We review the use of introspective and phenomenological methods in experimental settings. We distinguish different senses of introspection, and further distinguish phenomenological method from introspectionist approaches. Two ways of using phenomenology in experimental procedures are identified: first, the neurophenomenological method, proposed by Varela, involves the training of experimental subjects. This approach has been directly and productively incorporated into the protocol of experiments on perception. A second approach may have wider application and does not involve training experimental subjects in phenomenological method. (...) It requires front-loading phenomenological insights into experimental design. A number of experiments employing this approach are reviewed. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for both the cognitive sciences and phenomenology. (shrink)

AimWhite matter changes in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR) may be involved in the transition to psychosis. Sleep-wake disturbances commonly precede the first psychotic episode and predict development of psychosis. We examined associations between white matter microstructure and sleep-wake disturbances in UHR individuals compared to healthy controls (HC), as well as explored the confounding effect of medication, substance use, and level of psychopathology.MethodsSixty-four UHR individuals and 35 HC underwent clinical interviews and diffusion weighted imaging. Group differences on global (...) and callosal mean fractional anisotropy (FA) was tested using general linear modeling. Sleep-wake disturbances were evaluated using the subjective measures disturbed sleep index (DSI) and disturbed awakening index (AWI) from the Karolinska Sleep Questionnaire, supported by objective sleep measures from one-night actigraphy. The primary analyses comprised partial correlation analyses between global FA/callosal FA and sleep-wake measures. Secondary analyses investigated multivariate patterns of covariance between measures of sleep-wake disturbances and FA in 48 white matter regions of interest using partial least square correlations.ResultsUltra-high risk for psychosis individuals displayed lower global FA (F = 14.56, p < 0.001) and lower callosal FA (F = 11.34, p = 0.001) compared to HC. Subjective sleep-wake disturbances were significantly higher among the UHR individuals (DSI: F = 27.59, p < 0.001, AWI: F = 36.42, p < 0.001). Lower callosal FA was correlated with increased wake after sleep onset (r = −0.34, p = 0.011) and increased sleep fragmentation index (r = −0.31, p = 0.019) in UHR individuals. Multivariate analyses identified a pattern of covariance in regional FA which were associated with DSI and AWI in UHR individuals (p = 0.028), but not in HC. Substance use, sleep medication and antipsychotic medication did not significantly confound these associations. The association with objective sleep-wake measures was sustained when controlling for level of depressive and UHR symptoms, but symptom level confounded the covariation between FA and subjective sleep-wake measures in the multivariate analyses.ConclusionCompromised callosal microstructure in UHR individuals was related to objectively observed disruptions in sleep-wake functioning. Lower FA in ventrally located regions was associated with subjectively measured sleep-wake disturbances and was partly explained by psychopathology. These findings call for further investigation of sleep disturbances as a potential treatment target. (shrink)

Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, the Psychopathy (...) Personality Inventory-Revised, and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this survey we have investigated the experiences and attitudes of Danish physicians regarding end‐of life decisions. Most respondents have made decisions that involve hastening the death of a patient, and almost all find it acceptable to do so. Such decisions are made more often, and considered ethically more acceptable, with the informed consent of the patient than without. But both non‐resuscitation decisions, and decisions to provide pain relief in doses that will shorten the patient's life, have been made (...) and found acceptable by at least 50% of the respondents, even when there is no informed consent. Furthermore, 12% have doubled morphine dosages with fixed intervals, thus providing doses substantially higher than that necessary to control pain, without the informed consent of the patient. Two per cent have helped in assisted suicide, and 5% have administered a lethal injection at the patient's request. Respectively 37% and 34% find these last two practices ethically acceptable. Amongst those that do not find them acceptable, the most important reasons to be opposed are, the doctrine of double effect, the doctrine of doing and allowing, and the view that human life is sacred. Amongst supporters, the most important reasons mentioned are, that the patient's right to self‐determination should be respected, the view that a patient should not be forced to suffer, and the view that the patient has a right to be helped to a dignified death. (shrink)

