This article is an account of reflections drawn from a total of four explicitation interviews , with two people. The article has both methodological and substantive purposes. Methodologically, we explain the contribution of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in the elicitation of first person accounts through guided introspection. Aspects of NLP have been used by both Vermersch and Petitmengin-Peugeot as means for exploring people's inner worlds. We further elucidate NLP as a set of tools for researchers, emphasising the distinctions these enable researchers to (...) make within the structure of consciousness. As the nature of NLP's methodological contribution to the field of Psychophenomenology has been little articulated, this represents an original feature of this article. Substantively, we show how the application of these tools has generated insights into the fine experiential detail of what we term `moments of knowing'. First, our data suggest that suspension and Epoche, which manifested themselves as unrecognised, or pre-reflective moments of understanding for the participants, may be part of everyday 'knowing'. Second, consciousness appears to be multi-dimensional. In particular it appears that it may be helpful to distinguish between different dimensions of awareness that may be involved when exploring an inner landscape. Third, we consider the apparently transformative effect of the explicitation interview for one of these participants, which emphasises that the interview is an active exploration. Our findings question established views of transformative learning, which hitherto have regarded `critical reflection' as the central process involved in transformative learning. (shrink)

This article conveys a first person, phenomenological account of an experience of learning through a series of lessons in horse riding, experienced by the first author as participant. The study was undertaken in order to develop understanding of the experience of, and processes that may be involved in, 'transformative learning' (Mezirow, 1991). The study drew on approaches from Neuro-linguistic Programming (Bandler & Grinder, 1975b), and from Psycho-phenomenology and Consciousness Studies (Depraz et al., 2003; Vermersch, 1994), to reflect on and describe (...) both the rider's first person experiences and the instructor's methods. This represents an innovation in the field of transformative learning. The subsequent analysis highlights the importance of the act of becoming mindful and more aware. This was partly initiated and maintained by the ways in which the coach used language and questions to enable the learner to make ever more fine-grained distinctions, which effected a transformation in her understanding. The article concludes that transformative learning needs to be understood as an embodied and emergent process, informed theoretically by consciousness studies and complexity sciences. (shrink)

The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life.

Examines the theories of Plato, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman concerning the education of women.

It is generally assumed that the debate between theory‐theory and simulation theory is an empirical one, but this view of the structure of the debate is misleading. It is an a priori truth that theory‐theory is mistaken and equally a priori that simulation in one sense (here labelled ‘co‐cognition’) is central in thinking about the thoughts of others. Given this, it is a further question how our co‐cognitive powers are realized in sub‐personal machinery. Here simulation in quite another sense (that (...) involving such ideas as ‘pretend states’ and ‘off‐line’ mental processes) may provide one possible answer. (shrink)

We are social primates, for whom language-mediated co-operative thinking (‘co-cognition’) is a central element of our shared life. Psychological concepts may be illuminated by appreciating their role in enriching and improving such co-cognition — a role which is importantly different from that of enabling detailed prediction and control of thoughts and behaviour. This account of the nature of psychological concepts (‘co-cognitivism’) has social anti-individualism about thought content as a natural corollary. The combination of co-cognitivism and anti-individualism further suggests that, in (...) addition to the familiar first person authority with which we ascribe thoughts to ourselves, there may also be something deserving the name ‘second person authority’. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Background Central Philosophical Issues in Works on the Passions The Weakness of Reason “Reason Directs and the Affections Execute”19 Hume's Connection to the Earlier Literature Central Philosophical Issues regarding the Passions: Hume's Alternative Analyses Conclusion Notes References and further reading.

How are we to explain the authority we have in pronouncing on our own thoughts? A 'constitutive' theory, on which a second-level belief may help to constitute the first-level state it is about, has considerable advantages, for example in relieving pressures towards dualism. The paper aims to exploit an analogy between authority in performative utterances and authority on the psychological to get a clearer view of how such a constitutive account might work and its metaphysical presuppositions.

