astronomy

Stephen Stich

Stephen Stich is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stephen Stich rather than just read about it. In short: Stephen Peter Stich (born May 9, 1943) is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Emeritus at Rutgers University. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and moral psychology.

Key takeaways

Stephen Stich belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stephen Stich to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stephen Stich from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stephen Peter Stich (born May 9, 1943) is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Emeritus at Rutgers University. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and moral psychology. His 1983 book From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief received much attention; it argues for a form of eliminative materialism about the mind. Stich's views later changed, as indicated in his 1996 book Deconstructing the Mind.

Education and career Stich attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Philomathean Society. He received his BA in 1964, summa cum laude with distinction in philosophy. He then did graduate work at Princeton University, receiving his PhD in 1968 under the direction of Paul Benacerraf and Gilbert Harman. Stich has held full-time teaching positions at the University of Michigan (1968-1978), University of Maryland, College Park (1978-1986), University of California, San Diego (1986-1989), and, since 1989, Rutgers University. Stich was the Visiting Senior Lecturer at University of Sydney in 1984-1985 and the Clark-Way-Harrison Distinguished Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 2007. In 2005, he joined the University of Sheffield as an honorary professor. He remains primarily at Rutgers but periodically visits Sheffield, where he teaches and works at the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies. In 2007, Stich received the Jean Nicod Prize and gave a series of lectures in Paris titled Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science: How the Cognitive Science Can Transform Traditional Debates. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2020, Stich became a visiting professor at Princeton University through the University Center for Human Values.

Philosophical work 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 argued for a form of eliminative materialism—the view that talk of the mental should be replaced with talk of its physical substrate. He later revised his view, as indicated in his 1996 book Deconstructing the Mind. In epistemology, he has explored (with several of his colleagues) the nature of intuitions using the techniques of experimental philosophy, especially epistemic intuitions that vary among cultures. This work reflects a general skepticism about conceptual analysis and the traditional methods of analytic philosophy. In The Fragmentation of Reason he sketches a form of epistemic relativism "in the spirit of pragmatism". Stich and Shaun Nichols are responsible for a theory of how humans understand the mental states of themselves and others, or mindreading. Their theory is a hybrid, containing elements of both the simulation theory and theory theory, and also aims to explain the mental architecture that enables pretence.

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 Psychology 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 2012, "Collected Papers, Volume 2: Knowledge, Rationality, and Morality, 1978-2010", Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 9780199733477. 2017, "Gettier Across Cultures" (with Edouard Machery, David Rose, Amita Chatterjee, Kaori Karasawa, Noel Struchiner, Smita Sirker, Naoki Usui, and Takaaki Hashimoto), Nous, Vol. 51.

See also American philosophy List of American philosophers List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates

References

External links

Stich's website Stich's profile at Rutgers Stich's website at Rutgers Stich's profile at the University of Sheffield

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stephen Stich

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stephen Stich claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stephen Stich before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stephen Stich ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stephen Stich

In research: Stephen Stich appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stephen Stich in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stephen Stich is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1943 births, 20th-century American philosophers, 21st-century American philosophers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stephen Stich outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stephen Stich in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stephen Stich means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stephen Stich out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stephen Stich in simple terms?

Why does Stephen Stich matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stephen Stich?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stephen Stich.