Background: Facial attractiveness influences our perceptions of others, with beautiful faces reaping societal rewards and anomalous faces encountering penalties. The purpose of this study was to determine associations of visual attention with bias and social dispositions toward people with facial anomalies. -/- Methods: Sixty subjects completed tests evaluating implicit bias, explicit bias, and social dispositions before viewing publicly available images of preoperative and postoperative patients with hemifacial microsomia. Eye-tracking was used to register visual fixations. -/- (...) Results: Participants with higher implicit bias scores fixated significantly less on the cheek and ear region preoperatively (P = 0.004). Participants with higher scores in empathic concern and perspective taking fixated more on the forehead and orbit preoperatively (P = 0.045) and nose and lips (P = 0.027) preoperativel. -/- Conclusions: Participants with higher levels of implicit bias spent less visual attention on anomalous facial anatomy, whereas participants with higher levels of empathic concern and perspective taking spent more visual attention on normal facial anatomy. Levels of bias and social dispositions such as empathy may predict layperson gaze patterns toward those with facial anomalies and provide insights to neural mechanisms underlying the "anomalous is bad" paradigm. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I propose (...) that images can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive theories predict that linguistic conceptual representations are grounded and continually represented in real world, sensorimotor experiences. However, there is an on-going debate on whether this also holds for abstract concepts. Grammar is the archetype of abstract knowledge, and therefore constitutes a test case against embodied theories of language representation. Former studies have largely focussed on lexical-level embodied representations. In the present study we take the grounding-by-modality idea a step further by using reaction time (RT) data from the linguistic (...) processing of nominal classifiers in Chinese. We take advantage of an independent body of research, which shows that attention in hand space is biased. Specifically, objects near the hand consistently yield shorter RTs as a function of readiness for action on graspable objects within reaching space, and the same biased attention inhibits attentional disengagement. We predicted that this attention bias would equally apply to the graspable object classifier but not to the big object classifier. Chinese speakers (N = 22) judged grammatical congruency of classifier-noun combinations in two conditions: graspable object classifier and big object classifier. We found that RTs for the graspable object classifier were significantly faster in congruent combinations, and significantly slower in incongruent combinations, than the big object classifier. There was no main effect on grammatical violations, but rather an interaction effect of classifier type. Thus, we demonstrate here grammatical category- specific effects pertaining to the semantic content and by extension the visual and tactile modality of acquisition underlying the acquisition of these categories. We conclude that abstract grammatical categories are subjected to the same mechanisms as general cognitive and neurophysiological processes and may therefore be grounded. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that visual attention is cognitively penetrated by intention. I present a detailed account of attention and its neural basis, drawing on a recent computational model of neural modulation during attention: divisive normalization. I argue that intention shifts computations during divisive normalization. The epistemic consequences of attentional bias are discussed.

For almost half a century dual-stream advocates have vigorously defended the view that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in the primary visual cortex: a ventral, perception-related ‘conscious’ stream and a dorsal, action-related ‘unconscious’ stream. They furthermore maintain that the perceptual and memory systems in the ventral stream are relatively shielded from the action system in the dorsal stream. In recent years, this view has come under scrutiny. Evidence points to two overlapping action (...) pathways: a dorso-dorsal pathway that calculates features of the object to be acted on, and a ventro-dorsal pathway that transmits stored information about skilled object use from the ventral stream to the dorso-dorsal pathway. This evidence suggests that stored information may exert significantly more influence on visually guided action than hitherto assumed. I argue that this, in turn, supports the notion of skilled automatic action that is nonetheless agential. My focus here will be on actions influenced by implicit biases (stereotypes/prejudices). Action that is biased in this way, I argue, is in an important sense intentional and agential. (shrink)

A model of face representation, inspired by the biology of the visual system, is compared to experimental data on the perception of facial similarity. The face representation model uses aggregate primary visual cortex (V1) cell responses topographically linked to a grid covering the face, allowing comparison of shape and texture at corresponding points in two facial images. When a set of relatively similar faces was used as stimuli, this Linked Aggregate Code (LAC) predicted human performance in similarity judgment (...) experiments. When faces of perceivable categories were used, dimensions such as apparent sex and race emerged from the LAC model without training. The dimensional structure of the LAC similarity measure for the mixed category task displayed some psychologically plausible features but also highlighted differences between the model and the human similarity judgements. The human judgements exhibited a racial perceptual bias that was not shared by the LAC model. The results suggest that the LAC based similarity measure may offer a fertile starting point for further modelling studies of face representation in higher visual areas, including studies of the development of biases in face perception. (shrink)

When visual attention is directed away from a stimulus, neural processing is weak and strength and precision of sensory data decreases. From a computational perspective, in such situations observers should give more weight to prior expectations in order to behave optimally during a discrimination task. Here we test a signal detection theoretic model that counter-intuitively predicts subjects will do just the opposite in a discrimination task with two stimuli, one attended and one unattended: when subjects are probed to discriminate (...) the unattended stimulus, they rely less on prior information about the probed stimulus’ identity. The model is in part inspired by recent findings that attention reduces trial-by-trial variability of the neuronal population response and that they use a common criterion for attended and unattended trials. In five different visual discrimination experiments, when attention was directed away from the target stimulus, subjects did not adjust their response bias in reaction to a change in stimulus presentation frequency despite being fully informed and despite the presence of performance feedback and monetary and social incentives. This indicates that subjects did not rely more on the priors under conditions of inattention as would be predicted by a Bayes-optimal observer model. These results inform and constrain future models of Bayesian inference in the human brain. (shrink)

Human beings define their identity primarily by the way they present, design and style their bodies. In doing so, individuals make statements about their affiliation to a social context. Globalisation implies a change of identity among the members of less industrialised cultures, as they are exposed to effects of cultural dominance. For the individual, this exposure can be the stronger, the more autonomous his or her culture of origin used to be before the confrontation. There is a bias of (...) cultural elements that are being transferred, so that the industrialised culture has a strong impact on other cultures. Global consent with regard to behaviour patterns, especially to bodily self-presentation and the related cognitive styles, leads to the obliteration of traditional knowledge, which is interwoven with the behaviour upon which identity had been defined previously. The cultural elements transferred are being used for the construction of globally standardised personal identities, whereat elements concerning the visual design of the human body are of major relevance for defining the self. The loss of variegated identities in favour of belonging to the global society brings about a number of problems, which can be demonstrated in functional models. These models, in turn, may support the planning of interventional strategies and rescue work. In this article, the role of the body within the destabilising effects of cultural change are analysed, and chances for intervention are discussed. (shrink)

For scatterplots with gaussian distributions of dots, the perception of Pearson correlation r can be described by two simple laws: a linear one for discrimination, and a logarithmic one for perceived magnitude (Rensink & Baldridge, 2010). The underlying perceptual mechanisms, however, remain poorly understood. To cast light on these, four different distributions of datapoints were examined. The first had 100 points with equal variance in both dimensions. Consistent with earlier results, just noticeable difference (JND) was a linear function of the (...) distance away from r = 1, and the magnitude of perceived correlation a logarithmic function of this quantity. In addition, these laws were linked, with the intercept of the JND line being the inverse of the bias in perceived magnitude. Three other conditions were also examined: a dot cloud with 25 points, a horizontal compression of the cloud, and a cloud with a uniform distribution of dots. Performance was found to be similar in all conditions. The generality and form of these laws suggest that what underlies correlation perception is not a geometric structure such as the shape of the dot cloud, but the shape of the probability distribution of the dots, likely inferred via a form of ensemble coding. It is suggested that this reflects the ability of observers to perceive the information entropy in an image, with this quantity used as a proxy for Pearson correlation. (shrink)

