This thesis aims to make a contribution to a long-standing philosophical puzzle about how normativity fits within a naturalistic ontological view of the world. One specific arena in which this debate plays out, and which this thesis is devoted to, are evolutionary accounts of the emergence of norm-governed (or rule-following) agency. Recent proposals about the evolutionary origins of normativity have converged around the idea that norm-governed action and cognition emerged as an adaptive solution to problems of social cooperation in early (...) human communities. I raise doubts about this view and argue that its general explanatory approach is misguided. -/- I first discuss how action in this view has an underlying teleological structure that answers “Why?” explanatory questions, particularly questions of function (what it is for). I contend that any action explained in terms of an overall teleological structure/function cannot account for its normative features, if any. I contrast this with a participatory structure which ties normative agency to a shared practice that highlight elements like shared commitment (instead of shared goals), interpersonal (versus predictive or evidential) expectations, and co-regulation (not cooperation) as the basic relation between agents that shapes thought and action. I unpack norm-governed/rule-following agency as involving participatory commitment to a shared activity/practice that is mutually co-regulated amongst co-recognising participants through the giving and taking of interpersonally-mediated (i.e., communicable) reasons, intentional expressions, and expectations. In slogan form: normative guidance involves the co-regulated interactive dynamics amongst committed, co-recognising participants. -/- Based on this account, I propose an alternative origin story which I label the Social Play Hypothesis (SPH) where I claim that the expression of social play (in human and non-human animals) within a developmental niche is the key evolutionary moment in the advent of normative agency. A central part of the SPH is a non-adaptationist, by-product-based evolutionary explanation of play that appeals to structural and developmental explanatory resources in accounting for its expression and fitness benefits. I argue that contexts of relaxed selection set the conditions for the animal to be in a state of “negative natural freedom” which results in the expression of spontaneously-attuned activities like play. With social play however, the structure and regulation of action shifts from individual evaluative states and biases to interpersonally-mediated constraints where co-regulated “rules of engagement” and especially the use of play-signals, which communicate commitment and expectations of “appropriate” moves, become behaviourally relevant. This is where I suggest behaviour starts to be cultivated by a participatory structure and instantiates a unique condition of “positive freedom.” -/- I end by giving an account of the unique playful ontogenetic environment that is distinctive in the human socio-cognitive niche where a prolonged period of immaturity becomes salient in the overall development of the human normative agent. As a case study, I analyse the co-regulated structure of peekaboo play. I argue that peekaboo represents a game of “recognitional tag” in which a capacity for robust mutual recognition is cultivated and arguably provides a base-level scaffold for developing a thoroughgoing normative agent embedded in a highly co-regulated socio-cognitive developmental niche. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I present a model of cognition which intends to explain high-order cognitive abilities, usually defined as conscious and controlled, taking into account the picture emerging from the cognitive sciences, according to which most—or all—cognitive processes are nonconscious and automatic. The two first chapters of the dissertation constitute the negative part of the argument, motivating an alternative view. The three last chapters gradually build the positive view, which shall, not only explain high-order cognition general mannerisms (the “Easy” problems (...) of cognition) but, ultimately, solve “The Hard Problem of Cognition”, bridging the persistent gap between the general automaticity of cognitive processes and the personal level control some cognitive phenomena seem to entail. The negative part starts with an analysis of Dual-Process Theories (DPTs). These conceptualize the cognitive mind dividing it in two. On the one hand, we have Type 1 processing, in which autonomous and nonconscious processes (might) result in conscious perceptual or intuitive outputs. On the other hand, we have Type 2 processes, which use Working Memory, are effortful, serial, and are at least more conscious and somehow controlled. This framework has faced strong criticism, but it remains one of the most prominent theories in psychology. In the last few years, many authors (e.g. Evans & Stanovich, 2013; Carruthers, 2015), have abandoned the “received version”, in which a long list of features distinguished both “systems”, in favour of a different kind of approach: most features constitute correlations, and only a few work as defining features. In Evans & Stanovich’s case, for instance, the defining features are 1) the autonomy of Type 1 processes and 2) the use of Working Memory by type 2 processes. In order to analyse this new variation of the dual typology, I start by distinguishing two categories of Dual-Process Theories (DPTs), disambiguating the meaning of “Type 2 processes”: to instrumental DPTs, Type 2 processes are personal level ones. To substantial DPTs, type 2 processes are subpersonal level ones (according do Dennett’s distinction). It happens that most dual-process theorists (including the ones I focus on, that is, Evans & Stanovich and Carruthers) endorse a substantial version of the duality (in contrast with, e.g., Frankish). This means that, when they claim Type 2 processes exist, they mean there is some kind of subpersonal mechanism present in Type 2 processing that 1) is absent in Type 1 processing; 2) does not align with the definition of Type 1 process. I show that the arguments used to defend a substantial DPT only support an instrumental version and that, as so, there are no reasons to hold the belief that qualitatively different processes are involved in the personal level activity of thinking consciously. First, although the use of Working Memory by Type 2 processes and their controlled nature—as opposed to autonomous—might support the existence of a different level of processing, it does not support the existence of a different type of subpersonal process, as the mechanisms involved in the personal level of thinking consciously might be the same that are active in intuition and perception. Second, I also show that the activities usually ascribed to Working Memory’s executive component (attention, manipulation of information, inhibition, etc.) are also better understood as Type 1 processes—as they are present in Type 1 processing and align with the definition of Type 1 process). Then, we are left with a challenge: explaining Cognition2 workings, mannerisms and evolution without resorting to any additional cognitive process—and no “centre” to perform it (this includes the absence of subpersonal Type 2 processes both in terms of Working Memory and Control and in terms of the processes usually taken as deployed by the executive part of Working Memory in response to its contents). I thus present my positive proposal as an alternative to the present conceptualization, having this question has the starting point: How can we make sense of a virtual system approach in order to make sense of higher cognition without relying on subpersonal type 2 processes? If we invert the question using the classical terminology, how can we make sense of Type 2 reflective processing relying only on Type 1 processes? To build an alternative, I start by presenting a principle for access conscious contents that, being implicitly widely accepted for Type 1 processing, is somehow questioned for higher cognition. As such, this principle makes no assumptions about consciousness (conscious processes that exist in Type 2 processing), the existence of further processes (Type 2) or contentious psychological constructs (Working Memory and its executive component). The principle can be divided in two sides of the same coin: on the one side, every cognitive process is nonconscious and autonomous (Type 1); on the other side, every access conscious state is, by definition and nature, an output of nonconscious-autonomous processes. In order to explain higher order cognition starting from this assumptions—that are widely accepted for Type 1 processing—we just need two rules: 1) systems that read globally available states are the same that write them; 2) Type 2 processing is a loop produced by the interaction between nonconscious, autonomous processes and conscious states (their outputs, which hereby work as inputs as well). Type 2 processing therefore happens when the outputs of nonconscious-autonomous processes become inputs to the same nonconscious-autonomous processes—in accordance with The Global Workspace Theory, according to which these states are conscious in virtue of being globally accessible). This results in a feedback loop in which chains of related conscious events arise as “simulations” of action and perception. After presenting the model, juxtaposing it with several existing theories that align with its parts, I will present some evidence for its simulatory nature and show how it can explain and integrate 1) the feature correlation of DPT’s received version; 2) the data used to object to DPTs (thus explaining and integrating both sides of the discussion) and 3) The fact that the so-called System 2 appears to be an “Opaque Story-Teller”—“opaque” because there is nearly no epistemic access to thought processes and reasons, “storyteller” because Type 2 processing seems to have a confabulatory and argumentative nature (see Nisbett and Wilson, 1977; Mercier and Sperber, 2019). Lastly, I confront the mentioned gap—the “hard problem”. On the one side, we know that cognition is fundamentally nonconscious and automatic (e.g., Strawson, 2003; Lieberman, 2007; Wegner, 2002; Sklar et al., 2021; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Bargh & Chartland, 1999). On the other, “It is undeniable that deliberation contains many elements that are straightforwardly intentionally controlled" (Vierkant, 2022: 68. See also Wu, 2013; Jennings, 2022; Brent, 2023) without which—and an explanation of which—the notion of agency is undermined (e.g., Wu, 2013; Schroeter, 2004). This creates a dissonance between the observation that most of our cognitive processing is automatic and the requirement that we explain how intentional, controlled cognitive processing is possible—and how it might emerge from its (automatic) foundations. In my account, control is relative to a level. Without relying on any controlling entity—at the personal or at the subpersonal level, I start with the claim that, while automatic processes happen at the subpersonal level, they deliver outputs at the personal level—as conscious states or events, which behave as “voices”. If we generalize this principle, which is taken for granted in automatic processing (perception, intuition), we have that deliberation consists of a loop where those outputs work as inputs to the same systems. At the personal level, this loop creates a “virtual” hub in which a personal level “process” emerges. This process, although its contents are automatically generated, is relatively controlled—the sequence of states, from the personal level perspective, can be stopped or interrupted—and controlling—each state, being a state of the person, not the personal level system, controls the generation of the next state by working as an input. Metaphorically, if we take the suprapersonal (social) level into account, and imagine a conversation between people, each voice is a suprapersonal level state—that only exists as such—, and, from the perspective such level (e.g., a room), the emerging conversation is controlled while each person is an autonomous black box which receives inputs and delivers outputs. I also distinguish intentional control as an instance of relative personal level control in which the main controlling factor connecting thoughts (e.g., semantics, affects), being isolated by attention and language, increases the sense of agency and the predictability of the next thought's content. Motivating the proposal by refuting the attribution of control to controllers—personal or subpersonal—and uncoupling the terms “personal” and “personal level”, I explain how the model may contribute to unifying the concepts of automaticity and control in cognition. Being able to explain the available data, this model explains controlled conscious cognition and how it might emerge from its automatic, subpersonal foundations, without relying on questionable controlling centres, selves or psychological constructs. If we already knew there were something like controlled processes, even if the mind seems to be, on the one side, entirely automatic, and, on the other, devoted to a central controller, now we have a better grasp of what that might mean and how it might be possible. Since the mind is the subject and object of study, there is no way—nor is that my goal—of completely dispelling its secrets. But I hope to shed some light on one of its central mysteries. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that far from representing a critique or representation, Deleuze's philosophy is in fact a theory ofits genesis.

This thesis is concerned with the fusion of two deeply human innovations – one very ancient (moral thought), the other very modern (artificial intelligence – or AI). AI systems are rapidly penetrating and influencing our personal, social, political and intellectual lives. As with all major technological developments through history, this one has the potential to both damage and enhance human wellbeing – not least in the moral realm. My aim here is to chart one pathway towards enhancement. I show that (...) an AI bot, grounded in virtue ethics, can provide constructive guidance to human agents who find themselves facing challenging ethical problems in specified moral domains. I argue that this guidance can not only improve the ethical outcomes of particular situations but also help users to improve their skills in moral reasoning. I have named this bot Phronimo. There are seven stages in my argument: I begin in Chapter 1 with an account of, and preliminary justification for, Christine Swanton’s theory of virtue ethics (called Pluralistic Virtue Ethics – PVE) as the grounding for an AI-based ethical assistant. I then give an overview of the theory with an emphasis on its account of practical moral reasoning. PVE offers a comprehensive account of virtue-guided moral reasoning – in contrast to the kinds of principle-driven procedural guidance that alternative deontological and consequentialist theories are compelled to offer. In addition, as against monistic forms of virtue ethics, Swanton’s endorsement of pluralism accommodates a more comprehensive account of the demands, constraints and considerations which inevitably bear upon the agent who is grappling with an ethical problem. In Chapter 2 I begin with additional arguments in support of virtue ethics, and PVE specifically, as a grounding for Phronimo. I then describe, in principle, how Phronimo’s capabilities can be assembled around a basic reasoning structure which closely aligns with the systematic elements of Swanton’s theory. I explain why and how this rudimentary reasoning system must be enhanced by the addition of tailored AI software systems to provide Phronimo with appropriate analytical capabilities and user-friendly dialogical capabilities. I also introduce a central aspect of Phronimo’s mode of operation – a Socratic style of dialogue with which it engages its users. Chapter 3 provides a more comprehensive account of Phronimo’s virtue-orientated reasoning capabilities that were introduced in the previous chapter. To do this I imagine a Phronimo developed to assist teachers in the specific moral domain of the school classroom. I show how this Phronimo can be given comprehensive virtue-orientated reasoning expertise which is tailored to this domain. I also introduce the reader to an actual secondary school example which I utilise through the remainder of my thesis to demonstrate Phronimo’s capabilities. In Chapter 4 the reader is introduced to the AI world. Phronimo’s basic classroom-focussed reasoning capabilities must be refined and developed by the inclusion of a number of AI-based systems. I show how this can be done – in a way which I hope can be grasped by readers with no expertise in AI systems. The outcome of this process is my account of an integrated set of AI-based tools with the capability to deliver both the analytical and communications capabilities needed by Phronimo. I call it VirtBERT. With a fully developed, classroom oriented, Phronimo in hand I dedicate Chapter 5 to demonstrating and defending its capabilities. This involves envisioning the inexperienced teacher (introduced in Chapter 2) seeking guidance from Phronimo when faced with the theft of her phone by one of her students. This is a mundane, but typically complex, example. It provides me with the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of Phronimo’s Socratic reasoning method, as well as the effectiveness of its grounding in a synthesis of Swanton’s PVE and VirtBERT. This completes my account of Phronimo. The remaining chapters are dedicated to addressing a range of potential objections likely to be raised against a Phronimo. The most damaging objections to the notion of an agent relying on the moral testimony of others are referred to as ‘the problems of moral deference’. They include concerns such as the erosion of moral autonomy, of moral understanding, and of virtue – in the deferring agent. These objections become more worrying when the moral guide is a machine. Chapter 6 is therefore dedicated to defending Phronimo against these objections. In the literature there is no consistent taxonomic framework by which the problems of deference are ordered, so I begin by proposing a methodology which allows for the consideration of machine-based moral advisors. I then offer a detailed defence against each in turn. I conclude that Phronimo not only avoids most of the objections but has the potential to enhance the moral reasoning capabilities of its users. In the final chapter Phronimo meets its competitors. Although this is a new field, a number of machine-based moral advisors have been implemented – or have been described in the literature. I undertake a critical comparative analysis of the best of these. I conclude that Phronimo shows great promise as a potential leader in the field. I complete the chapter by reverting to the question of which theory is best equipped to provide the moral grounding for Phronimo. I imagine a Phronimo grounded in both a consequentialist and deontological theories – as well as an atheoretical AI-based alternative. I conclude that a PVE-grounded Phronimo is best positioned to overcome the main objections to the idea of human deference – particularly if that moral guidance is provided by a machine. This dissertation is first and foremost a doctoral thesis in philosophy. However, its content and structure are such that it can also be read as a philosophically minded feasibility study by anyone interested in creating a machine-based ethical assistant. (shrink)

