I argue that recent developments in animal cognition support the conclusion that HOT theory is consistent with animal consciousness. There seems to be growing evidence that many animals are indeed capable of having I-thoughts, including episodic memory, as well as have the ability to understand the mental states of others.

Three years ago, my body began to slowly, incrementally, go haywire. Sometimes, I would wake up at night and my right arm would be alarmingly numb, taking several minutes to regain feeling. My right hand would ache for hours after I had been working on my laptop. I experienced numbness in the fingers of my right hand after pressing them against a hard surface. Tingling radiated down the back of my legs and into my calves, which I referred to as (...) "zings" or "fireworks."I was chronically constipated and had reoccurring hemorrhoids and anal fissures that produced blood in my stool. I saw dark specks in my eyes that an optometrist called "floaters." The glands in my neck were chronically swollen, and I was prone to... (shrink)

Cross-national traffic of feminist ideas have contributed to a growth of the international women’s movement and has shaped national movements. These processes have only recently become the subject of study and theoretical discussion. The theoretical models that have been developed so far fail to take into account the complex nature of intercultural communication. No attention is paid to problems of interpretation and translation that may occur and how ‘adopters’ use the example of others. Instead, this article proposes an empirically grounded, (...) alternative model of the process, based on the cases of women’s organizations against sexual violence in the Netherlands and Spain. The author’s approach focuses on the processes of communication – the relationship between source and followers and the conditions that facilitate or impede communication – and the conditions that lead to adaptation. (shrink)

This paper investigates why women in their first year enter philosophy at a representative level but their participation falls subsequently thereafter. Using data gathered from women students that are currently enrolled in a philosophy department at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand, the paper provides a set of recommendations for changing this pattern in women’s participation and how one particular department responded to these recommendations. In addition, the paper raises several reflective questions concerning the data gathered from women students, including (...) why a number of women describe their experience in the philosophy department as being no different than that of their male counterparts. (shrink)

This paper addresses the scholarly controversies surrounding the succinct remark Thucydides makes at Hist. 1. 22. 1 on composing speeches. It argues for the understanding of the “ἂν εἰπεῖν” expression not as contrary-to-fact, as most scholars assume, but as potential of the past, to be translated: “as in his judgment the speakers most likely might have spoken.” The paper proposes that Thucydides indicates a historical method similar to the strategy used in contemporary rhetoric in order to show on the basis (...) of probability considering all the conditions given that certain things were said. The paper scrutinizes every important term used by Thucydides at 1. 22. 1 and the various modern interpretations and translations proposed. (shrink)

1. The difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind.- In the one, the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for want of habit it is difficult to turn one's mind in that direction: but if one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost impossible they should escape notice. But in the intuitive mind (...) the principles are found in common use and are before the eyes of everybody. One has only to look, and no effort is necessary; it is only a question of good eyesight, but it must be good, for the principles are so subtle and so numerous that it is almost impossible but that some escape notice. Now the omission of one principle leads to error; thus one must have very clear sight to see all the principles and, in the next place, an accurate mind not to draw false deductions from known principles. All mathematicians would then be intuitive if they had clear sight, for they do not reason incorrectly from principles known to them; and intuitive minds would be mathematical if they could turn their eyes to the principles of mathematics to which they are unused. The reason, therefore, that some intuitive minds are not mathematical is that they cannot at all turn their attention to the principles of mathematics. But the reason that mathematicians are not intuitive is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of intuition where the principles do not allow of such arrangement. They are scarcely seen; they are felt rather than seen; there is the greatest difficulty in making them felt by those who do not of themselves perceive them. These principles are so fine and so numerous that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in order as in mathematics, because the principles are not known to us in the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake it. (shrink)

Brian Garrett has criticized my diagnosis of the paradox of self-consciousness. In reply, I focus on the classification of 'I'-thoughts, and show how the notion of immunity to error through misidentification can be used to characterize 'I'-thoughts, even though an important class of 'I'-thoughts (those whose expression involves what Wittgenstein called the use of 'I' as object) are not themselves immune to error through misidentification. 'I'-thoughts which are susceptible to error through misidentification are dependent upon those which are not. The (...) dependence here has to do with how a thinker understands what would defeat such thoughts. (shrink)

