To continue the project of explicating Pacific values and worldviews, this paper focuses on correlative thinking in some of the cultural philosophies of the Pacific islands, especially Micronesia. Correlative thinking differs, in degree, from scientific and academic logic that emphasize the truth-value of statements. After examining aspects of correlative thinking in Bali and the Philippines, I extract some characteristics of Pacific philosophies from cultural practices, myths, and beliefs. Unlike William Alkire (Alkire, 1972), I find (...) that Pacific islanders use correlative thinking, not dualism, to fill their canoes and baskets of wisdom, so that they can navigate between contemporary logic or scientific thinking, and their cultural knowledge systems and ways of reasoning. (shrink)

This paper argues that correlative thinking, a fundamental aspect of Chinese thought often distinguished from rational thinking, is rooted in our situated bodily experiences, constituting a unique mode of sensemaking. It performs a comparative analysis between Zhuangzi's Fish Parable and Merleau‐Ponty's philosophy of embodied perception, focusing on the self‐attunement in our embodied experience and Dao, which remains invisible but gradually reveals its presence as the parable unfolds. The paper illuminates the embodied nature of correlative thinking (...) by exposing the intricate interplay between the self and others, as well as the self and its lived environment. This analysis underscores the reciprocal relationship between Dao and correlative thinking: Dao acts as the origin of correlative thinking, while correlative thinking, in turn, unveils the presence of Dao. This analysis could enrich our understanding of the interplay between the self, others, and the world they inhabit. (shrink)

Abstract:This article enquires into a transcultural aesthetic: bi-xing (inspired metaphor) in China and symbolic representation in the West, which share the common logic of correlative thinking. By examining its earliest provenance in the Zhouyi (Book of Changes) and Shijing(Book of Songs) in China's high antiquity in relation to divination, symbolization, and poetic creation in the West, it argues that this aesthetic arose from omen readings in divination, went through symbolism in linguistic representation, and became a poetic principle in (...) aesthetic thought. It concludes that correlative thinking was an approach to knowledge production and conception in traditional thought across cultures. (shrink)

Scholars have generally agreed that correlative thinking represents a defining feature of traditional Chinese thought, and their discussions on this enduring mode of thinking have led to a better understanding of the Chinese intellectual and cultural tradition. Although scholars have seldom looked into the causes of the formation of early Chinese correlative thought, some of their discussions have provided inspiration for further investigation.A number of scholars have indicated that the concept of resonance was a fundamental factor (...) in Chinese correlative thinking. For example, both Hellmut Wilhelm and Joseph Needham asserted that, in correlative thinking, order, pattern, and symbolic correlation or.. (shrink)

This article aims at providing a general picture of the idea of correlative thinking developed by sinologists and philosophers in the field of Chinese and comparative studies, including Marcel Granet, Joseph Needham, A. C. Graham, David Hall and Roger Ames. As a matter of fact, there is no exactly the same view among these scholars when they use the term "correlative thinking"? to describe the Chinese mode of thinking; but they all recognize, more or less, (...) the term's implication as "non-logical"? or "pre-logical", "non-rational"? or "irrational", "intuitive-associative"? or "beyond analytic thinking". ?Based on this presumption, some of them think that there is "irreducibility"?from the root level of (correlative) thinking to the upper level of (analytic) thinking or that there is "incommensurability"? between correlative and analytic thinking. Based on the contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, especially Donald Davidson's holism of the mental and the principle of charity, I shall argue that the thesis of "pre-logical", ?"illogical"? or "non-logical" is self-refuting. I shall also demonstrate that the view of "incommensurability"? between correlative and analytic thinking and the thesis of "unanalyzability" of correlative thinking shared by most of these scholars are not well-argued but taken as a primary fact. The conclusion of this article is that there is no thinking by correlation and analogy which cannot be understood in terms of analytic concepts and which can escape from the logical or rational space. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to explore alternatives to disgust, which is a social problem today, based on Lao-tzu’s thought. Various discussions on how to approach the problem of hate have recently focused on legal aspects. However, in order to get to the root of the problem, we need a philosophical approach that can provide wisdom along with an understanding of the science of disgust. Among the various causes of hate, the process of generating and categorizing prejudice and discriminating (...) against people based on certain criteria is one of the core elements of hate. Lao-tzu’s thought may offer a new way forward in this regard. Lao-tzu did not see the world’s constitution as a simple division of things into this and that, separated from their relationship to each other by a set of criteria. He also warned against trapping objects within specific concepts by talking about the limits of conceptualization. In this article, I will interpret Lao-tzu’s thought from a correlative standpoint and use it to derive an alternative to aversion based on the dimensions of ‘correlation’and ‘conceptualization’. (shrink)

