Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

When solving problems, like making predictions or choices, people often “sample” possibilities into mind. Here, we consider whether there is structure to the kinds of thoughts people sample by default—that is, without an explicit goal. Across three experiments we found that what comes to mind by default are samples from a probability distribution that combines what people think is likely and what they think is good. Experiment 1 found that the first quantities that come to mind for everyday behaviors and (...) events are quantities that combine what is average and ideal. Experiment 2 found, in a manipulated context, that the distribution of numbers that come to mind resemble the mathematical product of the presented statistical distribution and a (softmax-transformed) prescriptive distribution. Experiment 3 replicated these findings in a visual domain. These results provide insight into the process generating people’s conscious thoughts and invite new questions about the value of thinking about things that are both likely and good. (shrink)

The empirical study of grace, a relational virtue, is in its beginning stages. The purpose of this study was to provide rich, context-based, qualitative data to describe Mainline Protestants’ (a) experiences of, and (b) beliefs about, divine grace. Interviews were conducted with 28 community adults who were affiliated with Mainline Protestant Churches. Results indicated that Mainline Protestant Christians have varying beliefs about divine grace and how it is related to both the present moment and the afterlife. Divine grace was often (...) defined as, or associated with, other relational virtues (e.g., forgiveness and love), and participants occasionally defined grace as a gift. In addition, divine grace was also reported to be difficult to accept at times for a variety of reasons, but the effects of divine grace have direct associations with participants’ overall well-being. Divine grace was also associated with beliefs about heaven or the afterlife, yet participants had varying beliefs about how grace is applied to non-Christians. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed in light of the present empirical literature on divine grace. (shrink)

Recent work by Magnuson, Solomon and Grossman(1) adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that microorganisms possess sophisticated signaling systems that enable them to sense and respond to environmental challenges. Typically, this response results in morphological, physiological and even genetic differentiation, paralleling that observed among higher organisms. These signaling systems may be interpreted as adaptations that maximize the reproductive potential of a population.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

Fairness is central to the ethical and responsible development and use of AI systems, with a large number of frameworks and formal notions of algorithmic fairness being available. However, many of the fairness solutions proposed revolve around technical considerations and not the needs of and consequences for the most impacted communities. We therefore want to take the focus away from definitions and allow for the inclusion of societal and relational aspects to represent how the effects of AI systems impact and (...) are experienced by individuals and social groups. In this paper, we do this by means of proposing the ACROCPoLis framework to represent allocation processes with a modeling emphasis on fairness aspects. The framework provides a shared vocabulary in which the factors relevant to fairness assessments for different situations and procedures are made explicit, as well as their interrelations. This enables us to compare analogous situations, to highlight the differences in dissimilar situations, and to capture differing interpretations of the same situation by different stakeholders. (shrink)

Care—concern for and attending to the needs of the particular other we take responsibility—requires enacting time in a way that clashes with the industrial ‘clock time’ dominating our lives. Ethicists of care have highlighted the tensions between the temporalities involved in caring as a situated, relational and processual practice and the organization of care work according to standardized clock time. Yet, the practice of care work within bureaucratic work organizations seems to reconcile temporal demands of care and clock time. In (...) this article, we build on Barbara Adam’s concept of ‘timescape’ (Adam, Timewatch: The social analysis of time, Polity, 1995; Adam, Time, Polity, 2004) to inquire how care workers juggle apparently conflicting temporalities. Through a participant observation study of a child protection agency in France, we discover that care workers ‘trick’ time by carving out care timescapes that resist the clock—time as continuous, non-standardized, and in the present moment—while utilizing the structure of clock time in the form of ‘scheduling work’ to negotiate for and safeguard the process time they needed to ensure the provision of appropriate, ethical care. Confirming the centrality of time to ethical practices in organizations, our study further evidences and elucidates the intricate relations between clock time and process time in the ethical practice of care. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio-enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio-enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings (...) of Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

Julian of Norwich emphasizes God’s eternal and unchanging love for humankind. Her visions show how God is not angry with our sins and so has no need to forgive us. God does not shame or blame us but excuses us and plans how to reward and compensate us for sin. In relation to Mother Jesus, we remain dear lovely children who need help, correction, and education. Although these remarks suggest to some that Julian must be soft on sin, (...) that she has no adequate appreciation of the worthiness of God or the dignity of human nature, I argue that this is far from the case. On the contrary, she makes Divine worthiness axiomatic and urges readers to live into it. She relocates human dignity not in its intrinsic value but in our centrality to God’s plan. She measures the seriousness of sin in terms of the real hard work it takes to rear us up out of it: crucifixion for Christ, the hell of being a sinner and the crucifixion of life-long penance for us. Nevertheless, the brightness of her visions dominates with her assurance that despite the sin-produced sufferings of this present life, all will be well. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reinterpret the life and work of J. B. S. Haldane by focusing on an illuminating but largely ignored essay he published in 1927, "The Last Judgment" -- the sequel to his better known work, "Daedalus" (1924). This astonishing essay expresses a vision of the human future over the next 40,000,000 years, one that revises and updates Wellsian futurism with the long range implications of the "new biology" for human destiny. That vision served as a kind of (...) lifelong credo, one that infused and informed his diverse scientific work, political activities, and popular writing, and that gave unity and coherence to his remarkable career. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio‐enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio‐enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings (...) of Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

