Foundationalism in moral epistemology is a core tenet of ethical intuitionism. According to foundationalism, some moral beliefs can be known without inferential justification; instead, all that is required is a proper understanding of the beliefs in question. In an influential criticism against this view, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has argued that certain psychological facts undermine the reliability of moral intuitions. He claims that foundationalists would have to show that non-inferentially justified beliefs are not subject to those defeaters, but this would already constitute (...) a form of inference and hence undermine the possibility of noninferential justification. The goal of my paper is to defend foundationalism against Sinnott-Armstrong’s criticism. After presenting his challenge, I first argue that the most promising objection to it fails. This objection makes the case that defeater-defeaters are not part of the justification, but merely preserve the justification which the original claim provides. I object to this argument by distinguishing between weak and robust defeaters; only weak defeaters, I argue, fall outside the scope of justification, and it is an open question whether Sinnott-Armstrong’s defeaters fall into that category. This leads the way to my own criticism of Sinnott-Armstrong’s challenge: foundationalists in moral epistemology are entitled to the use of defeater-defeaters as part of the justification for moral beliefs as long as those defeater-defeaters themselves do not entail moral claims. Therefore, Sinnott-Armstrong’s challenge does not undermine foundationalism. (shrink)

The philosophical study of irrationality can yield interesting insights into the human mind. One provocative issue is self-defeating behaviours, i.e. behaviours that result in failure to achieve one’s apparent goals and ambitions. In this paper I consider a self-defeating behaviour called choking under pressure, explain why it should be considered irrational, and how it is best understood with reference to skills. Then I describe how choking can be explained without appeal to a purely Freudian subconscious or ‘sub-agents’ view of mind. (...) Finally, I will recommend an alternative way to understand self-defeating behaviour which comes from a synthesis of Peter Strawson’'s explanation of ‘self-reactive attitudes’, Mark Johnston’'s notion of ‘mental tropisms’, and revised Freudian descriptions of the causes of self-defeating behaviour. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic (...) responsibility. Although Pollock’s evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

Adult-based suicide theories have determined much of what we know about suicidal ideation. Here, we investigate the extent to which elements of theIntegrated Motivational-Volitional(IMV) model generalize to adolescence, a period when rates of suicidal ideation increase dramatically. In a sample of community-based adolescents (n= 74), we tested whether defeat and entrapment related to suicidal ideation, and whether poor positive future thinking abilities exacerbated this association. Consistent with the IMV model, we found that defeat/entrapment was associated specifically with history (...) of suicidal ideation, and not with history of suicide attempt. Defeat/entrapment was related to baseline suicidal ideation severity above and beyond depressive symptoms. While defeat/entrapment predicted future suicidal ideation controlling for history of ideation, it did not do so controlling for depressive symptoms. Counter to the IMV model, we initially found that the association between defeat/entrapment and suicidal ideation was strongest among adolescents withgreaterpositive future thinking abilities. This was driven by the tendency to imagine more positive future events, particularly those that are less realistic and achievable. These findings call for a more nuanced understanding of defeat/entrapment and positive future thinking among adolescents, particularly in how they interact to predict recurrent suicidal ideation. (shrink)

If individual knowledge and justification can be vanquished by epistemic defeaters, then the same should go for group knowledge. Lackey (2014) has recently argued that one especially strong conception of group knowledge defended by Bird (2010) is incapable of preserving how it is that (group) knowledge is ever subject to ordinary mechanisms of epistemic defeat. Lackey takes it that her objections do not also apply to a more moderate articulation of group knowledge--one that is embraced widely in collective epistemology--and (...) which she does not challenge. This paper argues that given certain background premises that are embraced by orthodox thinking in collectivist epistemology, the more moderate account of group knowledge cannot make sense of either psychological or normative epistemic defeaters. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how the more moderate proposal might avoid this result. (shrink)

Competitive sports involve physiological, technical and psychological skills, which influence directly on individuals’ performance. This study aims to investigate the levels of perceived stress and Heart Rate Variability before and after matches with victory and defeat in professional eSports athletes. Our hypothesis was that the winners would have better autonomic and stress responses after match, thus corroborating the literature on neurocardiac connections. Fifty male eSport players were selected players from 10 different Brazilian teams. The experiment was carried out in (...) 2 sessions. Firstly, after signing the informed consent form, 24 h before the game, anthropometric, physical activity levels and time of expertise data were recorded only for sample characterization and the players were familiarized with the perceived stress scale—10 and the HRV measurements. Secondly, players performed the PSS-10 and HRV recording at rest by 10 min 60 and 30 min before the game and 10 min after the end of the game. Overall, concerning PSS-10 our findings show that VG had significant reduced scores in post-game time compared to baseline and pre-game times, while DG had significant increased scores in post-game time compared to BL and pre-game times. Regarding HRV, our results demonstrate that VG had significant increase in RR, SDNN, rMSSD, pNN50 and HF, and significant decrease in LF and LF/HF, while DG had a significant decrease in RR, SDNN, rMSSD and HF, and significant increase in LF and LF/HF. It was observed that VG had better HRV responses as well as lower levels of perceived stress, while DG had worst HRV responses and higher levels of perceived stress. (shrink)

