Papers (selected)
The Importance of Realism about Gender Kinds: Lessons from Beauvoir
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Analyse & Kritik (2023)
Beauvoir’s The Second Sex stands out as a master class in the accommodation of conceptual and inferential practices to real, objective gender kinds. Or so I will argue. To establish this framing, we will first need in hand the kind of scientific epistemology that correctly reconciles epistemic progress and error, particularly as pertains to the unruly social sciences. An important goal of the paper is to develop that epistemological framework and unlock its ontological implications for the domain of gender. As we will see, the real gender kinds that contemporary social scientists successfully identify and track are very much the same kinds to which Beauvoir was coordinating reference in The Second Sex. The correct identification of those kinds endures as a moral and political priority, regardless of one’s other gender-related normative agenda.
On the Limitations and Criticism of Experimental Philosophy
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In Bauer, M. & Kornmesser, S. (eds.) Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy, De Gruyter (2023)
Experimental philosophy involves subjecting philosophical methods and judgments to empirical scrutiny. I begin by exploring conceptual, confirmational, and empirical factors that limit the significance of experiment-based and survey-based approaches to the evaluation of philosophical epistemic activities. I then consider specific criticisms of experimental philosophy: its experimental conditions lack ecological validity; it wrongly assumes that philosophers rely on psychologized data; it overlooks the reflective and social elements of philosophical case analysis; it misconstrues the importance of both procedural and evaluative forms of philosophical expertise; it incorrectly views psychological bias as incompatible with reliability; and it generalizes to a global, self-defeating skepticism about case judgment. I explain why these criticisms should be understood as converging and interdependent. I also set out a three-level model of philosophical case judgment that frames the criticisms.
Same-Tracking Real Kinds in the Social Sciences
Synthese (2022)
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The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated (norm-driven, conceptually engineered) classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer (in ways to be described) to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan.
Erkenntnis (2021)
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In some domains (meteorology, live-stock judging, chess, etc.) experts perform better than novices, and in other domains (clinical psychiatry, long-term political forecasting, financial advising, etc.) experts do not generally perform better than novices. According to empirical studies of expert performance, this is because the former but not the latter domains make available to training practitioners a direct form of learning feedback. Several philosophers resource this empirical literature to cast doubt on the quality of philosophical expertise. They claim that philosophy is like the dubious domains in that it does not make available the good, direct kind of learning feedback, and thus there are empirical grounds for doubting the epistemic quality of philosophical expertise. I examine the empirical studies that are purportedly bad news for professional philosophers. On the basis of that examination, I provide three reasons why the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise does not undermine the status of philosophical expertise. First, the non-philosophical task-types from which the critics generalize are unrepresentative of relevant philosophical task-types. Second, empirical critiques of non-philosophical experts are often made relative to the performance of linear models – a comparison that is inapt in a philosophical context. Third, the critics fail to discuss findings from the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise that have more favorable implications for the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. In addition to discussing implications for philosophical expertise, this article makes progress in the philosophical analysis of the science of expertise and expert development.
In Defense of Armchair Expertise
Theoria (2019)
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In domains like stock brokerage, clinical psychiatry, and long-term political forecasting, experts generally fail to outperform novices. Empirical researchers agree on why this is: experts must receive direct or environmental learning feedback during training to develop reliable expertise, and these domains are deficient in this type of feedback. A growing number of philosophers resource this consensus view to argue that, given the absence of direct or environmental philosophical feedback, we should not give the philosophical intuitions or theories of expert philosophers greater credence than those of novice philosophers. This essay has three objectives. The first is to explore several overlooked issues concerning the strategy of generalizing from empirical studies of non-philosophical expertise to the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. The second is to explain why empirical research into a causal relationship between direct learning feedback and enhanced expert performance does not provide good grounds for abandoning a default optimism about the epistemic superiority of expert philosophical theories. The third is to sketch a positive characterization of learning feedback that addresses developmental concerns made salient by the empirical literature on expert performance for specifically theory-driven or “armchair” domains like philosophy.
Real Kinds in Real Time: On Responsible Social Modeling
The Monist (2019)
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There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set in, threatening to undermine shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities.
Gender is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence
Ethics (2012)
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Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences.
