This book brings together a collection of essays written by scholars inspired by Eugene Gendlin's work, particularly those interested in thinking with and beyond Gendlin for the sake of a global community facing significant crises. The contributors take inspiration from Gendlin's philosophy of the implicit, and his theoretical approach to psychology. The essays engage with Gendlin's ideas for our era, including critiques and corrections as well as extrapolations of his work. Gendlin himself worried that knowing about a problem (...) is too often conflated with actions that might lead to change; the essays in this book point to a form of understanding that is activated, an embodied and immediate way of thinking about today's problems. Throughout the volume, the contributors creatively engage with Gendlin's work and its applicability to the complex, pressing crises of our time: the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental/climate issues, racism, sexism, economic inequality, and other factors threatening human persons and communities. Gendlin's theoretical approach to psychology is naturally interdisciplinary, making this book an essential read for anyone interested in moving to the boundaries where psychology meets philosophy, theology, art, environmental studies, science, and technology, and much more. (shrink)

This open access book discusses a variety of important but unprecedented ways in which psychology can be useful to philosophy. The early chapters illustrate this theme via comparisons between Chinese and Western philosophy. It is argued that the Chinese notion of a heart-mind is superior to the Western concept of mind, but then, more even-handedly, the relative strengths and weaknesses of Chinese and Western thought overall are critically examined. In later chapters, the philosophical uses of psychology (...) are treated more specifically in relation to major issues in Western philosophy. Michael Slote shows that empathy and emotion play a role in speech acts that speech act theory has totally ignored. Similarly, he treats the age-old question of whether justice pays using psychological material that has not previously been recognized. Finally, the implications of psychological egoism are discussed in terms of some new psychological and, indeed, human distinctions. Human life is pervaded by instincts and aspirations that are neither egoistic nor altruistic, and recognizing that fact can help put egoism in its place. It is less of a challenge to morality than we have realized. (shrink)

Certainty The following article provides an overview of the philosophical debate surrounding certainty. It does so in light of distinctions that can be drawn between objective, psychological, and epistemic certainty. Certainty consists of a valuable cognitive standing, which is often seen as an ideal. It is indeed natural to evaluate lesser cognitive standings, in particular … Continue reading Certainty →.

ABSTRACT I argue against both neuropsychological and cognitive accounts of our grasp of numbers. I show that despite the points of divergence between these two accounts, they face analogous problems. Both presuppose too much about what they purport to explain to be informative, and also characterize our grasp of numbers in a way that is absurd in the light of what we already know from the point of view of mathematical practice. Then I offer a positive methodological proposal about the (...) role that cognitive science should play in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Psychology and Philosophy provides a history of the relations between philosophy and the science of psychology from late scholasticism to contemporary discussions. The book covers the development from 16th-century interpretations of Aristotle’s De Anima, through Kantianism and the 19th-century revival of Aristotelianism, up to 20th-century phenomenological and analytic studies of consciousness and the mind. In this volume historically divergent conceptions of psychology as a science receive special emphasis. The volume illuminates the particular nature of studies (...) of the psyche in the contexts of Aristotelian and Cartesian as well as 19th- and 20th-century science and philosophy. The relations between metaphysics, transcendental philosophy, and natural science are studied in the works of Kant, Brentano, Bergson, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Davidson. Accounts of less known philosophers, such as Trendelenburg and Maine de Biran, throw new light on the history of the field. Discussions concerning the connections between moral philosophy and philosophical psychology broaden the volume’s perspective and show new directions for development. All contributions are based on novel research in their respective fields. The collection provides materials for researchers and graduate students in the fields of philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and psychology. (shrink)

The present article critiques standard attempts to make philosophy appear relevant to the scientific study of well-being, drawing examples in particular from works that argue for fundamental differences between different forms of wellbeing, and claims concerning the supposedly inherent normativity of wellbeing research. Specifically, it is argued that philosophers in at least some relevant cases fail to apply what is often claimed to be among their core competences: conceptual rigor—not only in dealing with the psychological construct of flow, but (...) also in relation to apparently philosophical concepts such as normativity, objectivity, or eudaimonia. Furthermore, the uncritical use of so-called thought experiments in philosophy is shown to be inappropriate for the scientific study of wellbeing. As an alternative to such philosophy-as-usual, proper attention to other philosophical traditions is argued to be promising. In particular, the philosophy of ZhuangZi appears to concord well with today’s psychological knowledge, and to contain valuable ideas for the future development of positive psychology. (shrink)

This chapter first discusses psychology in the eighteenth century as the background to nineteenth-century psychology. It then recounts developments within German psychology, British psychology, evolutionary psychology, and American psychology, followed by a discussion of introspective methods in the laboratory. The final three sections discuss conflicting opinions on the existence of unconscious mental states, review relations between philosophy and psychology, and survey the state of psychology in the early twentieth century.