Evidence from biology and psychology suggests that our moral views depend on our evolutionary history. For example, if we humans would have evolved to live like hive bees, we would probably think very differently about moral questions such as whether we have a duty to care for our children. The findings from biology and psychology threaten to ‘debunk’ the justification of judgements about objective moral truths. Objective moral truths are always the same and they do not vary with (...) our contingent evolutionary history, whereas our moral judgements do. It has been argued that we, therefore, cannot tell right from wrong. In my thesis, I investigate the epistemology behind the evolutionary debunking of morality. Evolutionary explanations of morality, I argue, do not imply that our moral judgements are false. This leaves the possibility that evolution undercuts our (alleged) evidence for our moral judgements. Our evolutionarily influenced moral judgements might turn out to be unreliable guides to the moral truth, just like sight is a lousy guide to the external world in bad lighting conditions. However, I show that as long as we have reason to initially trust our moral beliefs, evolution does not provide us with reason to give up our moral beliefs. If evolution undercuts our moral beliefs, evolutionary considerations must show that true moral judgements do not qualify as knowledge because moral judgements are not cognitive achievements but comparable to lucky guesses. The thesis thus answers how empirical investigations of morality might have justificatory implications and the findings are relevant for deciding whether new factual information can alter how we think about right and wrong. (shrink)

In previous work, I have suggested a doxastic account of perceptual experience according to which experiences form a kind of belief: Beliefs with what I have called “phenomenal” or “looks-content”. I have argued that this account can not only accommodate the intuitive reason providing role of experience, but also its justificatory role. I have also argued that, in general, construing experience and perceptual beliefs, i.e. the beliefs most directly based on experience, as having different contents best accounts for the defeasibility (...) of experiential reasons. In this paper, I shall have a closer look at the evidential or inferential relation between looks-propositions and the contents of perceptual beliefs and argue for a form of what I shall call “Pollockianism” about experiential reasons: such reasons are good unless defeated. Questions to be investigated include: Does the resulting picture of perceptual justification contain an externalist element? Is it compatible with Bayesianism? And how does it do with respect to problems that have been raised for other forms of Pollockianism such as dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism? (shrink)

Grünbaum argues that psychoanalysis cannot justify its inferences regarding motives using its own methodology, as only the employment of Mill’s canons can justify causal inferences (which inferences to motives are). I consider an argument offered by Hopkins regarding the nature and status of our everyday inferences from other people’s behavior to their motives that seeks to rebut Grünbaum’s charge by defending a form of inference to the best explanation that makes use of connections in intentional content between behavior and motives. (...) I argue that Hopkins succeeds in defeating Grünbaum’s objection as it is presented, but that work in social psychology presents a further challenge. I discuss the extent to which the challenge can be met, and conclude that certain types of inference in psychoanalysis are justifiable, but others, including those which are the target of Grünbaum’s objection, cannot be justified by the methods defended by Hopkins. (shrink)

Several epistemologists have advanced the idea that a subject’s epistemic status can be weakened by evidence she does not possess but should have possessed, or, alternatively, by beliefs or doubts she should have had under her evidential circumstances but does not have. This alleged phenomenon is known as normative defeat and its adherents have typically reported intuitions that it obtains under mundane circumstances. Some epistemologists have analyzed normative defeat in terms of breached epistemic obligations, while others have preferred (...) an analysis in terms of cognitive malfunctioning. No matter which analysis one prefers, I here argue that - given plausible psychological and epistemological assumptions - if the normative defeat phenomenon were real it would be more bizarre than is generally recognized. I conclude that alleged cases of normatively defeated knowledge or epistemic justification are better analyzed as cases of lucky or undeserved knowledge or epistemic justification. (shrink)

There is a tendency to use data from neuroscience, cognitive science and experimental psychology to rail against philosophical ethics. Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that deontological judgments tend to be supported by emotional responses to irrelevant features, whereas consequentialist judgments are more reliable because they tend to be supported by cognitive processes. In this article, I will analyse the evidence used by Greene to suggest a different kind of argument against deontology, which I will call the argument from self-defeating (...) beliefs. The charge of this type of argument amounts to exposing a psychological nature of deontological judgements that is supposedly rejected by deontologists. I will argue that the alleged evidence is poorly understood, mixed and indeterminate, failing to endorse general conclusions about the psychological processes underlying deontological judgements. (shrink)

By synthesizing the argumentation theory of new rhetoric with research on heuristics and motivated reasoning, we develop a conceptual view of argumentation based on reasoning motivations that sheds new light on the morality of decision-making. Accordingly, we propose that reasoning in eristic argumentation is motivated by psychological (e.g., anxiety reduction) or material (e.g., vested interests) gains that do not depend on resolving the problem in question truthfully. Contrary to heuristic argumentation, in which disputants genuinely argue to reach a practically rational (...) solution, eristic argumentation aims to defeat the counterparty rather than seeking a reasonable solution. Eristic argumentation is susceptible to arbitrariness and power abuses; therefore, it is inappropriate for making moral judgments with the exception of judgments concerning moral taboos, which are closed to argumentation by their nature. Eristic argumentation is also problematic for strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making because it impedes the search for the right heuristic under uncertainty as an ecologically rational choice. However, our theoretical view emphasizes that under extreme uncertainty, where heuristic solutions are as fallible as any guesses, pretense reasoning by eristic argumentation may be instrumental for its adaptive benefits. Expanding the concept of eristic argumentation based on reasoning motivations opens a new path for studying the psychology of reasoning in connection to morality and decision-making under uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our theoretical view to relevant research streams, including ethical, strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making. (shrink)

