Pinocchio is, above all, what he is not. His identity is often played to the limit, imagined by himself and everyone he meets along the way. Pinocchio is the name of life that is simultaneously inorganic, human and animal. For this reason, it is the possible name of a radical desertion: to identify at the same time with oneself and with someone other than oneself. One question that can be deduced from The Adventures of Pinocchio is whether such an intelligent (...) machine would like to become “human”? In fact, before Pinocchio becomes a real boy, he does everything that real boys do, including the disobedience to their parents. (shrink)

Authenticity is often defined as the extent to which people feel that they know and express their true selves. Research in the psychological sciences suggests that people view true selves as more morally good than bad and that this “virtuous” true self may be a central component of authenticity. In fact, there may be reasons to suspect that authenticity serves as a cue that one’s behaviors are virtuous, and feelings of authenticity may help sustain virtuous actions. However, in previous research, (...) operationalizations of virtue may not clearly capture virtue as virtue theorists might recognize it. The possibility that feelings of authenticity keep people oriented toward virtuous activities is compatible with theorizing, but the precise ways that it might do so has not received direct conceptual or empirical scrutiny. We propose an interdisciplinary hypothesis of how feelings of authenticity could function to serve as a feedback mechanism for virtuous behavior. Feelings of authenticity could play a role in sustaining motivation to engage in virtuous activity insofar as the experience of subjective authenticity encourages one to approach that activity or environment in the future. Furthermore, virtuous behavior incorporates a few key elements that are predictive of experiencing subjective authenticity. We review emerging research that offers initial support for the idea that authenticity may guide sustained and virtuous civic action and develop a theoretical framework that positions authenticity as integral to sustained virtuous behavior. (shrink)

In two studies, we tested how the expression of civic hope in narratives and the perceived authenticity of civic/political actions relate to civic/political engagement. In a cross-sectional study of undergraduates (N = 230), the expression of civic hope predicted the perceived authenticity of civic actions (e.g., voting), which in turn predicted the motivation to engage in them. In a longitudinal on-line study that began 8 weeks prior to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election (N = 308 MTurk workers), overall expressions of (...) civic hope positively predicted the perceived authenticity of voting and the motivation to vote. In addition, expressions of civic hope positively predicted the perceived authenticity of voting, which in turn positively predicted the likelihood of reporting that one did vote. These findings indicate that a sense of civic hope and the experience of authenticity in political contexts may be important for democratic engagement. (shrink)

The acquisition of virtue can be conceptualized as a self-regulatory process in which deliberate practice results in increasingly higher levels of skillfulness in leading a virtuous life. This conceptualization resonates with philosophical virtue theories as much as it converges with psychological models about skill development, expertise, goal motivation, and self-regulation. Yet, the conceptualization of virtue as skill acquisition poses the crucial question of motivation: What motivates individuals to self-improvement over time so that they can learn from past experience, correct mistakes, (...) and expand their ethical knowledge to new and unfamiliar circumstances? In this paper, it is argued that the motivation to increase one’s level of skillfulness in leading a virtuous life is supported by a specific identity goal, namely the goal to be a moral person. However, this moral identity goal needs to carry specific goal characteristics in order to effectively provide this motivation. It needs to be sufficiently abstract, internally motivated and promotion- rather than prevention-oriented. Research in developmental psychology suggests that the moral identity of children is rather concrete, externally motivated, and prevention-oriented. With development, higher levels of abstraction, internal motivation, and promotion-orientation gain importance providing an important motivational basis for a self-regulated process of virtue acquisition. (shrink)

Psychological research has revealed that there is a strong tendency for people to believe that they have a ‘true self’, and to believe that this true self is inherently morally good. This would seemingly be very good news for virtue theorists, since this may help to promote virtue development. While there are some obvious benefits to people having morality intrinsically tied to their sense of self, in this paper I want to suggest instead that there may also be some significant (...) drawbacks, especially when it comes to motivating virtue development and moral improvement. In part this stems from people’s belief in their own inherent moral goodness being merely assumed (as part of one’s core identity), rather than earned (say through reliably good moral behavior). This disconnection between identity and behavior can result in attempts to reinforce one’s identity as morally good, at the expense of virtuous behavior or self-improvement. (shrink)

