Stich and his Critics – ed. Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop

Extract

Stephen Stich is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of cognitive science. His impact has been enormous, not only through his ideas and arguments but also through his promotion of a cross‐disciplinary methodology and an unyielding naturalistic outlook. Yet this assessment of Stich's overall contribution may actually be somewhat uncharitable. As the essays in Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop's excellent volume Stich and his Critics make clear, the significance of Stich's work extends well beyond cognitive science. Anyone working in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics or the philosophy of language, and moreover anyone for whom questions about philosophical method matter (that is, virtually all professional philosophers), should pay attention to Stich's work. Stich and his Critics is an edifying look at some of the ways his iconoclastic scholarship has shaped the profession so far.

The volume begins with a helpful introduction, followed by ten original essays and then Stich's replies to each author. The chapters are not organized by topic, as they cut across many different themes. These include (but are not limited to) the explanatory value of semantic properties (Egan, Godfrey‐Smith, Devitt, Jackson), nativism (Cowie, Sterelny, Prinz), the reliability of philosophical intuitions (Devitt, Jackson, Sosa, Bishop, Prinz), mind‐reading (Goldman, Sterelny), and various forms of eliminativism (Devitt, Jackson, Cowie).