Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

In 1925, David Katz published an influential monograph on touch, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, which was translated into English in 1989. Although it is called “the world of touch,” it also discusses the thermal and the nociceptive senses, albeit briefly. In this chapter, we will follow this approach, but we will speak about “somatosensory senses” in general in order to remind ourselves that perceptions of temperatures and pains should also be considered together in this context.

According to the theory theory of folk psychology, our engagement in the folk psychological practices of prediction, interpretation and explanation draws on a rich body of knowledge about psychological matters. According to the simulation theory, in apparent contrast, a fundamental role is played by our ability to identify with another person in imagination and to replicate or re-enact aspects of the other person’s mental life. But amongst theory theorists, and amongst simulation theorists, there are significant differences of approach.

Arash Abazari's Hegel's Ontology of Power is a superb study of the relevance of Hegel's logic to Marx's theory. Hegel is often dismissed by Marxists as an ‘idealist’ denying the reality of the world, as if Hegel were Bishop Berkeley with a German accent.1 Abazari recognizes this is not the case: ‘(T)he logical categories are not self-standing, but shadow, or track, the empirical world’ (Abazari 2020: 7). But the world in its full actuality does not simply consist of the objects (...) we sense or perceive. It is intrinsically intelligible, and its intelligibility can be comprehended only in thought. When it is, the ‘idealist’ thesis of the identity (in difference) of thought and being holds. Anyone asserting a truth claim implicitly asserts this identity. In so far as Marx asserts that Capital comprehends the capitalist mode of production, he too is an ‘idealist’ in the Hegelian sense of the term. (shrink)

Many find it plausible that for a given beneficiary, Y, benefactor, R, and action, ϕ, Y’s being grateful to R for ϕ-ing implies Y’s being grateful that R ϕ-ed. According to some philosophers who hold this view, all instances of gratitude to, or “prepositional gratitude,” are also instances of gratitude that, or “propositional gratitude.” These philosophers believe there is a single unified concept of gratitude, a phenomenon that is essentially gratitude that, and whose manifestations sometimes have additional features that make (...) them instances of gratitude to as well. In this article, I show that view to be mistaken. I base my argument on two hypothetical cases, in each of which a beneficiary, Y, is grateful to a benefactor, R, for ϕ-ing, but not grateful that R ϕ-ed. Generalizing from those cases and other cases of gratitude, I argue that prepositional gratitude is the proper response to benevolence-motivated action and propositional gratitude consists in a beneficiary’s judging a state of affairs to be valuable for himself and welcoming that state of affairs. Because not every instance of a benefactor’s acting benevolently toward a beneficiary is something that beneficiary finds valuable for himself and welcomes, it is possible to be grateful to a benefactor for ϕ-ing but not grateful that she ϕ-ed. Prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude can each occur without the other and are thus two distinct phenomena. I conclude by explaining the importance of accurately understanding the relationship between prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude. (shrink)

Examines the origin and early development of the classical theory of distribution up to 1767, stressing the concept of economic `surplus' as a key determinant of economic phenomena.

This article examines the relations between methods used in both animal work and study and concepts of animal mind. By "animal work" the authors mean humans and animals working together, and by "animal study" they mean the discipline of ethology, especially the emerging area of cognitive ethology. Within these areas the wide range of conceptions of animal mind includes varying emphases on intelligence, forms of rationality and language, cognition, consciousness, and intentionality. The authors' central concern is to elucidate the vocabulary (...) and the concepts which seem necessary to establishing successful working relationships with sheepdogs and gundogs. Their argument moves toward an emphasis on the appreciation of particular intentional states and recognizes that they invariably deploy elements of a moral vocabulary in achieving creative teamwork performances with dogs and other animals. The article concludes by consid enng the relevance of accounts of work with animals for associated considerations of intentionality. (shrink)

In its most fundamental, constructive parts devoted to descriptive theory, The Wealth of Nations is first and foremost an account of the causes of economic growth and development. Smith’s theory of economic development gives primary place, at least as the proximate determinants of development, to labour productivity growth and capital accumulation. This chapter examines successively, under six heads, the key dimensions of Smith’s treatment of labour and capital, and the relations between the two, both in The Wealth of Nations and (...) other writings: division of labour, the concept of capital, capital accumulation and economic development, productive versus unproductive labour, the theory of real wages and of profit rates, and economic policy in relation to labour and capital. There are some concluding reflections on Smith’s legacy in relation to these matters. (shrink)

The excavation of the bamboo slips from Jingmen Guodian Tomb No. 1 in Hubei has had major significance for scholarship. How to determine the date of this tomb has thus become a key issue in current research. A paper entitled "Jingmen Guodian Chu Tomb No. 1," published in Wenwu 7, noted: As Guodian Tomb M 1 had been robbed, the accompanying grave goods are not complete. And though a large number of bamboo slips was excavated, there is a lack of (...) precise chronological records able to determine the date of the tomb. Therefore we can only roughly infer its date from the structure of the tomb and the excavated items. (shrink)

Crespi & Badcock (C&B) hypothesize that psychosis and autism represent opposite poles of human social cognition. I briefly outline how computational models of cognitive brain function may be used as a resource to further develop and experimentally test hypotheses concerning 1.