Mengzi 孟子 6A2 contains the famous water analogy for the innate goodness of human nature. Some evaluate Mengzi’s reasoning as strong and sophisticated; others, as weak or sophistical. I urge for more nuance in our evaluation. Mengzi’s reasoning fares poorly when judged by contemporary standards of analogical strength. However, if we evaluate the analogy as an instance of correlative thinking within a yin-yang 陰陽 cosmology, his reasoning fares well. That cosmology provides good reason to assert that water tends (...) to flow downward, not because of available empirical evidence, but because water correlates to yin and yin correlates to naturally downward motion. Substantiating these contentions also gives occasion to better understand the nature of correlative reasoning in classical Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

We wanted to gather recent results supporting the idea of the central role of sharing agency in socioaffective and motivational information processing. Here, we want to support the idea that this process is quite arbitrary, early in the temporal chain of processes and not only influence the psychological, but also the motor correlates of socioaffective information processes.

The application of statistical methods and models both in the natural and social sciences is nowadays a trivial fact which nobody would deny. Bold analogies even suggest the application of the same statistical models to fields as different as statistical mechanics and economics, among them the case of the young and controversial discipline of Econophysics . Less trivial, however, is the answer to the philosophical question, which has been raised ever since the possibility of “commuting” statistical thinking and models (...) between natural and social sciences emerged: whether such a methodological kinship would imply some kind of more profound unity of the natural and the social domain. Starting with Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) and ending with the Vienna Circle (from the late 1920s until the 1940s), this paper offers a brief historical and philosophical reconstruction of some important stages in the development of statistics as “commuting” between the natural and the social sciences. This reconstruction is meant to highlight (with respect to the authors under consideration): (1) the existence of a significant correlation between the readiness to “transfer” statistical thinking from natural to social sciences and vice versa, on the one hand, and the standpoints on the issue of the unity/disunity of science, on the other; (2) the historical roots and the fortunes of the analogy between statistical models of society and statistical models of gases. (shrink)

Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Analytical Reading and Reasoning, Second Edition, provides a nontechnical vocabulary and analytic apparatus that guide students in identifying and articulating the central patterns found in reasoning and in expository writing more generally. Understanding these patterns of reasoning helps students to better analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments and to more easily comprehend the full range of everyday arguments found in ordinary journalism. Critical Thinking, Second Edition, distinguishes itself from other texts in the field by (...) emphasizing analytical reading as an essential skill. It also provides detailed coverage of argument analysis, diagnostic arguments, diagnostic patterns, and fallacies. Opening with two chapters on analytical reading that help students recognize what makes reasoning explicitly different from other expository activities, the text then presents an interrogative model of argument to guide them in the analysis and evaluation of reasoning. This model allows a detailed articulation of "inference to the best explanation" and gives students a view of the pervasiveness of this form of reasoning. The author demonstrates how many common argument types--from correlations to sampling--can be analyzed using this articulated form. He then extends the model to deal with several predictive and normative arguments and to display the value of the fallacy vocabulary. Ideal for introductory courses in critical thinking, critical reasoning, informal logic, and inductive reasoning, Critical Thinking, Second Edition, features hundreds of exercises throughout and includes worked-out solutions and additional exercises at the end of each chapter. An Instructor's Manual--offering solutions to the text's unanswered exercises and featuring other pedagogical aids--is available on the book's Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/wright. (shrink)

Abstract.Differences in methods of knowing correlate with differences in concepts about what is known. This is an underlying issue in science and religion. It is seen, first, in Arthur Peacocke's reasoning about God as transcendent and personal, is based on an assumption of correlative thinking that like causes like. This contrasts with a notion of causation in empirical science, which explains the emergence of new phenomena as originating from temporally prior phenomena quite unlike that which emerges. The scientific (...) understanding of causation is compatible with a naturalistic theism that holds a nonpersonal model of God as the creative process. However, focusing on the immanence of God, there is a second correlation between methods of knowing and concepts of God. Classical empiricism, used by science, correlates with God understood nonpersonally as the creative process. Radical empiricism, in which feelings and not only sense perceptions have cognitive import, opens up the possibility that one can experience Peacocke's personal, panentheistic God as pattern‐forming influence. I illustrate this second method‐concept correlation with a personal experience. (shrink)

