In recent decades, various sources of scientific evidence have been used to disprove the idea that we have free will. Conceptual confusion has tended to lurk behind such claims, however, for it often turns out that what researchers mean by “free will” is something extremely implausible. A similar problem persists in the literature on the causal role of consciousness. Various sources of psychological evidence have been used to show that consciousness is not among the causes of our behaviour. However, consciousness (...) is often assumed to be both non-physical and non-functional, and causation is often poorly understood or not defined at all. The aim of this paper is to clear up these issues by urging that (1) future research on this topic remains neutral on the metaphysics of consciousness, (2) avoids assuming that phenomenal consciousness is functionless, (3) is more precise in specifying what is doing the causal work when discussing conscious mental states, and (4) adopts the practice of being clearer on what it takes for something to count as a cause. Much unwarranted scepticism about whether consciousness is causally efficacious has resulted from this fragmented thinking, and much is to be gained by clearing it up. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe famously remarked that an adequate philosophy of psychology was needed before we could do ethics. Fifty years have passed, and we should now ask what significance our best theories of the psychology of agency have for moral philosophy. My focus is on non-moral conceptions of autonomy and self-governance that emphasize the limits of deliberation -- the way in which one's cares render certain options unthinkable, one's intentions and policies filter out what is inconsistent with them, and one's resolutions (...) function to block further reflection. I argue that we can expect this deliberative "silencing" to lead to moral failures that occur because the morally correct option was filtered out of the agent's deliberation. I think it follows from these conceptions of self-governance that we should be considered culpable for unwitting acts and omissions, even if they express no ill will, moral indifference, or blameworthy evaluative judgments. The question is whether this consequence is acceptable. Either way, the potential tradeoff between self-governance and moral attentiveness is a source of doubt about recent attempts to ground the normativity of rationality in our concern for self-governance. (shrink)

Working Memory plays a crucial role in many high-level cognitive processes . The prevalent view holds that active components of WM are predominantly intentional and conscious. This conception is oftentimes expressed explicitly, but it is best reflected in the nature of major WM tasks: All of them are blatantly explicit. We developed two new WM paradigms that allow for an examination of the role of conscious awareness in WM. Results from five studies show that WM can operate unintentionally and outside (...) of conscious awareness, thus suggesting that the current view should be expanded to include implicit WM. (shrink)

The dynamic constraint relaxation theory predicts crucial roles of the initial diversity and evaluation in creative problem-solving. We reported the experimental evidence supporting these predictions, using an insight problem. The experiments showed that the degrees of making different types of trials and the appropriate evaluation were closely related to individual differences in insight problem-solving, and that evaluation became more appropriate by making the problem-solving goal explicit. The review of the research in related fields showed that these experimental findings were in (...) congruent with the evidence obtained from different types of creative activities. (shrink)

Although we have gained great insight into the variety of cultural influences on emotion concept prototypes from a plethora of studies examining such cross-cultural effects, there has been relatively little academic focus on the nature of emotion concept prototypes within a cultural perspective. Our discussion of the nature of emotion concept prototypes centres on essentialist versus non-essentialist principles. We argue that at a general, decontextualised level, essentialist and non-essentialist principles predict similarity in the structure of emotion concept prototypes. We further (...) argue that context is central in assessments of the nature of emotion concept prototypes from a cultural perspective. Rather than asking how emotion concept prototypes differ as a consequence of how certain influences might vary from one culture to another, a key question is whether emotion concept prototypes vary in different contexts within and between cultures and what this might inform us about the nature of emotion concept prototypes. (shrink)

We propose the Selfish Goal model, which holds that a person's behavior is driven by psychological processes called goals that guide his or her behavior, at times in contradictory directions. Goals can operate both consciously and unconsciously, and when activated they can trigger downstream effects on a person's information processing and behavioral possibilities that promote only the attainment of goal end-states (and not necessarily the overall interests of the individual). Hence, goals influence a person as if the goals themselves were (...) selfish and interested only in their own completion. We argue that there is an evolutionary basis to believe that conscious goals evolved from unconscious and selfish forms of pursuit. This theoretical framework predicts the existence of unconscious goal processes capable of guiding behavior in the absence of conscious awareness and control (theautomaticity principle), the ability of the most motivating or active goal to constrain a person's information processing and behavior toward successful completion of that goal (thereconfiguration principle), structural similarities between conscious and unconscious goal pursuit (thesimilarity principle), and goal influences that produce apparent inconsistencies or counterintuitive behaviors in a person's behavior extended over time (theinconsistency principle). Thus, we argue that a person's behaviors are indirectly selected at the goal level but expressed (and comprehended) at the individual level. (shrink)

The role of intuition in scientific endeavor is examined through the lens of three philosophers/historians of science—Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Gerald Holton. All three attribute an important role to imagination/intuition in scientific endeavor. As a case study, the article examines the controversy between the generally accepted Vesicular Sequestration/Exocytosis Model of pancreatic digestive enzyme secretion and an alternative view called the Equilibrium Model. It highlights the intertwining of intuition and reason in the genesis of the Equilibrium Model developed in response (...) to findings that could not readily be explained by the consensus view. It suggests that tacit knowledge/understanding works in conjunction with philosophical and aesthetic presuppositions that function to a greater or lesser extent below awareness. Together they guide judgments about whether falsification has occurred and help frame alternative theories. (shrink)

Traditionally irony has been researched as a verbal mode of communicating non-literal meaning. Yet, the extant literal/non-literal meaning oriented research provided conflicting evidence and failed to explain how irony vs. non-irony is processed. The dominant literal/non-literal meaning approach hasn’t accounted for the role of attitudinal non-propositional contents so crucially involved in irony communication and comprehension. Employed to communicate indirectly, on top of non-literal meaning, irony serves to convey implicit attitudes: emotional load non-propositionally attached to the propositional contents. The role of (...) emotional contents implicitly communicated by irony has not been acknowledged in irony research so far. This paper reviews irony and attitude research, focusing on the non-propositional, emotional contents, aiming to bridge the propositional-non-propositional meaning gap in irony research. Neuroimaging and behavioral evidence showing that emotional load profoundly influences communicative contents processing, priming its computation and determining its processing patterns, is presented, and its role for irony processing is highlighted. (shrink)