Many philosophers and psychologists argue that out everyday ability to predict and explain the actions and mental states of others is grounded in out possession of a primitive 'folk' psychological theory. Recently however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human beings are able to predict and explain each other's actions by using the resources of their own minds to simulate the psychological aetiology of the actions of the others. This book and (...) the companion volume Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate together offer a richly woven fabric of philosophical and psychological theory, which promises to yield real insights into the nature of our mental lives. (shrink)

This article provides a Foucauldian analysis of whiteness as a philosophical, political, anthropological and epistemological regime, undergirded by a power/knowledge nexus, which shapes what it meansto embody whiteness vis-a-vis the Black body/self. As a specific historically constructed standpoint, one that takes itselfas a “universal” value, and through a genealogical reading, whiteness is revealed as akind of emergence (Entstehung), a reactive value-creating power which shapes how the Black body/self is disciplined and how the Black body/selfcomes to introject a self-denigrating episteme. This (...) introjected episteme is explored as being fueled by white ressentiment. Coming under normalizing disciplinary techniques of whiteness, which is historically demonstrated, it is argued that Blacks carne to intemalize a form of self-ressentiment. Through the existentially rich narrative text of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the author shows that Pecola Breedlove, though a fictional character, is the racially distorted (and racially self-hating) product of certain contingent interpersonal and historical practices that once genealogically revealed create the possibility of radically dismantling their impact. (shrink)

We provide a taxonomy of the two most important debates in the philosophy of the cognitive and neural sciences. The first debate is over methodological individualism: is the object of the cognitive and neural sciences the brain, the whole animal, or the animal--environment system? The second is over explanatory style: should explanation in cognitive and neural science be reductionist-mechanistic, inter-level mechanistic, or dynamical? After setting out the debates, we discuss the ways in which they are interconnected. Finally, we make some (...) recommendations that we hope will help philosophers interested in the cognitive and neural sciences to avoid dead ends. (shrink)

abstract The argument that scarce health care resources should be distributed so that patients in ‘need’ are given priority for treatment is rarely contested. In this paper, we argue that if need is to play a significant role in distributive decisions it is crucial that what is meant by need can be precisely articulated. Following a discussion of the general features of health care need, we propose three principal interpretations of need, each of which focuses on separate intuitions. Although this (...) account may not be a completely exhaustive reflection of what people mean when they refer to need, the three interpretations provide a starting‐point for further debate of what the concept means in its specific application. We discuss combined interpretations, the meaning of grading needs, and compare needs‐based priority setting to social welfare maximisation. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce and defend the recurrent model for understanding bodily spatial phenomenology. While Longo, Azañón and Haggard (2010) propose a bottom-up model, Bermúdez (2017) emphasizes the top-down aspect of the information processing loop. We argue that both are only half of the story. Section 1 intro- duces what the issues are. Section 2 starts by explaining why the top- down, descending direction is necessary with the illustration from the ‘body-based tactile rescaling’ paradigm (de Vignemont, Ehrsson and Haggard, (...) 2005). It then argues that the bottom-up, ascending direction is also necessary, and substantiates this view with recent research on skin space and tactile field (Haggard et al., 2017). Section 3 discusses the model’s application to body ownership and bodily self-representation. Implications also extend to topics such as sense modality individuation (Macpherson, 2011), the constancy- based view of perception (Burge, 2010), and the perception/cognition divide (Firestone and Scholl, 2016). (shrink)

By integrating conservation of resources and social comparison perspectives, we seek to investigate how employees’ own i-deals, independently from and jointly with their coworker’s i-deals, determine their emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behaviors. We conducted a field study focusing on task i-deals, and used Actor–Partner Interdependence Model and polynomial regression to test the hypotheses. We found that emotional exhaustion not only mediated the negative relationship between employees’ own task i-deals and deviant behaviors, but also mediated the positive relationship between upward (...) social comparison of task i-deals and deviant behaviors. These results demonstrated the intra- and interpersonal implications of task i-deals for emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behaviors. The current research not only shifts the attention from a predominantly positive view on i-deals to a more balanced and nuanced view on i-deals’ implications, but also sheds light on the interpersonal nature of i-deals and the emotional exhaustion implication of upward social comparison. (shrink)