When one encounters disagreement about the truth of a factual claim from a trusted advisor who has access to all of one's evidence, should that move one in the direction of the advisor's view? Conciliatory views on disagreement say "yes, at least a little." Such views are extremely natural, but they can give incoherent advice when the issue under dispute is disagreement itself. So conciliatory views stand refuted. But despite first appearances, this makes no trouble for *partly* conciliatory views: views (...) that recommend giving ground in the face of disagreement about many matters, but not about disagreement itself. (shrink)

The claim of this paper is that the everyday functions of knowledge make most sense if we see knowledge as contrastive. That is, we can best understand how the concept does what it does by thinking in terms of a relation “a knows that p rather than q.” There is always a contrast with an alternative. Contrastive interpretations of knowledge, and objections to them, have become fairly common in recent philosophy. The version defended here is fairly mild in that there (...) is no suggestion that we cannot think in terms of a simpler not explicitly contrastive relation “a knows that p.” Some, for instance Schaffer (2005) and Karjalainen and Morton (2003), have hinted that this stronger possibility may be right. But all that I am arguing now is that facts that are easily expressed in contrastive terms are vital to understanding why we need the concept of knowledge. In a piece that is in some ways a companion to this one ("Contrastivism" in Duncan Pritchard and Sven Bernecker, eds. The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge 2010, 513-522), I give a general survey of theories of contrastive knowledge and the differences between them. (shrink)

Some of my colleagues will sadly not be attending the IAB World Congress in Qatar. Amongst other things, they wish to take a stand against Qatar’s human rights record and the treatment of women and...

Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...) a distinctive quality as pervading a round area out there in external space. Let us call it “sensible redness” to highlight the fact that the representation of this property is necessarily connected with the sensory character of the experience. Is this property, sensible redness, really co-instantiated with roundness out there in the space before you? (shrink)

For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.

Van Inwagen proposes that besides simples only living organisms exist as composite objects. This paper suggests expanding van Inwagen’s ontology by also accepting composite objects in the case that physical bonding occurs (plus some extra conditions). Such objects are not living organ-isms but rather physical bodies. They include (approximately) the complete realm of inanimate ordinary objects, like rocks and tables, as well as inanimate scientific objects, like atoms and mol-ecules, the latter filling the ontological gap between simples and organisms in (...) van Inwagen’s origi-nal picture. We thus propose a compositional pluralism claiming that composition arises if and on-ly if bonding or life occurs. (shrink)

The first ever global overview of philosophy: how it developed around the world and impacted the cultures in which it flourished.

In a revolutionary new book, a theoretical physicist attacks the foundations of modern scientific theory, including the notion of time, as he shares evidence of ...

In order to predict and explain behavior, one cannot specify the mental state of an agent merely by saying what information she possesses. Instead one must specify what information is available to an agent relative to various purposes. Specifying mental states in this way allows us to accommodate cases of imperfect recall, cognitive accomplishments involved in logical deduction, the mental states of confused or fragmented subjects, and the difference between propositional knowledge and know-how .

Some philosophical theories of the nature of color aim to respect a "common sense" conception of color: aligning with the common sense conception is supposed to speak in favor of a theory and conflicting with it is supposed to speak against a theory. In this paper, we argue that the idea of a "common sense" conception of color that philosophers of color have relied upon is overly simplistic. By drawing on experimental and historical evidence, we show how conceptions of color (...) vary along several dimensions and how even supposedly "core" components of the contemporary "common sense" conception of color are less stable than they have been thought to be. (shrink)

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

Quantum mechanics is humanity's finest scientific achievement. It explains why the sun shines and how your eyes can see. It's the theory behind the LEDs in your phone and the nuclear hearts of space probes. Every physicist agrees quantum physics is spectacularly successful. But ask them what quantum physics means, and the result will be a brawl. At stake is the nature of the Universe itself. What does it mean for something to be real? What is the role of consciousness (...) in the Universe? And do quantum rules apply to very small objects like electrons and protons, but not us? In What is Real?, Adam Becker brings to vivid life the brave researchers whose quest for the truth led them to challenge Bohr: David Bohm, who picked up Einstein's mantle and sought to make quantum mechanics deterministic, all while being hounded by the forces of McCarthyism; Hugh Everett, who argued that everything, big and small, must be governed by the same rules; and John Bell, who went to great lengths to eradicate the power of the god-like observer from the core of quantum physics. And they paid dearly, their reputations, careers, and sometimes lives ruined completely. But history has been kinder to them than their contemporaries were. As Becker shows, the brave intellectual giants have inspired a growing army of physicists and philosophers intent both on making a philosophically more satisfying theory of the universe and a more useful one as well. A gripping story of some of humanity's greatest ideas and the high cost with which many have pursued them, What is Real? is intellectual history at its passionate best. (shrink)

