This book represents the first major attempt by any author to provide an integrated account of the evidence for bias in human reasoning across a wide range of disparate psychological literatures. The topics discussed involve both deductive and inductive reasoning as well as statistical judgement and inference. In addition, the author proposes a general theoretical approach to the explanations of bias and considers the practical implications for real world decision making. The theoretical stance of the book is based on a (...) distinction between preconscious heuristic processes which determine the mental representation of 'relevant' features of the problem content, and subsequent analytic reasoning processes which generate inferences and judgements. Phenomena discussed and interpreted within this framework include feature matching biases in propositional reasoning, confirmation bias, biasing and debiasing effects of knowledge on reasoning, and biases in statistical judgement normally attributed to 'availability' and 'representativeness' heuristics. In the final chapter, the practical consequences of bias for real life decision making are considered, together with various issues concerning the problem of 'debiasing'. The major approaches discussed are those involving education and training on the one hand, and the development of intelligent software and interactive decision aids on the other. (shrink)

‘A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.’ This paper is an attempt to follow Russell’s advice by using a puzzle about the contingent a priori to test and explore certain theories of reference and modality. No one could claim that (...) the puzzle is of any great philosophical importance by itself, but to understand it, one has to get clear about certain aspects of the theory of reference; and to solve it, one has to think a little more deeply than one is perhaps accustomed about what it means to say that a statement is contingent or necessary. (shrink)

This volume collects thirteen papers by one of the leading philosophers of his generation, who died prematurely in 1980.

Real Life Bully Prevention For Real Kids addresses the pervasive problem of bullying by offering students hands-on activities. Teachers will want to use this book in their classrooms with their students as part of the school’s anti-bullying curriculum. As an added bonus, the activities reinforce English/language arts, social studies, and health education curricular goals. Counselors, therapists, and school administrators can also use the activities in large and small group instruction. Additionally, leaders of after-school programs and youth leadership programs, such as (...) scouting, dramatics classes, and religious education classes, will find the activities helpful in addressing their bully prevention programs. Each activity contains a description, goals for children, and helpful hints for adults to guide their youngsters through the program. (shrink)

Drawing on findings in psychology, neuroscience, and utilising the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this work argues that our experience of time may...

In days past, epistemologists expended a good deal of effort trying to analyze the basing relation—the relation between a belief and its basis. No satisfying account was offered, and the project was largely abandoned. Younger epistemologists, however, have begun to yearn for an adequate theory of basing. I aim to deliver one. After establishing some data and arguing that traditional accounts of basing are unsatisfying, I introduce a novel theory of the basing relation: the dispositional theory. It begins with the (...) pedestrian observation that beliefs stand or fall with their bases. The theory I offer is an elucidation and refinement of this thought. (shrink)

Truth and Meaning is a classic collection of original essays on fundamental questions in the philosophy of language.

Papers delivered at the International Philosophy Year conference at Brockport, 1967-68. Includes bibliographical references.

There is an urgent call for nurses to address climate change, especially in advocating for those most under threat to the impacts. Social justice is important to nurses in their relations with individuals and populations, including actions to address climate justice. The purpose of this article is to present a Global Nurse Agenda for Climate Justice to spark dialog, provide direction, and to promote nursing action for just‐relations and responsibility for planetary health. Grounding ourselves within the Mi'kmaw concept of Etuaptmumk (...) (two‐eyed seeing), we suggest that climate justice is both call and response, moving nurses from silence to Ksaltultinej (love as action). We review the movement for climate justice in nursing, weaving between our own stories, our relations with Mi'kmaw ways of knowing, and the stories of the movement, with considerations for the (w)holistic perspectives foundational to nursing's metaparadigm of person, environment, and health. We provide a background to the work of the Global Nurse Agenda for Climate Justice steering committee including their role at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, 2021, and share our own stories of action to frame this agenda. We accept our Responsibility for the challenges of climate justice with humility and invite others to join us. (shrink)

In common with a number of other authors I believe that there has been a paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning, specifically the area traditionally labelled as the study of deduction. The deduction paradigm was founded in a philosophical tradition that assumed logicality as the basis for rational thought, and provided binary propositional logic as the agreed normative framework. By contrast, many contemporary authors assume that people have degrees of uncertainty in both premises and conclusions, and reject binary logic (...) as a workable normative system. I discuss a number of questions and challenges for this new psychology of reasoning, including the following: (a) Do we need an alternative normative system, such as Bayesianism, for the new paradigm? (b) Is there any longer a clear distinction between the study of deductive and inductive reasoning, the latter having its own tradition and literature? (c) Precisely how is the integrated study of reasoning and decision making facilitated by the new paradigm? (d) What difficulties with dual-processing approaches need to be resolved, if they are to take us forward? (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICE Charles Frankel I It will be no news to anyone that one of the vexatious problems of the moment is the relationship, ...

