Emotional Truth: Ronald de Sousa

Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem—objectivity—is not insurmountable.     

Environmental and Behavioral Influences on Gene Activity

The central dogma of molecular biology holds that 'information' flows from the genes to the structure of the proteins that the genes bring about through the formula DNA → RNA → protein. In this view, a set of master genes activates the DNA necessary to produce the appropriate proteins that the organism needs during development. In contrast to this view, probabilistic epigenesis holds that necessarily there are signals from the internal and external environment that activate DNA to produce the appropriate proteins. To support this view, I review a substantial body of evidence showing that external environmental influences on gene activation are normally occurring events in a large variety of organisms, including humans. This demonstrates how genes and environments work together to produce functional organisms, thus extending the model of probabilistic epigenesis.     

Judgment Internalism: an Argument from Self-Knowledge

One of the most important metaethical debates concerns the relationship between evaluative judgments and motivation. The so-called judgment internalists claim that there is an internal modal connection between our evaluative judgments and motivation, whereas the so-called externalists believe that evaluative judgments are connected to desires only through contingent external facts. This debate has reached a standoff. My aim is to introduce a completely new argument for internalism, which does not rely on our intuitions about individual cases. I argue that the truth of internalism explains best why the so-called transparency method yields self-knowledge of what we desire.     

Direct social perception and dual process theories of mindreading

The direct social perception (DSP) thesis claims that we can directly perceive some mental states of other people. The direct perception of mental states has been formulated phenomenologically and psychologically, and typically restricted to the mental state types of intentions and emotions. I will compare DSP to another account of mindreading: dual process accounts that posit a fast, automatic “Type 1” form of mindreading and a slow, effortful “Type 2” form. I will here analyze whether dual process accounts’ Type 1 mindreading serves as a rival to DSP or whether some Type 1 mindreading can be perceptual. I will focus on Apperly and Butterfill’s dual process account of mindreading epistemic states such as perception, knowledge, and belief. This account posits a minimal form of Type 1 mindreading of belief-like states called registrations. I will argue that general dual process theories fit well with a modular view of perception that is considered a kind of Type 1 process. I will show that this modular view of perception challenges and has significant advantages over DSP’s phenomenological and psychological theses. Finally, I will argue that if such a modular view of perception is accepted, there is significant reason for thinking Type 1 mindreading of belief-like states is perceptual in nature. This would mean extending the scope of DSP to at least one type of epistemic state.     

The stress response systems: Universality and adaptive individual differences

Biological reactivity to psychological stressors comprises a complex, integrated system of central neural and peripheral neuroendocrine responses designed to prepare the organism for challenge or threat. Developmental experience plays a role, along with heritable variation, in calibrating the response dynamics of this system. This calibration occurs through setting of response thresholds in the regulatory mechanisms that coordinate the expression and use of trait-specific gene products and environmental elements that build alternative phenotypes. Whereas natural selection tends to favor developmental plasticity when the fitness of alternative phenotypes can be predicted from observable cues, genetic polymorphisms are most likely to be maintained when the advantages of niche specialization are high and organisms can evaluate and select their niches. Well-developed theories of both adaptive phenotypic plasticity and adaptive genetic variation in the stress-response systems have been advanced in the literature. Taken together, these theories strongly suggest that variation in stress-response phenotypes has been shaped by natural selection, is an adaptation to multiniche environments, and involves an integration of genetic influences and condition-sensitivity.     

Epistemic control without voluntarism

It is tempting to think (though many deny) that epistemic agents exercise a distinctive kind of control over their belief-like attitudes. My aim here is to sketch a “bottom-up” model of epistemic agency, one that draws on an analogous model of practical agency, according to which an agent's conditional beliefs are reasons-responsive planning states that initiate and sustain mental behavior so as to render controlled.     