This study firstly addresses three threads in Chris Marker’s work – theology, Marxism, and Surrealism – through a mapping of the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida onto the varied production of his film and photographic work. Notably, it is late Agamben and late Derrida that is utilized, as both began to exit so-called post-structuralism proper with the theological turn in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It addresses these threads through the means to ends employed and as (...) ends proper (as production of semi-autonomous works that also, paradoxically, index a much larger field of inquiry and theoretical praxis). It is perhaps French “schizophrenia” regarding theological versus political agency that best accounts for the sardonic deployment of irony and humor in Marker’s work in the face of Big History. Such means to ends (plus a subtle anti-intellectualism vis-à-vis fashionable academic trends) tend to underscore the severity and ultimate sincerity of Marker’s overall cultural-political project. -/- Dossier Chris Marker is also a study of a late-modern chiasmus, impersonal-personal agency, as it comes to expression in the works of Marker, as the dynamic interplay of political and subjective agency. As chiasmus, the complementary halves of this often-apocalyptic dynamis (a semi-catastrophic, temporal or historical force-field) also – arguably – secretly agree to meet, through the work of art, in the futural (problematized in contemporary French post-phenomenological and post-post-structuralist theory as “the event).” Consistent with the classical figure of concordia discors, Marker resolves these irreducible warring aspects of life experience in an atemporal and ahistorical moment that inhabits the work of art from its inception. This redemptive aspect in art is also the ultimate gesture of the artwork as autonomous subject and “mask” (or “screen”) for forces that reside beyond the frame of the image or work, as its proverbial Other, or within the frame, as other to that Other. -/- Despite the complications of the as-yet unresolved post-modern condition (its nihilist-relativist bias), and its similar, mostly circular concerns with the image and/or media, Marker’s work is clearly not post-modern. In fact, when tested against immemorial cultural epiphenomena, that work withstands all attempts at categorization and/or art-historical analysis proper. It remains unassimilable to the post-modern cause ... What emerges, upon closer examination, and through rigorous re-contextualization, is the prescient force of Marker’s works toward that futural state buried in art that is also “theological,” versus atheological, and heedlessly anterior to cultural politics per se. -/- In the case of Marker, this age-old or immemorial “thing-in-itself” (the artwork as image of world-chiasmus) finds its foremost or penultimate formation in his very-still photography – the singular images that are also the building blocks for his renowned ciné-essays. Not without irony, this same austere, reductive force of the still image (as form of proscription) also inhabits the more complex, synthetic works (or montages) that he has formulated and presented “dramatically,” here and there, through the often-sketchy apparatuses of his new-media experiments, as of the late 1980s. Ultimately, this world-image as chiasmus was always present within his earliest literary projects, from the 1940s forward – most especially in books and essays, with or without actual images. -/- Marker’s “return” to photography (to exhibiting still photography in galleries), in the late 2000s, is in many ways a return to the singular object of the artist-critic’s desire; the image in/for itself, while that image – endlessly troubled or interrogated for decades – continues to speak “in tongues” anyway, often against, or oblivious to, the voice of the author/artist/narrator. -/- Marker is a High Romantic Christian Marxist. The “Christic” aspect is rightly well-hidden, but emerges when the eschatological versus historical center of his work is exposed (the existential-metaphysical fuse such as also inhabits the works of Caravaggio), and when his early years are examined in light of his later and/or final years. Marker’s semi-personal/semi-impersonal apocalyptic vision is writ large in diverse works that cross decades, figuring a redemptive, world-shattering formation of art as pleroma. (shrink)

Feminist aesthetics can be characterized as a critical conceptual framework for analyzing the gender assumptions Western aesthetics, philosophy of the arts and the arts have had and their implications in the categories they have historically employed. It emerged as a result the influence feminism had in the study of gender bias in the artistic production and its reception. Works like Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971) and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (...) (1975) were fundamental for recognizing the exclusion of women from the history of the great visual artists and how the male gaze is a predominant kind of depiction that satisfies and is designed from a masculine and heterosexual point of view. -/- During the 1970s and 1980s it started the analysis of the male gaze in literature, film and visual arts, but also the women’s artistic production demanding its recognition. However, it was not until the 1990s that philosophical feminist aesthetics was first addressed as an important and necessary area of study with the special issues Feminism and aesthetics (Hein, Korsmeyer 1990) in “Hypatia: a journal of Feminist Philosophy”, and Feminism and traditional aesthetics (Brand, Korsmeyer 1990) in “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism”. And the first introductory book on the field, Gender and aesthetics: an introduction by Carolyn Korsmeyer (2004) was published during the first decade of the 2000s. -/- Although feminist aesthetics came later than feminist political philosophy, it appeared almost at the same time as feminist perspectives of other philosophical fields, such as epistemology and philosophy of science. Like other feminist approaches to different philosophical domains, there is not a unitary feminist perspective on aesthetics, however, despite the variety of approaches, all implicitly or explicitly demand the recognition of women in its sphere of influence, that is, philosophy and the arts. Nevertheless, contrary to other fields it does not only take contributions from analytic and continental feminism, but also from cultural theory, art history, comparative literature, film theory, psychoanalysis, just to name a few disciplines and theories. Feminist aesthetics’ literature covers a broad range of topics, but the most important are the feminist critique of philosophical aesthetics and the feminist philosophy and theory of the arts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT -/- One increasingly reads about different aspects of the death of philosophy. One reason or cause being its institutionalization, as just another academic discipline, while research universities demand their tenured professionals to produve endless streams of really irrelevant publications, resulting in dealing with more detailed, microscopic issues and fabricated ‘problems’. The professionalization of philosophers created other problems of this socio-cultural practice. The dying out of philosophy is not only cased by external social and cultural factors, but also by internal (...) factors such as its methods and those concerning its subject-matter. I have explored the above in the context of meta-philosophy. In the process I also investigated the nature, the subject-matter and theories of philosophy of art, aesthetics and theory of art. It is mostly about these explorations of art that the contents of this piece is concerned with. All this is an exercise with words as the verbal means are the traditional instruments of doing philosophy. These tools not only enable the doing of philosophy but also creates limitations and limits to philosophizing. This will remain the case until the discourse develops other (for example visual, auditory, computational, etc) means to develop its many levelled and multi-dimensional practice - and in the process questions and overcomes its anthropo-centered bias. (shrink)

Introduction: Online eye-tracking has been used in this study to assess the impacts of different cultural backgrounds on information discernment. An online platform called RealEye allowed participants to engage in the eye-tracking study from their personal computer webcams, allowing for higher ecological validity and a closer replication of social media interaction. -/- Methods: The study consisted of two parts with a total of five visuals of social media posts mimicking news posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Participants were asked to (...) view examples of real and fake news taken from a news fact-checking website, Snopes, and their eye movements were recorded during the process. Participants were recruited through Prolific and SONA; the total sample size for study 1.1 was 29 participants, and the total for study 1.2 was 25 participants, after removing poor eye-tracking data. A total of five visual images comprising true and false news were shown to the participant, study 1.1 had three examples and study 1.2 had two examples. There were two main cultural backgrounds in focus: participants born in China or the United Kingdom. -/- Results: Results suggested that participants follow a similar visual pattern of attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) on the posts, which leads us to believe that due to the global standardisation of popular social media platforms, a bias might have occurred during information discernment. -/- Discussion: It is suggested that regardless of country background, users may have similar eye-tracking results while viewing a social media post because social media platform formats are standardised globally. Further research would recommend looking at language and linguistic traits when seeking differences between country backgrounds during online information discernment. (shrink)

The topic of the human face is addressed from a biocultural perspective, focusing on the empirical investigation of how the face is represented, perceived, and evaluated in artistic portraits and self-portraits from the XVth to the XVIIth century. To do so, the crucial role played by the human face in social cognition is introduced, starting from development, showing that neonatal facial imitation and face-to-face dyadic interactions provide the grounding elements for the construction of intersubjective bonds. The neuroscience of face perception (...) is concisely presented and discussed, together with the psychophysics of face perception and gaze exploration, introducing the notions of the left visual field advantage and the left gaze bias. The results of experiments on the perception and the emotional and aesthetic rating of artistic portraits and self-portraits are reported, showing that despite participants’ inability to tell self-portraits and portraits apart, greater emotional, communicative-social, and aesthetic ratings were attributed to self-portraits. It is concluded that neuroscience and experimental aesthetics can contribute to better understand the human face, hence to better understand ourselves. (shrink)

