We have studied a number of long-term meditators in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to determine if there are differences in baseline brain function of experienced meditators compared to non-meditators. All subjects were recruited as part of an ongoing study of different meditation practices. We evaluated 12 advanced meditators and 14 non-meditators with cerebral blood flow SPECT imaging at rest. Images were analyzed with both region of interest and statistical parametric mapping. The CBF of long-term meditators was (...) significantly higher compared to non-meditators in the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, thalamus, putamen, caudate, and midbrain. There was also a significant difference in the thalamic laterality with long-term meditators having greater asymmetry. The observed changes associated with long-term meditation appear in structures that underlie the attention network and also those that relate to emotion and autonomic function. (shrink)

David Atkinson asks whether nonempirical constructions can lead to genuine knowledge in science, and answers in the negative. Thought experiments, in his view, are to be commended only insofar as they eventually lead to real experiments. The claim does not rely on a general study, conceptual or historical, of thought experiments as such: the range of the paper is at once narrower and broader. Atkinson views thought experiments as commonly understood as just one kind of episode in the development of (...) physics in which real experimentation is bypassed, and he believes that such episodes are justified only inasmuch as they are transitory stages on the way to genuine empirical inquiry. Atkinson wants to kill with one arrow what is usually regarded as two different birds: the notion that thought experiments proper can be persuasive in themselves, and the thesis that theories which cannot be brought to the tribunal of experience can nevertheless belong to science. He thus implicitly opposes three views which are commonly, albeit not universally, held: (i) some thought experiments are conclusive; (ii) some theories belong to science despite not being evidently and concretely amenable to empirical corroboration; (iii) the two issues are largely independent. The standpoint from which Atkinson operates is a rather strict form of empiricism, one which relies on a fairly sharp distinction between the conceptual and empirical dimensions of inquiry. My outlook is rather different: the conceptual and empirical seem to me to be intertwined, both conceptually, as suggested by Quine’s critique of logical positivism, and empirically, as revealed by the evidence provided by science itself in its daily and historical reality. Rather than take the high road, I propose to focus first on the critique to which Atkinson subjects Galileo’s thought experiment, and the lessons he draws from his analysis.. (shrink)

Obesity may be the most difficult and elusive public health problem this country has ever encountered. Unlike the classical infectious diseases and plagues that killed millions in the past, it is not caused by deadly viruses or bacteria of a kind amenable to vaccines for prevention, nor are there many promising medical treatments so far. While diabetes, heart disease, and kidney failure can be caused by obesity, it is easier to treat those conditions than one of their causes. I call (...) obesity elusive partly because of the disturbingly low success rate in treating it, but also because it requires changing the patterns, woven deeply into our social fabric, of food and beverage commerce, personal eating habits, and sedentary lifestyles. It also raises the most basic ethical and policy questions: how far can government and business go in trying to change behavior that harms health, what are the limits of market freedom for industry, and how do we look upon our bodies and judge those of others?. (shrink)

Qui a écrit la première histoire du christianisme ? La recherche historienne moderne a rarement hésité à pointer le doigt vers Eusèbe de Césarée, ainsi que le rappellent dans ce dossier les contributions de M. Fédou et de M. Heinzelmann. Une telle reconnaissance devait amener une dégradation de la qualité historienne de l’œuvre lucanienne, évangile et Actes des Apôtres, reconnue jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle. Ainsi, jusque dans les années 60 du XXe siècle, la recherche sur cette œuvre devait être dominée par (...) cette tonalité lourde. Une révision de ces attitudes, dont certaines se sont manifestées dès le début de ce même siècle, s’est depuis engagée, grâce notamment à une meilleure connaissance et acceptation des caractéristiques de l’historiographie ancienne. C’est donc un véritable historien qui se révèle désormais dans l’œuvre lucanienne, légitimant du même coup le concept d’histoire théologique, et rendant à Luc sa place, la première, bien avant Eusèbe de Césarée.Who wrote the first history of Christianity? Modern historical research has rarely hesitated to designate Eusebius of Caesarea, as the contributions of M. Fédou and M. Heizelmann recall here. Such recognition led to downgrading the historical quality of Luke’s writings, the Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, which had been accepted until the 18th century. Thus, up until the 1960’s, research on these writings was dominated by this overriding approach. A revision of these attitudes, some of which arose in the early 20th century, has since emerged, especially due to a better understanding and acceptance of the characteristics of ancient historiography. Hence, Luke now appears as a true historian, thereby legitimizing the concept of theological history and once again acknowledging Luke’s place as the first historian of Christianity, well before Eusebius of Caesarea. (shrink)