We find it natural to say that creatures with minds can be understood ‘from the inside’. The paper explores what could be meant by this attractive but, on reflection, somewhat mysterious idea. It suggests that it may find a hospitable placement, which makes its content and appeal clearer, in one version of the so-called ‘simulation theory’ approach to grasp of psychological concepts. Simulation theory suggests that ability to use imagination in rethinking others’ thoughts and in recreating their trains of reasoning (...) is central to our grasp and use of psychological concepts.On this view to think of another’s mind is not to think of some intricate quasi-mechanical assemblage of items in the other’s head which causally explain her behavior. If this is all that the ‘inside’ of another person, i.e. her mind, were like, then there would be no question of anything being ‘from’ it. The simulation view, however, emphasizes that thoughts essentially have content and that identifying another’s thought, and working out its possible effects, involves identifying its content and oneself entertaining thoughts with the same content.So, on this approach, to think of another’s mind is to think of a complex but rationally unified set of thoughts, a set which is conceived as had by one subject but where the contents and relations can be grasped and appreciated by another. Some of these thoughts will be indexical and the whole can thus be said to constitute the subject’s point of view on the world, both literally and metaphorically. Grasping this point of view is, the paper suggests, what is meant by speaking of ‘understanding from the inside’. (shrink)

There are modes of presentation of a person in thought corresponding to the first and third person pronouns. This paper proposes that there is also thought involving a second person mode of presentation of another, which might be expressed by an utterance involving ‘you’, but need not be expressed linguistically. It suggests that co-operative activity is the locus for such thought. First person thought is distinctive in how it supplies reasons for the subject to act. In co-operative action there is (...) first person plural intending and judging. So there is a way of thinking of another, when openly co-operating with him or her, which plays the distinctive role of giving reason for contribution to the co-operative activity. In slogan form, ‘you’ is ‘we minus I’. The way children learn to use second and third person pronouns is naturally explained on this view. Contrasting less sophisticated kinds of co-operative activity with more sophisticated forms, and considering some issues about common knowledge and commo.. (shrink)

Indexicality is a feature of predicates and predicate components (verbs, adjectives, adverbs and the like) as well as of referring expressions. With classic referring indexicals such as 'I' or 'that' a distinctive rule takes us from token and context to some item present in the content which is the semantic correlate of the token. Predicates and predicate components may function in an analogous fashion. For example 'thus' is an indexical adverb which latches onto some manner of performance present in its (...) context. 'John sang thus', said while indicating someone singing discordantly, claims that John sang discordantly. The phenomenon of predicatival indexicality is widespread in English and is expressed in a variety of idioms. Indexical predication plays important epistemological and psychological roles and the notion may have other interesting philosophical applications. (shrink)

Can we understand other minds ‘from the inside’? What would this mean? There is an attraction which many have felt in the idea that creatures with minds, people, invite a kind of understanding which inanimate objects such as rocks, plants and machines, do not invite and that it is appropriate to seek to understand them ‘from the inside’. What I hope to do in this paper is to introduce and defend one version of the so-called ‘simulation’ approach to our grasp (...) and use of psychological concepts, a version which gives central importance to the idea of shared rationality, and in so doing to tease out and defend one strand in the complex of ideas which finds expression in this mysterious phrase. (shrink)

Human beings are social animals. A solitary life would be horrible for most of us. What makes life worthwhile is being with others and engaging in shared projects with them. To do justice to these facts, philosophers need to pay more attention to the first-person plural, we/us, and to rethink their accounts of value and virtue.

: Stich, Nichols et al. assert that the process of deriving predictions by simulation must be cognitively impenetrable. Hence, they claim, the occurrence of certain errors in prediction provides empirical evidence against simulation theory. But it is false that simulation‐derived prediction must be cognitively impenetrable. Moreover the errors they cite, which are instances of irrationality, are not evidence against the version of simulation theory that takes the central domain of simulation to be intelligible transitions between states with content.

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of the early career of Martha Kneale, née Hurst, and of the five papers she published between 1934 and 1950. One on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, is particularly interesting. In it she considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’, which has some resemblance to Kripke’s ideas about metaphysical necessities, in that it assigns an important role to experience in how we come to know them. (...) But Kneale’s view is very different from Kripke’s, depending not on doctrines about rigid designation but rather on recognition of the failure of the atomist/empiricist account of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ concepts. That account cannot deal with such things as the relations of the determinates of a determinable like colour. A plausible corollary of this, which Kneale exploits, is that some of our experience reveals to us that there are phenomena which are intrinsically complex in having multiple distinguishable aspects, but where those aspects are inseparable. Other of the papers show Kneale to have been pursuing interesting lines of thought about McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time and on the mind-body problem. (shrink)

How are we to explain the authority we have in pronouncing on our own thoughts? A 'constitutive' theory, on which a second-level belief may help to constitute the first -level state it is about, has considerable advantages, for example in relieving pressures towards dualism. The paper aims to exploit an analogy between authority in performative utterances and authority on the psychological to get a clearer view of how such a constitutive account might work and its metaphysical presuppositions.

