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Are Biology Experts and Novices Function Pluralists? Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Andrew J. Roberts, Pierrick Bourrat
Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting
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Experimenting with Truth Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-03-25 Jamin Asay
In the last decade Robert Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski have conducted a number of experimental studies in order to better understand the ordinary notion of truth. In this paper I critically engage their ecological approach to the study of truth, and argue for a wider perspective on how truth should be empirically studied: in addition to the experimental data that they emphasize and collect, there should
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Intellectual Humility and Humbling Environments Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Steven Bland
While there are many competing accounts and scales of intellectual humility, philosophers and psychologists are generally united in treating it as an epistemically beneficial disposition of individual agents. I call the research guided by this supposition the traditional approach to studying intellectual humility. The traditional approach is entirely understandable in light of recent findings that
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Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and the Comprehension of Determinism Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Daniel Lim, Ryan Nichols, Joseph Wagoner
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Aftereffects, High-Levelism and Gestalt Properties Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Yavuz Recep Başoğlu
According to high-levelism, one can perceptually be aware of high-level properties such as natural kind properties. Against high-levelism, the Gestalt proposal suggests that instead of high-level properties, one can have a perceptual experience as of Gestalt properties, i.e., determinables of determinate low-level properties. When one looks at a bird, the high-levelist argues that one can perceive
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Non-doxastic Attitude Reports, Information Structure, and Semantic-Pragmatic Interface Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Wojciech Rostworowski, Katarzyna Kuś, Bartosz Maćkiewicz
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Causal Conditionals, Tendency Causal Claims and Statistical Relevance Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Michał Sikorski, Noah van Dongen, Jan Sprenger
Indicative conditionals and tendency causal claims are closely related (e.g., Frosch and Byrne, 2012), but despite these connections, they are usually studied separately. A unifying framework could consist in their dependence on probabilistic factors such as high conditional probability and statistical relevance (e.g., Adams, 1975; Eells, 1991; Douven, 2008, 2015). This paper presents a comparative
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Credences and Trustworthiness: a Calibrationist Account Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-02-10
Abstract All of us make judgments of probability, and we rely on them for our decision-making. This paper argues that such judgments are trustworthy only to the extent that one has good reasons to think that they are produced by maximally inclusive, well calibrated cognitive processes. A cognitive process is maximally inclusive when it takes into account all the evidence which one regards as relevant
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Symbol and Substrate: A Methodological Approach to Computation in Cognitive Science Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-01-26
Abstract Cognitive scientists use computational models to represent the results of their experimental work and to guide further research. Neither of these claims is particularly controversial, but the philosophical and evidentiary statuses of these models are hotly debated. To clarify the issues, I return to Newell and Simon’s 1972 exposition on the computational approach; they herald its ability to
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‘Pragmatics First’: Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Dorit Bar-On
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On the Reality of the Base-Rate Fallacy: A Logical Reconstruction of the Debate Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Martina Calderisi
Does the most common response given by participants presented with Tversky and Kahneman’s famous taxi cab problem amount to a violation of Bayes’ theorem? In other words, do they fall victim to so-called base-rate fallacy? In the present paper, following an earlier suggestion by Crupi and Girotto, we will identify the logical arguments underlying both the original diagnosis of irrationality in this
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Against an Epistemic Argument for Mineness Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Shao-Pu Kang
When you have a conscious experience—such as feeling pain, watching the sunset, or thinking about your loved ones—are you aware of the experience as your own, even when you do not reflect on, think about, or attend to it? Let us say that an experience has “mineness” just in case its subject is aware of it as her own while she undergoes it. And let us call the view that all ordinary experiences have
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Moral Identity, Moral Integration, and Autobiographical Narrative Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2024-01-05
Abstract Moral identity theorists argue that moral action is explained by the centrality of moral values to a person’s identity. Moral identity theorists refer to moral integration as both the process by which moral values become central to a person’s identity and the state an individual is in when a given moral value is central to their identity. While moral identity theorists appeal to autobiographical
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How to Think about Zeugmatic Oddness Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Michelle Liu
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A Pattern Theory of Scaffolding Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-21 Albert Newen, Regina E. Fabry
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Conceptual Spaces for Conceptual Engineering? Feminism as a Case Study Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-19 Lina Bendifallah, Julie Abbou, Igor Douven, Heather Burnett
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Conspiracy Theory Belief: A Sane Response to an Insane World? Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Joseph M. Pierre