ABSTRACTR. G. Collingwood is mostly remembered for his theory that historical understanding consists in re-enacting the thoughts of the historical figure whom one is studying. His first recognizable expression of this view followed from an argument about the emptiness of psychological interpretations of religion, and throughout his career Collingwood offered history as re-enactment as an alternative to psychology. Over time, his argument that the psychology of religion could not be relevant to the veracity of religious beliefs was supplanted (...) by the argument that psychology is self-undermining because the psychologist’s procedure of attributing beliefs to blind psychic needs could apply just as easily to the psychologist him- or herself. As an alternative to what he took to be the self-defeating psychological position, Collingwood put forward the study of the development of beliefs as the motivations for actions, which led him to his views that “all history is the history of thought” and that, in order to understand an historical event, we must mentally re-enact the thoughts that stood behind it. (shrink)

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of (...) strategy and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste. (shrink)

The standard reliabilist line on defeat is open to counterexamples regarding its necessity and sufficiency. In this paper, I present three problems for the standard reliabilist line from the recent literature on defeat before arguing that reliabilists can solve those problems by adopting an account of justification that ties defeat to the evidence possessed by the relevant agent. In doing so, I show that there is a conception of having evidence that reliabilists can adopt without giving up (...) on the core commitments of their research program, namely the reduction of epistemic facts and having a psychologically realistic account of justification. My account of defeat draws on the account of propositional justification, transglobal evidentialism, defended by David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč. (shrink)

The present research examines psychological momentum (PM), a perceived force that lay intuition suggests influences performance. PM theory is proposed to account for how momentum perceptions arise, and four studies demonstrate the influence of lay intuitions about PM on expectations regarding performance outcomes. Study 1 establishes that individuals share intuitions about the types of events that precipitate PM, and Study 2 finds that defeating a rival increases momentum perception. Study 3 provides evidence for the lay belief that as more PM (...) accumulates during a prior task, there should be more residual momentum left to carry over to a subsequent task, and Study 4 finds that an individual whose PM is interrupted is expected to have greater difficulty completing a task than is an individual whose steady progress is interrupted. Discussion focuses on linkages between PM and related constructs. (shrink)

While psychological egoism “A”, the theory that all human actions are selfish, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, “B”, is defended: “AU deliberate human actions are either self-interested or self-referential.” While “B” is not empirically testable, neither is any alternative altruistic theory. “B” escapes criticisms leveled at “A”, including those of Joseph Butler. “B” is shown to be theoretically superior to any theory of altruism since it brings coherence to moral theory by explaining the nature of moraI motivation.

This paper discusses how we understand and use a concept or the meaningof a general term to identify the objects falling under the term. There aretwo distinct approaches to research on the problems of concepts and meaningthe psychological approach and the formal (or logical) approach. My majorconcern is to consider the possibility of reconciling these two differentapproaches, and for this I propose to build a psychologically plausibleformal system of conceptualization. That is, I will develop a theory-basedaccount of concepts and propose (...) an explanation of how an agent activates aperspective (which consists of theories) in response to a situation in whichreasoning using a concept is called for. Theories are represented as sets offacts and rules, both strict and defeasible. Each theory is organized in acoherent perspective which stands for an agent's mental state or an agent'smodel of another agent's perspective. Perspectives are organized intohierarchies and the theory for a concept in one perspective may defeat thetheory for the same concept in another perspective. Which perspective issuperior is context-dependent. (shrink)

Two notions from philosophical logic and linguistics are brought together and applied to the psychological study of defeasible conditional reasoning. The distinction between disabling conditions and alternative causes is shown to be a special case of Pollock's (1987) distinction between ‘rebutting' and ‘undercutting' defeaters. ‘Inferential' conditionals are shown to come in two types, one that is sensitive to rebutters, the other to undercutters. It is thus predicted and demonstrated in two experiments that the type of inferential conditional used as the (...) major premise of conditional arguments can reverse the heretofore classic, distinctive effects of defeaters. (shrink)

Two notions from philosophical logic and linguistics are brought together and applied to the psychological study of defeasible conditional reasoning. The distinction between disabling conditions and alternative causes is shown to be a special case of Pollock’s (1987) distinction between ‘rebutting’ and ‘undercutting’ defeaters. ‘Inferential’ conditionals are shown to come in two varieties, one that is sensitive to rebutters, the other to undercutters. It is thus predicted and demonstrated in two experiments that the type of inferential conditional used as the (...) major premise of conditional arguments can reverse the heretofore classic, distinctive effects of defeaters. (shrink)

“If, then, we are really to find out what is true and what is false, we must direct our attention to the role of any particular item in the whole of which it is a part.”—Wertheimer: On Truth.In these days of Gestalttheorie it seems not untimely to inquire whether psychology itself does not stand in need of being recognized as a configuration of complementary parts. The suggestion, it is true, tends at the first to be repudiated by the implacability (...) of the schools with their claims and counterclaims resounding on every side. On further analysis, however, such controversy seems to acquire the very different significance of having permitted certain partial aspects of the whole field to become well-articulated, even if in somewhat exaggerated form. In other words, if there is any underlying unity in psychology, then the very overstatements of the school zealots while unwittingly defeating their own purpose may have been doing the science a real service by throwing its basic pattern into bold relief. In broadest terms this seems to describe what has been happening in psychology in the recent past and to define the present stage of its development. (shrink)