In this survey we have investigated the experiences and attitudes of Danish physicians regarding end-of-life decisions. Most respondents have made decisions that involve hastening the death of a patient, and almost all find it acceptable to do so. Such decisions are made more often, and considered ethically more acceptable, with the informed consent of the patient than without. But both non-resuscitation decisions, and decisions to provide pain relief in doses that will shorten the patient's life, have been made and found (...) acceptable by at least 50% of the respondents, even when there is no informed consent. Furthermore, 12% have doubled morphine dosages with fixed intervals, thus providing doses substantially higher than that necessary to control pain, without the informed consent of the patient. Two per cent have helped in assisted suicide, and 5% have administered a lethal injection at the patient's request. Respectively 37% and 34% find these last two practices ethically acceptable. Amongst those that do not find them acceptable, the most important reasons to be opposed are, the doctrine of double effect, the doctrine of doing and allowing, and the view that human life is sacred. Amongst supporters, the most important reasons mentioned are, that the patient's right to self-determination should be respected, the view that a patient should not be forced to suffer, and the view that the patient has a right to be helped to a dignified death. (shrink)

Drawing upon the literature on action research and case-study research, this paper discusses similarities and differences between these two forms of research practice. The paper also highlights some of the criticisms and challenges action researchers face. It suggests ways in which action researchers may enhance the discussability of action research by: (a) increasing the transparency of their research processes, (b) declaring the intellectual frameworks brought into action research projects, (c) discussing transferability of findings, and (d) defining accumulation of results. This (...) may require an extension to scientific discourse. In particular, the paper suggests that action researchers could change the ways in which action research results are reported to increase their reach among a wider audience. (shrink)

Jesper Kallestrup argues that groups can have knowledge that their members may not.

If people never dreamed, would it make a difference to how they picture reality? Or themselves? Philosophers would certainly lose the most natural way of introducing skepticism. The Chinese Taoist, Chuang Tzu (369 B. C. - ?), dreamt he was a butterfly. When he awoke he wondered whether he was a man who dreamt he was butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming he is a man. Any experience can be explained as either a faithful representation of the world or as (...) a mere figment of a sleeper's imagination. (shrink)

In several texts, Kant announces that there are three distinct mental faculties: cognition, desire, and feeling. This trinitarian commitment should give us pause, for many people operate instead with a dualist model of reason and emotion, where desire and feeling are usually squished together under emotion. Here, as elsewhere, the Kantian model is more complicated. On Kant's view, each of the three faculties has its own specific work to do and generates its own kinds of representations. We do not simply (...) have emotions that... (shrink)

Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing (...) before He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. (shrink)

The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.

In _Plato on Democracy and Political technē_ Anders Dahl Sørensen offers an in-depth investigation of Plato’s discussions of democracy’s ‘epistemic potential’, arguing that this question is far more central to his political thought than is usually assumed.

In ”Formal Problems about Knowledge,” Roy Sorensen examines epistemological issues that have logical aspects. He uses Fitch's proof for unknowables and the surprise test paradox to illustrate the hopes of the modal logicians who developed epistemic logic, and he considers the epistemology of proof with the help of the knower paradox. One solution to this paradox is that knowledge is not closed under deduction. Sorensen reviews the broader history of this maneuver along with the relevant alternatives model of (...) knowledge which assumes that ”know” is an absolute term like ”flat.” Sorensen argues that the difference between epistemic absolute terms and extensional absolute terms gives rise to an asymmetry that undermines recent claims that there is a structural parallel between the supervaluational and epistemicist theories of vagueness, and he suggests that we have overestimated the ability of logical demonstration to produce knowledge. (shrink)

