Online research in philosophy

Complex cognitive processes like concept learning involve a mixture of redundant explicit and implicit processes that are active simultaneously. This aspect of cognitive architecture creates difficulties in determining the influence of consciousness on processing. We propose that the interaction between an individual's regulatory focus and the reward structure of the current task influences the degree to which explicit processing is active. Thus, by manipulating people's motivational state and the nature of the task they perform, we can vary the influence of (...) conscious processing in cognitive performance. We demonstrate the utility of this view by focusing on studies in which people acquire new perceptual concepts by learning to classify them. This technique will allow us to better tease apart the roles of explicit and implicit processing in a variety of cognitive tasks. (shrink)

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was (...) whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. 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