We examine how Frege’s contrast between identity judgments of the forms “a=a” vs. “a=b” would fare in the special case where ‘a’ and ‘b’ are complex mental representations, and ‘a’ stands for an introspected ‘I’-thought. We first argue that the Fregean treatment of I-thoughts entails that they are what we call “one-shot thoughts”: they can only be thought once. This has the surprising consequence that no instance of the “a=a” form of judgment in this specific case comes out true, let (...) alone a priori true. This further reinforces Glezakos’s objections against the set-up of Frege’s puzzle, while also raising what we think is an acute problem for Fregeans, insofar as I-thought (and indexical thinking more generally), understood in their way, turns out to be incompatible with some basic features of rationality. (shrink)

Brian Garrett has criticized my diagnosis of the paradox of self-consciousness. In reply, I focus on the classification of 'I'-thoughts, and show how the notion of immunity to error through misidentification can be used to characterize 'I'-thoughts, even though an important class of 'I'-thoughts are not themselves immune to error through misidentification. 'I'-thoughts which are susceptible to error through misidentification are dependent upon those which are not. The dependence here has to do with how a thinker understands what would defeat (...) such thoughts. (shrink)

“I”‐thought is often taken to have a special cognitive significance, with “I” symbolising a subjective way of thinking about oneself that is inapt for communication. In this paper I argue that the way one thinks of oneself in “I”‐thought is immaterial to the meaning of “I,” for in general the psychological role associated with a referential expression is separable from its meaning. With respect to “I,” I suggest that its meaning consists in an interpersonal way of fixing its reference in (...) a context, which is accessible to the speaker and the hearer. Consequently, “I” would have a dual cognitive significance. (shrink)

A traditional view holds that the self-concept is essentially indexical. In a highly influential article, Ruth Millikan famously held that the self-concept should be understood as a Millian name with a sui generis functional role. This article presents a novel explanatory argument against the Millian view and in favor of the indexical view. The argument starts from a characterization of the self-concept as a device of information integration. It then shows that the indexical view yields a better explanation of the (...) integration function than the Millian view. The resulting account can rebut Millikan’s objections and it has broader implications for the debate on the essential indexical. (shrink)

The analysis of the structure of the I-thoughts is intertwined with several epistemic and metaphysical questions. The aim of this paper is to highlight that the absence of an identification component does not imply that the “I" doesn’t perform a referential function, nor that it necessarily involves a specific metaphysical thesis on the nature of the self-conscious subject. Particularly, as far as the Cartesian illusion concerning the thinking subject’s immaterial nature is concerned, Kant and Wittgenstein seem to share the same (...) philosophical concerns and focus on the same type of reference involved in the “I", obviously via different philosophical paths and antipodal metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

If tokens of 'I' have a sense as well as a reference the question immediately arises of what account to give of their sense. One influential kind of account, of which Gareth Evans provides the best developed instance, attempts to elucidate the sense of 'I' partly in terms of the distinctive functional role possessed by thoughts containing this sense ('I'-thoughts). Accounts of this kind seem to entail that my 'I'-thoughts cannot be entertained by anyone other than me, a consequence generally (...) thought unacceptable. I defend it. I also justify a functional role account of the sense of 'I'. The result should be to make plausible an account of the sense of 'I' in terms of the functional role of 'I'-thoughts. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be understood as the ability to think I-thou-ghts which can be described as thoughts about oneself ‘as oneself’. Self-consciousness possesses two specific correlated features: the first regards the fact that it is grounded on a first-person perspective, whereas the second concerns the fact that it should be considered a consciousness of the self as subject rather than a consciousness of the self as object. The aim of this paper is to analyse a few considerations about Descartes and Hume’s (...) approaches to self-consciousness, as both philosophers introduce a first-personal method of accessing the subjective dimension through an introspective account. Descartes’s view on self-consciousness seems incapable of conceiving and recognizing herself as herself, while Hume’s seems to lack those features assigned to the consciousness of self-as-subject. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