Rational choice theory enjoys unprecedented popularity and influence in the behavioral and social sciences, but it generates intractable problems when applied to socially interactive decisions. In individual decisions, instrumental rationality is defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This becomes problematic in interactive decisions, when individuals have only partial control over the outcomes, because expected utility maximization is undefined in the absence of assumptions about how the other participants will behave. Game theory therefore incorporates not only rationality but also common (...) knowledge assumptions, enabling players to anticipate their co-players' strategies. Under these assumptions, disparate anomalies emerge. Instrumental rationality, conventionally interpreted, fails to explain intuitively obvious features of human interaction, yields predictions starkly at variance with experimental findings, and breaks down completely in certain cases. In particular, focal point selection in pure coordination games is inexplicable, though it is easily achieved in practice; the intuitively compelling payoff-dominance principle lacks rational justification; rationality in social dilemmas is self-defeating; a key solution concept for cooperative coalition games is frequently inapplicable; and rational choice in certain sequential games generates contradictions. In experiments, human players behave more cooperatively and receive higher payoffs than strict rationality would permit. Orthodox conceptions of rationality are evidently internally deficient and inadequate for explaining human interaction. Psychological game theory, based on nonstandard assumptions, is required to solve these problems, and some suggestions along these lines have already been put forward. Key Words: backward induction; Centipede game; common knowledge; cooperation; epistemic reasoning; game theory; payoff dominance; pure coordination game; rational choice theory; social dilemma. (shrink)

Two notions from philosophical logic and linguistics are brought together and applied to the psychological study of defeasible conditional reasoning. The distinction between disabling conditions and alternative causes is shown to be a special case of Pollock’s (1987) distinction between ‘rebutting’ and ‘undercutting’ defeaters. ‘Inferential’ conditionals are shown to come in two varieties, one that is sensitive to rebutters, the other to undercutters. It is thus predicted and demonstrated in two experiments that the type of inferential conditional used as the (...) major premise of conditional arguments can reverse the heretofore classic, distinctive effects of defeaters. (shrink)

The child objection is a major challenge for reductionism, which requires hearers to have positive reasons for testimonial justification. However, it has been pointed out that anti-reductionism, which requires only the absence of negative reasons, or defeaters, suffers from the same kind of problem. The child objection presupposes the empirical thesis that “children do not have the capacity to consider reasons,” but the plausibility of this assumption may be revealed by developmental psychology research on selective trust. This paper uses (...) recent epistemological studies as a guide to narrow down the types of defeaters that children are required to consider, and then clarifies what kind of reasons various experiments can be said to test the ability to consider, and in what sense children who pass the test can be said to be “considering” reasons. In doing so, we clarify the scope and limits of the implications that selective trust studies can have for reductionism and anti-reductionism. We then suggest what future psychological research is desired from an epistemological interest to go beyond the current limitations. (shrink)

I will present what I think is the best argument for the version of psychological egoism under consideration here, and explain why I think even that argument fails to go much distance toward establishing it. It turns out, though, I will caution, that defeating that argument means only that we are right to reject psychological egoism as extremely implausible; it does not entitle us to claim to have shown the thesis itself to be either confused and senseless or false. However, (...) my main goal in this paper is neither to refute nor to defend psychological egoism, but rather to show how it, even in a very strong form, manages to survive a number of common objections both to itself and to arguments meant to support it. (shrink)

Stories in which a hero defeats a semi-human ogre occur much more frequently in unrelated cultures than chance alone can account for. This claim is supported by a discussion of folk-tales from 20 cultures and an examination of the folk-tales from a random sample of 44 cultures. The tendency to tell these stories must, therefore, have its source in the innate human nature discussed by evolutionary psychologists. This essay argues that these stories reinforce innate positive biases in the perception of (...) self and ingroup and negative biases in the perception of outgroups. (shrink)

In this paper, on the basis of psychological research concerning psychopathy, I argue against one claim a moral rationalist—such as Michael Smith —might make. First, I distinguish three rationalist claims the moral rationalist might make: the rationalists' conceptual claim, the rationalists' substantial claim, and the practicality requirement. Then, I go on to discuss some of the subtle relations between these claims. I argue that, if we have reason to reject the rationalists' substantial claim, this gives us prima facie reason to (...) reject the rationalists' conceptual claim as well, or else to accept the view that there are no substantial truths of morality. Next, I present evidence from psychological research on psychopaths, and argue that these considerations undermine the rationalists' substantial claim. Lastly, I consider a few replies on behalf of Smith, and conclude that they are not successful in defeating my arguments against the rationalists' substantial claim. (shrink)

Jim Slagle claims that eliminative materialism (EM) denies some of the mind’s self‐evident properties, such as intentionality, qualia and the view that beliefs are real or veridical. I, herein, will argue that what EM denies is actually the folk psychological notion of belief, not belief as such. The Churchlands construe propositional belief as merely one kind of representation in the larger representational scheme. The point here is not to deny belief, but to construe it as one of the, and possibly (...) a very recent, sorts of representations that the brain uses, not the general or fundamental form thereof. (shrink)