Will I die? As a hypothesis, in my natural scientific understanding, the psyche, is nothing more than, and exclusively just some states of my living brain – I will die as a result of his death. -/- In presented answer, psyche – itself own immediate reality itself, that is – undoubted. -/- This work was performed in reality “in the first person” (“subjective reality”, “phenomenal consciousness”). To realize, how, what it is the reality of the “in the first person” let’s (...) imagine ourselves as an experimenter, who does not replace reality with reasoning about it. – Now for us, as experimenters, how (what it is) psychic is an immediate and undoubted reality. And the awareness of “I am” is a direct reality, and not knowledge about it, which is always doubtful. That is, in psychic reality, nothing prevents us from answering undoubtedly and definitively the question, asked by this psychic reality itself about itself. The author acts from the position of “being in reality – not going beyond its limits, for example, into philosophy” (philosophy, including methodology, is the replacement of reality itself with always dubious reasoning about reality) – explores phenomenal consciousness (“psychic”) directly and as an immediate reality. That is, this work is the mastery of psychic reality through subjective-psychical experimentation – don’t philosophize, but experiment! -/- For example, Descartes, introspectively experimenting in his own psyche reality with his own psyche, informed us about the immutability of the “mind” and proposed to understand this immutability as our own immortality: “the mind does not represent any combination of accidents, it is a pure substance, and although all its accidents are subject to change, it understands some things, it desires others or feels others, etc. – nevertheless, in itself it does not change; and as for the human body, it changes, if only because they are subject to a change in the shape of some of its parts. It follows from this that the body perishes very easily, while the mind, by its very nature, is immortal” (Декарт Р., p. 13). Note that, Descartes did not realize that he was immortal, but logically deduced his own immortality from the immutability of the mind. However, Descartes’ unchanging “mind” itself is such that there is something to die. And in my natural scientific understanding, the immutability of the mind does not imply its immortality – it will die without changing in its subjective self-perception, while instantly fading away as a result of brain death. Psyche (psychical) – a designation of the fact that this is one’s own immediate reality (that is, undoubtedly) – how (what) I myself am immediately, undoubtedly, and that immediate reality of mine, how and through which I myself and everything in general for me there is, and which is exclusively the only one for me. It should be noted that while I am unconscious (brain injury or dreamless sleep), there is nothing at all. -/- But this does not mean that “I”, having completely gone into oblivion, I'll die. This does not exclude that, I will disappear completely into oblivion and does not exist, but (at the same time) “I” – am. So, let’s define immortality as the impossibility of dying because there is nothing to die (psychic, but is such that there is nothing to die – is immortal) and will make a conclusion important for this work: if I am, as psyche, exclusively only is such that there is something to die and nothing else, then, therefore, my death is not excluded. But am I like that? The idea of this work is that I, as a psyche can to manifest (reveal) and realize myself as such (I such), that there is nothing to die, but (at the same time) I – am. I will realize of myself as immortal – such that to die (to decease) nothing. In other words, if I will approach with a bias and, acting purposefully, will reveal the subjective reality “I (psyche) such is that to die (to decease) nothing, but I – am”, that is – I am immortal, that the hypothesis “I will die” will falsified and excluded. -/- To realize this in the work, it is proposed to use the subject-object model, shift the boundary of “I” to the pole of the subject and become objectless, manifesting (revealing) oneself as such that there is nothing to die. Therefore, the aim (goal) of the work – to realize: I – am, but such that there is to die (decease) nothing. To become objectless and wondering about the possibility to dying, as a result, or I will exclude the immortality of the manifested state, or I will manifest (will reveal) immortal undoubtedly and definitively. -/- At the same time, I, as a subject, am “a necessary pole of subject-object relations. … An object is what the activity of … a subject is directed at. … In fact, everything that exists can become an object. … it is important to keep in mind the fundamental fact that the object is always outside the subject, does not merge with it. This externality also takes place when the subject deals with the states of his own consciousness, his Self ... it is important to emphasize that the relation of the subject and the object is not the relation of two different worlds, but only two poles as part of some unity” (Лекторский В.А., p. 6-7). That is, everything that I find existing in myself, this (such) is as an object. “The subject always refers to all “objects”, but it can never become an object for itself” (Титлин Л.И., p. 23). “… you will not be able to see the seeing vision ...” (Титлин Л.И., p. 40), and in this model this implies the “limit” of the subject. As the limit of the subject, I am “objectless”. And, therefore, in its own pole the subject is “ideal” – in its (own) limit (as its own limit, its own limit), I do not exist for myself (non-existent). -/- Using the “fact of the mobility of the boundaries of the subject” (for example, Тхостов А.Ш., p. 16), I have the opportunity to “pull” the boundary of the “I” into myself and become my own limit. At the same time, it is necessary to realize and accept that “inside” the limit of the subject and behind – “beyond of the subject”, and in general the very “inside” and “behind” in this version – unreality. In such a subject limit, the required paradoxical subjective state is assumed – I exist and see, but at the same time I am such that I do not exist for myself, that is, I am, but (subjectively such that) there is nothing to die (“immortality”). -/- Accordingly, the following tasks are indicated in the experiment: 1. In the object-subject sphere of visual perception, shift (and shift) the boundary of “I” into oneself –» to run into one’s own limit and become one’s own limit (without thickness: without depth, without “from within” and without reverse side) –» 2. Having become your own limit, which in its own limit is, but for myself I do not exist (non-existent), realize: • Myself – I am and this is real; • Will I die? – or there is nothing to die, which of the options is to me, as a psyche (as itself the psychic “I”), is applicable: • or I am such that it is not impossible that I will die, and the realized state is not immortal; • or “I” am such that “I” – am (is reality), but such that myself “I” to die nothing, that is, my own immortality – I am immortal; • Is this real? -/- Instruction for reproducing the target result: sequence of actions and results in a subjective-psychic experiment (hereinafter referred to as SPE) -/- At a distance of 25-40 cm from the wall (so that the wall occupies the entire field of view or its overwhelming part), • Here and now, focus on your face: “I am” – reality (and not is the knowing about it). • In yourself step back and look out of yourself at this wall. • Without moving your head, cover the field of vision with your attention as wide as possible and at the same time perceive everything at once (all this) as a single whole. • Perceive a high and wide wall (option: look up at an angle of 135-150 degrees in front of you) in such a way that the space (volume) surveyed by you without turning your head is a closed asymmetrical “lens” • limited in a circle in the periphery of the field of view, • convex in you; You – the beholder, rearwards concave in self (“subject”) – which one of you are watching? • Without moving your head, perceive the field of view as a single whole –» • Into yourself “draw in” –» “backing away” –» step back from everything –» • lean back into yourself –» up to dead-end limit –» • become a dead end itself – a concave (reflector-like) limit-plane. • You – into yourself – backward concave – a perceiving visual screen (limit-dead end), plane –» • lean back and press –» • something in general somehow inside the dead-end plane and behind the dead-end plane, as well as “inside” and “behind”, “behind the dead-end plane” – unreality; • myself – a dead-end plane without thickness (depth), without “inside”, without a reverse side for oneself. • –» That is, as a psychic reality (what is it psychically) will I die? –» or • Something there is, and that is I will die (it is possible); or • I am such that there is nothing to die, but I – am. or • Subjective-psychic experiment is incomplete… • –» Realize that this is reality (realize the reality of it) and emphasize (answer). -/- As a result, “I” am, but there is nothing to die/not to die, that is, the hypothesis “I will die” is unrealistic. -/- Remarks -/- • Each completed SPE is completed with the target result: “I am such that there is nothing to die, but I – am”. And the that what I will die (not excluded) does not correspond to this, that is unreality and is excluded by this. • But I am not such that I will not die. The concepts “I will die/ I will not die” to me, as a psyche are not applicable. That is, I, as a psyche, is immortal, but I am not eternal (not eternal – endlessly lasting, such that there is something to last) – to last, to be eternal and to end there is nothing. This is “immortality”. • In the target result of this work, I – am, but such that there is nothing to die/not die (“immortality”). And such a “I” is not the Atman of the Hindu schools of Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Purva Mimamsa, which E.A. Torchinov. Since the “I” – psychic, and not a substance with the psyche as an attributes. • According to illusionism, what I am as a result of the experiment given in the work is an illusion. And the impression of immortality is a product of the brain. But in reality I am such that I will die (it is not excluded). However, it is necessary to realize that illusionism is a detached reasoning about the “I”, but not is the self itself. And to what I am (as psiche), reasoning and questions about the reality of the “I” (for example, question: am I really like this, what am I like as psyche?) and other expressing illusionism do not correspond. That is, subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), the illusionism of the “I” is unreality. Subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), this is undeniable and final. • Reasoning about what such a “I” is in this (mine) or not in this brain, as well as (for example, holding a real skull in my hands), questions like “how (or, but now where is it here) such “I” – how is it after brain death?” – To the fact that is such an “I” these questions do not correspond and is falsified by this. • After being unconscious, the impression remains that I'm is not and that there is nothing at all. That is, my “unconsciousness” is psychic indistinguishable from my non-existence. However, science has not shown, but and it is not excluded that before and after I exist physically (there is something to die), I still or I no longer exist, there is still or nothing to die as a soul, substance, or otherwise. But what I am in the target result of this work is what I – am, and not “died and already now or still unreality” and I am such that there is nothing to die, this is – reality. That is, I will die? – there is nothing (to die), but I – am (reality), even if I am not (don’t exist). Or I do not exist as something. • I am such that there is nothing to be and die, but I am. And subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), this immortality is – reality. But this reality eludes my rational explanation. -/- Conclusion -/- Will I die? – In the target result the I am, but at the same time I am such that there is nothing to die. That is, I am immortal, but at the same time, I am not eternal (“I” not something eternal (endlessly continuing)) – I am such that to be eternal there is nothing. And, if we accept the subjective (psychic, “first person”, in first person perspective) reality without trying to understand it rationally, then I am exactly like that – I realize that this is my undoubted nature. That is, “I will die / I will not die” is an unreality. Subjectively (psychic, in the psychic reality of the “first person”, in first person perspective), it is undoubted and final. Despite the unscientific nature, this work is a way of mastering reality. The author would be grateful for the identified and shown unreality of the fact that the “I” – am, but such that there is nothing to die, and ideally, the awareness: “I will die (not excluded).” -/- Bibliography -/- Декарт Р., Размышления о первой философии //Декарт Р. Соч.: В 2 т. Т. 2. М., 1994. Лекторский В.