This is an edited transcription of Thomas S. Kuhn’s “Does Knowledge ‘Grow’?”.

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled (...) by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science. (shrink)

The nature of temporal experience is typically explained in one of a small number of ways, most are versions of either retentionalism or extensionalism. After describing these, I make a distinction between two kinds of temporal character that could structure temporal experience: A-ish contents are those that present events as structured in past/present/future terms, and B-ish contents are those that present events as structured in earlier-than/later-than/simultaneous-with relations. There are a few exceptions, but most of the literature ignores this distinction, and (...) silently assumes temporal experience is A-ish. I then argue that temporal character is not scale invariant, but rather that temporal experience is A-ish at larger scales, and B-ish at smaller scales. I then point out that this scale non-invariance opens the possibility of hybrid views. I clarify my own view as a hybrid view, according to which temporal experience is B-ish at small scales – and at this scale my trajectory estimation model applies – but A-ish at larger scales, and at the larger scale my TEM does not apply. I then motivate this hybrid position by first defending it against arguments that have tried to show that the TEM is untenable. Since the hybrid view has TEM as its small-scale component, it must address this objection. I then put pressure on the main alternative account, extentionalism, by showing that its proponents have not adequately dealt with the problem of temporal illusions. The result is a new theory motivated by i) explaining its virtues, ii) showing that objections to it can be met, and iii) showing that objections to its main competitors have not been met. (shrink)

Lloyd Humberstone’s recently published Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic presents a number of new ideas in modal logic as well explication and critique of recent work of many others. We extend some of these ideas and answer some questions that are left open in the book.

A critical review of the first wave of publications on Buddhism and free will between the 1960s and 1980s.

A critical review of Mark Siderits's arguments in support of a compatibilist Buddhist theory of free will based on early Abhidharma reductionism and the two-truths distinction between conventional and ultimate truths or reality, which theory he terms 'paleo-compatibilism'. The Buddhist two-truths doctrine is basically analogous to Sellers' distinction between the manifest and scientific images, in which case the argument is that determinism is a claim about ultimate reality, whereas personhood and agency are about conventional reality, both discourse domains are semantically (...) insulated, and thus there cannot be any issue of the incompatibility. (shrink)

This chapter analyses Soren Kierkegaard's thoughts and opinions about ancient Greek philosophy. It examines the significance of Kierkegaard's references to Greek philosophy in his writings and suggests that his use of classical thought was part of his effort to define his own intellectual project. The chapter investigates how Greek philosophy influenced Kierkegaard's works and views about ethics, existential thought, Socratic faith, love, and virtue, and also considers what Kierkegaard believed was the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy.

In both psychology and philosophy, cognitive theories of emotion have met with increasing opposition in recent years. However, this apparent controversy is not so much a gridlock between antithetical stances as a critical debate in which each side is being forced to qualify its position in order to accommodate the other side of the story. Here, I attempt to sort out some of the disagreements between cognitivism and its rivals, adjudicating some disputes while showing that others are merely superficial. Looking (...) at evidence from neuroscience and social psychology, as well as thought experiments and theoretical arguments, I conclude that it is necessary to acknowledge both that emotions have intentional content and that they involve somatic agitation. I also point out some of the more promising directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

A collection of essays, mostly original, on the actual and possible positions on free will available to Buddhist philosophers, by Christopher Gowans, Rick Repetti, Jay Garfield, Owen Flanagan, Charles Goodman, Galen Strawson, Susan Blackmore, Martin T. Adam, Christian Coseru, Marie Friquegnon, Mark Siderits, Ben Abelson, B. Alan Wallace, Peter Harvey, Emily McRae, and Karin Meyers, and a Foreword by Daniel Cozort.

Critical review of Buddhist theories of free will published between 2000 and 2014.

A critical review of Charles Goodman's view about Buddhism and free will to the effect that Buddhism is hard determinist, basically because he thinks Buddhist causation is definitively deterministic, and he thinks determinism is definitively incompatible with free will, but especially because he thinks Buddhism is equally definitively clear on the non-existence of a self, from which he concludes there cannot be an autonomous self.

