The phenomenon of commitment is a cornerstone of human social life. Commitments make individuals' behavior predictable, thereby facilitating the planning and coordination of joint actions involving multiple agents. Moreover, commitments make people willing to rely upon each other, and thereby contribute to sustaining characteristically human social institutions such as jobs, money, government and marriage. However, it is not well understood how people identify and assess the level of their own and others' commitments. The Philosophy and Psychology of Commitment explores and (...) explains the philosophical and cognitive issues that underpin commitment. John Michael considers how commitments motivate us and their often implicit and tacit nature. To flesh out the philosophical framework of his argument he draws on experimental work with young children, adults and human-robot interaction within the context of joint action, considering the role of the emotions and whether very young children are capable of joint action. Providing an important account of the nature and operation of commitment, this book is essential reading for those working in philosophy of psychology, cognitive science, experimental philosophy, and social and developmental psychology. It will also be of interest to those working in emerging fields such as human-robot interaction and behavioural economics. (shrink)

In recent years, developmental psychologists have increasingly been interested in various forms of prosocial behavior observed in infants and young children—in particular comforting, sharing, pointing to provide information, and spontaneous instrumental helping. We briefly review several models that have been proposed to explain the psychological mechanisms underpinning these behaviors. Focusing on spontaneous instrumental helping, we home in on models based upon what Paulus :77–81, 2014) has dubbed ‘goal-alignment’, i.e. the idea that the identification of an agent’s goal leads infants to (...) take up that goal as their own. We identify a problem with the most well-known model based upon this idea, namely the ‘goal contagion’ model. The problem arises from the way in which the model specifies the content of the goal which is identified and taken up. We then propose an alternative way of specifying the content of the goal, and use this as a starting point for articulating an alternative model based upon the idea of alignment, namely the ‘goal slippage’ model. By elucidating the difference between goal contagion and goal slippage, we contribute to the articulation of experimental criteria for assessing whether and when the mechanisms specified by these two models are at work. (shrink)

The 2011 tsunami had a devastating effect on the east coast of Japan. Particularly poignant were the century-old markers on hillsides warning against building anywhere below. Nevertheless, such wisdom from traditional knowledge was disregarded because of the perceived invulnerability of the modern. This paper attempts to garner such traditional empirical knowledge regarding the siting of towns and cities by considering the Chinese art/science of fengshui or dili, the original purpose of which was to site human habitation in the most favourable (...) places for long term survival. This knowledge is then used to consider the placement of cities created by modernity, those founded on and flourishing through the advent of globalisation, such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, St Petersburg, and Sydney. (shrink)

A considerable body of research has documented the emergence of what appears to be instrumental helping behavior in early childhood. The current study tested the hypothesis that one basic psychological mechanism motivating this behavior is a preference for completing unfinished actions. To test this, a paradigm was implemented in which 2-year-olds (n = 34, 16 female/18 male, mostly White middle-class children) could continue an adult’s action when the adult no longer wanted to complete the action. The results showed that children (...) continued the adult’s actions more often when the goal had been abandoned than when it had been reached (OR = 2.37). This supports the hypothesis that apparent helping behavior in 2-year-olds is motivated by a preference for completing unfinished actions. (shrink)

Bundel bijdragen over wijsgerige ontwikkelingen in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw.

In this brief discussion, we explicate and evaluate Heyes and colleagues’ deflationary approach to interpreting apparent evidence of domain-specific processes for social percep- tion. We argue that the deflationary approach sheds important light on how functionally specific processes in social perception can be subserved at least in part by domain-general processes. On the other hand, we also argue that the fruitfulness of this approach has been unnecessarily hampered by a contrastive conception of the relationship between domain- general and domain-specific processes. (...) As an alternative, we propose a complementary conception: the identification of domain-general processes that are engaged in instances of social perception can play a positive, structuring role by adding additional constraints to be accounted for in modelling the domain-specific processes that are also involved in such instances. (shrink)