The concern this paper will address is whether the opacity of black-box algorithms is equivalent to the opacity of human decisions in predicting recidivism, and if greater accuracy should be privileged over transparency concerns. I will argue that the use of black-box algorithms to predict recidivism does increase opacity of decision-making in the justice system, and that it is justified to call for methods that are more transparent. The argument of equivalent opacity provides a reductionist view of human decision-making which (...) creates a false equivalence with algorithms. Furthermore, transparency is necessary to help identify, and correct errors made in individual risk assessments and to allow for improvement in how the justice system manages recidivism generally. (shrink)

In this thesis I aim to advance philosophical understanding of human agency, and resolve some knotty philosophical puzzles, by engaging in a novel fine-grained analysis of conative and cognitive phenomenology. Taking the phenomenology of the decision-making process seriously is sensible for three reasons: First, instances of phenomenology are data to be explained. Any theory which ignores their existence is incomplete. Second, experience-based seemings pay a central part in belief formation. Any unresolved conflict between experience and theory will either lead to (...) rejection of the theory or to a dialectic impasse. Third, phenomenologically informed theories, are better placed to answer some of the unresolved philosophical questions including does agential phenomenology support beliefs in libertarianism (no), is intentional synchronic self-control possible (yes), and can making a decision ever be an action (yes)? The central claim that I defend throughout the thesis is the motivational strength idea, that when an agent makes a choice, she always chooses to do what she is most motivated to do. Whilst others have rejected or added complexity to the idea, I will remain true to its simplicity. Doing so will force me to be flexible elsewhere, and question other assumptions, which will pay dividends. From this foundation, and focusing almost entirely on motives and levels of confidence in the context of a sophisticated metacognitive agent, I am able to present an experience compatible, and evolutionarily plausible theory of agency. Although the broad picture is uncontroversial, some of the findings may be surprising: An intention is just an uninhibited motive. The phenomenological intensity of a motive is a representation of its functional strength if and only if it is inhibited. The feeling of effort is, for all subspecies of effort, a non-conceptual representation of the conative costs of a pursued course of action. It represents-as-costly a trying. An instrumentally rational (undivided) agent with metacognitive abilities can intentionally shift her own current motivational balance. Making a difficult decision is an action. It feels effortful because it involves resisting the motivation to deliberate further. Whilst functional analysis celebrates the victory of the strongest motive (indicating only that it was stronger than its competition), phenomenological analysis reveals the strength of its weaker, inhibited cousin. This inversion encourages a new perspective on the phenomenology of agency. Rather than of desires being realised and intentions being implemented, it is the experience of uncertainty, inhibited motives and unfulfilled plans. The model that emerges is hierarchical but extremely simple, explaining flexible agency through the interaction of inhibitable motives in accordance with the motivational strength idea. There is no reliance on distinct intending attitudes, motivational partitions, reservoirs of willpower, Cartesian homunculi, or error theory. There is just an agent, deliberating about and then doing (or at least trying to do) what she most wants to do. (shrink)

This thesis explores how the objectification of women—treating women as though they are objects rather than subjects—goes beyond men treating women as sexual objects to be used. This thesis conceptualises three novel forms of objectification in addition to sexual objectification. The first new type of objectification described herein is procreative or childbearing objectification, in which women are treated as tools for conceiving and birthing children by men. The second new domain of objectification is child-rearing objectification, wherein women are used by (...) men to raise and care for their children. Finally, the third form of objectification defined in this thesis is spousal objectification, which occurs when men treat women as a means for looking after their domestic lives. This thesis presents five studies (N = 3083) (including four Exploratory Factor Analysis studies), which were conducted in the form of questionnaires that explore whether these new types of objectification can be separated from sexual objectification and considered domains in their own right. With each study, the Objectification of Women Questionnaire was modified according to the findings from the previous studies. By the fourth EFA study, the results from the data analysis become more interpretable, suggesting that it is possible to differentiate domains of objectification (instrumentality), though they remain highly correlated, indicating that the questionnaire would very likely function best as a higher-order model. (shrink)

Responsibilist epistemic virtues, such as intellectual humility, thoroughness, and inquisitiveness, motivate and inform behaviour to acquire, assess, and share epistemic goods. While existing accounts primarily emphasise the virtues' role in knowledge acquisition, I argue for casting a wider net by redefining responsibilist virtues in their connection to wisdom. I draw upon Sosa's AAA structure of competence – which he employs to support the direct and constitutive relation between reliabilist virtues (e.g., memory and perception) and knowledge – proposing that the same (...) structure can be applied to responsibilist virtues, establishing their direct and constitutive relation to wisdom. The resulting framework provides us with an account of how epistemic agents can responsibly engage with our current sociotechnical environment. The first half of the thesis establishes this framework, arguing for its implementation. The value of this framework is, in part, its ability to uphold the claim that responsibilist virtues are admirable traits of character that aid one’s epistemically responsible engagement with the environment. The AAA structure of competence entails that a performance is Adroit, i.e., resulting from a reliable competence, Accurate, whereby the performance hits the intended target or the functional goal given the competence, and Apt, whereby it is Accurate as it is Adroit. Applying this to responsibilist virtue, an act is adroit when it results from an acquired, admirable, epistemically motivated, and stable disposition to perform behaviour characteristic of the relevant intellectual virtue. This act is accurate when it is successfully virtuous, i.e., admirable. Within this framework, an act from an admirable, virtuous disposition (i.e., an adroit act) can fail to be virtuous by undermining another virtue, or successfully virtuous when it does not. An apt act of intellectual virtue is thereby an act performed from an intellectual virtue (e.g., attentiveness or intellectual humility), that is admirable because it is adroit (e.g., as it was performed from a virtuous disposition to be attentive or intellectually humble, without the act undermining another virtue). The second half of the thesis applies this framework to various phenomena within the digital epistemic environment. It explores how increasingly prevalent epistemic emotions, such as an epistemic fear of missing out (epistemic FOMO) and morbid curiosity, can shape epistemic behaviour to be unwise, despite the knowledge one may acquire through acts motivated by these emotions. For example, ‘doombehaviour’ – entailing the frequent or long-lasting consumption of distressing news – is examined in light of its impact on mental health and other prudential concerns. Moreover, our digital environment supplies us with novel epistemic responsibilities in relation to consuming attention-grabbing information, as well as inadvertently distributing misinformation. By applying the framework of apt intellectually virtuous action on these and similar phenomena, we can give an account of wise engagement with our sociotechnical environment. (shrink)

In this thesis I develop an account of how processes of social understanding are implicated in experiences of mental disorder, critiquing the lack of examination of this phenomena along the way. First, I demonstrate how disorder concepts, as developed and deployed by psychiatric institutions, have the effect of shaping the cognition of individuals with psychopathology through setting expectations. Such expectation-setting can be harmful in some cases, I argue, and can perpetuate epistemic injustices. Having developed this view, I criticise enactive accounts (...) of mental disorder for failing to consider how such terms like ‘dysfunction’ are open to interpretation and can come embedded with normative expectations. Enactive accounts consequently run the risk of perpetuating injustices in their account of the sociality of mental disorder. Similar concerns arise when we consider the attachment of enactivism to the medical model, I argue. But by adapting enactivism to consider other experiences of disorder, such as those described as ‘madness’, enactive psychiatry may genuinely provide ethical groundwork for a better conception of disordered experience. Then, I consider a further concern with a distinctly medicalised conception of mental disorder from the perspective of self-illness ambiguity, arguing that self-illness ambiguities appear to form a special class of ambiguities due to their proximity to disorder concepts which mark them as appropriate targets for therapeutic treatment. However, I argue further that we should be critical of the idea that self-illness ambiguities necessitate disambiguation, as, in cases where self and illness are demarcated, individuals may still experience distress because simply having a mental disorder can be socially alienating. The medicalised focus in self-illness ambiguity, and the explicit need from the medical perspective to disambiguate it, might then exacerbate the distress someone experiences in mental disorder. Moreover, drawing on Mad Studies, I suggest that one might not need a coherent self-narrative to live well. Because of this, one may not need to adopt a medicalised view of the self in the case of selfillness ambiguity. In order to support this analysis, I provide a phenomenological account of language and argue that the very thoughts implicated in mental disorder shape the individual’s perception of the world due to the way that language foregrounds particular aspects of our world. This demands a critical examination of the language adopted and used by both clinicians and disordered individuals. I thus conclude with some thoughts on how to approach research and developing understanding of mental disorder given that we, as people, are always implicated in this process and therefore socialisation of some kind will always be taking place. (shrink)

In this work I propose the basis for a Panexperientialist ontology. The reasons for propose it, its assumptions, and its form are motivated by a scenario in which the nature of reality is constantly emerging. I arrive to such scenario by means of an analysis of relations. Also I defend this view from possible objections that could arise from advocates of semantic externalism.

The thesis combines the Humean theory of normative practical reasons with constitutivism. Humeanism claims, roughly, that an agent’s reasons are explained by his desires. Constitutivism claims that the foundations of moral normativity can be found in the constitutive features of agency. This combination, ‘Humean constitutivism’ as I call it, claims there is some desire-like mental state, the possession of which is partly constitutive of rational agency, which explains the normativity of morality. I first argue that the union of constitutivism and (...) Humeanism makes for an attractive marriage. As with any good relationship, the two bring out the best in one another. Humeanism offers the constitutivist a compelling account of how we get from the ‘is’ of the nature of rational agency to the ‘ought’ of normative conclusions. In doing so, it permits the constitutivist to circumvent the influential ‘shmagency’ objection. The constitutivist strategy provides the Humean with the resources to accommodate moral rationalism and hence answer sceptical challenges to morality’s practical normative authority. Having established its attractiveness, I then defend the truth of Humean constitutivism. I argue that there are desire-like mental states (constitutive commitments), the possession of which is partly constitutive of agency. This is because rational agency involves distinctively linguistic forms of cognition—dwelling in something like Sellars’ ‘logical space of reasons.’ Engaging in this linguistic form of cognition, in turn, requires us to take on certain second-personal practical commitments to our (hypothetical) interlocutors. Hence, all agents necessarily have these constitutive commitments. Piggy-backing on Darwall’s derivation of contractualist moral norms from the constitutive presuppositions of the second- person standpoint, I claim that the Humean constitutivist can vindicate the intuitive existence, modal status, universality, and special weight of (many) moral reasons. (shrink)

Predictive processing, an increasingly popular paradigm in cognitive sciences, has focused primarily on giving accounts of perception, motor control and a host of psychological phenomena, including consciousness. But higher cognitive processes, like conceptual thought, language, and logic, have received only limited attention to date and PP still stands disconnected from a huge body of research in those areas. In this thesis, I aim to address this gap and I attempt to go some way towards developing and defending a cognitive-computational approach (...) to higher cognition within the predictive processing paradigm. To test its explanatory potential, I apply it to a range of linguistic and conceptual phenomena. I proceed in three steps. First, I lay out an account of concepts and suggest how concepts are represented, how they can be context-sensitively processed, and how the apparent diversity of formats arise. Secondly, I propose how paradigmatic higher cognitive competencies, like language and logical reasoning, could fit into the PP picture. Thirdly, I apply the PP account of concepts and language to a range of linguistic-conceptual phenomena as test cases, namely: metaphor, the semantic paradox (specifically the Liar Paradox) and copredication. Finally, I discuss some challenges and objections to the PP framework as applied to higher cognition and in general. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown the negative impacts of child abuse on mental health in later life. Compared to physical and sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment has received less attention. Emerging literature has explored the associations between psychological maltreatment on adult mental health. However, no systematic review or meta-analysis focuses on the associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and adult mental health while controlling for other adverse childhood experiences. In addition, there is a lack of measures in China that focus on assessing childhood (...) psychological maltreatment in all its relevant dimensions. Further, limited studies have explored the associations between different types and profiles of childhood psychological maltreatment and its associations with adult mental health. Therefore, this thesis aims to fill these gaps by reviewing previous literature on childhood psychological maltreatment and adult mental health, translating and validating a measure that focuses on childhood psychological maltreatment for use in China, assessing the associations between different types of childhood psychological maltreatment and adult mental health, and exploring different profile patterns in Chinese and the UK populations of childhood psychological maltreatment and its associations on mental well-being. Chapter 1 provides a brief background to the existing literature on childhood psychological maltreatment and its associations with adult mental health outcomes. It also presents an overview of frequently used measures assessing childhood psychological maltreatment in China and the UK. In addition, this chapter demonstrates the key gaps in the previous literature. Chapter 2 uses a systematic review approach to review the previous literature on childhood psychological maltreatment and various adult mental health outcomes (i.e., depression and anxiety, eating disorders, personality disorders, suicidal ideation and attempts, substance abuse, and other psychological symptoms). It also reviews the comparison of the mental health outcomes between clinical populations and the general population on the prevalence of childhood psychological abuse and neglect. Meta-analyses are conducted on several themes (i.e., depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and clinical population) to explore the effects sizes of childhood psychological abuse on these mental health outcomes. Chapter 3 introduces, translates, and validates the Psychological Maltreatment Review (PMR) for the Chinese population. Factorial validity, internal consistency, convergent and divergent validity, and gender measurement invariance are assessed. Chapter 4, which builds on Chapters 2 and 3, uses the higher-order model to examine the associations between childhood psychological abuse, neglect, and non-support and various mental health outcomes (i.e., depression, anxiety, anger, hostility, and physical aggression). This chapter explores whether different types of childhood psychological maltreatment are more harmful than others, whether the harms associated with different types of psychological maltreatment are generalised or specific to particular domains of psychopathology, and whether there are gender invariances in these associations. Building on Chapter 4, which compares sub-dimensions of childhood psychological maltreatment, Chapter 5 explores the effects of different profiles of psychological maltreatment in the Chinese and the UK population. Various mental health outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, and aggression, and broader well-being, such as self-esteem, are assessed. Lastly, Chapter 6 provides a general summary of the results from Chapters 2 – 5 and an overall discussion. In conclusion, this thesis contributes to understanding the associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and adult mental health. The empirical findings of this thesis emphasise the need to have policies that prevent psychological maltreatment and interventions that can address its psychological harms. (shrink)