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and (...) Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology. (shrink)

In contemporary psychology and philosophy, influential theories approach the emotions via their relations to values and evaluations. My aim is to contribute to our understanding of how these evaluative theories in psychology and philosophy relate to one another. I first explain why this presupposes that we make up our minds about the relations between “molecular” and “molar” properties. The rest of my discussion explores some ways of understanding the relation between the molar and the molecular: as (...) a relation of epistemological support, of identity or of the determinable-determinates type. (shrink)

The article aims at highlighting the inadequacy of traditional philosophy, especially when taught in the traditional way, in making itself relevant to modern humans. The mind of the modern human is attuned to the scientific attitude and the scientific method; the speculative method which philosophy employs is no longer held reliable in the search for truth and objective knowledge. This shift in attitude and methodology is reflective of the transition from the prescientific to the scientific era. Philosophy, (...) therefore, has to adopt new ways of arriving at truth and knowledge if it is to make itself a relevant and acceptable discipline in the modern world. (shrink)

Perceptual experience is one of our fundamental sources of epistemic justification—roughly, justification for believing that a proposition is true. The ability of perceptual experience to justify beliefs can nevertheless be questioned. This article focuses on an important challenge that arises from countenancing that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable. -/- The thesis of cognitive penetrability of perception states that the content of perceptual experience can be influenced by prior or concurrent psychological factors, such as beliefs, fears and desires. Advocates of this (...) thesis could for instance claim that your desire of having a tall daughter might influence your perception, so that she appears to you to be taller than she is. Although cognitive penetrability of perception is a controversial empirical hypothesis, it does not appear implausible. The possibility of its veracity has been adduced to challenge positions that maintain that perceptual experience has inherent justifying power. -/- This article presents some of the most influential positions in contemporary literature about whether cognitive penetration would undermine perceptual justification and why it would or would not do so. -/- Some sections of this article focus on phenomenal conservatism, a popular conception of epistemic justification that more than any other has been targeted with objections that adduce the cognitive penetrability of experience. (shrink)

​The motivation for this volume is simple. For a variety of reasons, clinical psychologists have long shown considerable interest in the philosophy of science. When logical positivism gained currency in the 1930s, psychologists were among the most avid readers of what these philosophers had to say about science. Part of the critique of Skinner’s radical behaviorism and thus behavior therapy was that it relied on, and thus was logically dependent on, the truth of logical positivism—a claim decisively refuted both (...) historically and logically by L.D. Smith (1986) in his important Behaviorism and Logical Positivism: A Reassessment of the Alliance. ​. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary discussion of traumatic experience seeks better understanding and care for the suffering of individuals and societies.

This article analyzes Wittgenstein’s position on the grammatical incorrigibility of psychological self-ascriptions and shows how introspective statements can be of use to philosophers. In Wittgenstein On Rules and Private Language, Kripke notes Wittgenstein’s puzzling ambivalence toward introspection. On the one hand Wittgenstein repudiates introspection and on the other he uses it in his own philosophical investigations. To resolve the paradox, this paper distinguishes between introspective methodology in psychological and philosophical investigations. Wittgenstein’s arguments against introspection are specifically directed at introspective methodology (...) in psychology. He argues that the use of introspection to discover “inner causes” commits one to a conception of “direct inner awareness”. On that conception, psychological self-ascriptions are considered highly reliable due to the superiority of the subjective vantage point in ascertaining one’s own mental contents. As an alternative, Wittgenstein maintains that this reliability stems from the grammar of the ascription. The paper places Wittgenstein’s alternative conception of incorrigibility into the context of his argument against the use of introspection in psychology. (shrink)

This article analyzes Wittgenstein’s position on the grammatical incorrigibility of psychological self-ascriptions and shows how introspective statements can be of use to philosophers. In Wittgenstein On Rules and Private Language, Kripke notes Wittgenstein’s puzzling ambivalence toward introspection. On the one hand Wittgenstein repudiates introspection and on the other he uses it in his own philosophical investigations. To resolve the paradox, this paper distinguishes between introspective methodology in psychological and philosophical investigations. Wittgenstein’s arguments against introspection are specifically directed at introspective methodology (...) in psychology. He argues that the use of introspection to discover “inner causes” commits one to a conception of “direct inner awareness”. On that conception, psychological self-ascriptions are considered highly reliable due to the superiority of the subjective vantage point in ascertaining one’s own mental contents. As an alternative, Wittgenstein maintains that this reliability stems from the grammar of the ascription. The paper places Wittgenstein’s alternative conception of incorrigibility into the context of his argument against the use of introspection in psychology. (shrink)