For most of his career, Kant accepts Augustine's requirement that lying requires an intention to deceive. However, he eventually converts to Aquinas, following him in rejecting this requirement in favor of Aristotle's teleological conception of lying. This change of view amounts to an improvement, for it makes room for the possibility of lying to an omniscient being—and such lies, we argue, are indeed possible. We accompany these historical and philosophical theses with a biographical thesis taking the form of the following (...) story. Kant believed that in his youth he had lied to God, largely because of his religious training. He adopted policies designed to help him resist the habit of lying to God. However, this program conflicted with his desire to lead a well‐rounded life as a public intellectual. This worldly ambition led him to forego the Quaker solution to the problem of lying to God: refuse to swear any oath to God, avoid set prayers and hymns, decline offers of intercession by clergy. Kant's worldly compromise served him well, but as he entered his twilight years, he came to worry that his only surviving argument for theism—the moral argument—might constitute a relapse into the vice of lying to God. (shrink)

Ockham's razor is popularly phrased as a prohibition against multiplying entities beyond necessity. This prohibition should extend to the receptacle for these entities. To state my thesis more positively and precisely, both qualitative and quantitative parsimony apply to space, time, and possibility. All other things equal, we ought to prefer a hypothesis that postulates less space. Smaller is better. Admittedly, scientists are ambivalent about economizing on the void. They praise simplicity. Yet astronomers have a history of helping themselves to as (...) much empty space as they wish—staggering common sense with the vastness of the universe. This largesse is abetted by an aesthetic bias for sublime hypotheses. Whereas abductions based on beauty converge with parsimony, abductions based on the sublime diverge from parsimony. Awe stifles our inner accountant. Both types of abduction are popular. Both are dubious because we lack independent assurance that the universe is beautiful or sublime. The analogy between space and time supports an extension of parsimony to time. Uniformitarian geologists regarded time as a free resource. However, geologists and cosmologists must justify their postulation of an immense past. Possibility follows suit. Contrary to David Lewis, possible worlds should be minimized. Parsimony about possibilities provides a rationale for parsimony about absences. Absences are possibilities that are not actual. So proliferation of absences entails proliferation of possibilities. We should admit only those absences which do explanatory work. (shrink)

Bumped from a flight? Relax with this defense of the big business practice of deliberately promising more services than one will provide. On a small scale, over‐promising yields a toxic moral dilemma and a lie. At a large scale, the dilemma becomes dilute, and the lie completely disappears. Overbooking is honest because there is a sufficiently high probability of fulfilling each promise. Overbooking is socially beneficial because the promised resources are used more efficiently. There are fewer wasted seats on jumbo (...) jets and hence cheaper tickets with less pollution. Widespread disapproval of overbooking is a fallacious scaling error. Instead of there being too much overbooking, there is too little. (shrink)

A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities is a collection of puzzles, paradoxes, riddles, and miscellaneous logic problems. Depending on taste, one can partake of a puzzle, a poem, a proof, or a pun.

The allocation of resources among different stakeholders is an ethical dilemma for chief executive officers (CEOs). In this study, we investigate the association between CEO power and workplace injuries and illnesses. We use an establishment-level dataset comprising 31,924 establishment-year observations between 2002 and 2011. Our main result shows that employees at firms with structurally powerful CEOs experience fewer workplace injuries and illnesses and days away from work. We reason that CEOs derive a private benefit from low injury and illness rates (...) and that powerful CEOs are better at influencing employees to take workplace safety and health seriously. Additional analyses reveal fewer injuries and illnesses in firms led by CEOs with expertise power. However, increased injuries and illnesses were linked to firms controlled by CEOs with ownership power. Moreover, we find that structurally powerful CEOs mitigate injury and illness differences in relation to geographical proximity to corporate headquarters. We contribute with both research and practical implications on the topics of CEO power and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and workplace safety and health in particular. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of a contemporary approach to cognitive psychology known as 4E cognition. According to this ‘extracranial’ view of cognition, the mind is not ensconced in the head, but dynamically intertwined with a host of different entities, social as well as technological. The purpose of the present article is to raise a concern about 4E cognition. The concern is not about whether the mind is in fact extended, but about how this condition is currently (...) portrayed in the 4E literature. It is argued that 4E scholars tend to paint an overly idealized picture of human–technology relations in which all entities are presumed to cooperate and collaborate. The article first describes the basic tenets of extended cognition and distributed cognition, two of the most thingly approaches in this new wave of cognitive psychology. It then proceeds to discuss the twin notions of cognition and representation and argues that it may be time to leave these concepts behind. Finally, it sketches out the so-called ‘dogma of harmony’ in the 4E literature and argues for the importance of making analytical room for conflictual human–technology relations. Two examples of such conflictual relations are provided: bad habits and deskilling. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that autonomous decision-making requires that the decision-maker’s desires are authentic, i.e., “genuine,” “truly her own,” “not out of character,” or similar. In this article, it is argued that a method to reliably determine the authenticity (or inauthenticity) of a desire cannot be developed. A taxonomy of characteristics displayed by different theories of authenticity is introduced and applied to evaluate such theories categorically, in contrast to the prior approach of treating them individually. The conclusion is drawn that, (...) in practice, the authenticity of desires cannot be reliably determined. It is suggested that authenticity should therefore not be employed in informed consent practices in healthcare. (shrink)