This paper examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demon- strate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this, and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states amongst agents of the same type. This is quite di erent from Schelling-like behavior, and sug- (...) gests (in his terms) that segregation is an instance of macro behavior which can arise from a wide variety of micro motives. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Issues concerning the putative perception/cognition divide are not only age-old, but also resurface in contemporary discussions in various forms. In this paper, I connect a relatively new debate concerning perceptual confidence to the perception/cognition divide. The term ‘perceptual confidence’ is quite common in the empirical literature, but there is an unsettled question about it, namely: are confidence assignments perceptual or post-perceptual? John Morrison in two recent papers puts forward the claim that confidence arises already at the level of perception. (...) In this paper, I first argue that Morrison’s case is unconvincing, and then develop one picture on perceptual precision with the notion of ‘matching profile’ and ‘supervaluation’ : 481–495.), highlighting the fact that this is a vagueness account, which is similar to but importantly different from indeterminacy accounts : 156–184.). With this model in hand, there can be rich resources with which to draw a theoretical line between perception and cognition. (shrink)

To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy – namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the (...) controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait or manipulated. Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films, and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation. (shrink)

The overflow debate concerns this following question: does conscious iconic memory have a higher capacity than attention does? In recent years, Ned Block has been invoking empirical works to support the positive answer to this question. The view is called the “rich view” or the “Overflow view”. One central thread of this discussion concerns the nature of iconic memory: for example how rich they are and whether they are conscious. The first section discusses a potential misunderstanding of “visible persistence” in (...) this literature. The second section discusses varieties of attention relevant to this debate. The final section discusses the most prominent alternative interpretation of the Sperling paradigm—the postdiction interpretation—and explains how it can be made compatible with a weaker version of the rich or overflow view. (shrink)

This study draws on semistructured interviews with 19 white, rural, straight-identified men who have sex with men to understand how they perceive their gender and sexuality. It is among the first to use straight men’s own narratives, and helps address the underrepresentation of rural masculinities research. Through complex interpretive processes, participants reworked non-normative sexual practices—those usually antithetical to rural masculinities—to construct normative masculinity. Most chose other masculine, white, and straight or secretly bisexual men as partners for secretive sex without romantic (...) involvement. By choosing these partners and having this type of sex, the participants normalized and authenticated their sexual encounters as straight and normatively masculine. The participants engaged in bud-sex, a specific type of male–male sex that reinforced their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. The married men framed sex with men as less threatening to marriage than extramarital sex with women, helping to preserve a part of their lives that they described as central to their straightness. The results highlight the flexibility of heterosexuality; the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity; how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations; and the social construction of masculinities and sexualities by age, race, gender, time period, and place. (shrink)

BackgroundInformed consent is an ethical and legal requirement for research involving human participants. However, few studies have evaluated the process, particularly in Africa.Participants in a case control study designed to identify correlates of immune protection against tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. This study was in turn nested in a large TB vaccine efficacy trial.The aim of the study was to evaluate the quality of consent in the case control study, and to identify factors that may influence the quality of consent.Cross-sectional (...) study conducted over a 4 month period.MethodsConsent was obtained from parents of trial participants. These parents were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained questions about the key elements of informed consent (voluntary participation, confidentiality, the main risks and benefits, etc.). The recall (success in selecting the correct answers) and understanding (correctness of interpretation of statements presented) were measured.ResultsThe majority of the 192 subjects interviewed obtained scores greater than 75% for both the recall and understanding sections. The median score for recall was 66%; interquartile range (IQR) = 55%–77% and for understanding 75% (IQR = 50%–87%). Most (79%) were aware of the risks and 64% knew that they participated voluntarily. Participants who had completed Grade 7 at school and higher were more likely (OR = 4.94; 95% CI = 1.57 – 15.55) to obtain scores greater than 75% for recall than those who did not. Participants who were consented by professional nurses who had worked for more than two years in research were also more likely (OR = 2.62; 95% CI = 1.35–5.07) to obtain such scores for recall than those who were not.ConclusionNotwithstanding the constraints in a developing country, in a population with low levels of literacy and education, the quality of informed consent found in this study could be considered as building blocks for establishing acceptable standards for public health research. Education level of respondents and experience of research staff taking the consent were associated with good quality informed consent. (shrink)

This article briefly replies to commentaries by Ilina Singh and Peter Lucas on our original piece titled "Mental Disorder and the Concept of Authenticity". In response to Lucas, we argue that those who face questions of authenticity in the context of mental disorder cannot avoid the dilemma between the "self-discovery" and "self-creation" approaches. In response to Singh, we suggest some ways in which the concept of authenticity might be of relevance to clinicians.

This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.¹ At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?