Over the last few decades the study of Shīʿī Islam has witnessed a growing interest in specific aspects and perspectives of Shīʿī philosophers and theologians. The monograph authored by Sayeh Meisami focuses on the views of two of the most influential thinkers in Shīʿī, namely the eleventh century Ismāʿīlī thinker Ḥāmid al-Kirmānī and the Twelver mystic and thinker Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, better known as Mullā Ṣadrā. Throughout the five chapters, the textual comparative analysis of their thought shows how multifaceted epistemological (...) and cosmological keys are transmitted from al-Kirmānī to Mullā Ṣadra, and ultimately become interwoven with their respective theories about the legitimacy of the Imām. Epistemology, cosmology, and political theory thus become, in the author’s analysis, the fil rouge that characterize the development of Shīʿī mystical and political philosophies up to the advent of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran. (shrink)

What are the objects of thought? To consider a familiar case, may we assert that the proposition “I am thinking of a unicorn” entails that there is some object which is being thought of? Theories of subsistent objects provide an affirmative answer and seem to be based on the consideration that we are thinking of something when we think of a unicorn. Otherwise, to paraphrase G. E. Moore's well known statement of the argument, we would be thinking of the same (...) thing whether we thought of a unicorn or a griffen, namely, nothing. But, as G. E. Moore has shown, subsistence theories fail to distinguish between the logical and grammatical forms of such statements as “I am thinking of a unicorn” and “I am hunting a lion”. The latter is of the form · φx · Ψx; the former is not since it does not assert that the property of being a unicorn and the property of thought of by me both belong to something. But the problem that suggests itself is the nature of the contention that something is being thought of when, for example, we think of a unicorn. To begin with, is there no acceptable alternative to the various forms of the theory of subsistent objects according to which it would be correct to say that the proposition “I am thinking of a unicorn” entails the proposition “·x is being thought of”? And if saying that we are thinking of something, when we think of a unicorn, does not mean that there exists something that is being thought of, what is the force of the contention that we are thinking of something? (shrink)

In the last several months, several major disciplines have started their initial reckoning with what ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) mean for them – law, medicine, business among other professions. With a heavy dose of humility, given how fast the technology is moving and how uncertain its social implications are, this article attempts to give some early tentative thoughts on what ChatGPT might mean for bioethics. I will first argue that many bioethics issues raised by ChatGPT are similar (...) to those raised by current medical AI – built into devices, decision support tools, data analytics, etc. These include issues of data ownership, consent for data use, data representativeness and bias, and privacy. I describe how these familiar issues appear somewhat differently in the ChatGPT context, but much of the existing bioethical thinking on these issues provides a strong starting point. There are, however, a few “new-ish” issues I highlight – by new-ish I mean issues that while perhaps not truly new seem much more important for it than other forms of medical AI. These include issues about informed consent and the right to know we are dealing with an AI, the problem of medical deepfakes, the risk of oligopoly and inequitable access related to foundational models, environmental effects, and on the positive side opportunities for the democratization of knowledge and empowering patients. I also discuss how races towards dominance (between large companies and between the U.S. and geopolitical rivals like China) risk sidelining ethics. (shrink)

Arthur I. Miller is a historian of science whose approach has been strongly influenced by current work in cognitive science, and in this book he shows how the two fields might be fruitfully linked to yield new insights into the creative process.