BackgroundPeople say it is hard to stay truly positive in Lebanon. Studies showed that 63% of Lebanese young adults are highly dissatisfied with their country. In fact, young adults are the most vulnerable population to stressors in Lebanon since their future is at stake and it is their time to shape their lives in a country that cripples them. This study aimed to assess factors associated with positivity among a sample of Lebanese university students despite the various stressors they are (...) facing on top of the economic collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted between November and December 2021. A total of 333 participants was recruited through convenience sampling and snowball technique through several areas in Lebanon’s governorates. A linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable was adopted and all variables that showed a correlation > │0.24│ in absolute value were entered in the final model as independent.ResultsA linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable showed that more positive experiences in life, more flourishing, living in rural area compared to urban, and female gender were significantly associated with more positivity.ConclusionThis study demonstrated that the youth’s positivity is strongly affected by age, gender, residency, and the country they live in that will both directly and indirectly shape their life experiences and their ability to flourish and prosper. Along with all the efforts done to help during this collapse and alleviate the stress that young adults are enduring, follow-up studies are still needed to determine accurate coping techniques that pushes these young adults to think positively in a country where negativity reigns and all else fails. (shrink)

'Correlations without correlata' is an influential way of thinking of quantum entanglement as a form primitive correlation which nonetheless maintains locality of quantum theory. A number of arguments have sought to suggest that such a view leads either to internal inconsistency or to conflict with the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. Here wew explicate and provide a partial defence of the notion, arguing that these objections import unwarranted conceptions of correlation properties as hidden variables. A more plausible account sees (...) the properties in terms of Everettian relative states. The ontological robustness of entanglement is also defended from recent objections. (shrink)

This study examined academic and psychological correlates of exam performance in an introductory logic course. The participants were 39 students who completed Logic and Critical Thinking at a southeastern liberal arts university. Students were assigned 20 online homework sets, met for two 75-minute class sessions each week for a 15-week term, and took three exams. A general self-efficacy scale and a frustration scale were administered during the last class meeting. A significant positive correlation was found between exam scores and (...) each of the following variables: homework scores, attendance, and self-efficacy scores. A significant negative correlation was found between students’ frustration scores and their exam scores. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that homework, attendance, and frustration scores made significant contributions to the prediction of exam scores. The implications of these findings for improving course design and enhancing student learning were discussed. (139 words). (shrink)

The article suggests specific grammatical features of some languages of the leading philosophical traditions of Eurasia, which can explain some of the differences in philo­sophical thinking that exist in these traditions. In particular, the use of Genetivus Objec­tivus in Sanskrit, New European, Latin and Arabic languages is considered, its possible correlation with the socio-practice of cultures in which these languages are dominant is analyzed. As a theoretical preamble, which allows not only to raise, but also to compre­hend the designated (...) problems, the author refers to the logical-semantic theory proposed by the Russian philosopher and arabist Andrei V. Smirnov (b. 1958), which deals with subject-predicate constructions in substantive and procedural logic, the problems of cor­relation of language and thinking, as well as the commensurability of the bases rationality in different philosophical cultures. Analyzing the peculiarities of the use of the so-called object genitive case (Genetivus Objectivus) in different linguistic traditions, the author comes to the conclusion that it is the grammar of a language that often determines the pe­culiarities of a person’s thinking, which in turn are reflected in the socio-practice of a par­ticular culture. Using the example of the Sanskrit fragment “Śrībhāṣya” by the Indian me­dieval philosopher Rāmānuja (XI–XII), in which the compound word (brahmajijñāsā) is proposed to be read as a combination of two nouns in the construction of Genetivus Ob­jectivus (brahmano jijñāsā) (with reference to the grammar of Pāṇini), the author of the article shows the peculiarity of Sanskrit-speaking thinking in comparison with New Euro­pean, Arabic and Latin languages. This feature is understood in the light of the defini­tions offered by philosophical traditions to understand the nature of God or the Absolute Principle. (shrink)

_Scientific Thinking_ is a practical guide to inductive reasoning—the sort of reasoning that is commonly used in scientific activity, whether such activity is performed by a scientist, a reporter, a political pollster, or any one of us in day-to-day life. The book provides comprehensive coverage of such topics as confirmation, sampling, correlations, causality, hypotheses, and experimental methods. Martin’s writing confounds those who would think that such topics must be dry-as-dust, presenting ideas in a lively and engaging tone and incorporating amusing (...) examples throughout. This book underlines the importance of acquiring good habits of scientific thinking, and helps to instill those habits in the reader. Stimulating questions and exercises are included in each chapter. (shrink)

Thinking about thought -- Everything's an inference -- Out of context or the situation -- The rational unconscious -- The formerly dismal science -- Should you think like an economist? -- Spilt milk and free lunch -- Foiling foibles -- Coding, counting, correlation, and causality -- Odds and Ns -- Linked up -- Experiments -- Ignore the hippo -- Experiments natural and experiments proper -- Eekonomics -- Don't ask, can't tell -- Thinking, straight and curved -- Logic -- (...) Dialecticism -- Knowing the world -- Kiss and tell -- Keeping it real -- Whom to believe. (shrink)

_Thinking, Knowing, Acting: Epistemology and Ethics in Plato and Ancient Platonism_ aims to offer a fresh perspective on the correlation between epistemology and ethics in Plato and the Platonic tradition from Aristotle to Plotinus, by investigating the social, juridical and theoretical premises of their philosophy.

