Human Minds

Articl

The Teleological Theory of Representation

Book chapter (revised

Normativity and Judgement

Article (also printed in Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume (1999)

The Causal Structure of Reality

This paper seeks to cast light on some of the more puzzling aspects of causation. My initial aim is to develop an analysis that will explain the “causal inference” techniques used by non-experimental scientists to infer causal structures from sets of correlations. Some have attempted to explain these techniques by reducing causal relationships directly to correlational ones. I show that the techniques are better explained by an analysis of causation in terms of structures of laws with probabilistically independent exogenous terms. This allows me to relate my analysis to quantum mechanical indeterminism and thereby to account for the temporal asymmetry of causation. I also show how this analysis can ground an understanding of single-case actual causation and counterfactual dependence

Swampman, Teleosemantics and Kind Essences

One powerful and influential approach to mental representation analyses representation in terms of biological functions, and biological functions in terms of histories of natural selection. This “teleosemantic” package, however, faces a familiar challenge. Surely representation depends only on the present-day structures of cognitive systems, and not on their historical provenance. “Swampman” drives the point home. Suppose a bolt of lightning creates an intrinsic duplicate of a human being in a steamy tropic swamp; will not this creature be representing its surroundings, despite its lack of any selectional history? In this paper I shall answer this challenge by showing how a proper appreciation of the structure of natural kinds in general, and of mental representation in particular, implies that selectional histories are indeed built into the nature of mental representation. In particular, I shall address a recent argument by Peter Schulte against this general line of argument

The Statistical Nature of Causation

Causation is a macroscopic phenomenon. The temporal asymmetry displayed by causation must somehow emerge along with other asymmetric macroscopic phenomena like entropy increase and the arrow of radiation. I shall approach this issue by considering ‘causal inference’ techniques that allow causal relations to be inferred from sets of observed correlations. I shall show that these techniques are best explained by a reduction of causation to structures of equations with probabilistically independent exogenous terms. This exogenous probabilistic independence imposes a recursive order on these equations and a consequent distinction between dependent and independent variables that lines up with the temporal asymmetry of causation

Science and truth

Philosophy of science and mainstream epistemology have much to leam from each other. Most twentienth\century philosophers of science set absurdly high standards for knowledge, and so succumb to naive sceptical arguments. They would do well to learn from mainstream epistemology that reliability is a more sensible standard for knowledge than certainty. At the same time, mainstream epistemologists would do well to learn from philosophers of science that intuitions about the everyday concept of knowledge are unimportant, by comparison with the serious issue of how to get at the truth, My own view on this latter issue is that we should look to science itself for the answers, since science itself tells us about different techniques for uncovering the truth in different subject áreas. There is nothing viciously circular in this position, though it does imply that there is no external perspective from which science as a whole can be vindicated