The ability to reason independently from one's own goals or beliefs has long been recognised as a key characteristic of the development of formal operational thought. In this article we present the results of a study that examined the correlates of this ability in a group of 10-year-old children ( N = 61). Participants were presented with conditional and relational reasoning items, where the content was manipulated such that the conclusion to the arguments were either congruent, neutral, or incongruent with (...) beliefs, and either logically valid or logically invalid. Participants also received a measure of working memory capacity (the counting span task) and a measure of inhibitory control (the stop signal task). Indices of belief bias and logical reasoning on belief-based problems were predicted independently by both measures. In contrast logical reasoning on belief neutral problems was predicted by working memory alone. The findings suggest that executive functions play a key role in the development of children's ability to decontextualise their thinking. (shrink)

We report the results of three experiments designed to assess the role of suppositions in human reasoning. Theories of reasoning based on formal rules propose that the ability to make suppositions is central to deductive reasoning. Our first experiment compared two types of problem that could be solved by a suppositional strategy. Our results showed no difference in difficulty between problems requiring affirmative or negative suppositions and very low logical solution rates throughout. Further analysis of the error data showed a (...) pattern of responses, which suggested that participants reason from a superficial representation of the premises in these arguments and this drives their choice of conclusion. Our second experiment employed a different set of suppositional problems but with extremely similar proofs in terms of the rules applied and number of inferential steps required. As predicted by our interpretation of reasoning strategies employed in Experiment 1, logical performance was very much higher on these problems. Our third experiment showed that problems that could be solved by constructing an initial representation of the premises were easier than problems in which this representation was not sufficient. This effect was independent of the suppositional structure of the problems. We discuss the implications of this research for theories of reasoning based on mental models and inference rules. (shrink)

A person who arrives at correct solutions via false premises is right and wrong simultaneously. Similarly, a person who generates “logical intuitions” through superficial heuristics can likewise be right and wrong at the same time. However, heuristics aren't guaranteed to deliver the logical solution, so the claim that system 1 can routinely produce the alleged system 2 response is unfounded.

Byrne's approach to the semifactual conditional captures the reasoning data. However, we argue that it does not account for the processes or principles by which people arrive at representations of even-if conditionals, upon which their reasoning is said to be based. Drawing upon recent work on the suppositional conditional we present such an account.

Two studies are reported which demonstrate that analytic responding on everyday reasoning problems can be increased and bias eliminated after training on the law of large numbers. Critical thinking problems involving belief-consistent, neutral, and inconsistent conclusions were presented. Belief bias was eliminated when a written justification of argument strength was elicited. However, belief-based responding was still evident when evaluations of the arguments were elicited using rating scales. This finding demonstrates a dissociation between analytic and belief-based responding as a function of (...) response format. In Experiment 2 an instructional condition designed to foster decontextualised reasoning was included but was ineffective in reducing the degree to which judgements were biased by beliefs. It was concluded that training which makes available the analytic strategies necessary to evaluate a problem has the potential to facilitate performance only if the requested response triggers conscious deliberation of the evidence. (shrink)

A controversial claim in recent dual process accounts of reasoning is that intuitive processes not only lead to bias but are also sensitive to the logical status of an argument. The intuitive logic hypothesis draws upon evidence that reasoners take longer and are less confident on belief–logic conflict problems, irrespective of whether they give the correct logical response. In this paper, we examine conflict detection under conditions in which participants are asked to either judge the logical validity or believability of (...) a presented conclusion, accompanied by measures of eye movement and pupil dilation. The findings show an effect of conflict, under both types of instruction, on accuracy, latency, gaze shifts, and pupil dilation. Importantly, these effects extend to conflict trials in which participants give a belief‐based response (incorrectly under logic instructions or correctly under belief instructions) demonstrating both behavioral and physiological evidence in support of the logical intuition hypothesis. (shrink)

