This article shows that the modal ontological argument as proposed by Gottrieb Leibniz was very much anticipated in its logical articulation by John Duns Scotus in his work De Primo Principio. To this end, the author analyzes some of the various versions of the argument present in the philosophical thought of authors such as Scotus, Leibniz, Malcom and Plattinga, and demonstrates that those versions are based on the hidden premise of the possibility of the idea of God. In this respect, (...) the Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno defends what he calls an “inverted ontological argument” which, if viable, would prove not so much the non-existence of God but that the idea of God does not exist itself. (shrink)

This discussion focuses on whether Mario Bunge’s emergent materialism implies continuism or not. Íñigo Ongay defends that Bunge’s emergent materialism implies continuism. In his response, Javier Pérez-Jara argues that Bunge’s emergent materialism explicitly assumes structural ontological and epistemological discontinuities in the universe. The question is more than a Scholastic one, concerning only a particular system of philosophy, however relevant for current philosophical materialism. Rather, what is at stake is the ability of non-reductionist ontologies to explain (non-miraculous) novelty and (...) plurality. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

Educación y Ciencias de la conducta. La Etología como ciencia de la educación.

Este artículo propone un análisis de las relaciones entre una idea clave del pensamiento filosófico moderno como es la del llamado cogito cartesiano y un trastorno de naturaleza psiquiátrica descrito por el médico francés Jules Cotard en las últimas décadas del siglo XIX. Mientras que Descartes, y toda la estela de sus descendientes, habrían tendido a situar en la existencia auto-trasparente del sujeto el fundamento de la filosofía en la Modernidad, los pacientes aquejados del síndrome de Cotard piensan, con el (...) mismo grado de evidencia clara y distinta, que no existen. El ensayo termina por sugerir que trastornos psicopatológicos como el de Cotard tienden a disolver la hipóstasis cartesiana del ego apuntando en la dirección de un sujeto concebido como anómalo y atravesado por discontinuidades. (shrink)

Misremembering is a systematic and ordinary occurrence in our daily lives. Since it is commonly assumed that the function of memory is to remember the past, misremembering is typically thought to happen because our memory system malfunctions. In this paper I argue that not all cases of misremembering are due to failures in our memory system. In particular, I argue that many ordinary cases of misremembering should not be seen as instances of memory’s malfunction, but rather as the normal result (...) of a larger cognitive system that performs a different function, and for which remembering is just one operation. Building upon extant psychological and neuroscientific evidence, I offer a picture of memory as an integral part of a larger system that supports not only thinking of what was the case and what potentially could be the case, but also what could have been the case. More precisely, I claim that remembering is a particular operation of a cognitive system that permits the flexible recombination of different components of encoded traces into representations of possible past events that might or might not have occurred, in the service of constructing mental simulations of possible future events. So that imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations hath diverse names.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1.2. (shrink)

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

Memory trace was originally a philosophical term used to explain the phenomenon of remembering. Once debated by Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno of Citium, the notion seems more recently to have become the exclusive province of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. Nonetheless, this modern appropriation should not deter philosophers from thinking carefully about the nature of memory traces. On the contrary, scientific research on the nature of memory traces can rekindle philosopher's interest on this notion. With that general aim in mind, the (...) present paper has three specific goals. First, it attempts to chart the most relevant philosophical views on the nature of memory traces from both a thematic and historical perspective. Second, it reviews critical findings in the psychology and the neuroscience of memory traces. Finally, it explains how such results lend support to or discredit specific philosophical positions on the nature of memory traces. This paper also touches upon the issues raised by recent empirical research that theories of memory traces need to accommodate in order to succeed. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that if a deterministic description of the events leading up to a morally questionable action is couched in mechanistic, reductionistic, concrete and/or emotionally salient terms, people are more inclined toward compatibilism than when those descriptions use non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, abstract and/or emotionally neutral terms. To explain these results, it has been suggested that descriptions of the first kind are processed by a concrete cognitive system, while those of the second kind are processed by an abstract cognitive system. The (...) current paper reports the results of three studies exploring whether or not considerations about possible future consequences of holding an agent responsible at a present time affect people’s judgments of responsibility. The results obtained suggest first that the concrete system does not produce compatibilist judgments of responsibility unconditionally, even when facing appropriately mechanistic, reductionistic, emotionally loaded and concretely worded deterministic scenarios. Second, these results suggest that considerations about possible future consequences for innocent third parties that may follow as a result of holding an agent responsible affect people’s judgment as to whether or not the agent is responsible for what she did. Finally, it is proposed that these results compliment extant evidence on the so-called “Side-effect effect”, as they suggest that emotional reactions toward possible future side effects influence people’s judgment of responsibility. The impact of these results for philosophy and moral psychology is discussed. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers of memory opposed the postulation of memory traces based on the claim that a satisfactory account of remembering need not include references to causal processes involved in recollection. However, in 1966, an influential paper by Martin and Deutscher showed that causal claims are indeed necessary for a proper account of remembering. This, however, did not settle the issue, as in 1977 Malcolm argued that even if one were to buy Martin (...) and Deutscher’s argument for causal claims, we still don’t need to postulate the existence of memory traces. This paper reconstructs the dialectic between realists and anti-realists about memory traces, suggesting that ultimately realists’ arguments amount to inferences to the best explanation. I then argue that Malcolm’s anti-realist strategy consists in the suggestion that causal explanations that do not invoke memory traces are at least as good as those that do. But then, Malcolm, I argue that there are a large number of memory phenomena for which explanations that do not postulate the existence of memory traces are definitively worse than explanations that do postulate them. Next, I offer a causal model based on an interventionist framework to illustrate when memory traces can help to explain memory phenomena and proceed to substantiate the model with details coming from extant findings in the neuroscience of memory. (shrink)

