Toward a Noninferentialist,Nonreliabilist Account of Perceptual Justification

While it may be a datum of common sense that perceptual experiences can justify beliefs, there is no clear consensus about how they can do so. According to what I call “inferentialism,” perceptual experiences can justify beliefs because perceptual experiences have propositional contents and thus can serve as reasons for belief. A critical commitment of inferentialism is that justification requires the obtaining of a nonarbitrary or nonaccidental semantic relation between justifier and justified, a requirement that I call semantic appropriateness (SA). By contrast, reliabilists reject SA and argue that perceptual experiences can justify beliefs because perceptual experiences are part of a reliable belief‐forming process. In this paper, I explore whether a commitment to SA inevitably leads to a commitment to inferentialism. This exploration is largely motivated by doubts over whether perceptual experiences have propositional contents. If those doubts prove to be well‐founded, then it seems either that perceptual experiences cannot justify beliefs or that some form of reliabilism is true. I argue that although we should take the doubts seriously, there is a way to make sense of SA that does not require inferentialism.     

Sensing the presence of the deceased: A narrative review

Researchers have reported that bereaved people often continue to sense the presence of the deceased. A particular collection of such experiences can be identified as instilling a perception that the deceased person is in some manner present in the company of the bereaved person. The aim of the current review was to synthesise the results on this topic to provide a comprehensive over-view for practitioners working with bereaved people who report these experiences. The studies were reviewed in terms of the nature of the experiences described, the provision of explanatory models to understand the significance of these experiences, describing any culturally specific aspects of these experiences, discussion of the personal impact of having the experiences, and for recommendations of how people who have these experiences can be supported.     

Hidden Mission of the Psyche in Abuse and Addiction

Traumatic experiences can become the central mental content in our psychic structure and can deeply mark all our later perceptions and experiences of our surroundings. We can claim something similar also for addictions of all kinds. In this article, we will demonstrate that recurring traumatic experiences and abuse as well as addiction represent a hidden mission of psyche for resolution and a great cry of longing for salvation.     

Guilty,free, and wise: Determinism and psychopathy diminish learning from negative emotions

Emotional experiences can bring about personal growth. For instance, feeling guilty may prompt one to learn from a mistake, and this learning can bring about different and better future behavior. Three studies found that belief in free will facilitated learning from emotional experiences, as inducing participants to disbelieve in free will was associated with reduced learning. Emotional responsiveness, as defined by low psychopathy scores, also facilitated learning from emotional experiences (Studies 2 and 3). The degree of learning associated with emotional experiences was measured by self-rating (Study 1), independent evaluations of lessons learned (Study 2), and whether participants joined a campus recycling program (after being made to feel guilty about an environmental transgression; Study 3).     

联想学习对消费行为的影响：基于产品搜索经验的视角

消费者能够基于长期形成的联结产生预期并引导产品搜索。然而,在实际搜索过程中,消费者可能会遭遇符合预期的经验或违反预期的经验。本研究主要探讨基于不同产品搜索经验的联想学习影响消费行为的机制,主要涉及(1)消费者是否会基于产品搜索经验的联想学习产生“违反预期”的预期,并且影响随后搜索中的注意加工;(2)违反预期和符合预期的产品搜索经验对任务无关信息的联想学习所产生的影响,同时关注先前短期的联想学习能否建立预期从而引导随后的产品注意搜索过程;(3)基于产品搜索经验的联想学习对产品偏好的影响,并将行为偏好和大脑奖赏进行联系。本研究有助于阐明消费情境中产品搜索对消费者行为和大脑的影响机制,为营销应用中通过改变消费体验、促进产品购买提供实证依据。     

Designing Urban Experiences. The Case of Zuidas,Amsterdam

Zuidas is a new city centre, which is emerging in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The ambitious project of developing a new international city centre has been carefully planned as the Netherlands has a strong and meticulous tradition for urban planning. The planning has however not only encompassed traditional urban planning aspects such as infrastructure, environmental factors and aesthetics, but has also dealt with the design of urban experiences. Through an introduction of the framework of the structure of experiences, this article examines how urban experiences can be understood and analysed, and deals with how urban experiences can be designed through careful consideration of how experiences are constituted. Taking the psychological structure of experiences into account when designing urbanity is not only interesting, but also highly relevant as Zuidas is competing with other international venues such as La Défense, the Docklands and Potsdamer Platz.     