А. Субъект в истории философии: проблемы и достижения // Методология и история психологии. 2010. Том 5. Выпуск 1. С. 5-18. Титлин Л.И. Проблема субъекта в индийской философии («Пудгалавинишчая» Васубандху) [Текст] / [Л. И. Титлин]; Федеральное государственное бюджетное учреждение науки Институт философии Российской академии наук. – Москва: ОнтоПринт: Сделано-Сказано, 2018. – 361, [1] с. Тхостов A. Ш. Культурно-историческая патопсихология: монография, – М.: Канон+ РООИ «Реабилитация», 2020. – 320 с. Торчинов Е.А. «Словарик индуизма» (Дата написания: 2003; дата файла: 15.06.2007). Торчинов Е.А. Пути философии Востока и Запада: познание запредельного — СПб.: «Азбука-классика», «Петербургское Востоковедение», 2005. — 480 с. ISBN 5-352-01371-5 (Азбука-классика) ISBN 5-85803-258-3 (Петербургское Востоковедение). -/- Скончаюсь? – я бессмертен (как осознать бессмертие «от первого лица») -/- Скончаюсь? В качестве гипотезы в моем естественно-научном понимании психическое (каково психически), это не более чем, и исключительно только всего лишь некоторые состояния моего живого мозга – скончаюсь в результате его смерти. -/- В представленном ответе психическое – сама собственная непосредственная реальность, то есть, то, каково психически, это – несомненно. -/- Данная работа выполнена в реальности «первого лица» («субъективная реальность», «феноменальное сознание»). Чтобы осознать то, как, каково это, представим себя экспериментатором, который не подменяет реальность рассуждениями о ней. – Теперь для нас, как экспериментаторов, то, как (каково) психически, это непосредственная и несомненная реальность. И осознание «я есть», это непосредственная реальность, а не знание об этом, которое всегда сомнительно. То есть, в психической реальности, на вопрос, заданный самой этой психической реальностью самой себе о себе самой, нам ничто не запрещает ответить несомненно и окончательно. Автор действует с позиции «быть в реальности – не выходить за ее пределы, например, в философию» (философия, включая методологию, это подмена самой реальности всегда сомнительными рассуждениями о реальности) – исследует феноменальное сознание («психическое») непосредственно и в качестве непосредственной реальности. То есть, данная работа, это овладение психической реальностью посредством субъективно-психического экспериментирования – не философствуй, а экспериментируй! -/- Например Декарт, интроспективно экспериментируя в собственной психической реальности с собственным психическим, сообщил нам о неизменности «ума» и предложил эту неизменность понять в качестве нашего собственного бессмертия: «ум не представляет какого-то соединения акциденций, являет собой чистую субстанцию и, хотя все его акциденции подвержены изменению — он то понимает какие-то вещи, то желает другие или чувствует третьи и т.д.,— тем не менее сам по себе он не изменяется; а что касается тела человека, то оно изменяется хотя бы уже потому, что подвержены изменению формы некоторых его частей. Из этого следует, что тело весьма легко погибает, ум же по самой природе своей бессмертен» /Декарт Р., стр. 13. Заметим, Декарт не осознавал себя бессмертным, а логически вывел собственное бессмертие из неизменности ума. Однако, неизменный «ум» Декарта таков, что скончаться есть чему. А в моем естественно-научном понимании из неизменности ума не следует его бессмертие – он, не изменяясь в своем субъективном само-восприятии, при этом мгновенно угаснув в результате смерти мозга, скончается. Психически (психическое) – обозначение того, что это сама собственная непосредственная реальность (то есть – несомненно) – то, как (каково) я сам непосредственно, несомненно, и та моя непосредственная реальность, как и посредством чего я сам и всё вообще для меня есть, и которое для меня исключительно единственное. Следует заметить, что пока бываю без сознания (травма мозга или сон без сновидений), ничего и никак нет вообще. -/- Но это не значит, что «я» ушедши в небытие окончательно – скончаюсь. Этим не исключено, что таковой ушедший в небытие «я» не существую, но (при этом) есть. Итак, определим бессмертие, как невозможность скончаться потому, что скончаться нечему (например, если «умерший» психически есть, но уже таков, что скончаться больше нечему, то теперь он бессмертен) и сделаем важный для данной работы вывод: если психически я исключительно только таков, что скончаться есть чему и ни каков иначе, то, следовательно, то, что скончаюсь, это не исключено. Но таков ли я? Идея данной работы в том, что мне удастся проявить (выявить) и осознать себя таковым (я таков), что скончаться нечему, но (при этом) я есть. Иначе выражаясь, если я подойду предвзято и действуя целеустремленно, выявлю субъективную реальность «я есть, но таков, что скончаться нечему» – то смерть мне, как психическому несвойственна, то есть, я бессмертен – гипотеза возможности субъективно скончаться («я скончаюсь») будет фальсифицирована и исключена. -/- Чтобы это реализовать в работе предлагается воспользоваться субъект-объектной моделью, сдвинуть границу «я» в полюс субъекта и стать безобъектным, проявившись (выявившись) собой таковым, что скончаться нечему. Следовательно, цель работы – осознать: я таков, что есть, но скончаться нечему. Стать безобъектным и задаваясь вопросом о возможности скончаться, или исключу бессмертие проявленного состояния, или проявлюсь (выявлюсь) бессмертным несомненно и окончательно. -/- При этом, я, как субъект, являюсь «необходимым полюсом субъектно-объектных отношений. … Объект – то, на что направлена активность … субъекта. … В действительности объектом может стать все, что существует. … важно иметь в виду тот принципиальный факт, что объект всегда внеположен субъекту, не сливается с ним. Эта внеположность имеет место и тогда, когда субъект имеет дело с состояниями собственного сознания, своим Я … важно подчеркнуть, что отношение субъекта и объекта – это не отношение двух разных миров, а лишь двух полюсов в составе некоторого единства» /Лекторский В.А., стр. 6-7. То есть, всё, что нахожу в себе существующим, это (таковое) есть в качестве объекта. «Субъект – всегда относится ко всем «объектам», но он никогда не может стать объектом для самого себя» /Титлин Л.И., стр. 23. Иначе это выражая – «ты не сможешь увидеть видящего видение…» /Титлин Л.И., стр. 40, и в данной модели таковое предполагает «предел» субъекта. Как предел субъекта я «безобъектен». То есть, «идеален» – своим (собственным) пределом (в качестве собственного предела) самим для себя не существую (несуществующий). -/- Используя «факт подвижности границ субъекта» /например, Тхостов А.Ш., стр. 16, я имею возможность границу «я» в себя-назад «втянуть» и стать собственным пределом. При этом необходимо осознать и принять, что внутри предела субъекта и сзади – «за пределом субъекта», и вообще само «внутри» и «сзади» в этой модели – нереальность. Таким субъектным пределом предполагается требуемое парадоксальное субъективное состояние – я есть и вижу, но при этом я таков, что для себя не существую, то есть, я есть, но (психически таков, что) умереть нечему («бессмертие»). -/- Соответственно, в эксперименте обозначаются следующие задачи: 1. В объект-субъектной сфере зрительного восприятия сдвинуть (и сдвинув) границу «я» в себя-назад –» упереться в собственный предел и стать самим собственным пределом (без толщены: без глубины, без «внутри» и без обратной стороны) –» 2. Став собственным пределом, которым есть, но для себя не существую (несуществующий), осознать: • Себя – я есть и это реально; • Скончаюсь? – есть ли чему скончаться или скончаться нечему, какой из вариантов мне (как психическому «я») свойственен: • или я таков, что то, что скончаюсь не исключено, и реализованное состояние не бессмертно; • или я есть, но таков, что скончаться нечему, то есть, собственное бессмертие – я бессмертен; • Реальность ли это. -/- Инструкция воспроизведения целевого результата: последовательность действий и результатов в субъективно-психическом эксперименте (далее СПЭ) -/- На расстоянии 25-40 см от стены (так, чтобы стена занимала всё поле зрения или его подавляющую часть), • Здесь и сейчас сосредоточьтесь на своём лице: «я есть» – реальность (а не знание об этом). • В себе отстранитесь назад и смотрите из себя на эту стену. • Не двигая головой, охватите поле зрения вниманием предельно широко и одновременно всё сразу (всё это) воспримите единым целым. • Высокую и широкую стену (вариант: смотрите вверх под углом 135-150 градусов перед собой) воспримите так, что обозреваемое вами без поворота головы пространство (объем), это – ограниченная по окружности в периферии поля зрения замкнутая несимметричная «линза» • плоская с противоположной вам стороны • и выпуклая в вас; Вы – вогнутый в себя-назад смотрящий («субъект») – каков? – кто из вас сейчас на всё это смотрит? • Не двигая головой, поле зрения воспримите единым целым –» • В себя-назад «втянитесь» –» и «пятьтесь» –» «за мысли» и за всё вообще –» из этого всего назад вытесняясь –» от всего вообще взад отстранитесь –» • собой в себя-назад подайтесь и упершись в собственный (себя) задний к объектному обращённый (развернутый) тупиковый предел –» • станьте самим пределом-тупиком – в себя-назад вогнутой (рефлектор-подобной) пределом-плоскостью смотрящей – воспринимающим зрительным экраном –» станьте плоскостью-тупиком –» • «проскользните» по себе – плоскости-тупику и охватите вниманием целиком –» • собой – самим плоскостью-тупиком назад надавить, нажать –» • осознать: что-то как-то внутри плоскости-тупика и сзади за плоскостью-тупиком, и там вообще «что-то как-то», а также само «внутри» и «сзади», «за плоскостью-тупиком» и вообще «там» – нереальность; • самого себя – плоскости-тупика без толщины (глубины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны для себя нет. • –» То есть – в качестве психической реальности (каково психически) я скончаюсь? –» или • скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено). или • я таков, что скончаться нечему, но я есть. или • субъективно-психический эксперимент не завершён. • –» Осознайте, что это – реальность (осознать реальность этого) и подчеркните (ответ). -/- В результате я есть, но скончаться/не скончаться нечему, то есть гипотеза «скончаюсь» – нереальность. -/- Замечания -/- • Каждый завершённый СПЭ завершён целевым результатом: «я таков, что скончаться нечему, но я есть». И тому, каков я в результате СПЭ, то, что скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено) не соответствует, то есть нереальность и этим исключено. • То есть, я и не таков, что не скончаюсь. «Я скончаюсь/не скончаюсь» ко мне, как к психике, неприменимо. Иначе это выражая, тому, каков я, смерть несвойственна. То есть, я, как психика (психическое), бессмертен, но я не вечен (не вечный – бесконечно длящийся, таковой, что есть чему длиться) – длиться, быть вечным и не скончаться нечему. Таково «бессмертие». • В целевом результате данной работы я есть, но таков, что скончаться/не скончаться нечему («бессмертие»). И таковой «я» не Атман индуистских школ ньяя, вайшешика и пурва-миманса, о котором сообщает Е.