Recently, I presented evidence that there are two broad kinds of dehumanization: descriptive dehumanization and normative dehumanization. An individual is descriptively dehumanized when they are perceived as less than fully human in the biological-species sense; whereas an individual is normatively dehumanized when they are perceived as lacking a deep-seated commitment to good moral values. Here, I develop the concept of normative dehumanization by addressing skepticism about two hypotheses that are widely held by dehumanization researchers. The first hypothesis is that dehumanization (...) is distinct from mere dislike and other non-dehumanizing attitudes. The second hypothesis is that dehumanization is an important predictor of intergroup hostility. Across four studies, I found evidence that normative dehumanization is distinct from mere dislike, and denials of ideal humanness. I also found that it is a unique predictor of intergroup hostility. These findings suggest that research into dehumanization and intergroup hostility will benefit from recognizing the distinction between descriptive and normative dehumanization. (shrink)

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). We (...) tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work. -/- . (shrink)

Do you persist as the same person over time because you keep the same mind or because you keep the same body? Philosophers have long investigated this question of personal identity with thought experiments. Cognitive scientists have joined this tradition by assessing lay intuitions about those cases. Much of this work has focused on judgments of identity continuity. But identity also has practical significance: obligations are tagged to one's identity over time. Understanding how someone persists as the same person over (...) time could provide insight into how and why moral and legal obligations persist. In this paper, we investigate judgments of obligations in hypothetical cases where a person's mind and body diverge (e.g., brain transplant cases). We find a striking pattern of results: In assigning obligations in these identity test cases, people are divided among three groups: “body‐followers,” “mind‐followers,” and “splitters”—people who say that the obligation is split between the mind and the body. Across studies, responses are predicted by a variety of factors, including mind/body dualism, essentialism, education, and professional training. When we give this task to professional lawyers, accountants, and bankers, we find they are more inclined to rely on bodily continuity in tracking obligations. These findings reveal not only the heterogeneity of intuitions about identity but how these intuitions relate to the legal standing of an individual's obligations. (shrink)

There are two fundamental self-regulatory systems for moral action reflecting an approach-oriented system promoting moral action (prescriptive morality) and an avoidance-oriented system restraining immoral action (proscriptive morality). Despite the presence of these systems, individuals may vary in the extent to which the systems regulate their moral responses. One factor that may heighten prescriptive and proscriptive moral self-regulation is individuals’ moral identity. Three studies examined if the systems of moral regulation are more salient among individuals with a strong internalized moral identity. (...) Possessing a strong internalized moral identity was associated with greater salience of the prescriptive system – with heightened perceptions that prescriptive behaviors should be enacted, that prescriptive behaviors are less a matter of personal preference, and that prescriptive behaviors are expected to yield greater social approval – compared to the proscriptive system. Possessing a strong internalized moral identity appears to orient individuals toward engaging in good (rather than only avoiding bad) behaviors. (shrink)

Keeping track of what others believe is a central part of human social cognition. However, the social relevance of those beliefs can vary a great deal. Some belief attributions mostly tell us about what a person is likely to do next. Other belief attributions tell us more about a person's social identity. In this paper, I argue that we cope with this challenge by employing two distinct concepts of belief in our everyday social interactions. The epistemic concept of belief is (...) primarily used to keep track of what other people take to be true, and this informs how we predict and interpret their behaviors. The symbolic concept of belief, in contrast, is primarily used as a means of signaling one's social identity to other members of one's community. In turn, community members closely monitor each other's symbolic beliefs as a means of enforcing social norms. (shrink)