The use of terms like “collaboration” and “co-workers” to describe interactions between human beings and certain artificial intelligence (AI) systems has gained significant traction in recent years. Yet, it remains an open question whether such anthropomorphic metaphors provide either a fertile or even a purely innocuous lens through which to conceptualize designed commercial products. Rather, a respect for human dignity and the principle of transparency may require us to draw a sharp distinction between real and faux peers. At the heart (...) of the concept of collaboration lies the assumption that the collaborating parties are (or behave as if they are) of similar status: two agents capable of comparable forms of intentional action, moral agency, or moral responsibility. In application to current AI systems, this not only seems to fail ontologically but also from a socio-political perspective. AI in the workplace is primarily an extension of capital, not of labor, and the AI “co-workers” of most individuals will likely be owned and operated by their employer. In this paper, we critically assess both the accuracy and desirability of using the term “collaboration” to describe interactions between humans and AI systems. We begin by proposing an alternative ontology of human–machine interaction, one which features not two equivalently autonomous agents, but rather one machine that exists in a relationship of heteronomy to one or more human agents. In this sense, while the machine may have a significant degree of independence concerning the means by which it achieves its ends, the ends themselves are always chosen by at least one human agent, whose interests may differ from those of the individuals interacting with the machine. We finally consider the motivations and risks inherent to the continued use of the term “collaboration,” exploring its strained relation to the concept of transparency, and consequences for the future of work. (shrink)

[About the book] This book explores the idea that we have two minds - automatic, unconscious, and fast, the other controlled, conscious, and slow. In recent years there has been great interest in so-called dual-process theories of reasoning and rationality. According to such theories, there are two distinct systems underlying human reasoning - an evolutionarily old system that is associative, automatic, unconscious, parallel, and fast, and a more recent, distinctively human system that is rule-based, controlled, conscious, serial, and slow. Within (...) the former, processes the former, processes are held to be innate and to use heuristics that evolved to solve specific adaptive problems. In the latter, processes are taken to be learned, flexible, and responsive to rational norms. Despite the attention these theories are attracting, there is still poor communication between dual-process theorists themselves, and the substantial bodies of work on dual processes in cognitive psychology and social psychology remain isolated from each other. This book brings together leading researchers on dual processes to summarize the state-of-the-art, highlight key issues, present different perspectives, explore implications, and provide a stimulus to further work. It includes new ideas about the human mind both by contemporary philosophers interested in broad theoretical questions about mental architecture and by psychologists specialising in traditionally distinct and isolated fields. For all those in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that will advance dual-process theorizing, promote interdisciplinary communication, and encourage further applications of dual-process approaches. (shrink)

Concerns over medical paternalism are especially salient when there exists a conflict of values between patient and clinician. This is particularly relevant for psychiatry, the field of medicine for which the phenomenon of conflicting values is most present and for which the specter of medical paternalism looms large. Few cases are as glaring as that of anorexia nervosa (AN), a disorder that is considered to be egosyntonic (meaning its symptoms are reflectively endorsed by the patient) and maintained by the presence (...) of pathological values. One might think, given this, that an approach to medicine that foregrounds the role of values in clinical encounters would be particularly well suited to address the problem of medical paternalism in treating AN. As it happens, this is precisely the goal of values-based medicine, an approach to medicine that prioritizes the integration of patients’ unique values into the aims of treatment and that has been touted as being particularly applicable to psychiatric conditions such as AN. Although this strategy may initially appear promising, in this paper I will argue that the directive to incorporate patient values (as dictated by values-based medicine) cannot do the work of mitigating medical paternalism in the treatment of egosyntonic disorders such as AN. Rather than chalking this up as a failure due to AN being a particularly challenging case, I will instead conclude that the failure of values-based medicine in this context cuts to the heart of the limitations of rectifying medical paternalism within psychiatry as it currently exists. (shrink)

These are central to the accounts of lexical representation and meaning construction developed, giving rise to the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive ...

