Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. A Defense of Experiential Realism: The Need to take Phenomenological Reality on its own Terms in the Study of the Mind.Stan Klein - 2015 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (1):41-56.
    In this paper I argue for the importance of treating mental experience on its own terms. In defense of “experiential realism” I offer a critique of modern psychology’s all-too-frequent attempts to effect an objectification and quantification of personal subjectivity. The question is “What can we learn about experiential reality from indices that, in the service of scientific objectification, transform the qualitative properties of experience into quantitative indices?” I conclude that such treatment is neither necessary for realizing, nor sufficient for capturing, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Autonoetic Consciousness: Re-considering the Role of Episodic Memory in Future-Oriented Self-Projection.Stan Klein - 2016 - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69 (2):381-401.
    Following the seminal work of Ingvar (1985. “Memory for the future”: An essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness. Human Neurobiology, 4, 127–136), Suddendorf (1994. The discovery of the fourth dimension: Mental time travel and human evolution. Master’s thesis. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand), and Tulving (1985. Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26, 1–12), exploration of the ability to anticipate and prepare for future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty has grown into a thriving research enterprise. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • (1 other version)When actions feel alien: An explanatory model.Timothy Lane - 2014 - In Tzu-Wei Hung (ed.), Communicative Action. Singapore: Springer Science+Business. pp. 53-74.
    It is not necessarily the case that we ever have experiences of self, but human beings do regularly report instances for which self is experienced as absent. That is there are times when body parts, mental states, or actions are felt to be alien. Here I sketch an explanatory framework for explaining these alienation experiences, a framework that also attempts to explain the “mental glue” whereby self is bound to body, mind, or action. The framework is a multi-dimensional model that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • (1 other version)When actions feel alien: An explanatory model.Timothy Lane - 2014 - In Tzu-Wei Hung (ed.), Communicative Action. Singapore: Springer Science+Business. pp. 53-74.
    It is not necessarily the case that we ever have experiences of self, but human beings do regularly report instances for which self is experienced as absent. That is there are times when body parts, mental states, or actions are felt to be alien. Here I sketch an explanatory framework for explaining these alienation experiences, a framework that also attempts to explain the “mental glue” whereby self is bound to body, mind, or action. The framework is a multi-dimensional model that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Sameness and the self: Philosophical and psychological considerations.Stan Klein - 2014 - Frontiers in Psychology -- Perception 5:1-15.
    In this paper I examine the concept of cross-temporal personal identity (diachronicity). This particular form of identity has vexed theorists for centuries -- e.g.,how can a person maintain a belief in the sameness of self over time in the face of continual psychological and physical change? I first discuss various forms of the sameness relation and the criteria that justify their application. I then examine philosophical and psychological treatments of personal diachronicity(for example,Locke's psychological connectedness theory; the role of episodic memory) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Autonoesis and belief in a personal past: an evolutionary theory of episodic memory indices.Stan Klein - 2014 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (3):427-447.
    In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hope to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • What can Recent Replication Failures tell us about the Theoretical Commitments of Psychology?Stan Klein - 2014 - Theory and Psychology 24:326-338.
    I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate the results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It also is a symptom of a serious issue -- the underdeveloped state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of “social priming” -- since it figures centrally in current debate -- it is not the only area (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Going Out of My Head: An Evolutionary Proposal Concerning the “Why” of Sentience.Stan Klein, Bill N. Nguyen & Blossom M. Zhang - forthcoming - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
    The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What adaptive problem(s) did organisms face in their evolutionary (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Quantification, Conceptual Reduction and Theoretical Under-determination in Psychological Science.Stan Klein - 2021 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 8 (1):95-103.
    I argue that academic psychology’s quest to achieve scientific respectability by reliance on quantification and objectification is deeply flawed. Specifically, psychological theory typically cannot support prognostication beyond the binary opposition of “effect present/effect absent”. Accordingly, the “numbers” assigned to experimental results amount to little more than affixing names (e.g., more than, less than) to the members of an ordered sequence of outcomes. This, in conjunction with the conceptual under-specification characterizing the targets of experimental inquiry, is, I contend, a primary reason (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Thoughts on the Scientific Study of Phenomenal Consciousness.Stan Klein - 2021 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 8 (74-80).
    This Target paper is about the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness (i.e., how is subjective experience possible given the scientific presumption that everything from molecules to minerals to minds is wholly physical?). I first argue that one of the most valuable tools in the scientific arsenal (metaphor) cannot be recruited to address the hard problem due to the inability to forge connections between the stubborn fact of subjective experience and physically grounded models of scientific explanation. I then argue that adherence (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • An Essay on the Ontological Foundations and Psychological Realization of Forgetting.Stan Klein - 2019 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 6 (292-305).