In this paper,1 I discuss Davidson’s ideas about the relationship between mind and language. First, I consider his arguments for the claim that there cannot be thought without language, and I examine the assumptions the arguments presuppose. In the second place, I consider the idea of “thought” Davidson adopts, and its essentially normative and holistic character. Third, I try to show the adequacy of this conception of thought in order to deal with epistemological problems, and the inadequacy of this notion (...) in solving the problem of the “emergence” of thought. Finally, I sketch an alternative account of such an “emergence,” looking for continuities between pre-linguistic and linguistic thoughts. (shrink)

People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, which starts (...) from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis. (shrink)

In Islamic theological writings, under the heading of sustenance, the focus is generally on issues such as who is the provider of sustenance, whether haram is considered sustenance, and whether Allah’s consent exists for haram sustenance. Another issue that can be found between the lines of the subject of sustenance is whether it is haram for a person to work for sustenance or not. In fact, the pursuit of means of livelihood in order to sustain one’s life is, according to (...) the general and predominant acceptance of Muslim scholars, permissible and, in cases of necessity, wajib. According to a record in Uṣūl al-niḥal, during the formative period of itizālī thought, there were Mu‘tazilite sufis (ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila) such as Bishr b. al-Mu‘tamir’s disciple Abū Imrān Mūsā b. al-Raqqāshī, al-Naẓẓām’s apostate disciple Fadl al-Hadathī, and Husayn al-Kūfī, about whom no information is available. These names, who seem to have earned their livelihood through almsgiving, defended the forbiddenness (taḥrīm al-makāsib) of all kinds of endeavour for sustenance, contrary to the acceptance of Muslim thinkers. However, it should be noted that for them, the forbiddenness in making an effort for sustenance does not cover the definition of sustenance, which is ‘all the benefits’, but only the effort in obtaining sustenance through means such as trade and agriculture. It is interesting to find such an extreme tendency among the Mu‘tazilites, who came to the fore with their rationalist discourses. “How could a Mu‘tazilite defend tahrīm al-makāsib?”, the issue of abandonment of striving for sustenance (tark al-makāsib), from which the idea of tahrīm al-makāsib is thought to have evolved, is mentioned, and then the Mu‘tazilite sufis views on tahrīm al-makāsib are tried to be based mainly on Mu‘tazilite sources and the criticisms of Mu‘tazilite authors against them are included. It has been determined that Mu‘tazilite sufis justifications for defending tahrīm al-makāsib concentrate on three points: (i) the absence of a just order due to the absence of a just imam and the possibility of supporting the oppressors (rulers) intentionally or unintentionally, and as a result of this, some of them describe the land of Islam as dār al-kufr, (ii) again in relation to the issue of imamate, in an environment where there is no justice, i.e. legal/moral order, the halāl and harām are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from each other, and in order to protect oneself from harām, the things that are subject to sustenance can only be purified through charity and become halāl, and (iii) the fact that trust in Allah is obligatory and any effort to pursue sustenance is contrary to tawakkul. The Mu‘tazilite authors criticised the proponents of tahrīm al-makāsib on the grounds that it is permissible to trade while maintaining a rational and ethical attitude, that one’s intention and interest in trade are important, and that tawakkul cannot be built on the right ground. As a result, the proponents of tahrīm al-makāsib disappeared because they could not gain a foothold in the Mu‘tazilite intellectual climate due to their erroneous reasoning. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of the way in which contemporary forms of intelligence discourse, in similar fashion to political art, function by delimiting critical thought. The intelligence discourse critiqued is extolled through things such as progressive intelligence acquisition and the supposed indispensability of Democratic reason, amongst other qualities. In support of its argument, the article focusses specifically on Baudrillard’s analysis of the notion of the intelligence of evil, as well as on the Frankfurt School’s critique of massification. However, the (...) article also notes limitations in these thinkers’ recovery and defence of critical thought in response to the delimitation posed by intelligence and massification, and argues for Rosi Braidotti’s evaluation of thought as nomadic as a necessary corrective. (shrink)

The fierce propaganda campaign against the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties developed in the 1960s by the Mao Tse-tung group in China confronted the international communist movement with the fact that a new front in the ideological struggle had come into being. The significance of this struggle is defined by the fact that the matter at issue is what constitutes a contemporary, truly scientific interpretation of the principles of revolutionary theory, and the determination of the future of socialism and communism.

