Online research in philosophy

Introduction. Whatever its underlying causes, even the description of the phenomenon of thought insertion, of the content of the delusion, presents difficulty. It may seem that the best hope of a description comes from a broadly cognitivist approach to the mind which construes content-laden mental states as internal mental representations within what is literally an inner space: the space of the brain or nervous system. Such an approach objectifies thoughts in a way which might seem to hold out the prospect (...) of describing the ''alienated'' relation to one's own thoughts that seems to be present in thought insertion.1 Method. Firstly, I examine the general structure of cognitivist accounts of intentional or content-laden mental states. I raise the general difficulty of explaining how free-standing, and thus world-independent, inner states can still have bearing on the outer world. Secondly, I briefly examine Frith's model for explaining thought insertion and other passivity phenomena by postulating a failure of an internal monitoring mechanism of inner states. I question what account can be given of non-pathological cases and raise two specific objects. Results. Cognitivist accounts of the mind face a general, and possibly insuperable, challenge: explaining the intentionality of mental states in non-intentional, non- question-begging terms. There have so far been no satisfactory solutions. Cognitivist accounts of passivity phenomena in terms of a failure of internal monitoring face two objections. Firstly, accounting for non-pathological cases generates an infinite regress. Secondly, no account can be given of the paradoxical nature of utterances of the form of Moore's paradox: ''it is raining but I do not believe it''. Conclusions. A cognitivist approach presents an alienated account of thought in normal, non-pathological cases and is no help in accounting for thought insertion. (shrink)

Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, it examines the key debates about mental health care, and the philosophical ideas and tools needed to assess those debates, in six chapters. In addition to outlining the state of play, Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry presents a coherent and unified approach across the different debates, characterized by a rejection of reductionism and (...) an emphasis on the ineliminability of uncodified skilled judgement. The first part, Values, outlines the debate about whether diagnosis of mental illness is essentially value-laden and argues that the prospects for reducing illness or disease to plainly factual matters are poor. It also explains the important role of skilled contextual judgement, rather than a principles-based deduction, in ethical judgement. The second part, Meanings, examines the central role of understanding and a shared first person perspective, both against attempts to reduce meaning to basic information-processing mechanisms and to explain away the difficulties of understanding psychopathology in recent models of delusion. The third part, Facts, shows the importance of uncodified clinical judgements, both in assessing the validity of psychiatric taxonomy and in the application of Evidence Based Medicine. Despite advances in the codifaction of practice and operationalism of diagnosis, an element of judgement remains in the assessment both of what, at one level, is good evidence for diagnosis and treatment and what, at a higher level, is good evidence for the validity of classification overall. (shrink)

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four experiments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sensitivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sensitivity does not rely on (...) the redeploy- ment of attention. We discuss these results in relation to theories of scene percep- tion, and propose a reinterpretatio n of the role of attention in representing change. (shrink)

Summary The aim of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, to briefly set out how strategic choices made about theorising about intentionality or content have actions at a distance for accounting for delusion. Secondly, to investigate how successfully a general difficulty facing a broadly interpretative approach to delusions might be eased by the application of any of three Wittgensteinian interpretative tools. Thirdly, to draw a general moral about how the later Wittgenstein gives more reason to be pessimistic than optimistic about the (...) prospects of a philosophical psychopathology aimed at empathic understanding of delusions. (shrink)

State of nature or Eden? -- Hobbes' state of nature as an account of the fall? -- Hobbes' own belief or unbelief -- The contemporary reaction to Leviathan -- Hobbes and commentaries on Genesis -- A note on method and chapter order -- Good and evil -- Hobbes on good and evil -- The 'seditious doctrines' of the schoolmen -- The contemporary reaction -- The scriptural account -- The state of nature as an account of the fall? -- Equality and (...) unsociability -- Hobbes and natural equality -- The contemporary reaction -- The scriptural account -- Hobbes on natural unsociability -- The contemporary reaction -- The scriptural account -- State of nature as Eden? -- The war of all against all -- Hobbes' war of all against all -- The contemporary reaction -- The scriptural account -- State of nature as fallen condition? -- The right and law of nature -- Hobbes and natural right -- The contemporary reaction -- Hobbes and natural law -- The contemporary reaction -- The scriptural account -- Hobbes as reformed theologian? -- The creation of society -- Hobbes on the escape from the state of nature -- The contemporary reaction : Hobbes versus divine right -- The scriptural account of Cain building a city -- Hobbes on the creation of the commonwealth -- The contemporary reaction : Hobbes versus the patriarchalists -- The scriptural account of the relationship between Adam and Eve -- State of nature as Eden, the process of the fall, and the fallen condition? -- Reading Hobbes' state of nature -- Anti-aristotelianism -- Hobbes' Protestantism. (shrink)

