In this paper I first list a number of areas in which recent research seems to reinforce the need to follow through on activities identified in Simonetta Magari’s article. A careful review of research in these areas would lead us into deeply mysterious psychological processes and underline the need to change the most fundamental assumptions on which modern psychology is built. Unfortunately, I am in no position to undertake this review. Accordingly, I have settled for the lesser objective of discussing (...) the problems posed by the phenomenon of emergence; the dominant role that networks of external social forces play in determining behaviour, and the emergence of a network of negative social forces which seems to have the future of mankind and the planet in its grip. I start by showing that one of the most important uses of the slippery word “intelligence” is to refer to an emergent property of a group. Groups can, to a greater or lesser extent, harness the diverse talents available to them to create cultures of intelligence or enterprise on the one hand and despondency and conflict on the other. Whereas we, as a species, currently have the highest levels of individual intelligence ever, it seems that we have the lowest levels of collective intelligence ever. But group and individual characteristics are not the only things transformed by networks of social forces. Time after time we see that well intentioned social action is transformed into its opposite by networks of social forces. A systemogram of the social forces which transform the “educational” system into its opposite is then used as a basis for a discussion of the role of social forces more generally. Two issues then stare one in the face. One is that our governance systems are ill equipped to promoting the kind of experimentation and societal learning that is needed…especially to enable us to survive as a species. The other is the dominance of the “sociological” forces pressing unrelentingly toward the societal hierarchy and division that is leading us so forcefully toward our self-destruction. Unexpectedly, therefore, it emerges that two key tasks for psychologists, qua psychologists, are to contribute to the design of a societal management system which will act more effectively in the long term public interest – that is to say, in the interests of maintaining life itself – and to map the network of social forces which are driving us so relentlessly toward our own extinction. (shrink)

This article argues that harnessing social processes for the common good depends on creating a learning society which will innovate, learn, and evolve in the long-term public interest. In essence, this involves establishing more embedded, interconnected, and interacting, “organic” feedback loops which do not depend on long and distorting chains of “accountability” to distant “representative” assemblies of “decision takers”. Several important steps toward doing this are discussed. However, all depend on undertaking a great deal of adventurous, problem-driven research. By far (...) the most important of these research programmes would be to develop a better understanding of the currently invisible network of social forces that have the future of our species and the planet in their grip … and then to find ways of intervening in that network. It is suggested that this is analogous to Newton first conceptualising physical forces and then showing how to measure, map, and harness them. Answering the question of how work like Newton’s could be funded and conducted in modern society – and especially under current research-funding arrangements – thus emerges as crucial to finding a way forward. (shrink)

A history of the pre-Socratic philosophers, with selected writings and texts.

