Multiple perspectives are applied in approaching the subject of psychological role the media plays in the processes of indoctrination of political and corporate ideologies in western socie ties. This paper provides a review of critical theory on the media, examining the way in which postmodern propaganda contributes to the formation of ‘the public’ and the institution of public relations. It is found that consumerist imperative, insisting on the negation of individuality, reproduces certain types of personalities, thus a modern day (...) individual appears to be deper sonalised and highly depended upon media, politicians, advertisers and relatively recent agents – influencers – for the construction of their reality. The paper examines how collective enti ties, made up from heterogeneous pluralist institutions, can become the core of social ‘pathos’. Paper attempts to deconstruct some aspects of the existing relationships between the economy, politics and media, and investigate the way in which propagandistic rhetoric can influence the psyche of individuals and communities. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Haig and Borsboom explore the relevance of the theory of truth for psychological science. Although they conclude that correspondence theories of truth are best suited to offer the resources for making sense of scientific practice, they leave open the possibility that other theories might accomplish those same ends. I argue that deflationary theories of truth, which deny that there is any substantive property that unifies the class of truths, makes equally good sense of scientific practice (...) as the correspondence theory, but at lesser theoretical cost. I also argue that the considerations Haig and Borsboom draw on are better thought of as issues relevant to realism, and thus separate from the theory of truth. I conclude that while they are correct to engage questions about what makes true the various claims that arise in psychological research, they may do so without saddling themselves with a correspondence theory. (shrink)

Should economics study the psychological basis of agents' choice behaviour? I show how this question is multifaceted and profoundly ambiguous. There is no sharp distinction between "mentalist'' answers to this question and rival "behavioural'' answers. What's more, clarifying this point raises problems for mentalists of the "functionalist'' variety (Dietrich and List, 2016). Firstly, functionalist hypotheses collapse into hypotheses about input--output dispositions, I show, unless one places some unwelcome restrictions on what counts as a cognitive variable. Secondly, functionalist hypotheses make (...) some risky commitments about the plasticity of agents' choice dispositions. (shrink)

APPENDIX: The data emerging from the clinical and brain studies described above suggest that, in the case of OCD, there are two pertinent brain mechanisms that are distinguishable both in terms of neuro-dynamics and in terms of the conscious experiences that accompany them. These mechanisms can be characterized, on anatomical and perhaps evolutionary grounds, as a lower-level and a higher-level mechanism. The clinical treatment has, when successful, an activating effect on the higher-level mechanism, and a suppressive effect on the lower-level (...) one. (shrink)

Recent work in moral philosophy has emphasized the foundational role played by interpersonal accountability in the analysis of moral concepts such as moral right and wrong, moral obligation and duty, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility (Darwall 2006; 2013a; 2013b). Extending this framework to the field of moral psychology, we hypothesize that our moral attitudes, emotions, and motives are also best understood as based in accountability. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, we argue that the implicit aim of the central (...) moral motives and emotions is to hold people - whether oneself or others - accountable for compliance with the demands of morality. Moral condemnation is based in a motive to get perpetrators to hold themselves accountable for their wrongdoing, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere retributive motive to make perpetrators suffer (�2). And moral conscience is based in a genuine motive to hold oneself accountable for behaving in accordance with moral demands, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere egoistic motive to appear moral to others (�3). The accountability-based theory of the moral motives and emotions we offer provides better explanations of the extant empirical data than any of the major alternative theories of moral motivation. Moreover, conceiving of moral psychology in this way gives us a new and illuminating perspective on what makes morality distinctive: its essential connection to our practice of holding one another accountable (�4). (shrink)

According to a widely shared view, a radical change took place in the role of intersubjectivity in Hegel's philosophy somewhere between Jena and Berlin. For instance, Jürgen Habermas's judgement is that whereas in the Jena writings – in the JenaRealphilosophien, and perhaps still in the 1807Phenomenology of Spirit– Hegel conceived of intersubjectivity as an essential element in the constitution of subjectivity and of objectivity, in Berlin Hegel's intersubjectivist conception was replaced by a metaphysics of the absolute I or absolute self-consciousness, (...) in which intersubjectivity no longer plays any important constitutive role.Perhaps it is due to something like this view having been mostly taken for granted even among Hegel-specialists that scholarly literature on intersubjectivity in Hegel's late Encyclopaedic system is indeed very scarce. Robert R. Williams'Hegel's Ethics of Recognitionargues convincingly that the theme of intersubjective recognition can be seen as a central thread running through the whole of Hegel's Encyclopaedic philosophy ofobjectivespirit. But very little has so far been written on the theme of intersubjectivity or intersubjective recognition in Hegel's Encyclopaedic philosophy of subjective spirit. My thesis in what follows is that intersubjectivity or intersubjective mediation in recognition can and should in fact be seen as an essential constituent also of subjective spirit as Hegel conceptualises it in the 1830 Encyclopaedia. (shrink)