Most people's intuitive reaction after considering Nozick's experience machine thought-experiment seems to be just like his: we feel very little inclination to plug in to a virtual reality machine capable of providing us with pleasurable experiences. Many philosophers take this empirical fact as sufficient reason to believe that, more than pleasurable experiences, people care about “living in contact with reality.” Such claim, however, assumes that people's reaction to the experience machine thought-experiment is due to the fact that they value reality (...) over virtual experiences—an assumption that has seldom (if ever) been questioned. This paper challenges that very assumption. I report some experimental evidence suggesting that the intuition elicited by the thought-experiment may be explainable by the fact that people are averse to abandon the life they have been experiencing so far, regardless of whether such life is virtual or real. I use then an explanatory model, derived from what behavioral economists and psychologists call the status quo bias, to make sense of these results. Finally, I argue that since this explanation also accounts for people's reaction toward Nozick's thought-experiment, it would be wrong to take such intuition as evidence that people value being in touch with reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA longstanding tradition in philosophy distinguishes between knowthatand know-how. This traditional “anti-intellectualist” view is soentrenched in folk psychology that it is often invoked in supportof an allegedly equivalent distinction between explicit and implicitmemory, derived from the so-called “standard model of memory.”In the last two decades, the received philosophical view has beenchallenged by an “intellectualist” view of know-how. Surprisingly, defenders of the anti-intellectualist view have turned to the cognitivescience of memory, and to the standard model in particular, todefend their view. Here, (...) I argue that this strategy is a mistake. As it turns out, upon closer scrutiny, the evidence from cognitivepsychology and neuroscience of memory does not support theanti-intellectualist approach, mainly because the standard modelof memory is likely wrong. However, this need not be interpretedas good news for the intellectualist, for it is not clear that theempirical evidence necessarily supp... (shrink)

Niche construction theory highlights the active role of organisms in modifying their environment. A subset of these modifications is the developmental niche, which concerns ecological, epistemic, social and symbolic legacies inherited by organisms as resources that scaffold their developmental processes. Since in this theory development is a situated process that takes place in a culturally structured environment, we may reasonably ask if implicit cultural biases may, in some cases, be responsible for maladaptive developmental niches. In this paper we wish to (...) argue for an affirmative answer. In order to do so, we first propose to conceptualize implicit bias as embodied perceptual habits, and then proceed to show that these habits are at least partially responsible for maladaptive developmental niches of children with Down syndrome and autism. With this framework we thus hope to bring together two fields of research that haven’t been explicitly connected: implicit bias and niche construction theory. Linking these two theories may bring benefits both to implicit bias researchers, who can extend this concept to characterize other sets of processes as biased, as well as to niche construction theorists, who will have a useful theoretical tool to diagnose maladaptive features of niches brought about by sociocultural biases. (shrink)