One of the tasks that recent philosophy of psychiatry has taken upon itself is to extend the range of understanding to some of those aspects of psychopathology that Jaspers deemed beyond its limits. Given the fundamental difficulties of offering a literal interpretation of the contents of primary delusions, a number of alternative strategies have been put forward including regarding them as abnormal versions of framework propositions described by Wittgenstein in On Certainty. But although framework propositions share some of the apparent (...) epistemic features of primary delusions, their role in partially constituting the sense of inquiry rules out their role in helping to understand delusions. (shrink)

& Awareness of change within a visual scene only occurs in subjects were aware of, replicated those attentional effects, but the presence of focused attention. When two versions of a.

The notion of capacity implicit in the Mental Capacity Act is subject to a tension between two claims. On the one hand, capacity is assessed relative to a particular decision. It is the capacity to make one kind of judgement, specifically, rather than another. So one can have capacity in one area and not have it in another. On the other hand, capacity is supposed to be independent of the ‘wisdom’ or otherwise of the decision made. (‘A person is not (...) to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because he makes an unwise decision.’ Department of Constitutional Affairs 2005, section 1). One may have capacity even if the decision one arrives at is seen as unwise by one’s doctor. In this short note, I explore this .. (shrink)

The paper uses ideas from Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms to provide a model of the development of a fight-or-flight response in a simulated agent. The modelled development process involves (simulated) processes of evolution, learning and representation development. The main value of the model is that it provides an illustration of how simple learning processes may lead to the formation of structures which can be given a representational interpretation. It also shows how these may form the infrastructure for (...) closely-coupled agent/environment interaction. (shrink)

THE AUTHOR ARGUES THAT THE HUMEAN "A PRIORI" ATTACK ON MIRACLES IS INTENDED TO SHOW THE INCOHERENCE OF THE NOTION OF A WELL-ATTESTED MIRACULOUS EVENT (NOT THE INCOHERENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF A MIRACLE). THOUGH THIS TYPE OF ATTACK CAN BE PRESENTED IN A POWERFUL FORM, IT SUFFERS FROM AN UNDULY NARROW ASSUMPTION CONCERNING THE NATURE OF EVIDENCE AND EXPLANATION, FOR IT "IS" POSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO CONCLUDE THAT A MIRACLE HAS OCCURRED. HOWEVER, (...) WE CAN KNOW ON "A POSTERIORI" GROUNDS THAT THE PROBABILITY OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES EVER HAVING OBTAINED IS EXTREMELY REMOTE. FINALLY, IT IS ARGUED THAT (UNLESS THE DESIGN ARGUMENT IS SOUND) WELL-ATTESTED MIRACLES ARE, NEVERTHELESS, THE ONLY POSSIBLE GROUNDS WHICH COULD JUSTIFY A REASONABLE BELIEF IN THE EXISTENCE OF A PERSONAL GOD. (shrink)

This highly anticipated second edition of The Curriculum Studies Reader retains key features of the successful first edition while incorporating an updated introduction and new, timely essays. Grounded in historical essays, the volume provides context for the growing field of curriculum studies, reflects upon the trends that have dominated the field, and samples the best of current scholarship. This thoughtful combination of essays provides a survey of the field coupled with concrete examples of innovative curriculum, and an examination of contemporary (...) topics like HIV/AIDS education and multicultural education. (shrink)

Michael Wheeler, in his book Reconstructing the Cognitive World, analyses the development of embedded-embodied cognitive science in the light of underlying philosophical differences about the constitution of human agency. On one side he sees orthodox computational cognitive science as holding to Cartesian conceptions of an abstract, disembodied reason deliberating over de-contextualised representations of the world. On the other side, he sees modern-day embodied-embedded cognitive scientists going beyond such Cartesianism to embrace concepts of human agency more in keeping with Heidegger’s account (...) of Dasein in Being and Time. By bringing to light and criticising the Cartesian assumptions of the computationalists and by pointing out and clarifying the connections between embodied-embedded cognitive science and Heidegger’s philosophy, Wheeler aims to lay the “foundations of a genuinely non- Cartesian cognitive science.”. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent philo- sophical work on the nature of mental illness. Two..