The use of brain technology that contributes to psychological changes has spurred a debate about personal identity. Some argue that neurotechnology does not undermine personal continuity (Levy, 2011) while others argue that it does (Kreitmair, 2019; Schechtman, 2010). To make these assessments, commentators fail to identify psychological changes that cause personal discontinuity. In this paper, I present a view that identifies personal continuity with the maintenance of a self-concept. I argue that a concept of self requires the ability to self-ascribe (...) physical and psychological features and that the diachronic self emerges with self-ascriptions of features that require endurance over time. I maintain that an adequate concept of self does not depend on the maintenance of any particular combination of self-ascriptions and that it can be maintained despite even significant changes in psychological or physical traits. Finally, I apply the self-concept view to identify changes that can result in discontinuity of self. (shrink)

Unraveling the complex notion of “self” and “other” necessitates a layered approach that explores biology, namely genetics; philosophy, namely event phenomenology; and culture, namely religion. This essay examines (1) the latest paradigm shift occurring in the genetic sciences due to the increased knowledge of epigenetic effects on gene expression and how our DNA functions in concert with the cellular apparatus, the body, and the environment; (2) the incorporation of relationality into a philosophical understanding of self; and (3) finally, what religion (...) adds to this exploration of self. Thus, providing a glimpse at how these different approaches to identity help us understand the “self.”. (shrink)

Relying on aesthetic testimony seems problematic. For instance, it seems problematic for me to simply believe or assert that The Velvet Underground's debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1964) is amazing solely because you have told me so, even though I know you to be an honest and competent music critic. But why? After all, there do not seem to be similar reservations regarding testimony from many other domains. In this paper, I will argue that relying on aesthetic testimony (...) seems problematic because we are attached to an ideal of aesthetic authenticity and feel that living up to this ideal is anathema to simply relying on aesthetic testimony. (shrink)

The role of autobiographical memory is not just to relate us to our past self, but also to shape the future self of ours by helping us navigate the complex world we encounter in our every-day lives on a stable basis: some more or less vivid idea of who we really are as persons, as individual beings with distinct selves and unique identities. In this sense memory has also to do with being and becoming, and not just with having been. (...) The advances in the field of memory neuroscience have resulted in what is called memory reconsolidation, that is, techniques to suppress, modify, or enhance certain memories that have to do with our moral identity and moral status. In this presentation I will discuss certain potential implications of memory reconsolidation that are in my view of key importance for neuroethics, and especially for the debate concerning moral identity, agency and status in the brand-new landscape that has been shaped by the novel capabilities neuroscience has made available. (shrink)

This paper reports the first study in the literature that adopts a bibliometric approach to systematically explore the scholarship in the young and fast‐growing research field of experimental philosophy. Based on a corpus of 1,248 publications in experimental philosophy from the past two decades retrieved from the PhilPapers website, the study examined the publication trend, the influential experimental philosophers, the impactful works, the popular publication venues, and the major research themes in this subarea of philosophy. It found, first, an overall (...) growing trend in publications in experimental philosophy, encompassing four developmental stages. Second, it found that significant changes in topics of interest have taken place, with some gaining increasing attention, others seemingly going out of fashion, and still others remaining popular constantly. Third, the study identified lists of leading philosophers, frequently cited publications, and popular journals helpful for researchers and newcomers to get a quick start in learning about the field. (shrink)

The crux of this paper is to provide a concentrated critical evaluation of Galen Strawson's innovative approach to the self. To that end, I will first attempt to concisely introduce his general thesis, which seems appropriate to be broken up into two major pieces: the phenomenology (experience) of the self, what the self would have to be; and the metaphysics of the self (i.e., a query refers to its metaphysics [its existence and nature]: whether there is any). Explaining and discussing (...) Strawson's twofold account of the self is my first target in this paper. And it is with these two parts that I take issues. Accordingly, I shall determinedly try to develop a counterargument according to which Strawson's establishment of his entire enterprise of the self is based merely on unjustified intuitive generalisation. Next, I will put more effort into making some more argumentative points, mainly to show how his metaphysics does not give much thought to some vital matters of the self in comparison with the systems of metaphysics of his forebears of Western philosophers. What all this means is that Strawsonian metaphysical analysis of the self so conceived and so described appears philosophically to drive itself to justly be placed in an ahistorical context. (shrink)