Belief bias is the tendency for prior beliefs to influence people's deductive reasoning in two ways: through the application of a simple belief-heuristic and through the application of more effortful reasoning for unbelievable conclusions. Previous research indicates that cognitive ability is the primary determinant of the effect of beliefs on accuracy. In the current study, we show that the mere tendency to engage analytic reasoning is responsible for the effect of cognitive ability on motivated reasoning. The implications of this finding (...) for our understanding of the impact of individual differences on belief bias are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of the present research was to develop a difficulty model for logical reasoning problems involving complex ordered arrays used in the Graduate Record Examination. The approach used involved breaking down the problems into their basic cognitive elements such as the complexity of the rules used, the number of mental models required to represent the problem, and question type. Weightings for these different elements were derived from two experimental studies and from the reasoning literature. Based on these weights, difficulty (...) models were developed which were then tested against new data. The models had excellent predictive validity and showed the relative influence of rule based factors and factors relating to the number of underlying models. Different difficulty models were needed for different question types, suggesting that people used a variety of approaches and, at a wider level, that both mental models and mental rules may be used in reasoning. (shrink)

Delving into the newly identified genre of the philosophical autobiography, Dr. Ronald J. Manheimer's 'Mirrors of the mind' takes both the neophyte and the initiated on a unique literary and philosophical journey through the works of important thinkers who have changed the world or, at least, how we perceive it. This guided tour of the life of the mind covers nine self-reflective narratives ranging from fourth century Augustine's 'Confessions' to 20th century Simone de Beauvoir's 'The prime of life.'"--Back cover.

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to (...) better understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

The Prologue offers an overview of the Reformation of method from Augustine of Hippo through to the Ramist movement, providing an orientation to the rest of the book. It highlights and explains an important nexus of Realism, exemplarism and illumination fundamental to Ramism. Beginning with Augustine it shows how these themes coalesced into a distinctive Christian philosophy taken up and refined by Franciscans such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and John Duns Scotus, as well as by Ramon Lull, the Franciscan-inspired encyclopaedist. (...) It traces the continuation of this methodological impulse into the Platonism and Christian humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting especially the topical and Realist (Scotistic) reform of logic pioneered by Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola. It concludes by showing the reception of this topical and biblical reform in Philipp Melanchthon and the movement of Reformed scholasticism, revealing Reformed Scotism and Christian philosophy as important preconditions for Ramism. (shrink)

I argue that it is rational for a person to believe the conjunction of her beliefs. This involves responding to the Lottery and Preface Paradoxes. In addition, I suggest that in normal circumstances, what it is to believe a conjunction just is to believe its conjuncts.

The thesis of the paper is that persons are similar to a kind of group: multiple-expert epistemic unities (MEUs). MEUs are groups in which there are multiple experts on whom other members of the group model their opinion. An example would be a group of children playing Telephone. Any child nearer the source is an 'expert' for any child further away. I argue that, with certain important qualifications, it is both rational and necessary for persons to treat their future selves (...) as experts (i.e. to satisfy Bas Van Fraassen's Principle of Reflection). This makes a person a kind of MEU. (The paper "Epistemic Unities" gives more details about different kinds of epistemic unities.). (shrink)

Memes are a prominent example of a kind of digital artifact. It is widely agreed that an integral component of meme-making is the way in which it makes use of other existing material. In this paper, I examine three different ways of understanding this making use of. First, it has been seen in economic terms, as a kind of poaching. Secondly, the cultural concept of (re)appropriation has been deployed. Finally, Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage is often mentioned. I argue that despite (...) some interesting insights deriving from the first two approaches, it is the third that gives the most comprehensive and interesting take on meme-making. (shrink)

Memes, of the kind found often on the internet, are an increasingly significant medium of expressive activity. I develop a theory of their ontological nature and, in parallel, an analysis of the concept meme. On my view, memes are abstract artifacts made out of norms for production of instances. The norms say things like ‘use a certain image; add text of a certain kind; the text should be delivered in two chunks, one at the top of the image, one at (...) the bottom, etc.’ Instances of these memes are created when users follow these norms and publish the results. The concept meme is analyzed in terms of the notion of memographic practice, a historically situated form of activity within which memes are created and their instances produced and made public. (shrink)

Musical Platonists identify musical works with abstract sound structures but this implies that they are not created but only discovered. Jerrold Levinson adapts Platonism to allow for creation by identifying musical works with indicated sound structures. In this paper I explore the similarities between Levinson's view and Kit Fine's theory of qua objects. Fine offers the theory of qua objects as an account of constitution, as it obtains, for example, between a statue and the clay the statue is made out (...) of. I argue that Fine's theory does not adequately characterize the constitution relation and that the problems it faces extend to Levinson's account of musical works as indicated structures. I develop an alternative theory of constitution, based on the notion of being made out of. This approach to constitution enables me to offer an account of musical works as abstract objects that are constituted by sound structures. I argue that my account has several advantages over the Levinson/Fine approach. (shrink)

