Mentalist view began to lose its standing among psychologists mainly during the first half of the twentieth century. As a result, the enthusiasm to build an objective science began to grow among behaviourists and ethologists. The rise of cognitive sciences around the 1960s, however, revived the debates over the importance of cognitive intervening variables in explaining behaviours that could not be explained by clinging solely to a pure behavioural approach. Nevertheless, even though cognitive functions in nonhuman animals have been identified (...) in many studies, attributing human mental properties to animals is still being criticized as anthropomorphism. Such anthropomorphic attributions have been considered as an open door to the return of subjective methodology. Representation of anthropomorphic attributions as scientific activities within the context of discovery as opposed to the context of justification casts a new light on this problem. The present analysis proposes that anthropomorphic attributions are formed based on top-down idiosyncratic intuitions on the cusp of hypothesis building, outside the context of scientific justification. In other words, an anthropomorphic attribution is a potential creative link between pure observations of behaviours and building testable hypotheses about cognition in the process of scientific discovery. Thus, serving a function within the context of discovery, anthropomorphism does not motivate the return of subjective methodology, simply because it is not inconsistent with the rule-governed path in the context of scientific justification. (shrink)

The introspective method has come under attack throughout the history of psychology, yet it is widely used today in virtually all areas of the field, often to good effect. At the same time indirect methods that do not rely on introspection are widely used, also to good effect. This conundrum is best understood in terms of models of nonconscious processing and the role of consciousness. People have access to many of their feelings and emotions, and develop rich narratives about themselves (...) and their social worlds. These conscious states, accessible to introspective reports, are often good predictors of people’s behaviour. There is also a pervasive adaptive unconscious that is inaccessible via introspection. When using introspective reports researchers should be clear about which kinds of mental states they are trying to measure. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)

Cognitive science has wholeheartedly embraced functional brain imaging, but introspective data are still eschewed to the extent that it runs against standard practice to engage in the systematic collection of introspective reports. However, in the case of executive processes associated with prefrontal cortex, imaging has made limited progress, whereas introspective methods have considerable unfulfilled potential. We argue for a re-evaluation of the standard ‘cognitive mapping’ paradigm, emphasizing the use of retrospective reports alongside behavioural and brain imaging techniques. Using all three (...) sources of evidence can compensate for their individual limitations, and so triangulate on higher cognitive processes. (shrink)

For human interaction, it is important to understand what emotional state others are in. Especially the observation of faces aids us in putting behaviours into context and gives insight into emotions and mental states of others. Detecting whether someone is nervous, a form of state anxiety, is such an example as it reveals a person’s familiarity and contentment with the circumstances. With recent developments in computer vision we developed behavioural nervousness models to show which time-varying facial cues reveal whether someone (...) is nervous in an interview setting. The facial changes, reflecting a state of anxiety, led to more visual exposure and less chemosensory (taste and olfaction) exposure. However, experienced observers had difficulty picking up these changes and failed to detect nervousness levels accurately therewith. This study highlights humans’ limited capacity in determining complex emotional states but at the same time provides an automated model that can assist us in achieving fair assessments of so far unexplored emotional states. (shrink)