I argue for a possible Buddhist theory of free will that combines Frankfurt's hierarchical analysis of meta-volitional/volitional accord with elements of the Buddhist eightfold path that prescribe that Buddhist aspirants cultivate meta-volitional wills that promote the mental freedom that culminates in enlightenment, as well as a causal/functional analysis of how Buddhist meditative methodology not only plausibly makes that possible, but in ways that may be applied to undermine Galen Strawson's impossibility argument, along with most of the other major arguments for (...) free will skepticism. (shrink)

This paper is largely exegetical/interpretive. My goal is to demonstrate that some criticisms that have been leveled against the program Gareth Evans constructs in The Varieties of Reference (Evans 1980, henceforth VR) misfire because they are based on misunderstandings of Evans’ position. First I will be discussing three criticisms raised by Tyler Burge (Burge, 2010). The first has to do with Evans’ arguments to the effect that a causal connection between a belief and an object is insufficient for that belief (...) to be about that object. A key part of Evans’ argument is to carefully distinguish considerations relevant to the semantics of language from considerations relevant to the semantics (so to speak) of thought or belief (to make the subsequent discussion easier, I will henceforth use ‘thought’ as a blanket term for the relevant mental states, including belief). I will argue that Burge’s criticisms depend on largely not taking account of Evans’ distinctions. Second, Burge criticizes Evans’ account of ‘informational content’ taking it to be inconsistent. I will show that the inconsistency Burge finds depends entirely on a misreading of the doctrine. Finally, Burge takes Evans to task for a perceived over-intellectualization in a key aspect of his doctrine. Burge incorrectly reads Evans as requiring that the subject holding a belief be engaged in certain overly intellectual endeavors, when in fact Evans is only attributing these endeavors to theorists of such a subject. Next, I turn to two criticisms leveled by John Campbell (Campbell, 1999). I will argue that Campbell’s criticisms are based on misunderstandings – though they do hit at deeper elements of Evans’ doctrine. First, Campbell reads Evans’ account of demonstrative thought as requiring that the subject’s information link to an object allows her to directly locate that object in space. Campbell constructs a case in which one tomato (a) is, because of an angled mirror, incorrectly seen as being at a location that happens to be occupied by an identical tomato (b). Campbell claims that Evans’ doctrines require us to conclude that the subject cannot have a demonstrative thought about the seen tomato (a), though it seems intuitively that such a subject would be able to have a demonstrative thought about that tomato, despite its location is inaccurately seen. I show that Evans’ position in fact allows that the subject can have a demonstrative thought about the causal-source tomato in this case because his account does not require that the location of demonstratively identified objects be immediately accurately assessed. What is crucial is that the subject have the ability to accurately discover the location. Second, Campbell criticizes Evans’ notion of a fundamental level of thought. I show that this criticism hinges on view of the nature and role of the fundamental level of thought that mischaracterizes Evans’ treatment of the notion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 1 Seiten: 217-242.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 207-215 [Access article in PDF] Notes and Fragments Poetics of Sentimentality Rick Anthony Furtak IN HIS MAJOR WORK, The Passions, Robert Solomon argues that emotions are judgments. 1 Through a series of persuasive examples, he shows that emotions are best understood as mental states which involve certain beliefs about the world. This means that every emotion has an object: if I am angry (...) at John for stealing my car, the object of my anger is the fact (or what I take to be a fact) that my car has been stolen by John. If I find out that this is not the case, that my car has not even left the garage, then my anger should vanish along with its justification. 2 The key point here is that anger, like any other emotion, may be reasonable or inappropriate depending on the situation. If there is nothing to be angry about, then it would be irrational for me to cultivate anger simply because I enjoy having this particular emotion. In general, emotional responses are cognitively flawed whenever they are at odds with the properties of their objects. If we want our judgments to be realistic and not delusional, then we must avoid this kind of error.It is curious, then, that Solomon has written an essay in which he categorically declares that "there is nothing wrong with sentimentality." 3 For it would appear that his theory of emotion provides precisely the terms needed in order to specify what is wrong with it. If emotions are judgments, then "sentimentality" ought to be an important critical term to designate the habit of having emotions that involve either impaired or mistaken judgment. Nevertheless, Solomon is willing to defend any and every episode of tender emotion, of the kind associated with the [End Page 207] death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (S, p. 240). He suggests that the more we can muster up this sort of response to literature or life, the better. What he seeks to encourage, in other words, is what Hume would call "delicacy" of (aesthetic) taste and of (ethical) passion. 4 But while Hume acknowledges that sensitivity to beauty and to ugliness are two sides of the same coin, such that anyone who is susceptible to lively enjoyments is also liable to undergo pungent sorrows, Solomon wants to promote only the tender aspect of emotion.On the principle of passionate maximization, it is good if I can be tenderly affected by a poem—any poem! The problem with such crass emotion-stoking is that it precludes the possibility of distinguishing between, for instance, the two stanzas below. Both are by Wilfred Owen: the first was written in 1914 and the second in 1918. 5 I O meet it is and passing sweet To live in peace with others, But sweeter still and far more meet To die in war for brothers. II Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Only if emotions did not involve rational judgment could a person's passionate response to these two stanzas be a matter of indifference. But it seems that, on the contrary, an essential component of understanding them is recognizing that they express irreconcilable cognitive attitudes. The tone of the 1918 stanza is strikingly different from that of the earlier one, even though they share roughly the same topic. The latter stanza is stark and ominous, and filled with vivid detail; the one from 1914 is sweet and vague. Clearly, we might describe the earlier of the two as "sentimental"—the question is, what kind of judgment does [End Page 208] it involve? I suggest that its insipid jingles endorse the view that war is a delightful opportunity to nurture brotherhood and gain... (shrink)