А. Торчинов. Так как «я» психичен, а не субстанция с психическим в качестве атрибута. • Согласно иллюзионизму, то, каков я в результате данного в работе эксперимента, это иллюзия. И впечатление бессмертия, это порождение мозга. А реально я таков, что скончаюсь (не исключено). Однако, необходимо осознать, что иллюзионизм, это отстраненные рассуждения о «я», но не сам я непосредственно. И тому, каков я психически (каково психически), рассуждения и вопросы о реальности «я» (например, таков ли я реально, каков психически?) и другие выражающие иллюзионизм «я» не соответствуют. То есть, каково психически, иллюзионизм «я» – нереальность. Психически, это несомненно и окончательно. • Рассуждения о том, что таковой «я» в этом (моем) или не в этом мозге, а также (например, держа в руках реальный череп), вопросы, типа «а как же (или, но теперь где же здесь) таковой «я» – как это после смерти мозга?» тому, каков таковой «я» эти вопросы не соответствуют. • После пребывания без сознания остается впечатление, что без сознания меня нет и ничего никак нет вообще. То есть, моё «бессознание» психически неотличимо от моего несуществования (небытия). Однако, наукой не показано и не исключено то, что до и после того, как я есть физически (скончаться есть чему), меня ещё или уже нет, скончаться ещё или уже нечему в качестве души, субстанции или как-то иначе. Но, то, каков я в целевом результате данной работы, таковой я есть, а не «скончался и уже теперь или ещё нереальность» и я таков, что скончаться нечему – реален (реалия). То есть, скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но я есть, даже если меня нет (не существую). • Я таков, что быть и скончаться нечему, но я есть. И то, как (каково) психически, это бессмертие – реальность. Но эта реальность ускользает от моего рационального её объяснения. -/- Заключение -/- Скончаюсь? – в целевом результате я есть и вижу, но при этом я таков, что умереть (скончаться) нечему. То есть, я бессмертен, но при этом я не вечен (не нечто вечное (бесконечно длящееся)) – быть вечным нечему. И, если принять психическое реальностью не пытаясь понять это рационально, то я именно таков – осознаю, что такова моя несомненная для меня природа. То есть, «скончаюсь/не скончаюсь» – нереальность. Психически, это несомненно и окончательно. Несмотря на ненаучность, данная работа – способ овладения реальностью. Автор был бы признателен за выявленную и показанную нереальность целевого результата данной работы, а в идеале, за осознание: «скончаюсь (не исключено)». -/- Annex 2. The key essence of this work (only in Russian to convey the nuances without distortion) -/- Performed, expressed and transmitted initially by means of Russian, the native language of the author, and, in order to avoid distortions in the correspondence of the linguistic nuances of the reproduced subjective reality, it assumes an independent translation into the language of the experimenter by the experimenter himself in the process of reproducing the target result of this work. -/- «Я» скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но «Я» есть. Will “I” die (decease)? – to die (decease) nothing, but “I” am. -/- Заметить: • Выполнено, выражено и передано изначально посредством русского – родного для автора языка и, чтобы избежать искажений соответствия языковых нюансов воспроизводимой психической реальности, предполагается самостоятельный перевод на язык экспериментатора самим экспериментатором в процессе воспроизведения целевого результата данной работы. • В «кавычки» взяты слова и выражения, требующие «субъективного» приведения в соответствие психическому содержанию. Подготовка: • Вам потребуется уединённое место (там, где вас не отвлекут). • На первоначальном этапе понадобится некоторое (возможно длительное) время для того, чтобы усвоить предложенный алгоритм действий в психической реальности в процессе реализации и воспроизвести целевой результат впервые. • Возможно, результату поспособствует отклонение от предложенного алгоритма «психических действий», импровизация в направлении целевого результата. • В процессе эксперимента количество попыток не ограничено и затраченное на это время не имеет значения. Необходим исключительно только именно целевой результат. Реализация: • В уединении встать перед плоской широкой и высокой (достаточно большой, чтобы её границы были на периферии вашего поля зрения) стеной, например, покрытой однородной светлой (но не белой) керамической, не глянцевой (не отражающей на вас свет или отвлекающих внимание изображений, не дающей бликов) плиткой с лёгким текстурным рисунком (позволяющим глазам «зацепиться» за стену и отчётливо воспринимать перед собой поверхность, а не «утонуть» в однородном (монотонном) пространстве), на расстоянии 25-40 см от неё (так, чтобы стена занимала всё поле зрения или его подавляющую часть) –» • Скончаюсь (1)? – каково психически (психическое), в моем естественно-научном понимании – это (я) не более чем и исключительно только некоторые состояния функционирующего (живого) мозга – скончаюсь, как и уже скончался каждый умерший мозг – того каждого, кто скончался, как реальности (реального, реалии) (2) уже теперь нет окончательно. Теоретически, если психически я исключительно только таков, что скончаться есть чему и ни каков иначе, то, следовательно, что (я) скончаюсь, это не исключено. • Глядя на стену, здесь и сейчас сосредоточиться на своём лице (и осознать): «я есть» – реальность (а не знание об этом) –» • В себе «отстраниться» назад – смотрю из себя на эту стену –» • Не двигая головой, охватить поле зрения вниманием предельно широко (поднять (вздернуть) брови, если это расширит поле зрения) и одновременно всё сразу (всё это) воспринять единым целым –» • Высокую и широкую стену (вариант: смотреть вверх под углом 135-150 градусов перед собой) воспринять так, что обозреваемое без поворота головы пространство (объем), это – ограниченная по окружности в периферии поля зрения замкнутая несимметричная «линза» • плоская (ограниченная стеной) с противоположной мне стороны • и «выпуклая в меня» –» • Я – «вогнутый» в «себя-назад» смотрящий, каков? – кто из меня сейчас на всё это смотрит? –» • Не двигая головой, поле зрения воспринять единым целым –» • в себя-назад «втянуться» –» и «пятиться» –» «за мысли» и за всё вообще –» из этого всего назад «вытесняясь» –» от всего вообще «взад отстраниться» –» • «собой» в себя-назад «податься» и «упершись» в «собственный (себя) задний к объектному обращённый (развернутый)» «предел тупиковый» («тупо-уперто») –» • «стать» самим «пределом-тупиком» – «в себя-назад вогнутой (рефлектор-подобной)» «пределом-плоскостью» смотрящей – воспринимающим «зрительным экраном» –» стать «плоскостью-тупиком» –» • «проскользнуть» по себе – плоскости-тупику и охватить вниманием целиком –» • собой — самим плоскостью-тупиком «назад надавить, нажать»: • осознать: «что-то как-то внутри плоскости-тупика» и «сзади – за плоскостью-тупиком», и «там вообще» «что-то как-то», а также само «внутри» и «сзади», «за плоскостью-тупиком» и вообще «там» – нереальность; • самого себя – плоскости-тупика без толщины (глубины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны для себя нет –» Собой – плоскостью-тупиком: • без глубины (толщины), без «внутри», без обратной стороны таков, что скончаться есть чему – скончаюсь (не исключено) –» • смотрю –» смотря –» «Непосредственно-психически» -/- Заметить: • Специфику используемых в данной работе слов (терминов), названий и выражений необходимо осознать в соответствии с (4.1.) (данный пункт смотрите ниже). • Необходимо от себя – (как) «смотрящего плоскости-тупика», такового, что скончаться есть чему, оттождествиться собой — «самим психическим» (каково психически) (3) –» • –» «отличить (4)» «Я» –» «Я-лик». • Отличив, и себя такового обозначая, но не имея в языке отличающего местоимения, именую «Я» (5). • «Соединённое-через-дефис-в-кавычках» реализовать и/или воспринять «одним-единым-целостным»; • Последовательность слов и знаков предполагает последовательность психических действий (алгоритм действий в собственном психическом); • Вопросительность слова, фразы или отдельной её, именно вопросительной части задаётся знаком «?» расположенным перед и после них. Требование к действию задаётся знаком «!» расположенным перед и после слова (фразы); • Субъективно-психический эксперимент завершён, если воспроизведен (4.1.), иначе субъективно-психический эксперимент не завершён. -/- Собой – плоскостью-тупиком … смотрю –» смотря –» -/- «Психически» (6) 1. ?кто? видит –» !отличить «Я»! –» 2. –» !«Я-видящий-лик»! –» 3. –» !«Я-лик»! –» 4. –» !«Я-ликом» всем «психически-назад-надавить(нажать)»: «Я» ?скончаюсь?! –» !«Я-ликом» всем «психически-назад-давить(жать)»: (4.1.) – нечему (7), но «Я» есть.! -/- Признательность: Согласно иллюзионизму, то, каков «Я» (как (каково) «скончаться нечему, но «Я» есть.»), реально, это не так (не таково). То есть, таковой «Я» нереален (нереальность), а реально – таков, что скончаюсь (не исключено). Однако, необходимо осознать, что это «отстраненные» от «Я» рассуждения о «Я», но не сам «Я» непосредственно. И тому, каков «Я» (как (каково) скончаться нечему, но «Я» есть.) таковое (рассуждения) не соответствует. То есть, эти рассуждения о «Я» – заблуждение. Это (как осознание) несомненно и окончательно. Не так? – за выявленную и показанную нереальность (того, что) «Скончаюсь? – нечему (скончаться), но «Я» есть.», за показанную реальность того, что скончаться не исключено, а в идеале, за осознание: «скончаюсь (не исключено)» я был бы признателен. -/- (Сноски) (1) Именно «скончаюсь, скончался», то есть – как реальности (реального, реалии) нет окончательно. (2) Реалия, реально, реален, реальность, реальное – само то, что (каково это) непосредственно, как само таковое – само то, каково познаваемое и как-либо моделируемое вне его познания и иного (вообще) моделирования. То есть, само само-осознание себя реальностью, например, «я-реалия», «я есть» или «скончаться – нечему, но «Я» есть.» – реальность. То есть – нам ничто не запрещает ответить на вопрос «скончаюсь?» несомненно и окончательно. (3) Психически (психическое) – то, как (каково) я сам непосредственно, несомненно, и та моя непосредственная реальность, как и посредством чего я сам и всё вообще для меня есть, и которое для меня исключительно единственное. Следует заметить, что пока бываю без сознания (травма мозга или сон без сновидений), ничего и никак нет вообще. Также само обозначение того, что это сама собственная непосредственная реальность (то есть – несомненно). И чтобы её осознать, представьте себя экспериментатором, который не подменяет реальность рассуждениями о ней. – Теперь для вас, как экспериментатора, то, как (каково) психически, это – несомненно (непосредственная несомненная реальность). Не философствуй (не рассуждай, не моделируй её), а экспериментируй! (4) «Я-Лик» – специфическое выражение, соответствующее психическому в данный момент СПЭ. (5) «Я» – целевой (конечный, «предельный») и «ключевой» результат данной работы. «Я» в данной работе не склоняется, выделено полужирным подчеркнутым шрифтом и заключено в кавычки. (6) «Каково психически» – то, как (каково) «Я» сам непосредственно, несомненно – само «первое лицо» (субъект психического), а также обозначение принятия позиции «первого лица» и сообщения «от первого лица». (7) Пока я бываю без сознания («бессознание», например, сплю без сновидений), моего сознания нет (оно сведено на нет, угасло) – ничего и никак нет вообще (это моё абсолютное небытие) – (каково) психически, мне скончаться нечем. А в целевом результате данной работы, психически (то есть – непосредственно), «Я» таков, что скончаться не нечем, а именно нечему, но при этом «Я» есть. (shrink)