The idea of natural truth is the idea of truths that are the same for all rational beings with our biological form of life. The thought is that in regard to at least some issues, for example the ontological status of fish, there are natural truths, and that it is the task of philosophy in particular to discover such truths. In my essay I distinguish such truths from empirical truths such as, for example, that water nourishes plants or that there (...) are black swans, as well as from matters of taste. Angle reminds us of yet another sort of truth that is not amenable to the kind of treatment that I outline for natural truth. It is not, or at least seems not to be, a natural truth that one ought to rid... (shrink)

The apportionment of responsibility for health policy within multi‐level states should be sensitive to a number of conflicting normative pressures, some of which militate for placing decision‐making authority at the higher reaches of policy‐making structures, while others would seem to require placing them lower down this structure. The principle of subsidiarity is a structural principle that addresses in a manner that is neutral with respect to these values a way of addressing the conflicting claims of these values. Standard accounts of (...) federalism fare poorly with respect to the criterion of subsidiarity. While central governments are at first glance better equipped to apply such a principle to the issue of the distribution of authority, there are strong empirical grounds for thinking that centralized governments will non‐neutrally privilege central authorities in applying the principle. Federal structures that admit of overlapping jurisdictions, and that therefore require that deliberation among federal parties occur as a condition of the problem of the distribution of powers over health care being solved, are most amenable to solving problems of distribution of authority. (shrink)

Dans la section 1, j’explique pourquoi une conception Dummet-tienne du réalisme n’a de pertinence que dans certains cas particuliers. Dans la section 2, j’indique qu’il est raisonnable de penser que Crispin Wright soutient que la vérité de certains jugements dépend de notre capacité de la connaître (si et) seulement si leur vérité consiste dans le fait qu’ils sont superassertables. Dans la section 3, je souligne qu’insister, avec Dummett et Wright, sur la connaissabilité, nous empêche de voir qu’il y a d’autres (...) formes légitimes de réalisme. Je propose une réfutation de la thèse attribuée à Wright dans la section 2, ce qui m’amène à suggérer que c’est une erreur de penser que la question du réalisme concerne essentiellement la nature de la vérité. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Confessions of an American PsychoJames Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’s Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to ViolenceDaniel Cojocaru (bio)My vitals have all been torn, and every faculty and feeling of my soul racked, and tormented into callous insensibility.... I could perceive no bottom, and then—not till then, did I repeat the tremendous prayer!—I was instantly at liberty; and what I now am, the Almighty knows! Amen.—James Hogg, The Private (...) Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner1My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist.... My pain is constant and sharp.... But even after admitting this... and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself.... This confession has meant nothing.—Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho2A hundred and sixty-seven years lie between the publication of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) (henceforth referred to as Confessions) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991). Yet one cannot but be amazed at the striking similarities of the main [End Page 185] protagonists’s insights at the end of these two novels. Although connections between works of Gothic Romanticism and postmodern narratives have been duly noted, the possible reasons for the analogies remain largely unexplored.3It will be argued here that both novels are representations of worlds immersed in what René Girard, in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (henceforth referred to as Deceit), has termed “deviated transcendency,” resulting in similar stages of narrative progression, which in turn can be analyzed in terms of Girard’s mimetic cycle of violence.At a first glance, the two pieces seem to be concerned with themes that to a secularized age must appear most disparate. But as Girard has noted: “The very idea of mediation encourages literary comparisons at a level which is no longer that of genre criticism or thematic criticism.... It may illuminate the works through each other.”4 Hogg’s narrative deals with the problem of antinomianism and the resulting spiritual pride. The anti-hero of the narrative, Robert Wringhim, relies on his belief that he is one of the elect and cannot fall from grace and consequently is convinced by his elusive friend Gil-Martin to become a murderer without having to fear punishment. American Psycho on the other hand is concerned with the consequences of the crass materialism of the U.S. yuppie generation, culminating at the end of the 1980s, as experienced by the serial-killing first-person narrator Patrick Bateman. However, one could argue that in its very first pages, American Psycho presents the reader with a secularized version of antinomianism. Michael Steig has fleetingly noted that the egocentric doctrines of antinomianism psychologically resemble the “I’m alright tenets” of yuppie pseudo-psychology.5 Timothy Price, one of Bateman’s colleagues on Wall Street, expresses this in the following words: “In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset.”6 Translated into antinomian terms, one could say that he is one of the elect, one of the privileged enjoying a capitalist heaven on earth; and by saying that society cannot afford to lose him, he, like Robert Wringhim, is showing that he believes he cannot fall from grace—or at least he tries to believe it.“I was well aware that the devilish powers of his mother would finally prevail; and either the dread of this, or the inward consciousness of having wronged him, certainly unnerved my arm.”7 If, in this reference to a quarrel with a fellow pupil at school, Robert gives away the fact that he doubts his own words, through the rhetorical device of correctio, so does Timothy Price by his choice of words. In fact, it is exactly because he is an asset that society can afford to lose him. As he is literally transformed into a commodity, society can discard him and in the novel indeed does so. It is one of the many ironies of the narrative that Price disappears soon after the above... (shrink)

