Outline for the Neuropsychological Examination of Patients with Local Brain Lesions

Neuropsychology Review -     

Teaching an amnesic a complex cognitive skill

G.P., a Korsakoff's amnesic, was able to learn an algorithm for squaring two-digit numbers mentally over a 7-day period at a rate comparable to that of age-matched controls. He failed to show normal positive transfer to specific problems or to specific numbers used in components of the task. He also exhibited slight improvement in simple naming speed, forward digit span, simple multiplication speed, but no apparent improvement for the recall of repeated supraspan digit strings. He was unable to state the algorithm he had learned to square two-digit numbers, though he could implement it successfully. The results suggest that the compilation of a skill may involve two dissociable components: composition and proceduralization, with the former, but not the latter, occurring at normal rates for Korsakoff's amnesics.     

Metaemotional Intentionality

This article argues against two theories that obscure our understanding of emotions whose objects are other emotions. The tripartite model of emotional intentionality holds that an emotion's relation to its object is necessarily mediated by an additional representational state; I argue that metaemotions are an exception to this claim. The hierarchical model positions metaemotions as stable, epistemically privileged higher‐order appraisals of lower‐level emotions; I argue that this clashes with various features of complex metaemotional experiences. The article therefore serves dual purposes, offering metaemotions as a counterexample to an intuitive thesis about emotional intentionality, and examining their intentional structure in its own right.     

In defense of the disjunctive

Are there any disjunctive properties—features of things such as being either red or round, or Nelson Goodman’s infamous example of being grue (i.e. either green if observed on or before 2500 A.D. or blue otherwise)? As esoteric as the question may seem at first, central issues about the metaphysics of properties hinge upon its answer, such as whether reductive views about special science properties can handle the phenomenon of multiple realizability. A familiar argument for a negative answer is that disjunctive properties fail to guarantee that their instances are similar in some genuine respect. In this paper, I respond to a novel, sophisticated version of this argument developed in recent work by Paul Audi. Along the way, I develop two new accounts of what it is for a property to be disjunctive—which rely on important recent work on the nature of essence and analysis—and clarify what one is committed to in believing that there are any disjunctive properties at all.