What the experimenter’s prime tells the observer’s brain

The presentation of a stimulus below the threshold of conscious awareness can exert an influence on the processing of a subsequent target. One such consequence of briefly presented “primes” is seen in the negative compatibility effect. The response time (RT) to determine the left—right orientation of an arrow (i.e., the target) is relatively slow if a prime is also an arrow whose direction corresponds to that of the target. When the direction of the arrow is opposite that of the prime, RTs are relatively fast. In four experiments, we examined whether the prime shifts attention from the location of the subsequent target and whether this attention shift influences target processing. Results showed that the prime does indeed move attention. The consequence of this attention movement is that the representation of direction is affected. Specifically, RTs to process an arrow are shorter if the arrow’s direction is compatible with the last shift of attention. Furthermore, this interference occurs at a conceptual level concerning the representation of left and right rather than at the motor planning level. We argue that a shift in attention brought about by the prime can create a negative compatibility-like effect.     

Patrolling the Mind’s Boundaries

Defenders of the extended mind thesis say that it is possible that some of our mental states may be constituted, in part, by states of the extrabodily environment. Often they also add that such extended mentation is a commonplace phenomenon. I argue that extended mentation, while not impossible, is either nonexistent or far from widespread. Genuine beliefs as they occur in normal biologically embodied systems are informationally integrated with each other, and sensitive to changes in the person’s overall system of beliefs. Environmental states, however, fail to satisfy this central feature of the functional role of belief, and hence fail to be genuine mental states.

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Reimagining the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey and The Devil in Silver (2012) by Victor LaValle are two novels that focus on mental hospitalization as a medical and social practice. Published fifty years apart, however, the books possess important differences in setting, method, and message reflecting the times that spawned them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changing documentary and metaphorical uses of the asylum novel by comparing an iconic work in the genre with a respectful, but divergent, successor. What emerges from this comparison is an appreciation of the literary conventions shared by Kesey and LaValle but also the ingredients that separate their work. Whereas Kesey produced an enduring tribute to the virtue of nonconformity, LaValle's social criticism expresses itself as a disturbing portrayal of class-based disparities and administrative dysfunction inside the contemporary American mental health system.     

Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: What’s the Question?

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis.     

Korsgaard’s Moral Theory ln the Light of Kant’s Architectonics

Philosophia - In The Sources of Normativity Korsgaard introduces her conception of practical identities understood as the source of moral obligations. This conception forms a point of transition...     

Erikson’s Schedule of Human Strengths and the Church’s Self-Images

This article focuses on Erik H. Erikson’s schedule of human strengths presented in his essay, “Human Strength and the Cycle of Generations” (Erikson 1964) and suggests that certain images of the church support these human strengths. In supporting these human strengths, they also contribute to our understanding of the importance of the fact that the church is an intergenerational body.     

Intervening in the psychopath’s brain

Psychopathy is a disorder involving personality and behavioral features associated with a high rate of violent aggression and recidivism. This paper explores potential psychopharmacological therapies to modulate dysfunctional neural pathways in psychopaths and reduce the incidence of their harmful behavior, as well as the ethical and legal implications of offering these therapies as an alternative to incarceration. It also considers whether forced psychopharmacological intervention in adults and children with psychopathic traits manifesting in violent behavior can be justified. More generally, the paper addresses the question of how to weigh the psychopath’s presumptive right to non-interference in his brain and mind against the public interest in avoiding harm.     

Lacan’s subversion of the subject

I explore Lacan’s theory of the subject by responding to two well-known criticisms of it, found in Borch-Jacobsen’s Lacan and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s The Title of the Letter. I argue that the relation of the subject to language is an important part of Lacan’s theory, but his conception of the subject cannot be reduced to language, as the critiques allege. The real must be included in the picture too. I then discuss the situation of Lacan’s subject between language and the real, and conclude with a contrast of Lacan’s subversion of the subject to a Derridean paleonymic approach.     

Russell’s Repsychologising of the Proposition

Bertrand Russell’s 1903 masterpiece The Principles of Mathematics places great emphasis on the need to separate propositions from psychological items such as thoughts. In 1919 (and until the end of his career) Russell explicitly retracts this view, however, and defines propositions as “psychological occurrences”. These psychological occurrences are held by Russell to be mental images. In this paper, I seek to explain this radical change of heart. I argue that Russell’s re-psychologising of the proposition in 1919 can only be understood against the background of his struggle with the problem of the unity of the proposition in earlier work. Once this is recognized, and the solution to the problem offered by the 1919 theory is appreciated, new light is also shed on Russell’s naturalism. I go on to compare Russell’s psychological “picture theory” with the vehemently anti-psychological picture theory of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and suggest that, once the background of the dispute is brought into clearer focus, Russell’s position can be seen to have many advantages over its more celebrated rival.     

Freud’s dream of the double

While the motif of the double serves a prominent role in Freud’s writings from early on, this essay is an examination of the determinative power of the double in two key texts, texts in which specific, new sets doubles emerge for the first time in Freud’s career. Totem and Taboo features a double that manifests itself primarily in the form of ambivalence. Beyond the Pleasure Principle features a double that manifests itself primarily in the form of a very peculiar conflict that also entails complicity.     