The notion of cognitive system is widely used in explanations in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Traditional approaches define cognitive systems in an agent-relative way, that is, via top-down functional decomposition that assumes a cognitive agent as starting point. The extended cognition movement challenged that approach by questioning the primacy of the notion of cognitive agent. In response, [Adams, F., and K. Aizawa. 2001. The Bounds of Cognition. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.] suggested that to have a clear understanding of what a cognitive (...) system is we may need to solve “the demarcation challenge”: the problem of identifying a reliable way to determine which mechanisms that are causally responsible for the production of a certain cognitive process constitute a cognitive system responsible for such process and which ones do not. Recently, [Rupert, R. 2009. Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.] offered a solution based on the idea that the mechanisms that constitute a cognitive system are integrated in a particular sense. In this paper I critically review Rupert’s solution and argue against it. Additionally, I argue that a successful account of cognitive system must accommodate the fact that the neural mechanisms causally responsible for the production of a cognitive process are diachronically dynamic and yet functionally stable. At the end, I offer a suggestion as to how to accommodate this diachronic dynamicity without losing functional stability. I conclude by drawing some implications for the discussion on cognitive ontologies. (shrink)

Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into the neurological causes of our actions, people will cease to view others as morally responsible for their actions, thus creating a troubling quandary for our legal system. This paper provides empirical evidence against such intuitions. Particularly, our studies (...) of folk intuitions suggest that (1) when the causes of an action are described in neurological terms, they are not found to be any more exculpatory than when described in psychological terms, and (2) agents are not held fully responsible even for actions that are fully neurologically caused. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest that our capacity to imagine the future depends on our capacity to remember the past. However, the extent to which episodic memory is involved in our capacity to think about what could have happened in our past, yet did not occur , remains largely unexplored. The current experiments investigate the phenomenological characteristics and the influence of outcome valence on the experience of past, future and counterfactual thoughts. Participants were asked to mentally simulate past, future, and counterfactual events (...) with positive or negative outcomes. Features of their subjective experiences during each type of simulation were measured using questionnaires and autobiographical interviews. The results suggest that clarity and vividness were higher for past than future and counterfactual simulations. Additionally, emotional intensity was lower for counterfactual simulations than past and future simulations. Finally, outcome valence influenced participants’ judgment of probability for future and counterfactual simulations. (shrink)

Demonstrative thoughts are distinguished by the fact that their contents are determined relationally, via perception, rather than descriptively. Therefore, a fundamental task of a theory of demonstrative thought is to elucidate how facts about visual perception can explain how these thoughts come to have the contents that they do. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how cognitive psychology may help us solve this metasemantic question, through empirical models of visual processing. Although there is a dispute between attentional and (...) non-attentional models concerning the best metasemantic mechanism for demonstrative thoughts, in this paper I will argue in favor of a hybrid model, which combines both types of processes. In this picture, attentional and non-attentional mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and each plays a specific role in determining the singular content of demonstrative thoughts. (shrink)

People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly supporting three interconnected claims. First, the perceived plausibility of a counterfactual event is (...) predicted by the perceived similarity between the possible world in which the imagined situation is thought to occur and the actual world. Second, when people attend to differences between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as less similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as less plausible. Lastly, when people attend to what is identical between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as more similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as more plausible. We discuss these results in light of philosophical, semantic, and psychological theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

Entrevista com Luiz Felipe de Alencastro.

Muchos psiquiatras se encuentran constantemente con pacientes cuyos síntomas incluyen trastornos o alteraciones de la conciencia. Infortunadamente, el significado del término conciencia es poco claro. Este artículo hace un repaso sistemático de varios significados atribuidos a dicho término, así como de diversos problemas filosóficos asociados. Asimismo, reconstruye varias teorías filosóficas y científicas de la conciencia, identificando sus ventajas y desventajas. Al final, ofrece algunas sugerencias para el uso del término conciencia en la psiquiatría.