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In (...) this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms. (shrink)

Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such evocations is often taken to settle differences between conflicting theoretical views that, albeit, have practical implications for ethical controversies of personal identity in health care. Employing thought experiments that way is inadequate, I argue, since personhood is intrinsically linked to constraining facts about the actual world. I defend a moderate modal skepticism according to which intuiting across conceptually incongruent (...) worlds constitutes ‘invalid intuitioninferences’—i.e., carrying over intuitions gathered from facts about possible worlds that are at odds with facts about the actual world, for the purpose of making claims about real-life persons and their identity, leads to conceptual incongruences. Such a methodological fallout precludes accurate, informative judgments about personal identity in the actual world, calling into question the adequacy of thought experimental considerations for potential real world applications in medical ethics. (shrink)

One of the most widely read books in the world, considered a metaphor for the human condition, and suitable for a variety of interpretations, The Adventures of Pinocchio has had a major impact on world culture. The book responds to a prerogative that belongs only to masterpieces: that of being out of time. The book focuses on the psychological investigation of his central character Pinocchio, while trying to discover a humanity lost in the vacuum of technology and science. The myth (...) of Pinocchio is used to condemn the culture of violence and consumerism. Collodi successfully uses metaphorical interactions, bipolarities, and ambiguous miracles. Pinocchio's identity is often played to the limit, imagined by himself and everyone he meets along the way. Pinocchio is the name of life that is simultaneously inorganic, human and animal. The Adventures of Pinocchio explore how experiences gained in heterotopic space give the individual the ability to change panoramic vision, and how these experiences can ultimately show us how we can recover or restore our existence as individual subjects. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Abstract Carlo Collodi The Adventures of Pinocchio Pinocchio The Myth The Psychology The Duality The Heterotopy The Identity Artificial Intelligence The Humanism The Becoming The Demiurge The Education Bibliography -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20541.38887. (shrink)

The Centred View offers an account of the connection between imagination and possibility that combines the centred world framework with some allegedly appealing intuitions regarding our persistence over time. In particular, Dilip Ninan suggests that the Centred View has the theoretical advantage of respecting our intuitions about cases of personal identity in certain imaginative scenarios while also being compatible with physicalism. Unfortunately, the Centred View faces a series of serious objections and should ultimately be rejected.

In this paper, we argue that the neo-Aristotelian conception of “friendships of character” appears to misrepresent the essential nature of "genuine", or "true", friendship. We question the neo-Aristotelian imperative that true friendship entails disinterested love of the other “for their own sake” and strives at enhancing moral virtue. We propose an alternative conception of true friendship as involving affective and motivational features which we call closeness, intimacy, identity, and trust. Even on this minimal construal, however, friendship can turn vicious when (...) one of its characteristics becomes overpowering and thereby destroys the very goods for which the friendship was originally sought. (shrink)

