First-Person Neuroscience: A new methodological approach for linking mental and neuronal states

Though the brain and its neuronal states have been investigated extensively, the neural correlates of mental states remain to be determined. Since mental states are experienced in first-person perspective and neuronal states are observed in third-person perspective, a special method must be developed for linking both states and their respective perspectives. We suggest that such method is provided by First-Person Neuroscience. What is First-Person Neuroscience? We define First-Person Neuroscience as investigation of neuronal states under guidance of and on orientation to mental states. An empirical example of such methodological approach is demonstrated by an fMRI study on emotions. It is shown that third- and first-person analysis of data yield different results. First-person analysis reveals neural activity in cortical midline structures during subjective emotional experience. Based on these and other results neural processing in cortical midline structures is hypothesized to be crucially involved in generating mental states. Such direct linkage between first- and third-person approaches to analysis of neural data allows insight into the "point of view from within the brain", that is what we call the First-Brain Perspective. In conclusion, First-Person Neuroscience and First-Brain Perspective provide valuable methodological tools for revealing the neuronal correlate of mental states.     

Group Agents and Their Responsibility

Group agents are able to act but are not literally agents. Some group agents, e.g., we-mode groups and corporations, can, however, be regarded as functional group agents that do not have “intrinsic” mental states and phenomenal features comparable to what their individual members on biological and psychological grounds have. But they can have “extrinsic” mental states, states collectively attributed to them—primarily by their members. In this paper, we discuss the responsibility of such group agents. We defend the view that if the group members have accepted the group agent’s (attributed) attitudes and are committed to them, we can favorably compare the situation with the case of individual human agents and a group agent can be regarded as morally responsible for its intentional activities.     

Disproportional mental causation

In this paper I do three things. First, I argue that Stephen Yablo’s influential account of mental causation is susceptible to counterexamples involving what I call disproportional mental causation. Second, I argue that similar counterexamples can be generated for any alternative account of mental causation that is like Yablo’s in that it takes mental states and their physical realizers to causally compete. Third, I show that there are alternative nonreductive approaches to mental causation which reject the idea of causal competition, and which thus are able to allow for disproportional mental causation. This, I argue, is a significant advantage for such noncompetitive accounts.     

IN DEFENSE OF THE WHAT‐IT‐IS‐LIKENESS OF EXPERIENCE

It is common parlance among philosophers who inquire into the nature of consciousness to speak of there being something it is like for the subject of a mental state to be in it. The popularity of the ‘what‐it‐is‐like’ phrase stems, in part, from the assumption that it enables us to distinguish, in an intuitive and illuminating way, between conscious and unconscious mental states: conscious mental states, unlike unconscious mental states, are such that there is something it is like for their subjects to be in them. The ‘what‐it‐is‐like’ phrase, however, has not gone unopposed; some very clever philosophers have vigorously disputed it. Peter Hacker, for example, argues that the phrase should be abandoned because it is ungrammatical, and Paul Snowdon argues that it should be abandoned because the propositions expressed by its usage are either trivial or false. This paper mounts a case for the claim that neither of these conclusions is warranted. Against Hacker, it is argued that the arguments he produces for the ungrammaticality of the phrase are unpersuasive; and, against Snowdon, it is argued that he fails to consider a plausible and independently motivated interpretation of the phrase and that on this interpretation, the propositions expressed by its usage are nontrivially true.     

Naïve deontics: a theory of meaning, representation, and reasoning

Deontic assertions concern what one ought to do, may do, and ought not to do. This paper proposes a theory of their meanings and of how these meanings are represented in mental models. The meanings of deontic assertions refer to sets of permissible and impermissible states. An experiment corroborated the ability of individuals to list these states. The most salient were those corresponding to the mental models of the assertions. When individuals reason, they rely on mental models, which do not make all states explicit. The theory predicts the most frequent conclusions drawn from deontic premises. It also predicts the occurrence of illusory inferences from assertions of permission, i.e., inferences that seem highly plausible but that are in fact invalid. Assertions of prohibitions, according to the theory, should reduce the illusions. Further experiments corroborated these predictions.     