The tooth,the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth: how belief in the Tooth Fairy can engender false memories

To examine how children's fantasy beliefs can affect memory for their experiences, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds with differing levels of belief in the reality of the Tooth Fairy were prompted to recall their most recent primary tooth loss in either a truthful or fun manner. Many of the children who fully believed in the existence of the Tooth Fairy reported supernatural experiences consistent with the myth under both sets of recall instructions, whereas those who realized the fictionality of the myth recalled mainly realistic experiences. However, those children with equivocal beliefs evidenced a different pattern under each set of instructions, recalling mainly realistic experiences when asked to be truthful and reporting many fantastical experiences when prompted to relate the tooth loss in a fun manner. These findings suggest that children's beliefs in the reality of fantastic phenomena can give rise to genuine constructive memory errors in line with their fantasies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consciousness as a concrete physical phenomenon

The typical empirical approach to studying consciousness holds that we can only observe the neural correlates of experiences, not the experiences themselves. In this paper we argue, in contrast, that experiences are concrete physical phenomena that can causally interact with other phenomena, including observers. Hence, experiences can be observed and scientifically modelled. We propose that the epistemic gap between an experience and a scientific model of its neural mechanisms stems from the fact that the model is merely a theoretical construct based on observations, and distinct from the concrete phenomenon it models, namely the experience itself. In this sense, there is a gap between any natural phenomenon and its scientific model. On this approach, a neuroscientific theory of the constitutive mechanisms of an experience is literally a model of the subjective experience itself. We argue that this metatheoretical framework provides a solid basis for the empirical study of consciousness.     

A new inverted spectrum thought experiment

A version of the inverted spectrum thought experiment that disconfirms functionalism for the case of humans’ color experiences has typically been thought to require a certain kind of balancing act. What one needs, it has typically been thought, is a mapping of color experiences onto other color experiences that preserves the similarity and difference relationships among those experiences and the aspects of perceived colors underlying those similarities and differences. However, there are good reasons for being suspicious about whether that is possible when the palette of color experiences is that available to humans with normal vision. The new version of the thought experiment constructed here doesn’t depend on preserving those relationships. I argue that there is a coherent, metaphysically possible scenario in which two human color experiences—any two—can be seen to be functionally equivalent. The upshot is that functionalism fails for all human color experiences.     

The role of affinity for prosumption experiences and values

Prosumers are individuals who produce goods they consume themselves. The prosumption literature suggests that prosumption can be enhanced through knowledge sharing, creativity and innovation, and developing expertise. In this article, we investigate the relationships between prosumption experiences, prosumption values, and affinity with a prosumption activity. We use a structural equation model approach to evaluate the relationships between these constructs and assume that affinity can mediate the relationship between prosumption experiences and values. We collect empirical data from prosumers who homebrew their own beer and confirm that prosumption experiences and values are positively related, and that affinity mediates the relationship between experiences and values. Implications deriving from these findings are discussed along with directions for future research.     

Wittgenstein on Public Language About Personal Experiences

Philosophia - In this paper, we would like to discuss Wittgenstein’s critique of the idea that a person’s experiences are necessarily private, and these experiences can only be...     