In this article, an account of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system is offered, according to which the contamination system can generate contamination represen- tations in circumstances that do not satisfy the norms of contamination, including in cases of mere visual contact with disgusting objects. It is argued that this architecture is important for explaining the content, logic, distribution, and persistence of maternal impression beliefs – according to which fetal defects are caused by the pregnant mother’s experiences and (...) actions – which in turn provide important evidence of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system. (shrink)

Many who suffer from eating disorders claim that they see themselves as “fat”. Despite decades of research into the phenomenon, behavioural evidence has failed to confirm that eating disorders involve visual misperception of own-body size. I illustrate the importance of this phenomenon for our understanding of perceptual processing, outline the challenges involved in experimentally confirming it, and provide solutions to those challenges.

In this paper, we distinguish between different sorts of assessments of algorithmic systems, describe our process of assessing such systems for ethical risk, and share some key challenges and lessons for future algorithm assessments and audits. Given the distinctive nature and function of a third-party audit, and the uncertain and shifting regulatory landscape, we suggest that second-party assessments are currently the primary mechanisms for analyzing the social impacts of systems that incorporate artificial intelligence. We then discuss two kinds of as-sessments: (...) an ethical risk assessment and a narrower, technical algo-rithmic bias assessment. We explain how the two assessments depend on each other, highlight the importance of situating the algorithm within its particular socio-technical context, and discuss a number of lessons and challenges for algorithm assessments and, potentially, for algorithm audits. The discussion builds on our team’s experience of advising and conducting ethical risk assessments for clients across dif-ferent industries in the last four years. Our main goal is to reflect on the key factors that are potentially ethically relevant in the use of algo-rithms, and draw lessons for the nascent algorithm assessment and audit industry, in the hope of helping all parties minimize the risk of harm from their use. (shrink)

I argue that evidentialism should be rejected because it cannot be reconciled with empirical work on bias in cognitive and social psychology.