This thesis develops and defends epistemic fictionalism, according to which knowledge talk is metaphorical. One of the distinctive features of metaphor is that metaphorical sentences have multiple readings: a literal (or ‘face-value’) reading and at least one metaphorical (or ‘non-face-value’) reading. Typically, speakers who utter metaphorical sentences intend to communicate a content that corresponds to the metaphorical meaning. Epistemic fictionalism posits that, as is standard for metaphors, sentences of the form “S knows that P” admit of at least two different (...) readings: a face-value (literal) reading, and a different non-face-value metaphorical reading. A face-value reading of sentences of the form “S knows that P” is that S is infallible with regards to P, and as such are always (or almost always) false at face-value. However, such sentences are not typically used to communicate their typically false face-value content, but some other, typically true metaphorical content. The thesis applies the methods of function-first epistemology (Craig 1990, Hannon 2019a), taking as a starting point the question of what knowledge talk is used for. I argue that understanding knowledge talk as metaphorical coheres with the function that knowledge talk plays, in spite of all (or most) knowledge attributions being literally false: there are advantages to communicating the non-face-value, metaphorical content. Another key advantage of epistemic fictionalism is that it explains the intuitions surrounding sceptical arguments. On the one hand, sceptical infallibilism is compelling because it is the correct analysis of the face-value content of knowledge attributions. On the other hand, sceptical infallibilism is not threatening to everyday knowledge attributions because it does not threaten the truth of the metaphorical content that knowledge attributions are typically used to express. Overall, the main aim of the thesis is to motivate epistemic fictionalism as a serious contender worthy of further investigation and development. (shrink)

This project is a blend of Africana intellectual history and philosophical anti-humanism. The opening chapter seeks to contextualize the thought of Huey P. Newton in the Black nationalist tradition outline his conceptualization of US empire – ‘Reactionary Intercommunalism’. I use the second chapter to explore counterinsurgency as a historical phenomenon that laid the basis for European colonization and the civilizing mission during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and the modern phenomena understand as racial violence. The third chapter analyzes how (...) gender ideological have been deployed toward this end historically and through contemporaneous Black scholarship before using the final chapter to introduce the theory of killology or MAN3. This theory advances the claim that counterinsurgency as a modality of warfare be understood as the contemporary fountainhead of western humanism and thus as the primary force of social regulation which proleptically organizes modern civilization on a spatially and temporally indeterminate basis to defeat/subvert insurgent populations before they are ever mobilized towards resistance through the application of technology, deadly force to those constructed as threats and control of the information environment towards this end. (shrink)

Doubt is a much-maligned state. We are racked by doubts, tormented by doubts, plagued by them, paralysed. Doubts can be troubling, consuming, agonising. But however ill-regarded is doubt, anxiety is more so. We recognise the significance of doubting in certain contexts, and allow ourselves to be guided by our doubts. For example, the criminal standard of proof operative in the U.K., U.S., as well as in most other anglophone countries, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Israel, requires for conviction to be permissible (...) that the defendant’s guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt; to feel a doubt about a defendant’s guilt, so long as it is reasonable, is reason to refrain from convicting. But our folk understanding of anxiety ascribes no value to that state. Anxiety is inherently unpleasant and irrational; it prevents us from being able to perform well when it is most important to us that we do; it is an emotion that, if we could, we’d eliminate from our emotional toolbox. Yet in this thesis, I offer a vindication of doubt – a defence of doubt in terms of what it does for us – on which it ultimately turns out to be a kind of anxiety. The basic idea is that the concept of doubt serves a function for us that we couldn’t do without: it signals when we should begin inquiry. I will argue that the concept doubt is able to serve this function because the state it picks out, the state of doubt, is a kind of anxiety: epistemic anxiety. I develop a picture of epistemic anxiety as an emotional response to epistemic risk: potential disvalue in the epistemic realm. Because doubt is a kind of anxiety, it has the right kind of representational and motivational profile to track epistemic risk in our environments, and motivate us to reduce or avoid that risk. This makes it hugely valuable for us, as knowledge-seeking creatures, given the incompatibility of knowledge with high levels of epistemic risk. (shrink)

The philosophy of time travel is a sub-field of metaphysics – the study of what there is and what things are like – that considers questions about the possibility of time travel and what a world in which time travel is possible looks like. These questions range from whether time travel is actually possible, to how time travellers can act in the past or future. This thesis delves into a particularly interesting, yet historically undertreated theme: the abilities of time travellers (...) and relatedly their freedom as well. The abilities and freedom of time travellers has been the source of a lot of recent discussion with some polarising views. The minority (which includes Lewis (1976), but also Ted Sider (2002)) argue for the affirmative – that time travellers are free and have the same (or perhaps more) abilities as non-time travellers. The majority (which includes Kadri Vihvelin (1996), Michael Rea (2005), Stephanie Rennick (2015), Alison Fernandes (2020), amongst others) argue for the negative, that time travellers do not have exactly the same freedoms and abilities as non-time travellers. I think that it is a mistake to be so pessimistic about the abilities and freedom of time travellers. I treat concerns about the freedom of time travellers and concerns about the abilities of time travellers as two sides of the same coin. Therefore, in what follows, I argue for two related conclusions. First, I argue that time travellers have all sorts of abilities. Second, I argue that time travellers are just as free as non-time travellers. In arguing for these conclusions, I first produce a novel analysis of ability which reveals important details about how abilities track inputs rather than outputs. Second, I use this new analysis of ability to present a new compatibilist account of free will. If I am right in arguing positively for the abilities and freedoms of time travellers, then this has large implications for both the current time travel discourse and the general debate surrounding freedom. Significantly, I am arguing against some prominent views about time travel and in suggesting that these views are mistaken, I am presenting new ideas about ability and freedom: specifically, that time travellers have the ability and are free to do impossible things. (shrink)

I defend a position in which affective and emotional reactions are incorporated into visual representations. Such incorporation allows affect, emotion and perception to operate together in a more efficient manner than other accounts. It is also consistent with developing thinking on brain structure and functionality. In this account, emotions are constructed by an individual based on cultural and societal factors: within these constraints, emotions emerge from affective reactions by a conceptualisation of those reactions — states of affairs and affective reactions (...) are matched with existing emotion concepts. Emergent emotions form part of the information used at the earliest stages in building a visual representation (a specific neural pathway has been identified), so that emotion information is incorporated into the visual representation. This is relativism in vision. I show that societies sharing very broadly a similar set of values will share a very broadly similar set of emotion concepts and emotional reactions, so that affect- and emotion-based variations in representations will be small enough to be either unnoticed or explained away. Concerns about relativism in vision generally are groundless: vision cannot be subject to whim and fancy, as societal factors constrain the degree to which variations in visual perception may occur. This is not the case when two cultures with materially different cultural values and hence emotions meet, such as in Australia, where traditional Australian Aborigines rub shoulders with their Anglo-European counterparts. Here visual perception may be sufficiently different between the two groups that detailed, fine-grained communication will be hampered, which may be an additional factor contributing to the difficulty of effective cross-cultural provision of mental health services in Australia. (shrink)

This thesis puts forward a theory which I call container theory for how a single notion of concept can satisfy the two desiderata that Machery (2009) sets out for concepts: (a) the Judgement Desideratum - a concept must permit categorisation, typicality and inferential judgements; and (b) the Propositional Desideratum: a concept must be capable of being used as a unit or constituent in compositions of propositional thoughts. Achieving this depends on two core claims: (a) that a concept is a container (...) of stored knowledge that pertains to a single category and (b) that double-armed finsts (DA-finsts), which keep track of both objects and the categories they have been recognised as, are composed into propositional thoughts. In addition to satisfying the desiderata, the framework allows a full explanation of what a concept is, how one is acquired, how it comes to have meaning, and how they are involved in matters of sense and reference and wide and narrow content. The first core idea is that a concept is a container which gathers together information pertaining to a single category. Recognitional information (e.g. exemplars and prototypes) in the container allows categorisation and typicality judgements and functional information facilitates inferential judgements. Together these satisfy Machery's judgement desideratum. I stress that a concept is the container itself and not the information stored in the container and not the label or symbol of the container. The second core idea is that DA-finsts, which are an extension of Pylyshyn's (1988) notion of a finst, are what are composed into propositional thoughts, thus satisfying Machery's propositional desideratum. These finsts have no intrinsic meaning; they inherit their meaning from what concept/container they are currently keeping track of. DA-finsts are disposable symbols in that they dispose of their meaning once they stop pointing to a container or point to a new container. In addition to satisfying Machery's desiderata this framework has three major benefits. First, because DA-finsts can be substituted for Mentalese symbols in Fodor's (2008) LOT account and for perceptual symbols in Barsalou's (1999) account an attractive fusion of these two accounts can be achieved. Second, a full account can be given of how new concepts/containers are acquired and come to have the meanings they do. In container theory concepts are individuated by their container structure rather than by their semantic structure. Information that is not recognised as belonging to any existing container causes a new container to be opened. What a container/concept pertains to is determined by what information is in the container, but the concept itself is determined by the container structure. Error (misrepresentation) occurs when the expected outcomes of inferences and interactions based on the stored information in a container do not match the actual outcomes experienced. Finally, the framework is used to make sense of puzzles that give rise to distinctions between wide and narrow content and between sense and reference. (shrink)

This thesis presents a novel theory of temporal experience. While time as measured by the clock is a perennially popular topic, the time of experience remains relatively neglected and poorly understood despite its centrality to our existence. This thesis therefore sets out to address the following questions: 1) How should we characterize experiential time and the experienced present? 2) How might such distinctively temporal experience arise in the first place? While the first of these is a “what is it like” (...) question, and thus in the realm of phenomenological analysis, the second is ostensibly closer to the realm of scientific inquiry in that it concerns an empirical phenomenon. The goal of this thesis is to synthesize plausible answers to both of these questions. As to the first question, there is already a lively debate ongoing in the philosophy of mind between various camps, each offering what they see as the most plausible analysis of the phenomenology of time. Regarding the second, there is an interdisciplinary investigation of mechanisms at various levels of abstraction, notably the levels of neurophysiology and information processing. This thesis proposes, among other contentions, that the time of experience is best characterized by a combination of retentional and extensional phenomenological analyses. This means the actual temporal extension of experience and its correlates determines, to some degree, the felt temporal character of experience. At the same time, perhaps the greater part of temporal phenomenology is determined by content: mental processes can be about temporal properties in addition to their primary contents and the way they are so partially determines the temporal character of experience as well. This analysis dovetails nicely with contemporary theories of consciousness that maintain the brain is fundamentally a complex predictive engine actively and adaptively guiding behavior. The thesis thus represents a multi-level framework for understanding the experience of time and the mechanisms underpinning it. It is my hope this perspective advances the debate on time-consciousness and can guide further work towards understanding this most fundamental aspect of our lives. (shrink)

