Reply to Nagasawa on the Inconsistency Objection to the Knowledge Argument

Yujin Nagasawa has recently defended Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument from the “inconsistency objection.” The objection claims that the premises of the knowledge argument are inconsistent with qualia epiphenomenalism. Nagasawa defends Jackson by showing that the objection mistakenly assumes a causal theory of phenomenal knowledge. I argue that although this defense might succeed against two versions of the inconsistency objection, mine is unaffected by Nagasawa’s argument, in which case the inconsistency in the knowledge argument remains.     

Faking on self-report emotional intelligence and personality tests: Effects of faking opportunity, cognitive ability, and job type

We assessed the combined effects of cognitive ability, opportunity to fake, and trait job-relevance on faking self-report emotional intelligence and personality tests by having 150 undergraduates complete such tests honestly and then so as to appear ideal for one of three jobs: nurse practitioner, marketing manager, and computer programmer. Faking, as expected, was greater (a) in higher-g participants, (b) in those scoring lower under honest conditions (with greater opportunity to fake), and (c) on job-relevant traits. Predicted interactions accounted for additional unique variance in faking. Combining all three factors yielded a “perfect storm” standardized difference of around 2, more than double the overall .83 estimate. Implications for the study of faking are discussed.     

Clinical Psychology Students’ Experiences of a Pilot Objective Structured Clinical Examination

There is a need to improve methods used to assess students’ clinical skills in postgraduate clinical psychology training, but research into the use of new competency‐based assessments are sparse. The current study examines the potential application of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to clinical psychology training. Commonly used in medical training, the OSCE requires students to demonstrate clinical skills across a number of standardised stations with trained actors playing the part of patients. A pilot OSCE was conducted with nine students from a psychology doctoral program. Participants completed a brief student feedback questionnaire and attended a focus group after the OSCE. They also completed the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory before and after the OSCE. The results showed that students viewed the OSCE as a valid, realistic, and fair assessment method. They reported high levels of anxiety during the OSCE but noted that the OSCE was a positive learning experience. These results suggest that OSCEs should be considered in clinical psychology training programs for the assessment of clinical competence. Further evaluations of the validity and reliability of the clinical psychology OSCE using a larger sample size are required. Other limitations and implications of the study are discussed.     

Sex differences in how erotic and painful stimuli impair inhibitory control

Witnessing emotional events such as arousal or pain may impair ongoing cognitive processes such as inhibitory control. We found that this may be true only half of the time. Erotic images and painful video clips were shown to men and women shortly before a stop signal task, which measures cognitive inhibitory control. These stimuli impaired inhibitory control only in men and not in women, suggesting that emotional stimuli may be processed with different weights depending on gender.     

Is Neurolaw Conceptually Confused?

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson argue that current attempts to use neuroscience to inform the theory and practice of law founder because they are built on confused conceptual foundations. Proponents of neurolaw attribute to the brain or to its parts psychological properties that belong only to people; this mistake vitiates many of the claims they make. Once neurolaw is placed on a sounder conceptual footing, Pardo and Patterson claim, we will see that its more dramatic claims are false or meaningless, though it might be able to provide inductive evidence for particular less dramatic claims (that a defendant may be lying, or lacks control over their behavior, for instance). In response, I argue that the central conceptual confusions identified by Pardo and Patterson are not confusions at all. Though some of the claims made by its proponents are hasty and sometimes they are confused, there are no conceptual barriers to attributing psychological properties to brain states. Neuroscience can play a role in producing evidence that is more reliable than subjective report or behavior; it therefore holds out the possibility of dramatically altering our self-conception as agents and thereby the law.     

Brouwer’s Notion of ‘Egoicity’

Axiomathes - According to Brouwer’s ‘theory of the exodus of consciousness’, our experience includes ‘egoicity’, a distinct kind of feeling. In this paper, we (i)...     

Philosophy for Resilience: A Meaningful Intervention for Medical Students

Journal of Academic Ethics - Philosophy and ethics in medicine is an interesting and often fascinating topic of enquiry, however uptake amongst medical students is highly variable and it...     

Defending the Possibility of Knowledge

In this paper, I propose a solution to Fitch’s paradox that draws on ideas from Edgington (Mind 94:557–568, 1985), Rabinowicz and Segerberg (1994) and Kvanvig (Noûs 29:481–500, 1995). After examining the solution strategies of these authors, I will defend the view, initially proposed by Kvanvig, according to which the derivation of the paradox violates a crucial constraint on quantifier instantiation. The constraint states that non-rigid expressions cannot be substituted into modal positions. We will introduce a slightly modified syntax and semantics that will help underline this point. Furthermore, we will prove results about the consistency of verificationism and the principle of non-omniscience by model-theoretical means. Namely, we prove there exists a model of these principles, and delineate certain constraints they pose on a structure in which they are true.     

Recognition by association: Within‐ and cross‐modality associative priming with faces and voices

Recent literature has raised the suggestion that voice recognition runs in parallel to face recognition. As a result, a prediction can be made that voices should prime faces and faces should prime voices. A traditional associative priming paradigm was used in two studies to explore within‐modality priming and cross‐modality priming. In the within‐modality condition where both prime and target were faces, analysis indicated the expected associative priming effect: The familiarity decision to the second target celebrity was made more quickly if preceded by a semantically related prime celebrity, than if preceded by an unrelated prime celebrity. In the cross‐modality condition, where a voice prime preceded a face target, analysis indicated no associative priming when a 3‐s stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used. However, when a relatively longer SOA was used, providing time for robust recognition of the prime, significant cross‐modality priming emerged. These data are explored within the context of a unified account of face and voice recognition, which recognizes weaker voice processing than face processing.