The rationality of future bias figures crucially in various metaphysical and ethical arguments (Prior 1959; Parfit 1984; Fischer 2019). Recently, however, philosophers have raised several arguments to the effect that future bias is irrational (Dougherty 2011; Suhler and Callender 2012; Greene and Sullivan 2015). Particularly, Greene and Sullivan (2015) claim that future bias is irrational because future bias leads to two kinds of irrational planning behaviors in agents who also seek to avoid regret. In this paper, (...) I join others who have objected to Greene and Sullivan’s argument (Dorsey 2016; Tarsney 2017), but for significantly different reasons that put into question an unchallenged premise in the debate. These reasons are based on the relationship between the alleged irrational planning behaviors and certain features of regret that regret shares with future bias. First, regret is dynamic, involving preferences that change over time and in inconsistent ways. Second, regret comes in degrees, meaning that we can rank our potential regrets. Because regret has these features, I show that the future-biased agents in Greene and Sullivan’s cases do not need to act in irrational ways to rationally avoid regret. (shrink)

All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such preferences rationally permissible, or are they, as time-neutralists contend, (...) rationally impermissible? And what is it that grounds their having the normative status that they do have? We consider two sorts of arguments regarding the normative status of future-biased preferences. The first appeals to the supposed arbitrariness of these preferences, and the second appeals to their upshot. We evaluate these arguments in light of the recent empirical research on future-bias. (shrink)

What is the mental representation that is responsible for implicit bias? What is this representation that mediates between the trigger and the biased behavior? My claim is that this representation is neither a propositional attitude nor a mere association. Rather, it is mental imagery: perceptual processing that is not directly triggered by sensory input. I argue that this view captures the advantages of the two standard accounts without inheriting their disadvantages. Further, this view also explains why manipulating mental imagery (...) is among the most efficient ways of counteracting implicit bias. (shrink)

Anosognosia for visual deficits—cases where significant visual deficits go unnoticed—challenges the view that our own conscious experiences are what we know best. We review these widespread and striking failures of awareness. Anosognosia can occur with total blindness, visual abnormalities induced by brain lesions, and eye diseases. We show that anosognosia for visual deficits is surprisingly widespread. Building on previous accounts, we introduce a framework showing how apparently disparate forms of anosognosia fit together. The central idea is (...) that, to notice a deficit, individuals need to form expectations about normal vision, compare expectations and visual input, and judge any mismatch at the metacognitive level. A failure in any of these three steps may lead to unawareness of visual deficits. (shrink)

chapter on perception and bias including implicit bias.

If you care about securing knowledge, what is wrong with being biased? Often it is said that we are less accurate and reliable knowers due to implicit biases. Likewise, many people think that biases reflect inaccurate claims about groups, are based on limited experience, and are insensitive to evidence. Chapter 3 investigates objections such as these with the help of two popular metaphors: bias as fog and bias as shortcut. Guiding readers through these metaphors, I argue that they (...) clarify the range of knowledge-related objections to implicit bias. They also suggest that there will be no unifying problem with bias from the perspective of knowledge. That is, they tell us that implicit biases can be wrong in different ways for different reasons. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the metaphors reveal a deep—though perhaps not intractable—disagreement among theorists about whether implicit biases can be good in some cases when it comes to knowledge. (shrink)

Are individuals morally responsible for their implicit biases? One reason to think not is that implicit biases are often advertised as unconscious, ‘introspectively inaccessible’ attitudes. However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, although often in partial and inarticulate ways. Here I explore the implications of this evidence of partial awareness for individuals’ moral responsibility. First, I argue that responsibility comes in degrees. Second, I argue that individuals’ partial awareness of their implicit biases makes (...) them (partially) morally responsible for them. I argue by analogy to a close relative of implicit bias: moods. (shrink)

Many of Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Thomas Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters (1664) relate to the disorder and damage that she holds would result if Hobbesian pressure were the cause of visual perception. In this paper, I argue that her “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV is aimed at a different goal: to show the explanatory potency of her account. First, I connect Cavendish’s view of visual perception as “patterning” to the “two men” thought experiment in Letter (...) IV. Second, I provide a potential reply on Hobbes’s behalf that appeals to physiological differences between perceivers’ sense organs, drawing upon Hobbes’s optics in De homine. Third, I argue that such a reply would misunderstand Cavendish’s objective of showing the limited explanatory resources available in understanding visual perception as pressing when compared to her view of visual perception as patterning. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of prestige bias in shaping academic philosophy, with a focus on its demographics. I argue that prestige bias exacerbates the structural underrepresentation of minorities in philosophy. It works as a filter against (among others) philosophers of color, women philosophers, and philosophers of low socio-economic status. As a consequence of prestige bias our judgments of philosophical quality become distorted. I outline ways in which prestige bias in philosophy can be mitigated.

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, (...) overgeneralized conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

Philosophers have long noted, and empirical psychology has lately confirmed, that most people are “biased toward the future”: we prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. At least two explanations have been offered for this bias: belief in temporal passage and the practical irrelevance of the past resulting from our inability to influence past events. We set out to test the latter explanation. In a large survey, we find that participants exhibit significantly (...) less future bias when asked to consider scenarios where they can affect their own past experiences. This supports the “practical irrelevance” explanation of future bias. It also suggests that future bias is not an inflexible preference hardwired by evolution, but results from a more general disposition to “accept the things we cannot change”. However, participants still exhibited substantial future bias in scenarios in which they could affect the past, leaving room for complementary explanations. Beyond the main finding, our results also indicate that future bias is stake-sensitive and that participants endorse the normative correctness of their future-biased preferences and choices. In combination, these results shed light on philosophical debates over the rationality of future bias, suggesting that it may be a rational response to empirical realities rather than a brute, arational disposition. (shrink)

It has been argued that implicit biases are operative in philosophy and lead to significant epistemic costs in the field. Philosophers working on this issue have focussed mainly on implicit gender and race biases. They have overlooked ideological bias, which targets political orientations. Psychologists have found ideological bias in their field and have argued that it has negative epistemic effects on scientific research. I relate this debate to the field of philosophy and argue that if, as some studies (...) suggest, the same bias also exists in philosophy then it will lead to hitherto unrecognised epistemic hazards in the field. Furthermore, the bias is epistemically different from the more familiar biases in respects that are important for epistemology, ethics, and metaphilosophy. (shrink)

Future-biased agents care not only about what experiences they have, but also when they have them. Many believe that A-theories of time justify future bias. Although presentism is an A-theory of time, some argue that it nevertheless negates the justification for future bias. Here, I claim that the alleged discrepancy between presentism and future bias is a special case of the cross-time relations problem. To resolve the discrepancy, I propose an account of future bias as a (...) preference for certain tensed truths properly relativized to the present. (shrink)

This paper proposes to define metaphor as a visual-material structure, the sphere of which is ontological rather than cognitive or conceptual. It argues that the essence of metaphor, as either an aesthetic or a communicative unit or both, resides in the qualitative dimension and appearance, or even materiality, of the metaphorical medium and its form. The paper thus offers a new theory of metaphor, focusing on the medium of metaphor, which composes and transfigures or reconstructs its target anew: a (...) composition that is prior to understanding or conceptualizing the target. In doing so, the paper presents a formalist ontology of metaphors, established via an externalist account of metaphors, as opposed to the prevailing cognitivist-conceptualist account which I characterize as internalist. The various kinds of metaphor – linguistic, poetic, visual or material – are based on their external structure, rather than an internal-conceptual mechanism of understanding, as assumed by a significant segment of the literature. Visual metaphor, therefore, is the paradigmatic kind of metaphor, the analysis of which can be generalized to other kinds of metaphor. Furthermore, the paper tries to overcome the current discrepancy between the formalist character of the metaphorical medium and the dominance of cognitivist and conceptualist theories of metaphor. Challenging these, I claim that if the identity of metaphor is indeed based on its composition, then it is actually based on its aesthetic qualities. That is to say, not only are there autonomous visual or material metaphors, that are not based on linguistic or conceptual ones, but linguistic and conceptual metaphors are based on visuality: they are enabled by the structural possibilities offered by visual media. (shrink)

Having a confirmation bias sometimes leads us to hold inaccurate beliefs. So, the puzzle goes: why do we have it? According to the influential argumentative theory of reasoning, confirmation bias emerges because the primary function of reason is not to form accurate beliefs, but to convince others that we’re right. A crucial prediction of the theory, then, is that confirmation bias should be found only in the reasoning domain. In this article, we argue that there is evidence (...) that confirmation bias does exist outside the reasoning domain. This undermines the main evidential basis for the argumentative theory of reasoning. In presenting the relevant evidence, we explore why having such confirmation bias may not be maladaptive. (shrink)

For synergistic interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, AI outputs often need to be explainable to people. Explainable AI (XAI) systems are commonly tested in human user studies. However, whether XAI researchers consider potential cultural differences in human explanatory needs remains unexplored. We highlight psychological research that found significant differences in human explanations between many people from Western, commonly individualist countries and people from non-Western, often collectivist countries. We argue that XAI research currently overlooks these variations and that (...) many popular XAI designs implicitly and problematically assume that Western explanatory needs are shared cross-culturally. Additionally, we systematically reviewed over 200 XAI user studies and found that most studies did not consider relevant cultural variations, sampled only Western populations, but drew conclusions about human-XAI interactions more generally. We also analyzed over 30 literature reviews of XAI studies. Most reviews did not mention cultural differences in explanatory needs or flag overly broad cross-cultural extrapolations of XAI user study results. Combined, our analyses provide evidence of a cultural bias toward Western populations in XAI research, highlighting an important knowledge gap regarding how culturally diverse users may respond to widely used XAI systems that future work can and should address. (shrink)