Metacognition, the cognition about cognition, is closely linked to intelligence and therefore understanding the metacognitive processes underlying intelligence test performance, specifically on Raven’s Progressive Matrices, could help advance the knowledge about intelligence. The measurement of metacognition, is often done using domain-general offline questionnaires or domain-specific online think-aloud protocols. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between metacognitive awareness and intelligence via the design and use of a novel Meta-Cognitive Awareness Scale – Domain Specific that encourages reflection of task strategy (...) processes. This domain-specific scale was first constructed to measure participants’ awareness of their own metacognition linked to Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Following discriminatory index and Exploratory Factor Analysis, a 15-item scale was derived. Exploratory Factor Analysis showed five factors: Awareness of Engagement in Self-Monitoring, Awareness of Own Ability, Awareness of Responding Speed/Time, Awareness of Alternative Solutions and Awareness of Requisite Problem-Solving Resources. The intelligence level of ninety-eight adults was then estimated using Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Participants also completed the MCAS-DS, and further items that examined their test-taking behavior and Confidence level. Metacognitive awareness was positively correlated to standardized IQ scores derived from the SPM whilst Over-Confidence derived using the Confidence level measure was negatively correlated to SPM. Despite some limitations, this study shows promise for elucidating the relationship between metacognitive awareness and intelligence using the task-specific scale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:260 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and 8, although hc proposed no emendation of the text. [Raven's work is nowhere mentioned by Loenen, not even in connection with fr. 4 where he and Raven are in agreement, yet where he says "... all present-day authors assume this passage to refer to the material world," Raven believes with Loenen that the passage does not refer to the material world.] (...) With regard to Loenen's sensu stricto ~ar~, all commentators realized that Parmenides was at least some of the time using ~a~Lto denote necessity of existence and essence. Loenen does valuable work in emphasising this, but the observation is not revolutionarily original. Vlastos, following yon Fritz, argued (in Gnomon [1953]) that, for Parmenides, nothing exists but thought. Vlastos' arguments were not on as many fronts as are Loenen's, and Loenen develops the interpretation much further. Aristotle and Simplicius were the first of many who believed Parmenides to be a dualist, to have posited two worlds, fa ata~ra and ~& ~a~a, between which there was no causal relationship. Although there is much originality in Loenen's development and argument for his theses, it is nevertheless true that on the three grounds on which he lays claim to originality (introduction, pp. 3-5), his views have considerable precedents. M. C. SCHOLAR St. John's College, Cambridge Plato and the Individual. By Robert William Hall. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963. Pp. 224.) Professor Hall's main thesis is that Plato's ethical thought underwent a gradual and significant development and that in the face of this fact the mature Plato is neither a halfhearted moral philosopher, nor a utilitarian, but completely committed to the substantiality and immortality of the soul. The first issue is raised so that the claim that Plato reserved the ethical ideal only for the specialists in philosophical reflection can be dismissed as groundless. The second problem is discussed in order to demonstrate beyond doubt that Plato's later moral views went beyond the limited ethics of consequences that dominates the early Socratic dialogues. But it is the third issue that constitutes the core of Hall's book, and the discussion here is undertaken in order to identify the metaphysical principle to which Plato appealed when he reconstructed his ethics from an initially quite aristocratic affair into a publicly available ideal that was rendered universal in scope and attainment. Dr. Hall argues that if knowledge of the Forms is unconditionally required for genuine morality, then only the philosophically gifted can rise to the lofty occasion. Being himself a strong advocate of a moral ideal open to all human beings, Dr. Hall does not hesitate to challenge Plato's views with this formidable problem: If we suppose Plato's views grant to the ordinary individual nothing more than a second class morality, he hardly deserves his reputation as a great ethical thinker. In line with this question the author devotes the entire first chapter to an interesting discussion on the sources of modern democratic individualism as supported by the best in the Christian tradition and then uses his findings to test the strength of Plato's moral fiber. But the author knows all along that Plato will emerge unscathed. His purpo~ then is not so much to show that Plato actually held that view as it is to take the reader through the meandering paths only the modem scholar and erudite interpreter of the dialogues know how to travel best and by which it is believed Plato himself must have been able to reach the summit of the superb answer. Since Dr. Hall discerns two different available moralities in Plato, an "aristocratic" and a "demotic," he also finds it necessary to distinguish between the morality of the excellences of the individual man and the excellence of the philosopher. When all is told, it turns out that Plato's development as an ethical philosopher moves from a high-minded kind of utilitarianism based on arete, inherited from Socrates, to a non-utilitarian conception of virtue which is Plato's own discovery and contribution. The pivotal point is found to be in the Republic where the central problem is to justify the inherent value of... (shrink)

In his new book What is a Law of Nature?, David Armstrong gives an account of functional laws on the basis of the theory, originally proposed independently by Armstrong himself, Dretske, and Tooley, and further developed in this work, which asserts that laws are relations of necessitation between properties. On the theory, properties and relations are universals, and so a law is a relation between universals and is itself a universal. There are two reasons why Armstrong's account of functional laws (...) is worth discussing. First, any theory that purports to be about laws that are investigated by science–I assume that we are only interested in such theories–must cover functional laws and not merely be adequate for generalizations about ravens or grue. Second, Armstrong claims that the main rival to his theory, the regularity theory of laws, cannot give a satisfactory account of functional laws. If this is true, and if Armstrong's theory can provide a satisfactory account of functional laws, then this may incline us towards his point of view. (shrink)