Marriage is one of the most important topics in the education field since life in this world is structured by interaction among families and between families and other social institutions. Dissatisfaction and unsustainability of marriage have led the urgency of premarital education in various countries. The problem is that the spread of virtual reality has made marriage itself to become more complex and experience reinterpretation and reconfiguration, moreover with the emergence of new kind of marriage in the digital era, i.e. (...) virtual marriage. Everybody who has observed, known, or even tried, certainly asks the question, “Could (or: should) I accept virtual marriage?” . This study was aimed to investigate the role of tolerance of ambiguity and illusion of intimacy in online dating in predicting the acceptance of virtual marriage. There were 420 adolescents and young adults (212 males, 208 females; Mage=21.10 years old, SDage=1.459 years; 338 students, 82 employees or entrepreneurs) in the Greater Jakarta, Indonesia, participated in this study. It was found that the acceptance was not predicted by the ambiguity tolerance, but by the illusion of intimacy in online dating. The psychometric issues, substantive discussion, and recommendation are presented at the end of this article. The trend of virtual marriage should not be allowed to roll away, by autopilot, without loaded by strategies in designing an online game as one of the pivotal educational technologies that needs to shape appropriate character and attitude for it. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Due to the wide array of phenomena that are of interest to them, psychologists offer highly diverse and heterogeneous types of explanations. Initially, this suggests that the question "What is psychological explanation?" has no single answer. To provide appreciation of this diversity, we begin by noting some of the more common types of explanations that psychologists provide, with particular focus on classical examples of explanations advanced in three different areas of psychology: psychophysics, physiological psychology, and information-processing psychology. To analyze (...) what is involved in these types of explanations, we consider the ways in which law-like representations of regularities and representations of mechanisms factor in psychological explanations. This consideration directs us to certain fundamental questions, e.g., "To what extent are laws necessary for psychological explanations?" and "What do psychologists have in mind when they appeal to mechanisms in explanation?" In answering such questions, it appears that laws do play important roles in psychological explanations, although most explanations in psychology appeal to accounts of mechanisms. Consequently, we provide a unifying account of what psychological explanation is. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem (...) from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Buddhists consider fear to be a root of suffering. In Chapters 2 and 7 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva provides a series of provocative verses aimed at inciting fear to motivate taking refuge in the Bodhisattvas and thereby achieve fearlessness. This article aims to analyze the moral psychology involved in this transition. It will structurally analyze fear in terms that are grounded in, and expand upon, an Abhidharma Buddhist analysis of mind. It will then contend that fear, taking refuge, and fearlessness (...) are complex intentional attitudes and will argue that the transition between them turns on relevant changes in their intentional objects. This will involve analyzing the object of fear into four aspects and 'taking refuge' as a mode of trust that ameliorates these four aspects. This analysis will also distinguish two modes of taking refuge and show the progressive role each might play in the transition from fear to fearlessness. (shrink)

The psychological mechanism of decision-making has traditionally been modeled with the help of belief-desire psychology: the agent has some desires (or other pro-attitudes) and some background beliefs and deciding between two possible actions is a matter of comparing the probability of the satisfaction of these desires given the background beliefs in the case of the performance of each action. There is a wealth of recent empirical findings about how we actually make decisions that seems to be in conflict with (...) this picture. My aim is to outline an alternative model that is consistent with these empirical findings. This alternative model emphasizes the role imagination plays in our decisions: when we decide between two possible actions, we imagine ourselves in the situation that we imagine to be the outcome of these two actions and then compare these two imaginings. (shrink)

Race is one of the most common variables in the social sciences, used to draw correlations between racial groups and numerous other important variables such as education, healthcare outcomes, aptitude tests, wealth, employment and so forth. But where concern with race once reflected the view that races were biologically real, many, if not most, contemporary social scientists have abandoned the idea that racial categories demarcate substantial, intrinsic biological differences between people. This, in turn, raises an important question about the significance (...) of race in those social sciences: if there is no biological basis of race, why are racial categories useful to social scientists? More specifically, in virtue of what are racial categories a successful basis of informative, important social scientific generalizations? 2 We’ll call this social science’s race puzzle. (shrink)