Norms are standards against which actions, dispositions of mind and character, states of affairs and so forth can be measured. They also govern our behaviour, make claims on us, bind us and provide reasons for action and thought that motivate us. J. L. Mackie argued that the intrinsic prescriptivity, or to-be-pursuedness, of moral norms would make them utterly unlike anything else that we know of. Therefore, we should favour an error theory of morality. Mackie thought that the to-be-pursuedness would have (...) to be built into mind-independent moral reality. One alternative, however, is that the to-be-pursuedness is built into our faculty of moral sensibility. There is a large body of empirical evidence demonstrating that the emotions play a central role in making moral judgments. I shall argue that this helps to explain how normative judgments are reliably and non-accidentally related to motivation. I shall also argue that emotional experience has the right structure and properties to provide us with a defeasible warrant for normative knowledge. The role of the emotions in our moral psychology does not obviously support anti-realism. Rather, emotional experience can be intentional, evaluative, evaluable, and quasi-perceptual. This makes emotional experience a plausible candidate for constituting a non-queer faculty of moral sensibility. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In what sense is commitment essential to joint action, and do the participants in a joint action themselves perceive commitment as essential? Attempts to answer this question have so far been hampered by clashes of intuition. Perhaps this is because the intuitions in question have mostly been investigated using informal methods only. To explore this possibility, we adopted a more formal approach to testing intuitions about joint action, sampling naïve participants’ intuitions about experimentally controlled scenarios. This approach did reveal (...) patterns in participants’ responses which may hint at potential conceptual links between commitment and joint action. It did not however provide evidence to support the view that commitment is essential to joint action, at least not from the agents’ own perspective. We conclude that intuitions alone, even when drawn systematically from a large sample, may be a poor basis for theorizing about joint action. (shrink)

We propose category theory, the mathematical theory of structure, as a vehicle for defining ontologies in an unambiguous language with analytical and constructive features. Specifically, we apply categorical logic and model theory, based upon viewing an ontology as a sub-category of a category of theories expressed in a formal logic. In addition to providing mathematical rigor, this approach has several advantages. It allows the incremental analysis of ontologies by basing them in an interconnected hierarchy of theories, with an operation on (...) the hierarchy that expresses the formation of complex theories from simple theories that express first principles. Another operation forms abstractions expressing the shared concepts in an array of theories. The use of categorical model theory makes possible the incremental analysis of possible worlds, or instances, for the theories, and the mapping of instances of a theory to instances of its more abstract parts. We describe the theoretical approach by applying it to the semantics of neural networks. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty (...) is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction. (shrink)

In Five Classics of Fengshui Michael Paton traces the theoretical development of this form of spiritual geography through full translations of major texts: the Burial Classic of Qing Wu , Book of Burial , Yellow Emperor’s Classic of House Siting , Twenty Four Difficult Problems , and Water Dragon Classic.

The Cynic exhortation to live according to nature is far from transparent. I defend a traditional interpretation: to live in accordance with nature is to live in accordance with human nature, which is to live as a rational animal. After discussing methodological concerns, I consider the theriophilic proposal that the ideal Cynic lives like an animal. I marshal evidence against this view and in favor of the alternative of Cynics as rational animals. Finally, I anticipate and address the concern that (...) mine is an unduly idealized and Stoicized account. (shrink)

How do social media affect interpersonal relationships? Adopting a Strawsonian framework, I argue that social media make us more likely to adopt the objective attitude towards persons. Technologically mediated communication tends to inhibit interpersonal emotions and other reactive attitudes. This is due to a relative lack of the social cues that typically enable us to read minds and react to them. Adopting the objective attitude can be harmful for two reasons. First, it tends to undermine the basis of interpersonal relationships. (...) In particular, I argue that friendship is a relationship between persons that requires the participant stance. Second, it is a morally risky attitude that makes us more likely to treat persons in problematic, thing-like ways. Some philosophers have rightly urged that social media are compatible with virtuous, Aristotelian friendship. Notwithstanding, I argue that the harms associated with the objective attitude are more pressing than they might appear if we restrict our focus to relatively virtuous people with the social competence to flourish in morally risky online environments. (shrink)