Social Categories are Natural Kinds, not Objective Types (and Why it Matters Politically)
Journal of Social Ontology (2016)
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There is growing support for the view that social categories like men and women refer to “objective types” (Haslanger 2000, 2006, 2012; Alcoff 2005). An objective type is a similarity class for which the axis of similarity is an objective rather than nominal or fictional property. Such types are independently real and causally relevant, yet their unity does not derive from an essential property. Given this tandem of features, it is not surprising why empirically-minded researchers interested in fighting oppression and marginalization have found this ontological category so attractive: objective types have the ontological credentials to secure the reality (and thus political representation) of social categories, and yet they do not impose exclusionary essences that also naturalize and legitimize social inequalities. This essay argues that, from the perspective of these political goals of fighting oppression and marginalization, the category of objective types is in fact a Trojan horse; it looks like a gift, but it ends up creating trouble. I argue that objective type classifications often lack empirical adequacy, and as a result they lack political adequacy. I also provide, and in reference to the normative goals described above, several arguments for preferring a social ontology of natural kinds with historical essences.
Children and Added-Sugar: The Case for Restriction
Journal of Applied Philosophy (2018, 2015 online)
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It is increasingly clear that children’s excessive consumption of products high in added (or extrinsic) sugar causes obesity and obesity-related health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome. Less clear is how best to address this problem through public health policy. In contrast to policies that might conflict with adult’s right to self-determination – for example sugar taxes and soda bans – this article proposes that children’s access to products high in added sugars should be restricted in the same way that children’s access to tobacco products is restricted. The article considers contractualist, rights-based, and consequentialist arguments for this policy proposal. It also addresses several potential objections.
What Products Should Kids have the Right to Buy?
Chicago Tribune 9/26/14
A Unified Account of General Learning Mechanisms and Theory-of-Mind Development
Mind and Language 29/3 (2014): 351-381
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Modularity theorists have challenged that there are, or could be, general learning mechanisms that explain theory-of-mind development. In response, supporters of the ‘scientific theory-theory’ account of theory-of-mind development have appealed to children’s use of auxiliary hypotheses and probabilistic causal modeling. This article argues that these general learning mechanisms are not sufficient to meet the modularist’s challenge. The article then explores an alternative domain-general learning mechanism by proposing that children grasp the concept belief through the progressive alignment of relational structure that occurs as a result of structural-comparison. The article also explores the implications of the proposed account for Fodor’s puzzle of conceptual learning.
Going Live: On the Value of a Newspaper-Centered Philosophy Seminar
Journal of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (Volume 1) (2015)
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For the last several years I have made the daily newspaper the pedagogical center piece of my philosophy seminar. This essay begins by describing the variations, themes, and logistics of this approach. The essay then offers several arguments in support of the value of this approach. The first argument references measurable indicators of success for this approach. A second argument contends that by “going live” with philosophical concepts, the newspaper-centered approach is uniquely well-positioned to motivate and excite the philosophy student. A third argument claims that the newspaper-centered approach is well-positioned to construct an individualized bridge between the student and the world of philosophy.
Review of Sally Haslanger "Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique"
Ethics (2014): 612-617
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There has been a significant amount of research, from a variety of disciplines, targeting the nature and political status of human categories such as woman, man, Black, and Latino. The result is a tangle of concepts and distinctions that often obscure more than clarify the subject matter. This incentivizes the creation of fresh terms and distinctions that might disentangle the old, but too often these efforts just add to the snarl. The process iterates, miscommunication becomes standard, and insufficiently vetted concepts can gain central theoretical status. Over the last two decades, Sally Haslanger’s work in this area – conveniently consolidated in the volume “Resisting Reality: Social construction and social critique” – has been a much needed corrective to this process; Haslanger’s terms and distinctions really do disentangle. This review organizes and explicates central themes from Haslanger’s volume. It then offers some critical comments, arguing that some of Haslanger’s distinctions and proposals are less successful than others.
Analogical Cognition: Applications in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Mind and Language
Philosophy Compass 7/5 (2012): 348-360
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Analogical cognition refers to the ability to detect, process, and learn from relational similarities. The study of analogical and similarity cognition is widely considered one of the ‘success stories’ of cognitive science, exhibiting convergence across many disciplines on foundational questions. Given the centrality of analogy to mind and knowledge, it would benefit philosophers investigating topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language to become familiar with empirical models of analogical cognition. The goal of this essay is to describe recent empirical work on analogical cognition as well as model applications to philosophical topics. Topics to be discussed include the epistemological distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge, the debate between empiricists and nativists, the frame problem, expertise, creativity and autism, cognitive architecture, and relational knowledge. Particular attention is given to Dedre Gentner and colleague’s structure-mapping theory – the most developed and widely accepted model of analogical cognition.
