Four experiments are reported which investigated the types of truth tables that people associate with conditional sentences and the kinds of inferences that they will draw from them. The present studies differed from most previous ones in using different types of content in the conditionals, for example promises and warnings. It was found that the type of content had a strong and consistent effect on both truth tables and inferences. It is suggested that this is because in real life conditionals (...) make probabilistic assertions, and that the strength of the probabilistic link is determined by the situation in which the conditional occurs. The implications of these findings for current theories of reasoning are considered and it is concluded that none of them is entirely satisfactory. It is suggested that more linguistically based theories may prove more successful. (shrink)

The notion of ecological rationality, although plausible, does not readily lead to testable predictions. This is illustrated with respect to heuristics in syllogistic reasoning. Several possible heuristics have been proposed but ecological rationality does not appear to offer a sensible rationale for choosing between these.

(1994). Inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning and mental models. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 65-67. doi: 10.1080/02698599408573483.

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)

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)

Many researchers have suggested that premise interpretation errors can account, at least in part, for errors on categorical syllogisms. However, although it is possible to show that people make such errors in simple inference tasks, the evidence for them is far less clear when actual syllogisms are administered. Part of the problem is due to the lack of clear predictions for the solutions that would be expected when using modified quantifiers, assuming that correct inferences are made from them. This paper (...) presents the expected solutions for Gricean, reversible, and reversible Gricean interpretations, and evaluates these using three datasets (two currently available, and one new). The evidence supported the adoption of reversible and reversible Gricean interpretations, but not Gricean interpretations on their own. These results suggest that the categorical syllogism task tends to induce different quantifier interpretations from those identified in simple inference tasks. (shrink)

Stanovich & West's claim that there are two coherent and conceptually distinct types of thinking, System 1 and System 2, is questioned. Some authors equate System 2 with intelligence whereas other do not; and some authors regard the two types of system as distinct while others regard them as lying on a continuum.

Girotto and Legrenzi's 1993 facilitation effect for their SARS version of Wason s THOG problem a disjunctive reasoning task was examined. The effect was not replicated when the standard THOG problem instructions were used in Experiments 1 and 2. However, in Experiment 3 when Girotto and Legrenzi's precise instructions were used, facilitation was observed. Experiment 4 further investigated the role of the type of instructions in the observed facilitation. The results suggest that such facilitation may result from attentional factors rather (...) than the use of a combinatorial analysis in the problem. (shrink)

For over thirty years, Stephen Braude has studied the paranormal in everyday life, from extrasensory perception and psychokinesis to mediumship and materialization. _The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations_ is a highly readable and often amusing account of his most memorable encounters with such phenomena. Here Braude recounts in fascinating detail five particular cases—some that challenge our most fundamental scientific beliefs and others that expose our own credulousness. Braude begins with a south Florida woman who can make thin (...) gold-colored foil appear spontaneously on her skin. He then travels to New York and California to test psychokinetic superstars—and frauds—like Joe Nuzum, who claim to move objects using only their minds. Along the way, Braude also investigates the startling allegations of K.R., a policeman in Annapolis who believes he can transfer images from photographs onto other objects—including his own body—and Ted Serios, a deceased Chicago elevator operator who could make a variety of different images appear on Polaroid film. Ultimately, Braude considers his wife’s surprisingly fruitful experiments with astrology, which she has used to guide professional soccer teams to the top of their leagues, as well as his own personal experiences with synchronicity—a phenomenon, he argues, that may need to be explained in terms of a refined, extensive, and dramatic form of psychokinesis. Heady, provocative, and brimming with eye-opening details and suggestions, _The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations_ will intrigue both adherents and detractors of its controversial subject matter alike. (shrink)

This paper expands the literature on accounting ethics education by considering the teaching of ethics in accounting doctoral education. Some of the ethical issues that might be addressed in accounting doctoral education are reviewed. A number of matters relating to teaching ethics to accounting doctoral students are considered. The paper concludes with a summary and some final remarks.

A common approach to explaining the perception of form is through the use of static features. The weakness of this approach points naturally to dynamic definitions of form. Considering dynamical form, however, leads inevitably to the need to explain how events are perceived as time-extended—a problem with primacy over that even of qualia. Optic flow models, energy models, models reliant on a rigidity constraint are examined. The reliance of these models on the instantaneous specification of form at an instant, t, (...) or across a series of such instants forces the consideration of the primary memory supporting both the perception of time-extended events and the time-extension of consciousness. This cannot be reduced to an integration over space and time. The difficulty of defining the basis for this memory is highlighted in considerations of dynamic form in relation to scales of time. Ultimately, the possibility is raised that psychology must follow physics in a more profound approach to time and motion. (shrink)

Bergson’s model of time (1889) is perhaps the proto-phenomenological theory. It is part of a larger model of mind (1896) which can be seen in modern light as describing the brain as supporting a modulated wave within a holographic field, specifying the external image of the world, and wherein subject and object are differentiated not in terms of space, but of time. Bergson’s very concrete model is developed and deepened with Gibson’s ecological model of perception. It is applied to the (...) problems of consciousness, direct realism, qualia and illusions. The model implies an entirely different basis for memory and cognition, and a brief overview is given for the basis of direct memory, compositionality and systematicity. (shrink)