In recent years, several minimalist accounts of joint action have been offered (e.g. Tollefsen Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35:75–97, 2005; Sebanz et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(6): 234–1246, 2006; Vesper et al. Neural Networks 23 (8/9): 998–1003, 2010), which seek to address some of the shortcomings of classical accounts. Minimalist accounts seek to reduce the cognitive complexity demanded by classical accounts either by leaving out shared intentions or by characterizing them in a way that (...) does not demand common knowledge of complex, interconnected structures of intentions. Moreover, they propose models of the actual factors facilitating online coordination of movements. The present proposal aims to enrich a minimalist framework by showing how shared emotions can facilitate coordination without presupposing common knowledge of complex, interconnected structures of intentions. Shared emotions are defined for the purposes of this paper as affective states that fulfill two minimal criteria: (a) they are expressed (verbally or otherwise) by one person; and (b) the expression is perceived (consciously or unconsciously) by another person. Various ways in which the fulfillment of (a) and (b) can lead to effects that function as coordinating factors in joint action are distinguished and discussed. (shrink)

The seminal ideas of the most influential modern art educator are presented here as he developed them, in edited transcripts of Viktor Lowenfeld's 1958 class lectures and discussions on art education and art therapy. The transcripts serves as explication of Lowenfeld's_ Creative and Mental Growth_, now going into a seventh edition—with posthumous collaborators since the author's death in 1960—translated into all the world's major languages. The experiential basis of Lowenfeld's ideas is revealed through the autobiographical and reflective quality of his (...) lectures and his Socratic dialogs with students. Both his vicarious experience, arising from his erudition, and his immediate experience, stemming from his sensitivity to everyday stimuli, are focused on the problem at hand. The result is a freshness and immediacy as though the author were speaking directly to the reader about mutual concerns. The book presents transcripts of 31 class sessions conducted by Lowenfeld on Art and the Child, Art and the Adolescent, and Art Education Therapy in the year after his election as "Art Educator of the Year" by national Art Education Association. The editor's introduction gives the highlights of Lowenfeld's life and work and the circumstances surrounding the recorded class meetings. The book concludes with a selected bibliography of the works of Viktor Lowenfeld. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how theoretical discussion of recent research on the abilities of infants and young children to represent other agents’ beliefs has been shaped by a descriptivist conception of mental content, i.e., to the notion that the distal content of a mental representation is fixed by the core body of knowledge that is associated with that mental representation. I also show how alternative conceptions of mental content—and in particular Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic approach—make it possible to endorse the (...) view that infants have the ability to track beliefs by as early as 6 months while failing to understand some of the ways in which beliefs combine with each other and with other mental states in contributing to inferences and actions. In articulating this view, I will draw upon Millikan’s recently developed notion of ‘unicepts’. Unicepts, according to Millikan, are the basic representational vehicles that underpin our abilities to identify objects, properties, relations and kinds. When applied to research on mindreading in infancy and early childhood, Millikan’s approach generates fruitful new questions about the development of belief reasoning, and about the functions of belief reasoning in infancy and at different stages of childhood. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a great deal of controversy in the philosophy of mind, developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience both about how to conceptualize empathy and about the connections between empathy and interpersonal understanding. Ideally, we would first establish a consensus about how to conceptualize empathy, and then analyze the potential contribution of empathy to interpersonal understanding. However, it is not at all clear that such a consensus will soon be forthcoming, given that different people have fundamentally conflicting (...) intuitions about the concept of empathy. Thus, instead of trying to resolve this controversy, I will try to show that a fair amount of consensus is within reach about how empathy can be a source of interpersonal understanding even in the absence of a consensus about how to conceptualize empathy. As we shall see, the main controversy concerns a few phenomena that some researchers view as necessary conditions of empathy, but which others view either as merely characteristic features or as consequences of empathy. My strategy will be to try to show how empathy can generate interpersonal understanding by virtue of these phenomena—regardless of whether one chooses to conceptualize them as necessary conditions of empathy. (shrink)

In a recent article in Philosophy of Science, De Vignemont and Jacob defend the view that empathy involves interpersonal similarity between an empathizer and a target person with respect to internal affective states. Focusing on empathy for pain, they propose a theory of the neural substrate of pain empathy. We point out several flaws in their interpretation of the data and argue that currently available data do not differentiate between De Vignemont and Jacob’s model and alternative models. Finally, we offer (...) some suggestions about how this might be achieved in future research. (shrink)