How best to think about quantum systems under permutation invariance is a question that has received a great deal of attention in the literature. But very little attention has been paid to taking seriously the proposal that permutation invariance reflects a representational redundancy in the formalism. Under such a proposal, it is far from obvious how a constituent quantum system is represented. Consequently, it is also far from obvious how quantum systems compose to form assemblies, i.e. what is the formal (...) structure of their relations of parthood, overlap and fusion. In this paper, I explore one proposal for the case of fermions and their assemblies. According to this proposal, fermionic assemblies which are not entangled—in some heterodox, but natural sense of ‘entangled’—provide a prima facie counterexample to classical mereology. This result is puzzling; but, I argue, no more intolerable than any other available interpretative option. (shrink)

Mental explanations of behaviour are physical explanations of a special kind. Mental events are physical events. Mental explanations of physical behaviour are not mysterious, they designate events with physical causal powers. Mentalistic terms differ from physicalistic ones in the way they specify events: the former cite extrinsic properties, the latter intrinsic properties. The nature of explanation in general is discussed, and a naturalistic view of intentionality is proposed. The author shows why epistemological considerations rule out the elimination of "mentalistic talk" (...) from explanations of behaviour. (shrink)

El prejuicio más aciago de la filosofía es que su historia jalona rivalidades sangrientas, conflictos insuperables, superaciones radicales, reinicios absolutos, fines y clausuras. Se trata de una concepción pobre y desangelada de esta pasión que impulsa mi viaje por la tierra. El paisaje de lo trascendental se anima cuando se lo concibe como el trabajo conjunto de una saga de artistas embriagados por el pensamiento. Esto no quiere decir que se trate de una suave danza de almas bellas; por el (...) contrario, esa misma embriaguez lleva a enfrentamientos salvajes: hay interpretaciones en las que se nos va la vida, hay conceptos cuya importancia nos desvela, hay posturas que nos parecen escandalosas. Sin embargo, también cuando la danza se hace tan turbulenta que se parece más bien a una brutal pelea de box, lo que importa es esa violencia que fuerza a pensar, y no quién tiene razón. Discutimos porque pensamos juntos, nos respetamos cuando nos criticamos de forma salvaje. Así se construye el pensamiento común: en la tensión y no en la calma, en la pasión de la embriaguez que alterna afinidades radicales y diferencias que parecen irreconciliables.Este libro se propone sostener tal visión de la filosofía a través de un experimento crucial: mostrar que entrelazando a Hegel y a Deleuze podemos construir una potente ontología práctica, que tome la multiplicidad como prius, para dar cuenta del mundo y de la experiencia, donde se conjugan movimiento y devenir con identidades y persistencias. Con ese objetivo, a lo largo de estas páginas expondré a la multiplicidad como una fuerza capaz de determinarse en formas concretas y precisas. La alianza de Deleuze y Hegel nos brinda herramientas conceptuales preciosas para esa tarea: el primero nos ofrece esa ontología de la multiplicidad, mientras el segundo nos plaga de determinaciones sutiles hasta el agotamiento. Una lectura de Hegel desde una perspectiva deleuziana abre nuestros ojos a las miríadas de diferencias y al sutil recorrido incluso de lo más bajo (en su filosofía de la naturaleza hay un secreto slum naturalismo: un amor apasionado por la vileza y las formas más precarias de la existencia). Una lectura de Deleuze desde la perspectiva hegeliana abre nuestros ojos a la máquina de determinación y constitución de lo existente que se alimenta de los flujos y rizomas que lo han hecho célebre. (shrink)

2007 will be remembered as the year in which the Tour de France died. Race leader and likely eventual winner, Michael Rasmussen, was eliminated near the end on an allegation of doping. Since the 1960s, the idealistic drug crusaders have been on a mission to reverse the course of history, and eliminate drugs from the sport. But this “zero tolerance” strategy to drugs has failed, as 2007's Tour spectacularly showed. Only around 10–15% of professional athletes are drug tested. Currently, it (...) is illegal to use erythropoietin (EPO) or blood doping to move your haematocrit from 48 to 49% even though some people will have a normal level of 49%. A regulated permissive policy would paradoxically reduce risk to athletes. The present system creates an environment of risk to the athlete. A rational policy on doping would allow safe performance‐enhancing interventions which are consistent with the spirit of a particular sport. (shrink)

