Mark Phelan
Professor of Philosophy, Lawrence University
About
I am Professor of Philosophy at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where I direct the Program in Cognitive Science and co-direct the university’s AI Working Group.
My research concerns the normative structure of communication and cooperative relationships, pragmatics and speech acts, and mental state attribution. Much of my work sits at the intersection of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, and often proceeds experimentally. Recent projects take up the value of friendship, how we attribute mental states to others, and the question of whether large language models can have intentions.
Before coming to Lawrence in 2011, I was a Fellow in Cognitive Science at Yale University. I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010.
Research Areas
Primary topics: the normative structure of communication and cooperative relationships; pragmatics and speech acts; mental state attribution.
Specializations & competencies: philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of art, epistemology, philosophy of science.
Publications
“Attribution Functionalism.” Mind & Language 41(3): 363–382. doi:10.1111/mila.70000 · pdf
2025“Change Your Self, Change Your Friends.” IAI News. iai.tv
2024“Norm Manipulation as a Condition of Friendship.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67(6): 1524–1530. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2021.1947890 · pdf
2023“Experimental Philosophy of Mind: Conscious State Attribution.” In Bauer & Kornmesser (eds.), The Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy. De Gruyter: 263–288. · pdf
2023“Rethinking Friendship.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66(5): 757–772. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2019.1658627 · pdf
2019“Moral Objectivism and a Punishing God” (with Hagop Sarkissian). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 80: 1–7. · pdf
2018“Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy” (with Florian Cova et al., including Lawrence student co-authors Wenjia Hu and Navin Rambharose). Review of Philosophy and Psychology. · pdf
2016“Experimental Pragmatics in Linguistics and Philosophy.” The Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy: 390–403. · pdf
2015“Testing Transparent Ascriptions.” In Haukioja (ed.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Language. Continuum Press: 173–202. · pdf
2015“Is Free Will Necessary for Moral Responsibility?: A Case for Rethinking Their Relationship and the Design of Experimental Studies in Moral Psychology” (with Carrie Figdor). Mind & Language 30(5): 603–627. · pdf
2014“Evidence that Stakes Don’t Matter for Evidence.” Philosophical Psychology 27(4): 488–512. · pdf
2014“Phenomenal Consciousness Disembodied” (with Wesley Buckwalter). In Sytsma (ed.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind. Continuum Press: 45–74. · pdf
2014“Experimental Pragmatics: An Introduction for Philosophers.” Philosophy Compass 9(1): 66–79. · pdf
2013“Thinking Things and Feeling Things: On an Alleged Discontinuity in Folk Metaphysics of Mind” (with Adam Arico and Shaun Nichols). Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12(4): 703–725. · pdf
2013“Function and Feeling Machines: A Defense of the Philosophical Conception of Subjective Experience” (with Wesley Buckwalter). Philosophical Studies 166(2): 349–361. · pdf
2013“Mere Exposure to Bad Art” (with Aaron Meskin, Margaret Moore, and Matthew Kieran). British Journal of Aesthetics 53(2): 139–164. · pdf
2012“Analytic Functionalism and Mental State Attribution” (with Wesley Buckwalter). Philosophical Topics 40(2): 129–154. · pdf
2012“Brain Damage, Mind Damage, and Dualism” (with Eric Mandelbaum and Shaun Nichols). In Allhoff, Mallon & Nichols (eds.), Philosophy: Traditional and Experimental Readings. Oxford University Press: 212–216. · pdf
2012“The Moral Cognition/Consciousness Connection” (with Adam Waytz). Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3(3): 293–301. · pdf
2012“Introduction to Mental States” (with Eric Mandelbaum). In Allhoff, Mallon & Nichols (eds.), Philosophy: Traditional and Experimental Readings. Oxford University Press: 193–199. · pdf
2012“Experimental Philosophy as an Elephant.” Philosophy Now 92: 13–16. · pdf
2012Review of John Mikhail’s Elements of Moral Cognition. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. · pdf
2011“Just What Are Your Intentions?” The Philosophers’ Magazine 52(1): 72–77. · pdf
2010“The Inadequacy of Paraphrase is the Dogma of Metaphor.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91(4): 481–506. · pdf
2009“Is the Trade-off Hypothesis Worth Trading For?” (with Hagop Sarkissian). Mind and Language 24(2): 164–180. · pdf
2008“The Folk Strike Back; Or, Why You Didn’t Do It Intentionally, Though It Was Bad and You Knew It” (with Hagop Sarkissian). Philosophical Studies 138: 291–298. · pdf
Recent Talks
“Can an LLM Have Intentions?” 6th International Conference on Philosophy of Mind: Artificial Intelligence, Porto, Portugal. May 2026.
2026“Can an LLM Have Intentions?” AI and Philosophy Conference, New Orleans, LA. April 2026.
2025“Meta-prompting for Metacognition.” AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium, New London, CT. October 2025.
2025“Friendship and Culture.” Auburn University Department of Philosophy, Auburn, AL. August 2025 (invited).
A complete list of presentations and commentaries appears in my CV.
Teaching
Recent courses at Lawrence University:
Philosophy of Mind (Winter)
2026Computation & Cognition (Winter)
2025Epistemology (Fall)
2025Symbolic Logic (Fall)
2025Computation & Cognition (Spring)
2025Philosophy of Art (Spring)
2025Introduction to Cognitive Science (Winter)
2025Studies in Philosophy — Senior Seminar (Winter)
I regularly supervise student-proposed independent studies. A full teaching history appears in my CV.
Leadership & Service
- Director, Program in Cognitive Science, Lawrence University (2022–present)
- Co-Director, AI Working Group, Lawrence University (2025–present)
- Chair, Department of Philosophy, Lawrence University (2017–2023)
- Chair, Faculty Committee on University Governance (2019–20)
- Referee for numerous journals, including Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Analysis, Mind and Language, Cognition, and Synthese
Education
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2005M.A. in Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2003M.S. in Philosophy, University of Utah
1999B.A. in English and Philosophy, Ouachita Baptist University
Contact
Department of Philosophy, Programs in Cognitive Science & Linguistics
Lawrence University · 711 East Boldt Way · Appleton, WI 54911
Full CV (PDF) · Lawrence Philosophy Department · PhilPeople profile