This chapter examines the possibility of using AI technologies to improve human moral reasoning and decision-making, especially in the context of purchasing and consumer decisions. We characterize such AI technologies as artificial ethics assistants (AEAs). We focus on just one part of the AI-aided moral improvement question: the case of the individual who wants to improve their morality, where what constitutes an improvement is evaluated by the individual’s own values. We distinguish three broad areas in which an individual might think (...) their own moral reasoning and decision-making could be improved: one’s actions, character, or other evaluable attributes fall short of one’s values and moral beliefs; one sometimes misjudges or is uncertain about what the right thing to do is in particular situations, given one’s values; one is uncertain about some fundamental moral questions or recognizes a possibility that some of one’s core moral beliefs and values are mistaken. We sketch why one might think that AI tools could be used to support moral improvement in those areas, and describe two types of assistance: preparatory assistance, including advice and training supplied in advance of moral deliberation; and on-the-spot assistance, including on-the-spot advice and facilitation of moral functioning over the course of moral deliberation. Then, we turn to some of the ethical issues that AEAs might raise, looking in particular at three under-appreciated problems posed by the use of AI for moral self-improvement: namely, reliance on sensitive moral data; the inescapability of outside influences on AEAs; and AEA usage prompting the user to adopt beliefs and make decisions without adequate reasons. (shrink)

Una din cele mai citite cărți din lume, considerată o metaforă a condiției umane, și pretabilă la o pluralitate de interpretări, Aventurile lui Pinocchio a avut un impact mare asupra culturii mondiale. Cartea răspunde unei prerogative care aparține doar capodoperelor: aceea de a fi în afara timpului. Cartea pune accent pe investigarea psihologică a personajului său central Pinocchio, în timp ce încearcă să descopere o umanitate pierdută în vidul tehnologiei și al științei. Mitul Pinocchio este folosit pentru a condamna cultura (...) violenței și a consumerismului. Collodi apelează cu succes la interacțiunile metaforice, bipolaritățile, și miracolele ambigue. Identitatea lui Pinocchio este adesea jucată la limită, imaginată de el însuși și de toți cei pe care îi întâlnește în drum. Pinocchio este numele vieții care este simultan anorganică, umană și animală. Aventurile lui Pinocchio explorează modul în care experiențele câștigate în spațiul heterotopic oferă individului capacitatea de a modifica viziunea panoramică, și cum aceste experiențe ne pot arăta în cele din urmă cum putem recupera sau restabili existența noastră ca subiecți individuali. -/- CUPRINS: -/- Abstract Carlo Collodi Aventurile lui Pinocchio Pinocchio Mitul Psihologia Dualitatea Heterotopia Identitatea Inteligența artificială Umanismul Devenirea Demiurgul Educația Bibliografie -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22089.67688. (shrink)

Whole Brain Emulation has been championed as the most promising, well-defined route to achieving both human-level artificial intelligence and superintelligence. It has even been touted as a viable route to achieving immortality through brain uploading. WBE is not a fringe theory: the doctrine of Computationalism in philosophy of mind lends credence to the in-principle feasibility of the idea, and the standing of the Human Connectome Project makes it appear to be feasible in practice. Computationalism is a popular, independently plausible theory, (...) and Connectomics a well-funded empirical research program, so optimism about WBE is understandable. However, this optimism may be misplaced. This article argues that WBE is, at best, no more compelling than any of the other far-flung routes to achieving superintelligence. Similarly skeptical conclusions are found regarding immortality. The essay concludes with some positive considerations in favor of the Biological Theory of consciousness, as well as morals about the limits of Computationalism in both artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind more generally. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. Throughout the past several decades, psychological essentialism has emerged as an extremely active area of research in cognitive science. More recently, it has also attracted attention from philosophers, who put the empirical results to use in many different philosophical areas, ranging from philosophy of mind and cognitive science to social (...) philosophy. This article aims to give philosophers who are new to the topic an overview of the key empirical findings surrounding psychological essentialism, and some of the ways the hypothesis and its related findings have been discussed, extended, and applied in philosophical research. (shrink)