My basic claim in this article is that Heidegger’s lifelong engagement with Kant’s critical philosophy displays a unity that consists in the development of a problem that concerns transcendental-critical methodology at a fundamental level. My goal is therefore simultaneously interpretative and systematic: I will both trace out a trajectory for a unitary interpretation of Heidegger’s reading of Kant and show that the problem that animates this reading concerns at bottom the methodological resources and limitations of a transcendental grounding of ontology. (...) More specifically, I argue that what connects the different moments of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is the question of how, within... (shrink)

Actively open-minded thinking is often used as a proxy for reflective thinking in research on reasoning and related fields. It is associated with less biased reasoning in many types of tasks. However, few studies have examined its psychometric properties and criterion validity. We developed a shortened, 17-item version of the AOT for quicker administration. AOT17 is highly correlated with the original 41-item scale and has highly similar relationships to other thinking dispositions, social competence and supernatural beliefs. Our (...) analyses revealed that the AOT is not a unitary construct, but comprises four distinct dimensions, some of which concern attitudes towards knowledge, and others concern attitudes towards people. This factor structure was replicated in another data-set, and correlations with other measures in four data-sets support the criterion validity of these dimensions. Different dimensions were responsible for the AOT's relationships with other thinking dispositions. (shrink)

Critical thinking measures have often been empirically associated with other cognitive dimensions (e.g., achievement test scores, IQ scores, exam scores) but seldom with sociopolitical perspectives. Consequently, the current study examined the relationship of critical thinking to sociopolitical values reflective of political ideology, namely respect for civil liberties, emphasis on national security, militarism, and support for the Iraq War. In a sample of 232 undergraduates attending a Southeastern university, critical thinking correlated significantly with respect for civil liberties (.19), (...) emphasis on national security (-.29), militarism (-.25), and support for the Iraq War (-.28). A logistic regression analysis showed that the sociopolitical measures significantly predicted placement in high and low critical thinking groups, with support for the Iraq War being the primary predictor. A multivariate analysis (MANOVA) revealed that the sociopolitical means for the high and low critical thinking groups all differed significantly. The results suggest that critical thinking scores are generally predictive of liberal versus conservative political ideology. (shrink)

The Chinese tianrenheyi thesis bespeaks a correlative cosmology irreducible to the Western metaphysics. This article historicizes tianrenheyi for new implications to help rethink the given concepts of ‘person/thing,’ ‘environment/nature,’ and ‘relationality’ in contemporary ethical and environmental education in three steps. First, it turns to Yu Ying-Shih’s writing for a historical and ethical picture of tianrenheyi as an ‘Axial breakthrough’ in Confucius' time and with direct relevance to Confucian person-making education. Second, it moves on to Roger Ames’ unpacking of tianrenheyi (...) as hospitalized in a ‘correlative cosmology’ and ‘Confucian relational personhood’ to help us re-understand Confucian ‘person’ as being relational. Finally, it shows how these re-invoked philosophical–ethical–cosmological theses expose a ‘foundational individualism’ which grounds and confines current educational thinking to an anthropocentric ordering. As an alternative, this article calls for a productive symbiotic conjoining between humans and their cultural–natural environs toward nurturing today’s youth into ecologically literate, responsible, and responsive co-beings. (shrink)

Constructive (productive) thinking in the critical philosophy of Hermann Cohen differs significantly from the seemingly similar speculative thinking in J. G. Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) (1794/95). The fundamental characteristics of scientific thinking in Cohen’s teaching include: purity, focus on the “fact of science”, the origin (Ursprung), the infinitesimal method, continuity, movement, production, correlation, intensive magnitude, interrelation of thinking and being. According to Cohen, scientific thinking can only be pure and generated by the origin. The (...) origin is continuous action (movement) of thinking to separate the united and bind the divided content. In this process, thinking and being are correlative. Infinitely small reality contains thinking and being simultaneously as a union and in a divided form. The infinitesimal method is thinking that continuously carries out a) the operations of opposing itself as pure thinking to the results of its own production; b) the coincidence of itself with the products of its own generation. Infinitesimal thinking seeks to eliminate the difference between self and being. Nevertheless, being constantly retains autonomy. Being does not merge with thinking and is not absorbed by it. In Fichte’s Science of Knowledge pure thinking moves in a logical circle, having no access into real being. In an effort to break out of this circle and find its causality, thinking turns not to the being of the world of phenomena, but to the Absolute I. Such a speculative approach to consciousness, thinking and being has little in common with Cohen’s critical position. (shrink)