Putting the Image Back in Imagination

Despite their intuitive appeal and a long philosophical history, imagery-based accounts of the imagination have fallen into disfavor in contemporary discussions. the philosophical pressure to reject such accounts seems to derive from two distinct sources. First, the fact that mental images have proved difficult to accommodate within a scientific conception of mind has led to numerous attempts to explain away their existence, and this in turn has led to attempts to explain the phenomenon of imagining without reference to such ontologically dubious entities as mental images. Second, even those philosophers who accept mental images in their ontology have worried about what seem to be fairly obvious examples of imaginings that occur without imagery. In this paper, I aim to relieve both these points of philosophical pressure and, in the process, develop a new imagery-based account of the imagination: the imagery model.     

The psycho‐physical laws of intentionality

Intentional mental states have causes and effects. Davidson has shown that this fact alone does not entail the existence of psycho‐physical laws, but his anomalism makes the connection between the content and causation of intentional states utterly mysterious. By defining intentional states in terms of their causes and effects, functionalism promises to explain this connection. If intentional states have their causes and effects in virtue of their contents, then there must be intrinsic states (of the people who have them) which are ‘local causal surrogates’ for the propositions believed, desired, or whatever. We can define these intrinsic states in terms of the laws that govern them, but these laws alone are not sufficient to account for intentional content. To do that we need to invoke laws which link these intrinsic states with their contents. Such a ‘wide’ functional account is sketched; it combines a suggestion of Ramsey's about truth conditions with a ‘feedback’ account of the content of desires.     

Simulation, Theory and Collapse

Recent philosophical discussions of our capacity to attribute mental states to other human beings, and to produce accurate predictions and informative explanations of their behavior which make reference to the content of those states have focused on two apparently contrasting ways in which we might hope to account for these abilities. The first is that of regarding our competence as being under-girded by our grasp of a tacit psychological theory. The second builds on the idea that in trying to get a grip on the mental lives of others we might be able to draw on the fact that we are ourselves subjects of mental states in order to simulate their mental processes. Call these the theory view and the simulation view. In this paper I wish to discuss an argument—which I shall call Collapse—to the effect that if our capacities can be explained in the way that the simulationist supposes then they can also be explained along lines that the advocate of the theory view favours. I am not the first person with simulationist sympathies to have addressed this argument. However, my response is somewhat less concessive than others in the literature: while they attempt to soften its force by attempting to reformulate the simulationist view in a way that evades the conclusion of the argument, I attempt to meet it head on and to show that it does not even succeed in refuting the version of simulationism which it takes as its target.

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张君劢“德法合一”论述评

张君劢的“德法合一”是儒家之德与西方之法的合一,在德与法的关系上,二者并不是地位相同的,德法合一是在德的基础上德与法的合一,德比法更根本,“德法相辅而行”更深层的意义是“德主法辅而行”。张君劢“德法合一”论始终未离儒家道德本位,决定了这种结合仍是停留在道德文化层面,而没有落实为政治法律事实,若将“德法合一”论还原为“内圣外王”之道,我们仍可看到传统儒学在当代社会面临的困境。     

丹尼特的“异类现象学”——新实用主义谱系中一个被忽略的环节

一般认为,"新实用主义"乃经典实用主义的一个后现代主义的变种,它无法在知识论的角度接受心灵表征的客观实在性。本文则认为,反实在论并非是我们发展实用主义的心灵哲学时必然陷入的理论窠臼。如果我们采纳美国哲学家丹尼特主张的"异类现象学"方法,我们就有可能将科学方法和工具主义立场相调和,或在对他人的心灵状态做出本体论承诺时,不必向反实在论投降。     