What makes someone the same person over time? There are (at least) two ways of understanding this question: A person can be the same in the sense of being very similar to how they used to be (similarity), or they can be the same in the sense of being the same individual (numerical identity). In recent years, several papers have claimed to explore the commonsense notion of numerical identity. However, we suggest here that these researchers have instead been studying similarity. (...) We develop a novel method that uses simple intuitions about objects to illustrate these two notions of “same person”, and then asks which concept applies to instances of personal change. Across 4 studies (N = 2446), we find that these previously documented intuitions are best understood as reflecting judgments about similarity, not identity (Experiments 1 and 2). We then use this method to explore the situations in which participants do perceive a change in numerical identity. We find that when a person's entire brain (Experiments 3 and 4) or soul (Experiment 4) has been replaced with that of another person, the majority of participants judge that numerical identity has changed. However, we also note that a substantial minority of participants denied that identity had changed, opening new questions about the role of the body in intuitive judgments of personal identity. (shrink)

Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated that essentialism—the notion that observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases and sometimes decreases moral condemnation. To resolve these discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which essentialism influences moral judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior, the target of essentialism (particular behaviors vs. actors’ character), and the component of (...) essentialism (biology vs. immutability). Participants punished people described as having a criminal essence more than those with a non‐criminal essence or no essence. Probing potential mechanisms underlying this effect, we found a mediating role for perceptions of control and weak influences of essentialism focus (behavior vs. character) and component of essentialism (biology vs. immutability). These results extend prior work on essentialism and moral cognition, demonstrating a causal link between perceptions of “internal wickedness” and moral judgment. Our findings also resolve discrepancies in past work on the influence of essentialism on moral judgment, highlighting the role that perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior play in moral condemnation. (shrink)

In this chapter, we outline the interdisciplinary contributions that philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have provided in the understanding of the self and identity, focusing on one specific line of burgeoning research: the importance of morality to perceptions of self and identity. Of course, this rather limited focus will exclude much of what psychologists and neuroscientists take to be important to the study of self and identity (that plethora of self-hyphenated terms seen in psychology and neuroscience: self-regulation, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-concept, self-perception, (...) and more). We will likewise not engage with many canonical philosophical treatments of self and identity. But we will lay out a body of research that brings together classic themes in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to raise empirically tractable philosophical questions, and philosophically rigorous empirical questions about self and identity. More specifically, in section 4.2, we will review some recent research that has treated traditional philosophical questions about self and identity as empirical questions. Within this body of work, we will be primarily concerned with the finding that morality (more so than memory) is perceived to be at the core of self and identity. Then, in section 4.3, we raise and respond to a variety of questions and criticisms: first, about the operationalization of identity concepts in the empirical literature; second, about the generalizability of the moral self effect; third, about the direction of change; fourth, about connections with recent work in neuroscience; and fifth, about the target of evaluation. Finally, in section 4.4, we consider a variety of implications and applications of this work on the moral self. Throughout, we aim to highlight connections between classical themes in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, while also suggesting new directions for interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

An impressive variety of theories of ontology of musical works has been offered in the last fifty years. Recently, the ontologists have been paying more attention to methodological issues, in particular, the problem of determining criteria of a good theory. Although different methodological approaches involve different views on the importance and exact role of intuitiveness of a theory, most philosophers writing on the ontology of music agree that intuitiveness and compliance with musical practice play an important part when judging theories. (...) A multitude of diverse claims exist regarding folk intuitions and matters of musical practice in the literature on the ontology of musical works. In this review paper, a systematized collection of about one hundred empirical claims extracted from the theoretical literature is presented. All of the empirical claims are categorized thematically. The paper also includes a short discussion on the role of appeals to common intuitions in methodological literature, as well as some suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 72-75.

This article provides an overview and analysis of recent work on the extended self, demonstrating that the boundaries of selves are fluid, shifting across biological, artifactual, and sociocultural structures. First, it distinguishes the notions of minimal self, person, and narrative self. Second, it surveys how philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists argue that embodiment, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and moral character traits can be extended and what that implies for the boundaries of selves. It also reviews and responds to various criticisms and (...) counterarguments against the extended self. The main focus is on the link between the extended mind and extended self, which has received the most attention in recent literature. But accounts of the extended self developed independently of the extended mind are also briefly discussed. This article ends by drawing out some of the conceptual, methodological, and normative implications of the extended self and suggesting some directions for future research. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