The dynamic role of personality States in mediating the relationship between extraversion and positive affect

One of the most noteworthy and robust findings in personality psychology is the relationship between extraversion and positive affect. Existing theories have debated the origins and nature of this relationship, offering both structural/fixed and environmental/dynamic explanations. We tested the novel and straightforward dynamic hypothesis that part of the reason trait extraversion predicts trait positive affect is through an increased propensity to enact extraverted states, which in turn leads to experiencing more positive affect states. We report 5 experience sampling studies (and a meta‐analysis of primary studies) conducted in natural environments and laboratory settings in which undergraduate participants (N = 241) provided ratings of trait extraversion, trait positive affect, extraversion states, and positive affect states. Results of primary studies and the meta‐analysis showed that relationships between trait extraversion and trait positive affect were partially mediated by aggregated extraversion states and aggregated positive affect states. The results supported our dynamic hypothesis and suggested that dynamic explanations of the relationship between trait extraversion and trait positive affect are compatible with structural explanations. An important implication of these findings is that individuals might be able to increase their happiness by self‐regulating their extraverted states.     

Against Cognitivism About Supposition

A popular view maintains that supposition is a kind of cognitive mental state, very similar to belief in essential respects. Call this view “cognitivism about supposition”. There are at least three grades of cognitivism, construing supposition as (i) a belief, (ii) belief-like imagination or (iii) a species of belief-like imagination. I shall argue against all three grades of cognitivism and claim that supposition is a sui generis form of imagination essentially dissimilar to belief. Since for good reasons (i) is not supported in the literature, I shall dwell on (ii) and (iii). Without further explanation supposition has been very often merely postulated as being nothing but belief-like imagination—that is, (ii). I shall show that at least two considerations undermine (ii). First, supposition and belief-like imagination are governed by different norms, more precisely the former is freer than the latter and requires minimal or no mental effort. Second, contrary to belief-like imagination, supposition is “cold”, in that it is typically dissociated from emotional reactions. Proponents of (iii) face the pressure of explaining these differences between supposition and belief-like imagination too. I shall argue that they have not sufficiently motivated the claim that supposition is belief-like. In particular they fail to accommodate precisely the dimensions of supposition pertaining to its normativity and emotionality. I shall close with a sketch of a new account of supposition.     

Pretense, imagination, and belief: the Single Attitude theory

A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are ??belief-like?? in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a ??DCA??) called ??imagination?? that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating normal belief and desire. On the present ??Single Attitude?? account of imagination, propositional imagining just is a form of believing. The Single Attitude account is also distinguished from ??metarepresentational?? accounts of pretense, which hold that both pretending and recognizing pretense in others require one to have concepts of mental states. It is argued, to the contrary, that pretending and recognizing pretense require neither a DCA nor possession of mental state concepts.     

Psychoanalysis and Nature: Commentary on Papers by Bodnar and Santostefano

This is a response to papers by Sebastiano Santostefano and Susan Bodnar. The response argues that the psychoanalytic view of constitutive conflict makes any assimilation of analysis and ecology very problematic. Patients may benefit from being in pleasant surroundings outside urban areas, but this is not psychoanalytic work. Psychoanalysis would entail them coming to understand why they are fueled by desires they do not recognize as their own. It would entail them working through how these desires have come to belong to them. Calling these desires natural or unnatural is not helpful, and it may be pernicious.     

A temporal modelling environment for internally grounded beliefs,desires and intentions

In this paper the internal dynamics of mental states, in particular states based on beliefs, desires and intentions, is formalised using a temporal language. A software environment is presented that can be used to specify, simulate and analyse temporal dependencies between mental states in relation to traces of them. If also relevant data on internal physical states over time are available, these can be analysed with respect to their relation to mental states as well.     