Dans cet échange, les deux philosophes s'interrogent sur la nature même de la pensée : les représentations que l'homme se fait de la pensée, sur ce qui l'y amène, sur les bonnes et les mauvaises raisons de penser, sur la philosophie et misosophie. Ils dessinent ainsi une pensée qui s'épuise, mais qui aime aussi et redonne foi en l'existence.

We study randomizations of definable groups. Whenever the underlying theory is stable or NIP and the group is definably amenable, we show its randomization is definably connected.

This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social sciences and allude to historiographical and methodological questions through a range of examples. Topics include the emergence of (...) children's rooms in US consumer magazines, research on the unborn in nineteenth-century sciences of development, the framing of autism in nascent child psychiatry, German literary discourses about the child's initiation into writing, and the sociopolitics of racial identity in the photographic depiction of African American infant corpses in the early twentieth century. Throughout the course of the paper, childhood emerges as a topic particularly amenable to interdisciplinary perspectives that take the history of science as part of a broader history of knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 599-617 [Access article in PDF] Thinking Geometrically in Pierre-Daniel Huet's Demonstratio evangelica (1679) April G. Shelford Sometime after 1679, Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) indulged an author's vanity by comparing his Demonstratio evangelica with works whose authors are far better known today. He recorded his judgments on a scrap of paper. 1First, he contrasted the Demonstratio to Antoine Arnauld's Les nouveaux (...) élémens de géometrie (1664). While Arnauld had assumed that all the principles of geometry were true and all geometrical demonstrations certain, and had considered religious questions not amenable to methodical demonstration, Huet noted, "I made clear the contrary by proving religion through a methodical sequence of propositions similar to those one finds in geometry." For Arnauld religious belief fell into the class of things better proven through a series of mutually reinforcing propositions than through proofs modeled on geometry; Huet had actually accomplished the latter. Arnauld did not require geometric proofs in religious works; Huet wrote the Demonstratio "to satisfy those who do." Indeed, Arnauld forbade such proofs, "but I permitted them... and I proposed something to satisfy those who do [demand them]."Huet then considered Blaise Pascal's Pensées (1670). Pascal had also rejected demonstration in proving religious truths, Huet noted, opting instead for "moral proofs, which are directed more to the heart than to the mind. In other words he desired to work harder at moving and disposing the heart than at convincing and persuading the intellect." Apparently, "M. Pascal did not believe that one could prove the truth of the Christian religion by geometric proofs; much less that he had any hope of doing so." [End Page 599]Huet's jottings precisely situate the Demonstratio evangelica (1679)between the claims of Cartesian rationalism and Pascal's fideism and religion of the heart, inviting us to take another look at an imperfectly understood work. Scholarly treatment of the Demonstratio has generally been cursory or partial because it has been considered less for its own merits than for how it fits into larger research agendas. 2 Some scholars have offered important insights but either do not develop them or do not consider the Demonstratio in a sufficiently broad context. 