How can contemporary companies and corporations, necessarily operating within market-derived norms, act justly in their dealings? Why should they care about doing so? I claim in this thesis that Aristotle’s conception of general justice provides an answer to these questions and, claiming the necessity of justice to all ethical deliberation, I propose it as a practicable foundation for the such organizations’ ethics. I argue that Aristotle’s eudaimonic metaphysics can plausibly be brought to bear on contemporary dilemmas in corporate ethics; and (...) that his particularist approach to ethical deliberation justifies a conception of justice as a point of equipoise, found along several dimensions, always evanescent and demanding of constant attention. Acknowledging the dominance of deontological and utilitarian thinking in contemporary business ethics, I propose an Aristotelian, eudaimonic approach which rests on his teleology and the place of virtue within it. I argue for the primacy of justice as an ethical concern and claim that Aristotle’s conception of general (as opposed to particular) justice provides a plausible basis for creating a justice-based corporate ethic. I claim that Aristotelian general justice is analogous to the ancient concept of dikaiosyne, which can be loosely translated into vernacular English as ‘doing the right thing’. In chapter 1, I outline the problem I am seeking to address, namely the proliferation of conceptions of justice with which contemporary companies and corporations are expected to deal. I identify two dominant strands of thinking, roughly corresponding to the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ in post-French Revolution politics, positing Rawls and Hayek, respectively, as representatives of these traditions. I place companies and corporations within the context of the market – based theories and conventions that underpin contemporary capitalism. In Chapter 2, I introduce Aristotle’s teleology and the metaphysics from which he derives his approach to justice. Following his metaphysics, I argue that justice is an ineradicable concern for human beings if they are to have a chance of living a eudaimonic life; and that collective entities such as companies and corporations can partake of these metaphysics, because of the relationship between the collective and the individual. In chapter 3, I summarize Aristotle’s approach to justice and propose an interpretation of Aristotelian general justice as a point of equipoise, balanced along many dimensions, and, drawing on his Doctrine of the Mean, consisting in a ‘mean of means’. I argue that general justice is the whole of virtue and that it can be conceptualized in a way that can support ethical deliberations in contemporary companies and corporations. In chapter 4, I examine the ways in which justice can be considered in the light of modern schematics of justice, and how this takes place in companies and corporations. I consider the dominant concerns that need to be addressed by any plausible approach to justice in contemporary market economies, such as desert and inequality; and propose ways of considering aspects of contemporary corporate life, such as investments and profits, in terms of Aristotelian general justice. In chapter 5, I consider six intuitively obvious objections to my thesis, namely: that globalization, financialization and the advent of the internet have, respectively and in different ways, rendered it anachronistic; that companies and corporations have no counterparts in the Ancient World, as they are products of industrial capitalism; that the setting for Aristotle’s philosophy, the Ancient Greek polis, is irrelevant to modern life; and that Aristotle’s character-based ethics are elitist and therefore incompatible with contemporary meritocratic norms. I conclude with some practical proposals for basing corporate ethics on my conception of Aristotelian justice as a point of equipoise. (shrink)

This thesis is guided by the following question: what, if anything, makes a life meaningful? My answer to this question is asymmetric welfarism about meaning in life. According to asymmetric welfarism, the meaning of a life depends upon two factors. First, a life is conferred meaning insofar as it promotes or protects the well-being of other welfare subjects. Second, a life is made meaningless insofar as it decreases or minimises the well-being of other welfare subjects. The meaning of a life (...) is determined by the net balance between these two factors; the more the good outweighs the bad, the more meaningful a life that is. I argue that asymmetric welfarism is the most plausible theory about meaning in life. To do this, I show how such a view captures a variety of intuitions about meaning in life while defending it from objections. This is the business of chapters 1, 2, and 3. Specifically, chapter 1 lays the groundwork, chapter 2 advances the case in favour of asymmetric welfarism, while chapter 3 defends asymmetric welfarism from objections. But some objections cannot be so easily overturned by a mere argument. Such objections do not just count against asymmetric welfarism, but also support competing theories. In order to overcome both, I show how such objections, and the theories they motivate, are best understood as tracking a different, but related, evaluative dimension a life can have. This is the business of chapters 4, 5, and 6. Specifically, chapter 4 argues that subjective theories are best understood as being about fulfilment, chapter 5 argues that purpose theories are best understood as being about purpose, and chapter 6 argues that differing views about the role of morality confuse morality and significance with meaning. These other evaluative dimensions which stand alongside meaning in life are fulfilment, purpose, significance, morality, and prudential value. (shrink)

This thesis concerns mindreading, the ability to attribute mental states to others. The standard conception of mindreading emerged from philosophical debates about our everyday use of mental-state terms and experiments in psychology. Underlying this conception, I suggest, are three assumptions: that mindreading is fundamental to our social understanding, that it is (solely) aimed at accuracy, and that its purpose is to explain and predict others’ behaviour. While the core chapters of this thesis were conceived of separately, they each challenge one (...) or more of these assumptions, putting pressure on the standard conception and presenting new directions for mindreading research. The first chapter provides historical and theoretical background to mindreading research. This helps to contextualise the standard conception of mindreading and the three main assumptions that underly it. I then provide summaries of the remaining chapters and detail how they address these assumptions. Chapter 2 looks at what I call the ‘third-person’ objection to the standard conception of mindreading. This objection is frequently alluded to in the literature; opponents of the standard conception of mindreading tend to assume that it is self-explanatory, while proponents often dismiss it by emphasising the importance or frequency of mindreading. After considering these approaches, this chapter offers a framework for thinking about the third-person objection, disambiguating three distinct targets: the perspective involved in mindreading, the purpose of mindreading, and the access that mindreading grants to others. To evaluate these criticisms, I suggest we need to consider how interactions’ perceptual and cognitive demands can differ, specifically with regard to the reciprocity and goals involved. These aspects of interactions are not typically recognised; once we do so we can take a broader view of the purposes of, and perspective taken, in social cognition than either proponents or opponents of the standard conception typically allow. Chapter 3 asks whether we perceive others’ emotions directly rather than infer them as in mindreading accounts. I outline different interpretations of what is at stake in the inferential/non-inferential distinction and examine an approach based on the similarity of emotion recognition to object recognition. I argue that this fails to appreciate key differences between emotion recognition and object recognition, namely the flexibility of, and effect of context on, facial expression perception and emotion categorisation. This allows me to distinguish between affect perception and emotion perception, and from here, I argue that we perceive the valence of people’s affective expressions. Socio-cultural effects on mindreading are considered in chapter 4. I present evidence that shows intra-cultural differences in how we mindread based on socio-economic status in society – those with low socioeconomic status are more likely to attend to context when attributing mental states to others. I then suggest that transitory status in an interaction may also affect our motivation to mindread. These arguments highlight the impact of culture and social dynamics on mindreading, an area that has received relatively little attention and cannot be easily accommodated by traditional theories of mindreading. In chapter five, I broaden the lens to offer a philosophical analysis of camouflaging in autism. Camouflaging – the use of coping strategies in social situations and the repression of specific behaviours – is increasingly given as a reason for the under- and late diagnosis of autism in women and girls. The social difficulties in autism are often attributed to mindreading difficulties, but camouflaging might show that these can be compensated. To try to understand this, first, I suggest that the concept of camouflaging is ambiguous regarding several different phenomena: socialisation differences, bias in tests, and implicit and explicit compensation. Then, drawing on the mindshaping literature, I argue that social categorisation has pervasive effects on behaviour and how one is understood. This helps to explain ambiguities with the concept of camouflaging while demonstrating the importance of researching it. Finally, in chapter 6, the conclusion, I rehearse the critical insights of this thesis, and consider relevant future research. (shrink)

The work presented in this dissertation primarily focused on two topics. The first was understanding differences in support for redistribution. In this section, we replicated existing research on the three-player two-situation model, extended this model with more precise measures – for instance of malicious envy – and developed new measures for instance of mutualism. The second main topic was understanding how motivations and cognitive ability influence people's economic attitudes and knowledge. The thesis is structured as follows. Chapter 1 provides a (...) brief introduction about redistribution and economic ideology which will be discussed in subsequent chapters and argues for the importance of replication existing findings in psychology. Chapter 2 aims to address whether social orientation and cognitive style reflect the differences in cultural orientation, such as individualism and collectivism. We conducted a study (n = 216) to test the relationships between Sociogram Task (a social orientation measure which assumes that using a relatively large circle to perform self in a diagram would be more individualistic), Triad Task (a cognitive style measure which assumes grouping objects through their category rather than relationship would be more individualistic), and three cultural orientation measures. We found that neither social orientation nor cognitive style was associated with cultural orientations, and social orientation nor cognitive style were not correlated with each other, either. This result showed that Sociogram Task and Triad Task did not reflect the underlying dimension of individualism and collectivism, indicating that social orientation and cognitive style were not linked with cultural orientations. Given that the effects of social orientation and cognitive style failed to replicate, we switched to our main findings in the next part. In part one of this dissertation (Chapter 3 to Chapter 5), we explored a different direction, focusing on the replication and extension of the three-player two-situation model, which hypothesizes that people’s attitude toward resource allocation (e.g. support for economic redistribution) is driven by three motivations: compassion, envy, and self-interest. In Chapter 3, we build on the work of the three-player two-situation model, testing whether the attitude toward redistribution is motivated by the three motivations rather than procedural fairness. We successfully replicated this model in three studies (n = 1,011), confirming that support for redistribution is influenced by compassion, envy, and self-interest, and procedural fairness plays no role. Furthermore, we also refined the three-player two-situation model, indicating that the concept of envy referred to malicious envy, which is characterized by hostility and behaviours about decreasing others’ advantage. These results support the role of evolution motivates in explaining contemporary economic redistribution. In Chapter 4, we aim to answer whether support for redistribution would be shaped by a specific kind of fairness vital in collaboration, the equal-division fairness. In two studies (n = 805), we found that motivation of equal-division played a significant role in support for redistribution. Furthermore, we found that attitude toward redistribution involved a coercive part, which was also associated with equal-division fairness. These results confirmed the role of equal-division motivation, suggesting that the three-player two-situation model includes equal-division fairness and coercive enforcement. In Chapter 5, we focused on another key concept of the evolution of cooperation, mutualism, trying to answer how it influences support for redistribution and associates with compassion, envy, self-interest, and equal-division fairness. We developed a Mutualism scale based on Baumard, André, and Sperber (2013), which reflects proportional division, proportional punishment, and helping behaviour. In two studies (n = 902), the Mutualism scale showed good fits to the predicted model and satisfactory reliability and validity. Furthermore, we found mutualism was independent of compassion, envy, and self-interest, but associated with equal-division, coercing others to share equally, and negative attitudes toward redistribution. These results extended the three-player two-situation model, confirming the importance of equal-division and mutualism motivations in explaining people’s tendency toward economic redistribution. In the second part of this dissertation (Chapter 6 and Chapter 7), we turned to concern how cognitive ability influence people's economic attitudes and knowledge. In Chapter 6, we addressed whether cognitive ability influences economic attitudes. In two studies (n = 1,400) and a longitudinal data set (n = 11,563), we found cognitive ability was positively correlated with how far individuals deviate from prevailing centrist views, that is, the level of economic extremism. These results indicated that the association between cognitive ability and economic attitudes was not a simple linear relationship, highlighting the role of cognitive ability in generating radical attitudes. Chapter 7 aims to answer whether cognitive ability is related to economic knowledge and whether it will increase financial outcomes. In two studies (n = 1,356), we found that cognitive ability was positively associated with economic knowledge, and greater economic knowledge also positively correlated with financial literacy. In addition, our findings showed that education level and economic training level only had little effect on economic knowledge compared with cognitive ability. These findings fill the gap between cognitive ability and economic knowledge, extending the role of general ability in improving lifetime financial wellbeing. Finally, Chapter 8 was a summary of the previous chapters’ findings, and suggestions for future research on people's economic attitudes and knowledge, especially the role of individual differences in this research area. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: The well-being of romantic relationships often depends on the degree to which partners are able to sacrifice their own interests to meet each other’s needs when necessary. While enacted sacrifices are not always beneficial, one’s willingness to sacrifice (WTS) has been consistently linked to greater relationship satisfaction and personal well-being. One factor that may contribute to WTS is mindfulness, the non-reactive and non-judgmental attention to and awareness of present-moment experiences. Mindfulness is known to predict several positive relationship outcomes (e.g., (...) relationship quality, forgiveness). Accordingly, mindfulness may promote WTS through lower relationship ambivalence (RA; the extent to which one holds simultaneously positive and negative attitudes towards one’s partner/relationship) and higher commitment (the extent to which one intends to persist in one’s relationship). Prior research has demonstrated that mindfulness is negatively correlated with general attitudinal ambivalence and positively correlated with relationship commitment. Commitment, while being negatively linked to ambivalence, is also a robust predictor of pro-relationship behaviours, including sacrifice. However, no prior study has systematically investigated the cross-sectional or longitudinal links between these variables in tandem. AIM: Guided by the interdependence theory and theoretical models of mindfulness and relationships, this thesis investigates the link between mindfulness and WTS and examines whether RA and commitment uniquely or jointly mediate this link. METHOD: Studies 1-2 used an exploratory-confirmatory approach to investigate whether RA and/or commitment may mediate the mindfulness-WTS association in response to hypothetical scenarios. Studies 3-6 tested whether experimentally enhanced mindfulness predicted greater hypothetical (Study 3, 6) and actual (Studies 4-5) WTS through RA and commitment. Study 7 was a 5-week longitudinal study investigating the prospective effect of mindfulness on hypothetical WTS through RA and commitment. RESULTS: Studies 1-2 both revealed a significant indirect association between higher mindfulness and greater WTS, which occurred sequentially through lower RA and then higher commitment. This serial mediation model was replicated in Study 3, but not in Study 4-7. Although the links involving mindfulness and those involving WTS were more tenuous across studies, RA was consistently negatively linked to commitment in all studies. DISCUSSION: This research provides mixed evidence for the notion that mindfulness predicts WTS in relationships. The inconsistent findings across the experimental studies also illuminate the possibility that the factors that precede individuals’ hypothetical versus actual WTS may be different. Results from the longitudinal study further suggest that the links between mindfulness, RA, commitment, and WTS may sometimes be overestimated from cross-sectional data. The consistent RA-commitment association introduces promising directions for future relationship studies. Taken together, these findings offer novel insight into interdependence theory and models of mindfulness and relationships by outlining and explaining the somewhat limited and inconsistent prospective influence of mindfulness on WTS. (shrink)

The aim of the present work is to make a plausible case for the phylogenetic origin of self-knowledge, one which is compatible with a prevalent view about its ontogenetic origin, the social-scaffolding view. Essentially, the phylogenetic origin is generally argued to be evaluative metacognition, i.e. a system of cognitive control mechanisms, while the ontogenetic origin is generally argued to be mindreading, i.e. cognitive capacities supporting mental state attribution. So put simply, the present work aims to provide a plausible solution to (...) the problem of how to establish metacognition as a significant precursor to mindreading. Previous attempts to establish metacognition as an evolutionary precursor to mindreading have struggled to account for the exact relevance that metacognition has for the origin of self-knowledge. This present work analyses this struggle as first having to solve ‘the problem of triviality’, explain how metacognitive mechanisms are more sophisticated than mechanisms enabling basic cognitive feats. Once this problem is solved, however, the problem develops into having to show that the added layers of sophistication warrant construing metacognition as a significant precursor to self-knowledge. This latter problem is analysed as the ultimate problem, referred to here as simply ‘the problem of the origin of self-knowledge’. Thus, the present work seeks to offer a plausible solution to both of these problems. The solution to these problems is argued to be embodied metacognition, cognitive control mechanisms that enable conscious self-control of information-seeking behavior through the production of strongly embodied feedback signals. These feedback signals, often called ‘noetic feelings’, are theorized to motivate, demotivate, and guide cognitive acts to be more accurate. Here it is argued that these signals are strongly embodied, characterizing conscious emotional states constituted by psychological imperatives, states with external manifestations in the form of bodily expressions that can be detected, monitored, and regulated by individuals in the subject’s socio-cultural environment. To argue for this, I augment evaluative metacognition in light of evidence from recent interoception-based research in metacognition which reveals the degree to which noetic feelings are strongly embodied. They are thus argued to be cerebrally generated feedback signals produced by cognitive comparators that become intricately intertwined with bodily processes. Recent evidence suggests these signals come to fulfill their role in cognition through the conscious perception (the interoception) of internal bodily changes, specifically cardiovascular changes, and hence the subtitle of the present work, “How We Feel Our Hearts to Know Our Minds”. Reconceptualizing evaluative metacognition as embodied metacognition provides us with the tools for solving the two problems above. Concerning the first, mechanisms enabling conscious self-control of cognition are clearly more sophisticated than mechanisms that enable basic feats of cognition, such as reinforcement learning. Moreover, appealing to strongly embodied noetic feelings offers the possibility of solving the first problem in such a manner that the second problem is also solved. As conscious expressions of emotions, noetic feelings demand robust information-seeking behaviours and manifest feelings of confidence and uncertainty externally, thus they are well-suited to link metacognition to the social-scaffolding view about the origin of self-knowledge. (shrink)

The thesis starts from the position of Ontic Structural Realism, which holds that the world just is structure, and from the ontology of Rainforest Realism in which the only things that exist are real patterns. I argue that the temporal structure of the world emerges from the temporal aspect of spacetime and consists in real patterns of time existing at different ontological scales. Such scale relativity of ontology allows the temporal structure of the world to display very different features. At (...) the scale of instants and of extremely small duration, I argue that there is non-dynamic, tenseless structure to which the earlier than relation may be applied. At the scale of larger duration, I argue that there occurs robust objective becoming that just is dynamic composition of larger-scale material structure – initiating a real, tensed, passage of time. Thus, something akin to a Block Universe can be found at the very small scales of time, from which emerges the dynamic world of our experience. (shrink)

Metaethical relativism is the view that whether a moral claim is true depends on the standards endorsed by an individual or society. This view is attractive because it allows one to hold that moral claims can be true or false in an ordinary correspondence sense, without being committed to the view that moral claims state objective facts. But what could it mean to say that a whether a moral claim is true depends on an individual or society’s standards? How could (...) a single claim be true or false in an ordinary sense, and yet be true for some people while false for others? This thesis defends a certain answer to this question: metaethical truth relativism. Metaethical relativists have historically endorsed a different view: content relativism, which is the view that the semantic contents of moral claims vary across contexts of use. However, semanticists working outside metaethics have recently shown that an alternative exists, namely truth relativism: the view that the truth values of moral contents vary across contexts. Metaethicists have been slow to investigate the significance of this discovery. This is surprising, because truth relativism appears to avoid some of the most influential objections to content relativist views. Thus, this development in semantics appears to offer an exciting new direction for research on relativism in metaethics. The scope of this thesis is not narrowly semantic, however. Questions in moral semantics often interconnect with questions in substantive metaethics, and the question of whether ethical thought and talk is semantically relativistic is no exception. Therefore, while the core of the this thesis focuses on moral semantics, it also contains a fair amount of substantive metaethical material, located primarily in the first and final chapters. The plan of the thesis is as follows. Chapters 1 & 2 begin with a discussion of the most historically influential argument for metaethical relativism: the argument from disagreement. Chapter 1 discusses an epistemic version of this argument, but concludes that this version provides only limited evidence for relativism. However, chapter 2 introduces a different version of the argument, with a more semantic focus, and begins to make the case that this argument provides evidence not only for metaethical relativism broadly construed, but for truth relativism in particular. The broad strokes of this argument are that there can be moral disagreements which are faultless and furthermore that only truth relativism can vindicate the sense that these are genuine disagreements, rather than mere differences of opinion. Chapter 2 presents empirical evidence for the claim that putative moral disagreements can be faultless. Chapters 3 and 4 then take a deep dive into the topic of disagreement. Chapter 3 develops a positive account of disagreement which is available only to truth relativists. And chapter 4 advances detailed arguments against contextualist accounts of disagreement. Chapters 3 and 4 together thus defend in detail the claim that truth relativism can, while content relativism cannot, account for the sense that there is genuine disagreement in the relevant cases. Chapters 2 through 4, therefore, form a single long argument for truth relativism. They show that there is a compelling argument for relativism broadly construed, and that deep analysis of the issues surrounding this argument favour truth relativism over content relativism. Chapter 5 zooms back out to the broader metaethical landscape, discussing two remaining objections to relativism. The first objection is that relativism has objectionably subjectivistic implications, and the second is that moral standards cannot helpfully be understood as determined by societies. In the course of responding to these objections, natural opportunities to flesh out the substantive metaethical commitments of the theory will arise. And this will set us up to conclude with a brief comparison of truth relativism with some of the other main options in the space of substantive metaethical theory. (shrink)

How should we understand the place of the mind in the natural world? Can the relationship between the contents of consciousness and the underlying mechanisms be identified? This thesis approaches the question of consciousness and the self through the framework of active inference. According to predictive processing approaches to brain function, brains are essentially prediction machines. On this view, perception and action are underpinned by inferential mechanisms that implement a hierarchical generative model, constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with (...) topdown predictions or expectations. Predictive processing is thought to offer a first glimpse of a unified theory of the mind—uniting perception, action, and cognition under a single theoretical framework. In particular, active inference, under the free energy principle, has emerged as the most explanatorily powerful approach in predictive processing. In this thesis, I develop a conceptual framework within active inference for understanding consciousness and phenomenal selfhood in terms of an “allostatic control model”. I made the case that phenomenal selfhood arises from a hierarchically deep inference about endogenous control of ‘selfevidencing’ sensory outcomes. I apply this account to develop a new understanding of the relationship between self-consciousness and consciousness. Based on the allostatic control model, I posit a novel theoretical model of how psychedelic drugs can lead to ‘selfless’ experiences. I then apply the allostatic control model to characterise the contrastingly dysphoric and euphoric selfless experiences that can arise in depersonalisation disorder and meditation practice. Based on these accounts, I consider the possibility of a theory of consciousness within this active inference, analysing whether selfless experiences pose a threat to an active inference theory of consciousness understood in terms of selfmodelling mechanisms. I argue that selfless experiences do not pose a threat to an active inference theory of consciousness, rather selfless states can be informative as to how consciousness should be understood in active inference. Consciousness emerges as fundamentally affective on this view, where hierarchically deep self-modelling mechanisms function to ‘tune’ organisms to opportunities for adaptive action across multiple interlocking timescales. (shrink)

Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle has been proposed as a definition of existence from which “everything of interest about life and the universe can be derived”. Despite pretensions to a theory of every ‘thing’, focus has largely been on the first of these and the attempt to “unify all adaptive autopoietic and self-organizing behaviour under one simple imperative; avoid surprises and you will last longer”. By analysing biological existence in terms of the stability of a set of essential variables and (...) relations that are taken to define a particular organism, then redescribing this stability amid perturbation in statistical terms as ‘surprisal-minimization’, the FEP proposes to connect this biological imperative up to an account of higher-level cognition as involving the operation of hierarchical predictive models. At first glance then, it appears the ideal partner to the bioenactivist seeking to ground the content of our mental lives in this basic, biological intentionality. The potential compatibility is misleading. By reducing autonomy to the kind of stability amid perturbation that could be shared by pendulums and people alike, the FEF makes no distinction between a homeostatic mechanism and a self-producing agent, thereby failing to account for why the latter alone should be credited with active engagement in its own continuation. The free energy theorist is left to choose between instrumentalism about intentional attribution, or mathematically-motivated animism. Neither is an option for the bioenactivist who seeks a naturalistic account of intentionality and immanent teleology as real features distinct to living systems alone. This does not, however, mean that the FEP has inadvertently undermined the bioenactivist program by revealing there to be no difference in kind between life and non-life. The problem lies instead in its underlying assumption of a machine-substantialist ontology, which erases this distinction from the get-go by presuming the existence of a thing can be reduced to a set of invariant parts and the invariant rules that govern its dynamics. Organisms are constrained by neither. Unlike machines, we not only persist through but depend upon both material turnover and unprestatable change in our space of possible behaviours. This, as a number of theoretical biologists and complexity scientists have argued, makes it impossible to derive any invariant form or equations that could fix the possible trajectories of a living system in advance. The failure of the FEF as a theory of life is not just due to the inadequacy of surprisal-minimization as a particular principle, but due to the broader inappropriateness of a machine-substance ontology for analysing biological existence. The FEF’s failure is not the bioenactivist’s victory. For this we need to establish not only that living systems are different from machines, but also to show how these differences grant the former alone the status of intentional agents. The prevailing enactivist definition of autonomy as operational closure among precarious processes does not achieve this, for it fails to capture the mutual dependence between structure and dynamics that characterizes the self-determination of organisms. Instead, I draw upon Montévil, Moreno, and Mossio’s account of closure among constraints, to show how this describes a system that is intrinsically active in seeking out a continual supply of energy with which to rebuild the network of constraints that both embody that system and which would irretrievably disintegrate without such activity. Only such systems, I argue, can truly be said to have their own existence as the goal of their operations. This will likely not convince the eliminativist, determined to reduce subjectivity to atoms and the void, nor the anthropocentrist who jealously withholds agency to his species alone. But for the person who feels that there is a vital difference between her strivings and the operations of a machine, I believe that the place to look is not in the rational powers that might set us apart from our humbler biological relations, but in the peculiar form of precariousness that we share. (shrink)

The philosophy of well-being has generally assumed that only a weak form of pluralism could be true about prudential value: one which posits a plurality of constituents of well-being. The main exponent of theories espousing this form of pluralism are pluralist objective list theories. In this thesis I argue for the need to explore stronger forms of pluralism about well-being. In Chapter 1, I begin by arguing that pluralist objective list theories should develop an account of ill-being. Doing so, however, (...) reveals a particular phenomenon about the relation between objective list goods and ills. This is that they appear to form pairs: each good is a counterpart to a particular and distinct ill, e.g. pleasure and pain, such that the two stand in a special relationship to each other. In Chapter 2 it is argued that objective list theories lack the ability to appropriately explain pairing. In particular, though they can develop accounts of how members of a pair are related, they cannot explain why the pairing relation obtains. This, it is argued, is a serious problem for objective list theories. Following this, in Chapter 3 I argue that perfectionism, an alternative objectivist account of welfare, provides an intuitive explanation of the objective list theory’s goods and ills as well as of the nature of pairing. However, perfectionism itself encounters a serious problem in its inability to appropriately account for the goodness of pleasure and badness of pain. A broader, eudaimonist solution is then introduced that can save some degree of the perfectionist view. However, this is itself heavily suggestive of the stronger pluralist theories defended by this thesis. Chapter 4 introduces and explains Heathwood’s distinction between different kinds of monism and pluralism. In particular, I employ his proposed notion of radical pluralism in articulating a radical pluralist theory of well-being. On top of postulating a plurality of goods and ills, this theory proposes a plurality of kinds of prudential values, i.e., that different goods and ills are good and bad for us in different ways. This will be shown to not only survive initial scrutiny, but also explain pairing in an intuitive way: by postulating a distinct value property for each good-ill pair, such that each good-ill pair is good and bad for us in the same kind of way, while other pairs are good and bad for us in different kinds of ways. In Chapter 5 I introduce a serious problem facing the radical pluralist theory of well-being, arising from the threat of the incomparability of instances of different values. This would mean that, under radical pluralism, instances of achievement cannot be compared with instances of pleasure. As such bearers of prudential value do seem to be comparable, this constitutes an important obstacle for the theory to overcome. In addressing this, I consider both incomparabilist and comparabilist solutions, dismissing the former and developing a version of the latter based on the articulation of normative relations between such prudential values and of their grounds. Chapter 6 turns to argumentation in favour of the radical pluralist theory of well-being, primarily focused on arguing that there are cases where we can rationally regret not choosing the worse of two options, even when both options are exclusively prudentially valuable. This, it is maintained, cannot be explained by weaker forms of pluralism, but only by stronger ones like radical pluralism. Finally, in Chapter 7 the radical pluralist theory is applied to three important issues in current discussions of well-being: the formulation of explanatory theories, the variabilism-invariabilism debate, and the problem of alienation faced by at least some objectivist theories. In each case, it is argued that the radical pluralist theory offers novel approaches and insights into these questions, further providing a case for its careful consideration in future discussions of well-being. (shrink)

This thesis provides an investigation into whether the viability of the Termination Thesis (TERM) is affected by the kind of theory of time that one adopts. In other words, the chief motivation for this project is the question: does a subscription to the A theory or B theory dictate whether one can hold the TERM? The answer to which has implications not only for the greater question regarding the fit between A theoretic versus B theoretic models of time and the (...) TERM but also for the secondary motivating question for this project: how are the normative claims that are typically associated with the TERM affected by one’s temporal subscriptions? Chapter one lays the foundation of the project by deriving three interpretations of the TERM and providing a temporal analysis of each which reveals that the temporal notions of cessation, simultaneity, and change are requisite for the TERM. The ethical theses that are typically associated with the TERM and the connections between them are also presented. Chapter two focuses on the TERM in light of McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time—more specifically, whether the viability of the TERM is affected by said argument. Broadly, the resulting tension between McTaggart’s argument and the TERM signals an incompatibility between death as the cessation of existence and the absence of time, which serves as a good starting point for the considerations in chapters three and four. Chapters three and four analyze the potential for the A theory and B theory to account for the relevant temporal notions in such a way as to allow for a formulation of the TERM that significantly overlaps and serves the same function as the classical TERM, thereby exploring the viability of the TERM in light of both the A and B theory. A close inspection of the features of the main A theoretic and B theoretic models of time in conjunction with the three TERM interpretations reveals that the viability of the interpretations is affected by said theories. Chapter five marks a return to the normative implications of the TERM in light of the results from chapters one through four. The primary focus centers on the question: what is the rational attitude toward death and how is the prescription regarding whether one ought to fear death shaped by one’s temporal subscriptions? Additionally, on a metaphilosophical level, chapter five also serves as an illustration of how one’s metaphysical commitments can inform one’s ethical views. (shrink)

Irony is commonly defined as ‘the use of words that say the opposite of what you really mean, often as a joke and with a tone of voice that shows this’. Expanding the term’s focus from being merely linguistic to also including ironic action and serving philosophical conceptualisation, the same applies for Socratic irony, which is furthermore traditionally related to mockery and deceit and, therefore, inextricably connected to a negative overtone and an unfavorable portrayal of Socrates when he exercises it. (...) My research aims to reevaluate the significance of the philosophical use of eironeia as a phenomenon in Socrates’ methodology and support the claim that Socrates used all his tools – eironeia included – in an attempt to serve a novel pedagogical scheme, that of building his interlocutors’ epistemic character. This thesis attributes to Socratic eironeia a definitional refinement and a justified characterization as an epistemic device that can and should be fruitfully inserted in contemporary education. Socrates’ methodology is chiefly pedagogical but not in a conventional way since Socrates admits that he was not a teacher – at least not in the ordinary sense. He was, however, a certain type of educator, an ‘architect’ of the interlocutors’ intellectual character. In this epistemic mechanism eironeia works as a ‘sting’ and serves the purpose of enhancing the agent’s motivational feelings not to give up inquiry – after the state of aporia created by the elenchus hits them – but rather to eagerly desire to keep searching for truths. Firstly, my thesis focuses on eironeia’s refinement and presents a defense against the misjudgment of the concept as a linguistic phenomenon, which merely indicates a twist between words, actions and meanings with a connotation of mockery, deceit or humiliation. I will develop the unpopular theory that well-known scholars suggested when they innovatively separated the concept of eironeia from mockery and brought it closer to its interpretation as a device for profitable philosophical quest. And since in philosophy novel interpretations tend to flag disputes, I present an overview of the debate on whether eironeia can have constructive applications or not. Second, I proceed in justifying eironeia’s beneficial character through Aristotle’s understanding of Socrates as an eiron, focusing on eironeia’s function as a speech act and delineating its motivational aspect when employing it in a conversation with an agent, or a student. I establish that Socrates was not an arrogant boaster, as often stated, but rather a self-depreciator who intentionally understates his authority as part of his method. After embracing eironeia’s positive nature, my thesis moves on to defend Socrates’ knowledge of the good against the assertion that his ignorance was honest and, consequently, his eironeia not significantly deep. For the purposes of this argumentation I appeal to Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics and his particularist understanding of morality, which further illuminates Socrates’ method when considering the nature of virtue, hence the nature of his subject teaching. Finally, this brings my thesis to the position of defending Socrates as a teacher not in the commonly held sense but as a peculiar type of educator that builds our epistemic character. The last section of this research enhances our understanding of Socratic Intellectualism and the crucial role it plays in decoding his technique, especially when camouflaged behind the eiron’s mask. Conclusively, I introduce Socrates as an Intellectual Character Builder, who uses eironeia essentially as a motivational tool to enhance the addressee’s disposition to discover truths and not give up in their inquiry. I shall call his technique The Socratic Challenge. (shrink)

The concept of false consciousness is understood to involve individuals who act in ways that contribute to their own oppression, on the basis of ignorant beliefs that resist revision when confronted with attempts at correction. And these beliefs are themselves thought to arise from the individual’s oppressed conditions. This thesis is an attempt to rehabilitate the concept back into the toolkit of analytic social philosophy against its detractors. I thus examine the common problems associated with using this concept in social (...) philosophy, using the case of women anti-suffragists as a central case study. I begin with a brief genealogy of the concept of false consciousness, which attends to the history of the concept as it developed within the Marxian and Critical Theory traditions, before making a few preliminary clarifications about how the concept will be defined and used here. I then explain several challenges to using the concept of false consciousness, suggesting that detractors of the concept often rely on characterisations of it that sit uneasily between our emancipatory goals and certain extant approaches to social epistemology and ontology, normativity, and moral blameworthiness. The concept of false consciousness is often criticised as an ad hoc explanation for why someone acts a particular way that is contrary to their own interests. There is no standard account for why someone has false consciousness especially under multiple systems of oppression. I address this by proposing an approach that treats the concept as a means to regulate social research and direct attention to various looping mechanisms that sustain oppressive beliefs and practices. These mechanisms converge upon an individual to produce beliefs that may be shared with other oppressed agents when seen from the perspective of a system of oppression. Yet at the same time, such beliefs are nuanced differently at more agent-targeted levels and in relation to other systems. Another problem with false consciousness is in determining the appropriate standard for employing the concept in critique. Standards of critique are themselves often the very things in dispute. The problem thus lies in needing to provide a standard of critique that can avoid such disagreement and also ensure that the standards themselves are not products of false consciousness. I address this by appealing to the notion of well-being, which would generate standards that are by definition the agent’s own. Extant accounts of well-being, however, are inadequate for the task. I thus outline my own account, grounded in our status as sense-making organisms and second-order norms regulating our organismic processes. False consciousness is also often thought to involve victim-blaming, since the individuals are thought to be irrational or not to know any better. Using the concept to pick out the individual as contributing to the very oppression they experience thus seems to be inappropriate as irrationality and ignorance are exculpatory in many other cases in ethics. I address this by focusing on a historical case study of several women anti-suffragists. I first examine the charges of irrationality and find that the charges do not hold for them. I then consider the reasons behind their systematic ignorance and find that they are indeed brought about by culpable mechanisms. In turn, the women are also culpable for the acts that follow from them. Hence, false consciousness does not preclude blameworthiness. I conclude with a brief observation of a tension between moral criticism— wherein agents are criticised as individuals—and social criticism (critique)— wherein individuals are criticised in terms of social categories. I suggest that, although the concept of false consciousness can overcome the above conceptual problems, it nevertheless appears to have some limited use in relation to our blaming practices. This thesis, therefore, is an attempt to clarify, defend, and rehabilitate the concept of false consciousness, in order to expand the social philosopher’s toolkit and refine our understanding of social criticism both in philosophy and public discourse. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to develop an account of virtue ethics that takes Aristotle’s naturalistic teleology to be central the understanding and reconstruction of the account’s virtue theory. I call this account Function-Centred Virtue Ethics. In chapter one, I look at some of the dissatisfactions with the then dominant theories in moral philosophy that led to the revived interest in Aristotle’s ethics that later became virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is recognised today as one of the three major approaches (...) in normative ethics. Chapter two examines some of the familiar contemporary objections to virtue ethics. These include objections against the theoretical distinctiveness of virtue ethics, the difficulty of codifying the virtues and providing action guidance, and the problem of explanatory inadequacies of virtue ethic theories. Chapter three presents a reconstruction of Aristotle’s virtue theory that takes his metaphysical biology to be the entry point to understanding his moral psychology. This chapter examines the distinctly Aristotelian concepts such as arete, ergon, eudaimonia, hexis, boulesis, and telos in the context of FCVE’s virtue theory. Chapter four examines the metaethical thesis that provides the normative justification on which FCVE reconciles a pluralist account of eudaimonia while maintaining its commitment to ethical objectivism about virtue and eudaimonia. I make appeal to Aristotle’s function argument to ground a shared moral ontology, which delimits the range of true beliefs about the good and the correct interpretations of the virtues, without prescribing universal moral rules. Chapter five examines the epistemology and empirical status of FCVE’s developmental account of ethical perception. I present an account that takes both the reason-responsive dispositions and the intellect’s supposition of the true good as the two mental states involved in the function of ethical perception required for moral knowledge. This account highlights that in our understanding of eudaimonia, we should not overlook Aristotle’s theory on the harmony of the soul, which can be correlated to the concept of congruence of the psychological self in contemporary psychology. (shrink)

Located at the intersection of philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of biology, this thesis aims to provide a novel approach to understanding the strong continuity between life and mind. This thesis applies the Free Energy Framework, predictive processing and the conceptual apparatus from ecological psychology to reveal different manners in which the organizational processes and principles underlying life have been enriched so as to result in cognitive processes. By using these anticipatory cognitive frameworks this thesis unveils different forms of (...) cognition at work in surprising places and considers how such expressions of cognition are ultimately driven by various forms of environmental complexity. Importing the concepts of affordances, environmental information and perceptual medium from ecological psychology into predictive processing and the Free Energy Framework, an empirically grounded account of cognition as an anticipatory process that allows living systems to adapt to various degrees of uncertainty in their environments at distinct and yet overlapping timescales is argued for. In doing so, this thesis attempts to identify both the explanatory limits of ecological coupling accounts of perception and action, and the possible environmental conditions under which the predictive brain evolved from its decentralized non-neural predecessors as a solution to uncertainty. In contributing to a novel approach to constraining the mind, the various concepts deployed in both philosophy and cognitive science are sharpened, furthering the current debate on what cognition is and how it is related to life. (shrink)

Virtue reliabilism provides an account of epistemic integration that explains how a reliable-belief forming process can become a knowledge-conducive ability of one’s cognitive character. The univocal view suggests that this epistemic integration can also explain how an external process can extend one’s cognition into the environment. Andy Clark finds a problem with the univocal view. He claims that cognitive extension is a wholly subpersonal affair, whereas the epistemic integration that virtue reliabilism puts forward requires personal-level agential involvement. To adjust the (...) univocal view, Clark recommends a subpersonal epistemic integration account that also paves way for a wholly subpersonal epistemology. Accordingly, an epistemic agent can take responsibility for her reliable belief-forming process by way of entirely subpersonal mechanisms. The aim of this thesis is to argue against a subpersonal epistemology and the need for it. First, I bring into question the conditions that motivate extended cognition: the so-called ‘glue and trust’ requirements and the functional parity principle. Neither of these conditions demands that extension should be understood in entirely subpersonal terms. On the contrary, the glue and trust conditions suggest that agents should personally and actively engage with their external vehicles to extend cognition. Further, I consider an important disparity between the two kinds of integration. Integration that prompts extension can happen immediately, but the integration that makes a reliable belief-forming process knowledge-conducive is almost always a slow process. In light of this and other similar inconsistencies between the two integration accounts, I conclude that a type of univocal view is difficult to defend. And, since that type of univocal view is the main reason for a subpersonal epistemology, the need for it does not arise. Next, I locate Clark’s main motivation for his subpersonal epistemology in his account of the predictive brain. While the predictive brain provides useful insight into how an external process might extend one’s cognition, I show it runs into problems when it tries to account for epistemic integration. Then, I explore how the concept of epistemic defeaters informs epistemic integration. Agents have to meet a specific no-defeater condition to be sensitive to the reliability of their belief-forming processes and to employ them responsibly. In an entirely subpersonal epistemology, defeasibility theory has no means to explain how an agent is rendered sensitive to the reliability of her process. Subpersonal mechanisms can become sensitive to the new process, but that does not allow the agent to employ said process responsibly. Finally, I use an AI case, based on Amazon Alexa, to argue that all accounts of epistemic integration ought to explicitly describe how one’s subpersonal mechanisms link to one’s whole person, even if the link is weak and indirect. Without this connection between one’s subpersonal mechanisms and one’s person, it can become difficult to ascribe beliefs to the agent. This becomes apparent when Alexa leads to ever-increasing layers of cognitive, mental, and agential extension. (shrink)

The theory of the moral agent is the normative theory which prescribes actions following the higher authority. In this thesis, I conduct a comparative analysis of Plato and the Laozi to uncover what they say about the moral agent. My findings will show that the same theory is used, in relation to the formation of the moral agent, the final moral ends and moral motivations, in ancient Chines and Greek philosophies, in particular the Laozi and Plato. With regard to the (...) evidence of the notion of moral agent in the Laozi and Plato, I find that both encourage people in a socio-political context to follow the role model set by an exemplary figure in each, which is the sage in the Laozi and the philosopher-king in Plato. With regard to the process of the education/cultivation of people to the stage of the role model, each related aspect of the exemplary figure has been presented, such as the final moral ends, moral psychology and their actions. I argue that we can find that the moral agent can be cultivated/educated by following a higher authority in the Laozi and Plato, the dao and the cosmic god respectively, whereas the relation between the moral agent and human society are presented differently in each philosophy. Both the dao and the cosmic god represent the highest good for humans, because they contain the principles of the order for humans to emulate. We can find that the final moral ends for the Laozi is to live in accordance with the dao, whereas for Plato it is to become godlike as much as possible. On the basis of the relation between the moral agent and the final moral ends, I argue that although both the Laozi and Plato draw attention to the connection between desires and motivation of action for moral agents, the treatment of knowledge is different between, which leads to a difference in the treatment of desires. Both think that desires are necessary for the motivations of the moral agent to act. Moral agents can be cultivated and educated and controlled in a certain way so as to regulate the desires that would motivate them to act. The moral motivation for the Laozi would for the moral agent to have no desires, whereas the best life for the moral agent in Plato would be that the rational soul rules the whole human body and soul. For the Laozi acting wuwei and being in the status of having no desires is to live in accordance with the dao, whereas for Plato, letting the rational part of the soul rule the life of human beings is the final moral end that leads the human life to become as godlike as possible. The finding of this thesis is that we can identify, interpret and evaluate the notion of the moral agent including the relation to the formation of moral agent, the final moral ends and moral psychology in both the Laozi and Plato. By identifying the notion of the moral agent in the Laozi and Plato, I demonstrate the value this could add to discussions in contemporary moral theories. (shrink)

