Stephen Stich

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Stephen Stich is a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is also currently an Honorary Professor of the department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. For the spring of 2007, he is the Clark Way-Harrison visiting professor with the department of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, and moral psychology. He is arguably best known for his contributions to philosophy of mind. His 1983 book, "From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief", received much attention as he argued for a form of eliminative materialism about the mind. However, he has since modified his position, especially in his 1996 book Deconstructing the Mind. He will be awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and give the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in 2007.

1 Biography
2 Work
3 Selected publications
4 Notes and references
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Biography

Stephen Stich attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1960-1964, receiving his B.A. in 1964 (Summa Cum Laude with distinction in Philosophy). After attending Princeton University from 1964-1968, he received his Ph.D. in 1968.^[1]

Stich has taught at several universities, including University of Michigan, University of Maryland, College Park, University of California, San Diego, University of Sheffield, and Rutgers University.

Stich joined the department of philosophy at the University of Sheffield in February 2005 as an Honorary Professor. He remains primarily at Rutgers, but will visit Sheffield on a regular basis to teach and work with the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies.^[2]

[edit] Work

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Stich is primarily known in philosophy for his work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, and moral psychology. In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, Stich (1983) has argued for a form of eliminative materialism—the view that talk of the mental should be replaced with talk of its physical substrate. Since then, however, he has changed some of his views on the mind. See Deconstructing the Mind (1996) for his more recent views. In epistemology, he has explored (with several of his colleagues) the nature of intuitions relevant to philosophical analysis, especially epistemic intuitions that vary among cultures—see Stich (1988) and Stich, et al. (2001).

[edit] Selected publications

1972, "Grammar, Psychology and Indeterminacy", Journal of Philosophy, LXIX, 22, pp. 799-818.
1978, "Empiricism, Innateness and Linguistic Universals", Philosophical Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 273-286.
1978, "Beliefs and Sub-Doxastic States", Philosophy of Science, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 499-518.
1979, "Do Animals Have Beliefs?" The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 15-28.
1983, From Folk Pschology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief, MIT Press.
1985, "Could Man Be An Irrational Animal?" Synthese, Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 115-135.
1988, "Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology and the Problem of Cognitive Diversity", Synthese, Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 391-413.
1990, "Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future of Folk Psychology", Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 4, pp. 499-533. (with William Ramsey & Joseph Garon)
1990, The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation, MIT Press.
1992, "What Is a Theory of Mental Representation?" Mind, Vol. 101, No. 402, pp. 243-61.
1993, "Naturalizing Epistemology: Quine, Simon and the Prospects for Pragmatism", in C. Hookway & D. Peterson (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Royal Institute of Philosophy, Supplement no. 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-17. Online text
1996, Deconstructing the Mind, Oxford University Press. Chapter 1 online
1998, "The Flight to Reference, or How Not to Make Progress in the Philosophy of Science", (with Michael Bishop) Philosophy of Science, Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 33-49. Online text
1998, "Theory Theory to the Max", (with Shaun Nichols) Mind and Language, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 421-49. Online text
2001, "Jackson's Empirical Assumptions", (with Jonathan Weinberg) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 637-643. Online text
2003, Mindreading, (co-authored with Shaun Nichols) Oxford University Press.
2006, "Two Theories about the Cognitive Architecture Underlying Morality", (with Daniel Kelley), Online Philosophy Conference, Online PDF