Numerous scholars, philosophers, and experts in aesthetics have underscored the profound significance of a life enriched by the presence of beauty. Consequently, the appreciation of aesthetic experiences is considered pivotal for achieving self-discovery and self-transcendence (Howell et al. 2017). Despite theoretical prominence, limited qualitative research has been conducted on this topic. To address this gap in research, this study’s objective emphasized two questions guiding the inquiry; What is the role of aesthetic encounters in aiding self-realization or individuation? and, how do (...) these experiences foster self-transcendence? -/- A thematic analysis was performed on the online interviews conducted (N=25), and their results revealed seven themes pertaining to self-realization: a) Losing Yourself to Find Yourself; b) Relatability and Self-Reflection in Art; c) Identity as a Collection of Skills; d) Art as a Medium for Self-Expression and Acknowledgment; e) Aesthetic Genres and Taste as Identity; f) Belonging and Social Identity through Art; and g) Personal Interests and Choices in Artistic Consumption. Furthermore, seven themes for the second research question of self-transcendence were also discovered: a) Mother Nature’s Beauty; b) Intense, Passionate, and Overwhelming Experiences of Heightened Consciousness; c) Sacred Symbolism, Archetypal Imagery, and the Collective Unconscious; d) Collective Effervescence, Social Connection, and Shared Meaning; e) The ‘Profound’ Found in the Mundane; f) Feelings of Spiritual Elevation and Wellbeing; and g) Self-Referential Meaning-Making through Art. These findings evidenced the transformative potential of aesthetic experiences, shedding light on the facets of personal growth and meaning that individuals derive from such encounters. (shrink)

The framework of the modern Western analysis of culture, in terms of the socio-historical situation of the subject and the reciprocal influence of one on the other, has its roots in nineteenth century discussions. This paper will examine two traditions: the hermeneutic approach of Wilhelm Dilthey, and the Völkerpsychologie of Moses Lazarus and Chajim Steinthal. The account will focus on two elements. First, Lazarus and Steinthal attempted to motivate an account based on collective structures, or forms, of rationality made manifest (...) by a people or Volk; the paper will explore their account of how collective structures can be employed in sociohistorical analysis. Second, Dilthey rejected Lazarus’s and Steinthal’s argument that it was possible to identify the norms of action governing social phenomena. Dilthey rejected any account of psychology that took it to be law-governed, even retrospectively, because he argued that the ‘nexus of life’ that is the ultimate basis of the human sciences cannot be reduced to any law-governed or explanatory relationship between the self, society, and nature. However, there is a deep tension in Dilthey’s position here, which is evident in the development of his work over time. The account below will explore this tension and its significance for the understanding of the subject and the role of psychology in the human sciences. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism towards the substance-concept „I“ plays an important role in his late thought, and can be properly understood by making reference to the 19th century debate on the scientific psychology. Friedrich Lange and Ernst Mach gave an important contribution to that debate. Both of them developed the ideas of Gustav Fechner, and thought about a „psychology without soul“, i.e. an investigation that gives up with the old metaphysics of substance in dealing with the mind-body problem. In this paper (...) I shall deal with both Lange and Mach (whose writings has been read by Nietzsche), in order to shed some light on Nietzsche’s rejection of the „I“ in philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of four key debates about the roles of emotion in morality. First, many believe that emotions are an important psychological mechanism for explaining altruistic behavior and moral conscience in humans. Second, there is considerable debate about the causal role of affective reactions in moral judgment. Third, some philosophers have argued that emotions have a constitutive role in moral thought and even moral facts. Finally, philosophers disagree about whether affective influence undermines the justification of (...) moral beliefs or, in suitable circumstances, guides us toward moral truth. (shrink)

Special and General theories of relativity may be considered as the most significant examples of integrative thinking. From these works we see that Albert Einstein attached great importance to how we understand geometry and dimensions. It is shown that physics powered by the new multidimensional elastic geometry is a reliable basis for science integration. Instead of searching for braneworlds (elastic membranes - EM) in higher dimensions we will start by searching them in our 3+1 dimensional world. The cornerstone of the (...) new philosophy is an idea that lower dimensional EMs are an essential component of the living matter, they are responsible for our perceptions, intellect, pattern recognition and high speed signal propagation. According to this theory each EM has both physical and perceptive (psychological) meanings: it exists as our Universe-like physical reality for its inner objects and at the same time it plays perceptive (psychological) role in the external bulk space-time. This philosophy may help us to build up a science which explains not only inanimate, unconscious phenomena, but consciousness as well. (shrink)

Psychological studies show that the beliefs of two agents in a hypothesis can diverge even if both agents receive the same evidence. This phenomenon of belief polarisation is often explained by invoking biased assimilation of evidence, where the agents’ prior views about the hypothesis affect the way they process the evidence. We suggest, using a Bayesian model, that even if such influence is excluded, belief polarisation can still arise by another mechanism. This alternative mechanism involves differential weighting of the (...) evidence arising when agents have different initial views about the reliability of their sources of evidence. We provide a systematic exploration of the conditions for belief polarisation in Bayesian models which incorporate opinions about source reliability, and we discuss some implications of our findings for the psychological literature. (shrink)