Michael-John Turp | : There is little consensus concerning the truth or reference conditions for evaluative terms such as “good” and “bad.” In his paper “Good and Evil,” Geach proposed that we distinguish between attributive and predicative uses of “good.” Foot, Thomson, Kraut, and others have put this distinction to use when discussing basic questions of value theory. In §§1-2, I outline Geach’s proposal and argue that attributive evaluation depends on a prior grasp of the kind of thing (...) that is evaluated, which is another way of saying a prior grasp of a thing’s nature. In §§3-4, I discuss the evaluation of artifacts, which provide the clearest examples of attributive evaluation. This allows me to address a series of problems apparently facing the idea of attributive goodness. In §5, I consider the neo-Aristotelian idea that we can extend attributive accounts of goodness to human lives, and I pay attention to Foot’s account of natural goodness. This leads me to consider the goodness of human life as a whole in §6. At this point. I depart from Geach’s approach and argue that questions of attributive goodness finally give rise to questions of predicative or absolute goodness. | : Il y a peu de consensus sur la vérité ou les conditions de référence pour les termes évaluatifs tels que « bon » et « mauvais ». Dans son article « Good and Evil », Geach a proposé de distinguer les usages attributif et prédicatif du « bon ». Foot, Thomson, Kraut et d’autres considèrent qu’il faut utiliser cette distinction lorsqu’il s’agit des questions fondamentales de la théorie de la valeur. Dans les parties 1-2, je décris ici la proposition de Geach et je prétends que l’évaluation attributive dépend d’une compréhension préalable du genre de chose qui est évaluée, ce qui est une autre façon de dire une compréhension préalable de la nature d’une chose. Dans les parties 3-4, je discute de l’évaluation des artefacts, qui fournissent les exemples les plus clairs d’évaluation attributive. Cela me permet d’illustrer une série de problèmes apparemment liés à l’idée de la bonté attributive. Dans la partie 5, je considère l’idée néo-aristotélicienne voulant que nous puissions étendre notre compréhension de la bonté attributive aux vies humaines, et je me penche sur l’idée de bonté naturelle selon Foot. Cela me conduit à considérer la bonté de la vie humaine comme un tout, dans la partie 6. De là, je m’éloigne de l’approche de Geach pour affirmer que les questions de bonté attributive suscitent finalement des questions de bonté prédicative ou absolue. (shrink)

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach has been called ‘The Father of Physical Anthropology’ because of his pioneering publications describing human racial variation. He proposed a racial typology consisting of five ‘major varieties/races’ of humanity. Since the 1990s, Londa Schiebinger and other Anglophone scholars have argued that Blumenbach’s writings on race show evidence that he was significantly influenced by nineteenth-century race supremacist beliefs which held Europeans/caucasians to be the highest ranked and most beautiful race. However, these modern authors relied largely on Thomas Bendyshe’s (...) 1865 English translations of Blumenbach’s Latin and German texts. As documented herein, Bendyshe’s publication includes numerous translation errors which form a pattern indicating that he employed two translators. The first translator was consistent with five earlier English translations. The second translator was not consistent with the earlier translators. This second translator also used English terms that denigrated extra-Europeans while adulating Europeans. Furthermore, Bendyshe’s1865 translation regularly used the term ‘beauty’ to translate different Latin words that Blumenbach used to express his nuanced view of aesthetics and structural symmetry. Given the inconsistency and errors in Bendyshe’s 1865 translations, they should not be unquestionably accepted as an accurate reflection of Blumenbach’s views. (shrink)

A document discovered in the Roman archives of the Jesuits sheds new light on the involvement of the Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner in the trial of Galileo. The document suggests that Scheiner did not initiate the 1632–33 proceedings against Galileo, despite a long suspicion of his role in the events leading to Galileo’s condemnation, abjuration, and house arrest. An exploration of the contrasting conceptions of the scientific enterprise competing for hegemony within the Society of Jesus at the time of the (...) trial leads to the development of a model of scientific exchange based on money rather than gift giving. (shrink)