The problem of trust in social relationships was central to the emergence of the modern form of civil society and much discussed by social and political philosophers of the early modern period. Over the past few years, in response to the profound changes associated with postmodernity, trust has returned to the attention of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and public policy analysts. In this sequel to his widely admired book, The Idea of Civil Society, Adam Seligman analyzes trust as a fundamental (...) issue of our present social relationships. Setting his discussion in historical and intellectual context, Seligman asks whether trust--which many contemporary critics, from Robert Putnam through Francis Fukuyama, identify as essential in creating a cohesive society--can continue to serve this vital role. Seligman traverses a wide range of examples, from the minutiae of everyday manners to central problems of political and economic life, showing throughout how civility and trust are being displaced in contemporary life by new "external' system constraints inimical to the development of trust. Disturbingly, Seligman shows that trust is losing its unifying power precisely because the individual, long assumed to be the ultimate repository of rights and values, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules. The irony for Seligman is that, in becoming postmodern, we seem to be moving backward to a premodern condition in which group sanctions rather than trust are the basis of group life. (shrink)

Discusses recent work on representationalism, including: the case for a representationalist theory of consciousness, which explains consciousness in terms of content; rivals such as neurobiological type-type identity theory (Papineau, McLaughlin) and naive realism (Allen, Campbell, Brewer); John Campbell and David Papineau's recent objections to representationalism; the problem of the "laws of appearance"; externalist vs internalist versions of representationalism; the relation between representationalism and the mind-body problem.

The psychedelic psilocybin has shown promise both as treatment for psychiatric conditions and as a means of improving well-being in healthy individuals. In some jurisdictions (e.g., Oregon, USA), psilocybin use for both purposes is or will soon be allowed and yet, public attitudes toward this shift are understudied. We asked a nationally representative sample of 795 US Americans to evaluate the moral status of psilocybin use in an appropriately licensed setting for either treatment of a psychiatric condition or well-being enhancement. (...) Showing strong bipartisan support, participants rated the individual’s decision as morally positive in both contexts. These results can inform effective policy-making decisions around supervised psilocybin use, given robust public attitudes as elicited in the context of an innovative regulatory model. We did not explore attitudes to psilocybin use in unsupervised or non-licensed community or social settings. (shrink)

The idea that humans are by nature social and political animals can be traced back to Aristotle. More recently, it has also generated great interest and controversy in related disciplines such as anthropology, biology, psychology, neuroscience and even economics. What is it about humans that enabled them to construct a social reality of unrivalled complexity? Is there something distinctive about the human mind that explains how social lives are organised around conventions, norms, and institutions? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of (...) the Social Mind is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. An international team of contributors present perspectives from diverse areas of research in philosophy, drawing on comparative and developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural economics. The thirty-two original chapters are divided into five parts: _The Evolution of Social Mind_: including the social intelligence hypothesis, co- evolution of culture and cognition, ethnic cognition, cooperation; _Developmental and Comparative Perspectives_: including primate and infant understanding of mind, shared intentionality, and moral cognition; _Mechanisms of the Moral Mind:_ including norm compliance, social emotion, and implicit attitudes; _Naturalistic Approaches to Shared and Collective Intentionality_: including joint action, team reasoning and group thinking, and social kinds; _Social Forms of Selfhood and Mindedness_: including moral identity, empathy and shared emotion, normativity and intentionality. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind _is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and sociology. (shrink)

Joint attention is recognised by many philosophers and psychologists as a fundamental cornerstone of our engagement with one another and the world around us. The most familiar paradigm of joint attention is joint perceptual—specifically visual—attention to an object in the present environment. However, some recent discussions have focused on a potentially different form of joint attention: namely, ‘joint reminiscing’ conversations in which two or more people discuss something in the past which they both remember. These exchanges are in some ways (...) comparable to joint perceptual attention to something present, and have been characterised by some as a form of joint attention to the past. In this paper, I will assess the prospects for characterising joint reminiscing as a genuine form of joint attention to the past, as understood on the model of joint perceptual attention to something present. My conclusions will be tentative, and my primary aim will be to explore how different commitments regarding the nature of both joint attention and episodic memory give rise to different possibilities for characterising joint reminiscing as a distinctive form of collective engagement with the past. I will suggest that joint reminiscing is unlike ordinary joint attention at least insofar as joint reminiscing trades on the participants’ mutual recognition of one another as having been present at an earlier experience. This is connected with joint reminiscing’s social function, and its role in facilitating the special kind of relationship conveyed by the idea of knowing a person. (shrink)