KEYWORDS: Validity, reliability, values, taxonomy, clas- sification, McDowell.

I believe that Wright’s constructivist account of intention is funda- mentally flawed [Wright 1984, 1986, 1987a, 1987b, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1992]. To understand why it fails it is necessary first to locate the account in its broader strategic context. That context is Wright’s response to Wittgenstein’s account of rule following. When so located the diagnosis of the account’s failure is clear. Wright’s account of intention is a species of the interpretative approach to mental content which is explicitly rejected by (...) Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This volume will be an invaluable guide for student and professional researchers in visual perception, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

This research examines published editorials and letters to the editor at the time of one of the first and most bizarre newspaper frauds in this country-the infamous moon hoax of 1835, perpetuated by the New York Sun and reporter Richard Adams Locke. The purpose is to focus on what was written about the practice of journalism before, during, and after the moon hoax-thereby providing a more complete understanding of the journalistic environment that gave birth to the fabrication. This article taps (...) directly into discussion of journalism ethics printed in 4 leading New York City dailies: The Evening Post, The Herald, the combined Morning Courier & New York Enquirer, and the New York Sun. (shrink)

It is widely appreciated that the difficulty of a particluar computation varies according to how the input data are presented. What is less understood is the effect of this computation/representation tradeoff within familiar learning paradigms. We argue that existing learning algoritms are often poorly equipped to solve problems involving a certain type of important and widespread regularity, which we call 'type-2' regularity. The solution in these cases is to trade achieved representation against computational search. We investigate several ways in which (...) such a trade-off may be pursued including simple incremental learning, modular connectionism, and the developmental hypothesis of 'representational redescription'. In addition, the most distinctive features of human cognition- language and culture- may themselves be viewed as adaptions enabling this representation/computation trade-off to be pursued on an even grander scale. (shrink)

b>—Several paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integra- tion) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. However, those studies almost always rely on explicit reports. It remains a possibility that the visual system can implicitly detect change, but that in the absence of focused attention, the change does not (...) reach awareness and consequently is not reported. To test this possibility, we used a simple change detection paradigm coupled with a speeded orien- tation discrimination task. Even when observers reported being unaware of a change in an item’s orientation, its nal orientation effectively biased their response in the orientation discrimination task. Both in aware and unaware trials, errors were most frequent when the changed item and the probe had incongruent orientations. These results demonstrate that the _nature _of the change can be represented in the absence of awareness. (shrink)

This book will answer all your questions and more.

This paper reports the findings from an interconnected set of experiments designed to assess children’s knowledge of the semantic interactions between negation and quantified NPs. Our main finding is that young children, unlike adults, systematically interpret these elements on the basis of their position in overt syntax. We argue that this observation can be derived from an interplay between fundamental properties of universal grammar and basic learning principles. We show that even when children’s semantic knowledge appears to differ from that (...) of adults, the observed differences.. (shrink)

Several recent findings support the notion that changes in the environment can be implicitly represented by the visual system. S. R. Mitroff, D. J. Simons, and S. L. Franconeri (2002) challenged this view and proposed alternative interpretations based on explicit strategies. Across 4 experiments, the current study finds no empirical support for such alternative proposals. Experiment 1 shows that subjects do not rely on unchanged items when locating an unaware change. Experiments 2 and 3 show that unaware changes affect performance (...) even when they occur at an unpredictable location. Experiment 4 shows that the unaware congruency effect does not depend simply on the pattern of the final display. The authors point to converging evidence from other methodologies and highlight several weaknesses in Mitroff et al.’s theoretical arguments. It is concluded here that implicit representation of change provides the most parsimonious explanation for both past and present findings. (shrink)

We argue that existing learning algorithms are often poorly equipped to solve problems involving a certain type of important and widespread regularity that we call “type-2 regularity.” The solution in these cases is to trade achieved representation against computational search. We investigate several ways in which such a trade-off may be pursued including simple incremental learning, modular connectionism, and the developmental hypothesis of “representational redescription.”.