The view that folk psychology is primarily mindreading beliefs and desires has come under challenge in recent years. I have argued that we also understand others in terms of individual properties such as personality traits and generalizations from past behavior, and in terms of group properties such as stereotypes and social norms (Andrews 2012). Others have also argued that propositional attitude attribution isn’t necessary for predicting others’ behavior, because this can be done in terms of taking Dennett’s Intentional Stance (Zawidzki (...) 2013), appealing to social structures (Maibom 2007), shared norms (McGeer 2007) or via solution based heuristics for reaching equilibrium between social partners (Morton 2003). But it isn’t only prediction that can be done without thinking about what others think; we can explain and understand people in terms of their personality traits, habitual behaviors, and social practices as well. The decentering of propositional attitude attributions goes hand in hand with a move away from taking folk psychology to be primarily a predictive device. While experiments examining folk psychological abilities in children, infants, and other species still rest on asking subjects to predict behavior, theoretical investigations as to the evolutionary function of folk psychology have stressed the role of explanation (Andrews 2012) and regulative functions (McGeer 2007, Zawidzki 2013, Fenici 2011). In this paper I argue that an explanatory role for folk psychology is also a regulative role, and that language is not required for these regulative functions. I will start by drawing out the relationship between prediction, explanation, and regulation of behavior according to both mindreading approaches to folk psychology and the pluralistic account I defend. I will argue that social cognition does not take the form of causal reasoning so much as it does normative reasoning, and will introduce the folk psychological spiral. Then I will examine the cognitive resources necessary for participating in the folk psychological spiral, and I will argue that these cognitive resources can be had without language. There is preliminary evidence that some other species understand one another through a normative lens that, through looping effects, creates expectations that community members strive to live up to. (shrink)

Within dramatherapy and psychodrama, the term ‘de-roling’ indicates a set of activities that assist the subjects of therapy in ‘disrobing’ themselves from their fictional characters. Starting from the psychological needs and the therapeutic goals that ‘de-roling’ techniques address in dramatherapy and psychodrama, this text provides a broader understanding of procedures and exercises that define and ease transitional experiences across cultural practices such as religious rituals and spatial design. After this introductory section, we propose a tentative answer as to why (...) game studies and virtual world research largely ignored processes of ‘roling’ and ‘de-roling’ that separate the lived experience of role-play from our everyday sense of the self. The concluding sections argue that de-roling techniques are likely to become more relevant, both academically and in terms of their practical applications, with the growing diffusion of virtual technologies in social practices. The relationships we can establish with ourselves and with our surroundings in digital virtual worlds are, we argue, only partially comparable with similar occurrences in pre-digital practices of subjectification. We propose a perspective according to which the accessibility and immersive phenomenological richness of virtual reality technologies are likely to exacerbate the potentially dissociative effects of virtual reality applications. This text constitutes an initial step towards framing specific socio-technical concerns and starting a timely conversation that binds together dramatherapy, psychodrama, game studies, and the design of digital virtual worlds. (shrink)

In his article “The Ontology of Musical Versions: Introducing the Hypothesis of Nested Types,” Nemesio Puy raises a hypothesis that continuity of the purpose is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for musical work’s identity. Puy’s hypothesis is relevant to two topics in cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy. The first topic is the prevalence of teleological reasoning about various objects and its influence on persistence and categorization judgments. The second one is the importance of an artist’s intention in the (...) categorization of artworks. We tested the teleological hypothesis across three studies. Vignettes in these three studies describe a musical work being changed in some of these aspects: purpose either changed or retained; score either changed or retained; change is made either by the same or a different composer. The results suggest that teleological considerations impact judgments on the persistence of musical works, but this impact appears to be relatively weak. The results also suggest that persistence judgments strongly depend on whether acoustical properties were changed, while whether the change was made by the original composer seems to be relatively unimportant. (shrink)

I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compatible with determinism and not enough on whether free will is compatible with specific causal explanations for our actions, including those offered by empirical psychology. If free will is understood as a set of cognitive and volitional capacities, possessed and exercised to varying degrees, then psychology can inform us about the extent to which humans (as a species and as individuals) possess those capacities (...) and manage to exercise them across various situations. While recent work on the role of consciousness in action has been misinterpreted to suggest its role is illusory, recent work in social psychology presents a more viable challenge to our free will. The extent to which we can act on reasons we would accept or can know why we are doing what we do appears to be much less than we presume. Further work is necessary, of course, and it will need to involve both philosophical analysis and psychological investigation. Questions regarding the nature of human freedom and responsibility clearly require the conceptual resources of philosophy and the empirical resources of psychology. (This chapter was written in 2008 for the never published Oxford Handbook on Philosophy of Psychology.). (shrink)