The recent escalation of concern about scientific integrity has provoked a larger discussion of many questions about why we do science the way we do, as well as about how we should do it. One of these questions concerns collaboration: who should count as a collaborator? This, in turn, raises the question why collaborators collaborate, and whether and when they should. Here, history offers insights that can illuminate the current debate.

Stich, Nichols et al. assert that the process of deriving predictions by simulation must be cognitively impenetrable. Hence, they claim, the occurrence of certain errors in prediction provides empirical evidence against simulation theory. But it is false that simulation‐derived prediction must be cognitively impenetrable. Moreover the errors they cite, which are instances of irrationality, are not evidence against the (very defensible) version of simulation theory that takes the central domain of simulation to be intelligible transitions between states with content.

Some see the co-cognitive view of how we arrive at judgements about others' thoughts as a version of the analogy approach, where I reason from how I find things to be with me to how they will be for others. These thinkers think it a virtue of the view that it need not accept any linkage between thought and rationality. This paper will, however, defend the view that a co-cognitive view is a natural ally of theories which link thought and (...) rationality. It will try to show that exclusive stress on analogy is unduly sceptical about our cognitive capacities and overestimates our similarity to each other. (shrink)

It is plausible to think, as many developmental psychologists do, that joint attention is important in the development of getting a full grasp on psychological notions. This chapter argues that this role of joint attention is best understood in the context of the simulation theory about the nature of psychological understanding rather than in the context of the theory. Episodes of joint attention can then be seen not as good occasions for learning a theory of mind but rather as good (...) occasions for developing skills of expressing and sharing thoughts. This approach suggests seeing language acquisition as learning how to focus and fine-tune joint attention already present in the normal basic relation of carer and infant. Philosophers in thinking about other minds have concentrated too much on the contrast of first and third person, I vs he/she, and forgotten the centrality of the contrast of first and second person, I vs you, and the related centrality of we. (shrink)

First person authority, argues Moran, is not to be understood as a matter of having some especially good observational access to certain facts about oneself. We can imagine a person who can report accurately on her own psychological states, for example because she can perform, without conscious thought, extremely reliable psychoanalytic-style diagnoses of herself. But the ‘authority’ with which she produces her judgements resembles that which she could have about another person in that it can exist even when she does (...) not endorse or identify with the states she reports on. In imagining such a person we see that her speech about herself is very different from our more usual sort of psychological self-attributions and that something central to their authority, something we want to explain, has gone missing. Also the observational view does not illuminate why it is only psychological states to which one can have such privileged access, and only one’s own; nor does it explain why loss of such access is a serious matter. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an analysis, reconstruction and defense of Locke's account of personal identity. I begin with a detailed analysis of Locke's use of the term 'conscious' in its historical context. This term, which plays a central role in Locke's theory, had senses in the seventeenth century which it does not have today. In the light of this analysis, an interpretation of continuity of consciousness as the ancestral of memory is given. It is argued that this interpretation of (...) Locke's theory of personal identity does not involve an ontological commitment to immaterial substances, and Locke is defended against the historically important criticisms of Butler and Reid. In the conclusion I suggest that the account of the individuation of persons implicit in Locke's discussion of personal identity is similar to the account of contextual individuation given by Hintikka. (shrink)

Indexical predication is possible as well as the more familiar indexical reference. ‘My curtains are coloured thus’ describes my curtains. The indexical predicate expression it contains stands to possible non‐indexical replacements as a referring indexical does to possible non‐indexical replacements, in that it calls upon the context of utterance to fix its semantic contribution to the whole. Indexical predication is the natural resource to call upon in talk about skilful human performances, where we exhibit considerable know‐how but little explicit know‐that. (...) Speech is among such performances. Both direct and indirect speech reports may be illuminated by seeing them in the light of this thought. A corollary of the approach is that the prospects of providing a formal semantic treatment of indirect speech do not look good. (shrink)

Some see the co-cognitive view of how we arrive at judgements about others' thoughts as a version of the analogy approach, where I reason from how I find things to be with me to how they will be for others. These thinkers think it a virtue of the view that it need not accept any linkage between thought and rationality. This paper will, however, defend the view that a co-cognitive view is a natural ally of theories which link thought and (...) rationality. It will try to show that exclusive stress on analogy is unduly sceptical about our cognitive capacities and overestimates our similarity to each other. (shrink)