The poet’s school and the parrot’s cage: the educational spirituality of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), Asia’s first Nobel laureate, was a man of myriad gifts, but he sought to articulate a single global vision. He believed that for our flourishing we must strive towards ‘the other and the beyond’. In so doing we discover that, as we seek, we are ourselves being sought. Tagore believed that we find our meaning and fulfilment relationally; in our relationships one with another, to be sure, but fundamentally in our kinship with all that is. We must be liberated, Tagore believed, from the bounds of our separateness and so discover a wholeness larger than our individual well‐being. That wholeness is ultimately realised in our union with the eternal Divine Spirit. In the establishment of his ‘poet’s school’ at Shantiniketan Tagore sought to make his ideals come true. This paper will focus on Tagore’s understanding of childhood and on the pattern of education by which, he believed, the spirit of the child may be nurtured. It will also enter a plea that we return to someone whose neglect in the West has been much to its loss.     

The Identified Donor Effect: Disclosure of the Donor’s Name Shapes the Recipient’s Behavior

Previous research on charitable donations has examined the costs and benefits of anonymity from the perspectives of donors and charities. However, it is unclear how anonymity affects the recipients of a donation. This research examines how donor name disclosure affects recipients’ behaviors. The findings demonstrate that recipients of donations from named individuals (vs. recipients of anonymous donations) tend to regulate their behaviors to be more in line with the general goal of the donation. This occurs because name disclosure increases the salience of the donor’s identity in the mind of the recipient, which in turn leads to an increased feeling of obligation. Six lab and online studies (including two preregistered studies) and one field study assess this effect. The implications of these findings for charities, individual donors, and public policymakers are discussed.     

What the reader’s eye tells the mind’s ear: Silent reading activates inner speech

Although copious research has investigated the role of phonology in reading, little research has investigated the precise nature of the entailed speech representations. The present study examined the similarity of “inner speech” in reading to overt speech. Two lexical decision experiments (in which participants gave speeded word/nonword classifications to letter strings) assessed the effects of implicit variations in vowel and word-initial consonant length. Responses were generally slower for phonetically long stimuli than for phonetically short stimuli, despite equal orthographic lengths. Moreover, the phonetic length effects displayed principled interactions with common factors known to affect lexical decisions, such as word frequency and the similarity of words to nonwords. Both phonetic length effects were stronger among slower readers. The data suggest that acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.     

Hume’s Solution of the Goodman Paradox and the Reliability Riddle (Mill’s problem)

Many solutions of the Goodman paradox have been proposed but so far no agreement has been reached about which is the correct solution. However, I will not contribute here to the discussion with a new solution. Rather, I will argue that a solution has been in front of us for more than two hundred years because a careful reading of Hume’s account of inductive inferences shows that, contrary to Goodman’s opinion, it embodies a correct solution of the paradox. Moreover, the account even includes a correct answer to Mill’s question of why in some cases a single instance is sufficient for a complete induction, since Hume gives a well-supported explanation of this reliability phenomenon. The discussion also suggests that Bayesian theory by itself cannot explain this phenomenon. Finally, we will see that Hume’s explanation of the reliability phenomenon is surprisingly similar to the explanation given lately by a number of naturalistic philosophers in their discussion of the Goodman paradox.     

Prior’s defence of Hintikka’s theorem. A discussion of Prior’s ‘The logic of obligation and the obligations of the logician’

In his paper, The logic of obligation and the obligations of the logician, A.N. Prior considers Hintikka??s theorem, according to which a statement cannot be both impossible and permissible. This theorem has been seen as problematic for the very idea of a logic of obligation. However, Prior rejects the view that the logic of obligation cannot be formalised. He sees this resistance against such a view as an important part of what could be called the obligation of the logician. Prior argues that Hintikka??s theorem should not be seen as something paradoxical. On the contrary, it should be seen as a fully acceptable consequence of a basic and reasonable assumption in deontic logic, namely Hintikka??s rule.     

Draining the pond: why Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor is self-defeating

Philosophical Studies - Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning...     

For the mind’s eye the world is two-dimensional

The nature of visual mental images is a topic that has puzzled neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers alike. On the one hand, mental images might preserve the 3-D properties of our perceptual world. On the other hand, they might be akin to 2-D pictures, such as photographs, paintings, or drawings. In the present study, 16 observers judged where real objects (Experiment 1) or photographs thereof (Experiment 2) were pointing. Both experiments contained a perception condition and an imagery condition. In Experiment 1, there was a significant difference between the pointing errors in the perception and the imagery conditions, whereas there was no such difference in Experiment 2. In imagined objects, actual photographs, and imagined photographs, the direction in which the objects pointed followed the observer, regardless of his or her vantage point. The results from this study extend the rotation effect, typically found in pictures, to the domain of mental imagery. We found the rotation effect in pictures and mental images alike, but not in direct perception of 3-D objects; thus, we provide evidence that mental images share main characteristics of 2-D pictures.