A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it.

I argue for the use of contemplative practices, such as meditation, journaling, reflection, etc., as an adjunct or alternative form of pedagogy that can help enrich student engagement, facilitate the creation of a philosophical mind state, and engender intrinsic curiosity and related psychological and/or motivational qualities that are supportive of educational ideals. I report on my own scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research performed in my philosophy classes, as a case study in point. I found that the more times (...) students in my different philosophy courses meditated, the more their subjective responses changed on surveys about their philosophical attitudes and beliefs. (shrink)

A critical overview to the bulk of extant Buddhist theories of free will.

Martha Nussbaum’s new book Political Emotions is a contribution to political philosophy and, simultaneously, a moral-psychological study of the emotions. In it, she revisits some of the most prominent themes in her 2004 book Hiding from Humanity and her 2001 treatise, Upheavals of Thought. As Nussbaum points out in the opening pages of Political Emotions, one of her goals in this work is to answer a call issued by John Rawls for a “reasonable moral psychology” that would be conceptually refined (...) and empirically grounded, since a complete theoretical account of the just society must be informed by a suitably complex, accurate conception of human emotions. On the whole, Political Emotions is a remarkably successful book that combines several areas of philosophical research in which the author’s proficiency is well known. It shows how problems that lie on the more intimate side of ethics, pertaining for instance to friendship and family life, have relevance for social justice and publi .. (shrink)

I argue that if the claims Buddhist philosophy makes about meditation virtuosos are plausible, then Buddhism may rebut most of the strongest arguments for free will skepticism found in Western analytic philosophy, including the hard incompatiblist's argument (which combines the arguments for hard determinism, such as the consequence argument, with those for hard indeterminism, such as the randomness argument), Pereboom's manipulation argument, and Galen Strawson's impossibility argument. The main idea is that the meditation virtuoso can cultivate a level of mind (...) control that is impervious to the causal origins of her mental states, on the basis of which ability an account of free will may be erected, consistent with the claim that Buddhist enlightenment consists in some sort of radical conception of the ultimately impersonal nature of the agent. (shrink)

Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that CS programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern’s program that embeds values analysis modules into CS courses. The resulting data suggest (...) that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they’ll likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought. (shrink)

Plato's 'Symposium': Kierkegaard and Platonic Eros.

: Thoreau's journal contains a number of passages which explore the nature of perception, developing a response to skeptical doubt. The world outside the human mind is real, and there is nothing illusory about its perceived beauty and meaning. In this essay, I draw upon the work of Stanley Cavell (among others) in order to frame Thoreau's reflections within the context of the skeptical questions he seeks to address. Value is not a subjective projection, but it also cannot be perceived (...) without the appropriate kind of emotional orientation or attunement toward the world: that is, an attitude of trust or acceptance. Without this affective receptivity, or "perceptual faith," our knowledge of reality is limited. The beliefs we hold onto in the face of objective uncertainty establish the framework within which we make particular evaluations, and in this sense they are a necessary condition of practical reason. Every understanding has its mood. (shrink)

