Is our case strong enough to go to trial? Will interest rates go up? Can I trust this person? Such questions - and the judgments required to answer them - are woven into the fabric of everyday experience. This book, first published in 2002, examines how people make such judgments. The study of human judgment was transformed in the 1970s, when Kahneman and Tversky introduced their 'heuristics and biases' approach and challenged the dominance of strictly rational models. Their work highlighted (...) the reflexive mental operations used to make complex problems manageable and illuminated how the same processes can lead to both accurate and dangerously flawed judgments. The heuristics and biases framework generated a torrent of influential research in psychology - research that reverberated widely and affected scholarship in economics, law, medicine, management, and political science. This book compiles the most influential research in the heuristics and biases tradition since the initial collection of 1982. (shrink)

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject together with nine newly commissioned essays.One reason (...) that these questions are important is that we are receiving a huge influx of new information from the sciences that challenges some traditional philosophical views about the senses. This information needs to be incorporated into our view of the senses and perception. Can we do this whilst retaining our pre-existing concepts of the senses and of perception or do we need to revise our concepts? If they need to be revised, then in what way should that be done? Research in diverse areas, such as the nature of human perception, varieties of non-human animal perception, the interaction between different sensory modalities, perceptual disorders, and possible treatments for them, calls into question the platitude that there are five senses, as well as the pre-supposition that we know what we are counting when we count them as five.This book will serve as an inspiring introduction to the topic and as a basis from which further new research will grow. (shrink)

This paper provides a categorization of cross-modal experiences. There are myriad forms. Doing so allows us to think clearly about the nature of different cross-modal experiences and allows us to clearly formulate competing hypotheses about the kind of experiences involved in different cross-modal phenomena.

Hope and Gabbert review and distil the relevant research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with conversations within an eyewitness context. In particular, they focus on how co‐witnesses’ retellings of witnessed events impair the quantity and quality of information subsequently reported to law enforcement authorities. Notably, they also provide interventions (e.g., careful witness management and post incident procedures, use of warnings, early individual accounts, etc.) to mitigate these negative, well‐documented mnemonic effects.

This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory, framed by an introductory overview of these topics. How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge? These are the two central questions that the contributors seek to address.

For this Clarendon Paperback, Dr Griffin has written a new Postscript to bring the original book fully up to date. She discusses further important and controversial questions of fact or interpretation in the light of the scholarship of the intervening years and provides additional argument where necessary. The connection between Seneca's prose works and his career as a first-century Roman statesman is problematic. Although he writes in the first person, he tells us little of his external life or of (...) the people and events that formed its setting. Miriam Griffin addresses the problem by first reconstructing Seneca's career using only outside sources and his de Clementia and Apocolocyntosis, whose political purposes are undisputed. In the second part of the book she studies Seneca's treatment of subjects of political significance, including his views on slavery, provincial policy, wealth, and suicide. On the whole, the word of the philosopher is found to illuminate the work of the statesman, but notable exceptions emerge, and the links that are revealed vary from theme to theme and rarely accord with traditional autobiographical interpretations of Seneca's works. (shrink)

It is hoped that modern sensory substitution and augmentation devices will be able to replace or expand our senses. But to what extent has this been achieved to date? To what extent are the experiences created by sensory substitution devices like the sensory experiences that we are trying to replace? To what extent can we augment people’s senses providing them with new information and new experiences? The first aim of this introduction is to delve deeply into this question to discover (...) the usefulness of these devices, to outline the different sorts of experience that might be created, and what the evidence tells us about these experiences. While there are some reasons to be hopeful about the powers of sensory substitution devices, there are also reasons to wonder whether they will ever really have the practical applications that we hope they might have. The second aim is to look to see whether the study of modern sensory substitution and augmentation devices can shed light on the nature of our senses and perception in general. Much of the philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific work that takes place concerning sensory substitution and augmentation is keenly aware of the possibility that it might help our understanding and it seeks to comprehend many different aspects of perception. (shrink)

Abstract I argue for a new interpretation of the argument for the non-identity of Being and Difference at Sophist 255c-e, which turns on a distinction between modes of being a property. Though indebted to Frede (1967), the distinction differs from his in an important respect: What distinguishes the modes is not the subject's relation to itself or to something numerically distinct, but whether it constitutes or conforms to the specification of some property. Thus my view, but not his, allows self-participation (...) for Forms. Against Frede and the more traditional interpretation, I maintain that the distinction is not introduced by way of the pros alla / kath' hauta distinction, or by way of uses or senses of the verb `to be', but is established prior to the argument and is deployed in its frame. Moreover, since I read the argument's scope as restricted to properties in what I shall call the attribute mode, my interpretation can explain, as its rivals cannot, why the criterion of difference at 255d6-7 does not apply to the Form, Difference, itself. (shrink)