Certain of our traits are thought more central to who we are: they comprise ourindividual identity. What makes these traits privileged in this way? What accounts for theiridentity centrality? Although considerations of identity play a key role in many different areas of moral philosophy, I argue that we currently have no satisfactory account of the basis of identity centrality. Nor should we expect one. Rather, we should adopt an error theory: we should concede that there is nothing in reality corresponding (...) to the perceived distinction between the central and peripheral traits of a person. (shrink)

Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of evidence supporting these findings, a critique by (...) Starmans & Bloom (2018) suggests that this research program conflates personal identity with mere similarity. To address this criticism, we explore how loss of someone’s morality or memories influence perceptions of identity change, and perceptions of moral duties towards the target of the change. We present participants with a classic ‘body switch’ thought experiment and after assessing perceptions of identity persistence, we present a moral dilemma, asking participants to imagine that one of the patients must die (Study 1) or be left alone in a care home for the rest of their life (Study 2). Our results highlight the importance of the continuity of moral character, suggesting lay intuitions are tracking (something like) personal identity, not just mere similarity. (shrink)

Character-trait attribution is an important component of everyday social cognition that has until recently received insufficient attention in traditional accounts of folk psychology. In this paper, I consider how the case of character-trait attribution fits into the debate between mindreading-based and broadly ‘pluralistic’ approaches to folk psychology. Contrary to the arguments of some pluralists, I argue that the evidence on trait understanding does not show that it is a distinct, non-mentalistic mode of folk-psychological reasoning, but rather suggests that traits are (...) ordinarily understood as mentalistic dispositions. I also examine several ways in which trait attribution might also serve regulative, ‘mindshaping’ functions by promoting predictable norm-governed behavior, and argue that mindreading plays several important roles in these cases as well. I conclude that an appreciation of the relationship between trait attribution and mindreading is crucial to understanding the role it plays in our folk psychology. (shrink)

The relationships among character strengths (forgiveness and gratitude), happiness, and pro-social bystander behavior in bullying were analyzed. The sample includes 500 (early adolescents) and 500 (middle adolescents) of both genders, between 12 and 18 years old (M age = 14.70, SD = 1.58). Two structural equation models were calculated. Results of the first model indicated that forgiveness, gratitude, and happiness had a direct positive relation with pro-social bystander behavior. Furthermore, human strengths were indirectly related to prosocial behavior in bullying for (...) this effect in happiness. The second model showed that pro-social bystander behavior had a positive effect on human strengths and happiness. Multi-group analyses indicated that gender and stage of adolescence did not moderate the relations found in the model. Overall findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between character strengths, happiness, and pro-social bystander behavior. (shrink)

Filmul Solaris (1972) al lui Andrei Tarkovski poate fi abordat prin prisma filosofiei minții, a întrebărilor esențiale în acest domeniu. Aceste întrebări se referă la personalitate și suferință, care acoperă cel puțin perioada de la Rene Descartes la filosofii moderni, precum Derek Parfit și Hilary Putnam. Solaris apare ca un vehicul adecvat pentru a explora provocările filosofice. De altfel, filmul Solaris al lui Tarkovsky permite multiple interpretări semantice. În același timp, Solaris prezintă un exemplu excelent despre modul în care spațiile (...) heterotopice pot exista în termeni cinematografici. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30893.23521. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView. Despite the acknowledgement of the moral significance of consent there is still much work to be done in determining which specific sexual encounters count as unproblematically consensual. This paper focuses on the impact of deception. It takes up the specific case of deception about one's self. It may seem obvious that one ought not to lie to a sexual partner about who one is, but determining which features of oneself are most relevant, as well as (...) the lies which it follows would be impermissible to tell, is complicated. It is argued here that deception about one's morally valenced character traits, those we think of as virtues and vices, are particularly problematic. This is true regardless of whether knowing the truth about those traits would have made a difference to one's partner's consent. Attention is then drawn to a range of types of lies that one ought not to tell. (shrink)