Are conspiracy theory beliefs pathological? That depends on what is meant by "pathological." This paper begins by unpacking that ill-defined and value-laden term before making the case that widespread conspiracy theory belief should not be conceptualized through the “othering’ perspective of individual psychopathology. In doing so, it adopts a phenomenological perspective to argue that conspiracy theory
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The Hard Problem of Content is Neither Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-08 William Max Ramsey
For the past 40 years, philosophers have generally assumed that a key to understanding mental representation is to develop a naturalistic theory of representational content. This has led to an outlook where the importance of content has been heavily inflated, while the significance of the representational vehicles has been somewhat downplayed. However, the success of this enterprise has been thwarted
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Anorexia Nervosa, Bodily Alienation, and Authenticity Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-12-08 Michelle Maiese
Existing phenomenological accounts of anorexia nervosa suggest that various forms of bodily alienation and distorted bodily self-consciousness are common among subjects with this condition. Subjects often experience a sense of distance or estrangement from their body and its needs and demands. What is more, first-person reports and existing qualitative research reveal struggles with authenticity and
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Emotional Impulsivity and Sensorimotor Skills Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Luis Alejandro Murillo-Lara
In this paper I propose an explanation for the impulsivity displayed by some of our emotional experiences. I begin by looking for such an account in the psychological and philosophical literatures. After expressing doubts regarding some approaches’ resources to account for the phenomenon at issue, I outline an account of emotional impulsivity by focusing on (1) its independence from judgment and deliberation;
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For an Epistemology of Stereopsis Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-11-16 Gabriele Ferretti
Philosophers and cognitive scientists try to understand, from different perspectives, the nature of the experience of reality. Given this shared, interdisciplinary interest, it would be beneficial to have a coherent story about the experience of reality, in which there is reciprocal contribution from both philosophy and cognitive science. This paper wants to pave the way for this shared enterprise
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Lying by Asserting What You Believe is True: a Case of Transparent Delusion Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-11-11 Vladimir Krstić
In this paper, I argue (1) that the contents of some delusions are believed with sufficient confidence; (2) that a delusional subject could have a conscious belief in the content of his delusion (p), and concurrently judge a contradictory content (not-p) – his delusion could be transparent, and (3) that the existence of even one such case reveals a problem with pretty much all existing accounts of
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Life Satisfaction and Affect: Why Do these SWB Measures Correlate Differently with Material Goods and Freedom? Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Jelle de Boer
Two different types of subjective well-being (SWB) measures exhibit a remarkable difference in their correlations with people’s circumstances. The life satisfaction method shows relatively a strong correlation with income and material conveniences while affective measures are more tightly linked with freedom. Why is this so? To explain this difference I examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying these
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A Puzzle About Mental Lexicons and Semantic Relatedness Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Alice Damirjian
According to the received view in the literature on homonymy and polysemy representation, there is a difference between how polysemes and homonyms are represented in our mental lexicons. More concretely, the received view holds that whereas the meanings associated with a homonymous expression are (mentally) represented in separate lexical entries, the meanings associated with a polysemous expression
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Partial First-Person Authority: How We Know Our Own Emotions Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Adam J. Andreotta
This paper focuses on the self-knowledge of emotions. I first argue that several of the leading theories of self-knowledge, including the transparency method (see, e.g., Byrne 2018) and neo-expressivism (see, e.g., Bar-On 2004), have difficulties explaining how we authoritatively know our own emotions (even though they may plausibly account for sensation, belief, intention, and desire). I next consider
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Clearing our Minds for Hedonic Phenomenalism Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-18 Lorenzo Buscicchi, Willem van der Deijl
What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always about something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant
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From Altered States to Metaphysics: The Epistemic Status of Psychedelic-induced Metaphysical Beliefs Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Paweł Gładziejewski
Psychedelic substances elicit powerful, uncanny conscious experiences that are thought to possess therapeutic value. In those who undergo them, these altered states of consciousness often induce shifts in metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental structure of reality. The contents of those beliefs range from contentious to bizarre, especially when considered from the point of view of naturalism. Can
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Representationalism and Olfactory Valence Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Błażej Skrzypulec
One of the crucial characteristics of the olfactory modality is that olfactory experiences commonly present odours as pleasant or unpleasant. Indeed, because of the importance of the hedonic aspects of olfactory experience, it has been proposed that the role of olfaction is not to represent the properties of stimuli, but rather to generate a valence-related response. However, despite a growing interest
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Beyond the Implicit/Explicit Dichotomy: The Pragmatics of Plausible Deniability Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Francesca Bonalumi, Johannes B. Mahr, Pauline Marie, Nausicaa Pouscoulous