ABSTRACTEpisodic counterfactual thoughts and autobiographical memories involve the reactivation and recombination of episodic memory components into mental simulations. Upon reactivation, memories become labile and prone to modification. Thus, reactivating AM in the context of mentally generating CFT may provide an opportunity for editing processes to modify the content of the original memory. To examine this idea, this paper reports the results of two studies that investigated the effect of reactivating negative and positive AM in the context of either imagining a (...) better or a worse alternative to an experienced event, as opposed to attentively retrieving the memory without mental modification or no reactivation. Our results suggest that attentive remembering was the best strategy to both reduce the negative affect associated with negative AM, and to prevent the decay of positive affect associated with positive AM. In addition, reactivati... (shrink)

This work was carried out with the objective of presenting an integral vision of the person necessary for a healthy experience of objectivity/subjectivity in Emmanuel Mounier and rationality in José Saramago. Such approaches will be initiated by the corporeality that shows the body as an essential part of the person, that is, through it she expresses herself as such and exposes herself to the world and to others. However, this same person is beyond the body, the exteriority, he is interiority (...) and there he finds the strength that favors the leap of his own personal reality, that is, he favors the interior-exterior dynamic. In this dynamic, the great gift of freedom emerges, which, although interior, manifests itself in human acts. For the elaboration of the research, a bibliographic exploratory methodology was used in the main works of the authors. Finally, we conclude that Mounier and Saramago's proposal about freedom are really near on there principles, which ideas are sorely needed in today's world. Knowing that freedom is not pure objectivity, that we should live it instead of seeing it, nor pure subjectivity, because the world does not suit only my will; therefore, the human experience is lived under conditions, what surely puts us down to earth. We are free as we make others free, this is the great challenge! (shrink)

In the philosophy of memory there is a tension between a preservationist and a constructivist view of memory reflected in the debate between causalism and simulationism. Causalism is not only committed to the claim that there must be an appropriate causal connection between the remembered event and the content represented at retrieval but also that such connection is possible because of a content-preserving memory trace. Simulationism, by contrast, rejects the need for an appropriate causal condition and, thereby, makes the appeal (...) to memory traces unnecessary. In this paper I argue that while the are strong conceptual arguments and empirical evidence to support a constructivist view of memory, the empirical evidence also suggest that the initial formulation of simulationism needs to be revised. In particular, I argue, first, that simulationism’s commitment to a single cognitive system for mental time travel is likely wrong, and second, that simulationism cannot get rid of memory traces altogether, as they are still explanatorily indispensable when it comes to explaining a large number of memory-related phenomena. At the end, I end up suggesting a way of thinking about memory traces that, I think, is compatible with simulationism and a constructivist view of memory. If the view I put forth is on the right track, then an updated version of simulationism can help to dispel the dichotomy between causalism and simulationism as a false one. (shrink)

Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cross-cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of (...) participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. (shrink)

A adequação dinâmica dos bons exemplos, conformando-os às necessidades impostas pelas circunstâncias, insere Maquiavel nos variados usos da _imitatio_ antiga e renascentista. A _imitação_ deve reavivar as práticas civis e as atitudes de _Virtù_, fornecendo ânimo para a realização das ações políticas e das práticas pedagógicas, conforme a atuação como secretário de Florença e seus escritos políticos, históricos e literários salientam. Desse modo, ao revisar a noção de _imitatio_, especificamente na antiguidade e na renascença, contextualizam-se os argumentos de Maquiavel sobre (...) a possibilidade dos humanos alcançarem a _Virtù_ pela imitação das ações adequadas nos _Discorsi_, no _Príncipe_, nas _Histórias Florentinas_ e na _Arte da Guerra_. Ao propor investigações e análises do passado que produzam utilidade e deleite, realçando _o sabor das ações humanas_, os escritos Maquiavelianos realçam a impossibilidade de uma definição pré-determinada sobre quais opções devam ser usadas e sustentam a possibilidade de duas perspectivas, aparentemente antagônicas, serem escolhidas simultaneamente. (shrink)

O artigo propõe uma interlocução entre o filósofo francês Michel Foucault e o filósofo norte-americano Richard Rorty. Apresenta a descrição que Rorty realizou do colega francês. Analisa essa leitura e oferece, a partir do próprio Foucault, uma interpretação alternativa, que aponta para algumas imprecisões cometidas por Rorty, em sua interpretação. Conclui com um comentário sobre a conversação proposta.

