Below you'll find links to some of my papers and to my doctoral dissertation. Comments are welcome.
Forthcoming or in progress:
Against Group Cognitive States, forthcoming in From Individual to Collective Intentionality: New Essays, edited by S. Chant, F. Hindriks, and G. Preyer (Oxford UP)
Distributed Cognition and Extended Mind Theory, forthcoming in Sage's Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, edited by B. Kaldis
On the Sufficiency of Objective Representation, forthcoming in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, edited by U. Kriegel (Routledge)
Individual Minds as Groups, Group Minds as Individuals, forthcoming in Mind and Society: Cognitive Science Meets the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, edited by B. Kaldis, Synthese Library Special Volume
Embodiment, Cognition, and the Massively Representational Mind, forthcoming in Philosophical Topics
Penultimate or final drafts of papers in print: Memory, Natural Kinds, and Cognitive Extension; or, Martians Don't Remember, and Cognitive Science Is Not about Cognition appears in Review of Philosophy and Psychology, special issue on memory and distributed cognition Representation in Extended Cognitive Systems: Does the Scaffolding of Language Extend the Mind? appears in R. Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind (MIT Press) Keeping HEC in CHEC, by Putting Systems First; a descendant of this paper appears (as "Extended Cognition and the Priority of Cognitive Systems") in a special issue of Cognitive Systems Research, guest edited by Leslie Marsh
Critical study of Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind, appears in Journal of Mind and Behavior
Cognitive Systems and the Supersized Mind, appears in Philosophical Studies (as part of a book symposium on Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind)
Review of J. Fodor, LOT 2, appears in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Causal Theories of Intentionality, appears in the Encyclopedia of the Mind, Hal Pashler (ed.), Sage
Review of Adams and Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition (Blackwell 2008); the final version appears in Philosophical Psychology, 23: 1, 113 — 123
Ceteris Paribus Laws, Component Forces, and the Nature of Special-Science Properties, Noûs 42, 3 (2008) 349-80; click here for the definitive, published version The Causal Theory of Properties and the Causal Theory of Reference,
or How to Name Properties and Why It Matters, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77, 3 (November 2008): 579-612 click here for the definitive, published version Innateness and the Situated Mind (formerly titled "Nativism and Empiricism"), P. Robbins and M. Aydede (Eds.), The Cambridge
Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 96-116 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 Outline of one of the central arguments in "Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition." Critical treatments of this argument have not been sensitive to the argument's overall structure; this handout represents my attempt to boil the argument down to its essential structure, so as to avoid future misinterpretation. This handout is not, however, meant to summarize the paper as a whole. The paper ends by emphasizing the role of enduring cognitive systems in cognitive science, consideration of which grounds a distinct argument against the extended view. The systems-based argument is developed more fully in my book Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind (OUP 2009). Also in the 2004 paper are arguments against epistemic, as well as functionalist, routes to the extended view. 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: My doctoral 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". "Dispositions Indisposed" develops a criticism of Fodor's view originally made at the end of Chapter 2.