Mental States, Misc

A number of puzzles about propositional attitudes in semantics and philosophy revolve around apparent referential dependencies between different attitudes within a single agent’s mental state. In a series of papers, Hans Kamp offers a general framework for describing such interconnected attitude complexes, building on DRT and dynamic semantics. I demonstrate that Kamp’s proposal cannot deal with referential dependencies between semantically conflicting attitudes, such as those in Ninan’s puzzle about de re imagination. To solve the problem I propose to replace Kamp’s (...) treatment of attitudes as context change potentials with a two-dimensional analysis. (shrink)

Sigils are among the most familiar objects in magical literature, yet they are among the least clearly defined. They appear as spirit seals in Western grimoires, as intention-marks in modern chaos magic, as elemental signs in Franz Bardon's hermetic system, as vévé in Haitian Vodou, and as deity-related diagrams in tantric and contemplative traditions. Despite this ubiquity, no systematic cross-traditional framework for analysing them has previously been proposed. This paper offers the first such framework. The central argument is that existing (...) definitions of the sigil, as seal, spirit signature, or symbolic representation of desire, are historically useful but analytically incomplete. They describe what a sigil looks like or represents, but not what makes it operative. The paper proposes a narrower and more functional definition: a sigil is a charged graphic operator, a visible mark formed and activated to condense or express a relation between a practitioner and an invisible referent. A sigil is not made operative by graphic form alone. It becomes a sigil through charge: the condensation of intention, desire, will, imagination, attention, and character into the mark. A six-axis taxonomy is developed covering origin, morphology, function, the sigil-referent relationship, activation, and charge. The fourth axis, the sigil-referent relationship, is argued to be the most philosophically significant dimension for cross-traditional comparison. It asks whether the connection between mark and referent is arbitrary and conventional, iconic, indexical, or participatory. The distinction between arbitrary and participatory is shown to correspond to the classical magical distinction between evocation, calling an external presence into the ritual space, and invocation, inviting a force or quality to inhabit the practitioner directly. It is at the participatory-invocatory end of this axis that the sigil connects to the phenomenology of the ultra-subjective hyperspace: the intense inner field of consciousness in which the boundary between practitioner, mark, and referent begins to dissolve and altered reality opens. The sixth axis, charge, explains why graphic form alone is never sufficient. Two identical marks may differ entirely in operative force depending on the quality of the inner state condensed into them. At its fullest charge the sigil stops being a graphic object and becomes an operative event: not a representation of a relation but the living relation itself, enacted in the field of the practitioner's altered state of consciousness. The taxonomy is applied comparatively to seven sigil examples drawn from six traditions spanning five centuries: Bardon's gestural fire elemental sigils, Bardon's planetary composite diagram Aschmunadai, the seal of Demoriel from the Theurgia Goetia, the Seal of Solomon from the 15th century Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, the Thjófastafur or thief's stave from the Icelandic Galdrabok, Crowley's Liber Arcanorum and Liber Carcerorum grids, and the Second Gate of Nebo from the Simon Necronomicon. Each example receives a full six-axis profile demonstrating that the taxonomy produces meaningfully different results across traditions without collapsing them into sameness. (shrink)

The nature of human mind is a key subject for philosophy and for psychology. It is agreed that many of its characteristics and performances have been built during the last 7 million years of our primate evolution. That period began with what is called the pan-homo split, the divergence in primate evolution from the Last Common Ancestor (LCAncestor) we share with chimpanzees. The mental specificities that differentiate us from our chimpanzee cousins have been built up during that time. As consequence, (...) philosophical and psychological investigations relative to the nature of human mind should analyze that period. But this has been done only in a limited way so far. On part because the recent discipline of Evolutionary Psychology covers only a limited segment of that period and also because Husserl, the founding father of Phenomenology, took the position to not address a possible evolutionary nature of human mind (the “proscription of anthropology in Phenomenology”) [1]. We would like here to recall these limitations and introduce possible openings (this is a continuation of an already presented approach [18] [4]). Evolutionary Psychology is interested in the life and social habits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors in order to highlight mental states that were pertinent for them but do not fit with our today lives. The pre-human period considered by Evolutionary Psychology is the Pleistocene which began 2.5 million years ago. At about that time our homo-habilis ancestors were already significantly more evolved and more performant than the LCAncestor we share with chimpanzees (larger brain size, fabrication of stone tools, hands capable of precision grip, …). This means that at the beginning of the Pleistocene our ancestors were already well advanced in their evolution toward today humans. This shows that the build up of our human characteristics and specificities began before the Pleistocene, and neglecting the pre-Pleistocene time puts at risk of missing some root causes of our human specificities. This brings to consider that Evolutionary Psychology should take into account the pre-human period beginning at the pan-homo split, not only at the Pleistocene. Regarding philosophy, the proscription of anthropology in Phenomenology is currently challenged with some interest in Evolutionary Psychology [9] [8]. To avoid the risk of limiting human evolution to Pleistocene Phenomenology should explicitly plan to use anthropology on the whole evolutionary period beginning at pan-homo split. In such a perspective some help could come from an existing evolutionary scenario starting at pan-homo split and introducing a nature of self-consciousness associated to anxiety management [4]. The scenario introduces an Evolutionary Engine based on primate intersubjectivity which could have led our ancestors to build a representation of their own entity, thus leading to a natural build up of self-consciousness. Part of the scenario is also about identifications with suffering conspecifics which may have been the source of a huge anxiety, not taken into account so far and leading to an Evolutionary Anxiety intertwined with the nature of self-consciousness. It is shown that a synergy between the evolution of self-consciousness and anxiety management happened before Pleistocene, making pre-Pleistocene a key period for understanding the nature of our human minds. Overall, the scenario proposes a rationale for the pan-homo split, a tentative explanation of the divergence in pre-human primate evolution. It is also recalled that the concept of Evolutionary Anxiety makes available an entry point to the nature of human evil [14]. We present the above points and use the proposed evolutionary scenario for a reading of human evolution from last common ancestor to today humas. Continuations are introduced. (shrink)