Discussions of the concept of authenticity often fail to define the conditions of an appropriate emotional orientation toward the world. With a more solid philosophical understanding of emotion, it should be possible to define more precisely the necessary conditions of emotional authenticity. Against this background, I interpret Kierkegaard’s Either/Or as a narrative text that suggests a moral psychology of emotion that points toward the development of a better way of thinking about the ethics of authenticity. In the process, I also (...) engage with the positions of other philosophers, both “existential” and “analytic.” The upshot of my argument is that a cognitive phenomenology of emotion can flesh out the ideal of truthfulness as a virtue of character, while forcing moral philosophers to question whether authenticity should be understood as an achievement of the will rather than as a matter of affective receptivity. (shrink)

In this article I explore a number of questions that have not been adequately investigated in philosophy of mind circles: are minds located in the same place as the brains (or other computing machinery) supporting them? Must they exist at the same location as the body? Must they exist at the same time? Could a single mind be implemented in multiple brains, or multiple minds in a single brain? Under what conditions might a single mind persist despite being implemented successively (...) in different brains? What contributions do features of the computing machinery make to these questions, compared to the contribution made by the body and embedded point of view? Some of these questions have been touched on previously, but there hasn’t been any attempt at a systematic analysis of the various consequences that different approaches in the philosophy of mind have for how the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation and diachronic identity of minds relates to the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation, and diachronic identity of both the implementing computational machinery and the embodied embedded point of view. I make a first stab at such an analysis by discussing a variety of thought experiments in which such questions of location, individuation, and identity arise, and I explore how various approaches to understanding the mind – identity theoretic, functionalist, contentualist, embodied/embedded/extended, and so forth – would respond to such situations. A number of novel issues emerge, and some surprising affinities are revealed. (shrink)

Our perceptual experience is largely based on prediction, and as such can be influenced by knowledge of forthcoming events. This susceptibility is commonly exploited by magicians. In the Vanishing Ball Illusion, for example, a magician tosses a ball in the air a few times and then pretends to throw the ball again, whilst secretly concealing it in his hand. Most people claim to see the ball moving upwards and then vanishing, even though it did not leave the magician’s hand ( (...) class='Hi'>Kuhn & Land, 2006; Triplett, 1900). But what exactly can such illusions tell us? We investigated here whether seeing a real action before the pretend one was necessary for the Vanishing Ball Illusion. Participants either saw a real action immediately before the fake one, or only a fake action. Nearly one third of participants experienced the illusion with the fake action alone, while seeing the real action beforehand enhanced this effect even further. Our results therefore suggest that perceptual experience relies both on long-term knowledge of what an action should look like, as well as exemplars from the immediate past. In addition, whilst there was a forward displacement of perceived location in perceptual experience, this was not found for oculomotor responses, consistent with the proposal that two separate systems are involved in visual perception. (shrink)

Magicians use misdirection to prevent you from realizing the methods used to create a magical effect, thereby allowing you to experience an apparently impossible event. Magicians have acquired much knowledge about misdirection, and have suggested several taxonomies of misdirection. These describe many of the fundamental principles in misdirection, focusing on how misdirection is achieved by magicians. In this article we review the strengths and weaknesses of past taxonomies, and argue that a more natural way of making sense of misdirection is (...) to focus on the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved. Our psychologically-based taxonomy has three basic categories, corresponding to the types of psychological mechanisms affected: perception, memory, and reasoning. Each of these categories is then divided into subcategories based on the mechanisms that control these effects. This new taxonomy can help organize magicians' knowledge of misdirection in a meaningful way, and facilitate the dialog between magicians and scientists. (shrink)

It is argued here that cognitive science currently neglects an important source of insight into the human mind: the effects created by magicians. Over the centuries, magicians have learned how to perform acts that are perceived as defying the laws of nature, and that induce a strong sense of wonder. This article argues that the time has come to examine the scientific bases behind such phenomena, and to create a science of magic linked to relevant areas of cognitive science. Concrete (...) examples are taken from three areas of magic: the ability to control attention, to distort perception, and to influence choice. It is shown how such knowledge can help develop new tools and indicate new avenues of research into human perception and cognition. (shrink)

I argue for a soft compatibilist theory of free will, i.e., such that free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism, directly opposite hard incompatibilism, which holds free will incompatible both with determinism and indeterminism. My intuitions in this book are primarily based on an analysis of meditation, but my arguments are highly syncretic, deriving from many fields, including behaviorism, psychology, conditioning and deconditioning theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, simulation theory, etc. I offer a causal/functional analysis of (...) meta-mental control, or 'metacausality', cashed out in counterfactual terms, to solve what I call the easy problem of free will. (shrink)