Can commitments be generated without promises, commissive speech acts or gestures that are conventionally interpreted as such? While we remain neutral with respect to the normative answer to this question, we propose a psychological answer. Specifically, we hypothesize that people at least believe that commitments are in place if one agent (the sender) has led a second agent (the recipient) to rely on her to do something, and if this is mutually known by the two agents. Crucially, this situation can (...) occur even if the sender has neither uttered a commissive speech act nor performed any action that would conventionally be interpreted as such. In a series of online experiments, we tested this hypothesis by presenting participants with vignettes describing everyday situations in which a recipient’s expectations were frustrated by the sender’s behavior, and then eliciting moral judgments about the sender’s actions and character. We manipulated whether the recipient’s reliance on the sender was mutually known, and if so, whether the sender verbally acknowledged this or not. The results show that moral judgments differed significantly according to whether the recipient’s reliance was mutually known, but not according to whether this was verbally acknowledged. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess the thesis that the discovery of mirror neuron systems provides empirical support for the simulation theory of social cognition. This thesis can be analyzed into two claims: that MNSs are involved in understanding others’ intentions or emotions; and that the way in which they do so supports a simulationist viewpoint. I will be giving qualified support to both claims. Starting with, I will present theoretical and empirical points in support of the view that MNSs (...) play a substantial role and are perhaps neces¬sary although not sufficient for understanding at least some intentions or emo¬tions. Turning to, I will argue that the work on MNSs best supports a fairly weak version of ST, according to which social cognition involves simulation simply because conceptual thought in gen¬eral has a simulationist component. In elucidating this idea, I appeal to Law¬rence Barsalou’s embodied theory of concepts. Crucially, the term “simula¬tion” here refers not to simulations of a target agent’s experience, nor even spe¬cifically to one’s own experience in a similar counterfactual situation, but to simulations of experience in general - activating sensory, motor, proprioceptive, affective, and introspective representations that match representations one would have when perceiving, carrying out actions, experiencing emotions, etc. I then sketch an expanded simulationist framework for understanding the contribution of MNSs to social cognition. The ap¬peal to empirical work on MNSs in support of ST is therefore a two-edged sword; making this appeal persuasive requires us to modify our understanding of simulation to make it line up with the empirical work. (shrink)

Simulation as an epistemic tool between theory and practice: A Comparison of the Relationship between Theory and Simulation in Science and in Folk Psychology In this paper I explore the concept of simulation that is employed by proponents of the so-called simulation theory within the debate about the nature and scientific status of folk psychology. According to simulation theory, folk psychology is not a sort of theory that postulates theoretical entities (mental states and processes) and general laws, but a practice (...) whereby we put ourselves into others’ shoes and simulate their situation from our own perspective. On the basis of this sort of simulation, we supposedly know how we would act or think or feel, and then expect the same of others. A closer look at the concept of simulation reveals some problems with this view, but also helps to clarify the insight motivating simulation theory. Specifically, I defend the thesis that the analogy to simulations in science shows us how theoretical elements in folk psychology can be complemented by (i.e. not replaced by) the central idea of simulation theory – namely that our own cognitive habits and dispositions provide us with a resource that is distinct from propositional knowledge in folk psychology. I also discuss the idea that our use of simulations during cognitive development enables us to imitate the people around us and thereby to become more similar to them, which in turn makes simulation an increasingly effective epistemic strategy. Insofar as theoretical elements – such as the distinctions, relations, and entities referred to in folk psychological discourse – play a role in imitative learning, they are causally embedded in our cognitive development, so we have good reason to regard them as being among the real causes of our behavior. (shrink)

This book invites readers into Tolkien's world through the lens of a variety of philosophers, all of whom owe a rich debt to the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition. It places Tolkien's mythology against a wider backdrop of Catholic philosophy and asks serious questions about the nature of creation, the nature of God, what it means to be good, and the problem of evil. Halsall sets Tolkien alongside both his contemporaries and ancient authors, revealing his careful use of literary devices inspired by (...) them to craft his own "mythology for England. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty (...) is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction. (shrink)