Psychological Concept Acquisition
in Payette (ed.) (2013) Connected Minds: Cognition and Interaction in the Social World
This essay adjudicates between theoretical models of psychological concept acquisition. I provide new reasons to be skeptical about both simulationist and modularist models. I then defend the scientific-theory-theory account against familiar objections. I conclude by arguing that the scientific-theory-theory account must be supplemented by an account of hypothesis discovery.
Structure-Mapping: Directions from Simulation to Theory
Philosophical Psychology 24 (2011): 23-51
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The theory of mind debate has reached a “hybrid consensus” concerning the status of theory-theory and simulation-theory. Extant hybrid models either specify co-dependency and implementation relations, or distribute mentalizing tasks according to folk-psychological categories. By relying on a non-developmental framework these models fail to capture the central connection between simulation and theory. I propose a “dynamic” hybrid that is informed by recent work on the nature of similarity cognition. I claim that Gentner’s model of structure-mapping allows us to understand simulation as a process in which psychological representations are aligned, causing the spontaneous abstraction of theoretical generalizations about the psychological domain.
Pornography as Simulation
in Monroe, D. (ed.) (2010) Pornography - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink
This essay explains the prevalence of porn consumption by modeling it as a form of simulation. According to simulation theory (Gordon 1986, Goldman 2006) people predict and explain other’s behavior by using their own mind to model the mind of a target individual, much like an engineer might use a model aircraft to simulate the behavior of an actual aircraft. However, the cognitive mechanisms required for simulation have application outside of psychological interpretation. For example, it is plausible that while consuming pornography individuals simulate the actual activities as depicted by the pornographic material. On this construal, viewers of pornography think and feel as though they are truly having the depicted experience: from the psychological and phenomenological perceptive of someone watching a pornographic video, they really are being sexually pleasured by others, and in just those specific ways. The goal of this essay is to develop the pornography-as-simulation model and examine both its social and theoretical implications.
Historical Kinds and Conflicting Functions: An Ontological Framework for the Study of Intersectionality
If intersectionality – the important but opaque concept describing the complex interplay of social categories – is a general phenomenon that obtains in non-social contexts, then an account that codifies this general phenomenon will have a number of explanatory merits. This essay resources recent work in naturalistic approaches to ontology, epistemology, and the philosophy of science in order to provide a sketch of such a general account. The core feature of the account is the claim that intersectionality describes the status of an item that participates simultaneously in multiple natural kinds. The types of natural kinds to which an item might belong are many, but the types of kinds that will be of particular interest here are historical kinds, or natural kinds with historical essences. This is because social kinds such as gender and race are plausibly historical kinds (Bach, 2012). The essay argues that biological items, artifactual items, and social individuals can each exemplify the same type of historically-based ontological intersectionality, and that the investigation of this general ontology can illuminate the more contested and oppressive forms of intersectionality.
Pretend Play and the Development of Relational Category Knowledge
The ability to conceptualize relational-roles and relational systems is central to several aspects of higher-order cognition. According to structure-mapping theory, relational category knowledge results from performing relational comparisons that are prompted by either natural invitations (spatio-temporal juxtaposition of exemplars) or cultural invitations (symbolic juxtaposition of exemplars). However, natural invitations are sparsely and contingently available in children‟s natural environment, and the use of relational terms to generate symbolic juxtapositions is not generally effective for the younger child. This article proposes that the activity of pretend-play, instead of misrepresenting the world, offers a lens that allows children to focus on relational structures. During pretense, children use their own creativity to expand the availability of spatio-temporal juxtapositions. During dyadic pretend-play, care-givers use symbolic and tutorial-like methods in order to teach young children how to transfer relational knowledge.
Relational-System Natural Kinds and the Function of Analogy
Natural kinds are stable, mind-independent structures that support inductive practices. I claim that an important type of natural kind supports induction because kind-members exhibit a stable higher-order relational structure. For example, atoms and solar systems share certain likenesses because each exemplify the higher-order relational structure of a central force system – a type of relational-system natural kind of which atoms and solar systems are members. I argue that relational-system natural kinds are needed to explain the recent empirical finding that relational schema concepts have significant epistemic value. I further argue that analogical cognition – the cognitive process through which we can abstract relational commonalities – functions so as to develop relational concepts that describe relational-system natural kinds. These considerations bring together recent theoretical work in the philosophy of science and recent empirical work in the cognitive sciences. They also provide a new and naturalistically accommodating interpretation of the function of analogical cognition.