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Professor Nicholas Shea is an interdisciplinary philosopher of mind, and of psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. He studied mathematics at Oxford and worked as an intellectual property barrister before converting to philosophy with an MA at Birkbeck and PhD at King’s College London. He then worked as a research fellow in Oxford, based in the Faculty of Philosophy and Somerville College and affiliated to the Department of Experimental Psychology.

• Philosophy of psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science
• Philosophy of mind
• Theories of content

Professor Shea works on issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science.  As well as philosophical work on mental representation, consciousness and the metaphysics of mind, he has published in scientific journals in collaboration with psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and biologists.  

His current focus is on theories of representational content, concentrating on the nature of content in relatively low-level representing systems.

For links to published versions (via DOI) and unedited final drafts see Professor Shea's personal webpage. 

Monograph

• Shea, N. (2004), On Millikan (London / Belmont, CA: Wadsworth)

Articles

• Shea, N. (2013) ‘Naturalising Representational Content’, Philosophy Compass, 8(5) pp. 496–509. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12033
• Shea, N. (2012) ‘Reward prediction error signals are meta-representational’, Noûs. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2012.00863.x
• Shea, N. (2012) ‘New thinking, innateness and inherited representation’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367, pp. 2234-2244. doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0125
• Shea, N. (2012) ‘Methodological Encounters with the Phenomenal Kind’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 84(2), pp. 307-344. doi: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00483.x
• Shea, N. (2012) ‘Genetic representation explains the cluster of innateness-related properties’, Mind & Language 27(4), pp. 466–493. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-
  0017.2012.01452.x
• Shea, N. (2013) ‘Inherited Representations are Read in Development’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 64(1), pp. 1-31. doi: 10.1093/bjps/axr050
• Mars, R.B.*, Shea, N.J.*, Kolling, N. and Rushworth, M.F.S. (2012) ‘Model-based analyses: Promises, pitfalls, and example applications to the study of cognitive control’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(2), pp. 252-267. doi: 10.1080/17470211003668272 (* joint first authors)
• Shea, N. (forthcoming) ‘Using phenomenal concepts to explain away the intuition of contingency’, Philosophical Psychology. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2012.730039
• Shea, N. (forthcoming) ‘Two Modes of Transgenerational Information Transmission’, in B. Calcott et al. (eds.) Signaling, Commitment, and Emotion (MIT Press)
• Shea, N. (2013) ‘Millikan’s Isomorphism Requirement’, in D. Ryder, J. Kingsbury, K. Williford (eds.) Millikan and Her Critics (Oxford / Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell), pp. 63- 80. doi: 10.1002/9781118328118.ch3
• Shea, N. (forthcoming) ‘Distinguishing Top-Down From Bottom-Up Effects’, in S. Biggs, M. Matthen, and D. Stokes (eds.) Perception and Its Modalities (OUP)
• Shea, N. (2013) ‘Neural mechanisms of decision-making and the personal level’, in KWM Fulford et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (OUP), pp. 1063-1082
• Shea, N. (2011), ‘Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim About Inherited Information’, Philosophy of Science, 78(1), pp. 60-82. doi: 10.1086/658110
• Shea, N., Pen, I., Uller, T. (2011) ‘Three epigenetic information channels and their different roles in evolution’, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 24, pp. 1178-1187. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02235.x
• Shea, N. (2011) ‘What's Transmitted? Inherited Information’, Biology & Philosophy 26(2), pp. 183-189. doi: 10.1007/s10539-010-9232-4
• Shea, N. and Bayne, T. (2010) ‘The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61(3), pp. 459-484. doi: 10.1093/bjps/axp046
• Shea, N. and Heyes, C. (2010) ‘Metamemory as evidence of animal consciousness: the type that does the trick’, Biology & Philosophy, 25(1), pp. 95-110
• Shea, N., (2009) ‘Imitation as an inheritance system’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, pp. 2429-2443
• Shea, N., Krug, K. and Tobler, P.N., (2008) ‘Conceptual representations in goal-directed decision making’, Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 8(4), pp. 418-428
• Shea, N. (2007) ‘Consumers Need Information: supplementing teleosemantics with an input condition’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75(2), pp. 404-435
• Shea, N. (2007) ‘Content and Its Vehicles in Connectionist Systems’, Mind & Language, 22, pp. 246-269
• Shea, N. (2007) ‘Representation in the genome and in other inheritance systems’, Biology & Philosophy, 22, pp. 313-331
• Shea, N. (2006) ‘Millikan’s Contribution to Materialist Philosophy of Mind’ (in French translation), Matière Première, 1, pp. 127-156
• Shea, N. (2003) ‘Does Externalism Entail the Anomalism of the Mental?’, Philosophical Quarterly, 53, pp. 201–213

Review Essays and Short Reviews

• Shea, N. (forthcoming) ‘Perception vs Action: The Computations May Be The Same But The Direction Of Fit Differs’ (commentary on Andy Clark, ‘Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science’), Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
• Shea, N. (2011) ‘New concepts can be learned’, review essay on Susan Carey, The Origin of Concepts. Biology & Philosophy, 26, pp. 129-139
• Shea, N. (2011) ‘Acquiring a new concept is not explicable-by-content’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(3), pp. 148-149
• Shea, N. (2009) ‘Review of R. G. Millikan, Varieties of Meaning’, Philosophical Review, 118(1), pp. 127-130
• Shea, N. (2006) ‘The Biological Basis of Cultural Transmission: Review of Thought in a Hostile World: Kim Sterelny’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57, 259-66
• Shea, N. (2005) ‘Varieties of Meaning by R.G. Millikan’, Quarterly Review of Biology, 80(3), p. 344
• Shea, N. (2003) ‘Functions in Mind by Carolyn Price’, Philosophical Quarterly, 53, pp. 129-132
• Shea, N. (2002) ‘Getting Clear About Equivocal Concepts: Critical Review of Millikan’s On Clear and Confused Ideas’, Disputatio 13, pp. 34-47
• Papineau, D. and Shea, N. (2002) ’Ruth Millikan’s On Clear and Confused Ideas’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65(2), pp. 453–466

Professor Shea teaches modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the following areas

• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of psychology and cognitive neuroscience
• Philosophy of cognitive science

Professor Shea welcomes enquires from prospective students seeking supervision in areas connected with his research interests.

TBA