Being the parent of a disabled child is not easy, it is experienced as a situation marked by stress, crises and grief. As Vygotsky described eighty years ago, the development of children with disabilities and the culture do not fit as they do for non-disabled children. The development of a child with disabilities is not determined by the child’s physical defect alone, but constituted by the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture. In this study, the lives of four (...) families with deafblind children were followed for two years. Interviews and observations were conducted in different settings. This study finds that because of the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture, it is difficult to reach and maintain the zone of proximal development for a child with disabilities. This study illustrates how the network of professionals and parents around the child can make a local congruence that creates a platform for the child’s development. (shrink)

Can merely thinking about an imaginary situation provide evidence for how the world actually is--or how it ought to be? In this lively book, Roy A. Sorensen addresses this question with an analysis of a wide variety of thought experiments ranging from aesthetics to zoology. Presenting the first general theory of thought experiment, he sets it within an evolutionary framework and integrates recent advances in experimental psychology and the history of science, with special emphasis on Ernst Mach and Thomas (...) Kuhn. Sorensen explores what thought experiments are, how they work, and what their virtues and vices are. In his view, philosophy differs from science in degree, but not in kind. For this reason, he claims, it is possible to understand philosophical thought experiments by concentrating on their resemblance to scientific relatives. Sorensen assesses the hazards of thought experiments and grants that there are interesting ways in which the method leads us astray, but attacks most scepticism about thought experiments as arbitrary. He maintains that they should be used--as they generally are--as part of a diversified portfolio of techniques, creating a network of cross-checks that make for impressive reliability. (shrink)

You face two buttons. Pushing one will destroy Greensboro. Pushing the other will save it. There is no way for you to know which button saves and which destroys. What ought you to do? Answer: You ought to make the correct guess and push the button that saves Greensboro. Second question: Do you have an obligation to push the correct button?

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This book gives an analysis of Hertz's posthumously published Principles of Mechanics in its philosophical, physical and mathematical context. In a period of heated debates about the true foundation of physical sciences, Hertz's book was conceived and highly regarded as an original and rigorous foundation for a mechanistic research program. Insisting that a law-like account of nature would require hypothetical unobservables, Hertz viewed physical theories as images of the world rather than the true design behind the phenomena. This paved the (...) way for the modern conception of a model. Rejecting the concept of force as a coherent basic notion of physics he built his mechanics on hidden masses and rigid connections, and formulated it as a new differential geometric language.Recently many philosophers have studied Hertz's image theory and historians of physics have discussed his forceless mechanics. The present book shows how these aspects, as well as the hitherto overlooked mathematical aspects, form an integrated whole which is closely connected to the mechanistic world view of the time and which is a natural continuation of Hertz's earlier research on electromagnetism. Therefore it is also a case study of the strong interactions between philosophy, physics and mathematics. Moreover, the book presents an analysis of the genesis of many of the central elements of Hertz's mechanics based on his manuscripts and drafts. Hertz's research program was cut short by the advent of relativity theory but its image theory influenced many philosophers as well as some physicists and mathematicians and its geometric form had a lasting influence on advanced expositions of mechanics. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one’s phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal consequences. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with (...) students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people’s relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as a result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed. (shrink)

