We examine the role of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the weaponization of American psychology post-9/11. In 2004, psychologists’ involvement in the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects generated controversy over psychological ethics in national security (PENS). Two signal events inflamed the controversy. The 2005 APA PENS Report legitimized clinical psychology consultation in support of military/intelligence operations with detained terrorist suspects. An independent review, the 2015 Hoffman Report, found APA collusion with the US Department of Defense in producing the (...) APA PENS Report and subsequent policies. Ongoing activities within APA to weaponize psychology sharpened the controversy. The authors—two psychologists and four former military/intelligence professionals—bring a military/intelligence operational perspective to detail two neglected areas of collateral damage. The first is the toll on psychology as a scientific enterprise. The second is covert influence on professional associations for incompatible security-sector objectives. We establish epistemic, historical, institutional, legal, and operational foundations for evaluation of these damages, as well as implications for APA and related professional associations in the ongoing Global War on Terror. (shrink)

O’Donohue et al. sought to derive, from classical ethical theories, the ethical obligation of psychologists to assist “enhanced interrogations and torture” in national defense scenarios under strict EIT criteria. They asked the American Psychological Association to adopt an ethics code obligating psychologists to assist such EIT and to uphold the reputation of EIT psychologists. We contest the authors’ ethical analyses as supports for psychologists’ forays into torture interrogation when the EIT criteria obtain. We also contend that the authors’ application of (...) these ethical analyses violates the Geneva Conventions, contravenes military doctrine and operations, and undermines psychology as a profession. We conclude that “good” public reputation is not owed to, or expected by, “good” intelligence professionals, and collaborating operational psychologists must share their providence. (shrink)

This teaching case study poses classic questions about following orders versus serving one's conscience. It tracks the actions of Captain Lawrence Rockwood, an intelligence officer with the Tenth Mountain Division of the United States Army, who was sent to Haiti in September 1994 as part of the mission to oust the dictator Cedras and put the elected Aristide in power. Captain Rockwood felt that his conscience, his humanitarian duty and international law all required that he inspect the (...) National Penitentiary where, intelligence reports showed, political prisoners were being tortured and murdered. His chain of command was unanimous in refusing him permission to inspect the prison and in directing that he do nothing that would endanger fragile relations with the peacefully departing Cedras regime. The case is intended for use in courses on force and justice, for ethics and leadership classes at military academies, at chaplaincy schools and seminaries or in classes on law of war and international law, civil-military relations, peacekeeping and new missions for the military. (shrink)

Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief. The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of (...) moral distortion, to which moral philosophers have paid insufficient attention. Some of these are common to all stereotypes—failing to see members of the stereotyped groups as individuals, moral distancing, failing to see subgroup diversity within the group. Other moral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some attribute a much more damaging or stigmatizing characteristic (e.g. being violent) than others (e.g. being good at basketball). But the characteristic in question must also be viewed in its wider historical and social context to appreciate its overall negative and positive dimensions. (shrink)

Embodied cognition is one of the foremost areas of study and research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and debates in this exciting subject and essential reading for any student and scholar of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into six parts: Historical Underpinnings Perspectives (...) on Embodied Cognition Applied Embodied Cognition: Perception, Language and Reasoning Applied Embodied Cognition: Social and Moral Cognition and Emotion Applied Embodied Cognition: Memory, Attention and Group Cognition Meta-Topics. The early chapters of the Handbook cover empirical and philosophical foundations of embodied cognition, focusing on Gibsonian, phenomenological and cybernetic approaches. Subsequent chapters cover additional, important themes common to work in embodied cognition, incuding embedded , extended and enactive cognition as well as chapters on embodied cognition and empirical research in perception, language, reasoning, social and moral cognition, emotion, consciousness, memory and learning and development. (shrink)