3 A consensus on the Demonstratio's general thrust thus masks puzzling questions. Everyone acknowledges, for example, that Huet's apologetic responded to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670). Like other Christian apologists, he had to maintain "the Mosaic authorship" that was "the supposed guarantee of the truth of the text," 4 devoting "long chapters to the authenticity of the books of the Old Testament." 5 Yet Huet began the Demonstratio with an assault on geometrical knowledge and an epistemological discussion—an odd place to begin refuting the Tractatus. 6 Why? The question deserves a good answer, as Huet was a scholar of international reputation, and his contemporaries judged the Demonstratio an important work. 7More important for us, the evolution of the Demonstratio superbly reflects a vanished intellectual world and scholarly culture and in fact records change [End Page 600] in that world over four decades. Its genesis was the rash promise of a young man inspired by the possibilities of geometry and aspiring to recognition in the Republic of Letters, but before fulfilling that promise Huet developed a lively interest in such diverse fields as biblical criticism and natural philosophy, and he would apply the insights gained there in his apologetic. 8 A central question confronting Huet and his contemporaries was how to achieve certainty in matters religious, historical, and scientific. 9 The Demonstratio reveals Huet's conclusion that certainty in all three was profoundly interrelated. Finally, he composed the Demonstratio during the 1670s, having grasped with much alarm the consequences of the spread of Cartesianism. Thus, the Demonstratio is an intellectual biography not just of the author but of an era.Of course, Huet had to contend with Spinoza's challenge to Mosaic authorship, which fatally undermined the historical certainty of the Bible, but he also wrote... (shrink)

Que peut le bon sens comparé à ce que peut peut-être la connaissance scientifique ? Noam Chomsky a rappelé que le progrès des sciences a amené à se rendre compte que le bon sens, ou sens commun, pouvait se tromper de façon spectaculaire. La même chose n’est-elle pas susceptible de se passer en matière morale et politique ? Après tout, le sens commun un peu éduqué ne peut-il suffire pour nous procurer les lumières dont nous avons besoin pour l’action ? (...) Pierre Bourdieu était évidemment convaincu que la connaissance procurée par les sciences sociales est finalement la seule qui soit susceptible de nous permettre de comprendre réellement les mécanismes qui engendrent l’inégalité, l’injustice, l’oppression, etc. [Jacques Bouveresse se souvient] d’avoir pris la défense de Noam Chomsky, au moins une fois, devant Bourdieu, parce que Chomsky avait écrit que comprendre comment opèrent ces mécanismes d’assujettissement et d’oppression qui engendrent l’inégalité et l’injustice n’est pas très difficile ; il suffit d’un peu de bon sens, de psychologie – et de cynisme, ajoutait-il. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent work in the area.

Are there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superceded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they don't. There is no such state as quasi-existence; there are no stable doctrines of semi-realism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the (...) effect that when it comes to beliefs (and other mental items) one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist. (shrink)

_Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ , 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in _The Philosopher's Annual_ , Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23-68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., _Cognitive Science_ , Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp.210-274.

