not lead to eliminativism about concepts as an object of scientific study. Finally, I contrast pluralism with hybrid approaches to concepts and conceptual atomism, outlining some potential advantages pluralism can offer.
Synthese, 169 (2009), 145-173 (Download PDF)
Concepts and the modularity of thought
Having concepts is a distinctive sort of cognitive capacity. One thing that conceptual thought requires is obeying the Generality Constraint: concepts ought to be freely recombinable with other concepts to form novel thoughts, independent of what those concepts are of. Having concepts, then, constrains cognitive architecture in interesting ways. In recent years, spurred on by the rise of evolutionary psychology, massively modular models of the mind have gained prominence. Here I argue that these architectures are incapable of satisfying the Generality Constraint, and hence incapable of underpinning conceptual thought. I develop this argument with respect to two well-articulated proposals, due to Dan Sperber and Peter Carruthers. Neither proposal, I argue, gives us a satisfactory explanation of Generality within the constraints of a genuinely modular architecture. Evidence from neuropsychology of category-specific deficits also fails to show central modularity of the desired kind. I conclude that just as not any kind of behavioral control system is sufficient to underlie thought, so not any kind of cognitive system is capable of possessing concepts.
Forthcoming in Dialectica (Download PDF)
Remarks on Fodor on having concepts (w/ William Bechtel)
Fodor offers a novel argument against Bare-bones Concept Pragmatism (BCP). He alleges that there are two circularities in BCP<92>s account of concept possession: a circularity in explaining concept possession in terms of the capacity to sort; and a circularity in explaining concept possession in terms of the capacity to draw inferences. We argue that neither of these circles is real.
Mind and Language, 19 (2004), 48-56 (Download PDF)
Concept empiricism and the vehicles of thought
Concept empiricists are committed to the claim that the vehicles of thought are re-activated perceptual representations. Evidence for empiricism comes from a range of neuroscientific studies showing that perceptual regions of the brain are employed during cognitive tasks such as categorization and inference. I examine the extant neuroscientific evidence and argue that it falls short of establishing this core empiricist claim. During conceptual tasks, the causal structure of the brain produces widespread activity in both perceptual and non-perceptual systems. I lay out several conditions on what is required for a neural state to be a realizer of the functional role played by concepts, and argue that no subset of this activity can be singled out as the unique neural vehicle of conceptual thought. Finally, I suggest that, while the strongest form of empiricism is probably false, the evidence is consistent with several weaker forms of empiricism.
The Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14 (2007), 156-183 (Download PDF)
Embodied cognition and linguistic understanding
Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer.s perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of the evidence in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding.
Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Download PDF)
First thoughts
Jean Mandler proposes an original and richly detailed theory of how concepts relate to sensory and motor capacities. I focus on her claims about conceptual representations and the processes that produce them. On her view, concepts are declarative representations of object kind information. First, I argue that since sensorimotor representations may be declarative, there is no bar to percepts being constituents of concepts. Second, I suggest that concepts track kinds and other categories not by representing kind information per se, but rather by being subject to the appropriate sort of inferential dispositions. These dispositions themselves may apply equally to perceptual and non-perceptual representations. Third, I argue that Mandler's proposed redescriptive mechanism for producing conceptual primitives can be viewed as a kind of Fodorian triggering device. Hence there may be less distance between her view and Fodor's than either one has supposed. I suggest that redescription needs to be supplemented with several other kinds of more flexible and open-ended concept learning mechanisms. Finally, I briefly sketch the view of conceptual development that results from adopting these proposals and contrast it with Mandler's.
Philosophical Psychology, 28 (2008), 21, 251-268 (Download PDF)
Compound nominals, context, and compositionality
There are good reasons to think natural languages are compositional. But compound nominals (CNs) are largely productive constructions that have proven highly recalcitrant to compositional semantic analysis. I evaluate two proposals to treat CNs compositionally and argue that they are unsuccessful. I then articulate an alternative proposal according to which CNs contain covert indexicals. Features of the context allow a variety of relations to be expressed using CNs, but this variety is not expressed in the lexicon or the semantic rules of the language. This proposal accounts for the diversity of contents CNs can be used to express while preserving compositionality. Finally, I defend this proposal against some recent anti-contextualist arguments.