    I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting this investigative posture turns the “received view” (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The Phenomenology of REM-sleep Dreaming: The Contributions of Personal and Perspectival Ownership, Subjective Temporality and Episodic Memory.Stan Klein - 2018 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 6:55-66.
    Although the dream narrative, of (bio)logical necessity, originates with the dreamer, s/he typically does not know this. For the dreamer, the dream world is the real world. In this article I argue that this nightly misattribution is best explained in terms of the concept of mental ownership (e.g., Albahari, 2006; Klein, 2015a; Lane, 2012). Specifically, the exogenous nature of the dream narrative is the result of an individual assuming perspectival, but not personal, ownership of content s/he authored (i.e., “The content (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Memory and the self by Mark Rowlands. [REVIEW]Marina Trakas - 2017 - Phenomenological Reviews 3.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Personal memories.Marina Trakas - 2015 - Dissertation, Macquarie University
    This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The Curious Case of the Self-Refuting Straw Man: Trafimow and Earp’s Response to Klein (2014).Stan Klein - 2016 - Theory and Psychology 26:549– 556.
    In their critique of Klein (2014a), Trafimow and Earp present two theses. First, they argue that, contra Klein, a well-specified theory is not a necessary condition for successful replication. Second, they contend that even when there is a well-specified theory, replication depends more on auxiliary assumptions than on theory proper. I take issue with both claims, arguing that (a) their first thesis confuses a material conditional (what I said) with a modal claim (T&E’s misreading of what I said), and (b) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Unplanned Obsolescence of Psychological Science and an Argument for its Revival.Stan Klein - 2016 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 3:357-379.
    I examine some of the key scientific pre-commitments of modern psychology, and argue that their adoption has the unintended consequence of rendering a purely psychological analysis of mind indistinguishable from a purely biological treatment. And, since these pre-commitments sanction an “authority of the biological”, explanation of phenomena traditionally considered the purview of psychological analysis is fully subsumed under the biological. I next evaluate the epistemic warrant of these pre-commitments and suggest there are good reasons to question their applicability to psychological (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • The Feeling of Personal Ownership of One’s Mental States: A Conceptual Argument and Empirical Evidence for an Essential, but Underappreciated, Mechanism of Mind.Stan Klein - 2015 - Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (4):355-376.
    I argue that the feeling that one is the owner of his or her mental states is not an intrinsic property of those states. Rather, it consists in a contingent relation between consciousness and its intentional objects. As such, there are (a variety of) circumstances, varying in their interpretive clarity, in which this relation can come undone. When this happens, the content of consciousness still is apprehended, but the feeling that the content “belongs to me” no longer is secured. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Resisting temptation and overcoming procrastination: The roles of mental time travel and metacognition.Erica Cosentino, Christopher Jude McCarroll & Kourken Michaelian - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (4):791-811.
    We tend to seek immediate gratification at the expense of long-term reward. In fact, the more distant a reward is from the present moment?the more we tend to discount it. This phenomenon is known as temporal discounting. Engaging in mental time travel plausibly enables subjects to overcome temporal discounting, but it is unclear how, exactly, it does so. In this paper, we develop a framework designed to explain the effects of mental time travel on temporal discounting by showing how the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Memory-Modulation: Self-Improvement or Self-Depletion?Andrea Lavazza - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Moral Bioenhancement Through Memory-editing: A Risk for Identity and Authenticity?Andrea Lavazza - 2019 - Topoi 38 (1):15-27.
    Moral bioenhancement is the attempt to improve human behavioral dispositions, especially in relation to the great ethical challenges of our age. To this end, scientists have hypothesised new molecules or even permanent changes in the genetic makeup to achieve such moral bioenhancement. The philosophical debate has focused on the permissibility and desirability of that enhancement and the possibility of making it mandatory, given the positive result that would follow. However, there might be another way to enhance the overall moral behavior (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Names, Descriptions, and Assertion.Ray Buchanan - 2014 - In Zsu-Wei Hung (ed.), Communicative Action. Springer. pp. 03-15.
    According to Millian Descriptivism, while the semantic content of a linguistically simple proper name is just its referent, we often use sentences containing such expressions “to make assertions…that are, in part, descriptive” (Soames 2008). Against this view, I show, following Ted Sider and David Braun (2006), that simple sentences containing names are never used to assert descriptively enriched propositions. In addition, I offer a diagnosis as to where the argument for Millian Descriptivism goes wrong. Once we appreciate the distinctive way (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Toward a Model of Work-Related Self: A Narrative Review.Igor Knez - 2016 - Frontiers in Psychology 7.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations