What do people consciously experience when they read? There has been almost no rigorous research on this question, and opinions diverge radically among both philosophers and psychologists. We describe three studies of the phenomenology of reading and its relationship to memory of textual detail and general cognitive abilities. We find three main results. First, there is substantial variability in reports about reading experience, both within and between participants. Second, reported reading experience varies with passage type: passages with dialogue prompted increased (...) reports of inner speech, while passages with vivid visual detail prompted increased reports of visual imagery. Third, reports of visual imagery experiences, inner speech experiences, and experiences of conscious visual perception of the words on the page were at best weakly related to general cognitive abilities and memory of visual and auditory details. (shrink)

Of course it has always been recognized, in philosophical circles at least, that such deductions are at best plausible inferences, rather than a species of logically valid inferences, and we will not pretend otherwise. Still, it seems interesting to consider the question: why do people have puzzles, games of chance, games of strategy, and aesthetic objects, universally in human societies?

The contemporary operating environment for deployed United States military operations largely focuses on deployments to predominantly Islamic countries. The differences in cultural values between d...

Little research has explored the perceptions of military medical providers in the deployed environment and how their perceptions may change over time across an extended military conflict. To our knowledge, no studies have examined military medical providers’ opinions on readiness for their roles in the post-9/11 contingency operations. What has been published indicates that, during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, military medical providers often deployed with little notice and minimal formal training. The present report examines data obtained from multiple (...) cohorts of military medical providers (N = 321) deployed to Iraq between 2005 and 2009. Despite varying degrees of support from the U.S. public, our findings indicate that U.S. Air Force military medical providers’ support for the people of Iraq, their belief in the mission, and their ability to influence change did not vary with time. (shrink)

One striking point of similarity is this: there is a sense in which we feel we do not know what we are talking about. By this we mean that our remarks to follow do not constitute a theory. And as evidence for this contention we cite the fact that we have no logically valid arguments to support what we say. To be sure, we believe ourselves to be in very good company in this respect, at least as far as the (...) behavioral sciences and systems of synthetic philosophy are concerned--we do not believe others know what they are talking about either. Whitehead, for example, gives us very few arguments in favor of his metaphysics--he just tells us how the world looks to him. In this paper we will be presumptuous enough to try to tell you how the world looks to us. At worst the picture we want to draw will be misleading; at best it may suggest some experimental or formal problems of interest. (shrink)

In the first experiment, I exhibit unreliable judgment about the primeness or divisibility of four-digit numbers, in contrast to a seeming Excel program. In the second experiment, I exhibit an imperfect memory for arbitrary-seeming three-digit number and letter combinations, in contrast to my seeming collaborator with seemingly hidden notes. In the third experiment, I seem to suffer repeated defeats at chess. In all three experiments, the most straightforward interpretation of the experiential evidence is that something exists in the universe that (...) is superior in the relevant respects – theoretical reasoning (about primes), memorial retention (for digits and letters), or practical reasoning (at chess) – to my own solipsistically-conceived self. (shrink)

Gonzales tells Mark Crimmins (1992) that Crimmins knows him under two guises, and that under his other guise Crimmins thinks him an idiot. Knowing his cleverness, but not knowing which guise he has in mind, Crimmins trusts Gonzales but does not know which of his beliefs to revise. He therefore asserts to Gonzales. (FBI) I falsely believe that you are an idiot.

If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy). (...) By these three measures, audiences in ethics sessions did not appear to behave any more courteously than did audiences in non-ethics sessions. However, audiences in environmental ethics sessions did appear to leave behind less trash. (shrink)

I believe that Moore's appeal to common sense has been misunder-stood both by his defenders and his critics. Besides the mistakes of the latter, there is one enormous howler which, in my opinion, the former have committed. This is to confuse or coalesce two quite distinct appeals which he made, namely the appeal to common sense and the appeal to ordinary language.