How do fitness and natural selection relate to other evolutionary factors like architectural constraint, mode of reproduction, and drift? In one way of thinking, drawn from Newtonian dynamics, fitness is one force driving evolutionary change and added to other factors. In another, drawn from statistical thermodynamics, it is a statistical trend that manifests itself in natural selection histories. It is argued that the first model is incoherent, the second appropriate; a hierarchical realization model is proposed as a basis for (...) a statistical treatment. It emerges that natural selection does not cause evolution; it just is evolution. The theory incorporates relations of statistical correlation, but not the kind of causation found in fundamental physical processes. (shrink)

Languages are complex systems that allow speakers to produce novel grammatical utterances. Yet, linguists differ as to how general and abstract they think the mental representation of speakers have to be to give rise to this grammatical creativity. In order to shed light on these questions, the present study looks at one specific construction type, English comparative correlatives, that turns out to be particularly interesting in this context: on the one hand it has been described in terms of one of (...) the most abstract and general syntactic rules, on the other hand it shows specific idiomatic structures that are often produced without any variation. While the syntax and semantics of the English Comparative Correlative construction have received considerable attention in the literature, so far only a small number of usage-based analyses have been published on the topic. These either only relied on small databases or focussed only on the productivity of one slot in the construction. In contrast to this, the present study analyses more than 1,400 CC tokens sampled from COCA. The results of the present study yield important results concerning English CC constructions, including the schematicity and generality of their mental representations. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. (...) Nonetheless, some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Many critics of dual-process models have mistaken long lists of descriptive terms in the literature for a full-blown theory of necessarily co-occurring properties. These critiques have distracted attention from the cumulative progress being made in identifying the much smaller set of properties that truly do define Type 1 and Type 2 processing. Our view of the literature is that autonomous processing is the defining feature of Type 1 processing. Even more convincing is the converging evidence that the key feature of (...) Type 2 processing is the ability to sustain the decoupling of secondary representations. The latter is a foundational cognitive requirement for hypothetical thinking. (shrink)

Theorists have hypothesized that skill in critical thinking is positively correlated with the consistent internal motivation to think and that specific critical thinking skills are matched with specific critical thinking dispositions. If true, these assumptions suggest that a skill-focused curriculum would lead persons to be both willing and able to think. This essay presents a researchbased expert consensus definition of critical thinking, argues that human dispositions are neither hidden nor unknowable, describes a scientific process of developing (...) conventional testing tools to measure cognitive skills and human dispositions, and summarizes recent empirical research findings that explore the possible relationship of critical thinking skill and the consistent internal motivation, or disposition, to use that skill. Empirical studies indicate that for all practical purposes the hypothesized correlations are not evident. It would appear that effective teaching must include strategies for building intellectual character rather than relying exclusively on strengthening cognitive skills. (shrink)

Psychologists are paying increasing attention to a distinction between two ways of thinking. Cognitive psychologists discern between non-reflective “intuitive” and critical reflective “analytic” thinking. Cultural psychologists discern between context-focused “holistic” and object-focused “analytic” thinking. Both find the former strongly correlated with religious beliefs and Asian cultures, the latter with secular beliefs and Euro-American cultures. Yet, recent studies convincingly suggest: first, that analytic thinking does not just relate to secular beliefs but also to alternative beliefs that straddle (...) the boundaries between secular and religious worldviews; second, that critical reflective thinking includes both the holistic context-focus of Asian religions and the analytic object-focus of European philosophies and sciences. This article supports these recent studies in the psychology of religion based on recent studies from the history and sociology of religion and a discourse analysis of interviews with members of a small-scale twenty-first-century spiritual group, as an example. We show that people who identify as spiritual in a metamodern context use both holistic and analytic thinking in creating alternative worldviews, which dialectically reconcile beliefs that many within modern western cultures would consider contradictory. We conclude that this both/and logic challenges theories and stereotypes about “secular versus religious” and “eastern versus western” thinking. (shrink)

For decades now, the end of metaphysics has been heralded. Engaging with the issue at stake, first, I will present and critically discuss Jan Patočka’s prophetic reflection on the fate of metaphysics after metaphysical philosophy. This will show that the problem is far more complicated and that attempts devoted to overcoming metaphysics often unjustly reduce it. To be able properly address the complexities of the crisis of metaphysics, I will move beyond Patočka and will introduce the agent, which played a (...) decisive role in the history of metaphysics and its development, that is, theology. I will point out that Patočka’s reconsideration of metaphysical thinking via the reinterpretation of the Platonic Idea correlates with the category of faith. Thus, I will argue that ‘a providential marriage’ between Athens and Jerusalem should not be divorced and that, despite numerous attempts to prove the contrary, the alliance of theology metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and even beneficial for both parts. (shrink)

