Papers:
Comments are welcome
- In this paper I address the most promising
objection to the possibility of collective mental representation, the
claim that there is no explanatory value to positing collective
representational states above and beyond the representational states of
the
individuals that compose a particular collectivity. I argue this
argument either proves too much, forcing us to adopt
eliminativism about individual mentality and abandon person-level
representations, or it proves too little, demonstrating precisely the
sort of continuity between individual and collective representations
that would warrant the positing of genuine collective representations. pdf
here
- Troubles
with Stereotypes
for Spinozan minds. Philosophy
of the Social Sciences (forthcoming)
- Spinoza (Ethics II 48) argues that the various stimuli with
which we are confronted immediately modify our psychology, producing
ideas that have substantial effects without any cognitive assent.
According to this view of the mind, it is only by way of an active
process of resistance to a belief that ‘unbelieving’ can occur. I argue
that we have a Spinozan psychology (cf., Gilbert 1993). I argue that
our Spinozan psychology brings with it serious worries about the
capacity for resisting and modifying our behaviors. In particular, I
argue that merely resisting patriarchal and racist stereotypes will,
ironically, often contribute to the resilience of these stereotypes.
- Recent work in the cognitive and neurobiological sciences
suggests a significant relationship between emotion and moral judgment.
Based on this evidence, several researchers have argued that emotions
are the source of our intuitive moral judgments. However, despite the
richness of the correlational data between emotion and morality, we
argue that the current neurological, behavioral, developmental and
evolutionary evidence is insufficient to demonstrate that emotion is
necessary for making moral judgments. We suggest instead that the
source of moral judgments lies in our causal-intentional psychology;
emotion often follows from these judgments, serving a primary role in
motivating morally relevant action.
Work in Progress:
- It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in
developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have
traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows
commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of
consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two
experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that disputes
over
the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are
misguided--they all fail to capture the interesting and subtle
differences between commonsense ascriptions of pain and emotion.
- Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the
intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their
positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the
intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We
demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense,
and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there
is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is culturally specific
rather than universally held. This being the case, we argue that mere
appeal to the intuitive implausibility of collective consciousness does
not offer any genuine insight into the nature of mentality in general,
nor the nature of consciousness in particular.
- It is received wisdom in philosophy and the cognitive sciences
that individuals can be in emotional states but groups cannot. But why
should we accept this view? In this paper, I argue that there is
substantial philosophical and empirical support for the existence of
collective emotions. Thus, while there is good reason to be skeptical
about many ascriptions of collective emotion, I argue that some groups
exhibit the computational complexity and informational integration
required for being in genuinely emotional states.
- The Magic number +1 and the
simplicity of utilitarian calculations (with Nicholas Miller, Hamid
Sayamadost, & Marc Hauser, in prep)
- When are intentional,
means-based harms morally permissible? Folk psychological intuitions
confirm philosophical intuitions (with Marc Hauser and Philip Pettit,
in prep).
- Are the computations
required for moral permissibility judgments impenetrable? (with Marc
Hauser, in prep).
- Distributing cognition: A
defense of collective mentality (available by request)
- This is a draft of my PH. D.
thesis in which I offer a defense
of collective mentality, the claim that groups can possess cognitive
states in the same way that individuals do. I am currently in the
process of writing a book length manuscrip that is based on the
arguments in this thesis