The notion of authenticity, i.e., being “genuine,” “real,” or “true to oneself,” is sometimes held as critical to a person’s autonomy, so that inauthenticity prevents the person from making autonomous decisions or leading an autonomous life. It has been pointed out that authenticity is difficult to observe in others. Therefore, judgments of inauthenticity have been found inadequate to underpin paternalistic interventions, among other things. This article delineates what justifies judgments of inauthenticity. It is argued that for persons who wish to (...) live according to the prevailing social and moral standards and desires that are seriously undesirable according to those standards, it is justified to judge that a desire is inauthentic to the extent that it is due to causal factors that are alien to the person and to the extent that it deviates from the person’s practical identity. The article contributes to a tradition of thinking about authenticity which is known mainly from Frankfurt and Dworkin, and bridges the gap between theoretical ideals of authenticity and real authenticity-related problems in practical biomedical settings. (shrink)

Neuroplasticity is a core feature of the brain throughout the entire life of the individual. And when injury to the adult brain destroys part of the circuitry mediating behaviour and/or conscious experience, neuroplasticity is required to bring about the highest possible degree of post-traumatic functional recovery. But is the brain able to recreate the lost circuitry? Scrutiny of the impressive plasticity seen during development and in the adult brain reveals many similarities -- but also some crucial differences. And studies of (...) the mechanisms of functional recovery demonstrate that even an apparently 'full recovery' of the surface phenomena of behaviour and/or conscious representations is accomplished without a recreation of the lost circuitry. Instead, the post-traumatic process utilizes mechanisms, which have evolved to mediate problem solving in the intact brain. The newly developed REF model suggests how such dynamic reorganizations occur in the intact and injured brain. (shrink)

Based on the conception of life and semiosis as co-extensive an attempt is given to classify cognitive and communicative potentials of species according to the plasticity and articulatory sophistication they exhibit. A clear distinction is drawn between semiosis and perception, where perception is seen as a high-level activity, an integrated product of a multitude of semiotic interactions inside or between bodies. Previous attempts at finding progressive trends in evolution that might justify a scaling of species from primitive to advanced levels (...) have not met with much success, but when evolution is considered in the light of semiosis such a scaling immediately catches the eye. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a scaling of this progression in semiotic freedom into a series of distinct steps. The elleven steps suggested are: 1) molecular recognition, 2) prokaryote-eukaryote transformation, 3) division of labor in multicellular organisms, 4) from irritability to phenotypic plasticity, 5) sense perception, 6) behavioral choice, 7) active information gathering, 8) collaboration, deception, 9) learning and social intelligence, 10) sentience, 11) consciousness. In light of this, the paper finally discusses the conceptual framework for biosemiotic evolution. The evolution of biosemiotic capabilities does not take the form of an ongoing composition of simple signs into composite wholes. Rather, it takes the shape of the increasing subdivision and control of a primitive, holophrastic perception-action circuit already committed to “proto-propositions” reliably guiding action already in the most primitive species. (shrink)

According to robust virtue epistemology, knowledge is a cognitive achievement, where this means that the agent's cognitive success is because of her cognitive ability. One type of objection to robust virtue epistemology that has been put forward in the contemporary literature is that this view has problems dealing with certain kinds of testimonial knowledge, and thus that it is in tension with standard views in the epistemology of testimony. We build on this critique to argue that insofar as agents epistemically (...) depend on third-party members of their epistemic community as many social epistemologists contend, then there will be cases where two agents differ epistemically despite being virtue-theoretic duplicates. This means that robust virtue epistemology, at least insofar as it is understood along standard lines such that it endorses epistemic individualism, is also in tension with a central commitment of contemporary social epistemology. (shrink)