Inferentialism is the view that representational content is explained by lingual or mental states interacting according to inferential rules. Mendelovici and Bourget have argued against inferentialism that rules of inference do not sufficiently constrain content. This paper argues that their argument can be further strengthened such that its conclusion yields that content and inferential roles are strictly independent. It will then be argued that this conclusion is untenable and that the argument, rather than undermining inferentialism, corrodes the model theoretic foundations (...) of standard philosophical semantics. The paper concludes with some hints towards an alternative semantic paradigm. (shrink)

Abstract In his discourses on ‘the lily of the field and the bird of the air,’ Kierkegaard presents faith as the best possible response to our precarious and uncertain condition, and as the ideal way to cope with the insecurities and concerns that his readers will recognize as common features of human existence. Reading these discourses together, we are introduced to the portrait of a potential believer who, like the ‘divinely appointed teachers’—the lily and the bird—succeeds in leading a life (...) that is full of care, but free of worry. Such a portrait, we claim, echoes Kierkegaard’s portrait of the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling . In this essay we suggest that faith, as characterized in the ‘lily and bird’ discourses, is a kind of existential trust that would allow us to overcome worry, while remaining wholeheartedly engaged in the finite realm of our cares and concerns. We claim that Kierkegaard’s goal in these discourses is not to belittle our earthly cares, but to invite us to develop a modified attitude toward all that we are susceptible to worry about. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9322-5 Authors Sharon Krishek, Department of Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Rick Anthony Furtak, Department of Philosophy, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047. (shrink)

A philosophical linguistic exploration into the existence of not of AI ethics. Using Adorno's negative dialectics the author considers contemporary approaches to AI and Ethics, especially with regards to policy and law considerations. Looking at if these approaches are in fact speaking to our historical conception of AI and what the actual emergence of the latter could imply for future ethical concerns.

Book review of Jay Garfield's Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.

Survival of the fittest is an over simplification because the creature is tuned to the value in the environment. All variation is constrained and sophistication emerges as a consequence of value. -/- If we could zoom out until the entire universe appeared as an infinitesimal point, then it becomes one thing, undifferentiated, a system in search of a narrative. The system is a form of a dance, without the dancers, there is no system. The narrative unfolds as an expression in (...) a context. The meaning branches out as an increasingly rich and complex expression where the dancers enrich the environment and the environment enriches the dancers. As the deeper layers are expressed, more and more subtlety and sophistication is created and the process continues ad infinitum... Value is the measure of an enriching principle of organization. (shrink)

A review of two recent books on Kierkegaard's thought, with attention to his relevance for ethics, phenomenology, and metaphysics.

Book review of Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, Pitchstone Publishing, 2013, 280pp., $14.95, ISBN 978-1939578099 (paperback). Foreword by Michael Shermer. Science, Religion & Culture 1:2 (August 2014), 93-96 .

We address the question whether there is an explanation for the fact that as Fodor put it the micro-level “converges on stable macro-level properties”, and whether there are lessons from this explanation for other issues in the vicinity. We argue that stability in large systems can be understood in terms of statistical limit theorems. In the thermodynamic limit of infinite system size N → ∞ systems will have strictly stable macroscopic properties in the sense that transitions between different macroscopic phases (...) of matter (if there are any) will not occur in finite time. Indeed stability in this sense is a consequence of the absence of fluctuations, as (large) fluctuations would be required to induce such macroscopic transformations. These properties can be understood in terms of coarse-grained descriptions, and the statistical limit theorems for independent or weakly dependent random variable describing the behaviour averages and the statistics of fluctuations in the large system limit. We argue that RNG analyses applied to off-critical systems can provide a rationalization for the applicability of these limit theorems. Furthermore we discuss some related issues as, for example, the role of the infinite-system idealization. (shrink)

Over the centuries, magicians have developed extensive knowledge about the manipulation of the human mind—knowledge that has been largely ignored by psychology. It has recently been argued that this knowledge could help improve our understanding of human cognition and consciousness. But how might this be done? And how much could it ultimately contribute to the exploration of the human mind? We propose here a framework outlining how knowledge about magic can be used to help us understand the human mind. Various (...) approaches—both old and new—are surveyed, in terms of four different levels. The first focuses on the methods in magic, using these to suggest new approaches to existing issues in psychology. The second focuses on the effects that magic can produce, such as the sense of wonder induced by seeing an apparently impossible event. Third is the consideration of magic tricks—methods and effects together—as phenomena of scientific interest in their own right. Finally, there is the organization of knowledge about magic into an informative whole, including the possibility of a science centered around the experience of wonder. (shrink)