Claims pertaining to understanding are made in a variety of contexts and ways. As a result, few in the philosophical literature have made an attempt to precisely characterize the state that is y understanding x. This paper builds an account that does just that. The account is motivated by two main observations. First, understanding x is somehow related to being able to manipulate x. Second, understanding is a mental phenomenon, and so what manipulations are required to be an understander must (...) only be mental manipulations. Combining these two insights, the paper builds an account (URM) of understanding as a certain representational capacity—specifically, understanding x involves possessing a representation of x that could be manipulated in useful ways. By tying understanding to representation, the account correctly identifies that understanding is a fundamentally cognitive achievement. However, by also demanding that which representations count as understanding-conferring be determined by their practical effects, URM captures the insight that understanding is vitally connected to practice. URM is fully general, and can apply equally well to understanding states of affairs, understanding events, and even understanding people and works of art. The ultimate test of URM is its applicability in actual scientific and philosophical discourse. To that end the paper discusses the importance of understanding in the philosophy of science, psychology, and computer science. (shrink)

Clark has recently suggested that predictive processing advances a theory of neural function with the resources to put an ecumenical end to the “representation wars” of recent cognitive science. In this paper I defend and develop this suggestion. First, I broaden the representation wars to include three foundational challenges to representational cognitive science. Second, I articulate three features of predictive processing’s account of internal representation that distinguish it from more orthodox representationalist frameworks. Specifically, I argue that it posits a resemblance-based (...) representational architecture with organism-relative contents that functions in the service of pragmatic success, not veridical representation. Finally, I argue that internal representation so understood is either impervious to the three anti-representationalist challenges I outline or can actively embrace them. (shrink)

Damasio remarks, it "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly or implicitly." Indeed, serial information processing models generally run this risk (Kinsbourne, 1985). The commentaries provide a wealth of confirming instances of the seductive power of this idea. Our sternest critics Block, Farah, Libet, and Treisman) adopt fairly standard Cartesian positions; more interesting are those commentators who take themselves to be mainly in agreement with us, but who express reservations or offer support with arguments that betray a continuing (...) allegiance to one or another tenet of the view we sought to discredit. (shrink)

Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...) avoiding these objections and I argue that both confront formidable challenges. (shrink)

What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...) can accommodate much of the data that has motivated theories of understanding in philosophy of science, and can also be generally applicable in epistemology and daily life as well. (shrink)

It is almost universally agreed that the main business of commonsense psychology is that of providing generally reliable predictions and explanations of the actions of others. In line with this, it is also generally assumed that we are normally at theoretical remove from others such that we are always ascribing causally efficacious mental states to them for the purpose of prediction, explanation and control. Building on the work of those who regard our primary intersubjective interactions as a form of 'embodied (...) practice', I defend a secondpersonal approach in this paper. (shrink)

How do we acquire moral obligations to others? The most straightforward cases are those where we acquire obligations as the result of particular actions which we voluntarily perform. If I promise you that I will trim your hedge, I face a moral Obligation to uphold my promise, and in the absence of some morally significant countervailing reason, I should indeed cut your hedge. Moral obligations which arise as a result of wrongdoing, as a function of corrective justice, are typically thought (...) to be of a similar nature. (shrink)

How do we acquire moral obligations to others? The most straightforward cases are those where we acquire obligations as the result of particular actions which we voluntarily perform. If I promise you that I will trim your hedge, I face a moral Obligation to uphold my promise, and in the absence of some morally significant countervailing reason, I should indeed cut your hedge. Moral obligations which arise as a result of wrongdoing, as a function of corrective justice, are typically thought (...) to be of a similar nature. (shrink)

It is almost universally agreed that the main business of commonsense psychology is that of providing generally reliable predictions and explanations of the actions of others. In line with this, it is also generally assumed that we are normally at theoretical remove from others such that we are always ascribing causally efficacious mental states to them for the purpose of prediction, explanation and control. Building on the work of those who regard our primary intersubjective interactions as a form of ‘embodied (...) practice’, I defend a second‐personal approach in this paper. (shrink)