The 11 experimental, pseudo-avantgarde visual poems (wordless, other than title and date) are an indirect homage to the late-great filmmaker and photographer, Chris Marker (1921-2012), foremost to his penchant for utilizing disintegrating imagery in his film-essays and multimedia installations. All images were captured using a Research in Motion, BlackBerry 8520 cellphone, and subsequently 100-percent de-saturated, and 100-percent contrast-adjusted, using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. The images, as a result, resemble the primitive production values given to the pinhole camera, and the (...) “dogmatic” (uniform) adjustments (as above), applied to the original BB images, reference the early strictures applied to filmmaking by Lars von Trier. The above-mentioned, black-and-white adjustments notwithstanding, all images are used “as captured,” without cropping. The series begins and ends in Botwnnog, Northwest Wales, in May and August of 2013, respectively, with interregnums and brief idylls in Rijeka, Croatia, Trieste and Ancona, Italy, and Igoumenitsa, Ioannina, and Athens, Greece. Tracking the peregrinations of the author of the poems across Europe, and intimately associated with the then-nascent research and exhibition project, “Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art & Architecture,”* the poems are also a compressed form of scholarship, albeit operating in the shadow-lands of knowledge per se, and evoking the non-discursive side of literary-artistic production, a penumbral zone within cultural production that nonetheless references the discursive arts (essay and/or full-blown treatise), but favors the paradox and/or tautology – privileging, then, the much-desired destruction of dialectics. (shrink)

In analyzing implicit bias, one key issue is to clarify its metaphysical nature. In this paper, I develop a novel account of implicit bias by highlighting a particular kind of belief-like state that is partly constituted by phenomenal experiences. I call these states ‘qualiefs’ for three reasons: qualiefs draw upon qualitative experiences of what an object seems like to attribute a property to this very object, they share some of the distinctive features of proper beliefs, and they also (...) share some characteristics of what Gendler calls ‘aliefs’. I proceed as follows: First, I develop a general theory of qualiefs. Second, I argue that implicit bias involves generic qualiefs that involve experiences that have been shaped by stereotypes. Elaborating on the particular content of a generic qualief, I explain why we are unaware of the bias even though it involves an experience. Third, I demonstrate that the qualief-model best explains the key features of implicit bias: it accounts for the biases´ implicitness and automaticity. Moreover, it elucidates how implicit bias can be insensitive to logical form and evidence, but at the same time it can serve as propositional input to further mental states. (shrink)

Humans typically display hindsight bias. They are more confident that the evidence available beforehand made some outcome probable when they know the outcome occurred than when they don't. There is broad consensus that hindsight bias is irrational, but this consensus is wrong. Hindsight bias is generally rationally permissible and sometimes rationally required. The fact that a given outcome occurred provides both evidence about what the total evidence available ex ante was, and also evidence about what that evidence (...) supports. Even if you in fact evaluate the ex ante evidence correctly, you should not be certain of this. Then, learning the outcome provides evidence that if you erred, you are more likely to have erred low rather than high in estimating the degree to which the ex ante evidence supported the hypothesis that that outcome would occur. (shrink)

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

This paper offers an unorthodox appraisal of empirical research bearing on the question of the low representation of women in philosophy. It contends that fashionable views in the profession concerning implicit bias and stereotype threat are weakly supported, that philosophers often fail to report the empirical work responsibly, and that the standards for evidence are set very low—so long as you take a certain viewpoint.

Future-bias is preferring some lesser future good to a greater past good because it is in the future, or preferring some greater past pain to some lesser future pain because it is in the past. Most of us think that this bias is rational. I argue that no agents have future-biased preferences that are rationally evaluable—that is, evaluable as rational or irrational. Given certain plausible assumptions about rational evaluability, either we must find a new conception of future-bias (...) that avoids the difficulties I raise, or we must conclude that future-biased preferences are not subject to rational evaluation. (shrink)

(This contribution is primarily based on "Implicit Bias, Moods, and Moral Responsibility," (2018) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. This version has been shortened and significantly revised to be more accessible and student-oriented.) Are individuals morally responsible for their implicit biases? One reason to think not is that implicit biases are often advertised as unconscious. However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, although often in partial and inarticulate ways. Here I explore the implications of this (...) evidence of partial awareness for individuals’ moral responsibility. First, I argue that responsibility comes in degrees. Second, I argue that individuals’ partial awareness of their implicit biases makes them (partially) morally responsible for them. I argue by analogy to a close relative of implicit bias: moods. (shrink)

The reasonable person standard is used in adjudicating claims of self-defence. In US law, an individual may use defensive force if her beliefs that a threat is imminent and that force is required are beliefs that a reasonable person would have. In English law, it is sufficient that beliefs in imminence and necessity are genuinely held; but the reasonableness of so believing is given an evidential role in establishing the genuineness of the beliefs. There is, of course, much contention over (...) how to spell out when, and in virtue of what, such beliefs are reasonable. In this chapter, we identify some distinctive issues that arise when we consider that implicit racial bias might be implicated in the beliefs in imminence and necessity. Considering two prominent interpretations of the reasonable person standard, we argue that neither is acceptable. On one interpretation, we risk unfairness to the defendant-who may non-culpably harbour bias. On another, the standard embeds racist stereotypes. Whilst there are formulations of the defence that may serve to mitigate these problems, we argue that they cannot be avoided in the presence of racist social structures. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that (...) which explanation is the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near and bias toward the future. According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has (...) focused on future-directed near bias. The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences. (shrink)

Our focus here is on whether, when influenced by implicit biases, those behavioural dispositions should be understood as being a part of that person’s character: whether they are part of the agent that can be morally evaluated.[4] We frame this issue in terms of control. If a state, process, or behaviour is not something that the agent can, in the relevant sense, control, then it is not something that counts as part of her character. A number of theorists have argued (...) that individuals do not have control, in the relevant sense, over the operation of implicit bias. We will argue that this claim is mistaken. We articulate and develop a notion of control that individuals have with respect to implicit bias, and argue that this kind of control can ground character-based evaluation of such behavioural dispositions. (shrink)

A visual experience, as understood here, is a sensory event that is conscious, or like something to undergo. This chapter focuses on three issues concerning such experiences. The first issue is the so-called ‘transparency’ of experiences. The chapter distinguishes a number of different interpretations of the suggestion that visual experiences are ‘transparent’. It then discusses in what sense, if any, visual experiences are ‘transparent’, and what further conclusions one can draw from that. The second issue is which (...) properties we are presented with in visual experiences. It is widely accepted that we sometimes experience red for example. But exactly which properties do we sometimes visually experience, and which properties do we never visually experience? The third issue is which particulars, if any, we are presented with in visual experiences. Do we for example sometimes visually experience mind-independent particulars like trees? Do we sometimes visually experience mind-dependent, particular ‘sense-data’? (shrink)

The "myside bias'' in evaluating arguments is an empirically well-confirmed phenomenon that consists of overweighting arguments that endorse one's beliefs or attack alternative beliefs while underweighting arguments that attack one's beliefs or defend alternative beliefs. This paper makes two contributions: First, it proposes a probabilistic model that adequately captures three salient features of myside bias in argument evaluation. Second, it provides a Bayesian justification of this model, thus showing that myside bias has a rational Bayesian explanation under (...) certain conditions. (shrink)

Recent empirical research has substantiated the finding that very many of us harbour implicit biases: fast, automatic, and difficult to control processes that encode stereotypes and evaluative content, and influence how we think and behave. Since it is difficult to be aware of these processes - they have sometimes been referred to as operating 'unconsciously' - we may not know that we harbour them, nor be alert to their influence on our cognition and action. And since they are difficult to (...) control, considerable work is required to prevent their influence. We here focus on the implications of these findings for epistemology. We first look at ways in which implicit biases thwart our knowledge seeking practices (sections 1 & 2). Then we set out putative epistemic benefits of implicit bias, before considering ways in which epistemic practices might be improved (section 3). Finally, we consider the distinctive challenges that the findings about implicit bias pose to us as philosophers, in the context of feminist philosophy in particular (section 4). (shrink)

What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to understand, and ultimately (...) combat, discrimination and inequality. (shrink)