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Body Checking in Anorexia Nervosa: from Inquiry to Habit Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Somogy Varga
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Teasing Apart the Roles of Interoception, Emotion, and Self-Control in Anorexia Nervosa Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Sarah Arnaud, Jacqueline Sullivan, Amy MacKinnon, Lindsay P. Bodell
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Enhanced but Indeterminate? How Attention Colors our World Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-18 Azenet L. Lopez, Eliska Simsova
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Rethinking Bullshit Receptivity Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Jonathan Wilson
The bullshit receptivity scale—a methodological tool that measures the level of profoundness that participants assign to a series of obscure and new-agey, randomly generated statements—has become increasingly popular since its introduction in 2015. Researchers that deploy this scale often frame their research in terms of Harry Frankfurt’s analysis of bullshit, according to which bullshit is discourse
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Literalism in Autistic People: a Predictive Processing Proposal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Agustín Vicente, Christian Michel, Valentina Petrolini
Autistic individuals are commonly said – and also consider themselves – to be excessively literalist, in the sense that they tend to prefer literal interpretations of words and utterances. This literalist bias seems to be fairly specific to autism and still lacks a convincing explanation. In this paper we explore a novel hypothesis that has the potential to account for the literalist bias in autism
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Anorexia Nervosa, Body Dissatisfaction, and Problematic Beliefs Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Stephen Gadsby
Body dissatisfaction has long been considered an integral component of and driving force behind anorexia nervosa. In this paper, I characterise body dissatisfaction in terms of problematic beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. I suggest two methods for understanding these beliefs. Regarding body size beliefs, I suggest focusing on certain forms of misleading phenomenal evidence that sufferers
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Causal Connections Between Anorexia Nervosa and Delusional Beliefs Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Kyle De Young, Lindsay Rettler
Numerous studies of the beliefs of people with anorexia nervosa (AN) suggest that a subset of such individuals may experience delusions. We first describe what makes a belief delusional and conclude that such characteristics can be appropriately applied to some beliefs of people with AN. Next, we outline how delusional beliefs may relate to the broader psychopathological process in AN, including: (1)
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Does the Emotional Modulation of Visual Experience Entail the Cognitive Penetrability of Early Vision? Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Athanassios Raftopoulos
Empirical research suggests that motive states modulate perception affecting perceptual processing either directly, or indirectly through the modulation of spatial attention. The affective modulation of perception occurs at various latencies, some of which fall within late vision, that is, after 150 ms. poststimulus. Earlier effects enhance the C1 and P1 ERP components in early vision, the former enhancement
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Perceptual Similarity: Insights From Crossmodal Correspondences Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Nicola Di Stefano, Charles Spence
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Prediction and Art Appreciation Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Ancuta Mortu
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LTP Revisited: Reconsidering the Explanatory Power of Synaptic Efficacy Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Jonathan Najenson
Changes in synaptic strength are described as a unifying hypothesis for memory formation and storage, leading philosophers to consider the ‘synaptic efficacy hypothesis’ as a paradigmatic explanation in neuroscience. Craver’s mosaic view has been influential in understanding synaptic efficacy by presenting long-term potentiation as a multi-level mechanism nested within a multi-level structure. This
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Doxastic Revision in Non-Human Animals: The First-Order Model Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Laura Danón, Daniel E. Kalpokas
If we focus on current debates on how creatures revise or correct their beliefs, we can identify two opposing approaches that we propose to call “intellectualism” and “minimalism.” In this paper, we outline a new account of doxastic revision — “the first-order model”— that is neither as cognitively demanding as intellectualism nor as deflationary as minimalism. First-order doxastic revision, we argue
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Thought Insertion without Thought Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Shivam Patel
There are a number of conflicting accounts of thought insertion, the delusion that the thoughts of another are inserted into one’s own mind. These accounts share the common assumption of realism: that the subject of thought insertion has a thought corresponding to the description of her thought insertion episode. I challenge the assumption by arguing for an anti-realist treatment of first-person reports
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The Dual Role of Inner Speech in Narrative Self-Understanding and Narrative Self-Enactment Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-07-14 Francesco Fanti Rovetta
Psychologists and philosophers agree that personal narratives are a central component of one’s identity. The concept of narrative self has been proposed to capture this aspect of selfhood. In recent times, it has been a matter of debate how the narrative self relates to the embodied and experiential dimension of the self. In this debate, the role attributed to inner speech is that of constructing and
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Category Mistakes Electrified Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-07-10 Poppy Mankowitz
Occurrences of sentences that are traditionally considered category mistakes, such as ‘The red number is divisible by three’, tend to elicit a sense of oddness in assessors. In attempting to explain this oddness, existing accounts in the philosophical literature commonly claim that occurrences of such sentences are associated with a defect or phenomenology unique to the class of category mistakes.