I argue that it is not ideally rational to believe that some of one's current beliefs are false, despite the impressive inductive evidence concerning others and our former selves. One's own current beliefs represent a commitment which would be undermined by taking some of them to be false. The nature of this commitment is examined in the light of Nagel's distinction between subjective and objective points of view. Finally, I suggest how we might acknowledge our fallibility consistently with this special (...) attitude to our own beliefs. (shrink)

James Bryson’s The Christian Platonism of Thomas Jackson offers the first comprehensive study of the Oxford Platonist Thomas Jackson. While Jackson is by no means unknown to early modern historians...

Taking as its point of departure Leder's phenomenological discussion of the `absent' body, this article explores the nature of human corporeality as a site of transgression. The body, I argue, using a process metaphysic, is first and foremost excessive, driven by human desire rather than animal need: a sensual mode of existence organized around the pleasure/pain axis. To be excessive/transgressive, however, implies the crossing of boundaries or limits which vary according to history and culture, time and place. These issues are (...) illustrated through a range of thinkers from Bakhtin to Kristeva, Irigaray to Deleuze and Guattari. A full-scale endorsement of the poststructuralist position is, however, rejected in favour of an approach which steers a middle ground between these transgressive, more fluid arguments and a foundationalist ontology of the emotional body as an ongoing structure of lived experience. The article concludes with some reflections on the complex pattern of corporeal `appearances', some more pleasant than others, which characterize our bodily-being-in-the-world. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to say something about why certain key psychoanalytic concepts, particularly that of the unconscious, are special because of a studied, and therapeutically important, ambiguity or paradoxicality which affects them. Before I examine these concepts, however, the first section of this paper discusses some of Sartre's views on psychological explanation. On the one hand, this gives me a way of introducing the dichotomy of self-evident irreducibility and existential lucidity which underlies my account of the unconscious. On (...) the other hand, it is important because I take Sartre to be addressing, less successfully, the very same question that Freud dealt with by introducing his ambiguous concepts. (shrink)

This paper suggests that Locke's arguments against innate principles rest on a particular conception of what it is for things to be "in the mind." Understanding that notion in terms of presuppositions for radical interpretation allows us to see how some principle might be considered innate after all.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Save Us From Being Saved:Girard's Critical SoteriologySimon J. Taylor (bio)One of the most striking things about the work of René Girard is that it is an overarching critique of what it is to be saved. The paradox that Girard presents us with is that "salvation" is something from which we must be saved. This combination of salvation as something that must be avoided and something we desperately need appears (...) to have the characteristic of a "double bind," about which Girard has written so much.1 Are we then, even within Girard's own thesis, bound to the mimetic doubling of need and revulsion that can end only in the expulsion or death of a common victim? It is this question that I hope to explore in this article.Girard's Critique Of SalvationTo set out Girard's critique of salvation, it is first necessary to see that what he has come to call the victimage mechanism ("mécanisme victimaire") is, in fact, salvation. Girard's thesis states that desire is mimetic, based on the imitation of another's desire. "Desire is always an imitation of another desire, desire for the same object, and therefore, an inexhaustible source of conflicts and rivalries" (Girard 1978, 39). As the rivalry produced by this desire intensifies, it spreads and produces conflict and violence on a large scale. On an unlimited scale, Girard identifies this with the Hobbesian "war of all against all."2 And it is at this point that the victimage mechanism kicks in. It is at this point that the identification of a scapegoat and the expulsion or killing of the scapegoat produce unity and restore peace. It is this, in Girard's originary scene, that leads to the simultaneous origins of society and religion. In restoring unity to the group, and hence founding the community, the victim becomes sacred, a god. This in itself is an indicator of the salvific power that the scapegoat effects in the community. In order that the violence, once diverted, should not break out again, two things are necessary: ritual, specifically sacrifice, and myth. Ritual reenacts the founding murder upon which society is based, enabling the [End Page 21] participants to transfer their violence to another victim. Myth is the story told by the persecutors about the events that led to the creation of their community, that is, the founding murder. Thus, religion "dehumanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor.... religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed" (Girard 1978, 134–35). Salvation has happened, and a cult arises to disburse the effects of this salvation.It is important that we take this account of religion with full seriousness and do not regard it simply as the prologue to Girard's later promotion, even rehabilitation, of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This is salvific: religion protects us from our own violence; it has mechanisms for bringing to an end outbreaks of that violence. Elsewhere Girard can speak of "the negative usefulness of religion as a social prop against anarchy and chaos" (Girard 1997, 162–63). This is salvation: violence is dealt with and human society can dwell in relative peace. Religion, on this account, is not "pie-in-the-sky," a transcendent deferral of gratification. It has real benefits to society today; it is attractive, elegant, and simple. What more could we want from religion?But Girard will not allow us to rest content with this account of religion. He is blunt when he declares that "most religions are based on a lie, which is the supposed guilt of the victim" (Girard 1993c, 32). Nietzsche wrote that "The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators' ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say,"3 and this is precisely the origin of Girard's critique of the salvation offered by religions based on scapegoating. Girard is attempting to let the sacrificial animal have its say. All too often, these... (shrink)