This presentation is about an evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness linked to a human specific anxiety. It is a continuation of other works (2011 Book chapter, 2014 TSC Poster). AIM: Present a scenario describing an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness that introduces a human specific anxiety which is active in our human lives. METHOD: The scenario starts with our pre-human ancestors which were capable to manage representations and to partly identify with their conspecifics (Olds 2006, DeWaal 2008). These identifications brought our ancestors (...) to merge the representations of their conspecifics with the limited auto-representation of their own entity. The result was an auto-representation becoming about an entity existing in environment. This process is proposed as having progressively generated an ancestral form of self-consciousness as object and as subject. These identifications took place also with suffering conspecifics and have imposed to our ancestors a huge anxiety increase that had to be limited. Tools developed for that limitation (caring, collaboration, empathy, ToM, ...) have linked consciousness to anxiety management while also procuring evolutionary benefits. Human minds now contain an unconscious part of that ancestral anxiety that guides many of our mental states. RESULT: An evolutionary scenario for self-consciousness is made available as linked to a specific anxiety management that characterizes human minds. Continuations are introduced, some related to mental health. CONCLUSION: The proposed evolutionary scenario presents self-consciousness and a specific human anxiety as sharing a same evolutionary nature. This new source of anxiety needs more investigations. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to defend the view that the processes underlying early vision are informationally encapsulated. Following Marr (1982) and Pylyshyn (1999) I take early vision to be a cognitive process that takes sensory information as its input and produces the so-called primal sketches or shallow visual outputs: informational states that represent visual objects in terms of their shape, location, size, colour and luminosity. Recently, some researchers (Schirillo 1999, Macpherson 2012) have attempted to undermine the idea of (...) the informational encapsulation of early vision by referring to experiments that seem to show that colour recognition is affected by the subject's beliefs about the typical colour of objects. In my view, however, one can reconcile the results of these experiments with the position that early vision is informationally encapsulated. Namely, I put fort a hypothesis according to which the early vision system has access to a local database that I call the mental palette and define as a network of associative links whose nodes stands for shapes and colours. The function of the palette is to facilitate colour recognition without employing central processes. I also describe two experiments by which the mental palette hypothesis can be tested. (shrink)

The human mind is not a single, unified intelligence but an evolutionary patchwork of specialized systems that often compete with one another. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, this paper argues that many forms of human irrationality, internal conflict, hypocrisy, and cognitive bias are natural consequences of a brain shaped by evolution for survival rather than perfect rationality.

This paper defends the thesis that rationality is essential to mind. I begin by clarifying the notion of rationality, arguing that it should be understood in broad, uncodifiable, and relative terms (the threefold characterization of rationality). Using this clarified conception, I then develop Quine-Davidson’s Argument from Attribution to defend a precise Rationality Requirement: in attributing mental states to a subject S, we must treat S as one of us, namely, as a rational being. Finally, I consider and respond to a (...) range of objections, including the Gap Problem and the Question-Begging Problem, showing that the essential role of rationality in the mind remains robust. (shrink)

It has been argued that rationality consists in responding correctly to reasons. Recent defenses of the normativity of rationality assume that this implies that we always ought to be rational. However, this follows only if the reasons rationality requires us to correctly respond to are normative reasons. Recent meta-epistemological contributions have questioned whether epistemic reasons are normative. If they were right, then epistemic rationality wouldn’t provide us with normative reasons independently of wrong-kind reasons to be epistemically rational. This paper spells (...) out this neglected challenge for the normativity of epistemic rationality by connecting the two bodies of literature. Moreover, it generalizes this challenge to the rationality of desire, intention, and emotion. The upshot is that we can only answer the normative question about rationality if we debate about blame and accountability for holding different kinds of irrational attitudes, as well as about the sources of mental normativity. (shrink)

