Ascribing Advantages to Social Comparison Targets

Three experiments examined how people perceive a social comparison target when a dimension important to identity is threatened and a relatively unfavorable social comparison is anticipated. All 3 experiments show that people will perceive or exaggerate advantages in a target, that make the target inappropriate for social comparison, when they anticipate a comparison with the target and are uncertain of the outcome. Experiments 2 and 3 show that reports of some target advantages are moderated by individual differences in self-esteem, such that people with low self-esteem are more likely than people with high self-esteem to perceive that a comparison target enjoys subtle, subjective advantages. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that the report of overt target advantages reflects actual perceptions on the part of the perceiver, and are not merely self-presentational claims intended to manage audience attributions.     

Other minds embodied

I distinguish three kinds of other minds problems—conceptual, epistemological and empirical. I argue that while Merleau-Ponty believes embodiment helps with tackling the conceptual and epistemological problems, he suggests that it is of no clear use in solving (an important variant of) the empirical problem. I sketch some considerations that could lend support to Merleau-Ponty’s claims about the conceptual and epistemological problems, without claiming that these are conclusive. I then proceed to argue that Merleau-Ponty’s take on the empirical problem is essentially correct.     

The spatial intersection of minds

Spatial formats of information are ubiquitous in the cognitive and neural sciences. There are neural uses of space in the topographic maps found throughout cortex. There are metaphorical uses of space in cognitive linguistics, physical uses of space in ecological psychology, and mathematical uses of space in dynamical systems theory. These varied informational uses of space each provide a single contiguous medium through which cognitive processes can be shared across subsystems. As we further develop our understanding of how the human mind processes information in real time, the continuous sharing and cascading of information patterns between brain areas can be extended to a sharing and cascading of information between multiple brains and bodies to produce coordinated behavior. Essentially, the way you and the people around you negotiate your shared space affects the way you think, because space is a fundamental part of how you think. It is via space that the mental processes of one mind can form an intersection with the mental processes of another mind.     

Our minds and their bodies

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Our minds and their bodies

     

Other voices,other minds

I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response.     

The many minds account of vagueness

This paper presents an new epistemicist account of vagueness, one that avoids standard arbitrariness worries by exploiting a plenitudinous metaphysic.

The two minds of Roger Scruton

In two recent pieces Roger Scruton recommends that we should instil in children feelings of revulsion towards homosexuality; whereas the corollaries of his earlier book Sexual Desire contradict this. These inconsistencies are exposed and discussed and the preferability of his earlier stance defended.