Hume’s argument against believing the testimony of miracles is the most influential treatment of the topic, but there is not yet a consensus on how to interpret his argument. Two arguments are attributed to him. First, Hume seems to start with the infrequency of miracles and uses this to infer that the testimony of a miracle is exceedingly unlikely, and this then creates strong but defeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. Second, perhaps Hume takes the constancy of our (...) experience of the laws of nature as decisive or indefeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. I explain the basis for each of these interpretations of Hume’s argument, and then develop a novel criticism of his view: namely, any inductive inference depends on the relevant similarity between the observed and the unobserved, but we may have reason for thinking that purported miracles are not relevantly similar, and thus our past experience cannot be used as reliable evidence about the testimony of (some) miracles. (shrink)

I argue that physicians can save women from life-threatening pregnancies by performing a craniotomy, placentectomy, or salpingotomy without intending death or harm. To support this conclusion, I defend the relevance thesis about intentions (a person intends X only if X explains the action). I then criticize the identity thesis (if a person intends X and knows X is Y then the person intends Y) and three mistakenly strict moral principles: (1) one may not intend something that is a serious harm (...) for an innocent person, (2) one may not intend to terminate pregnancy before viability, which would prohibit, and (3) one may not act on a person’s body in a harmful way in order to benefit another person. (1) would prohibit procuring organs from living donors, (2) would prohibit treating hepatic pregnancies and other ectopic pregnancies, and (3) would prohibit procuring organs from living donors and performing many prenatal surgeries. (shrink)

Fourteen newly commissioned essays trace the historical development of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, which lies at the intersection of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of perception. 'Primary and Secondary Qualities' focuses on the age of the Scientific Revolution, the 'locus classicus' of the distinction, but begins with chapters on ancient Greek and Scholastic accounts of qualities in an effort to identify its origins. The remainder of the volume is devoted to philosophical reflections on qualities from the (...) seventeenth century to the present day. Virtualliy every major figure is represented from Gassendi to Kant, and special attention is paid to Locke, Descartes, and Hume. The essays collected here cover a wide range of topics, including the foundation for the distinction, the question of whether it is lmetaphysical or merely epistemic, the status of secondary qualities, the nature of sensoriy representation, the relation between philosophy and science, the status of dispositions, and the semantics of sensible-quality terms"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of dust jacket. (shrink)

If the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then it appears that miracles are metaphysically impossible. Yet Locke accepts both Essentialism, which takes the laws to be metaphysically necessary, and the possibility of miracles. I argue that the apparent conflict here can be resolved if the laws are by themselves insufficient for guaranteeing the outcome of a particular event. This suggests that, on Locke’s view, the laws of nature entail how an object would behave absent divine intervention. While other views (...) of laws also make miracles counterfactually dependent on God’s will, I show how this view is consistent with the Essentialist commitment to the view that the laws are metaphysically necessary. Further, I argue Locke’s view is a relatively attractive version of Essentialism, in part, because it allows for the possibility of miracles. (shrink)

Locke: Epistemology John Locke, one of the founders of British Empiricism, is famous for insisting that all our ideas come from experience and for emphasizing the need for empirical evidence. He develops his empiricist epistemology in An Essay Concerning Human understanding, which greatly influenced later empiricists such as George Berkeley and David Hume. In … Continue reading Locke: Epistemology →.

Departing from the sociological dual process model that divides thoughts into automatic and unconscious, or deliberate and conscious occurrences, this book draws on empirical cases to demonstrate the existence of 'automatic deliberation'. Through research into the ways in which people address difficult subjects, such as death and dying, paedophilia, and career decision-making, the author sheds light on a mode of thinking which is both habitual and effortful, displaying a combination of habituated understandings and conscious deliberation. Advancing a blended view of (...) cognition by which individuals draw on schemas and frames to think through complex topics, this volume will appeal to sociologists and psychologists with interests in cognition and the ways in which we make decisions. (shrink)