The replicability and importance of the correlation between cognitive style and religious belief have been debated. Moreover, the literature has not examined distinct psychological accounts of this relationship. We tested the replicability of the correlation (N = 5284; students and broader samples of Canadians, Americans, and Indians); while testing three accounts of how cognitive style comes to be related to belief in God, karma, witchcraft, and to the belief that religion is necessary for morality. The first, the dual process model, (...) posits that analytical thinking is recruited in overriding intuitions related to supernatural beliefs. The second, the expressive rationality model, posits that analytical thinking is recruited in supporting already-held beliefs in an identity-protective manner. And the third, the counter-normativity rationality model, posits that analytical thinking is recruited to question beliefs supported by prevailing cultural norms. In Study 2, we tested the replicability of our results in a re-analysis of published data. The association between analytic thinking style and beliefs was replicated. We conclude that whereas the counter-normativity rationality model was contradicted by the data, both the dual process and expressive rationality models received varying degrees of empirical support, but neither model fully accounted for all the patterns in the data. (shrink)

One hundred and three participants solved conflict and non-conflict versions of four reasoning tasks using a two-response procedure: a base rate task, a causal reasoning task, a denominator neglect task, and a categorical syllogisms task. Participants were asked to give their first, intuitive answer, to make a Feeling of Rightness judgment, and then were given as much time as needed to rethink their answer. They also completed a standardized measure of IQ and the actively open-minded thinking questionnaire. The FORs (...) of both high- and low-capacity reasoners were responsive to conflict, such that FORs were lower for conflict relative to non-conflict problems. Consistent with the quantity hypothesis, high-capacity reasoners made a greater distinction between conflict and non-conflict items on measures of Type 2 thinking, namely, rethinking time and probability of changing answers. In contrast to the quality hypothesis, however, this rethinking time did not advantage the ability of the high-capacity group to produce normative answers, except for the base rate task. Indeed, we observed that the correlation between capacity and the probability of normative answers emerged at the initial response, rather than after rethinking. (shrink)

The article explores examples of theoretical endeavor to think the political in “accordance with the Real” that can be found in the works of François Laruelle, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. The task this article sets for itself is to establish an insight into – or rather, arrive to a certain vision and knowledge of – the possibilities of interrogating the modes of participation of the Real in the production of a Political Truth. I will claim the latter is not (...) the product of Discourse exclusively, but of the inter-action between the Discursive and the Real. In the deployment of this argument I resort to the epistemic posture of thought proposed by François Laruelle’s non-philosophy as "thinking in correlation with the Real." It is a stance of theorizing which is unilateral, non-thetic and does not attempt to reflect or mirror the Real. It merely correlates with it by way of acknowledging it to be the decisive instance of legitimization of the produced truth. (shrink)

Recent advances in philosophical thinking about consciousness, such as cognitive phenomenology and mereological analysis, provide a framework that facilitates using computational models to explore issues surrounding the nature of consciousness. Here we suggest that, in particular, studying the computational mechanisms of working memory and its cognitive control is highly likely to identify computational correlates of consciousness and thereby lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness. We describe our recent computational models of human working memory and propose (...) that three computational correlates of consciousness follow from the results of this work: itinerant attractor sequences, top-down gating, and very fast weight changes. Our current investigation is focused on evaluating whether these three correlates are sufficient to create more complex working memory models that encompass compositionality and basic causal inference. We conclude that computational models of working memory are likely to be a fruitful approach to advancing our understanding of consciousness in general and in determining the long-term potential for development of an artificial consciousness specifically. (shrink)

Some people believe more than others in free will, and researchers have both measured and manipulated those beliefs. Disbelief in free will has been shown to cause dishonest, selfish, aggressive, and conforming behavior, and to reduce helpfulness, learning from one’s misdeeds, thinking for oneself, recycling, expectations for occupational success, and actual quality of performance on the job. Belief in free will has been shown to have only modest or negligible correlations with other variables, indicating that it is a distinct (...) trait. Belief in free will has correlated positively with life satisfaction and finding life meaningful, with self‐efficacy and self‐control, with low levels of stress, and (though not entirely consistently) with internal locus of control. High belief in free will has been linked to a punitive attitude toward wrongdoers and lower forgiveness toward them. The belief seems to involve a sense of agency and expecting others to behave in morally responsible fashion. (shrink)