Synthese, 156 (2007), 161-204 (Download PDF)
The functional unity of special science kinds
The view that special science properties are multiply realizable has been attacked in recent years by Shapiro, Bechtel and Mundale, Polger, and others. Focusing on psychological and neuroscientific properties, I argue that these attacks are unsuccessful. By drawing on interspecies physiological comparisons I show that diverse physical mechanisms can converge on common functional properties at multiple levels. This is illustrated with examples from the psychophysics and neuroscience of early vision. This convergence is compatible with the existence of general constraints on the evolution of cognitive systems, and does not involve any ad hoc typing of coarse-grained higher level properties. The mechanisms that realize these common higher level properties are really distinct by the criteria laid down by critics of multiple realizability. Finally, I present an account of how such functional properties might constitute special science kinds by playing a central explanatory role in a range of cognitive models. Behavioral science kinds in particular are the functionally defined constituents picked out by our most successful models of the multilevel systems and mechanisms that explain cognitive capacities.
Forthcoming, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (Download PDF)
Patrolling the mind's boundaries
Defenders of the extended mind thesis say that it is possible that some of our mental states may be constituted, in part, by states of the extra-bodily environment. Often they also add that such extended mentation is a commonplace phenomenon. I argue that extended mentation, while not impossible, is either nonexistent or far from widespread. Genuine beliefs as they occur in normal biologically embodied systems are informationally integrated with each other, and sensitive to changes in the person’s overall system of beliefs. Environmental states, however, fail to satisfy this central feature of the functional role of belief, and hence fail to be genuine mental states.
Erkenntnis, 68 (2008), 265-276 (Download PDF)
The place of time in cognition
Dynamical systems theorists (dynamicists) allege that symbolic models of cognition are essentially incomplete because they fail to capture the temporal properties of mental processing. I present two possible interpretations of the dynamicists’ argument from time and show that neither one is successful. The disagreement between dynamicists and symbolic theorists rests not on temporal considerations per se, but on differences over the multiple realizability of cognitive states and the proper explanatory goals of psychology. The negative arguments of dynamicists against symbolic models fail, and it is doubtful whether pursuing dynamicists’ explanatory goals will lead to a robust psychological theory.
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55 (2004), 87-105 (Download PDF)
Mental mirroring as the origin of attributions
A "Radical Simulationist" account of how folk psychology functions has been developed by Robert Gordon. I argue that Radical Simulationism is false. In its simplest form it is not sufficient to explain our attribution of mental states to subjects whose desires and preferences differ from our own. Modifying the theory to capture these attributions invariably generates innumerable other false attributions. Further, the theory predicts that deficits in mentalizing ought to co-occur with certain deficits in imagining perceptually-based scenarios. I present evidence suggesting that this prediction is false, and outline further possible empirical tests of the theory.
Mind and Language, 20 (2005), 495-520 (Download PDF)
A review of Jerry A. Fodor, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way
The 'New Synthesis' in cognitive science is committed to the computational theory of mind (CTM), massive modularity, nativism, and adaptationism. In The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Jerry Fodor argues that CTM has problems explaining abductive or global inference, but that the New Synthesis offers no solution, since massive modularity is in fact incompatible with global cognitive processes. I argue that it isn't clear how global human mentation is, so whether CTM is imperiled is an open question. Massive modularity also lacks some of the invidious commitments Fodor ascribes to it. Furthermore, Fodor's anti-adaptationist arguments are in tension with his nativism about the contents of modular systems. The New Synthesis thus has points worth preserving.
Philosophical Psychology, 15 (2002), 551-562 (Download PDF)
Ecological rationality and internalist justification
The classic picture of human beings as rational cognizers has been under intensive attack in recent decades. However, some novel empirical results appear to show that in some circumstances our reasoning can be extraordinarily accurate. Paradoxically, these circumstances are often ones in which we also appear to be violating internalist conditions on justified belief. Michael Bishop argues that these results pose a dilemma: abandon internalism or abandon the principle that epistemic justification is conducive to accuracy. He and others have proposed an externalist response to this dilemma. I argue that the dilemma does not force us into the arms of externalism. The empirical evidence, while important, could be accommodated by a consistent internalist. I offer an alternative view of the import of the empirical data for our epistemological theories and practices.
Email me for a copy; this is a conference paper that I have not worked on recently.