into complex society and experienced tremendous economic development and high cultural achievement through the use of money. It has foundered or even been destroyed when money has been undermined. Ignorance of the nature of money should therefore be the central economic issue for society. Frédéric Bastiat was a French businessman who lived during the first half of the nineteenth century (1801–1850). In the last few years of his life he was elected to the national assembly and began a prolific career (...) as a writer on topics of economics, public policy, and political issues of the day. His highly effective writing style includes the use of humor, ridicule, dialogue, irony, exaggeration and, most important, logical deduction and the process of elimination. He is like a mystery sleuth in search of economic truth and this style has made him the undisputed champion in economic polemics. He continues to earn high praise from journalists, economists, and most important, from educated readers more than 150 years after his death.1 In contrast to the universal respect and admiration for his literary skills, Bastiat has not been admired as an economic theorist. His efforts at economic theory have been roundly criticized and characterized as the efforts of an amateur or even a crank. We can list the eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, two outstanding economists, among the critics of Bastiat as an economic theorist. I have re-examined Bastiat’s contributions to economic theory and have found the charges against him to be unsubstantiated. In terms of economic theory, Bastiat is widely knowledgeable, keenly discerning, highly competent, and very creative. Furthermore, I have concluded that the central criticisms of.. (shrink)

How many letters to the editor published in today's popular magazines discuss media ethics? How do the number of letters to the editor about media ethics compare with lettersfrom an earlier era? To find some answers, this article compares the number of letters to the editor about journalistic standards contained in all the letters published in 10 popular magazines between 1982 and 1992 with those of 10 popular magazines published between 1902 and 1912. Of almost 42,000 letters to the editor (...) published in 10 contemporary magazines studied here, roughly 3.5% discussed media ethics. In sharp contrast, a study of letters to the editor in the magazines published from 1902 to 1912 reveals a much higher percentage of readers' comments about journalistic ethics.This article explores the differences and asks why far fewer letters to the editor about journalism were published in the recent decade than in the past. (shrink)

In his new commentary, Damper re-emphasises his claim that parity is not a generalisation problem. But when proper account is taken of the arguments he puts forward, we find that the proposed conclusion is not the only one that can be drawn.

The following is a transcript of the interview I (Yasuko Kitano) conducted with Neil Levy (The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CAPPE) on the 23rd in July 2009, while he was in Tokyo to give a series of lectures on neuroethics at The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. I edited his words for publication with his approval.

Many arguments have been advanced for the view that "Why be moral?" is a pseudo-question. In this paper I address one of the most widely known and influential of them, one that comes from John Hospers and J. C. <span class='Hi'>Thornton</span>. I do so partly because, strangely, an important phase of that argument has escaped close attention. It warrants such attention because, firstly, not only is it important to the argument in which it appears, it is important in wider (...) respects. For instance, if it is sound it has weighty consequences even if the argument in which it figures fails. Secondly, it is not sound; it succumbs to a simple objection. (shrink)

In his response to my essay “Out of Control,” Neil Levy contests my claims that (1) we are often responsible for acts that we do not consciously choose to perform, and that (2) despite the absence of conscious choice, there remains a relevant sense in which these actions are within our control. In this reply to Levy, I concede that claim (2) is linguistically awkward but defend the thought that it expresses, and I clarify my defense of claim (1) (...) by distinguishing my position from attributionism. (shrink)

In a paper in this journal, Neil Levy challenges Nicholas Agar’s argument for the irrationality of mind-uploading. Mind-uploading is a futuristic process that involves scanning brains and recording relevant information which is then transferred into a computer. Its advocates suppose that mind-uploading transfers both human minds and identities from biological brains into computers. According to Agar’s original argument, mind-uploading is prudentially irrational. Success relies on the soundness of the program of Strong AI—the view that it may someday be possible (...) to build a computer that is capable of thought. Strong AI may in fact be false, an eventuality with dire consequences for mind-uploading. Levy argues that Agar’s argument relies on mistakes about the probability of failed mind-uploading and underestimates what is to be gained from successfully mind-uploading. This paper clarifies Agar’s original claims about the likelihood of mind-uploading failure and offers further defense of a pessimistic evaluation of success. (shrink)