What is it like to perceive a feared object? According to a popular neo-Gibsonian theory in psychology, fear biases our perceptions of objects so as to encourage particular kinds of actions: when we are afraid, spiders may be perceived as physically closer than they are in order to promote fleeing. Firestone mounted severe criticisms against this view, arguing that these cases are better explained by non-perceptual biases that operate on accurate perceptions of the external environment. In this paper I will (...) argue that fear might indeed distort our perceptions of the world, but not in the way neo-Gibsonians suppose. In the view I favor, perceptual distortions occur as by-products of fearful attention, a special mode of attention that is part of an orchestrated defensive response that prepares the organism to deal effectively with a threat. To argue for this view I will rely on empirical evidence that fearful attention narrows down the focus of attention and favors processing of local rather than global features of stimuli, which may jointly explain why perceptual distortions might occur in fearful object seeing. This view has consequences not only for empirical investigations in fearful perceptual distortions, but also for an explanation of the intentionality of fear and the phenomenal integration of bodily and intentional elements in fear episodes. (shrink)

RESUMEN Muchos psiquiatras se encuentran constantemente con pacientes cuyos síntomas incluyen trastornos o alteraciones de la conciencia. Infortunadamente, el significado del término conciencia es poco claro. Este artículo hace un repaso sistemático de varios significados atribuidos a dicho término, así como de diversos problemas filosóficos asociados. Asimismo, reconstruye varias teorías filosóficas y científicas de la conciencia, identificando sus ventajas y desventajas. Al final, ofrece algunas sugerencias para el uso del término conciencia en la psiquiatría. ABSTRACT Psychiatrists often encounter patients whose (...) symptoms include disorders or impairments of consciousness. Unfortunately, the meaning of the term consciousness is not altogether clear. This article presents a systematic review of various meanings attributed to this term, as well as of diverse associated philosophical problems. Likewise, it reconstructs some philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness, identifying their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, it offers some suggestions for the use of the term consciousness in psychiatry. (shrink)

Empirical data from studies with both heterosexual and homosexual individuals have consistently indicated different tendencies in mating behavior. However, transgenders’ data are often overlooked. This exploratory study compared levels of sociosexuality and self-esteem between transgenders and non-transgender (cisgender) individuals. The aim was to verify whether either sexual genotype or gender self-perception had more influence on the examined variables in transgenders. Correlations between self-esteem and sociosexuality levels were also investigated. The sample consisted of 120 Brazilian individuals (51 transgenders) from both sexes. (...) Sociosexuality scores indicated mostly sex-typical patterns for transgenders of both sexes across the construct’s three dimensions (behavior, attitude, and desire), except for female-to-male transgenders’ behavioral sociosexuality. Unique associations between the dimensions of sociosexuality were found for transgender participants. No differences in self-esteem were observed and no correlations between self-esteem and sociosexuality were found. The results suggest that transgenders’ sociosexuality is largely influenced by their sexual genotype despite their incongruent gender self-perception and that the relationships between behavior, attitude, and sociosexual desire are different from those observed in cisgenders. (shrink)

É amplo o estudo sobre Leibniz hoje: conhecemo-lo como o filósofo metafísico de tendências religiosas, como opositor de Descartes, como vitalista, matemático etc.; mas a pergunta que orienta nossa pesquisa busca deslindar novos horizontes: é possível encontrar elementos em sua metafísica que nos permitam pensar o cenário social contemporâneo? A partir das ferramentas conceituais criadas pelo filósofo pensamos que a resposta seja positiva.

For the past three decades there has been a substantial amount of scientific evidence supporting the view that attention is necessary and sufficient for perceptual representations to become conscious (i.e., for there to be something that it is like to experience a representational perceptual state). This view, however, has been recently questioned on the basis of some alleged counterevidence. In this paper we survey some of the most important recent findings. In doing so, we have two primary goals. The first (...) is descriptive: we provide a literature review for those seeking an understanding of the present debate. The second is editorial: we suggest that the evidence alleging dissociations between consciousness and attention is not decisive. Thus, this is an opinionated overview of the debate. By presenting our assessment, we hope to bring out both sides in the debate and to underscore that the issues here remain matters of intense controversy and ongoing investigation. (shrink)

The expression “repressed memory” was introduced over 100 years ago as a theoretical term purportedly referring to an unobservable psychological entity postulated by Freud’s seduction theory. That theory, however, and its hypothesized cognitive architecture, have been thoroughly debunked—yet the term “repressed memory” seems to remain. In this paper I offer a philosophical evaluation of the meaning of this theoretical term as well as an argument to question its scientific status by comparing it to other cases of theoretical terms that have (...) either survived scientific change—such as “atom” or “gene”—or that have perished, such as “black bile”. Ultimately, I argue that “repressed memory” is more like “black bile” than “atom” or “gene” and, thus, recommend its demotion from our scientific vocabulary. (shrink)