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 (...) and 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the psychology of moral judgment and its implications for normative ethics and metaethics. Recent empirical findings in moral psychology, such as the impact of emotions, intuitions, and situational factors on moral judgments, have sparked a debate about whether ordinary moral judgments are systematically error-prone. Some philosophers, such as Peter Singer and Joshua Greene, argue that these findings challenge the reliability of moral intuitions and support more "reasoned", consequentialist approaches over deontological ones. The first part of the dissertation (...) reviews these provocative findings and the philosophical reactions to them, which often invoke the notion of 'moral relevance' - the idea that some factors shaping moral judgments are morally irrelevant. The second part develops a psychological account of moral relevance, drawing on theories of the moral domain, the role of emotions, and models of moral cognition. This account reveals the complex interplay of intuitive and reasoned processes in generating impressions of moral relevance. The final part reevaluates the philosophical discussions in light of this psychological understanding. It contends that the evolutionary background of moral intuitions does not necessarily render them inadequate, and that both deontological and consequentialist judgments likely depend on evolved intuitions to a significant degree. Furthermore, the tendency to dismiss certain influences on moral judgment as irrelevant can itself be explained psychologically. Considering the psychological account presented, mind-independent accounts of morality become less plausible. The dissertation concludes that while empirical moral psychology reveals important constraints on normative theorizing, it does not decisively favor consequentialism over deontology. To assess the significance of empirical-scientific findings for ethics, a nuanced understanding of the origins of moral judgments is nevertheless indispensable. (shrink)

According to the standard view in philosophy, intentionality is the mark of genuine action. In psychology, human cognition and agency are now widely explained in terms of the workings of two distinct systems (or types of processes), and intentionality is not a central notion in this dual-system theory. Further, it is often claimed, in psychology, that most human actions are automatic, rather than consciously controlled. This raises pressing questions. Does the dual-system theory preserve the philosophical account of intentional action? How (...) much of our behavior is intentional according to this view? And what is the role of consciousness? I will propose here a revised account of intentional action within the dual-system framework, and we will see that most of our behavior can qualify as intentional, even if most of it is automatic. An important lesson will be that philosophical accounts of intentional action need to pay more attention to the role of consciousness in action. (shrink)

The debate around the notions of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge has proven crucial for the development of many fields in philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, metametaphysics etc. We advocate that the recent debate on the two notions is also fruitful for man-made distributed computing systems and for the epistemic analysis thereof. Following a recently proposed modal and fallibilistic account of a priori knowledge, we elaborate the corresponding concept of a priori belief: We propose a rich taxonomy of (...) types of a priori beliefs and their role for the different agents that participate in the system engineering process, which match the existing view exceedingly well and are particularly promising for explaining and dealing with unexpected behaviors in fault-tolerant distributed systems. Developing such a philosophical foundation will provide a sound basis for eventually implementing our ideas in a suitable epistemic reasoning and analysis framework and, hence, constitutes a mandatory first step for developing methods and tools to cope with the various challenges that emerge in such systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing (...) and assessing the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed. (shrink)

Genetics and the biological sciences are the two contemporary scientific fields most readily called to mind in thinking about science and eugenics. Yet the history of another discipline, psychology, is enmeshed more intricately with eugenics than are the histories of either genetics or even the biological sciences more generally. This is true of the history of eugenics in Canada. Moreover, continuities in the roles that psychology plays in how we think about sorts of people and their ability and right (...) to parent make psychology’s eugenic past relevant to reflection on contemporary and ongoing practices and policies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a modified version of what Devitt calls the Representational Thesis. According to RT, syntactic rules or principles are psychologically real, in the sense that they are represented in the mind/brain of every linguistically competent speaker/hearer. I present a range of behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the claim that the human sentence processing mechanism constructs mental representations of the syntactic properties of linguistic stimuli. I then survey a range of psychologically plausible computational models of comprehension (...) and show that they are all committed to RT. I go on to sketch a framework for thinking about the nature of the representations involved in sentence processing. My claim is that these are best characterized not as propositional attitudes but, rather, as subpersonal states whose representational properties are determined by their functional role. Finally, I distinguish between explicit and implicit representations and argue that the latter can be drawn on as data by the algorithms that constitute our sentence processing routines. I conclude that skepticism concerning the psychological reality of grammars cannot be sustained. (shrink)

According to psychological constructivism, emotions result from projecting folk emotion concepts onto felt affective episodes (e.g., Barrett 2017, LeDoux 2015). Moreover, while constructivists acknowledge there’s a biological dimension to emotion, they deny that emotions are (or involve) affect programs. So they also deny that emotions are natural kinds. However, the essential role constructivism gives to felt experience and folk concepts leads to an account that’s extensionally inadequate and functionally inaccurate. Moreover, biologically-oriented proposals that reject these commitments are not similarly (...) encumbered. Recognizing this has two implications: biological mechanisms are more central to emotion than constructivism allows, and the conclusion that emotions aren’t natural kinds is premature. (shrink)