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

The past few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the scientific study of magic. Despite being only a few years old, this “new wave” has already resulted in a host of interesting studies, often using methods that are both powerful and original. These developments have largely borne out our earlier hopes (Kuhn et al., 2008) that new opportunities were available for scientific studies based on the use of magic. And it would seem that much more can still (...) be done along these lines. -/- But in addition to this, we also suggested that it might be time to consider developing an outright science of magic—a distinct area of study concerned with the experience of wonder that results from encountering an apparently impossible event1. To this end, we proposed a framework as to how this might be achieved (Rensink and Kuhn, 2015). A science can be viewed as a systematic method of investigation involving three sets of issues: (i) the entities considered relevant, (ii) the kinds of questions that can be asked about them, and (iii) the kinds of answers that are legitimate (Kuhn, 1970). In the case of magic, we suggested that this could be done at three different levels, each focusing on a distinct set of issues concerned with the nature of magic itself: (i) the nature of magical experience, (ii) how individual magic tricks create this experience, and (iii) organizing knowledge of the set of known tricks in a more comprehensive way (Rensink and Kuhn, 2015). Our framework also included a base level focused on how the methods of magic could be used as tools to investigate issues in existing fields of study. -/- Lamont (2010) and Lamont et al. (2010) raised a number of concerns about the possibility of such a science, which we have addressed (Rensink and Kuhn, 2015). More recently, Lamont (2015) raised a new objection, arguing that although base-level work (i.e., applications of magic methods) might be useful, there is too little structure in magic tricks for them to be studied in a systematic way at the other levels, ruling out a science of magic. We argue here, however, that although this concern raises some interesting challenges for this science, it does not negate the possibility that it could exist, and could contribute to the study of the mind. (shrink)

“Pick a card, any card. This has to be a completely free choice.” the magician tells you. But is it really? Although we like to think that we are using our free will to make our decisions, research in psychology has shown that many of our behaviours are automatic and unconsciously influenced by external stimuli (Ariely, 2008; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Newell & Shanks, 2014; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and that we are often oblivious to the cognitive mechanisms that underpin (...) our decision (Wegner, 2002, 2003). Magicians have exploited this illusory sense of agency for a long time, and have developed a wide range of techniques to influence and control spectators’ choices of such things as card, word, or number (Annemann, 1933; Banachek, 2002a; Jones, 1994; Turner, 2015). These techniques are instances of what is called forcing. -/- Many forces are extremely effective, illustrating various weaknesses in our sense of control over decisions and their outcomes. Researchers have started to investigate them in various ways (Kuhn, Pailh s, & Lan, 2020; Olson, Amlani, Raz, & Rensink, 2015; Pailhes & Kuhn, 2020b, 2020c; Shalom et al., 2013) and are beginning to obtain valuable insights into decision-making processes as well as a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that lead people to experience an illusory sense of free will and of agency. -/- Although magicians have acquired large amounts of knowledge in covertly controlling people’s choices, much of this knowledge is only discussed in the context of individual magic tricks, or in books that are not readily accessible to non-magicans. As we and others have argued elsewhere (Ekroll, Sayim, & Wagemans, 2017; Kuhn, 2019; Kuhn, Amlani, & Rensink, 2008; Kuhn, Caffaratti, Teszka, & Rensink, 2014; Macknik et al., 2008; Olson et al., 2015; Olson, Landry, Appourchaux, & Raz, 2016; Shalom et al., 2013; Thomas, Didierjean, Maquestiaux, & Gygax, 2015), a particularly effective way of making this knowledge more available is via the creation of taxonomies centered around psychological mechanisms (Rensink & Kuhn, 2015). For example, the psychologically based taxonomy of misdirection (Kuhn et al., 2014) helps draw links between misdirection and formal theories of perception and cognition. -/- Our aim here is to apply a similar process to the knowledge magicians have about forcing. The present paper develops a psychologically based taxonomy of forcing techniques with two goals in mind. Firstly, it should help uncover the various psychological mechanisms that underlie forcing techniques. Secondly, it should facilitate knowledge transfer between magicians and psychologists. Among other things, this knowledge will allow researchers to gain new insights into the mechanisms underlying decision-making, and the feeling of free will and of agency over choice. We start by defining the magician’s force and then look at some of the past classifications of forcing. (shrink)