I Want in this paper briefly to contribute two points to the elucidation of this famous passage, and apologize for the fact that my possessing the same name as one of its most illustrious interpreters may add confusion to the doxographic tradition. The first point is not an original one. It is simply to revive an interpretation given by Henry Jackson in an article which strikes me as the most profound and pellucid which I have read on the subject, and (...) which is in some danger of being forgotten. Raven, about ten years ago, insisted as a criterion of interpretation that the entire passage should be viewed ‘as a single and indivisible whole’. This is precisely what Jackson does, though he concentrates his attention, as indeed does Raven, on the line and the cave. (shrink)

Projectible conditions are (roughly) those whose universal generalizations are con firmed by their positive instances. This paper proposes certain modifications to the above definition in order to capture the pre-analytic notion it is supposed to explicate. Then we investigate what logical operations, when performed on projectible conditionals, yield new projectible conditionals. A number of surprising theorems are proven, and these theorems indicate that few conditionals having complex antecedents and consequents are projectible. It is also shown that projectibility is not closed (...) under contraposition, and this is proposed as a solution to the Paradox of the Ravens. Finally, a general conjecture is made concerning just what conditionals are projectible, and it follows from this conjecture that although most conditionals are not projectible, they can still be dealt with inductively, but in ways more complex than recognized by classical confirmation theory. (shrink)

We propose the Selfish Goal model, which holds that a person's behavior is driven by psychological processes called goals that guide his or her behavior, at times in contradictory directions. Goals can operate both consciously and unconsciously, and when activated they can trigger downstream effects on a person's information processing and behavioral possibilities that promote only the attainment of goal end-states (and not necessarily the overall interests of the individual). Hence, goals influence a person as if the goals themselves were (...) selfish and interested only in their own completion. We argue that there is an evolutionary basis to believe that conscious goals evolved from unconscious and selfish forms of pursuit. This theoretical framework predicts the existence of unconscious goal processes capable of guiding behavior in the absence of conscious awareness and control (theautomaticity principle), the ability of the most motivating or active goal to constrain a person's information processing and behavior toward successful completion of that goal (thereconfiguration principle), structural similarities between conscious and unconscious goal pursuit (thesimilarity principle), and goal influences that produce apparent inconsistencies or counterintuitive behaviors in a person's behavior extended over time (theinconsistency principle). Thus, we argue that a person's behaviors are indirectly selected at the goal level but expressed (and comprehended) at the individual level. (shrink)

In this article we present a notion of “logical perfection”. We first describe through examples a notion oflogical perfectionextracted from the contemporary logical concept of categoricity. Categoricity (in power) has become in the past half century a main driver of ideas in model theory, both mathematically (stability theory may be regarded as a way of approximating categoricity) and philosophically. In the past two decades, categoricity notions have started to overlap with more classical notions of robustness and smoothness. These have been (...) crucial in various parts of mathematics since the nineteenth century. We postulate and present the category of logical perfection. We draw on various notions of perfection from mathematics of the 19th and 20th centuries and then trace the relation to the concept of categoricity in power as a logical notion of what a “mathematically perfect” structure is. (shrink)

The constructs of behavioral mass in research on the momentum of operant behavior and associative strength in Pavlovian conditioning have some interesting parallels, as suggested by Savastano & Miller. Some recent findings challenge the strict separation of operant and Pavlovian determiners of response rate and resistance to change in behavioral momentum, renewing the need for research on the interaction of processes that have traditionally been studied separately. Relatedly, Furedy notes that some autonomic responses may be refractory to conditioning, but a (...) combination of operant contingencies and enriched Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer relations may prove effective. (shrink)