Within Piaget there is an implicit theory of the development of explicit memory. It rests in the dynamical trajectory underlying the development of causality, object, space and time – a complex (COST) supporting a symbolic relationship integral to the explicit. Cassirer noted the same dependency in the phenomena of aphasias, insisting that a symbolic function is being undermined in these deficits. This is particularly critical given the reassessment of Piaget’s stages as the natural bifurcations of a self-organizing dynamic system. The (...) elements of a theoretical framework required to support explicit memory are developed, to include, (1) the complex developmental trajectory supporting the emergence of the explicit in Piaget, (2) the concrete dynamical system and the concept of a non-differentiable time contained in Bergson’s theory required to support a conscious, as opposed to an implicit remembrance, (3) the relation to current theories of amnesia, difficulties posed by certain retrograde amnesic phenomena, the role of the hippocampus and limitations of connectionist models, (4) the fact that nowhere in this overall framework does the loss of explicit memory imply or require the destruction of experience “stored in the brain.”. (shrink)

Cushman raises the intriguing possibility that rationalization accesses/constructs intuitions that are not otherwise cognitively available. However, he substantially over-reaches in arguing that rationalization is mostly right on average, based on claims that the process must have emerged adaptively. The adaptiveness of “bounded rationalization” is domain specific and is unlikely to be adaptive in a large number of important applications.

Crimes of Reason brings together expanded and updated versions of some of Braude’s best previously published essays, along with new essays written specifically for this book.

What is art's relationship to play? Those interested in this question tend to look to modern philosophy for answers, but, as this book shows, the question was already debated in antiquity by luminaries like Plato and Aristotle. Over the course of eight chapters, this book contextualizes those debates, and demonstrates their significance for theoretical problems today. Topics include the ancient child psychology at the root of the ancient Greek word for 'play', the numerous toys that have survived from antiquity, and (...) the meaning of play's conceptual opposite, the 'serious'. What emerges is a concept of play markedly different from the one we have inherited from modernity. Play is not a certain set of activities which unleashes a certain feeling of pleasure; it is rather a certain feeling of pleasure that unleashes the activities we think of as 'play'. As such, it offers a new set of theoretical challenges. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the advantages and challenges of using active learning, when teaching an accounting ethics course offered in higher education . The willingness of an instructor to use active learning in an accounting ethics course may be influenced at least in part by that instructor’s assessment of the advantages and challenges of using active learning. Consequently, my paper may be of assistance to instructors with experience in teaching an accounting ethics course and to instructors who are preparing (...) to teach their initial accounting ethics course. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S83-S88, March‐April 2022.

This work was the first sustained philosophical study of psychic phenomena to follow C.D. Broad's LECTURES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, written nearly twenty years ...

In the Philosophy of Sport literature, play has been widely conceived, in whole or part, as an autotelic activity; that is, an activity pursued for intrinsic factors. I examine several versions of the conception of play as an autotelic activity. Given these different accounts, I raise the question whether the concept of autotelic play is tenable. I examine three possibilities: (i) accept the concept of autotelic play and reject the possibility of satisfying the conditions for play activities; (ii) accept the (...) concept and acknowledge that play refers to a range of activities ranging from the purely autotelic to something less; and, (iii) reject the definition of play as an autotelic activity and redefine play. I argue that the third option is the best avenue for constructing a viable account of play. In defending this third option, I argue that play activities are value laden, that the value of play is an empirical matter, and that the effect of motivating reasons on behavior is the basis for determining which motivating reasons count as intrinsic or extrinsic. I conclude that the weight of the arguments suggest we would be well-served to redefine and move beyond the notion of autotelic play. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory has yet to offer a detailed model of the complex transitions from a living system of one design to another of more advanced, or simply different, design. Hidden within the writings of evolution's expositors is an implicit appeal to AI-like processes operating within the "cosmic machine" that has hitherto been evolving the plethora of functional living systems we observe. In these writings, there is disturbingly little understanding of the deep problems involved, resting as they do in the very (...) heart of AI. The end-state requirements for a system, device, or "machine" with intelligence capable of design are examined. The representational power must be sufficient to support analogical thought, an operation demanding transformations of events in imagery, in turn a function of perception, both dependent on a non-differentiable flow of time. The operational dynamics of the device must inherit this fundamental property of the dynamically transforming matter-field. Whether the evolutionary mechanisms or algorithmics thus far envisioned by biology or AI are coordinate with such requirements is left seriously in doubt. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word _philosophy _means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In _The Erotic Phenomenon,_ Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and personal book (...) with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, _The Erotic Phenomenon _is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

In two books and several articles Philip Goff has developed a panpsychist theory. Recently, he has put forth a version which he calls cosmopsychism. Rejecting both perfect being theism and physicalism, according to cosmopsychism, there is a unitary mind that is not only the cause of the universe, but in a sense is the universe. In this essay I critique Goff’s theory, arguing that it is not simpler than PBT, and that it fails to make important issues clear. I conclude (...) that Goff’s theory is a version of theism but fails to be a plausible alternative to PBT. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on multiple personality has focused primarily on problems about personal identity and psychological explanation. But multiple personality and other dissociative phenomena raise equally important and even more urgent questions about moral responsibility, in particular: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities? Cases of dreaming help illustrate why attributions of responsibility in cases of dissociation do not turn on putative changes in identity, as some have (...) supposed. Instead, it is argued that traditional criteria of rationality and behavioral control apply also to cases of dissociation. It is noted, however, that one can distinguish different kinds of responsibility in cases of dissociation, and that one is responsible for one's dreams in a different sense from that in which one is responsible for actions one can control and evaluate. It is also argued that in cases of multiple personality it is important to distinguish control over switching of personalities from an alter's control over its own behavior. Moreover, the author considers reasons for thinking that amnesia is less relevant to attributions of responsibility than many have supposed. (shrink)