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

This essay develops a liberal account of the mens rea requirement of criminal liability and identifies the fault level required by that account. By “a liberal account” is meant one that interprets the meaning of mens rea in a way that reconciles liability to coercion with the individual's inviolability. The article argues that the wrongdoer's choice to interfere or to risk interfering with another agent's capacity to act on his own ends is the level of fault required to make punishment (...) implicitly self-imposed by the recipient and thus distinguishable from the wrongdoer's violence. Such a choice is one to which a denial of rights of agency may be logically imputed, a denial by which the wrongdoer implicitly authorizes his own coercibility. This version of subjectivism is, I argue, invulnerable against criticisms leveled against other versions. While staking out defensible subjectivist ground, the article criticizes the character, choice, and opportunity theories of mens rea proposed by Fletcher, Moore, and Hart, and elaborates the interpretations of exculpatory conditions flowing from the subjectivist thesis. Finally, it addresses arguments advanced by Ripstein, Duff, and Horder for eliminating the requirement of a conscious choice to do that which amounts to a denial of rights. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey (1931) wrote: If two people are arguing 'if p will q?' and both are in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q. We can say that they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. Let us take the first sentence the way it is often taken, as proposing the following test for the acceptability of an indicative conditional: ‘If p then q’ (...) is acceptable to a subject S iff, were S to accept p and consider q, S would accept q. Now consider an indicative conditional of the form (1) If p, then I believe p. Suppose that you accept p and consider ‘I believe p’. To accept p while rejecting ‘I believe p’ is tantamount to accepting the Moore-paradoxical sentence ‘p and I do not believe p’, and so is irrational. To accept p while suspending judgment about ‘I believe p’ is irrational for similar reasons. So rationality requires that if you accept p and consider ‘I believe p’, you accept ‘I believe p’. (shrink)

William K. Frankena has himself authoritatively and engagingly narrated the itinerarium of his mind from youthful cognitivism in ethics, as a beginner ‘of Calvinistic background and Hegelian sympathies’ who contrived to combine ‘naturalism about “good” with intuitionism about “ought” ’, to his mature noncognitivist rationalism as a major philosopher of sophisticated analytic technique and Calvinist sympathies. A number of his characteristic earlier opinions were elaborated in response to the writings of G. E. Moore; and this body of work as (...) a young man contains the seeds of his later development. Yet the past thirty years have radically altered the perspective from which Moore and his influence are now viewed. What changes does our altered perspective on Moore make to our understanding of Frankena? (shrink)

The author emphasizes Moore's contributions to philosophy and discusses his appeals to common sense and to ordinary language and his concept of the theory of meaning. This is followed by a close examination of the method of analysis. The application of the method is then illustrated in chapters on Moore's ethics and on his views on visual perception.

This book addresses the retributive and "orthodox subjectivist" theories that dominate criminal justice theory alongside recent "revisionist" and "postmodern" approaches. Norrie argues that all these approaches, together with their faults and contradictions, stem from their orientation to themes in Kantian moral philosophy. He explores an alternative relational or dialectical approach; examines the work of Ashworth, Duff, Fletcher, Moore, Smith, and Williams; and considers key doctrinal issues.

Adrian Moore’s paper continues the development of a radical re-interpretation of Kant’s practical philosophy initiated by his Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty. [Moore, 2003] I have discussed elsewhere why it seems to me that Moore’s work, taken as a composite with that of his co-symposiasts today Philip Stratton-Lake and Burt Louden, adds up to a comprehensive and radical re-assessment of the contemporary significance of Kant’s practical philosophy which moral philosophers generally ought not to ignore. [Thomas, 2004] (...) Moore states that he is engaged in today’s paper “in a rational reconstruction of Kant …. sufficiently Kantian to be at least worth taking seriously. But I shall certainly part company with Kant at various points.” [Moore, 2005 p. 1] I shall, similarly, not be evaluating Moore’s arguments in terms of their fidelity to Kant; that would not be be the most fruitful way to engage with his project. It is better evaluated as a free-standing meta- 2 ethical position that draws on Kant and as a position that seems to me one of the most interesting on offer in contemporary meta-ethics. Moore’s overall strategy has three separable components. First, he accepts that there is no such thing as pure practical reason, as that very idea would violate the internal reasons constraint. [Williams, 1981, 1995a, 2001] Second, he makes a concession, which softens the impact of this first admission, to the effect that concept possession in the context of a given social practice has a range of normative commitments including practical commitments. Third, Moore emphasises the continuity between the practical orientation of living by concepts and the general project of making rational sense. It is this latter idea, in particular, that leads his general arguments in his book length study into Kant’s religious as well as his moral writings. On the first point, Moore is simply prepared to work with the idea that a general contrast between “reasons” and “motives” is not helpful.. (shrink)

Studies of the prevalence and contents of codes of conduct in the private sector show that their use to define an ethical environment or culture, and their effective implementation, must be as part of a learning process that requires inculcation, reinforcement and measurement. Consequently, the public sector must realise it cannot look solely to formal codes to revive and sustain public sector values. Alan Doig is Professor of Public Services Management, and John Wilson is Principal Lecturer and Head of (...) the Centre for Public Services Management, at Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University. (shrink)