How does visual imagination differ from visual perceptual experience? And how should we describe experiences of visual imagery? Moreover how can people who have visual imagery convey what it is like to have it to those who have never had it – congenital aphantisics? This paper addresses these questions using examples of illusions and other perceptual phenomena to hone in on the answers.

Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

An important strand in the debate on abortion focuses on the moral status of fetuses. Knowledge of the moral value of fetuses is needed to assess fetuses’ moral status. As Errol Lord argues, acquaintance plays a key role in moral and aesthetic knowledge. Many pregnant persons have acquaintance with their fetus that provides privileged access to knowledge about that fetus’ moral value. This knowledge is (a) very difficult to acquire without being pregnant and (b) relevant for assessing the moral status (...) of fetuses. This has implications for public debate on abortion and the research methods of philosophers working on abortion. (shrink)

Is the sense-data theory, otherwise known as indirect realism, a form of representationalism? This question has been underexplored in the extant literature, and to the extent that there is discussion, contemporary authors disagree. There are many different variants of representationalism, and differences between these variants that some people have taken to be inconsequential turn out to be key factors in whether the sense-data theory is a form of representationalism. Chief among these are whether a representationalist takes the phenomenal character of (...) an experience to be explicable in virtue of the properties of an experience that represent something or explicable in virtue of that which gets represented. Another is whether representationalists hold a non-reductionist, or naturalistically or non-naturalistically reductionist variant of representationalism. In addition, subtle differences in what one takes phenomenal character to be on the sense-data theory – either awareness of sense-data or the sense-data themselves – together with one's account of representation, are crucial factors in determining whether sense-data theory is compatible with representationalism. This paper explores these relationships and makes manifest the complexities of the metaphysics of two central theories of perception. (shrink)

Unemployment is not just an economic category but is constituted by governmentality, most evidently by the increase of interventions into the lives of the unemployed through Active Labour Market Policies. Furthermore, the International Labour Organization definition of unemployment as being without work, available for work and seeking work is a shifting classification which categorises unemployment on multiple temporal horizons, with the passive element of being without work increasingly superseded by the emphasis on seeking work. Through biographical interviews with unemployed in (...) Ireland, spanning from 2012-2018, we trace this transformation of temporality empirically and conclude that governmentality constitutes multiple, contradictory, indefinite forms of time. Particularly, we offer an imaginative reading of two overlapping temporalities: Kairos, waiting, enduring, suffering nothingness in anticipation of transformation by getting a job, and Cronos, not cyclical time, but the devouring of time, where the days and leisure of the unemployed people are deliberately consumed by job-seeking. Ironically, states implement ALMPs in the kairotic hope of transforming their economy, yet these policies do little but make the experience of unemployment even harder to endure. (shrink)

This book is Yount's second installment in the Bloomsbury Studies in Ancient Philosophy. It comes on the heels of his debut in the series with Plotinus the Platonist: A Comparative Account of Plato and Plotinus' Metaphysics. The titles of both works clearly indicate what is close to Yount's heart; and he delivers, here as well as previously, the same passionate defense that there is an essentially inseparable connection between the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus. This stance may come as a (...) surprise to the expert reader of late ancient philosophy. For no opinion to the contrary has been put forth in the Neoplatonic scholarship in the last 120 years if we take, with Yount, as our terminus post quem Shorey's... (shrink)

The fields of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and participatory foresight seek to establish, and to include publics within, anticipatory governance mechanisms. While scenario-based methods can bring to the publics’ attention the ethical challenges associated to existing technologies, there has been little empirical research examining how, in practice, prospective public deliberative processes should be organized to inform anticipatory governance. The goal of this article is to generate methodological insights into the way such methods can stimulate the public's moral imagination regarding (...) what may (or may not) happen in the future and what should (or should not) happen in the future. Our qualitative analyses draw on a public deliberation study that included videos and online scenarios to support participants’ (n = 57) deliberations about fictional interventions for genetically at-risk individuals. Our findings clarify how participants: (1) challenged key elements of our scenarios; (2) extended several of their technical and moral prospects; (3) engaged personally with others, including our scenarios’ characters; and (4) mobilized the past creatively to reason about the future. Our methodology enabled participants to creatively and empathetically envision complex sociotechnical futures. Yet, important methodological limits should be acknowledged by those who design, implement and use public engagement methods to inform anticipatory governance. (shrink)