Plato extends a bold, confident, and surprising empirical challenge. It is implicitly a claim about the psychological — more specifically motivational — economies of human beings, asserting that within each such economy there is a desire to live well. Call this claim ‘psychological eudaimonism’ (‘PE’). Further, the context makes clear that Plato thinks that this desire dominates in those who have it. In other words, the desire to live well can reliably be counted on (when accompanied with correct (...) beliefs about the role of morality or virtue in living well) to move people be virtuous. As we will argue, this general claim appears in not only Plato but Aristotle and the Stoics as well. But it is one we might wonder about, in three ways. First, we might wonder about its warrant. After all, the claim is universal in scope; yet it is about a highly contingent fact about the motivational propensities of individual human organisms, and there is abundant variability in the individual forms human nature takes. What grounds could the ancients have for their confidence that there are no outliers (assuming, as we do, that they do not merely misspeak in framing general claims as universal ones)? Second, we might wonder about its truth. For were it true, it would entail something remarkable about the nature of rationality that we (post-)moderns would be wise to heed. And third, we might wonder about its relationship with normative eudaimonism. By ‘normative eudaimonism’ (‘NE’) we mean the claim that we have conclusive reason to act in ways that conduce to our own eudaimonia. As we will show, the key to these three questions is the first. If we consider what justification the ancients have for their claim, we can see why that claim must be true. Moreover, as we will also show, it must be true because of the nature of practical rationality as the ancients understood it — that is, in terms of normative eudaimonism. We will show this by marshalling unexpected resources: Donald Davidson’s work in understanding how we interpret others and in so doing make sense of them as rational beings. If we couple Davidson’s account of interpretation with the eudaimonist structure of practical rationality essential to these ancient ethical theories, psychological eudaimonism is a consequence. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section I, we lay out the textual basis for ascribing PE to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Section II, we introduce Davidson’s account of interpretation. This allows us to appropriate that account in Section III to the particular purposes of normative eudaimonism, to support the claim that we must ascribe the desire to live well to those whom we would see as rational. Finally, in Section IV we consider challenges to this strategy. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between cognitive styles of managers working in tourism companies and dynamic capabilities of these companies. Design – The research relies on a quantitative questionnaire. Methodology – To answer the research question, the bivariate (Pearson) correlation was applied. A number of 268 answers from people working in tourism were received. Findings – We found a positive correlation between different dimensions of dynamic capabilities of tourism companies. These capabilities are influenced (...) by managers’ cognitive characteristics. The organizational culture plays a mediating role in the latter relationship. Implications for theory – The paper offers an alternative understanding of dynamic capabilities in tourism and hospitality; the paper also opens new paths for academic research on the impact of cognitive characteristics of managers on the dynamic capabilities of tourism companies. Implications for practitioners – Making accurate psychological portrait of the candidate can predict his/her behavior in certain situation, such as response towards environmental change using dynamic capabilities and when making the necessary changes to the organizational culture. Originality – This study proposes model of influence of a manager’s cognitive style on dynamic capabilities, whereby organizational culture moderates this relationship. (shrink)

In this article I explore the concept of originality from several viewpoints. Within the world of printmaking, I show that while print dealers may draw attention to originality in order to enhance economic value, artists emphasize the aesthetic value of a work based on the freedom to express artistic intent and to experiment with techniques of the medium. Within the worlds of philosophy and to some extent, psychology, “originality” has been misleadingly tied to the notions of “creativity” and “genius,” thereby (...) replicating a cultural bias that links an artist to particular mental processes that are unnecessarily exclusive. An experiential account of creativity like the one recently advanced by Bence Nanay not only disadvantages those artists whose lived experiences reflect fewer social opportunities than their counterparts, but also invokes a concept of luck that undermines the role of originality within an artwork's overall aesthetic value. (shrink)

Why do our intuitive knowledge ascriptions shift when a subject's practical interests are mentioned? Many efforts to answer this question have focused on empirical linguistic evidence for context sensitivity in knowledge claims, but the empirical psychology of belief formation and attribution also merits attention. The present paper examines a major psychological factor (called ?need-for-closure?) relevant to ascriptions involving practical interests. Need-for-closure plays an important role in determining whether one has a settled belief; it also influences the accuracy of one's (...) cognition. Given these effects, it is a mistake to assume that high- and low-stakes subjects provided with the same initial evidence are perceived to enjoy belief formation that is the same as far as truth-conducive factors are concerned. This mistaken assumption has underpinned contextualist and interest-relative invariantist treatments of cases in which contrasting knowledge ascriptions are elicited by descriptions of subjects with the same initial information and different stakes. The paper argues that intellectualist invariantism can easily accommodate such cases. (shrink)

There are historical events which cannot easily be made sense of by reference to the actions of single individuals. I suggest that one way to understand such events is by building on the involved agents' joint experience, or reports thereof. The phenomenology of joint involvement, so my suggestion, is of use in a particular kind of sense making that combines hermeneutical and explanatory elements. Such sense making, I argue, is narrative in character. I suggest a particular conception of historical narratives (...) that aligns them with what I call, taking up an idea from Ian McEwan's novel Atonement , `psychological realism' — the idea that what renders stories accurate is a reality with both physical and mental characteristics. I end by illustrating my account with a historical example. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether the influential distinction between levels of explanation introduced by David Marr can be used as a general framework for contemplating levels of explanation in cognitive sciences. Marr introduced three levels at which we can explain cognitive processes: the computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels. Some argue that Marr’s levels of explanation can only be applied to modular cognitive systems. However, since many psychological processes are non-modular, it seems that Marr’s levels of explanation cannot (...) explain such psychological processes. To show that the latter claim is not convincing, the paper draws upon an influential paradigm from cognitive sciences that is based on the principle of free energy. Based on this paradigm, the paper argues that even non-modular psychological processes can be computationally analyzed and algorithmically implemented. The conclusion of the paper is that, at least under the assumption that the func- tion of the mind is to minimize free energy, Marr’s levels of explanation can be successfully used as a general framework for understanding psychological processes at different levels of description. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these (...) states? Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