This is a sequel to Forman's well-received collection, The Problems of Pure Consciousness (OUP 1990). The essays in this previous volume argued that some mystical experiences do not seem to be formed or shaped by the language system--a thesis that stands in sharp contrast to the constructivist school, which holds that all mysticism is the product of a cultural and linguistic process. In The Innate Capacity, the same scholars put forward a hypothesis about the formative causes of these "pure consciousness" (...) experiences. All the contributors agree that mysticism is the result of an innate human capacity, rather than a learned, socially conditioned constructive process. They look at mystical experience as it is manifested in a variety of religious and cultural settings, including Hindu Yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, and medieval Christianity. Taken together, the essays constitute an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of mystical experience and its relation to the social and cultural context in which it appears. (shrink)

The vast expansion of research in human-robot interactions (HRI) these last decades has been accompanied by the design of increasingly skilled robots for engaging in joint actions with humans. However, these advances have encountered significant challenges to ensure fluent interactions and sustain human motivation through the different steps of joint action. After exploring current literature on joint action in HRI, leading to a more precise definition of these challenges, the present article proposes some perspectives borrowed from psychology and (...) class='Hi'>philosophy showing the key role of communication in human interactions. From mutual recognition between individuals to the expression of commitment and social expectations, we argue that communicative cues can facilitate coordination, prediction, and motivation in the context of joint action. The description of several notions thus suggests that some communicative capacities can be implemented in the context of joint action for HRI, leading to an integrated perspective of robotic communication. (shrink)

One major challenge of the 21st century is the increasingly rapid development of new technologies and their evaluation. In this article we argue for an interdisciplinary approach to meet this demand for evaluating new and specifically bioinspired technologies. We combine the consideration of normative principles in the field of ethics with psychological-empirical research on attitudes. In doing so, the paper has a twofold concern: first, we discuss how such an interdisciplinary collaboration can be implemented by using the method of Cognitive-Affective (...) Mapping. Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs) enable a graphical representation of attitudes, including cognitive and affective aspects. Second, we argue that CAMs can be helpful to remedy the deficits of traditional ethical approaches. We applied CAMs in the context of an ethics seminar in which students were instructed to create CAMs based on bioinspired technologies twice – prior to the seminar to assess their evaluation on bioinspired technologies per se (pre-assessment) and after the seminar to assess how their evaluation might have changed and especially which normative ethical principles might have been additionally considered (post-assessment). As could be shown, CAMs can visualize the students’ attitudes, including the valence of ethical principles. Further, comparing pre- and post-CAMs indicated students’ attitude change. (shrink)

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

[This download contains the introductory chapter.] People confabulate when they make an ill-grounded claim that they honestly believe is true, for example in claiming to recall an event from their childhood that never actually happened. This interdisciplinary book brings together some of the leading thinkers on confabulation in neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as a (...) kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

Offering a model of mentality that sets psychology and philosophy on common footing, this book eliminates the breach between the sciences and the humanities.

Feelings of belonging are integral in people’s choice of what career to pursue. Women and men are disproportionately represented across careers, starting with academic training. The present research focuses on two fields that are similar in their history and subject matter but feature inverse gender gaps—psychology (more women than men) and philosophy (more men than women)—to investigate how theorized explanations for academic gender gaps contribute to feelings of belonging. Specifically, we simultaneously model the relative contribution of theoretically relevant (...) individual differences (empathizing, systematizing, and intellectual combativeness) as well as life goals (prioritization of family, money, and status) to feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology or philosophy. We find that men report higher intellectual combativeness than women, and intellectual combativeness predicts feelings of belonging and majoring in philosophy over psychology. Although systematizing and empathizing are predictive of belonging and, in turn, majoring in psychology and philosophy, respectively, when other factors are taken into account, women and men do not differ in empathizing and systematizing. Women, more than men, report prioritizing having a family, wealth, and status in choosing a career, and these directly or indirectly feed into feelings of belonging and majoring in psychology, in contrast to prior theory. Together, these findings suggest that students’ perceptions of their own combativeness and the extent to which they desire money and status play essential roles in women’s feeling they belong in psychology and men’s feeling they belong in philosophy. (shrink)

Psychology was born and evolved over the course of centuries in the bosom of philosophy, from which it separated to become an experimental science. However, not many are familiar with the period in the middle of our century when psychology and philosophy were united, a period that to a large extent defined the philosophical-methodological distinctiveness of our psychological science in comparison with world psychology. Today this uniqueness is ascribed exclusively to the influence of Marxism and, (...) because of the current revisions of Marxism, a number of psychologists are proposing that the philosophical-methodological foundations of our psychology be discarded and that the discipline be returned to the stream of pure scientism. However, it is worth noting that Russian culture has always had a distinctive orientation in its philosophy and worldview. Hence the influence of Marxism on the development of psychology had historical presuppositions of its own and cannot be reduced to purely ideological factors. The way it produces ideas and hypotheses, the way its scientists think, as well as the formulation of psychological knowledge make our psychology a philosophical discipline. (shrink)