I show that the indeterminacy problem for computational structuralists is in fact far more problematic than even the harshest critic of structuralism has realised; it is not a bullet which can be bitten by structuralists as previously thought. Roughly, this is because the structural indeterminacy of logic-gates such as AND/OR is caused by the structural identity of the binary computational digits 0/1 themselves. I provide a proof that pure computational structuralism is untenable because structural indeterminacy entails absurd consequences - namely, (...) that there is only one binary computational digit. I conclude that accounting for individuation is a more important desiderata for a theory of computation than even that of triviality. -/- . (shrink)

The well-established pattern of Executive expansionism and limited oversight of Executive action in times of terrorism is problematic from the civil libertarian point of view. How to limit such action has been the subject of much scholarship, a large amount of which focuses on perceptions of institutional competence rather than effectiveness. For the authors, the effective control of security-focused state action is to be judged by the extent to which it consists only of action that is necessary and proportionate and (...) thereby strikes an appropriate balance between security exigencies and individual rights. This article, written and structured in dialectic form, presents competing perspectives on effective oversight mechanisms: on the one hand, an extra-constitutionalism perspective, proposing a limited role for the Judiciary and emphasizing the need for legislative and democratic controls; and on the other, an argument for judicial muscularity. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 4, Page 1-4, December 2011.

In this article the authors discuss psychological counselling as it emerges as a gendered profession in the transitional economy of Russia. Based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 23 female and three male practising counsellors, the article analyses their perceptions of their profession, focusing in particular on two key issues: their reasons for entry into the profession; and their expectations of their work as a profession. The authors argue that both female and male counsellors’ perceptions of their entry into this profession (...) revealed highly gendered stances, and furthermore, that these were strongly imbricated in the legacies of Soviet employment policies and gender ideology. (shrink)

In some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore (...) and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit. (shrink)

Based on Davenport’s (1998) social audit, we examined six firms’ corporate social responsibility activities within the beer industry in an effort to identify and compare these firms’ industry social standing. The results have implications in our understanding and assessment of corporate citizenship practices both within and across business industry groups.

Most mainstream psychologists consider philosophy irrelevant to their work, but see themselves as realists. Various opposition movements embrace philosophy but reject realism, either completely or partially, despite upholding ideas consistent with a realist philosophy. Many on both sides see the Tower of Babel that constitutes psychology as a sign of healthy diversity, not fragmentation. We argue that relations among the three factors – philosophy, realism and fragmentation – deserve closer scrutiny. With philosophy’s core method of conceptual analysis deprioritized, both mainstream (...) psychology and the opposition fracture into an array of “partial realisms”, falling away from a realism that is thoroughly consistent. These are the source of psychology’s fragmentation. The conceptual neglect and resulting confusions can be seen in psychology’s recent replicability crisis, and in the widespread adoption of a representationalist approach to the mind/brain. We argue that the metatheoretical coherence and methodological maturity required for genuine scientific progress involves a consistent adherence to realism. We spell out what that involves and consider several reasons why this has been so difficult for psychology. (shrink)

This book traces a deep misunderstanding about the relation of concepts and reality in the history of philosophy. It exposes the influence of the mistake in the thought of Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Nietzche and Bradley, and suggests that the solution can be found in Hegelian thought. Ellis argues that the treatment proposed exemplifies Hegel's dialectical method. This is an important contribution to this area of philosophy.

The idea of economic peace is a “counterpoint” to a warlike view of the economy. Viewing things in terms of economic peace makes it possible to develop a different economic anthropology. The idea of economic peace is used to think about a fundamental revision of the relationships to self and between actors. It sits at the intersection of peace studies, social and cognitive psychology, institutional conventionalist approaches, postmodernist philosophy and sinology. By employing the inchoate concept of economic peace, this article (...) explores the opportunity to extend and deepen the relationship between individual and collective responsibility. The article describes individual and collective practices or avenues which could be useful when reacting to complex situations. (shrink)