Some eliminativists have predicted that a developed neuroscience will eradicate the principles and theoretical kinds (belief, desire, etc.) implicit in our ordinary practices of mental state attribution. Prevailing defenses of common-sense psychology infer its basic integrity from its familiarity and instrumental success in everyday social commerce. Such common-sense defenses charge that eliminativist arguments are self-defeating in their folk psychological appeal to the belief that eliminativism is true. I argue that eliminativism is untouched by this simple charge of inconsistency, and (...) introduce a different dialectical strategy for arguing against the eliminativist. In keeping with the naturalistic trend in the sociology and philosophy of science, I show that neuroscientists routinely rely on folk psychological procedures of intentional state attribution in applying epistemically reliable standards of scientific evaluation. These scientific contexts place ordinary procedures of attribution under greater stress, producing evidence of folk psychological success that is less equivocal than the evidence in mundane settings. Therefore, the dependence of science on folk psychology, when combined with an independently plausible explanatory constraint on reduction and an independently motivated notion of theoretical stress, allows us to reconstitute the charge of (neurophilic) eliminativist inconsistency in a more sophisticated form. (shrink)

In this article, we consider how certain types of contemporary biosocial psychiatric research conceptualise and explicate biology-social relations. We compare the historic biopsychosocial model to recent examples of social defeat research on schizophrenia and cultural neuroscience work on affective disorders. This comparison reveals how the contemporary turn towards the ‘biosocial’ within psychiatric research relies upon ideas of the psychological as an interface. This is problematic because psychological notions of ‘experience’ are used as the central mechanics of biosocial processes, but (...) lack any meaningful engagement with considerable debates within psychology and cognitive science about what the mind, and indeed the psychological, actually is, its relationship to social life, and how we should study it. The psychological interface is therefore vital to these biosocial hypotheses but is remarkably underdeveloped in comparison to its biological and sociological components. We argue that biosocial psychiatric research could gain a great deal from engaging with contemporary theorisations of experience and being more critical of vague appeals to psychological phenomena. (shrink)

History from Loss challenges the common thought that 'history is written by the winners' and explores how history makers in different times and places across the globe have written histories from loss, even when this has come at the threat to their own safety. A distinguished group of historians from around the globe offer an introduction to different history-makers' lives and ideas, and important extracts from their works which highlight various meanings of loss: from physical ailments to social ostracism, exile (...) to imprisonment, and from dispossession to potential execution. Throughout the volume consideration of the information 'bubbles' of different times and places helps to show how information has been weaponised to cause harm. In this way, the text helps to put current debates about the biases and weaponization of platforms such as social media into global and historical perspective. In combination, the chapters build a picture of history from loss which is global, sustained, and anything but a simple mirror of history made by victors. The volume also includes an Introduction and Afterword which draw out the key meanings of history from loss, and which offer ideas for further exploration. History from Loss provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and general readers who wish to put current debates on bias, the politicization of history, and threats to history makers into global and historical perspective. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the numerous critiques that have been leveled at the field of positive psychology over its short history, the field and its practitioners continue to enjoy substantial growth and popularity. Although several factors have no doubt contributed to their advancement, work in the field of science studies suggests that rhetorical demarcation in scientific writing, by which scientific fields establish their domains and distinguish themselves from other forms of intellectual activity, may be equally significant. Such “boundary work” is an important (...) means through which fields defeat their competitors, persuade their public, and compete for legitimacy. In light of this, I examine the discursive demarcation and legitimization of positive psychology as performed through historical narratives of its origins in its own writings. I offer an analysis of the ways in which these narratives exploit alternating and contradictory images of scientists, legitimate scientific activity, and in particular, images of American society, to perform the ideological and rhetorical work of describing, and making visible, the kinds of issues and problems for which positive psychology presents itself as the natural solution. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The concept of the person, and the notion that the latter is an entity separate and distinct from other persons, has persisted as one of the more secure ‘givens’ of philosophical thought. We have very little difficulty, in observer language, in pointing to a person, describing his or her attributes, distinguishing him or her from other persons, etc. Likewise, it is ordinarily not much of a problem to subjectively experience, both sensorially and conceptually, the self – that is, to distinguish (...) in agent language ‘my person’ from the rest of the universe. The second of these two perspectives on the person defines the ‘I,’ ‘ego,’ or ‘identity.’ Several recent developments in experimental psychology and brain science – while not defeating the ordinary notion of the person on the merits of data per se – at least force a re-thinking of tacit assumptions basic to our sense of the concepts of both the person and personal identity. In this paper, I would like to show how the concept of the person needs revision, and at the same time to raise some objections to Shaffer's (1977) account of the consequences of brain bisection and brain transplant with respect to the fate of the person and his identity. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating behaviors to the experience of willfulness, from pathological over-control and self-deception to subtler forms of (...) behavior such as altruism, sadism, gambling, and the 'social construction' of belief. This book integrates approaches from experimental psychology, philosophy of mind, microeconomics, and decision science to present one of the most profound and expert accounts of human irrationality available. It will be of great interest to philosophers and an important resource for professionals and students in psychology, economics and political science. (shrink)

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. (...) We argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