_Content and Consciousness_ is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett’s future ideas developed. It is (...) his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit anthropological arguments put forward by seven leading postwar theorists: self-transcendence, adaptation, responsibility, language, strong evaluations, reflexivity and reproduction of life. Genuinely interdisciplinary and boldly argued, (...) Daniel Chernilo has crafted a novel philosophical sociology that defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life. (shrink)

In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, (...) Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community. (shrink)

The experience of conscious will is the feeling that we are doing things. This feeling occurs for many things we do, conveying to us again and again the sense that we consciously cause our actions. But the feeling may not be a true reading of what is happening in our minds, brains, and bodies as our actions are produced. The feeling of conscious will can be fooled. This happens in clinical disorders such as alien hand syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, and (...) schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. And in people without disorders, phenomena such as hypnosis, automatic writing, Ouija board spelling, water dowsing, facilitated communication, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, and trance channeling also illustrate anomalies of will – cases when actions occur without will or will occurs without action. This book brings these cases together with research evidence from laboratories in psychology to explore a theory of apparent mental causation. According to this theory, when a thought appears in consciousness just prior to an action, is consistent with the action, and appears exclusive of salient alternative causes of the action, we experience conscious will and ascribe authorship to ourselves for the action. Experiences of conscious will thus arise from processes whereby the mind interprets itself – not from processes whereby mind creates action. Conscious will, in this view, is an indication that we think we have caused an action, not a revelation of the causal sequence by which the action was produced. Key Words: apparent mental causation; automatism; conscious will; determinism; free will; perceived control. (shrink)

Ce dictionnaire propose de réunir des portraits de brutes et de mégères dans le but de s'interroger sur les causes et les raisons de cette perception négative. Pourquoi certaines figures évoquent-elles la méchanceté? Que peut nous dire cette méchanceté dénoncée de nous-mêmes et de l'époque qui l'a engendrée? Il s'agira de retracer les portraits de ceux et celles ayant marqué l'Histoire et la fiction par leur cruauté, leur perfidie, leur machiavélisme, leur art de la dissimulation ou de la manipulation. S'attarder (...) sur la méchanceté et ses possibles, décliner les façons de la penser et de la vivre, de la subir ou de l'exercer, c'est s'intéresser à une facette peu valorisée de la sensibilité d'autant plus importante que chaque individu, de près ou de loin, est amené, un jour, à se montrer méchant. La méchanceté et ses manifestations, qu'elles soient conceptuelles ou biographiques, nous invitent donc à une introspection globale, à une immersion dans les affres de la noirceur des âmes dont la bouche n'est autre que celle de la méchanceté Le champ de cette entreprise est vaste et recouvre notamment : La Malice, le Machiavélisme, Orangina Rouge, Barbe Bleue, le cinéma d'Alfred Hitchcock, Marie-Antoinette, la Mauvaise conscience, Gilles de Rais, Harry Powell (La nuit du chasseur) Salomé-Hérodiade, Dracula, Tatie Danielle, Marie Tudor, la Perversité, la Mégère Grecque, Dark Vador, Mildred Ratched (Vol au-dessus d'un nid de coucou)... (shrink)

A large body of research in political science claims that the way in which democratic citizens think about politics is motivationally biased by partisanship. Numerous critics argue that the evidence for this claim is better explained by theories in which party allegiances influence political cognition without motivating citizens to embrace biased beliefs. This article has three aims. First, I clarify this criticism, explain why common responses to it are unsuccessful, and argue that to make progress on this debate we need (...) a more developed theory of the connections between group attachments and motivated reasoning. Second, I develop such a theory. Drawing on research on coalitional psychology and the social functions of beliefs, I argue that partisanship unconsciously biases cognition by generating motivations to advocate for party interests, which transform individuals into partisan press secretaries. Finally, I argue that this theory offers a superior explanation of a wide range of relevant findings than purely non-motivational theories of political cognition. (shrink)

