Many philosophers and psychologists argue that normal adult human beings possess a primitive or 'folk' psychological theory. Recently, however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human bings are able to predict and explain each others' actions by using the resources of their own minds to simuate the psychological etiology of the actions of others. The thirteen essays in this volume present the foundations of theory of mind debate, and are accompanied by (...) an extensive introduction. (shrink)

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second factor in the (...) aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Book description: The capacity to represent and think about time is one of the most fundamental and least understood aspects of human cognition and consciousness. This book throws new light on central issues in the study of the mind by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches dealing with the connection between temporal representation and memory. Fifteen specially written essays by leading psychologists and philosophers investigate the way in which time is represented in memory, and the role memory (...) plays in our ability to reason about time. They offer insights into current theories of memory processes and of the mechanisms and cognitive abilities underlying temporal judgements, and draw out fundamental issues concerning the phenomenology and epistemology of memory and our understanding of time. The chapters are arranged into four sections, each focused on one area of current research: Keeping Track of Time, and Temporal Representation; Memory, Awareness and the Past; Memory and Experience; Knowledge and the Past: The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Time. A general introduction gives an overview of the topics discussed and makes explicit central themes which unify the different philosophical and psychological approaches. (shrink)

In this book, psychologists and philosophers describe and discuss a range of case studies of delusional beliefs, drawing out general lessons both for the cognitive architecture of the mind and for the notion of rationality, and exploring connections between the delusional beliefs that occur in schizophrenia and the flawed understanding of beliefs that is characteristic of autism.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a _prima facie_ tension between our commonsense conception of ourselves as thinkers and the connectionist programme for modelling cognitive processes. The language of thought hypothesis plays a pivotal role. The connectionist paradigm is opposed to the language of thought; and there is an argument for the language of thought that draws on features of the commonsense scheme of thoughts, concepts, and inference. Most of the paper (Sections 3-7) is taken up with the (...) argument for the language of thought hypothesis. The argument for an opposition between connectionism and the language of thought comes towards the end (Section 8), along with some discussion of the potential eliminativist consequences (Sections 9 and. (shrink)

This article surveys western business ethics' recent history to show how this ethic has neglected recently its religious traditions and become construed more narrowly as an applied philosophy and social science. It argues that this narrowness has confused business ethics' role in business education and helped to weaken the distinctiveness of certain institutions of higher education. It then suggests ways that western business ethics might become more integrated, interesting, and autonomous as an academic discipline by incorporating its key religious traditions.

Hegel's very first acknowledged publication was, among other things, an attack on Fichte. In 1801, Hegel was still laboring in almost complete obscurity, while Fichte was an international sensation, though already somewhat past the peak of his meteoric career. In the 1801 Differenzschrift, Hegel cut his teeth by criticizing Fichte's already widelycriticised Wissenschaftslehre, and by demonstrating that Schelling's philosophical system was not simply to be equated with it. Fichte himself never bothered to respond to Hegel's criticisms; indeed he never publicly (...) acknowledged their existence. This was not because he was unconcerned with criticisms of his views; quite the contrary. But at the time he had bigger fish to fry. He responded to Jacobi's criticisms, and to Schelling's; he replied in great detail to critical questions raised by Reinhold, and with vituperative intensity to objections raised by skeptics and purportedly loyal Kantians. But Hegel's Differenzschrift was left without a Fichtean rebuttal. This is a pity, both because of the missed opportunity to illuminate by controversy central issues at stake in the post-Kantian period, but also because it made it easier for Hegel simply to reiterate his youthful criticism as if it were the last word. And reiterate it he did: in one form or another Hegel's early criticisms of Fichte reappear at every subsequent stage of his career: in the Phenomenology, in the Science of Logic, in the Encyclopaedia, as the final chapter in Hegel's History of Philosophy, and in countless other minor works and documents from the Nachlass and correspondence. (shrink)

: Perhaps the central problem which preoccupies Spinoza as a moral philosopher is the conflict between reason and passion. He belongs to a long tradition that sees the key to happiness and virtue as mastery and control by reason over the passions. This mastery, however, is hard won, as the passions often overwhelm its power and subvert its rule. When reason succumbs to passion, we act against our better judgment. Such action is often termed 'akratic'. Many commentators have complained that (...) the psychological principles that Spinoza appeals to in his account of akrasia are mere ad hoc modifications to his philosophical psychology. I show, on the contrary, that these principles follow from some of the most important and interesting aspects of Spinoza's philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Based on Moscovici’s classical study on the cultivation of psychoanalytic ideas in France in the 1950’s and our own research on modern biotechnology, we propose a paradigm for researching social representations. Following a consideration of the nature of representations and of the ‘iconoclastic suspicion’ that haunts them, we propose a model of the emergence of meaning relating three elements: subjects, objects, and projects. The basic unit of analysis is the elongated triangle of mediation : subject 1, object, project, and subject (...) 2, captured in the image of a ‘Toblerone’. Such social units cultivate, that is produce, circulate and receive representation which may be embodied in four modes–habitual behaviour, individual cognition, informal communication and formal communication–and in three mediums–words, visual images or non-linguistic sounds. We propose an operational definition of a ‘social representation’ as the comparison of four characteristics of communication systems: the content structures , the typified processes , and their functions , within the context of segmented social milieus. Seven implications for research on social representations are outlined: content and process; segmentation by social milieus rather than taxonomies; cultivation studies within social milieus; multi-method analysis; time structures and longitudinal data; the crossover of cultural projects and trajectories; the disinterested research attitude. This ideal type paradigm leads to an operational clarification to identify new research questions, and to guide the design and evaluation of studies on social representations. (shrink)