I address Sinnott-Armstrong's argument that evidence of framing effects in moral psychology shows that moral intuitions are unreliable and therefore not noninferentially justified. I begin by discussing what it is to be epistemically unreliable and clarify how framing effects render moral intuitions unreliable. This analysis calls for a modification of Sinnott-Armstrong's argument if it is to remain valid. In particular, he must claim that framing is sufficiently likely to determine the content of moral intuitions. I then re-examine the evidence (...) which is supposed to support this claim. In doing so, I provide a novel suggestion for how to analyze the reliability of intuitions in empirical studies. Analysis of the evidence suggests that moral intuitions subject to framing effects are in fact much more reliable than perhaps was thought, and that Sinnott-Armstrong has not succeeded in showing that noninferential justification has been defeated. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on psychological and epistemological issues related to our practice of accepting first-person reports of emotional state as knowledgeable. It concerns the epistemic warrant of beliefs having the form "I'm feeling X about Y" and "Y is making me feel X about Z", where X refers to an affective state, and Y and Z refer to situations. On the assumption that such "emotion-based" beliefs are true if and only if they accurately represent the "situation-directed" emotions they are about, (...) much attention is given to the initial issue of what an emotional state is. A feeling-centered, componential view of emotion is defended, one in which occurrent emotions are held to be extrinsically related combinations of affective and cognitive aspects. While the view is held to be consistent with current appraisal theories of emotion, such theories are criticized as being formally incomplete. It is argued that an adequate theory of the emotional system must distinguish between the two independent sub-processes of "affect-causation" and "affect-direction", but that appraisal theory is concerned only with the former. The model of a single emotional system with two sub-processes is defended against the objection that "affect-program" and "higher cognitive" emotions must be produced by different psychological systems. ;A notion of emotional rationality is defended that is consistent both with a feeling-centered, componential view of emotion, and with the modularity of the emotional system. It is argued that both the rationality and modularity of emotion help to facilitate the noninferential production of emotion-based beliefs. A reliabilist approach to the warrant of such beliefs is defended against its main "constitutivist" alternative, and a general entitlement to such beliefs is outlined. In the course of outlining the conditions of noninferential emotion-based knowledge, the notion of an "emotion-based equivalent" is developed: a relevant alternative state of affairs that can defeat a claim to such knowledge even when all other epistemic conditions are satisfied. However, it is argued that there is no convincing reason to think that these defeating conditions are prevalent enough to prevent us from having noninferential emotion-based knowledge in most cases. (shrink)

Les auteurs, à partir de rencontres entre historiens et spécialistes de littérature ou de cinéma, se penchent sur la récurrence du thème de la défaite. Vercingétorix, Jeanne d'Arc, Waterloo, Sedan, juin 1940 : la France exalte volontiers vaincus et pertes. La défaite permet de refonder une nation, un peuple, une communauté, elle est l'occasion d'un sursaut.

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological (...) theories as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion. (shrink)

Pluralistic ignorance is a social-psychological phenomenon in which an agent believes that their attitudes, feelings, and beliefs are different from those of others, despite the fact that their public behavior is identical. I argue that agents in standard cases of pluralistic ignorance are epistemically irrational. I accomplish this, first, by rebutting a recent argument for the rationality of pluralistic ignorance. Next, I offer a defeat-based argument against the epistemic rationality of pluralistic ignorance. Third, I examine a type of case (...) in which the pluralistically ignorant agent's belief is irrational, despite the fact that this belief lacks a defeater. Finally, I consider instances of pluralistically ignorant agents whose beliefs are not irrational, but explain why such cases are not problematic for my main thesis. This critical discussion allows me to offer an important amendment to an extant account of pluralistic ignorance. (shrink)

Since the wife-husband team of Anne Case and Angus Deaton popularized the term deaths of despair, psychologists have become more interested in decoupling despair from clinical depression and anxiety. Despair’s central marker is the loss of hope. It is characterized by feelings of social and spiritual isolation, meaninglessness, hopelessness, helplessness, demoralization, and shame. Causes of despair are complex, ranging from individual (e.g., grief, bad health, addiction, abuse), to societal (e.g., social and cultural dislocation, unemployment, economic disaster, poverty), to a combination (...) of both. Sometimes, acknowledging and/or addressing despair’s material causes is enough. But the problem with despair is that it tends to generate a vicious cycle of self-defeat. Often, it manifests in self-perpetuating negative cognitive biases, self-defeating emotional reactions, and self-destructive behavior. To break free, the person must address the psychological and spiritual roots of her despair. Here, I offer insights from a Christian tradition grounded in the monastic spirituality of the Desert Fathers in the hopes that these might help a therapist seeking to do just that. After distinguishing between an emotion and a sin of despair, I locate the latter’s roots in the vices of acedia and pride. Finally, I point to the virtue of humility as a traditional cure for despair. (shrink)

I outline a theory of moral motivation which is compatible with the metaphysical claims of strong emotionism—a sentimentalist account of morality first outlined by Jesse Prinz and supported by myself which construes moral concepts and properties as a subset of emotion-dispositional properties. Given these claims, it follows that sincere moral judgements are necessarily motivating in virtue of their emotional constitution. I defend an indefeasible version of judgement motivational internalism which takes into consideration both positively and negatively valenced affective states and (...) how they promote both approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. On this view, in making sincere moral judgements agents are antecedently motivated by standing Desires to avoid or approach the stimuli picked out by their judgements. I also defend internalism against the objections from defeating circumstances and amoralists. As regards the former, I claim that the tendency of philosophers to frame the motivation debate in terms of positive moral judgements makes the argument from defeating circumstances appear more plausible than it is; as regards the latter, I claim the amoralist argument only has force if it is empirically well supported and that psychological data has hitherto been unconvincing. (shrink)