Balāgha, which consists of three main branches today, has benefited from various channels in the process of completing its formation. Before the formation of systematic balāgha, it is assumed that there were two main currents, one represented by poets and lite-rati, and the other represented by scholars. This article aims to determine the place of Abū ʿUthmān al-Jāḥiẓ (255/869), one of the main names who wrote in the field of balāgha, in the pre-formation period of balāgha science. The documentary analysis (...) method will be used mainly in the research. The determinations of al-Jāḥiẓ on balāgha will be analysed in accord-ance with the parameters, categories and concepts of systematic balāgha. By examining al-Jāḥiẓ’s rhetorical understanding through the filter of systematic balāgha, the share of pre-for-mation period balāgha within systematic balāgha will be revealed. Another contribution of the study would be to reveal the balāgha understanding of al-Jāḥiẓ with its main frames. Ex-amining al-Jāḥiẓ’s concept of balāgha, on the other hand, will facilitate understanding of his unique concepts of balāgha and bayān. Because al-Jāḥiẓ designed a broad communication framework, which he calls bayān, and considered balāgha as a sub-category within this de-sign. Balāgha is the subject of verbal communication in this design.Summary: The formation of a discipline called balāgha passed through several stages. Balāgha as a term, which was in circulation as a qualification of beautiful and convincing words, has attracted the attention of some circles, had been dealt with it in various occasions and some thoughts had been recorded on the subject. These accumulations and records contained a number of basics and principles that formed the core of balāgha science which would later be systematized. Since these recorded cumulative basics and principles cannot be called balāgha science, it is possible to name them as the idea of balāgha. The independent works that emerged during this period were written by poets and literary writers. Religious scholars and linguists also had mentioned rhetorical issues in their works even though they did not write specific books on the topic. It is possible to say that there are two channels from which balāgha science is nourished: The literary criticism channel represented by poets and writers and the other channel which is held by various branches of science, the majority of which are religious sciences.The literary criticism channel is the product of some social and scientific developments in Arab history. When Jāhiliyya (pre-Islamic) poetry became a data source to serve the emerging grammar, an intensive movement of collecting Jāhiliyya poetry has begun. Compiled Jāhiliyya poetry was not only a source for linguists, but also a literary legacy that poets sang and used as a model for their new styles in poetry. Innovations in poetry led to a comparison between the old and the new, and these developments have also brought about the need for certain criteria to be used in literary criticism. Eventually, these critical activities circulated many terms, including the word balāgha.When it comes to religious sciences, balāgha has been a concept used mostly in iʿjāzu’l-Qurʿān issue. The discussions of the miraculous feature of the Qurʿān, which continued on theological grounds, must have aroused the desire to explain the eloquence of verses in concrete exam-ples. Because the scholars of these fields shifted their interest towards the use of linguistic tools. The balāgha channel shaped by the pressures of religious sciences such as kalām, fiqh and tafsīr could be called the balāgha developed by grammar; and the channel that began to take shape with the work of poets and writers can be called the balāgha developed by litera-ture.In the period after the formation of grammar and before the formation of balāgha, although there was not a balāgha science in the present-day sense, it is clear that there was a thought of balāgha. One of the scholars who reflects the idea of balāgha of the pre-establishment pe-riod is Abū ʿUthmān al-Jāḥiẓ. Al-Jāḥiẓ did not address the issue of persuasive and beautiful speech only in his book al-Bayān wa al-tabyīn. In various articles, he talks about the qualities of beautiful and impressive speeches, sometimes under different topics and sometimes under a special title. In his al-Bayān wa al-tabyīn, al-Jāḥiẓ establishes a communication theory called bayān that takes into account all the means of conveying meaning. He divides the means of communication into five, which are word, sign, number, text and posture. The book puts spe-cial emphasis on balāgha, which is one of the means of bayān, and its conditions of conveying meanings. Although the issues discussed in the work do not conform to the norms of the later systematic balāgha, it continues to be an important source in theoretical balāgha studies. Sys-tematic balāgha and al-Jāḥiẓ’s bayān project are different in terms of frame, but they have overlapping points and a piece-whole relationship between them. Bayān, developed by al-Jāḥiẓ’s, addresses the wide range of communication that takes into account including the ges-tures and signs; while balāgha is used to refer to the verbal communications only, which is part of the broader field of communication.In systematic balāgha, it is important to distinguish between balāgha and faṣāḥa terms; the former used to signify the word, the speech and the speaker, and the latter to signify only the word and the speaker. We have noticed that al-Jāḥiẓ uses them interchangeably. Nonetheless, the emphasis on the factor of transmitting messages, when he talks about the clarity of mean-ing on several occasions, shows that he considers the combined words rather than the indi-vidual words, which is the same assertion of systematic balāgha. According to him, the fact that a misarranged sentence is understood by the interlocutor should not mean that the sen-tence itself is capable of transmitting the meaning.The context factor, which is the determinant of systematic balāgha, is also taken into consid-eration in al-Jāḥiẓ’s understanding of balāgha. However, al-Jāḥiẓ generally considered the context together with the length and shortness of the speeches and did not mention the as-pects reflected in the sentence sequence. Although the major concern of al-Jāḥiẓ was the transmission ability of the speech, he also dealt with the expression forms. There are some other terms that he used less frequently like ījāz, iṭnāb, ishāb and kināya. Although some of these words are used in contexts similar to the meanings of today's term, most of them are used in such a context to meet more than one meaning. Ījāz, which is one of these concepts, is the name of expressing the meanings with little word in al-Jāḥiẓ’s usage. The use of terms reflects the types of narrative and figurative usages could not reach a stable point in al-Bayān wa al-tabyīn, because it was not written for the purpose of systematically analysing them. The author, who aims to examine the persuasive and beautiful words in many dimensions, under-took the issue with a view that takes into consideration the orator, and this caused his work to be designed in a way that serves speech making rather than analysing. This consideration prevented the emergence of an analysis system. Al-Jāḥiẓ mostly used balāgha in the context of oral performance. According to him, the written texts and performed sermons are different in style and therefore the balāgha criteria of these two species should be different as well. (shrink)