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Explaining the Cultural Evolution of large-scale Collaboration: Conventionality as an Alternative for Collective Intentionality Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Marc Slors
The scalar notion of collective intentionality has been used to characterize the evolution of largely uncollaborative apes to highly collaborative ones. This proposal covers human evolution up until and including the formation of hunter-gather groups. But can collective intentionality also explain the emergence of complex societies? I argue that it cannot. Instead of collective intentionality, collaboration
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Expressive Responding, Experimental Philosophy, and Philosophical Expertise Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Shane Nicholas Glackin
The Experimental Philosophy (“X-Phi”) movement applies the methodology of empirical sciences – most commonly empirical psychology – to traditional philosophical questions. In its radical, “negative” form, X-Phi uses the resulting empirical data to cast doubt on the reliability of common philosophical methods, arguing for radical reform of philosophical methodology. In this paper I develop two connected
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Difference and Robustness in the Patterns of Philosophical Intuition Across Demographic Groups Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Joshua Knobe
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Vice Explanations for Conspiracism, Fundamentalism, and Extremism Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-05-30 Rik Peels
In the literature on conspiracism, fundamentalism, and extremism, we find so-called vice explanations for the extreme behavior and extreme beliefs that they involve. These are explanations in terms of people’s character traits, like arrogance, vengefulness, closed-mindedness, and dogmatism. However, such vice explanations face the so-called situationist challenge, which argues based on various experiments
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Not What I Expected! Feeling of Surprise Differentially Mediates Effect of Personal Control on Attributions of Free will and Responsibility Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Samuel Murray, Thomas Nadelhoffer
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Identifying Relational Applications of Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment Resistant Depression Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-03-06 Abel Wajnerman-Paz
The adaptive BCI known as ‘closed-loop deep brain stimulation’ (clDBS) is a device that stimulates the brain in order to prevent pathological neural activity and automatically adjusts stimulation levels based on computational algorithms that detect or predict those pathological processes. One of the prominent ethical concerns raised by clDBS is that, by inhibiting or modulating the undesirable neural
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The Reputational Benefits of Intellectual Humility Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-02-18 Mia Karabegovic, Hugo Mercier
Much work on intellectual humility has focused on its epistemic benefits. We suggest that displaying (or failing to display) intellectual humility also has effects on how others perceive us and that, as a result, intellectual humility can serve reputation management purposes, in at least four ways: (i) Intellectual humility can be used to signal we are a good source of information; (ii) Intellectual
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The Different Bases of the Meaning and of the Seeing-in Experiences Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Fabrizio Calzavarini, Alberto Voltolini
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Schizophrenic Thought Insertion and Self-Experience Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Darryl Mathieson
In contemporary philosophy of mind and psychiatry, schizophrenic thought insertion is often used as a validating or invalidating counterexample in various theories about how we experience ourselves. Recent work has taken cases of thought insertion to provide an invalidating counterexample to the Humean denial of self-experience, arguing that deficiencies of agency in thought insertion suggest that
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The Phenomenal Quality of Complex Experiences Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-02-02 Peter Fazekas
This paper makes and defends four interrelated claims. First: most conscious experiences are complex in the sense that they have discernible constituent structure with discernible parts that can feature as parts of other experiences, and might occur as standalone experiences. Second: complex experiences have simple constituents that have no further discernible parts. Third: the phenomenal quality of
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Assessing the Evidence for Outcome Bias and Hindsight Bias Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Mikkel Gerken
Outcome bias and hindsight bias are important in philosophical debates and have wide-ranging implications outside of philosophy. Recently, Hedden has articulated a novel line of argumnt that the empirical evidence for what he labels hindsight bias is largely misguided and that empirical researchers who postulate such a bias are engaged in a fallacy fallacy. In this paper, I articulate Hedden’s core
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Inner Speech and ‘Pure’ Thought – Do we Think in Language? Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Nikola A. Kompa
While the idea that thinking is a form of silent self-talk goes back at least to Plato, it is not immediately clear how to state this thesis precisely. The aim of the paper is to spell out the notion that we think in language by recourse to recent work on inner speech. To that end, inner speech and overt speech are briefly compared. I then propose that inner speaking be defined as a mental episode
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Justice before Expediency: Robust Intuitive Concern for Rights Protection in Criminalization Decisions Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Piotr Bystranowski, Ivar Rodríguez Hannikainen
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The Epistemic Innocence of Elaborated Delusions Re-Examined Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Maja Białek
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I want to re-examine the epistemic status of elaborated delusions. Bortolotti (2016, 2020) claims that they can be epistemically innocent. However, I will show that this type of delusions is more unique than suggested by the existing analyses of their epistemic status. They typically cause more profound harms than other kinds of delusions, and in most cases
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Two Kinds of Process or Two Kinds of Processing? Disambiguating Dual-Process Theories Review of Philosophy and Psychology Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Rafael Augusto
Dual-Process Theories (D-PTs) claim there are two qualitatively different types of processes in the human brain-mind. Despite forming the basis for several areas of cognitive science, they are still shrouded in ambiguity: critics erroneously attack D-PTs as a whole (e.g., Evans and Stanovich Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 2013), the qualitative/quantitative distinction is not clear enough