In March 2016, DeepMind's computer programme AlphaGo surprised the world by defeating the world‐champion Go player, Lee Sedol. AlphaGo exhibits a novel, surprising and valuable style of play and has been recognised as “creative” by the artificial intelligence (AI) and Go communities. This article examines whether AlphaGo engages in creative problem solving according to the standards of comparative psychology. I argue that AlphaGo displays one important aspect of creative problem solving (namely mental scenario building in the form of Monte (...) Carlo tree search), while lacking another (domain generality). This analysis has consequences for how we think about creativity in humans and AI. (shrink)

Principles help comparative psychologists select from among multiple hypotheses that account for the data. Anthropomorphic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal similarities while anthropectic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal differences. I argue that there is no way for the comparative psychologist on their own to justify their selection of one principle over the other. However, the comparative psychologist can justify their selection of one principle over the other in virtue of being members of comparative (...) class='Hi'>psychology as a community. As it turns out, though, this justifies both competing principles: the community benefits most from competition between the two principles so comparative psychologists are justified in implementing the principles by which they can best contribute to the competition. Thus, I argue that common arguments to unify principle implementation in comparative psychology are defeated by the conservative arguments to preserve and foster competition. (shrink)

The knowledge representation and reasoning of both humans and artificial systems often involves conditionals. A conditional connects a consequence which holds given a precondition. It can be easily recognized in natural languages with certain key words, like “if” in English. A vast amount of literature in both fields, both artificial intelligence and psychology, deals with the questions of how such conditionals can be best represented and how these conditionals can model human reasoning. On the other hand, findings in the (...) psychology of reasoning, such as those in the Suppression Task, have led to a paradigm shift from the monotonicity assumptions in human inferences towards nonmonotonic reasoning. Nonmonotonic reasoning is sensitive for information change, that is, inferences are drawn cautiously such that retraction of previous information is not required with the addition of new information. While many formalisms of nonmonotonic reasoning have been proposed in the field of Artificial Intelligence, their capability to model properties of human reasoning has not yet been extensively investigated. In this paper, we analyzed systematically from both a formal and an empirical perspective the power of formal nonmonotonic systems to model possible explicit defeaters, as in the Suppression Task, and more implicit conditional rules that trigger nonmonotonic reasoning by the keywords in such rules. The results indicated that the classical evaluation for the correctness of inferences has to be extended in the three major aspects regarding the inference system, the knowledge base, and possible assumed exceptions for the rule. (shrink)

This innovative study posits that myths in general, and Greek theogonic myth in particular, have a latent meaning that is responsible both for the emotional energy inherent in myths, and for the special attraction they have even to those who no longer believe in their literal meaning. Caldwell describes, in clear and comprehensible language, aspects of psychoanalytic theory relevant to the understanding of Greek myth, implementing a psychoanalytic methodology to interpret the Greek myth of origin and succession, particularly as stated (...) in Hesiod's Theogony. In reassessing this work, which tells the story of the world's beginning from unbounded Chaos to the defeat of the Titans, Caldwell addresses several unexplained problems-- why does the world begin with the spontaneous emergence of four uncaused entities, and why in this particular order? Why does Ouranos prevent his children from being born by confining them in their mother's body? Why is Ouranos castrated by his son, and why is Aphrodite born from the severed genitals? Why is it always the youngest son who overthrows his father, the sky-god, and what is the logic of the steps taken by Zeus to prevent the same thing happening to him? Presenting a new definition and analyses of the psychological functions in myth, this new study should appeal to a wide range of classicists, teachers and students of mythology, and those interested in the application of psychoanalytic methods to literature. (shrink)

The article presents a systematic and detailed account of scholarly developments on the problem of studying the process of nation-building and the role of history, memory, language and culture in reflecting this process. The research reveals that according to the premordialist approach, nations are not formed instantaneously, by the relevant political will or by coincidence of circumstances; the process of creating and consolidating a nation is a long and meaningful one, full of historical events and national cultural tokens. The primordialist (...) concepts are considered unanimous in their recognition of the exceptional significance of psychological factors in the creation of a nation. The creation of a nation involves a sophisticated set of linguistic, religious, ethnic, territorial and myth-household factors that determine the formation of a corresponding type of sociality. The framework of the analytics of the phenomenon of a nation includes not only psychological, but also social, cultural, political, ethical, moral and axiological aspects. The new system-building concepts such as solidarity, habitus, plebiscite were added to the discussion of nation. In view of that, it is impossible to carry out the reduction of the phenomenon of a nation to a particular problem field and to localize it to invariant indicators. The formation and optimization of the capitalistic type of social system generates new factors in the interpretation and consolidation of a nation. The reasons for a political defeat in the development of a nation can be referedr to either conscious manipulative techniques, or spontaneous miscalculations. Elaborating the alternative versions of history is nothing but unjustified politicization, implementation of imperial and colonial ambitions, overcoming which is a necessary prerequisite for successful nation-building. The establishment and offsetting of such manipulative influence facilitate the stabilization of the social situation and the resolution of conflicts, and, consequently, contribute to national development. The key point is to establish a nation within the framework of the international and state policy, especially by distinguishing the consolidating and disintegrating influences of state and international politicies on nation-building. The policy of uniting the nation can become effective when the important reforms do not deepen the fragmentation of the nation, but rather neutralize it. (shrink)

