Essays on Belief
Morgan’s Quaker gun and the species of belief
Philosophical Perspectives 37:1, 119–144, 2023 [pdf]
Clarity about the metaphysics of belief can help remove obstacles to progress in animal cognition research.
Why dispositionalism needs interpretivism
Philosophia 51:4, 2139–2145, 2023 [pdf]
Krzysztof Poslajko says my interpretivism is metaphysically immodest [here]. I invite him to embrace my immodesty.
Belief in character studies
American Philosophical Quarterly 59:1, 27–42, 2022 [pdf]
Atticus Finch lives out his racist beliefs in a very different style than Bob Ewell. (The title is a quadruple entendre.)
How beliefs are like colors
Synthese 199:3–4, 7889–7918, 2021 [pdf]
The beliefs that figure in folk psychology evolved to serve as ecological signifiers, not cogs in cognitive systems.
Interpretivism without judgement-dependence
Philosophia 49:2, 611–615, 2021 [pdf]
Phenomena like beliefs and intelligence emerge relative to folks’ models thereof (not judgements about particular cases).
Interpretivism and norms
Philosophical Studies 177:4, 905–930, 2020 [pdf]
If beliefs exist relative to interpretation, then they exist relative to particular interpreters.
Beliefs as inner causes: the (lack of) evidence
Philosophical Psychology 31:6, 850–877, 2018 [pdf] [lizardo review]
There is no evidence that people ordinarily construe beliefs as inner causes that produce behavior.
Essays on intelligence
On IQ and other sciencey descriptions of minds
Philosophers’ Imprint, forthcoming [pdf]
The best ways of talking about minds (for scientific or social purposes) are not the only accurate ways.
Why academia should embrace “Grandma’s metaphysics”
Psyche, 1500 words, 2022 [pdf]
Conceptions of intelligence primarily reflect people’s values.
g as bridge model
Philosophy of Science 88:5, 1067–1078, 2021 [pdf] [spp poster]
IQ is of theoretical interest despite being a poor model of both folk psychological intelligence and its neural underpinnings.
Street smarts
Synthese 199:1–2, 161–180, 2021 [pdf]
To be intelligent is to be comparatively good at solving puzzles that an interpreter deems worth solving.
essays on Descartes
Cartesian critters can't remember
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 69, 72–85, 2018 [pdf]
Fabulous Cartesian brains reconstruct ideas, but cannot reflectively recognize those ideas as reconstructions.
Cabbage à la Descartes
Ergo 3:24, 609–637, 2016 [pdf]
Method actors really feel sad. Analogously, Descartes sincerely doubted everything.