Street art is an art form that entails creating public works incorporating the street physically and in their meaning. That physical property is employed as an artistic resource in street art raises two questions. Are street artworks necessarily illegal? Does being illegal change the nature of production and aesthetic appreciation? First, I argue street artworks must be in the street. On my view, both the physical and sociocultural senses of the street can be constitutive of meaning. Second, I argue that (...) illegality is a prototypical and paradigmatic feature of street art. While illegality alone does not make works better than sanctioned street art, it affects the production process and changes what is available to appreciate. (shrink)

There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is “to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them” (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is “to use (...) geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux’s original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids” (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux’s question empirically. (shrink)

Apparently illegal cases of animal rescue can be either open or covert: ‘open rescue’ is associated with organizations such as Animal Liberation Victoria and Animal Liberation New South Wales; ‘covert rescue’ is associated with the Animal Liberation Front. While the former seems to qualify non-controversially as civil disobedience I argue that at least some instances of the latter could also qualify as civil disobedience just so long as various norms of civility are satisfied. The case for such a move is (...) defended against objections that covertness is inherently suspect; a failure to accept responsibility; and inconsistent with civil disobedience as a form of communication. Against such objections, the paper emphasizes the importance of respecting the open texture of the concept of civil disobedience if it is to be of continuing relevance against the backdrop of changing forms of non-violent dissent. (shrink)

The debate around ethical consumption is often characterised by discussion of its numerous failures arising from complexity in perceived trade-offs. In response, this paper advances a pragmatist understanding of the role and nature of trade-offs in ethical consumption. In doing so, it draws on the central roles of values and value in consumption and pragmatist philosophical thought, and proposes a critique of the ethical consumer as rational maximiser and the cognitive and utilitarian discourse of individual trade-offs to understand how sustainable (...) consumption practices are established and maintained. An in-depth qualitative study is conducted employing phenomenological interviews and hermeneutic analysis to explore the consumption stories of a group of ethically minded consumers. The research uncovers the location of value within a fluid, yet habitual, plurality of patterns, preferences, morals, identities and relationships. Its contribution is to propose that consumer perception of value in moral judgements is represented by an overall form of aggregate personal advantage, which lacks conscious reflection and delivers a phenomenological form of value rooted in habits, reflecting a pragmatist representation of value unified as a ‘consummatory experience’. (shrink)

Abstract At stake in the dispute between Campbell and Hume is the basis for our acceptance of testimony. Campbell argues that, contrary to Hume, our acceptance of testimony is prior to experience, while Hume continues to maintain that the appropriation through testimony of the experience of others depends ultimately on one's own experience. I argue that Hume's remarks about testimony provide a non-circular account of the process by which the experience of others may become one's own; and I suggest that (...) the view of Campbell and Hume as proponents of two radically opposed positions on the epistemology of testimony represents a considerable over-simplification. (shrink)

Freeman Dyson has questioned whether any conceivable experiment in the real universe can detect a single graviton. If not, is it meaningful to talk about gravitons as physical entities? We attempt to answer Dyson’s question and find it is possible concoct an idealized thought experiment capable of detecting one graviton; however, when anything remotely resembling realistic physics is taken into account, detection becomes impossible, indicating that Dyson’s conjecture is very likely true. We also point out several mistakes in the literature (...) dealing with graviton detection and production. (shrink)

My primary concern will be to cast light upon the relation between animal guardians ('pet owners') and pets as a deep relation. I will proceed with a degree of indirectness by explaining why animal guardians can have an epistemically-privileged position when it comes to end-of-life decisions concerning pets. My contention is that they are best placed to grasp the relevant narrative considerations upon which end-of-life deliberation in marginal cases ought to depend. Such narrative-appreciation is built into the practice of treating (...) animals as pets. By virtue of having such a narrative appreciation, animal guardians can be best placed to grasp the life-role of pain and suffering. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate as to whether there is a major difference between Hume's accounts of morality in the Treatise and the second Enquiry. This has tended to focus on the role of sympathy in each case, but more recently the greater emphasis on humanity in the Enquiry as compared with the Treatise has been used to support a non-reconciliation view of the relation between these accounts. So far as humanity's role in relation to the moral sentiments is concerned, (...) I question whether it can provide the moral point of view associated with moral approval and disapproval. Considered as a motive to action, I question whether humanity always results in the kinds of action which would meet with general approbation. I also stress the limitations of humanity when viewed from the impartial perspective associated with the moral point of view. I further attempt to show that there is no real contradiction between Hume's claim in the Treatise that sympathy is ‘the chief source of moral distinctions’ and his claim in the Enquiry that the sentiments dependent on humanity ‘are the origin of morals’. I therefore conclude in favour of a reconciliatory view of the two accounts. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Doctrine of Necessity The Doctrine of Liberty Hume's Compatibilism Notes References Further reading.