During the influx of neurological research into France from across Europe that took place rapidly in the late 19th century, the philosophy course in lycées (the French equivalent of high schools) was mobilized by education reformers as a means of promulgating the emergent brain sciences and simultaneously steering their cultural resonance. I contend that these linked prongs of philosophy’s public mission under the Third Republic reconciled contradictory pressures to advance the nation’s scientific prowess following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian (...) war of 1870 without dropping France’s distinct tradition of 19th-century spiritualism, which extended from Maine de Biran’s philosophical psychology to Victor Cousin’s official eclectic spiritualism. Between 1874 and 1902, the French Ministry of Public Instruction transformed philosophy into a national project designed to guide the reception of experimental psychology generally and neurology in particular. This article features original archival research on philosophy textbooks and students’ course notes that illuminate the cultural and intellectual impact of these sciences in the fin de siècle from inside the classroom. I argue that the scientific turn in the psychology section of the lycée philosophy course reflected and brought about a distinct philosophical movement that I call ‘scientific spiritualism’. While historians have analysed philosophy instruction as a mechanism used by the Third Republic to secularize students, this article sheds new light on lycée philosophy professors’ campaign to promote scientific spiritualism as a means to advance incipient brain research and pare its reductionist implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Externalist Psychiatry, Mindshaping, and Embodied InjusticeMichelle Maiese, PhD (bio)Ongaro maintains that although enactivist approaches to psychiatry help to account for the integration of biological, psychological, and social factors, they gloss over an important distinction between patient-centered (bio and psycho) approaches and externalist (social) approaches to mental illness. The central problem is that they lack the means to account for the social causes of illness and do not specify how (...) social determinants can be addressed in the clinic. Since much of an organism’s interaction with the external world is social in kind, the implementation of externalist psychiatry could make the enactivist model truly biopsychosocial and usher in novel forms of treatment.According to Ongaro, this externalist orientation gives rise to an important question about ontology: what are the social causes of psychiatric illness made of, and how can these be conveyed in the clinic to facilitate treatment? A “shared social etiology” would allow for a “rich explanatory framework” that accounts for the social causes of mental disorder. For example, by pointing to spirit affliction as the social cause of mental illness, the Akha transform amorphous pains (which are difficult to capture naturalistically) into meaningful and familiar experiences. Such an approach involves combining a realist understanding of biopsychosocial integration with an anti-realist, social constructivist outlook on social etiology. For them, an illness that is explained as a rupture of a human-spirit relationship is experienced as a ‘problem in living’ that affects the person in an immediate and meaningful way, and can be treated via ritual action.Ongaro then considers social causation in a more familiar context, one where social determinants of mental illness include factors such as employment. Losing one’s job is a significant life event because it signals a change in social status and prompts feelings of uselessness. Ongaro characterizes these feelings of low subjective status as “socially constructed experiences that depend on collectively ingrained ideas about status, value, and self-realization that a person accepts—one could say ‘believes in’—by virtue of living in a particular society.” Because social worlds differ and what counts as social defeat is culturally specific, [End Page 333] social determinants of illness such as unemployment are either negligible or non-applicable in Ahka (non-capitalist) society.To acknowledge the impact of these social constructions, Ongaro maintains, clinical psychiatry should abandon its commitment to naturalism and embrace methodological constructivism instead. Methodological naturalism treats social causes as ‘real’ and holds that the social causes of disorder should be investigated using the scientific method; research focuses on social determinants, social stressors, and social capital. However, despite acknowledging that declining mental health correlates significantly with political and economic factors, Ongaro maintains that methodological naturalism when it comes to social causes will be insufficient to bring about meaningful changes in clinical practice. For one thing, individual psychiatrists lack the political power and economic resources to bring about the sorts of societal changes that are needed to address social determinants of health. Second, social determinants are probabilistic factors rather than definitive causes of mental disorder; psychiatric illnesses often do not have a well-defined cause or a clear-cut social trigger. Third, an explanation that points to ‘lack of social capital’ does “not possess the immediacy, emotional charge, and embodied meaning that could make them therapeutically effective in the same way that Akha explanations for spirit afflictions are.”Philosophically, Ongaro’s embrace of ‘methodological constructivism’ when it comes to social etiology entails a commitment to antirealism about social causation and fictionalism more specifically. Wilkinson (2022) notes that the core tenet of psychiatric fictionalism is that “when we engage in psychiatric discourse... we are not attributing a robust, objective property, but are instead engaging with a useful, perhaps even an indispensable, fiction” (p. 91). For Ongaro, this fiction consists in a meaningful explanatory narrative about the social causes of illness. However, if we take the notion of integration seriously, and characterize this integration naturalistically (as Ongaro does), then questions arise as to how these fictional narratives about social causes can impact people both biologically and psychologically, and thereby have such a powerful impact.I argue that an enactivist approach to treatment will be... (shrink)