Representationalism,perceptual distortion and the limits of phenomenal concepts

This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion (blur, perspective, double vision, etc.) against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal experiences. This can be shown by considering limit cases of perceptual distortion, for example, maximally blurry experiences, which manifestly lack details present in clear experiences. I argue that since there is no reasonable way to draw the line between distorted experiences that have degraded content and distorted experiences that do not, we should allow that an increase in distortion is always accompanied by a degradation in content. I also discuss the prospects for a positive account of the contents specific to distorted experiences. I argue that the prospects for such an account are dim, but that this is due to limitations of our phenomenal concepts, not to the falsity of the representationalist thesis.     

Experiences of justice in school and attitudes towards democracy: A matter of social exchange?

In a democratic society, school has the goal to foster democratic attitudes in students. Besides explicit attempts to do so, justice experiences in school may be crucial to develop positive attitudes towards democracy. Therefore, we studied the relationship between different dimensions of justice experiences in school and democratic attitudes. We further examined a potential mechanism underlying this relationship, namely general trust, and hypothesized that the relationship between justice experiences in school and democratic attitudes can be understood on the basis of social exchange theory. A total of 210 participants who had visited a public school gave information about their justice experiences in school, general trust, and democratic attitudes. First, it was shown that overall experiences of distributive and interactional justice predict democratic attitudes, more specifically the approval of civic and human rights and the approval of the democratic institutions. Second, we found that the relationships between overall distributive and interactional justice and the approval of civic and human rights, the approval of the democratic institutions, and the approval of democracy-supporting behaviors are each mediated by general trust which can be interpreted as a social exchange process. This study therefore highlights the role of general justice-related school experiences for the development of democratic attitudes.     

Reply to Garrett

The paper contains four arguments to show that experiences don't represent. The first argument appeals to the fact that an experience can't occur without what the experience is of; the second appeals to the fact we can have an experience without having any awareness of what it is of, the third argument appeals to the fact that long experiences, such as the experience of being kidnapped, don't represent anything; and the fourth appeals to the fact that experiences often leave physical traces. The author rebuts several arguments for the conclusion that experiences represent. The author also considers some of the pitfalls involved in stipulating that experiences represent in a technical sense of “experience” or “represent”.     

Reversing the Placebo: Performance‐Branded Experiences Can Undermine Consumer Performance

Products bearing premium brand labels are known to increase perceptions of efficacy and improve objective consumer performance relative to lesser‐branded equivalents, in what is traditionally described as a marketing placebo effect. In this paper, we suggest that experiences bearing these highly regarded brand labels can lead to a reverse effect, such that consumer performance actually declines with their use. Our findings demonstrate across domains of improving mental acuity, learning a new language, and developing financial analysis skills that completing performance‐branded training experiences impairs objective performance in related tasks, relative to lower‐performance‐branded or unbranded counterparts. We posit that branded training experiences can evoke a brand‐as‐master relationship in which consumers take on a subservient role relative to the brand. As a consequence, higher‐performance brands may impose greater demands upon consumers, increasing performance‐anxiety and interfering with an individual's ability to perform effectively. These results document an important ramification of applying branding to learning experiences and identify contexts in which traditionally positive marketing actions can backfire for consumers.     

Nozick’s experience machine: An empirical study

Many philosophers deny that happiness can be equated with pleasurable experiences. Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. We test Nozick’s hypothesis that people will reject this offer. We also contrast Nozick’s experience machine scenario with scenarios that are less artificial, and offer options which are less invasive or disruptive than being connected to a machine, specifically scenarios in which people are offered an experience pill or a pill that improves overall functioning.     

LIMITATIONS ON THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF DRUG‐ENABLED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES

Scientific interest in drug‐induced mystical experiences reemerged in the 1990s. This warrants reexamining the philosophical issues surrounding such studies: Do psychedelic drugs cause mystical experiences? Are drug‐induced experiences the same in nature as other mystical experiences? Does the fact that mystical experiences can be induced by drugs invalidate or validate mystical cognitive claims? Those questions will be examined here. An overview of the scientific examination of drug‐induced mystical experiences is included, as is a brief overview of the history of the use of psychedelic drugs in religion.