Epistemic inequality is something we face in our everyday experience whenever we acknowledge our epistemic inferiority towards some and our epistemic superiority towards others. The negative side of this epistemic phenomenon has received due attention in the context of the debate on epistemic injustice: whenever an epistemic subject deflates the credibility of another or fails to recognize their authority qua knowers, unjust epistemic inequality is easily produced. However, this kind of inequality has an important positive side, as it can amount (...) to a fundamental opportunity for the subject to achieve epistemic goods—such as knowledge, understanding, and intellectual virtues—from those who are epistemically superior to them. This thesis inquires into the key features of the interaction between non-peer agents to provide a compelling account of epistemic inequality as a positive phenomenon, that is, as an inescapable and reliable source of epistemic goods. To achieve this overarching aim, the proposed analysis shall address three main questions, one conceptual, one normative, and one practical. The conceptual question asks what it takes for an epistemic agent to be epistemically superior to someone else. The normative question investigates the rational boundaries of the interaction between non-peer agents. From the standpoint of the epistemically superior agent, I examine the permissibility of epistemic paternalism, namely whether it can be legitimate for one to interfere with another’s agency for the epistemic benefit of the subject interfered with without consulting them on the issue. From the standpoint of the epistemically inferior agent, I examine which attitudes it is rational to have towards individuals epistemically superior to us. The practical question is about the implications of this analysis for a paradigmatic instance of interaction between non-peer subjects, such as the educational relationship between teachers and students. As a response to the conceptual question, I shall offer a pluralistic virtue-based framework that allows individuating various ways in which an individual or a collective agent—such as groups, committees, and research teams—can be epistemically superior to another. In particular, I shall distinguish between experts, authorities of belief, and authorities of understanding. As a response to the normative question, I argue that epistemic paternalism is permissible only insofar as the interferers are epistemically better positioned than the subjects interfered with, and I outline an account of what I call a “virtuous paternalist interferer”. Furthermore, I argue that there are cases in which it is rational for an epistemically inferior subject to set aside whatever belief they might have and defer to the epistemically superior interlocutor—thereby endorsing a limited version of the so-called preemptionist view of epistemic authority. Finally, as a response to the practical question, I shall propose an exemplar-based account of education, explain how it can be employed to educate the young to intellectual virtues, and defend the view from several objections raised against virtue-based approaches to education. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis explores a novel way of thinking about computation in cognitive science. It argues for what I call ‘the mechanistic account of wide computationalism’, or simply wide mechanistic computation. The key claim is that some cognitive and perceptual abilities are produced by or are the result of computational mechanisms that are, in part, located outside the individual; that computational systems, the ones that form the proper units of analysis in cognitive science, are particular types of functional mechanisms that, (...) on occasion, spread out across brain, body, and world. Wide mechanistic computation is the result of bringing together two distinct strands of thinking about computation: ‘wide’ views, which hold that computational systems can, on occasion, include parts of the surrounding environment; and ‘mechanistic’ views, which hold that computational explanation is a species of mechanistic explanation, and that computational mechanisms are a special type of functional mechanism. I argue that wide mechanistic computation draws support from several sources. First, I examine research on animal and human psychology and show that several organisms’ behaviours are properly treated as being the output of wide computational mechanisms. Second, I defend the view from several philosophical charges, including worries about its explanatory parsimony and empirical testability. Finally, I argue for the view’s theoretical credentials by showing that it can help resolve specific problems that have recently troubled 4E cognition. The result is an argument for not only the coherence but also empirical plausibility of wide mechanistic computation. On route to its main objective, the thesis also accomplishes a number of related tasks, including: providing a framework for organising and conceptualising different views of computation, securing the conceptual foundations of mechanistic computation by addressing an outstanding challenge called the ‘abstraction problem’, sounding a cautionary note about recent predictive processing accounts of extended cognition and arguing against a particular conception of levels often used within cognitive science, what is labelled the ‘hierarchical correspondence view of levels’. (shrink)

What makes scientific knowledge possible? The philosopher Immanuel Kant in his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason, had a fascinating and puzzling answer to this question. Scientific knowledge, for Kant, is made possible by the faculty of reason and its demand for systematic unity. In other words, cognition about empirical objects can aspire to be scientific only if it is rationally embedded within or transformed into a system. But how can such system form once we take into account the (...) perspectival nature of knowledge, i.e., its being situated in individual human cognitive faculties? My PhD thesis has a two-pronged objective: to reconstruct the complexity of the notion of systematicity in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; and to defend its plausibility in contemporary debates on the unity or plurality of scientific knowledge. As far as is concerned, Kant’s position is far from being clearly understood in the literature. Despite a renewed interest in Kant’s notion of systematicity in recent decades, existing contributions fail to offer a satisfactory account of it. The aim of my thesis is to provide a unified reading of reason’s systematicity as an essential feature of Kant’s analysis of the sources of cognition. In particular, I defend a novel account of theoretical reason the aims to support the following claims: systematicity is grounded in a legitimate use of reason’s ideas as prescriptive rules for empirical investigation; it is necessary to make empirical cognition possible and generate scientific hypotheses; and it gives us fundamental insights into Kant’s ‘empirical realism’ and his understanding of the role of metaphysics in science. With regard to, I show that Kant’s account of theoretical reason has much more to offer than generally acknowledged. In particular, I present it as providing a reconciling solution to the conflict between unity and pluralism in contemporary philosophy of science. Drawing inspiration from Kant’s ‘perspectivism,’ I argue that unity and pluralism are to be thought as mutually inclusive principles of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This project is concerned with the attempt to diagnose certain types of deductive inferences as exhibiting failure of transmission of justification. The canonical example of alleged transmission failure is G. E. Moore’s infamous ‘proof’ of the external world, in which Moore reasoned here is a hand, therefore the external world exists. If the transmission failure diagnosis is correct, then this inference is incapable of providing a route to learning of its conclusion on the grounds that it is only if one (...) already has some justification to believe its conclusion that one can acquire justification for its premise. The thesis presents two novel problems for the transmission failure diagnosis. Firstly, this diagnosis is only appealing if it is able to safeguard epistemic closure, but it is unclear whether it is able to do this once we distinguish between propositional and doxastic justification. Secondly, a dilemma is presented for entitlement theory, the traditional framework for understanding how there could be justification for believing the conclusions at issue. The dilemma arises once we consider the question of what the apposite degree of confidence is that is licenced by an entitlement, the upshot of which is that either entitlement theory is unmotivated, or it leads to irrational doxastic attitudes. In light of these problems, an alternative framework for understanding the phenomenon of transmission failure is presented. This framework rejects a common assumption in the literature that we can only accommodate the phenomenon by appealing to internalist notions of justification. The resulting externalist framework is defended against two potentially devastating objections. Finally, implications for how these views regarding the structure of justification bear on issues in the epistemology of testimony are considered, and it is argued that a certain family of views in the literature on testimony are committed to certain problematic views regarding the structure of justification. (shrink)

The objectives of this PhD were to investigate forgetting, how to measure forgetting and what are the underlying mechanisms behind this effect. 1. Following the progress of forgetting over time will require repeated testing. There is strong evidence that this may enhance recall, while opposing evidence, from part-set cueing studies suggests that probing one item may reduce the memorability of others within the set. It appears that whenever we test memory, we change it, but how? Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 (...) compare long-term forgetting in healthy younger and older individuals and investigates whether repeated partial testing will enhance long-term memory performance based on the level of semantic coherence or integration of material to be remembered, possibly via a relearning or a priming effect. 2. Some previous studies showed that, under particular experimental conditions, patients suffering from a range of memory deficits appear to retain what they have learnt as well as controls. A challenge to this view comes from a subsample of epileptic patients, who have been found to show accelerated long-term forgetting, in some cases showing normal learning over a period of 30 minutes to one hour, followed by dramatic loss of information later on. Whether ALF applies to other patient populations remains to be established. Experiment 3 examines long-term forgetting as well as the effect of repeated partial testing in healthy people and in people with Alzheimer’s Disease. Assessing whether AD patients present with ALF and whether repeated partial testing delays long-term forgetting in both groups. 3. A frequent assumption is that when comparing two groups they should be matched on level of initial learning. At the same time, several influential studies from the early literature suggest that initial degrees of learning do not influence the rate of forgetting in the long-term. Experiment 4 is a replication of Experiment 1 from Slamecka & McElree’s classic study. 4. Achieving a particular degree of learning at encoding will require more exposures for lower performing individuals compared to high performing individuals. Therefore, Experiment 5 aimed to examine whether varying the degrees of learning at encoding will differentially affect participants long-term forgetting rate based on their individual learning capacity. 5. An important classification of long-term memory is based on its temporal direction. While retrospective memory deals with past information, the remembering of future intentions depends on prospective memory. The similarities between these two memory types have been frequently raised, yet an important distinction lies in their evaluation. When we measure RM tasks the participant is specifically directed to retrieve information, while when measuring PM tasks, the retrieval of the intended action is self-initiated. Experiment 6 investigated whether the retrieval of an intended PM action would be facilitated if participants repeated back the PM task multiple times at encoding. 6. In everyday life we typically only remember the gist of events that are encountered once and processed incidentally. Similarly, even events that are encountered repeatedly can be processed incidentally, with much of the rich contextual details being forgotten. In the forgetting literature, one class of such repetitive events such as taking medication daily, refer to habitual PM. In habitual PM the necessity of initiating a certain action is highly dependent on the accurate memory of the previously performed action. The aim of Experiment 7 was to examine forgetting of habitual PM tasks and its underlying mechanisms, as well as to devise a method to enhance the memory of previously performed actions in habitual PM. (shrink)

The thesis of this thesis is that expressivists can and should develop a theory of normative propositions that can play an explanatory role in their theory of normative thought and discourse. It has been widely assumed that expressivists cannot make explanatory appeal to normative propositions because propositional content is representational in the following sense: a proposition is or determines a way that reality must be when that proposition is true. If a normative proposition is or determines a way reality must (...) be when that proposition is true, and believing a proposition involves taking that proposition to be true, it follows that believing a normative proposition involves taking reality to be some particular way. But expressivists deny that normative thought represents reality in this way. Rather, normative thought is best explained as having some distinctive nonrepresentational function, such as motivating our actions and coordinating our attitudes. As such, almost all expressivists have rejected the existence of normative propositions, except in a deflationary and hence non-explanatory sense. However, by rejecting the existence of normative propositions, expressivists face a number of serious problems in relation to explaining normative thought and discourse. These problems have more recently led some to suggest that expressivists should embrace the existence of normative propositions within their theory of normative thought and discourse. This thesis takes up this idea and examines a number of different frameworks in which expressivists might develop a theory of normative propositions. It argues that expressivists should reject the assumption that normative propositions are representational. If a normative proposition is not or does not determine a way reality must be when it is true, then believing that proposition need not involve representing reality as being some particular way or other. I explore several different views about propositions and argue that they each admit of generalisation such that some but not all propositions are representational. I argue that some of these views are better than others for the purposes of expressivism. (shrink)

Ever-increasingly complex AI technology is being introduced into society, with ever-more impressive capabilities. As AI tech advances, it will become harder to tell whether machines are relevantly different from human beings in terms of the moral consideration they are owed. This is a significant practical concern. As more advanced AIs become part of our daily lives, we could face moral dilemmas where we are forced to choose between harming a human, or harming one or several of these machines. Given these (...) possibilities, we cannot withhold judgement about AI moral standing until we achieve logical certainty, but need guidance to make decisions. I will present a pragmatic framework that will enable us to have sufficient evidence for decision-making, even if it does not definitively prove which entities have moral standing. First, I defend adopting a welfarist moral theory, where having the capacity for well-being determines that a being has moral standing. I then argue that a desire-based theory of welfare is acceptable to a wide range of positions and should be adopted. It is therefore necessary to articulate a theory of desire, and I demonstrate by reference to discourse in ethics that a phenomenological conception of desire is most compatible with the way ethical theory has been discussed. From there, we need to establish a test for possessing the capacity for phenomenological desire. This can be accomplished by finding observed cases where a lack of specific morally-relevant phenomenal states inhibits the performance of a certain task in humans. If a machine can consistently exhibit the behaviour in question, we have evidence that it has the phenomenal states necessary for moral standing. With reference to recent experimental results, I present clear and testable criteria such that if an AI were to succeed at certain tasks, we would have a reason to treat it as though it did have moral standing, and demonstrate that modern-day AI has given no evidence as yet that it has the phenomenal experiences that would give it moral standing. The tasks in question are tests of moral and social aptitude. Success at these tests would not be certain proof of moral standing, but it would be sufficient to base our decisions on, which is the best we can hope for at the moment. Finally, I examine the practical consequences of these conclusions for our future actions. The use of this particular criterion has significant and interesting results that might change things significantly in terms of whether applications of this research are worth the cost and risks. (shrink)