Introduction i This book is about how we study history, how we research and write about it, and how we read it. In the postmodern age, historians are being ...

The most common theoretical approaches to defining mental disorder are naturalism, normativism, and hybridism. Naturalism and normativism are often portrayed as diametrically opposed, with naturalism grounded in objective science and normativism grounded in social convention and values. Hybridism is seen as a way of combining the two. However, all three approaches share a common feature in that they conceive of mental disorders as deviations from norms. Naturalism concerns biological norms; normativism concerns social norms; and hybridism, both biological and social norms. (...) This raises the following two questions: (a) Are biological and social norms the only sorts of norms that are relevant to considerations of mental disorder? (b) Should addressing norm deviations continue to be a major focus of mental healthcare? This paper introduces several norms that are relevant to mental disorder beyond the biological and social. I argue that mental disorders often deviate from individual, well-being, and regulatory norms. I also consider approaches which question mental healthcare’s focus on addressing norm deviations in the first place, including the neurodiversity paradigm, social model of disability, and Mad discourse. Utilizing these critical approaches, I contend that whether mental health intervention is justified depends, in part, on the type of norm deviation being intervened upon. (shrink)

This engaging collection of essays locates the debate between theism and naturalism in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven original essays will be of interest to anyone who is fascinated by the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature.

Bioethicists’ attraction to principlism is rooted in a Western view of how matters that affect the public ought to be deliberated and decided: their resolution ought to be so structured and constrained that it can be understood and verified even by those at a remove from the circumstances of the problem. That view of deliberation, itself fostered by the Western view of government, has encouraged principlism to spread from its source in human subjects research into other areas of bioethics discourse.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11360-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-11360-4 ... HM651.C64 2007 158.1—dc22 2007022671 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information ...

A recent controversy over the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity's recommendation to censor two publications on genetically modified H5N1 avian influenza has generated concern over the threat to scientific freedom such censorship presents. In this paper, I argue that in the case of these studies, appeals to scientific freedom are not sufficient to motivate a rejection of censorship. I then use this conclusion to draw broader concerns about the ethics of dual-use research.

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology -- (...) Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

Discussions of moral weakness in recent and even not so recent ethics have generally neglected large areas of the moral life. In some cases, it may be argued, such neglect has been accidental in that the philosopher or philosophers concerned have set out to examine problems thrown up by a class or classes of actions without purporting to present an exhaustive account of moral weakness. In other cases such neglect is pernicious in that if not designed to protect a certain (...) philosophical position it has by the doctrinaire delimitation of the range of examples considered had precisely that effect. This delimitation has often arisen out of unexamined presuppositions as to the nature of moral weakness. They are embodied in the following general framework suggested as an account not of some cases of weakness but of all cases: In a case of weakness a man does something that he knows or believes he should not do, or fails to do something that he knows or believes he should do, when the occasion and the opportunity for acting or refraining is present, and when it is in his power, in some significant sense, to act in accordance with his knowledge or belief. (shrink)

What all Christians need is a kingdom encounter. In Kingdom Encounters, Tony Evans explores how the faithful characters of Scripture encountered God-and were forever changed. Join Dr. Evans as he explores how these moments bolster your faith, restore your hope, and make clear to you the face of God.

Most readers of ancient Greek psychology will agree that the Philebus is where we find Plato’s best attempt to theorize about bodily pain.1 But they will probably also agree that the account he develops there has no real chance of being true, and so should not have much appeal to us today — at least insofar as we are philosophers rather than historians. It’s this second conviction that I want to challenge in what follows. More specifically, I want to argue (...) for two connected claims about the merits of Plato’s account: first, that despite its flaws — which are significant — it is stronger and more subtle than most commentators have yet realized; and second, that it anticipates in interesting ways a view that has become both increasingly popular and increasingly controversial in the last couple of decades: the view that pains — like beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears — are mental states with representational content. I will call this view representationalism. (shrink)