This volume contains contributions from friends and colleagues who have been influenced in one way or another by this accomplished psychologist.

In ‘The normative role of knowledge’ (2012), Declan Smithies defends a ‘JK-rule’ for belief: One has justification to believe that P iff one has justification to believe that one is in a position to know that P. Similar claims have been defended by others (Huemer, 2007, Reynolds, forthcoming). In this paper, I shall argue that the JK-rule is false. The standard and familiar way of arguing against putative rules for belief or assertion is, of course, to describe putative counterexamples. My (...) argument, though, won’t be like this – indeed I doubt that there are any intuitively compelling counterexamples to the JK-rule. Nevertheless, the claim that there are counterexamples to the JK-rule can, I think, be given something approaching a formal proof. My primary aim here is to sketch this proof. I will briefly consider some broader implications for how we ought to think about the epistemic standards governing belief and assertion. (shrink)

The ability to recognize and correct errors in one's explanatory understanding is critically important for learning. However, little is known about the mechanisms that determine when and under what circumstances errors are detected and how they are corrected. The present study investigated thought experiments as a potential tool that can reveal errors and trigger belief revision in the service of error correction. Across two experiments, 1149 participants engaged in reasoning about force and motion (a domain with well‐documented misconceptions) in a (...) pre‐training—training—post‐training design. The two experiments manipulated the type of mental model manipulated in the thought experiments (i.e., whether participants reasoned about forces acting on their own bodies vs. on external objects), as well as the level of relational and argumentative reasoning about the outcomes of the thought experiments. The results showed that: (i) thought experiments can serve as a tool to elicit inconsistencies in one's representations; (ii) the level of relational and argumentative reasoning determines the level of belief revision in the service of error correction; and (iii) the type of mental model manipulated in a thought experiment determines its outcome and its potential to initiate belief revision. Thought experiments can serve as a valuable teaching and learning tool, and they can help us better understand the nature of error detection and correction systems. (shrink)

Thoughts of Abdurrahman Wahid, the 4th president of Indonesia, on customs and practices of Islam in Indonesia.