The Turing Test is an experimental paradigm to test for intelligence, where an entity’s intelligence is inferred from its ability, during a text-based conversation, to be recognized as a human by the human judge. The advantage of this paradigm is that it encourages alternative versions of the test to be designed; and it can include any field of human endeavour. However, it has two major problems: it can be passed by an entity that produces uncooperative but human-like responses ; and (...) it is not sensitive to how the entity produces the conversation. In light of these two problems, I propose a new version of the TT, the Questioning Turing Test. In the QTT, the task of the entity is not to hold a conversation, but to accomplish an enquiry with as few human-like questions as possible. The job of the human judge is to provide the answers and, like in the TT, to decide whether the entity is human or machine. The QTT has the advantage of parametrising the entity along two further dimensions in addition to ‘human-likeness’: ‘correctness’, evaluating if the entity accomplishes the enquiry; and ‘strategicness’, evaluating how well the entity carries out the enquiry, in terms of the number of questions asked – the fewer, the better. Moreover, in the experimental design of the QTT, the test is not the enquiry per se, but rather the comparison between the performances of humans and machines. The results gained from the QTT show that its experimental design minimises false positives and negatives; and avoids both Artificial Stupidity and Blockhead. (shrink)

This thesis tackles the problem of realism in science by examining the analyses and insights that pluralism and perspectivism might o0fer. Scientific perspectivism was introduced by Giere as a way to use insights from the semantic analysis of theories to strike a middle ground between realism and anti-realism about science, which I discuss in chapter 1. The project here attempts a similar balance in the context of disagreement in specific scientific-historical contexts. It does so by suggesting we think of some (...) forms of disagreement as taxonomic, or identity, disagreements. Scientists use perspectival taxonomies and when problems with a given taxonomy arise, rival “perspectives” emerge. Such problems can be resolved by appeal to trans-perspectival standards of assessment. This approach has the advantage of being sensitive to the historical context in which past theories were used, a virtue that anti-realist views typically have. At the same time, perspectivism does not fall into an anti-realist attitude toward science because it is compatible with stronger realist commitments to the interpretation of scientific theories. To make this argument, I first discuss how data and data-to-phenomena inferences depend upon perspectival taxonomy and hence cannot always be used unambiguously to resolve disagreements. I next articulate the perspectival view, defend it, and situate it within the literature on scientific pluralism in chapter 3. Chapter 4 provides a perspectival interpretation of a paradigmatic case of historical disagreement: the Chemical Revolution and the debate between Lavoisier and Priestley on oxygen and phlogiston. In chapter 5 I distinguish and defend my own view against two influential alternatives that also aspire to provide insightful analyses of disagreement in science. (shrink)

This thesis is about the creativity in the East and the West, but I will mainly focus on the view of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy and Chinese philosophy. In the first chapter, I will explore the concept of creativity, the history of creativity, and the research on creativity, including the creativity research in psychology and philosophy, which will set the stage for further disscusion. Then in the second chapter, I will start from Plato’s dialogue, Ion, and explore the traditional (...) theory of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy, and claim that their creative ability is inspired by divine being. After this, I will show people’s view on creativity has undergone a process of demystification. During this process, people gradually began to resist the divine source and explore the world individually and independently. Meanwhile, the meaning of the concept of creativity has become broader, since it is not limited to poem any more, but it can be applied to other fields, such as art, science, and education. In the third chapter, I will turn to the modern creativity theory, including the lateral thinking and emotional creativity, and explore how to be creative with lateral thinking techniques and how to improve creativity through emotion regulation. After the examination in the West, I will turn to the theory of creativity in Chinese philosophy, by focusing on classical works in Daoism and Confucianism. In the fourth chapter, I will explore the view of creativity in philosophy of Daoism. I will claim that the creativity in Daoism is natural and cosmological, and there is no external creative source, so I will claim it is self- creativity, which is distinct from the ancient Western creativity pushed by external divine power. In the fifth chapter, I will argue that the creativity in Confucianism is evolutionary, which is unlike the revolutionary creativity in the West, and I will propose the way to become creative in Confucianism based on its classics, Analects, and then will explore the creativity principle and how the agent cultivate their creative ability in Confucianism. In the conclusion, I will summarize the difference between the creativity in East and West, from the perspective of the source of creativity, nature of creativity. I will claim that the source of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy is divine being, whereas there is no divine source for creativity in Chinese philosophy, therefore, the creativity in the West traditionally is inspired creativity, while the creativity in the East traditionally is natural and cosmological creativity. In addition, the concept of creativity in the West is revolutionary, whereas the concept of creativity in the East is evolutionary and the moral function of creativity is also addressed in Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis explores the cardinal importance of cosmological and theological narratives in our engagement with the contemporary ecological transition. Drawing upon the analyses of political philosophers Hans Jonas and Eric Voegelin, I argue that the category of Gnosticism provides a fruitful angle from which to approach the present environmental issue as well as the challenge of an ecological inhabiting of the earth. Originally referring to a variety of religious systems which bloomed in early Christianity, the concept of Gnosticism gravitates (...) around the cardinal theme of a cultural estrangement from the world. While Hans Jonas’ study of Gnosticism elucidates the nihilistic dimension of the structural dualism pervading modern cosmology by relating the latter to a deep-ingrained tendency to escape from the world – which his environmental ethics of responsibility famously attempted to remedy –, Eric Voegelin focuses on the political manifestations of this spiritual inclination. Voegelin’s insights and his developments around the platonic concept of metaxy contribute to unravel what modern gnostic movements struggle to contain: the irreducible in-betweenness of being in the world. This enduring and ubiquitous in-betweenness of worldly processes, I submit, is what simultaneously moves and resists the dualistic structure of modern cosmology: it also lies at the core of what is being unveiled along the ecological mutation, what remains unthought and yet must be thought. The perspective of Gnosticism thus enables both Jonas and Voegelin to reach a greater analytical depth as well as a critical distance from within the system of thought they intend to approach. Focusing on the notion of inhabiting, the “hermeneutics of Gnosticism” developed in this research aims to further illuminate some of the cosmological tropes framing our understanding of and involvement in the present ecological mutation. It uncovers for instance such pervasive ideas as that of an abyssal alienation from the world, a perpetual yearning to overcome the conditions of our inhabiting, or a radical dualism between God and the world as compelling cultural spells cast upon our inhabiting of the world. As I draw attention to some of these spells and how they bewitch the way we inhabit the world, I hope for the tropes of our inhabiting to be reclaimed on the path to a resilient and peaceful inhabiting of the earth. My analysis of the spectre of Gnosticism in our cosmologies brings into relief the relevance of alternate ways of dwelling and of engaging with the present ecological transition. These are mobilized by alternate narratives which, from process philosophy to ecofeminist thought through the poetics of créolité, recount a hopeful entanglement with the world, the resilient openness of our inhabiting, and a joyful, vernacular overflowing of our Gaian becomings. (shrink)

Working Memory refers to cognitive functions that support the ready availability of a small amount of information temporarily, while we undertake ongoing actions and mental activities, and is viewed as a core mechanism underpinning higher-order cognitive abilities. Moreover, the functioning of WM abilities is important for autonomy and wellbeing in older adults. As assessed, WM suffers pronounced, linear decline during adult ageing. However, merely establishing that younger adults outperform older adults on a given cognitive task is of limited value given (...) that it is uninformative regarding how and why WM declines with age. This thesis was inspired by research that has suggested that some aspects of WM decline faster than others. Indeed, verbal WM appears least susceptible, and visuospatial WM most susceptible to age-related decline. In six experiments, I moved beyond the ‘Dull Hypothesis’ and tested whether older adults approached WM tasks differently from younger adults, perhaps relying on relatively intact verbal abilities while performing visual memory tasks. Crucially, visual material – in everyday life as well as in memory experiments – may be remembered via verbal codes or visual traces, or both. In some WM theories, visual and verbal material is seen as maintained by separate mechanisms. The Multiple-Component model of WM is based on the postulate that visuospatial and verbal information is stored separately in dedicated storage buffers, which may also rely on separate rehearsal mechanisms. If one mechanism declines more with age, perhaps older adults strategically recruit a different mechanism. This led to our central research question: Do we approach cognitive tasks differently as we age? I investigated this in several WM paradigms, as outlined below. The first series of experiments addressed the debate about whether older adults have a specific deficit in the ability to bind and remember conjunctions of features, by investigating the consequences of allowing verbal rehearsal in visual feature-binding tasks. In experiments 1 to 4, I studied the role of verbal labels in two different feature-binding paradigms to test whether discrepancies in the literature can be explained by verbal rehearsal of visual features, which might vary by age group. I found that overall, visual memory for difficult-to-label, noncategorical, visual information appeared especially limited for older adults, likely because it impedes engagement of other systems, such as verbal WM or longterm memory. Results regarding the potential implications for discrepancies in the feature-binding literature were mixed. Next, I looked at the effect of instructing or preventing verbal labelling in a continuous colour memory paradigm, using a mixture model which allowed comparison of continuous and categorical memory representations. Labelling improved memory performance in both age groups, but older adults appeared to spontaneously rehearse verbal labels sub-vocally more than younger adults when simply instructed to perform the task in silence. Finally, I investigated the role of strategic approaches in an N-back WM training paradigm. In this study, I instructed participants to use a visualisation strategy previously found to improve N-back performance in younger adults. I found that both younger and older adults benefitted from the instructed strategy and performed better than uninstructed controls, but some evidence suggested that the strategy was more difficult to implement for older adults. I also found significant associations between N-back performance and the type, and level of detail, of self-generated strategies in the uninstructed participants. Combined, the results suggested that measures of performance and capacity partly reflect the extents to which participants apply appropriate strategies. Strategic mediation should be considered in research aiming to understand memory for visual features, continuous colour memory, and the mechanisms of WM training. Our results highlighted that strategic differences between younger and older adults may be crucial to interpret the age-related decline of memory, as measured in these paradigms, thus illustrating the importance of controlling differences in age-related strategic preferences in visual memory tasks. These differences may be informative for our understanding of age-related cognitive decline, suggesting that older adults may compensate for decline of some functions by approaching tasks differently. (shrink)

This thesis explores whether sensorimotor enactivism can be extended to flavour and smell perception. Sensorimotor enactivism claims that perceptual experience is constituted by skilful bodily engagement with the world. This engagement is said to be imbued with an implicit understanding of sensorimotor contingencies — law-like relations holding between bodily activity and sensory changes. The sensorimotor approach is intended as a non-visuocentric theory of perception, purporting to offer an account of all varieties of perceptual experience. However, until now there has been (...) no sustained research into the application of sensorimotor enactivism to flavour and smell. Moreover, some researchers have argued that these senses are problem cases for the theory, and that facts about flavour and smell serve to refute the approach. This thesis responds to such worries and addresses the gap in the literature. It argues that sensorimotor enactivism can be extended to flavour and smell and offers a positive account of how we should think about our perceptual experiences through these modalities. Flavour and smell, it will be argued, do not allow immediate perceptual access to ordinary physical objects like roses and tomatoes. But rather, they give us immediate access to odours and flavours. In order to understand what our perceptual access to such entities consists in, this thesis draws upon tools from Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology allows for a modality-neutral way of thinking about perceptual organisation and helps us to arrive at a useful notion of ‘perceptual objecthood’. The entities we perceive through flavour and smell are much more diffuse than the ordinary three-dimensional objects that we perceive through sight, and the phenomenology of these kinds of perception seem particularly difficult to articulate. I argue that flavour and smell are still akin to other senses like vision in that they allow us to perceive the world as segregated into discrete perceptual objects, which exhibit figure-ground segregation and perceptual constancies. An understanding of perceptual organisation and objecthood allows for a more refined sensorimotor approach and will help us to arrive at solutions to further philosophical queries, such as whether flavour and smell are multisensory, and what the role of memory is in these perceptual experiences. (shrink)

An orthodox view in epistemology holds that propositional knowledge is an absolute ‘yes or no’ affair, viz, propositional knowledge is ungradable. Call this view epistemic absolutism. This thesis purports to challenge this absolutist orthodoxy and develop an underexplored position—epistemic gradualism, which was initially proposed by Stephen Hetherington. As opposed to epistemic absolutism, epistemic gradualism argues that propositional knowledge can come in degrees. This thesis will examine motivations for endorsing absolutism and then, drawing on Hetherington’s original objections to absolutism, prove that (...) absolutism is ill-grounded. In particular, I will explain why the primary ground for insisting absolutism, to wit, linguistic evidence from ordinary English language, fails to entail that knowledge-that is an ungradable concept. After that, I will revisit Hetherington’s two versions of gradualist theories—both will be revealed to be defective. Moreover, the current model of the debate between absolutism and gradualism constructed by Hetherington will give rise to an equivocal attitude towards the gradability of knowledge. That is, there is a prevailing equivocal view which agrees that knowledge can be improved by virtue of better justification but denies that knowledge is, by and large, a gradable concept. This thesis proposes to remodel the debate between absolutism and gradualism by basing it on a dispute about whether knowledge has a cut-off point distinguishing knowledge from everything that falls short of knowledge. Succinctly put, whether propositional knowledge has a threshold. It will be argued that gradualism, so interpreted, should deny that knowledge has a threshold, and treat knowledge as a spectrum concept analogous to ‘red’, ‘warm’, and so forth. The theoretical merits of this new model of the debate and the reconstructed gradualism will be shown. With a better-constructed gradualist account of knowledge in play, I will demonstrate how gradualism enjoys advantages over absolutism by illustrating gradualism’s potential applications in solving epistemological issues that absolutism finds difficult to address. For example, issues related to epistemic luck, faultless disagreements, scepticism, and the relationship between different types of knowledge. (shrink)