 | Thisbiography of a living personrelies too much onreferences toprimary sources. Please help by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately, especially if potentiallylibelous or harmful. Find sources: "Peter Carruthers" philosopher – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Peter Carruthers | |
|---|---|
 Carruthers in 2008 | |
| Born | (1952-06-16)June 16, 1952 (age 73) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
| Main interests | Philosophy of mind Consciousness self-knowledge cognitive science |
| Notable ideas | Dispositional higher-order thought (DHOT) theory of consciousness (also known asdual-content theory) The importance ofaction-rehearsal (includinginner speech) for conscious forms ofcognition. Massively modular architecture of the human mind |
Peter Carruthers (born June 16, 1952) is aphilosopher working primarily in the area ofphilosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Maryland, associate member of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program and member of the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences.
Before he moved to theUniversity of Maryland in 2001, Carruthers was Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Sheffield where he founded and directed the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies and prior to that was a lecturer atUniversity of Essex,Queen's University of Belfast,University of St. Andrews, andUniversity of Oxford. He was educated at theUniversity of Leeds before studying for hisD.Phil atUniversity of Oxford underMichael Dummett.
There is a spectrum of opinions on the role of language in cognition. At one extreme, philosophers likeMichael Dummett have argued that thought is impossible in the absence of language; and social scientists influenced byBenjamin Whorf have believed that the natural languages that people grow up speaking will have a profound influence on the character of their thoughts. At the other extreme, philosophers likeJerry Fodor, together with most cognitive scientists, have believed that language is but an input/output device for cognition, playing no significant role in thought itself. Carruthers has steered a path in between these two extremes. In his 1996 book,[1] he allowed that much thought can and does occur in the absence of language, while arguing for a constitutive role for language in conscious thinking, conducted in "inner speech". In his 2006 book,[2] this position is broadened and deepened. FollowingAntonio Damasio, he argues that mental rehearsals of action issue in imagery that plays a profound role in human practical reasoning, with inner speech now being seen as a subset of action rehearsal. Carruthers now argues that the serial use of these rehearsals can issue in a whole newlevel of thinking and reasoning, serving to realize the "dual systems" that psychologists likeDaniel Kahneman believe to be involved in human reasoning processes.
Evolutionary psychologists likeLeda Cosmides,John Tooby, andSteven Pinker have claimed that the mind consists of a great many distinct functionally specialized systems, or modules.Jerry Fodor has argued, in contrast, that the "central" processes of the mind (judging, reasoning, deciding, and so forth)cannot be modular. In his 2006 book,[2] Carruthers lays out the main case supporting massive modularity, shows how the notion of "module" in this context should properly be understood, and takes up Fodor's challenge by showing how the distinctive flexibility, creativity, and rationality of the human mind can result from the interactions of massive numbers of modules.
Amongst philosophers who think that consciousness admits of explanation, the most popular approach has been some or other variety ofrepresentationalism. Representationalists hold that the distinctive features of consciousness can be explained by appeal to the representational contents (together with the causal roles) of experience. First-order representationalists likeFred Dretske andMichael Tye believe that the relevant contents are world-directed ones (colors, sounds, and so forth) of a distinctive sort (non-conceptual, analog, or fine-grained). Higher-order representationalists likeWilliam Lycan,David M. Rosenthal, and Carruthers, in contrast, maintain that we need to be aware of undergoing these first-order experiences in order for the latter to qualify as conscious. On Carruthers' view, the awareness in question is dispositional. By virtue of an experience being available to higher-order thought, it is claimed to acquire a higher-order non-conceptual content. Hence, conscious experiences have a dual content: while representing the world to us, they also represent themselves to us. Conscious experiences are thus held to be self-representational ones.
Most people (philosophers and non-philosophers alike) assume that they have direct introspective access to their own propositional attitude events of judging, deciding, and so forth[citation needed]. We think of ourselves as knowing our own thought processes immediately, without having to interpret ourselves (in the way that wedo need to interpret the behavior and circumstances of other people if we are to know whatthey are thinking). In a series of recent papers Carruthers has argued that this introspective intuition is illusory. While allowing that we do have introspective access to our own experiences, including imagistic experiences of the sort that occur during "inner speech", he draws on evidence from across the cognitive sciences to argue that our knowledge of our own judgments and decisions results from us turning our interpretative skills upon ourselves. He also argues that while inner speech plays important roles in human cognition, it never plays the rightsort of role to constitute a judgment, or a decision. The latter processes always occur below the surface of consciousness, Carruthers claims.
His primary research interests are inphilosophy of mind,philosophy of psychology, andcognitive science. He has worked especially ontheories of consciousness, the role ofnatural language in human cognition, andmodularity of mind, but has also published on such issues as: the mentality of animals; the nature and status of ourfolk psychology; nativism (innateness); human creativity; theories ofintentional content; and defence of a notion ofnarrow content for psychological explanation. He is presently working on a book project, tentatively entitledMind-reading andMeta-cognition, which examines the cognitive basis of our understanding of the minds of others and its relationship to our access to our own minds. He has also written a book in applied ethics, arguing that animals do not have moral rights. In it he explains why he prefers "global workspace theory" as the criterion of consciousness, shows that we cannot ascertain whether animals fulfil this, and concludes that anyway the possession of consciousness is irrelevant to moral rights.[3]
He is the author of several books:
Carruthers has also published several monographs onWittgenstein'sTractatus Logico-Philosophicus and co-edited seven interdisciplinary books in cognitive science (cf. selected publications). He is the author of numerous articles on consciousness and self-knowledge, cognitive architecture, the role of language in cognition, mental modularity, human creativity, animal mentality, nature, extent and moral significance and miscellaneous papers and book chapters. Furthermore, he has written books on epistemology and ethics, which are areas in which he continues to have interests.
Apartial list of publications by Carruthers:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