This article investigates the contribution made by indigenous employees to the work of the Hong Kong Observatory from its inception and into the early twentieth century. As has so often been the case in Western histories of science, the significance of indigenous workers and of women in the Hong Kong Observatory has been obscured by the stories of the government officials and observatory director(s). Yet without the employees, the service could not have functioned or grown. While the glimpses of their (...) work and lives are fleeting, often only revealed in minor archival references, this article seeks to interrogate these sources to make these workers’ lives visible and to offer an examination of everyday working relationships at this place and point in time. It focuses on three areas. First, an exploration of who these workers were, and the role they played at the observatory. Second, an investigation of their contribution to the nascent science of meteorology. Third, an examination of available evidence – levels of high staff turnover, complaints, instances of foot dragging, or working to rule, as well as the tenacity to continue for years under difficult working conditions – to demonstrate the ability of workers to reject or to negotiate with colonial/patriarchal authority. In profiling their stories, this article will add to the literature examining the lives of scientific workers and their contributions to science, the everyday cultural and social contexts of colonial meteorology, and the role of ordinary men and women in producing meteorological knowledge at this time. (shrink)

Palliative care seeks to improve the quality of life for patients suffering from the impact of life‐limiting illnesses. Palliative care encompasses but is more than end‐of‐life care, which is defined as care during the final hours/days/weeks of life. Although palliative care policies increasingly require all healthcare professionals to have at least basic or non‐specialist skills in palliative care, international evidence suggests there are difficulties in realising such policies. This study reports on an action research project aimed at developing respiratory nursing (...) practice to address the palliative care needs of patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The findings suggest that interlevel dynamics at individual, team, interdepartmental and organisational levels are an important factor in the capacity of respiratory nurses to embed non‐specialist palliative care in their practice. At best, current efforts to embed palliative care in everyday practice may improve end‐of‐life care in the final hours/days/weeks of life. However, embedding palliative care in everyday practice requires a more fundamental shift in the organisation of care. (shrink)

Slife and Reber ask of psychologists that they recognize their prejudice against theism and the incompatibility between theistic and naturalistic worldviews. Yet, the subtext of their article is that theism and naturalism are equally valid and that psychology’s secularism is a mistake. Given that theism is not beyond reason, the only sufficient ground for charging psychologists with prejudice is if theism has survived serious attempts at conceptual and empirical test, and psychology ignores or disguises this fact. So, the grounds for (...) believing in the reality of a supernatural existent are highly relevant to the authors’ allegation. However, their concept of God affords no such grounds. They disavow the logic involved in the ordinary meaning of the term “incompatible” and they ignore a crucial distinction between conditions of existence and qualities of things or processes. The consequence is that either God is this-worldly, and there is no ontological basis to Slife and Reber’s incompatibility thesis, or God’s mode of existence is quite different from the mode of existence of ordinary things and all the problems of dualism follow. Either way, their charge of prejudice is without foundation. The burden of proof rests with the defender of theism and, for now, psychology’s secularism can be considered a mark of the discipline’s rationality. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this model consciousness is a form of memory. We are essentially “living in the past” as our experience, the qualia, is always of past events. Consciousness represents the storage of past events for use in future situations and it is altered by external experience of the organism. Psychological frameworks of conditioning and learning theory are used to explain this model along with recent neuropsychological research on synaesthesia and phantom limb pain. Consciousness results from the gradual evolutionary development of the (...) human information processing function. Language is hypothesised to have evolved at a pre-conscious stage of human development as a function of the need for ‘within-organism’ data storage. Communication with others may not have been the initial evolutionary advantage conferred by language. The later incidental use of language as a communication tool, which results in the reflecting back of one’s experience through others, is what has triggered a conscious experience. (shrink)

David Ray Griffin develops a third form of realism, one that resolves the basic problem (common to dualism and materialism) of the continued acceptance of the Cartesian view of matter.

Abstract: This paper seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. I examine two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. I argue that one model of cognitive penetration—“classic” cognitive penetration—is compatible with only one of the accounts of nonconceptual content that I identify. I then consider (...) the other model of cognitive penetration—cognitive penetration “lite”. I provide reasons to think that this is compatible with three accounts of nonconceptual content. Moreover, I argue that the account of nonconceptual content that it is not compatible with is a spurious notion of nonconceptual content that ought to be abandoned. Thus, I claim that cognitive penetration lite is compatible with all reasonable specifications of nonconceptual content. (shrink)

Examines the findings of scientific research into the thought processes of animals and argues that animals are capable of conscious thought.