This critical notice describes some of Thomas Sattig’s book The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World and raises several critical issues about it.

I bring together social ontology and social epistemology by consideringsocial entities (``epistemic unities'') that are constituted by the holdingof epistemic relations between their members. In particular, I focus onthe relation of taking someone as an expert. Among the types of structuresexamined are ones with a single expert and one or more non-experts whomay or may not know of each other's situation; and ones with more thanone expert, including cases in which the relation between the experts ishierarchical and cases in which (...) it is symmetrical. These structures modela variety of social situations which can thus be given a unified treatment.Among the cases I discuss are persons, which I argue are multiple-expertunities of persons at times. Taking a person as a social unity like this offersa clear sense in which some groups can also be person-like. (shrink)

An element of the contemporary dispute amongst evolution minded psychologists and social scientists hinges on the conception of mind as being adapted as opposed to adaptive. This dispute is not trivial. The possibility that human minds are both adapted and adaptive courtesy of selection pressures that were social in nature is of particular interest to a putative evolutionary social psychology. I suggest that the notion of an evolved psychological adaptation in social psychology can be retained only if it is accepted (...) that this adaptation is for social interaction and has no rigidly fixed function and cannot be described in terms of algorithmic decision rules or fixed inferential procedures. What is held to be the reason for encephalisation in the Homo lineage and some of best atested ideas in social psychology offers license for such an approach. (shrink)

George Du Maurier’s best-selling novel, Trilby (1894), is as important because of its defiance of social and cultural norms as it is for its apparent compliance with them. Trilby is a fiction that, like its eponymous heroine, attempts to negotiate the perilously fine line between the highbrow and the lowbrow, or to put it another way, between fine art and political commentary on one side, and pornography and sensationalism on the other. This article examines the way that Du Maurier engages (...) his readership in this textual tease – his seduction of the reader – by suggesting the possibility of a peep show where everything that Victorian respectability abhors may be on display, and then his narratological dressing of the text, to ensure that where there is sexual non-conformity there is also moralism, and where there is social confrontation there is also historical distance. Understanding the textual appeal of Trilby as a character, the artist’s model who enchanted the fin-de-siècle reading public, is essential to appreciating how the discourses of pornography and fine art interact and have consequently evolved. This article therefore examines why Trilby succeeded with the Victorians where other, similarly sexually active heroines – such as Thomas Hardy’s Sue Bridehead – failed. Trilby the novel and Trilby the woman are both broken down by their author into manageable parts, a pornographic fetishistic technique that simultaneously eroticises, and makes more palatable, the textual and the physical bodies. (shrink)

A Certain Gesture: Evnine's Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga! is an entirely original kind of work. It takes the form of commentaries on memes made with the image of Batman slapping Robin. The commentaries are written as if they were not authored by the same person who made the memes, allowing the author to consider himself and his work from the outside. The book defies genre by mixing discussions of philosophy, psychoanalysis, Judaism, language, and representation with self-writing and autotheory. (...) These are juxtaposed like the items in a cabinet of curiosities or topics in an analytic patient’s free association. Both pre-modern and post-modern in its inspiration, it is cerebral, playful, social, and intensely personal. It contains philosophy, including original philosophical research, but also explores new ways of doing and thinking about philosophy. (shrink)