This paper responds to Sven Bernecker’s argument that agent reliabilism cannot accommodate internalist intuitions about clarvoyance cases. In section 1 we clarify a version of agent reliabilism and Bernecker’s objections against it. In section 2 we say more about how the notion of cognitive integration helps to adjudicate clairvoyance cases and other proposed counterexamples to reliabilism. The central idea is that cognitive integration underwrites a kind of belief ownership, which in turn underwrites the sort of responsibility for belief required for (...) subjective justification. In section 3 we say more about what cognitive integration amounts to, drawing on some recent accounts of desire ownership from the literature on autonomy and moral responsibility. (shrink)

The experience of conscious will is the feeling that we are doing things. This feeling occurs for many things we do, conveying to us again and again the sense that we consciously cause our actions. But the feeling may not be a true reading of what is happening in our minds, brains, and bodies as our actions are produced. The feeling of conscious will can be fooled. This happens in clinical disorders such as alien hand syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, and (...) schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. And in people without disorders, phenomena such as hypnosis, automatic writing, Ouija board spelling, water dowsing, facilitated communication, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, and trance channeling also illustrate anomalies of will not from processes whereby mind creates action. Conscious will, in this view, is an indication that we think we have caused an action, not a revelation of the causal sequence by which the action was produced. (shrink)

The core claim of this paper is that mind minding of the sort required for the simplest and most pervasive forms of joint attentional activity is best understood and explained in non-representational, enactivist terms. In what follows I will attempt to convince the reader of its truth in three steps. The first step, section two, clarifies the target explanandum. The second step, section three, is wholly descriptive. It highlights the core features of a Radically Enactivist proposal about elementary mind minding, (...) revealing it to be at least a possible explanans. The final step is to consider the comparative virtues of the contending proposals; section four. The exercise is to decide which of the possible explanations is best. Various evidential appeals and theoretical considerations that might aid us in this choice are reviewed. The conclusion is that the scales would be tipped in favour of the Radical Enactivist option, decisively, if it should turn out that there is (1) no reason to believe that basic forms of mentality are representational (in a semantically contentful way) and (2) if no good theory is likely to explain how they could be so. It is concluded that all that we need for understanding basic forms of intentional (with a ‘t’) mentality and what it takes to attend to basic cases of mind minding. (shrink)

The exclusion argument is widely thought to put considerable pressure on dualism if not to refute it outright. We argue to the contrary that, whether or not their position is ultimately true, dualists have a plausible response. The response focuses on the notion of ‘distinctness’ as it occurs in the argument: if 'distinctness' is understood one way, the exclusion principle on which the argument is founded can be denied by the dualist; if it is understood another way, the argument is (...) not persuasive. (shrink)

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

_Content and Consciousness_ is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett’s future ideas developed. It is (...) his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Are human beings linked by a common nature, one that makes them see the world in the same moral way? Or are they fragmented by different cultural practices and values? These fundamental questions of our existence were debated in the Enlightenment by Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. Daniel Carey provides an important new historical perspective on their discussion. At the same time, he explores the relationship between these founding arguments and contemporary disputes over cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Our own conflicting (...) positions today reflect long-standing differences that emerged during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool for several healthcare tasks. AI tools are suited to optimize predictive models in medicine. Ethical debates about AI’s extension of the predictive power of medical models suggest a need to adapt core principles of medical ethics. This article demonstrates that a popular interpretation of the principle of justice in healthcare needs amendment given the effect of AI on decision-making. The procedural approach to justice, exemplified with Norman Daniels and James Sabin’saccountability for reasonablenessconception, needs (...) amendment because, as research into algorithmic fairness shows, it is insufficiently sensitive to differential effects of seemingly just principles on different groups of people. The same line of research generates methods to quantify differential effects and make them amenable for correction. Thus, what is needed to improve the principle of justice is a combination of procedures for selecting just criteria and principles and the use of algorithmic tools to measure the real impact these criteria and principles have. In this article, the author shows that algorithmic tools do not merely raise issues of justice but can also be used in their mitigation by informing us about the real effects certain distributional principles and criteria would create. (shrink)