In The Laboratory of the Mind, James Brown considers some of the Kuhn’s thesis in “A Function for Thought Experiment”. I will question one of Brown’s conclusions, namely his interpretation according to which Kuhn maintains that from thought experiments we learn about our conceptual scheme and only derivatively about the world. I arn inclined to think that this particular interpretation does not accurately represent Kuhn’s wording. Accordingly, I will outline some of the issues concerning the relation between ‘learning about the (...) concepts’ and ‘learning about the world’, which is, as Brown states, the field of disagreement between him and Kuhn. And finally, I will consider whether Kuhn’s ‘incommensurability thesis’ is in contradiction with ‘thought experiment thesis’, as Brown seems to imply. (shrink)

Individual differences in demographics, personality, and other related beliefs are associated with coronavirus disease 2019 threat beliefs. However, the relative contributions of these different types of individual differences to COVID-19 threat beliefs are not known. In this study, a total of 1,700 participants in Croatia completed a survey that included questions about COVID-19 risks, questions about related beliefs including vaccination beliefs, trust in the health system, trust in scientists, and trust in the political system, the HEXACO 60 personality inventory, as (...) well as demographic questions about gender, age, chronic diseases, and region. We used hierarchical regression analyses to examine the proportion of variance explained by demographics, personality, and other related beliefs. All three types of individual differences explained a part of the variance of COVID-19 threat beliefs, with related beliefs explaining the largest part. Personality facets explained a slightly larger amount of variance than personality factors. These results have implications for communication about COVID-19. (shrink)

After decades of receiving a lot of attention on the epistemological level, the so-called ‘problem of intuitions’ is now in the center of debates on the metaphilosophical level. One of the reasons for this lies in the unfruitfulness of the epistemological discussions that recently subsided without producing any significant or broadly accepted theory of intuitions. Consequently, the metaphilosophical level of discussion of the ‘problem of intuitions’ inherits the same difficulties of the epistemological level. The significance of Max Deutsch’s book The (...) Myth of the Intuitive is his effort to resolve these problems in a clear and persuasive way. He is not only trying to debunk problems behind the vagueness of the ‘intuition-talk’ by drawing important distinctions that usually go under the radar in the contemporary literature, but also develops his own account of philosophical methodology. In this paper I will present some of his arguments against the traditional view of intuitional methodology, as well as his own solutions to the presented problems. Regardless of Deutsch’s insightful account of the ‘problem of intuitions’, I find that some difficulties in his own proposal are inherited from the unresolved issues of intuitions on the epistemological level. (shrink)