Directed forgetting is a successful method for thought control whereas thought suppression is notoriously ineffective. We tested a specific hypothesis about what difference between the two paradigms causes the difference in outcomes. Both paradigms instruct participants to suppress certain thoughts, but in thought suppression experiments participants are also told to report intrusions of unwanted thoughts. We added a condition to the typical directed forgetting experiment that instructed participants to report intrusions. When participants tried to forget a word list but also (...) reported intrusions, forgetting did not occur. The results are important for understanding control of conscious contents and have implications for practicable applications of individual thought control. (shrink)

In this letter we focus on the cognitive science of consciousness. The general message is that, while this interdisciplinary area has made much progress in recent years, there is a tendency of downplaying conceptual issues, and therefore underestimating the difficulties of various problems. We briefly focus on a few prominent examples only, due to the space limit, but the general message should be clear: this recent tendency can be problematic for the progress of the consciousness branch of cognitive sciences.

Humans and other animals perceive with many different sensory modalities, includ- ing olfaction, touch, audition, vision, echolocation, proprioception, gustation, and some other senses, depending on different criteria and definitions. Given its broad range, it is not possible to give a comprehensive overview of all of the philosophi- cal, psychological, and neuroscientific studies about perception in one chapter, so what will be offered here is quite selective. In the introduction, we will discuss basic concepts such as figure-ground segregation and scene analysis. (...) Section 1.1 provides a historical overview of psychological theories of perception since the late 19th century. Section 1.2 discusses the information-processing approach and hierarchical explanations, while section 1.3 looks into the historical development of philosophical studies of perception. Sections 2.1–2.3 introduce contemporary issues, and 3.1–3.3 provide future directions. (shrink)

The term “consciousness” is very often, though not always, interchangeable with the term “awareness,” which is more colloquial to many ears. We say things like “are you aware that ...” often. Sometimes we say “have you noticed that ... ?” to express similar thoughts, and this indicates a close connection between consciousness (awareness) and attention (noticing), which we will come back to later in this chapter. Ned Block, one of the key figures in this area, provides a useful characterization of (...) what he calls “phenomenal consciousness.” For him, phenomenal consciousness is experience. Experience covers perceptions, e.g., when we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste, we typically have experiences, such as seeing colors and smelling odors. It also covers bodily awareness, e.g., we typically have experiences of our own bodily temperature and positions of limbs. Consciousness is primarily about this experiential aspect of our mental lives. (shrink)

A major recurrent feature of the intellectual landscape in cognitive science is the appearance of a collection of essays by Noam Chomsky. These collections serve both to inform the wider cognitive science community about the latest developments in the approach to the study of language that Chomsky has advocated for almost fifty years now,1 and to provide trenchant criticisms of what he takes to be mistaken philosophical objections to this approach. This new collection contains seven essays, the earliest of which (...) were first published about ten years ago. So the linguistic work that is summarised is within the principles and parameters approach and some of the essays (particularly the first and last) provide an outline of the main ideas of the emerging minimalist programme.2 But this is not primarily a book about the details of recent linguistic theory. Rather, in these essays Chomsky offers a wealth of critical commentary on some of the most influential arguments in the philosophy of mind and language that have appeared over the past two decades or so. Indeed, Chomsky discusses a vast range of philosophical topics and reaches some radical conclusions – that many influential philosophical discussions on language and mind are utterly misconceived and that, for example, the traditional mind-body problem cannot even be coherently stated. (shrink)

Psychology and philosophy have maintained a special relationship since very long ago. Nowadays, many psychologists stay away from philosophy and focus on the empirical methods in their studies. The...

Markman and Dietrich¹ recently recommended extending our understanding of representation to incorporate insights from some “alternative” theories of cognition: perceptual symbol systems, situated action, embodied cognition, and dynamical systems. In particular, they suggest that allowances be made for new types of representation which had been previously under-emphasized in cognitive science. The amendments they recommend are based upon the assumption that the alternative positions each agree with the classical view that cognition requires representations, internal mediating states that bear information.² In the (...) case of one of the alternatives, dynamical systems³, this is simply false: many dynamically-oriented cognitive scientists are anti-representationalists.^4,5,6. (shrink)

In The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019), Declan Smithies has carried out a thorough radical internalist programme. Along the way he compares and contrasts many different views, including a group he calls “radical externalism.” From the labels, it might seem that radical internalism and radical externalism must be very different in their core commitments. In this short note, I will single out a version of radical externalism – factivism, more specifically John McDowell’s version (1994, 1995, 2011) – and argue that (...) actually this version has many similarities with Smithies radical internalism. Where there are differences, they do not obviously lie at the internalist/externalist juncture. The main point of this comparison is that philosophical positions that seem very different can share much common ground, and in seeing this one can be in a better position to understand the crucial points of disagreement. (shrink)

This article explores Polanyi’s views on religion. Reviewing the debate on his understanding of religion, which originated in Richard Gelwick and Harry Prosch’s conflicting readings of Polanyi on the theme, the article proposes that there are ambiguities within his writings on the theme which cannot be resolved. There is a weakness in Polanyi’s work on religion which reflcets his limited experience of religious practices and theological traditions. Nevertheless, his insight that religious knowledge is rooted in the practices of religious worship (...) is one from which theology has much to learn. (shrink)

This second volume continues the story told in the first by focusing on the writings of a selection of seminal thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in England, the German speaking world and in France, ending with the debate around the French Revolution of 1789.

This article focuses on the history of the concept of natural law and the role which Aristotle, and especially his Rhetoric, has to play within it. It is sometimes suggested that the origins of the concept of law are to be located in the writings of Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century BCE. The article argues that there is evidence both in Aristotle's Politics and in his Rhetoric to support the view that this is not the case. In these (...) texts Aristotle suggests that the origins of the concept of natural law lie in the writings of the Sophists in the fifth century, some of whom used natural law arguments to question the legitimacy of slavery. (shrink)