This is a chapter about changing the desires of others. People often have to coordinate their actions in order to get what they want. The need for coordination produces a practical problem and a philosophical problem. The difference between the problems is that in dealing with the practical one he/she does not have to get hung up about rationality. Different coordination problems generalize in different ways to more than two people or more than two actions. The prisoner's dilemma has received (...) more attention than these other situations because it has seemed to present the most intractable problems. If one can show how agents faced with prisoner's dilemmas can find their way to cooperation, then it will no longer seem implausible that people pursuing their individual good can achieve stable and mutually satisfactory social arrangements. (shrink)

I argue that folk psychology does not serve the purpose of facilitating prediction of others' behaviour but if facilitating cooperative action. (See my subsequent book *The Importance of Being Understood*.

I discussed the ways in which folk psychology is influenced by the need for small-scale cooperation between people. I argue that considerations about cooperation and mutual benefit can be found in the everyday concepts of belief, desire, and motivation. I describe what I call "solution thinking", where a person anticipates another person's actions by first determining the solution to the cooperative problem that the person faces and then reasoning backwards to a prediction of individual action.

I discuss the possibility that there is no intrinsic unity to the capacities which are bundled under the label "folk psychology". Cooperative skills, attributional skills, and predictive skills may be scattered as parts of other non--psychological capacities. I discuss how some forms of social life bring these different skills together. I end with some remarks on how abilities that are not unified in their essential mechanisms may still form a rough practical unity. (Remark: the paper is conjectural. It describes a (...) possibility to take seriously rather than a conclusion of which I am convinced.). (shrink)

I praise Bratman's minimal account of shared agency, while expressing some doubts about the explanatory force of his central concepts and some puzzlement about what he means by norms.

: Catholic teaching has no moral difficulties with research on stem cells derived from adult stem cells or fetal cord blood. The ethical problem comes with embryonic stem cells since their genesis involves the destruction of a human embryo. However, there seems to be significant promise of health benefits from such research. Although Catholic teaching does not permit any destruction of human embryos, the question remains whether researchers in a Catholic institution, or any researchers opposed to destruction of human embryos, (...) could participate in research on cultured embryonic stem cells, or whether a Catholic institution could use any therapy that ultimately results from such research. This position paper examines how such research could be conducted legitimately in a Catholic institution by using an ethical analysis involving a narrative context, the nature of the moral act, and the principle of material cooperation, along with references to significant ethical assessments. It also offers tentative guidelines that could be used by a Catholic institution in implementing such research. (shrink)

Following a hypnotic amnesia suggestion, highly hypnotically suggestible subjects may experience amnesia for events. Is there a failure to retrieve the material concerned from autobiographical memory, or is it retrieved but blocked from consciousness? Highly hypnotically suggestible subjects produced free-associates to a list of concrete nouns. They were then given an amnesia suggestion for that episode followed by another free association list, which included 15 critical words that had been previously presented. If episodic retrieval for the first trial had been (...) blocked, the responses on the second trial should still have been at least as fast as for the first trial. With semantic priming, they should be faster. In fact, they were on average half a second slower. This suggests that the material had been retrieved but blocked from consciousness. A goal-oriented information processing framework is outlined to interpret these and related data. (shrink)

This book introduces students to the principal issues in the philosophy of mind by tracing the history of the subject from Plato and Aristotle through to the present day. Over forty primary-source readings are included. Extensive commentaries from the editors are provided to guide student readers through the arguments and jargon and to offer necessary historical context for the readings. The new third edition examines some of the most exciting recent developments in the field, including advances in theories about the (...) mind’s relation to action and agency. Previous editions of this book, published under the title _A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind_, have been praised and widely taught for more than two decades. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy is torn between a reliance on the pragmatic meanings of designated objects and a foundation based on formal theory. This book shows that philosophical knowledge, which no more has a terminal state than an infinite set has a last term, advances when the dialectical relationship between the two approaches is synthesized. The choice of designations is intimately related to theory and the form of theory is intimately related to the character of designated objects. The intimate dialectical relationship between (...) theory and meaning is explored in detail in the area of international theory. The recent emphasis on realism rests on a regressive misunderstanding of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice that loses Newton's acute understanding of it, an understanding that underlies the great advances of physics, and that is lost in the contemporary social sciences. (shrink)

A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind is designed both to provide a selection of core readings on the subject and to make those readings accessible by providing commentaries to guide the reader through initially intimidating material. Each commentary explains technical concepts and provides background on obscure arguments as they arise, setting them in the historical and intellectual milieu from which they emerged. The readings concentrate on providing the student with a solid grounding in the theories of representative figures (...) of the major philosophical movements, from Plato and Aristotle to important recent figures such as Fodor and Dennett. A glossary of key terms is also included. (shrink)

The fundamental ideas concerning computation and recursion naturally find their place at the interface between logic and theoretical computer science. The contributions in this book, by leaders in the field, provide a picture of current ideas and methods in the ongoing investigations into the pure mathematical foundations of computability theory. The topics range over computable functions, enumerable sets, degree structures, complexity, subrecursiveness, domains and inductive inference. A number of the articles contain introductory and background material which it is hoped will (...) make this volume an invaluable resource for specialists and non-specialists alike. (shrink)

Psychological studies of touch and blindness have been fraught with controversy. Within this field there remains an important theoretical divide. Many researchers have taken a cognitive approach to the study of touch and blindness, relating these to higher order processes, such as memory and concept formation. Others adopt a theoretical perspective, arguing that it not necessary to consider the 'internal representation' of the stimuli, when investigating touch - thus people make use of information from the physical biomechanical properties of their (...) limbs as they assess the physical properties of objects. In addition, psychologists differ in the relative importance they place on the modality of sensory stimulation for subsequent perceptual experiences. Some psychologists argue that touch can do many of the things that are accomplished by vision, and claim that the mode of sensory stimulation is not critically important for perception, arguing that much information can be obtained through non-visual modalities. Others suggest that there are important consequences of a lack of visual experience, arguing for the importance of multiple forms of sensory input for conceptual development. New to the Debates in Psychology series, Touch, Representation, and Blindness brings together the leading investigators in these areas, each presenting the evidence for their side of the debate. An introductory chapter sets the theoretical and historical stage for the debate, and a concluding chapter draws together the different views and ideas set forth by the contributors, summarizing and resolving the discussion. (shrink)

I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.

While the link between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior has been established, the individual-level mechanisms underlying this relationship and its boundary conditions remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the salience of the mediating mechanisms of leader–member exchange and psychological empowerment in explaining the process by which servant leaders elicit discretionary OCB among followers. We also examine the role of followers’ proactive personality in moderating the indirect effects of servant leadership on OCB through LMX and psychological empowerment. Analysis (...) of survey data collected from 446 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a large Chinese state-owned enterprise suggests that while servant leadership is positively related to subordinate OCB through LMX, psychological empowerment does not explain any additional variance in OCB above that accounted for by LMX. Moderated mediation tests confirm the moderating effect of proactive personality through LMX. By providing a nuanced understanding of how and when servant leadership leads followers to go above and beyond their job role, our study assists organizations in deciding how to develop and utilize servant leaders in their organizations. (shrink)

a review of John Pollock's *Thinking about Acting* with a focus on his aim of describing psychological mechanisms which are humanly feasible.

When the book first appeared, William Welch in the American Political Science Review called it "excellent: his weighing against the evidence of competing ...