The sense of agency is the perception of willfully causing something to happen. Wegner and Wheatley proposed three prerequisites for SA: temporal contiguity between an action and its effect, congruence between predicted and observed effects, and exclusivity . We investigated how temporal contiguity, congruence, and the order of two human agents’ actions influenced SA on a task where participants rated feelings of self-agency for producing a tone. SA decreased when tone onsets were delayed, supporting contiguity as important, but the order (...) of the agents’ actions also mattered. Relative contiguity was the main determinant of SA, as delayed tones were usually attributed to the most recent action. This was unaffected by contingencies between the two actors’ actions , showing that contiguity has a powerful influence on SA, even during joint action in the presence of other cues. (shrink)

Schumaker (philosophy, science and technology department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) examines how the terms of posture encompass all the major disciplines and investigates a variety of philosophical topics: abstract thought, ...

A questionnaire on business ethics was administered to business professionals and to upper-class business ethics students. On eight of the seventeen situations involving ethical dilemmas in business, students were significantly more willing to engage in questionable behavior than were their professional counterparts. Apparently, many students were willing to do whatever was necessary to further their own interests, with little or no regard for fundamental moral principles. Many students and professionals functioned within Lawrence Kohlberg's stage four of moral reasoning, the law (...) and order stage. Individualism and egoism remain strong patterns in the moral reasoning of many professionals, but they influence moral reasoning patterns among students to a much greater degree. (shrink)

In a recent essay in this journal, John Maynard Smith argues that the often expressed idea that the genome is the repository of meaningful information is not merely a heuristically useful metaphor. Instead, he contends, it is a central idea in contemporary microbiology. While I am in general agreement with Maynard Smith on this issue, his account suffers, I believe, from using an inappropriate concept of ‘information.’ One result of this is that the concept of genomic information becomes burdened (...) by a conceptual load that the biological facts cannot support. When, however, the appropriate concept of information is used, then these burdens are shed, and the result is an account that is in substantial agreement with the heart of Maynard Smith's thesis. (shrink)

The apparently simple question, ‘Does philosophy of education have a future?’, is without a simple answer. Like so many other questions, it all depends on what we mean, and in this case, what we mean by the expression ‘philosophy of education’. I shall look at it in all of three ways: as a social institution, as an academic activity and as an intellectual pursuit. By doing so, it will become evident that consideration of each of them in turn will give (...) somewhat different answers, which not only adds to the complexity of the question, but also adds to the richness of the answer. From this we, as individuals and as members of a particular community, can begin to reflect on the sort of future philosophy of education might have and what, if anything, we ought to do about it. (shrink)

Spiritual life is made possible by the evolution of a human neuropsychology that requires social interdependence for its development. Extensive neuroplasticity requires experiential shaping throughout life. The evolution of frontal cortex hypertrophy suggests that much of this shaping is produced by a socially constructed virtual reality, extending beyond immediate experience. Prefrontal colonization makes possible the social scaffolding of neuroregulation, including the emotional attachments necessary for moral life. Cognitive independence from immediate environments enables symbioses with external memory systems, producing novel forms (...) of socially constituted experience and making possible the transformative effect of religious systems upon individual biologies and psychologies. (shrink)

This volume is a state-of-the-art review of the evidence and theory supporting the existence and significance of automatic processes in our daily lives, with chapters by the leading researchers in this field today.

A fundamental issue concerning the treatment of meaning in context is how to deal with the extremely flexible relationship that appears to hold between descriptions, which are taken as the exchange...

As genomic science has evolved, so have policy and practice debates about how to describe and evaluate the ways in which genomic information is treated for individuals, institutions, and society. The term genetic exceptionalism, describing the concept that genetic information is special or unique, and specifically different from other kinds of medical information, has been utilized widely, but often counterproductively in these debates. We offer genomic contextualism as a new term to frame the characteristics of genomic science in the debates. (...) Using stasis theory to draw out the important connection between definitional issues and resulting policies, we argue that the framework of genomic contextualism is better suited to evaluating genomics and its policy-relevant features to arrive at more productive discussion and resolve policy debates. (shrink)