A series of imitation games involving 3-participant (simultaneous comparison of two hidden entities) and 2-participant (direct interrogation of a hidden entity) were conducted at Bletchley Park on the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth: 23 June 2012. From the ongoing analysis of over 150 games involving (expert and non-expert, males and females, adults and child) judges, machines and hidden humans (foils for the machines), we present six particular conversations that took place between human judges and a hidden entity that (...) produced unexpected results. From this sample we focus on features of Turing’s machine intelligence test that the mathematician/code breaker did not consider in his examination for machine thinking: the subjective nature of attributing intelligence to another mind. (shrink)

The recent death of Peter McHugh becomes an occasion for the remembrance and recollection of the distinctive form of reflexive or analytic social inquiry, which framed his work and that of his longtime friend and collaborator, Alan Blum. Following dual appointments at York University, Toronto, Canada in 1972, Blum and McHugh’s partnership formed the basis for a community of scholars and students throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. A brief review of McHugh and Blum’s works shows theoretical roots in (...) social constructivism and a deep appreciation of the linguistic turn, which in turn lead to the development of a form of social analysis that meets the stringent requirements of a reflexive sociology by repudiating any claim to a privileged exemption of theoretical speech (practice) from the hermeneutical circle of speech and language. Blum and McHugh are shown to embrace and not to evade the hermeneutical circle by a form of social inquiry that subverts the inherent possibilities available within speech and social convention to make available an encounter with the (moral) authority or form of life for that self-same speech. With each example of everyday life or conventional usage, McHugh (and Blum) move from theorizing which formulates the complexity of a particular instance of social interaction through its rules, to the question of the form of life that make that particular instance of the rules possible. It is the pursuit of transparency between speech and its roots in language that informed and continues to inform the distinctive style of social theory fostered at York-Toronto under the orchestration of McHugh and Blum. (shrink)

J'examine d'abord trois sortes de fondations métaphysiques de l'éthique : ontologique (Aristote, G. E. Moore), non-cognitiviste (Stevenson, Havre), et rationnelle épistémologique (Kant). Ces théories ne donnent pas des fondations catégoriques et déterminées. Ensuite, je présente une esquisse de ma théorie selon laquelle l'action humaine donne la fondation ontologique et rationnelleépistémologique de l'éthique. First I examine three kinds of metaphysical foundations f or ethics: ontological (Aristotle, G. E. Moore), non-cognitivist (Stevenson, Hare) and rational-epistemological (Kant). These do not provide foundations (...) that are categorical and determinate.Then I briefly sketch my own theory that human action provides the ontological and rational-epistemological foundation of ethics. (shrink)

Towards the end of 1911, Russell complains that philosophy has unfortunately not produced a set of religious beliefs that he can rely on in his personal life. Early in his career philosophy had appeared very promising. But the adoption of G.E. Moores's philosophical views put paid to the "last hope of getting any creed out of philosophy". My paper is an attempt to show that Russell ought to celebrate, and not complain about the products of his philosophical endeavours. His correspondence (...) with Lady Ottoline Morrell contains a fascinating methodological hypothesis on the relationship between emotions and understanding: an hypothesis that can be used to produce the religion that Russell is after in 1911. This view will later form the basis of some of Russell's most obscure writings on religion - namely, his work on mysticism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the Kantian argument put forward by Alan Gewirth in Reason and Morality, that morality, which is identified with liberal principles of justice, is entailed in the standpoint of self‐interest, and can be discerned through the exercise of theoretical reason. This chapter argues that it fails to overcome the dualisms that bedevilled Kant's version of this argument.

This essay defends the basis of morality as held by non-believers by arguing that we just like believers learn our morality by learning our language – which necessarily involves learning about the world, the “forms of life”. First other attempts by Niose, Epstein and Harris to argue for humanist morality are considered and rejected, the latter rejection based on G.E. Moore’s “open question” argument against naturalism. Contrary to Hume’s contention that it is impossible to jump the logical chasm from (...) “is” to “ought”, it is contended in this essay that to understand morally relevant concepts, one has to already understand that they are either good or bad because to learn one’s native language is to learn what sorts of actions are right or wrong. This allows critical judgment about what is right or wrong. Humanism is based on such critical judgment. That is what makes it most moral. Deciding which acts are right or wrong is a matter of deciding what relevant facts apply to the situation. Some corollaries of the fact that humanism is moral because it relies first and foremost on critical judgment are considered. (shrink)