Intentional psychologism

In the past few years, a number of philosophers (notably, Siewert, C. (The significance of consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Horgan and Tienson (Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 520–533); Pitt 2004) have maintained the following three theses: (1) there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought, as opposed to other sorts of conscious mental states; (2) different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies; and (3) thoughts with the same phenomenology have the same intentional content. The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of a thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities (such as sets of possible worlds, functions from possible worlds to truth-values, structured n-tuples of objects and properties, etc.). And it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content—that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that one or another sort of thing—numbers, sentences, propositions, etc.—that we can think or know about is in fact a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that intentional mental content is phenomenological (what I call “intentional psychologism”) and to try to reach a conclusion about whether it yields a tenable view of mind, thought and meaning. I believe the thesis is not so obviously wrong as it will strike many philosophers of mind and language. In fact, it can be defended against the standard objections to psychologism, and it can provide the basis for a novel and interesting account of mentality.     

Putnam,Searle, and externalism

Summary To sum up, then, both kinds of Putnam's arguments established externalism, though they suffer from several defects. Yet, I think Searle's discussion of these arguments contributes to our understanding of what makes externalism true, and forces us to accept a moderate version of externalism. Searle's own account of the TE story shows us, within a solipsistic outline, how two identical mental states can be directed towards different objects, and further, that the content-determination of indexical thoughts does not necessarily involve external factors. We are thus led to search elsewhere (i.e., not in the nature of indexical thoughts nor in the mere fact of there being identical thoughts with different intentionalities) for what makes the thoughts in question external. Searle formulates the thesis that intension determines extension as asserting that intension sets certain conditions that anything has to meet in order to fall under its extension. I showed that this is a trivial and implausible understanding of that thesis. Yet, it leads us to distinguish between an intension's setting conditions for falling under its extension and its fully determining such conditions, and thus to see in what sense externalism is true: in the sense that there are intensions that do not fully determine the conditions for falling under their extensions. Rather, they leave indeterminacies. This version of externalism is a moderate one, since though the intensions do not fully determine extensions, they, so to speak, determine their indeterminacies, by specifying the possible external facts that can complete the determination of extension. (The intensions, as I said, function like open sentences, and can be viewed as narrow contents.) So what's in the head plays a much more important role in determining content than Putnam takes it to play. Searle's pointing out that Hilary's concepts elm and beech are different also contributes to seeing this phenomenon: we realize that in that case the difference between the concepts is what is responsible for the fact that the completions of the extension-determinations are different. I think that this way of viewing the facts shows that the externalist turn is not a great revolution, and that with the help of the concept of narrow content we can accept it without abandoning the traditional views about the mind as the source of content, and without being embarrassed by the very idea of (realistic) belief-desire psychology.     

Perceiving expressions of emotion: What evidence could bear on questions about perceptual experience of mental states?

What evidence could bear on questions about whether humans ever perceptually experience any of another’s mental states, and how might those questions be made precise enough to test experimentally? This paper focusses on emotions and their expression. It is proposed that research on perceptual experiences of physical properties provides one model for thinking about what evidence concerning expressions of emotion might reveal about perceptual experiences of others’ mental states. This proposal motivates consideration of the hypothesis that categorical perception of expressions of emotion occurs, can be facilitated by information about agents’ emotions, and gives rise to phenomenal expectations. It is argued that the truth of this hypothesis would support a modest version of the claim that humans sometimes perceptually experience some of another’s mental states. Much available evidence is consistent with, but insufficient to establish, the truth of the hypothesis. We are probably not yet in a position to know whether humans ever perceptually experience others’ mental states.     

Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation,Free Will,and Moral Responsibility

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent , but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome.     