In the Canon of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant endorses both a Moral Belief in God as well as what he there calls Doctrinal Belief. The former mode of belief is well known and can be found throughout the Kantian Corpus. The latter, however, is far more obscure and thus far has not been carefully studied. Doctrinal Belief only appears explicitly in the Canon, but is related to a number of issues in the Transcendental Dialectic as well as the (...) Critique of Judgment. This paper will provide an account of the Doctrinal Belief in God and consider its compatibility with Kant’s other discussions of the projected ground of the principle of purposiveness. (shrink)

Hume famously argues that the laws of nature provide us with decisive reason to believe that any testimony of a miracle is false. In this paper, I argue that the laws of nature, as such, give us no reason at all to believe that the testimony of a miracle is false. I first argue that Hume’s proof is unsuccessful if we assume the Humean view of laws, and then I argue that Hume’s proof is unsuccessful even if we assume the (...) governing view of laws. I conclude that regardless of which kind of view we adopt, the fact that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature does not give us any reason to believe it did not happen. (shrink)

This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because of the laws of (...) nature, but this necessity is thought to be metaphysically contingent. However, they struggle to explain how the laws could be genuinely necessary while being metaphysically contingent. The chief advantage of Descartes view, I argue, is that God’s will can plausibly explain both the necessity of the laws and the contingency of the laws. So, Descartes’ theistic account of laws provides a plausible explanation, perhaps the best explanation, of the contingent-necessity of laws of nature. (shrink)

Logic and Computation is concerned with techniques for formal theorem-proving, with particular reference to Cambridge LCF (Logic for Computable Functions). Cambridge LCF is a computer program for reasoning about computation. It combines methods of mathematical logic with domain theory, the basis of the denotational approach to specifying the meaning of statements in a programming language. This book consists of two parts. Part I outlines the mathematical preliminaries: elementary logic and domain theory. They are explained at an intuitive level, giving references (...) to more advanced reading. Part II provides enough detail to serve as a reference manual for Cambridge LCF. It will also be a useful guide for implementors of other programs based on the LCF approach. (shrink)

Frege famously held that numbers play the role of objects in our language and thought, and that this role is on display when we use sentences like "The number of Jupiter's moons is four". I argue that this role is an example of a general pattern that also encompasses persons, times, locations, reasons, causes, and ways of appearing or acting. These things are 'objects' simply in the sense that they are answers to questions: they are the sort of thing we (...) search for and specify during investigation or inquiry. I support this epistemological conception of objects by studying specificational sentences, a class of sentences which includes Frege's original example. I defend an analysis of such sentences as question-answer pairs, and show how to formally represent this analysis using game-theoretical semantics. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explain why Locke thinks religious belief requires evidence and, on his view, what evidence there is for religious belief. I will explain and defend Locke’s view that revelation can provide evidence for religious beliefs so long as there is evidence that God revealed it. Further, I will show how he takes the historical evidence of the miracles of Jesus as justification for belief in Christianity.

In western philosophy today, the three leading approaches to normative ethics are those of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and utilitarianism. In recent years the debate between Kantian ethicists and virtue ethicists has assumed an especially prominent position. The twelve newly commissioned essays in this volume, by leading scholars in both traditions, explore key aspects of each approach as related to the debate, and identify new common ground but also real and lasting differences between these approaches. The volume provides a rich (...) overview of the continuing debate between two powerful forms of enquiry, and will be valuable for a wide range of students and scholars working in these fields. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Locke takes sensitive knowledge (i.e. knowledge from sensation) to be genuine knowledge that material objects exist. Samuel Rickless has recently argued that, for Locke, sensitive knowledge is merely an “assurance”, or a highly probable judgment that falls short of certainty. In reply, I show that Locke sometimes uses “assurance” to describe certain knowledge, and so the use of the term “assurance” to describe sensitive knowledge does not entail that it is less than certain. Further, (...) I show that sensitive knowledge includes the perception of a relation between ideas, and thus it satisfies Locke’s definition of knowledge. He also repeatedly claims that sensitive knowledge is certain. So, despite recent challenges to this interpretation raised in the secondary literature, Locke really does take sensitive knowledge to be certain knowledge. (shrink)

