The Mechanism of Meaning

This is the first post in a series of five about my recent book, Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference (OUP, 2022). I will start things off by trying to convey the most basic motivation behind the book in terms that should be broadly accessible to theorists and philosophers …

The assumption of universality in Natural Pedagogy and early Mindreading System

Gergely and Csibra argue that natural pedagogy has been selected during hominid evolution to ensure 1) fast and efficient acquisition and intergenerational transfer of cultural knowledge, and 2) overcoming the hard social environmental conditions of «cognitive opacity» for human cultural forms. Pedagogical cues work as an “interpretation switch”, signalling to …

4. What makes a social emotion?

An important aspect of emotions that is relatively neglected in both the philosophical and psychological literature is their social manifestation. There is plenty of work on empathy, the role of emotions in morality, and even a growing interest in emotional expression, but all this should be tied together with a …

Epistemic and Ethical Implications

Most philosophical discussions of mindreading stay squarely within the realm of philosophy of psychology. Theorizing about mindreading plays a role in debates about the modularity of the mind, the representational theory of mind, language development, the semantics of ordinary language use, etc. Using mindreading as a case study for understanding …

The lingering appeal of knowledge

My first post in this series observed that (if usage is any guide) adults attribute knowledge an awful lot. My most recent post hinted that knowledge attribution might be a necessary bridge to reach belief attribution in the course of children’s development, and ended by raising the puzzle of why …

Factive verbs and factive mental states

My last post went back to babies, to see if the dawn of mental state attribution might show us something about the relationship between knowledge and belief.  Even for those who take the concept of belief to be innate or very early-developing, belief attribution is weirdly dependent on knowledge attribution …

Back to Top