Love and Identity： Unconditional Concern and Particularity

Love for a person involves an idea of the other＇s particularity, or ＂irreplaceability＂： an idea that is linked with a fine grained attention to, and affection for, very specific features of the other. This attention is largely a consequence of--or manifestation of--my love, rather than its ground. What I see in the other is partly conditioned by an ＂unconditional＂ concern for her as an individual. A consideration of the importance of the face and of personal names in my interactions with another may bring into focus crucial aspects of the particularity and unconditionality that are characteristic of love.     

Illusions of Optimal Motion,Relationism, and Perceptual Content

Austere relationism rejects the orthodox analysis of hallucinations and illusions as incorrect perceptual representations. In this article, I argue that illusions of optimal motion (IOMs) present a serious challenge for this view. First, I submit that austere‐relationist accounts of misleading experiences cannot be adapted to account for IOMs. Second, I show that any attempt at elucidating IOMs within an austere‐relationist framework undermines the claim that perceptual experiences fundamentally involve relations to mind‐independent objects. Third, I develop a representationalist model of IOMs. The proposed analysis combines two ideas: Evans' dynamic modes of presentation and Fine's relational semantics for identity.     

Illusions of bent line

A recent paper offered an explanation of the Poggendorf illusion, assuming that it results from a failure of the visual system to make a perfect resolution of acute angles. Variations of the illusion were drawn eliminating all acute angles, and the illusion was shown to remain in full strength. A variation of the figure preserving the acute angle was drawn, and the illusion was found to reverse in direction. Several theoretical interpretations are considered but none accepted, and it is concluded that the illusion remains unexplained.     

Perceptual Particularity

Perception grounds demonstrative reference, yields singular thoughts, and fixes the reference of singular terms. Moreover, perception provides us with knowledge of particulars in our environment and justifies singular thoughts about particulars. How does perception play these cognitive and epistemic roles in our lives? I address this question by exploring the fundamental nature of perceptual experience. I argue that perceptual states are constituted by particulars and discuss epistemic, ontological, psychologistic, and semantic approaches to account for perceptual particularity.     

Illusions and Knowing What Is Real

Geometrical illusions are displays that give false impressions that observers take to be accurate. They have traditionally been cited as evidence against the naive realist claim that people see the world as it "really" is. Such illusions, however, often depend on their being viewed from a single vantage point (Kennedy & Portal, 1990). In Gibsonian terms, they depend on the availability of impoverished information. In this study, spatial transformations were applied to line-length (Sander parallelogram) and area (Jastrow curves) illusions to provide information to observers about veridical size. In particular, the reversal of certain parts of the displays resulted in informative invariants that specified the veridical nature of the parts. Most observers were able to use the information.     

Illusions prepared as stereograms

The loci of organization and the modes of operation of certain perceptual mechanisms may be determined by presenting appropriate stimuli independently to each eye in such a way that they become superimposed in stereoscopic vision. It is possible that understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the appearance of certain “geometrical illusions” may be furthered by adopting this procedure. The two functional components of a sample of illusions are distinguished and illustrated in the form of stereograms.     

Illusions in modal reasoning

According to the mental model theory, models represent what is true, but not what is false. One unexpected consequence is that certain inferences should have compelling, but invalid, conclusions. Three experiments corroborated the occurrence of such illusions in reasoning about possibilities. When problems had the heading "Only one of the premises is true," the participants considered the truth of each premise in turn, but neglected the fact that when one premise is true, the others are false. When two-premise problems had the heading "One of the premises is true and one is false," the participants still neglected the falsity of one of the premises. As predicted, however, the illusions were reduced when reasoners were told to check their conclusions against the constraint that only one of the premises was true. We discuss alternative explanations for illusory inferences and their implications for current theories of reasoning.     

Speciesism,Arbitrariness and Moral Illusions

Philosophia - Just as one line appears to be longer than another in an optical illusion, we can have a spontaneous moral judgment that one individual is more important than another. Sometimes such...     

Character-Principlism and the Particularity Objection

This paper is a response to particularist critics of the normative force of moral principles. The particularist critique, as I understand it, is a rejection not only of principle-based accounts of moral deliberation and justification, but also of accounts of character in which principles play a central role. I focus on the latter challenge and counter it with a view I call character-principlism .
I begin by discussing in a general way what motivates the particularity objection to principles and then contrast two views – both of which insist on the importance of attentiveness to particularity – about the relative normative status of principles and particular cases. I present some reasons for believing that we need a more normatively robust conception of the role of moral principles than the particularists provide. In the main portion of the paper, I discuss how character-principlism sees principles functioning in our lives and the lives we lead with others. I contrast this with some other accounts of desirable character that particularists can embrace, and argue that these are seriously flawed because, unlike character-principlism, they cannot satisfactorily explain how a person could possess the constancy of character that moral integrity requires.     

Positive Illusions and Coping with Adversity

ABSTRACT We review the literature showing that positive illusions (i.e., self-aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control) are common and associated with successful adjustment to stressful events, including conditions of extreme adversity. Using theory and recent data, we offer a basis for integrating positive illusions with the constraints of reality. We explicitly contrast the social psychological model of positive illusions with a personality viewpoint that addresses the question “Do higher levels of positive illusions predict higher levels of adjustment?” These issues are explored in the context of people coping with an array of normal stressful events, as well as those coping with more extreme stressful events, including cancer, heart disease, and HIV infection. Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it ought to be. —Brooks Atkinson

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