The standard objection to Locke’s epistemology is that his conception of knowledge inevitably leads to skepticism about external objects. One reason for this complaint is that Locke defines knowledge as the perception of a relation between ideas, but perceiving relations between ideas does not seem like the kind of thing that can give us knowledge that tables and chairs exist. Thus Locke’s general definition of knowledge seems to be woefully inadequate for explaining knowledge of external objects. However, this interpretation and (...) subsequent criticism ignore a special category of knowledge Locke calls “real knowledge”, which is Locke’s own account of how we can have knowledge of the real world. In in this paper I argue that real knowledge of substances requires that, in addition to the perception of a relation between ideas, there be a necessary connection between our ideas and the external objects they represent. It is because Locke thinks there is a necessary connection between these ideas and reality that he thinks the perception of ideas can give us knowledge of the actual world. (shrink)

This paper explores two related issues concerning Locke’s account of epistemic justification for empirical knowledge. One issue concerns the degree of justification needed for empirical knowledge. Commentators almost universally take Locke to hold a fallibilist account of justification, whereas I argue that Locke accepts infallibilism. A second issue concerns the nature of justification. Many (though not all) commentators take Locke to have a thoroughly internalist conception of justification for empirical knowledge, whereas I argue that he has a (partly) externalist conception (...) of justification: it is the fact that sensation is caused by an external object that justifies our belief in the corresponding object. So, while most commentators take Locke to be a fallibilist with an internalist conception of justification for empirical knowledge, I argue he is actually an infallibilist with an externalist conception of justification. (shrink)

Commençant par une revue sommaire des types de questions qu’une fondation des mathématiques devrait poser, cet article présente premièrement une critique des fondements basés sur la théorie des ensembles, puis propose l’idée que plusieurs fondements catégoriques, reliés les uns aux autres, seraient plus avantageux, et finalement indique une méthode pour retrouver la théorie des ensembles à travers une approche catégorique.

Examines the theories of Socrates, Kant, Dewey, Piaget, and others to explore the implications of Socrates' question "what is a virtuous man, and what is a virtuous school and society which educates virtuous men.".

Do Descartes, Locke, and Hume have an internalist or externalist view of epistemic justification? Internalism is, roughly, the view that a belief that p is justified by a mental state, such as the awareness of evidence. By contrast, externalism is, roughly, the view that a belief that p is justified by facts about the belief-forming process, such as the reliability of the belief-forming process. I argue that they all think that the awareness of evidence is required for justification, but none (...) of them think that the awareness of evidence alone is sufficient for justification. Similarly, I argue that they all think that reliability of the belief-forming process is required for justification, but none of them think reliability alone is sufficient for justification. So, neither a fully internalist position nor a fully externalist position adequately captures their views of justification; rather, both the supporting evidence and the reliability of the belief-forming process explain why we should hold those beliefs, and hence explain why those beliefs are justified. Thus, they each have a partly internalist, partly externalist view of justification. (shrink)

In Socrates among Strangers, Joseph P. Lawrence reclaims the enigmatic sage from those who have seen him either as a prophet of science, seeking the security of knowledge, or as a wily actor who shed light on the dangerous world of politics while maintaining a prudent distance from it. The Socrates Lawrence seeks is the imprudent one, the man who knew how to die. The institutionalization of philosophy in the modern world has come at the cost of its (...) most vital concern: the achievement of life wisdom. Those who have ceased to grow (those who think they know) close their ears to the wisdom of strangers—and Socrates, who stood face to face with death, is the archetypal stranger. His avowal of ignorance, Lawrence suggests, is more needed than ever in an age defined by technical mastery and expert knowledge. (shrink)