I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub-personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub-personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level, this is the product (...) of an unacceptably • mechanistic view of persons. According to this objection, if we were to focus on persons as conscious rational thinkers and agents then the support for putative downward inferences would be undermined. I consider and reject developments of this objection in response to two arguments for downward inferences. (shrink)

Starting from Dennett's distinction between personal and sub-personal levels of description, I consider the relationships amongst three levels: the personal level, the level of information-processing mechanisms, and the level of neurobiology. I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal level and the sub-personal level of information-processing mechanisms as interaction without reduction . Even given a nonreductionist conception of persons, philosophical theorizing sometimes supports downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level. An example of a downward inference is (...) provided and an objection is considered. (shrink)

Anosognosia is literally ‘unawareness of or failure to acknowledge one’s hemi- plegia or other disability’ (OED). Etymology would suggest the meaning ‘lack of knowledge of disease’ so that anosognosia would include any denial of impairment, such as denial of blindness (Anton’s syndrome). But Babinski, who introduced the term in 1914, applied it only to patients with hemiplegia who fail to acknowledge their paralysis. Most commonly, this is failure to acknowledge paralysis of the left side of the body following damage to (...) the right hemisphere of the brain. In this paper, we shall mainly be concerned with anosognosia for hemiplegia. But we shall also use the term ‘anosognosia’ in an inclusive way to encompass lack of knowledge or acknowledgement of any impairment. Indeed, in the construction ‘anosognosia for X’, X might even be anosognosia for some Y. (shrink)

Reasoning and change over inconsistent knowledge bases is of utmost relevance in areas like medicine and law. Argumentation may bring the possibility to cope with both problems. Firstly, by constructing an argumentation framework from the inconsistent KB, we can decide whether to accept or reject a certain claim through the interplay among arguments and counterarguments. Secondly, by handling dynamics of arguments of the AF, we might deal with the dynamics of knowledge of the underlying inconsistent KB. Dynamics of arguments has (...) recently attracted attention and although some approaches have been proposed, a full axiomatization within the theory of belief revision was still missing. A revision arises when we want the argumentation semantics to accept an argument. Argument Theory Change encloses the revision operators that modify the AF by analyzing dialectical trees—arguments as nodes and attacks as edges—as the adopted argumentation semantics. In this article, we present a simple approach to ATC based on propositional KBs. This allows to manage change of inconsistent KBs by relying upon classical belief revision, although contrary to it, consistency restoration of the KB is avoided. Subsequently, a set of rationality postulates adapted to argumentation is given, and finally, the proposed model of change is related to the postulates through the corresponding representation theorem. Though we focus on propositional logic, the results can be easily extended to more expressive formalisms such as first-order logic and description logics, to handle evolution of ontologies. (shrink)

Context Opioid treatment agreements (OTAs) are documents that clinicians present to patients when prescribing opioids that describe the risks of opioids and specify requirements that patients must meet to receive their medication. Notwithstanding a lack of evidence that OTAs effectively mitigate opioids’ risks, professional organizations recommend that they be implemented, and jurisdictions increasingly require them. We sought to identify the jurisdictions that require OTAs, how OTAs might affect the outcomes of lawsuits that arise when things go wrong, and instances in (...) which the law permits flexibility for clinicians and health care institutions to adopt best practices. -/- Methods We surveyed the laws and regulations of all 50 states and the District of Columbia to identify which jurisdictions require the use of OTAs, the circumstances in which OTA use is mandatory, and the terms OTAs must include (if any). We also surveyed criminal and civil judicial decisions in which OTAs were discussed as evidence on which a court relied to make its decision to determine how OTA use influences litigation outcomes. -/- Findings Results show that a slight majority (27) of jurisdictions now require OTAs. With one exception, the jurisdictions’ requirements for OTA use are triggered at least in part by long-term prescribing. There is otherwise substantial variation and flexibility within OTA requirements. Results also show that even in jurisdictions where OTA use is not required by statute or regulation, OTA use can inform courts’ reasoning in lawsuits involving patients or clinicians. Sometimes, but not always, OTA use legally protects clinicians from liability. -/- Conclusions -/- Our results show that OTA use is entwined with legal obligations in various ways. Clinicians and health care institutions should identify ways for OTAs to enhance clinician–patient relationships and patient care within the bounds of relevant legal requirements and risks. (shrink)

The debate over whether germ-line genetic engineering is justified on the basis of the consent or presumed consent of future generations is mired in philosophical confusion. Because of this, the principle of informed consent fails to provide a reason to restrict germ-line genetic engineering. Most recent bioethicists ground the consent requirement on individual autonomy. While conceptually coherent, the notion of individual autonomy also fails to provide a reason for prohibiting germ-line genetic engineering. Moreover, it offers little in the way of (...) useful guidance for regulating genetic engineering. I argue, however, that respect for autonomy in the sense of moral agency – the ability to reflect on moral considerations and conform one’s behavior to those reflections – provides a principle that can be used for a nuanced evaluation of proposals for genetic engineering. (shrink)

The idea that the changing entropy of a system is relevant to explaining why we know more about the system's past than about its future has been criticized on several fronts. This paper assesses the criticisms and clarifies the epistemology of the inference problem. It deploys a Markov process model to investigate the relationship between entropy and temporally asymmetric inference.