Chris Arthur‟s body of work counts as a very important and original contribution to systematic dialectics, and I have profited immensely from his writings over the years. However we disagree on a number of points. Some have to do with the relatively secondary question of the intellectual relationship between Hegel and Marx; others involve more substantive matters. In his reply to my review of Joseph McCarney‟s Hegel on History Arthur distinguishes three different versions of the thesis that there is a (...) “homology” between the logic of capital (in a Marxian understanding of it) and Hegel‟s “idea.” I shall comment briefly on each and then conclude with a general remark. (shrink)

In his recent work The Myth of Dialectics John Rosenthal presents a forceful polemic against Hegel and Marxists sympathetic to the Hegelian legacy. The methodology Hegel employed, his metaphysical assertions, his rejection of the principles of formal logic, and the political implications of his standpoint, are all fundamentally incompatible with Marx’s perspective, according to Rosenthal. While Rosenthal grants that Marx did make use of Hegelian motifs in his theory of value, even this is not to Hegel’s credit: the very perversity (...) of Hegel’s thought made it useful for the comprehension of the perversity of capital. In this paper I argue that a close and reasonably charitable reading of Hegel’s Logic reveals a quite different picture of his methodology and ontological commitments from that presented by Rosenthal. While there are profound substantive differences between the Hegelian and Marxian 1 perspectives on capitalist society, it is not the case that Hegel’s Logic is homologous with capital. The Logic provides helpful conceptual resources for a critique of capital. In the final section of the paper five areas are briefly sketched in which Hegelian dialectical logic remains of contemporary interest. (shrink)

Avicenna (d. 1037) and Tūsī (d. 1274) have different doctrines on the contradiction and conversion of the absolute proposition. Following Avicenna's presentation of the doctrine in Pointers and reminders, and comparing it with what is given in Tūsī's commentary, allow us to pinpoint a major reason why Avicenna and Tūsī have different treatments of the modal syllogistic. Further comparison shows that the syllogistic system Rescher described in his research on Arabic logic more nearly fits Tūsī than Avicenna. This in turn (...) has consequences for analysing Avicenna's logic, and for writing the history of a fascinating period of change and diversity in the discipline in the medieval Islamic world. (shrink)

My topic is Hume’s treatment of the problem of evil in the Dialogues and elsewhere in his philosophical writings. The aim is to provide an overall view of Hume’s position which also takes account of the historical debate associated with the problem of evil. Critical and interpretative issues will also be addressed. We shall see that Hume is concerned mainly with a particular form of the evidential argument from evil which appears especially damaging to theistic belief in so far as (...) it calls into question traditional views of the nature of God. (shrink)

Purpose – Does copyright protection reduce or foster intellectual and industrial creation? Based on a case study from history of science, the aim is to provide more controversial evidence to this debate. Design/methodology/approach – The investigation used primary and secondary sources from the history of science and made the link to the actual debate on copyright, piracy and scientific communication. Findings – The paper describes how Elzevier, through non-authorized exploitation of a new product and without consideration of the editor's legitimate (...) interests, in a context of missing copyright protection, largely contributed to the dissemination of the French Journal de Savants and its content, and finally to the success of scientific journals. Obviously, rights infringement can not only promote the interest and objective of the rights holder but also and above all contribute to the emergence and development of new forms of scientific life. Sometimes, when barriers to communication and debate are too strong, tolerated and calculated infringement may be an option to move the lines/change the situation. Research limitations/implications – In the post-Gutenberg galaxy, made up of open access, common goods and public domain, open data and e-Science, evaluation, innovation, sustainability, communication and sharing, copyright is not necessarily the option to develop scientific communication. At least, the authors have to study lessons from academic publishing, copyright protection and piracy very carefully. Originality/value – The paper sheds light on a surprising and not very well-known part of the history of academic publishing. (shrink)

Avicenna refers on a number of occasions in his Book of the Syllogism to “the eminent later scholar” . At least three recent studies have argued or assumed that this eminent later scholar is Alexander of Aphrodisias. It is argued in this article that Avicenna is in fact referring to Alfarabi. This has consequences for reconstructing the lost first part of Alfarabi's Great Commentary on the Prior Analytics , for highlighting certain aspects of Alfarabi's logical doctrines, and for understanding more (...) about the relation between Avicenna and Alfarabi in matters logical. (shrink)