Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Jul 1, 1991
Do we really externalize or objectivize moral demands?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2018
Stanford's goal is to explain the uniquely human tendency to externalize or objectify “distin... more Stanford's goal is to explain the uniquely human tendency to externalize or objectify “distinctively moral” demands, norms, and obligations. I maintain that there is no clear phenomenon to explain. Stanford's account of which norms are distinctively moral relies on Turiel's problematic work. Stanford's justification of the claim that we “objectify” moral demands ignores recent studies indicating that often we do not.
Cognitive pluralism
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Descriptive cognitive pluralism claims that different people, or people in different cultures, go... more Descriptive cognitive pluralism claims that different people, or people in different cultures, go about the business of reasoning (that is, forming and revising beliefs) in significantly different ways. If descriptive cognitive pluralism is true, it lends considerable urgency to the venerable philosophical problem of deciding which strategies of belief formation and revision we ourselves should use. Normative cognitive pluralism claims that various quite different systems of reasoning may all be equally good. Epistemic relativism, which claims that different strategies of reasoning are best for different people, is a species of normative cognitive pluralism. Evaluative-concept pluralism claims that different people in different cultures use very different concepts of cognitive evaluation. Their notions of rationality and justification (or the closest equivalents in their culture) are quite different from ours. If this is right, it poses a prima facie challenge to a central strategy ...
Foundations and the future
This is the third of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind providing a comprehensive assessment o... more This is the third of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind providing a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and definitive reference point for future inquiry. Together these volumes point the way toward a synthesis that provides a powerful picture of our minds and their place in the natural order.
Naturalism, Positivism, and Pluralism
Deconstructing the Mind, 1999
Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers || Beyond Inference in Perception
Folk Psychology and Tacit Theories: A Correspondence between Frank Jackson, and Steve Stich and Kelby Mason
Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, 2008
Harvester Studies in Cognitive Science is a new series which will explore the nature of knowledge... more Harvester Studies in Cognitive Science is a new series which will explore the nature of knowledge by way of a distinctive theoretical approach one that takes account of the complex structures and interacting processes that make thought and action possible. Intelligence can be studied from the point of view of psychology, philosophy, linguistics, pedagogy and artificial intelligence, and all these different emphases will be represented within the series. Original 1978 book contents with format changes and other modifications Page numbers below refer to the 1978 printed edition, not preserved in this version. Detailed 1978 contents List (below)(originally pages v-ix) (New) List of Figures (Chapters 6 to 9) (Added 2015) Preface to 1978 Edition (pp. x-xiii) Acknowledgments (pp. xiv-xvi) Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview (pp. 1-21) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 1 Endnotes Chapter 2: What are the aims of science? (pp 22-62) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002. Notes added Nov 2001, 2008, 2016) Chapter 2 Endnotes; Notes on Chapter 2 added after 2001 Chapter 3: Science and Philosophy (pp. 63-83) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 4: What is conceptual analysis? (pp. 84-102) (Minor formatting changes 15 Jan 2002) Chapter 4 Endnotes Chapter 5: Are computers really relevant? (pp. 103-111) (Notes added at end,
Theories of reference have been central to analytic philosophy, and two views, the descriptivist ... more Theories of reference have been central to analytic philosophy, and two views, the descriptivist view of reference and the causal-historical view of reference, have dominated the field. In this research tradition, theories of reference are assessed by consulting one's intuitions about the reference of terms in hypothetical situations. However, recent work in cultural psychology (e.g., Nisbett et al. 2001) has shown systematic cognitive differences between East Asians and Westerners, and some work indicates that this extends to intuitions about philosophical cases (Weinberg et al. 2001). In light of these findings on cultural differences, two experiments were conducted which explored intuitions about reference in Westerners and East Asians. Both experiments indicate that, for certain central cases, Westerners are more likely than East Asians to report intuitions that are consistent with the causal-historical view. These results constitute prima facie evidence that semantic intuitions vary from culture to culture, and the paper argues that this fact raises questions about the nature of the philosophical enterprise of developing a theory of reference.
In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in w... more In epistemology, fake-barn thought experiments are often taken to be intuitively clear cases in which a justied true belief does not qualify as knowledge. We report a study designed to determine whether members of the general public share this intuition. The data suggest that while participants are less inclined to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases than in unproblematic cases of knowledge, they nonetheless do attribute knowledge to protagonists in fake-barn cases. Moreover, the intuition that fake-barn cases do count as knowledge is negatively correlated with age; older participants are less likely than younger participants to attribute knowledge in fake-barn cases. We also found that increasing the number of defeaters (fakes) does not decrease the inclination to attribute knowledge. 1 Goldman (1976). Goldman (2009) attributes the original idea of fake-barn cases to Carl Ginet. For an engaging, tongue-in-cheek overview of the ensuing debate, see Gendler and Hawthorne (2005). 2 Though this label is a convenient one, we know of no studies showing that the 'philosophically popular' intuition is shared by a majority of philosophers. So, for the remainder of this article, please regard the label as a stipulatively dened technical term.
Philosophers have argued that some philosophical concepts are universal, but it is increasingly c... more Philosophers have argued that some philosophical concepts are universal, but it is increasingly clear that the question of philosophical universals is far from settled, and that far more crosscultural research is necessary. In this chapter, we illustrate the relevance of investigating philosophical concepts and describe results from recent cross-cultural studies in experimental philosophy. We focus on the concept of knowledge and outline an ongoing project, the Geography of Philosophy Project, which empirically investigates the concepts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom across cultures, languages, religions, and socioeconomic groups. We outline questions for future research on philosophical concepts across cultures, with an aim towards resolving questions about universals and variation in philosophical concepts.
The idea that cognition might vary across cultural and linguistic groups is of course not new (se... more The idea that cognition might vary across cultural and linguistic groups is of course not new (see, e.g., Cole 1996). Famously, the linguists Edward Sapir, a student of Boas, and Benjamin Whorf, a student of Sapir, hypothesized that the syntactic structure of a language shapes speakers' thoughts (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1956), a hypothesis now known as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." As Whorf put it (1956, 212): The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face. On the contrary the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which have to be organized in our minds. This means, largely, by the linguistic system in our minds. It is notoriously unclear, and it has been long debated, what exactly Sapir and Whorf were asserting (e.g., Kay and Kempton 1984), but despite its vagueness it has inspired, and still inspires research in cognitive science (e.g.
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