This collection arose out of a conference on intuitions at the University of Notre Dame in April 1996. The papers in it mainly address two related questions: (a) How much evidential weight should be assigned to intuitions? and (b) Are concepts governed by necessary and sufficient conditions, or are they governed by ‘family resemblance’ conditions, as Wittgenstein suggested? The book includes four papers by psychologists relating and analyzing some empirical findings concerning intuitions and eleven papers by philosophers endorsing various answers (...) to these questions. (shrink)

One of the most pressing questions concerning singular demonstrative mental contents is what makes their content singular: that is to say, what makes it the case that individual objects are the representata of these mental states. Many philosophers have required sophisticated intellectual capacities for singular content to be possible, such as the possession of an elaborate scheme of space and time. A more recent reaction to this strategy proposes to account for singular content solely on the basis of empirical models (...) of visual processing. We believe both sides make good points, and offer an intermediate way of looking into singular content. Our suggestion is that singular content may be traced to psychological capacities to form flexible, abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex. This allows them to be sustained for increasingly longer periods of time and extrapolated beyond the context of perception, thus going beyond lowlevel sensory representations while also falling short of more sophisticated intellectual abilities. (shrink)

The DSM‐5 highlights two essential psychological features of anorexia nervosa (AN): recalcitrant fear of gaining weight and body image disturbance. Prominent accounts grant false beliefs about body weight and shape a central role in the explanation of AN behavior. In this article, we propose a stronger emphasis on recalcitrant fear. We show that such fear can explain AN behavior without the intermediary of a false belief, and thus without the associated explanatory burdens and conceptual difficulties. We illustrate how shifting (...) the emphasis from false belief to recalcitrant fear can supplement a number of different non‐doxastic models of AN. (shrink)

Several theories propose that one of the core functions of inner speech (IS) is to support subjects in the completion of cognitively effortful tasks, especially those involving executive functions (EF). In this paper we focus on two populations who notoriously encounter difficulties in performing EF tasks, namely, people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (Sz-AVH) and people within the Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We focus on these two populations because they represent two different ways in which IS can (...) fail to help in EF tasks, which can be illustrative for other mental conditions. First, we review the main components of EF (Section 1). Then we explain the functions that IS is taken to perform in the domain of EF (Section 2) and review the evidence concerning problems about EF in the two populations of our study: Sz-AVH (Section 3) and ASC (Section 4). After this we further detail our account about what a properly functioning IS can do for both populations and how different IS profiles may impact EF performance: in the case of Sz-AVH, the uncontrolled and intrusive character of IS negatively affects EF performance, whereas in ASC, EF is not sufficiently supported by IS, given the tendency in this population to present a diminished use of IS (Section 5). We finally briefly discuss Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend the view that, despite empathy’s susceptibility to problematic biases, we can and should cultivate empathy to aid our understanding of our own values and the values of others. I argue that empathy allows us to critically examine and potentially revise our values by considering concrete moral problems and our own moral views from the perspective of another person. Appropriately calibrated empathy helps us achieve a critical distance from our own moral perspective and is thus tied (...) to impartiality in moral inquiry. In defending this role for empathy in moral inquiry, I draw on empirical work from psychology and neuroscience to support a constructionist account of emotion, according to which we can develop more wide-ranging, fine-grained emotion concepts and empathetic capacities by seeking diverse experiences, communication, and engagement with art. I then defend the value of this effortful correction of empathy bias, arguing (1) that impartial moral inquiry ought to utilize empathy as a check on motivated reasoning and presumptions regarding what count as appropriate solutions to moral problems, and (2) that compassionate moral inquiry ought to involve empathy as a means of recognizing others as authentic moral agents that can make valuable contributions to moral debate. Lastly, I draw on insights from pragmatist philosophy to critique Adam Smith’s empathy-based account of the “impartial spectator” and defend a conception of impartiality grounded in fallibilistic, empathetic method. (shrink)