About the main psychological and philosophical aspects detached from the film Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovski, as well as the cinema techniques used by the director to convey his messages to the spectator. In the "Introduction" I briefly present the relevant elements of Tarkovski's biography and an overview of Stanislav Lem's Solaris novel and the film Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. In "Cinema Technique" I talk about the specific rhythm of the scenes, the radical movement triggered by Tarkovsky in modern (...) cinema, the role of symbolic and iconic elements, and affinities with the fantastic area of Russian literature. In Psychological Aspects I analyze the issue of communication in a human society of the future considered by Tarkovsky as rigid, the obsession of the house, and the personal evolution of Kris, Hari, and the relationships between them. In Philosophical Aspects, the film is analyzed through the philosophy of the mind (Cartesian dualism, reductionism and functionalism), the problem of personal identity, the theory of heterotopic spaces developed by Michel Foucault, and the semantic interpretations that can be deduced from the film. It also analyzes the issue of personal identity through Locke's philosophy. "Conclusions" show the general ideas of this essay, namely that Man's attempts to classify and maintain forms of interaction with unknown entities will always be condemned to failure and will reflect a major mistake in the panoptic world in which we live. In this framework of analysis of the philosophy of mind, functionalism seems to be the most intuitive. Solaris is, however, a movie that begins as a search for answers and comes to provide these answers with a whole range of different questions. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Abstract Introduction 1 Cinema technique 2 Psychological Aspects 3 Philosophical aspects Conclusions Bibliography Notes -/- DOI: 10.58679/MM59030 , ISBN 978-606-033-225-1. (shrink)

Proponents of moral abolitionism, like Richard Garner, qualify their view as an â assertiveâ version of the position. They counsel moral realists and anti-realists alike to accept moral error theory, abolish morality, and encourage others to abolish morality. In response, this paper argues that moral error theorists should abolish morality, but become quiet about such abolition. It offers a quietist or nonassertive version of moral abolitionism. It does so by first clarifying and addressing the arguments for and against assertive moral (...) abolitionism. Second, it develops novel criticisms of assertive moral abolitionism and offers nonassertive moral abolitionism in response. Third, it discusses how various metaethical views might respond to nonassertive moral abolitionism. Its basic claim is that nonassertive moral abolitionism provides superior therapeutic benefits over assertive moral abolitionism and other conserving and reforming approaches to moral discourse. (shrink)

Background: Recent literature on addiction and judgments about the characteristics of agents has focused on the implications of adopting a ‘brain disease’ versus ‘moral weakness’ model of addiction. Typically, such judgments have to do with what capacities an agent has (e.g., the ability to abstain from substance use). Much less work, however, has been conducted on the relationship between addiction and judgments about an agent’s identity, including whether or to what extent an individual is seen as the same person after (...) becoming addicted. Methods: We conducted a series of vignette-based experiments (total N = 3,620) to assess lay attitudes concerning addiction and identity persistence, systematically manipulating key characteristics of agents and their drug of addiction. Conclusions: In Study 1, we found that US participants judged an agent who became addicted to drugs as being closer to ‘a completely different person’ than ‘completely the same person’ as the agent who existed prior to the addiction. In Studies 2-6, we investigated the intuitive basis for this result, finding that lay judgments of altered identity as a consequence of drug use and addiction are driven primarily by perceived negative changes in the moral character of drug users, who are seen as having deviated from their good true selves. (shrink)

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions in online self-radicalization in its myriad (...) guises, encompassing extreme as well as more mundane forms. We begin by characterizing the phenomenon of technological seduction. Next, we distinguish between top-down seduction and bottom-up seduction. We then situate both forms of technological seduction within the theoretical model of dynamical systems theory. We conclude by articulating strategies for combatting online self-radicalization. (shrink)