Below you'll find links to some of my papers and my doctoral dissertation. Comments are welcome. Some links are temporarily disabled because of publishers' restrictions. Please email me if you would like a copy of one of the papers with a dead link.
Forthcoming or in progress:
The Causal Theory of Properties and the Causal Theory of Reference, or How to Name Properties and Why It Matters, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (link temporarily disabled)
Innateness and the Situated Mind (formerly titled "Nativism and Empiricism"), forthcoming in P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge UP)
Representation in Extended Cognitive Systems: Does the Scaffolding of Language Extend the Mind? forthcoming in R. Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind
Penultimate or final drafts of papers in print:
Ceteris Paribus Laws, Component Forces, and the Nature of Special-Science Properties, Noûs 42, 3 (2008) 349-80
Frege's Puzzle and Frege Cases: Defending a Quasi-syntactic Solution, Cognitive Systems Research 9 (2008): 76–91
Causal Theories of Mental Content, Philosophy Compass 3, 2 (March 2008): 353-80
Review of J.T. Ismael, The Situated Self, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2007.10.15 Realization, Completers, and Ceteris Paribus Laws in Psychology, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (March 2007): 1-11; click here for the official, published version Review of Raymond Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2006.08.20 Functionalism, Mental Causation, and the Problem of Metaphysically Necessary Effects,
Noûs 40 (June 2006): 256-83. Click here for the definitive, published version. Minding One's Cognitive Systems: When Does a Group of Minds Constitute a Single Cognitive Unit? appears in Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 1 (Feb. 2005): 177-88
Challenges to the Hypothesis
of Extended Cognition, appears in Journal of Philosophy 101
(August, 2004): 389-428 Coining Terms in the Language
of Thought: Innateness, Emergence, and the Lot of Cummins’s Argument against
the Causal Theory of Mental Content, appears in Journal of
Philosophy 98 (October 2001): 499-530 Dispositions Indisposed:
Semantic Atomism and Fodor’s Theory of Content, appears in Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 81 (September 2000): 325-48 The Best Test Theory of
Extension: First Principle(s), appears in Mind & Language 14
(September 1999): 321-55 Mental Representations and
Millikan's Theory of Intentional Content: Does Biology Chase Causality,
appears in The Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (Spring, 1999): 113-40 On the Relationship between
Naturalistic Semantics and Individuation Criteria for Terms in a Language of
Thought, appears in Synthese 117 (1998/99): 95-131 Dissertation: A masochist might find it pleasurable to read my entire dissertation, The Best Test Theory of Extension
(U. Illinois at Chicago, 1996), which is also available through UMI. The essay
"The Best Test Theory of Extension: First Principle(s)" draws from
various parts of Chapters 3 and 6; parts of Chapter 4 (section C.2, in
particular) provide the basis of "Coining Terms in the Language of Thought:
Innateness, Emergence, and the Lot of Cummins's Argument against the Causal
Theory of Mental Content"; "Dispositions Indisposed: Semantic
Atomism and Fodor's Theory of Content" develops a criticism of Fodor's
view that appears at the end of Chapter 2.