Summarizing the historical background and characteristics of the present, it should be noted that they are significantly different from the characteristics of the world where past generations lived, which undoubtedly poses new challenges for the human ability to withstand the growing pressure of stress factors. The article considers the problems of psychological resilience and fragility in terms of Existential-analytical psychotherapy of V. Frankl and A. Langle, analyzes the historical context of the present-day Ukraine, external and internal characteristics of the (...) modern world, identifies the role of personality in overcoming negative stress influences, proposes a therapeutic model of optimization of psychological resilience in the context of four fundamental existential motivations. The analysis of recent research indicates that the most important resource of psychological resilience lies on the personal level. Using the Existential-Analytical concept of personality structure (Dr. A. Leangle), the article analyzes the preconditions of the emergence of a threat to loss of integrity in each of the four fundamental existential dimensions. On the other hand, stability is ensured by the full realization of being in the following existential dimensions: relations with the world, which requires space, protection, and support; a relationship with life, a deep feeling that life is good; interconnection with oneself, awareness and respect for their own authenticity and uniqueness, which requires honest and attentive attitudes, recognition of their own values; relationships with the meaning -- awareness of the value and potential of one’s own live, the search for the ways to realize its meaningful integrity. (shrink)

The present study investigates the interaction between personal characteristics that are considered nowadays strengths used to face difficult events or transition period. A number of 200 married or living together participants completed self-reports for common goals, motivational persistence, resilience and well-being. Results show that persistence and resilience do interact with each other at an individual level but also from a family concept perspective. Moreover, maintaining apositive outlook and family spirituality do have an impact over the intensity and direction of the (...) relationship between long term purposes pursuing (LTPP) and recurrence of unattained purposes (RUP) and changes in well-being registered in time. Resiliency as a personal characteristic and family resilience show good psychometric qualities for this study. Although some of the results are descriptive, in-depth analyses of direction and intensity of the relationships lead the finalconclusions to suggestions for further research and implications for psychological practice. (shrink)

Social psychology and ideology, which are integral parts of public consciousness, are closely intertwined. While revealing the connection between them, most researchers give preference to ideology, noting that it plays an active role in relation to social psychology, and that social psychology has relative independence in relation to ideology. In the scientific literature devoted to this problem, the preference for the interpretation of ideology over social psychology is due to the complex nature of the latter and the difficulty of studying (...) it. It is also stated that when social psychology is developed spontaneously outside the ideology, without the latter’s influence, its ability to actively influence the ideology wanes. Although social psychology differs from ideology in terms of its history and mechanism of formation, there are a number of commonalities between them. First of all, both social psychology and ideology as a phenomenon of moral life reflect the social interests and needs of people and have a strong impact on the formation of their moral discourse. The interaction of ideology and social psychology is manifetsted in many forms. It is extremely important to identify the internal mechanisms of this interaction. Examples of such internal mechanisms are persuasion, persuasion, imitation, stereotypes, social attitudes, propaganda and other socio-psychological phenomena. Consideration of such socio-psychological events as a means of emotional and volitional influence on people's minds, as well as a mechanism of internal interaction between ideology and social psychology, is of great importance for studying their psychological nature and the possibility of their appropriate use. (shrink)

The contents of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism, the Sabdabrahma Siddhanta and Shaddarsanas will be discussed to present the true meaning of individual’s identity and I. The influence of spirituality contained in Upanishadic insight in the development of Sanskrit language structure, Indian culture, and individual identity formation will be developed. The cultural and psychological aspects of a civilization on the formation of its language structure and prominence given to various parts of speech and vice versa will be touched upon. (...) These aspects will be also compared and contrasted with German, French, Telugu and Hindi and their respective influence on cultural and identity formation and vice versa. A cognitive science interpretation of advaita and dvaita phases of mind and bhakti and vibhakti modes of language acquisition and communication in terms of physics and electronics will be given and be clubbed to present an inclusive and comprehensive modern scientific and social scientific understanding and interpretation of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism and rest of current theistic and atheistic awareness of I and its spiritual, linguistic, cognitive scientific and rationalistic ideas and opinions. The use of this study for national integration and oneness of Indians will be highlighted. (shrink)

In Flourish, the positive psychologist Seligman (2011) identifies five commonly recognized factors that are characteristic of human flourishing or well-being: (1) “positive emotion,” (2) “relationships,” (3) “engagement,” (4) “achievement,” and (5) “meaning” (p. 24). Although there is no settled set of necessary and sufficient conditions neatly circumscribing the bounds of human flourishing (Seligman, 2011), we would mostly likely consider a person that possessed high levels of these five factors as paradigmatic or prototypical of human flourishing. Accordingly, if we wanted to (...) go about the practical task of actually increasing our level of well-being, we ought to do so by focusing on practically increasing the levels of the five factors that are characteristic of well-being. If, for instance, an activity such as musical engagement can be shown to positively influence each or all of these five factors, this would be compelling evidence that an activity such as musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. I am of the belief that psychological research can and should be used, not only to identify and diagnose maladaptive psychological states, but identify and promote adaptive psychological states as well. In this article I advance the hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. Since there has not yet been a substantive and up-to-date investigation of the possible role of music in contributing to one’s living a flourishing life, the purpose of this article is to conduct this investigation, thereby bridging the gap and stimulating discussion between the psychology of music and the psychology of well-being. (shrink)