Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The (...) weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination. (shrink)

In this text Wundt challenges associationist and rationalist psychology and suggests that what we need is a careful analysis of the more elementary psychical processes, of the facts of attention and of the wider scope of consciousness, as well as of the relations between them and of the manifold affective processes that intervene in all these cases. It is rejected the view that humans could be able to explain what happens when they are thinking by simply turning their attention directly (...) to their own consciousness. In Wundt’s view, nothing can be discovered of the most complicated psychical processes if they are investigated directly and without any further preparation. As a consequence, direct observation of internal mental states is not scientifically accomplishable, Wundt’s “introspection” being not a naïve operation as too often reported. (shrink)

Those of us who are sympathetic to Kantian ethics usually are so because we regard it as an ethics of autonomy, based on rational self-esteem and respect for the human capacity to direct one’s own life according to rational principles. Kantian ethical theory is grounded on the idea that the moral law is binding on me only because it is a law proceeding from my own will. The ground of a law of autonomy lies in the very will which is (...) to be subject to the law, and this leaves no room for any issue about why this will should obey the law. The idea of autonomy also identifies the authority of the law with the value constituting the content of the law, in that it bases the law on our esteem for the dignity of rational nature in ourselves, which makes every rational being an end in itself. (shrink)

Do the physical facts of the viewed environment account for the ordinary experiences we have of that environment? According to standard philosophical views, distal facts do account for our experiences, a phenomenon explained by appeal to perceptual constancy, the phenomenal stability of objects and environmental properties notwithstanding physical changes in proximal stimulation. This essay reviews a significant but neglected research tradition in experimental psychology according to which percepts systematically do not correspond to mind-independent distal facts. Instead, stability of percept values (...) comes in degrees, and physical facts about the viewed environment alone do not account for our ordinary experiences of the world. I conclude that more attention to descriptive research in psychophysics is warranted if what is sought is a philosophical theory of the nature of our perceptual relation with the world. (shrink)

Carroll Izard’s theoretical and empirical work has played a preeminent role in energizing the renascence in the study of the emotions and emotional development in normality and pathology. A brief historical overview of his career is presented. Izard’s differential emotions theory (DET) has exerted influence in a number of domains and disciplines. Illustrations are provided from research and prevention in developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology. Personal recollections of Cal Izard are provided showing that Izard is not only an influential theoretician (...) and researcher, but also a wonderful emotional being. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the relationship between eye movements, mental imagery and memory retrieval in four studies based on eye-tracking experiments. The first study is an investigation of eye movements during mental imagery elicited both visually and verbally. The use of complex stimuli and the development of a novel method where eye movements are recorded concurrently with verbal data enabled the above-mentioned relationship to be studied to an extent going beyond what previous research had been able to do. Eye movements were (...) found to closely reflect content and spatial layout while participants were listening to a spoken scene description, while they were describing the same scene from memory, and while they were describing a picture they had previously seen. This effect was equally strong during recall from memory irrespective of whether the scene visualised had originally been inspected visually by the participants or whether it was constructed whole-cloth from long-term memory. It was also found that eye movements "to nothing" appeared both when the participants were visualising scenes while looking at a blank screen and when they were doing so in complete darkness. The second study explored an effect frequently observed in the first study, involving a "scaling-down" during recall of participants' gaze patterns to an area smaller than that occupied by the stimulus encoded. It was found that this scaling effect correlated with spatial-imagery ability: the gaze patterns of participants with weaker spatial-imagery ability were closer in size to the encoded scene than the gaze patterns of those stronger in spatial-imagery ability. In the third study, the role of eye movements during mental imagery was investigated in four experiments where eye movements were prohibited during either the encoding phase or the recall phase. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that maintaining central fixation during visual or auditory encoding, respectively, had no effect on how eye movements were executed during recall. Thus, oculomotor events during recall are not reproductions of those produced during encoding. In Experiments 3 and 4, central fixation was instead maintained during recall. This turned out to alter and impair scene recollection, irrespective of the modality of encoding. Finally, in the fourth study, the functional role of eye movements in relation to memory retrieval was further investigated by means of direct eye-movement manipulation in the retrieval phase of an episodic-memory task. Four conditions were used: free viewing on a blank screen, maintaining central fixation, viewing within a square congruent with the location of the objects to be recalled, and viewing within a square incongruent with the location of the objects to be recalled. The results obtained show that gaze position plays an active and facilitatory role during memory retrieval. The findings from these studies are discussed in the light of current theories regarding eye movements during mental imagery and memory retrieval. (shrink)

Some psychologists have recently tried to develop new approaches to psychology incompatible with both natural-science views of the discipline and basic tenets of postmodernism. In her new book on psychology’s interpretative turn, Barbara Held refers to these thinkers as "middleground theorists" or MGTs. Most of the MGTs reject psychological laws, defend free choice and agency, stress the role of values in psychological inquiry, and argue for a hermeneutical methodology. Some reject scientific realism and embrace epistemological relativism. Both Held and I (...) express doubts about some of these views. (shrink)

La concepción fenomenológica del sentido común inspirada por James sostiene que atender es esencialmente un fenómeno mental consciente. Las implicancias filosóficas modales de esta tesis sobre la naturaleza de la atención son claras. No es posible atender una cosa, sin ser consciente de ella. Sobre la base de estudios clásicos en torno a patologías visuales como la vista ciega y a experimentos recientes con sujetos no patológicos, este artículo argumenta que la conclusión filosófica jamesiana acerca de la metafísica de la (...) atención es falsa. La evidencia sugiere que de hecho es posible atender objetos sin experimentarlos conscientemente. (shrink)