Theories of embodied cognition assume that concepts are grounded in non-linguistic, sensorimotor experience. In support of this assumption, previous studies have shown that upwards response movements are faster than downwards movements after participants have been presented with words whose referents are typically located in the upper vertical space. This is taken as evidence that processing these words reactivates sensorimotor experiential traces. This congruency effect was also found for novel words, after participants learned these words as labels for novel objects that (...) they encountered either in their upper or lower visual field. While this indicates that direct experience with a word's referent is sufficient to evoke said congruency effects, the present study investigates whether this direct experience is also a necessary condition. To this end, we conducted five experiments in which participants learned novel words from purely linguistic input: Novel words were presented in pairs with real up- or down-words ; they were presented in natural sentences where they replaced these real words ; they were presented as new labels for these real words ; and they were presented as labels for novel combined concepts based on these real words. In all five experiments, we did not find any congruency effects elicited by the novel words; however, participants were always able to make correct explicit judgements about the vertical dimension associated to the novel words. These results suggest that direct experience is necessary for reactivating experiential traces, but this reactivation is not a necessary condition for understanding the corresponding aspects of word meaning. (shrink)

Despite substantial research on overall decision-making capacity levels in schizophrenia, the factors that cause individuals to make errors when making decisions regarding research participation or treatment are relatively unknown. We examined the responses of 84 individuals, middle-aged or older, with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. We used a structured decision-making capacity measure, the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research, to determine the frequency and apparent cause of participants’ errors. We found that most errors were due to difficulty recalling the disclosed (...) information, particularly the study’s procedures, potential risks, and purpose. Errors attributable to concrete thinking, psychotic symptoms, or perceived coercion were rarer. These results suggest that informed consent procedures for this population might be improved by providing information in a way that facilitates learning and memory, such as iterative disclosure of the information, corrective feedback, and emphasis of key points of the study—for instance, its purpose, procedures, and potential risks. (shrink)

Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s 2010 collaborative work, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, centers on a prophetic warning of impending apocalyptic collapse due to anthropogenic environmental destruction. An indigenous contribution to the contemporary burst of eco-apocalyptic writing and the search for a new ecological social order, The Falling Sky challenges the temporal vector of Euroamerican eco-apocalypticism. Instead of the teleological axis of anthropocentric temporality (the emergence of homo sapiens as the pinnacle of evolution), it refers us to (...) a temporality of terrestrial life, where homo sapiens is just one more living species in the web of life. (shrink)

Glenberg argues for embodied representations relevant to action. In contrast, we propose a grouping of representations, not necessarily all being directly embodied. Without assuming the existence of representations that are not directly embodied, one cannot account for the use of knowledge abstracted from direct experience.

Der Kolner Dominikaner Gerhard von Sterngassen verfasste im ersten Viertel des 14. Jahrhunderts einen Laster- und Tugendtraktat, der unter zwei metaphorischen Titeln "Medela languentis animae" bzw. "Pratum animarum" in zwei unterschiedlich umfangreichen Redaktionen uberliefert ist. Trotz der wiederholten Erwahnung des Werkes im Zusammenhang der Deutschen Thomistenschule bzw. der Rheinischen Dominikanerschule fehlte bislang eine umfassende Untersuchung und Edition. Den zentralen Inhalt des Buches von Susanne Kaup bilden die text- und quellenkritische Edition sowie die theologische Interpretation der Lehre von den Gluckseligkeiten (beatitudines) (...) der Bergpredigt einer Thematik, deren mittelalterliche Rezeptionsgeschichte bisher wenig Aufmerksamkeit erfuhr und die die haufig in der Forschung diskutierte philosophische Lehre vom Gluck aus theologischer Perspektive erganzt. In der Zitation von Autoren der Patristik bis hin zu Thomas von Aquin werden systematische Texte und narrative Exempla der Wustenvatertheologie miteinander verbunden. Gerhard von Sterngassen verfasste ein theologisch-spirituelles, heils-padagogisches Werk fur die Privatfrommigkeit; durch die umfangreiche Benutzung des Thomas von Aquin leistete er einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Breitenwirkung dieses Gedankengutes. Die Dissertation wurde im Juni 2010 mit dem Promotionsforderpreis der Munchener Universitatsgesellschaft ausgezeichnet.". (shrink)