For the purpose of enabling a dialogue between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and Rudolf Steiner’s work, we start from Rainer Thurnher’s hypothesis that Heidegger’s “existentials”, Befindlichkeit, Verstehen and Rede, represent correlates of psychic phenomena in their traditional triple division into thinking, willing and feeling. To test this hypothesis, we analyze the temporal constitution of these psychic phenomena, that is, their existential correlates from the temporal dimensions of future, present, and past in Heidegger’s Being and Time and in some of Steiner’s (...) lectures. (shrink)

How does reflective thinking impact decisions about ethics, mind, politics, or other philosophical domains? Reflective reasoning often correlates with better decision-making performance and certain philosophical preferences (e.g., utilitarian moral decisions). However, experiments suggest that reflection is not always the cause of these outcomes. Further, some evidence casts doubt on the trustworthiness of data from certain online crowd work platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk). This paper reports results of a pre-registered experiment on participants from multiple sources (mTurk, CloudResearch, (...) Prolific, and a university). The experiment investigated how reflective thinking relates to judgments about philosophical thought experiments (concerning knowledge, morality, personal identity, and more). First- and third-party data quality measures found up to 18 times as much low-quality data from mTurk as other sources. Analyzing across participant sources, some prior correlations between reflection and certain philosophical tendencies replicated (e.g., denying that accidentally true beliefs count as knowledge). However, a common reflection test prime failed to find evidence that reflection caused the corresponding philosophical preferences. Rather, a philosophical priming effect emerged: thinking through philosophical vignettes before taking a reflection test improved test performance—but only among those that passed the data quality checks. Together, these data suggest that the direction of causation between reflective and philosophical thinking may be the opposite of what dual process theories have suggested, and that researchers’ ability to detect such relationships can depend on participant source and data quality. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to understand how common aversions to critical thinking, and, in particular, critical thinking related to deliberation about ethics, is arguably akin to math anxiety (MA). However, unlike ethical-critical thinking anxiety (ECTA), MA has a body of literature and neuroscientific findings supporting it and correlating thoughts about math with neurobiology of pain and fear activation. The crux of the paper lies in the answer to the following question: how is ECTA like and (...) unlike MA? Is there a history—educational and otherwise—similar to MA—that leads to ECTA? In this paper, I argue that there are myriad factors contributing to ECTA but that, ultimately, the result is likely the same: a neurobiology of fear/pain response that inhibits ethical thought and judgment, largely given its dependence on critical thinking. My thesis statement, therefore, is that critical thinking engenders the angst engendered by MA and for similar reasons, and I surmise that current models of teaching applied clinical ethics to health care practitioners would benefit from approaches framing the lack of ethical thinking in our field of health and human services as an ego-defense mechanism or neurobiological constraint. This leads to the question of how workshops aimed at teaching ethics take into account the realities of avoidance, promote critical thinking, and avoid the pitfalls of ECTA. (shrink)

This issue starts from a conviction that globalization is inevitable, and in this process, we journey together. Globalization for East Asia once meant Westernization, or less geographically specific, universal modernization. However, it became apparent that globalization cannot be simply defined in terms of assimilation and univocality, as insoluble disputes and radical differences in all aspects of life still occur and reoccur. Nonetheless, dialogue and interaction have been happening more frequently on a larger scale, even if sometimes concurrently appearing in the (...) form of miscommunication. Scientists question if the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas while poets contemplate whether one falling leaf of a Chinese parasol informs the change of seasons in the whole world. From Turin to Wuhan, when our living conditions have never been more effectively integrated than they are now, it requires us not only to think more correlatively, but also to understand locality in a larger context from a holistic perspective. (shrink)

Background: While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition, and others have looked specifically at religious belief. However, no research has compared these two states of mind directly. (...) Methodology/Principal Findings: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects - fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers - as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behavior. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Conclusions/Significance: While religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world. © 2009 Harris et al. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers have offered differing concepts of biological race. That is, they have offered different candidates for what a biological correlate of race might be; for example, races might be subspecies, clades, lineages, ecotypes, or genetic clusters. One thing that is striking about each of these proposals is that they all depend on a concept of population. Indeed, some authors have explicitly characterized races in terms of populations. However, including the concept of population into concepts of race raises three (...) puzzles, all having to do with time. In this paper, I extend the causal interactionist population concept (CIPC) by introducing some simple assumptions about how to understand populations through time. These assumptions help to shed light on the three puzzles, and in the process show that if we want to understand races in terms of populations, we will need to revise our concept(s) of race. (shrink)