Desires as additional reasons? The case of tie-breaking

According to the Desire-Based Reasons Model reasons for action are provided by desires. Many, however, are critical about the Model holding an alternative view of practical reason, which is often called valued-based. In this paper I consider one particular attempt to refute the Model, which advocates of the valued-based view often appeal to: the idea of reason-based desires. The argument is built up from two premises. The first claims that desires are states that we have reason to have. The second argues that desires do not add to the stock of reasons the agent has for having them. Together the two theses entail that desires are based on reasons, which they transmit but to which they cannot add. In the paper I deal with a counterexample to the second premise: tie-breaking desires. I first distinguish two interesting cases and argue that only the second challenges the premise. Then I move onto analyze this challenge by focusing on Ruth Chang’s recent employment of it. I show that contrary to its counterintuitive appearance, the challenge can be sustained. However, I also argue that Chang overlooks the full potential of one particular response to the challenge: the introduction of higher-order reasons determining the normative significance of these desires. At the same time, I show that this response has a problem that Chang does not consider. As a result, the response can only partially disarm the challenge of tie-breaking desires; or not at all, depending on what significance we attribute to the counterexamples.     

Socio-cultural selection and the sculpting of the human genome: Cultures’ directional forces on evolution and development

This paper argues for culture as a significant determinant of the modern human genome. As progress in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology have gained greater insights into evolutionary process, aspects of classical proposals explaining how phenotypic responses to environmental experience could make their way into the genotype have returned in new guises. Recent proposals recognize environmental context as a key source of genetic variation by directly altering selection pressures to mask and unmask adaptive value of expressed traits, by reorganizing the combination and expression of genes during ontogeny to provide novel variants for selection, and by influencing developmental trajectories through epigenetic systems acutely sensitive to ontogenetic contexts. The emergence of a robust human socio-cultural niche, shielding humans from more proximate evolutionary pressures that marked our ancestral evolution, has arguably provided the strongest directive force on modern human evolution. Language is discussed as an exemplar of a cultural niche with a powerful self-organizing dynamic and the potential to dramatically alter the human genome.     

Sobel on Pleasure,Reason, and Desire

The paper begins with a well-known objection to the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires. The objection holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of the argument by David Sobel. Sobel invokes a counterexample: hedonic desires, i.e. the likings and dislikings of our present conscious states. The aim of the paper is to defend the premise by bringing the alleged counterexample under its scope. I first point out that reference to hedonic desires as a counterexample presupposes a particular understanding of pleasure, which we might call desire-based. In response, following Sobel, I draw up two alternative accounts, the phenomenological and the tracking views of pleasure. Although Sobel raises several objections to both accounts, I argue in detail that the phenomenological view is not as implausible as he claims it to be, whereas the tracking view, on its best version advocated by Thomas Scanlon, is an instance of the phenomenological view and is therefore also defensible.     

Power and the Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations

This study examines how the illusion of transparency in negotiation differs depending on whether one is the powerful or less powerful negotiator. The illusion of transparency is the tendency for individuals to overestimate the extent to which their internal states and intentions are apparent to an outside observer. Thus, this illusion equals the difference between perceived and actual transparency. We predict that less powerful negotiators experience more perceived transparency than do powerful negotiators and that powerful negotiators exhibit greater actual transparency than do less powerful negotiators. The main hypothesis that the illusion of transparency is greater for less powerful negotiators than for powerful negotiators was supported.     

I. The loving parent meets the selfish gene

In a recent Inquiry article Louis Pascal argues that the problem of massive starvation in the modern world is the result of a genetically‐based human propensity to produce as many offspring as possible, regardless of ecological conditions. In this paper biological and anthropological objections to Pascal's thesis are discussed as well as the conclusions he draws from it. It is suggested that natural selection has produced humans who are flexible in their reproductive behavior in order to cope with rapidly changing environments. The implications of both arguments for the population movement and the attempt to eliminate starvation are discussed.     

Evaluation, Uncertainty and Motivation

Evaluative judgements have both belief-like and desire-like features. While cognitivists think that they can easily explain the belief-like features, and have trouble explaining the desire-like features, non-cognitivists think the reverse. I argue that the belief-like features of evaluative judgement are quite complex, and that these complexities crucially affect the way in which an agent's values explain her actions, and hence the desire-like features. While one form of cognitivism can, it turns out that non-cognitivism cannot, accommodate all of these complexities. The upshot is that that form of cognitivism can explain both features of evaluative judgements, and that non-cognitivism can explain neither.