The present study examines whether deictic time and valence are mentally associated, with a link between future and positive valence and a link between past and negative valence. We employed a novel paradigm, the two-choice-sentence-completion paradigm, to address this issue. Participants were presented with an initial sentence fragment that referred to an event that was either located in time or of different valence. Participants chose between two completion phrases. When the given dimension in the initial fragment was time, the two (...) completion phrase alternatives differed in valence. However, when the given dimension in the initial fragment was valence, the two completion phrase alternatives differed in time. As expected, participants chose completion phrases consistent with the proposed association between time and valence. Additional analyses involving individual differences concerning optimism/pessimism revealed that this association is particularly pronounced for people with an optimistic attitude. (shrink)

Lewis has missed an excellent opportunity to concisely demonstrate that a dynamical system can provide a bridge between emotion theory and neurobiology.

This chapter first surveys general issues in the epistemic internalism / externalism debate: what is the distinction, what motivates it, and what arguments can be given on both sides. -/- The second part of the chapter will examine the internalism / externalism debate as regards to the specific case of the epistemology of memory belief.

The acquisition of a new skill usually proceeds through five stages, from novice to expert, with a sixth stage of mastery available for highly motivated performers. In this chapter, we re-state the six stages of the Dreyfus Skill Model, paying new attention to the transitions and interrelations between them. While discussing the fifth stage, expertise, we unpack the claim that, “when things are proceeding normally, experts don’t solve problems and don’t make decisions; they do what normally works” (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, (...) 1988, pp. 30 – 31). This leads us to offer an account of the “perspectival deliberation” that arises for experts and masters and that is distinct from the calculative deliberation characteristic of the lower stages of skillfulness. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities. He also (...) spells out the implications of this view for philosophical conceptions of causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Martin emphasizes the importance of non-conscious 'vegetative' systems, which provide clear examples of intentionality in the form of representational use. The slide from representational use to consciousness involves a change in the material of use, but not the form of representation. A concluding chapter provides an argument for the view that an ontology of particular substances and properties leads ineluctably to monism: the bus we board with Locke takes us directly to the world of Spinoza and Einstein. Along the way, we are led to understand the nature of minds and conscious states of mind in a way that avoids both reductionism and dualism. (shrink)

We presuppose a position of scientific realism to the effect (i) that the world exists and (ii) that through the working out of ever more sophisticated theories our scientific picture of reality will approximate ever more closely to the world as it really is. Against this background consider, now, the following question: 1. Do the empirical theories with the help of which we seek to approximate a good or true picture of reality rest on any non-empirical presuppositions? One can answer (...) this question with either a 'yes' or a 'no'. 'No' is the preferred answer of most contemporary methodologists -- Murray Rothbard is one distinguished counterexample to this trend -- who maintain that empirical theories are completely free of non-empirical ('a priori') admixtures and who see science as a matter of the gathering of pure 'data' obtained through simple observation. From such data scientific propositions are then supposed to be somehow capable of being established. (shrink)

In this concise yet powerful book, one of the twentieth century's most respected political philosophers presents a controversial reassessment of the political ideas and intellectual legacy of Edmund Burke. A practicing politician and powerful writer, full of ideas, Burke was intent on getting those ideas translated into government policies. But he was too much the impatient practitioner to set out his principles in a single book in the manner of Locke or Hume, leaving both admirers and opponents ample scope to (...) reinterpret his work in different ways. Macpherson, however, finds Burke's views on political economy to be the one consistent factor in his thinking. Today Burke is often viewed as one of modern conservatism's founding lights, and in an era of global capitalism unfettered by national borders, Macpherson's reassessment of Burke's ideas is perhaps more timely than ever. (shrink)

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)