In each of two experiments, college students were assigned to two ad hoc groups that competed in a dart-throwing contest. On each trial, one contestant from each team threw a single dart at a standard dart board, trying to come as close as possible to hitting the bull's-eye. Also on each trial, the other participants judged the likelihood that both the Team A contestant and the Team B contestant would come closer to hitting the bull's-eye. In both experiments, participants exhibited (...) a strong wishful thinking effect. They judged the likelihood that their own team members would come closer to be greater than the likelihood that the opposing team members would come closer. Experiment 2 suggested that it was participants' desires, as opposed to some other variable associated with team membership, that influenced their predictions. Experiment 2 also showed that the size of the effect did not depend on whether participants believed that their predictions had been influenced by their team membership. These results help bridge the gap between previous experimental laboratory studies, which have produced inconsistent results, and correlational field studies of sports fans and voters, which have consistently produced large effects. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux’s call for realism is a call for a new interest in the Earth as un-correlated being in philosophy. Unlike Meillassoux, Martin Heidegger has not been criticized for being a correlationist. To the contrary, his concept of the Earth has to be understood as un-correlated being, as it is opposed to the world as correlated being. First, this interpreta­tion of Heidegger’s concept of the Earth solves various problems of interpretation that are present in the secondary literature. Second, Heidegger’s characterization (...) of the Earth in the end remains unthought in his work. Third, in the age of global warming Meillassoux’s call for realism can help to conceive planet Earth as the ontic-ontological origin of the Heideggerian strife between Earth and world. (shrink)

Using a multiple-trial stock market decision paradigm, the possibility that counterfactual thinking can be dysfunctional for learning and performance by distorting the processing of outcome information was examined. Correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) evidence suggested that counterfactuals are associated with a decrease in experiential learning. When counterfactuals were made salient, participants displayed significantly poorer performance compared to their counterparts for whom counterfactuals were relatively less salient. A counterfactual salience ? need for cognition (NFC) interaction qualified these findings. (...) High NFC participants outperformed their counterparts when counterfactuals were not salient. Evidence for a memory-based mechanism was also supported. (shrink)

Negative duties are duties not to perform an action, while positive duties are duties to perform an action. This article focuses on the question of who holds the positive duties correlative to human rights. I start by outlining the Universal Scope Thesis, which holds that these duties fall on everyone. In its support, I present an argument by analogy: positive and negative duties correlative to human rights perform the same function; correlative negative duties are generally thought to (...) be universal; by analogy, we have reason to think that positive duties are held by everyone. I then consider three disanalogies that challenge the above argument. To address these worries, I introduce the notion of ‘aggregative duties’ – duties that can only be adequately grasped when we focus on the aggregate effect of the actions and omissions of different agents. This framework allows me to refine the initial thesis and address the objections. (shrink)

A close reading of Peirce’s pragmatic maxim shows a correlation between meaning and purpose. If the meaning of a concept, proposition or hypothesis is clarified by formulating its practical effects, those also can be articulated as practical maxims. To the extent that the hypotheses or propositions upon which they are based are true, practical maxims recommend reliable courses of action. This can be translated into a broader claim of an integral relation between semiosis and goal-directed or teleological systems. Any goal-directed (...) system, to be propagating, must be capable of coordinating the information in its internal or endergonic processes with exergonic information found in its environment. Signs are critical links between these two sources of information and must also serve as steering mechanisms for that system as well. If signs detected or represented information in the environments without using that information to steer the system, it would have no practical effect on the system; conversely, if a system could steer itself, but had no representation of exergonic information, it would fail to be propagating. Obviously, to get food, it must not only find it, but must also use that information to direct its behavior in a manner that makes use of that food. Using concepts found in complex systems and modern information theory, it is argued that this analysis requires a distinction between information and meaning. The result of this investigation is the claim that meaning can be understood as the propagating work of information. The remainder of the paper follows some of the ramification of this analysis for Peirce’s semiotic theory. (shrink)

In this article, it is argued that Ch'oe Han-gi (1803-1877), a Korean Confucian scholar from the late Chosŏn, can be credited with finding the full philosophical significance of the notion of experience (kyŏnghŏm). At the same time, his philosophy of experience can be interpreted adequately in the context of not British empiricist but Confucian philosophical assumptions. There is both continuity and discontinuity in Ch'oe's relation to Confucian tradition. Unlike the Confucian traditionalist, he admitted that inherited knowledge and practice are potentially (...) fallible. Confucian tradition, though still reliable, becomes less important than the process of the world itself, in whose flux all experience must be repeatedly tested. For Ch'oe, humans imbued with configurative energy and with their capability for correlative thinking become skilled in experiencing the world directly without absolute dependence on past Confucian traditions. (shrink)