不同阶层心理健康观念及需求状况的调查研究

运用开放式和封闭式问卷调查法 ,对不同阶层共 483人的心理健康观念及心理健康需求状况进行了调查研究。结果表明 :( 1 )不同阶层、不同年龄段的人关于心理健康标准的观念具有显著差异。 ( 2 )人们认为 ,心理健康的人应具有的最典型特征是“处世乐观、热情、诚恳”和“心平气和、与世无争、乐于助人”。 ( 3 )心理不健康的人或心理变态的人所表现的最典型特征是“性格孤僻、与人不合群”和“对生活失去信心、悲观”。 ( 4)虽然不少人认为心理健康与咨询工作者当前最急需开展的工作是“宣传心理健康知识、开展心理卫生服务” ,但只有极少的人能够正视自己的心理健康需求 ,提出自己需要心理健康服务或咨询。     

The Varieties of Intrinsicality

Intrinsicality is a central notion in metaphysics that can do important work in many areas of philosophy. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there are in fact a number of different notions of intrinsicality, and that these different notions differ in what work they can do. This paper discusses what these notions are, describes how they are related to each other, and argues that each of them can be analysed in terms of a single notion of intrinsic aboutness that relates states of affairs to the things they are intrinsically about.     

Higher-order theories of consciousness and what-it-is-like-ness

Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation—there being a HO state about a state the subject is not in—leads to a contradiction. In contrast, the awareness argument aims to bolster HO theories by showing that subjects are aware of all their conscious states. Both arguments hinge on how we understand two related notions which are ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness: those of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like for a subject to be in a mental state. This paper examines how HO theorists must understand the two crucial notions if they are to reject the misrepresentation argument but assert the awareness argument. It shows that HO theorists can and do adopt an understanding—the HO reading—which seems to give them what they want. But adopting the HO reading changes the two arguments. On this reading, the awareness argument tells us nothing about those states there is something it is like to be in, and so offers no support to ambitious HO theories. And to respond to the misrepresentation understood according to the HO reading is to simply ignore the argument presented, and so to give no response at all. As things stand, we should deny that HO theories can account for what-it-is-like-ness.     

Explaining the Feelings of Justice

Philosophical theories about justice feelings and axiological feelings generally suffer from the fact that they look for simple criteria of justice, legitimacy, fairness. For this reason, they appear as of little help to account for the findings from sociological empirical studies. Weber's notion of "axiological rationality" can be interpreted as suggesting a "cognitivist" theory of axiological feelings. According to this theory, the causes responsible for the fact that a social actor endorses an axiological statement would not be basically different from the causes responsible for his endorsement of a representational statement. He would endorse the statement "X is fair" as he endorses "X is true", because these statements appear to him as grounded on strong reasons, though he may not perceive these reasons explicitly. This cognitivist theory was used by analysts of collective moral sentiments, as Adam Smith, before Max Weber. A careful examination of two empirical studies shows that the cognitivist theory can make the observational findings more easily understandable. The "cognitivist theory" eliminates the weaknesses of the major general philosophical and sociological theories of axiological feelings. It shows notably that these feelings can be context-dependent without this contextuality making them irrational. This theory includes two major principles: that instrumental rationality does not overlap with rationality shortly; that there are no simple criteria of "fairness", "legitimacy", etc.     

Interventions on causal exclusion

Two strains of interventionist responses to the causal exclusion argument are reviewed and critically assessed. On the one hand, one can argue that manipulating supervenient mental states is an effective strategy for manipulating the subvenient physical states, and hence should count as genuine causes to the subvenient physical states. But unless the supervenient and subvenient states manifest some difference in their manipulability conditions, there is no reason to treat them as distinct, which in turn goes against the basic assumption of nonreductive physicalism. On the other hand, one can preserve the distinction between the two by introducing asymmetric manipulability conditions that the supervenience thesis entails. But this response can be used to argue that mental causes never have physical effects. However, this argumentation can also be used to show that mental causes can have mental effects.     

"中小学生心理健康"公众观的调查和分析

本研究调查分析了家长、教师对中小学生心理健康判断标准的认识.因素分析表明,家长主要强调四个因素"精神和神经病症"、"良好品行"、"健康人格"和"循环性";教师则强调五个因素"精神分裂症状"、"神经质"、"好学生标准"、"不良人格"和"不良品行".公众对于情、意、个性及社会适应等同心理健康的关系认识较为清楚,但对认知、品行及体征与之的关系认识则片面和模糊."好学生标准"对判断有重要影响.