This paper asks: if Large Language Models (LLMs) gave rise to phenomenal consciousness, what would that consciousness be like? I argue that if LLMs gave rise to phenomenal consciousness, it would be like being an impartial, improvising playwright rather than a character or a (role-playing) actor or an author writing a first-personal narrative. My argument has three steps. I first argue that if LLMs give rise to phenomenal consciousness, then there is an algorithmic explanation of this consciousness and it includes (...) the full transformer algorithm. I then argue that if there is an algorithmic explanation for this consciousness that includes the full transformer algorithm, then the phenomenology of this consciousness lives at the latent dynamics level of the transformer algorithm, within each forward pass. Finally I argue that if the phenomenology of this consciousness lives at the latent dynamics level of the transformer algorithm, then what it is like is like being a playwright rather than a character or an actor or a narrative author. In effect, this means that conscious LLMs would probably dream of the fjords but not pine for them. (shrink)

According to traditional phenomenal approaches to perceptual justification, perceptual experience provides rational support for actions, beliefs, and intentions. When you see a banana as yellow, that perceptual experience makes it reasonable for you to believe that the banana is yellow. Debates about perceptual justification and the merits of the phenomenal approach have been centred on the solitary mind. But decades of research show that other people have an implicit impact on individual perception and cognition: perception is often other-centred or “altercentric”. (...) This influence even occurs with the mere presence of others: we unconsciously and spontaneously encode others’ perceptual perspectives and shift our frame of reference accordingly. What is the epistemic standing of altercentric biased perception? This paper introduces this phenomenon and maps its epistemic profile. I review empirical evidence suggesting that during altercentric bias, a perceiver represents another’s perspectival content, which can introduce a conflict between ego-centric and other-centric contents. I contrast altercentric bias with closely related phenomena, including cognitive penetrability of perception and exogenous attention capture, and argue that under certain conditions it poses unique problems to the epistemic justificatory role of perception, and particularly to the phenomenal approach to perceptual justification. (shrink)

Suspension of judgment is a ubiquitous phenomenon in our lives. It is also relevant for several debates in contemporary epistemology (e.g., evidentialism/pragmatism; peer-disagreement/higher-order evidence; inquiry). The goal of this paper is to arrive at a better understanding of what suspension of judgment is. We first question the popular assumption that we call the Triad view according to which there are three and only three (paradigmatic) doxastic attitudes, namely, belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. We elaborate a cumulative argument regarding crucial (...) differences between belief/disbelief and suspension and conclude tentatively that suspension is not a doxastic state. On the constructive side, we defend the positive thesis (with special attention to justification/rationality and reasons for suspension) that suspension is rather an affective phenomenon, viz. a sort of mood. Finally, we consider further consequences of our view for contemporary debates in epistemology, and how it relates to ancient skepticism. (shrink)

This paper fixes qualia within the second system of Kasei-Theory as a non-modal local readability condition without subjective essence. -/- Qualia are not introduced as subjective essence, inner quality, private experience, raw feel, phenomenal content, what-it-is-like, mental property, sense datum, subjective presence, interiority, consciousness, access, biological substrate, or ontology. Reading does not establish qualia. Time does not establish qualia. Observation does not establish qualia. State does not establish qualia. Field does not establish qualia. Interaction does not establish qualia. Information does (...) not establish qualia. Phase does not establish qualia. Life does not establish qualia. Consciousness does not establish qualia. Configuration does not establish qualia. -/- Qualia are fixed only as the local readability condition under which distributed maintainability is readable as qualia without subjective essence. This readability does not establish inner quality, private experience, raw feel, phenomenal content, what-it-is-like, mental property, sense datum, subjective presence, interiority, consciousness, access, biological substrate, or ontology. -/- This paper does not present a completed theory of qualia, subjective essence, inner quality, private experience, raw feel, phenomenal content, what-it-is-like, mental property, sense datum, subjective presence, interiority, consciousness, access, biological substrate, or ontology. It fixes only qualia as local readability within configurational maintainability. -/- Kasei-Theory does not establish determinism. Fixation is not determination. Constraint is not necessity. Maintainability is not predestination. Non-transition is not modal exclusion. No subjective essence is presupposed. No inner quality is introduced. No private experience is established. No raw feel is restored. No phenomenal content is introduced. No consciousness is secured. No completion is introduced. (shrink)

This paper fixes consciousness within the second system of Kasei-Theory as a non-modal local readability condition without interiority. -/- Consciousness is not introduced as interiority, subjectivity, self-awareness, cognition, experience, mental state, inner access, reflection, intentionality, awareness, perception, qualia, life-process, biological substrate, or ontology. Reading does not establish consciousness. Time does not establish consciousness. Observation does not establish consciousness. State does not establish consciousness. Field does not establish consciousness. Interaction does not establish consciousness. Information does not establish consciousness. Phase does not (...) establish consciousness. Life does not establish consciousness. Configuration does not establish consciousness. -/- Consciousness is fixed only as the local readability condition under which distributed maintainability is readable as consciousness without interiority. This readability does not establish inner domain, subject-position, first-person structure, self-awareness, cognition, experience, mental state, intentionality, reflection, qualia, access, biological substrate, or ontology. -/- This paper does not present a completed theory of consciousness, interiority, subjectivity, self-awareness, cognition, experience, awareness, intentionality, reflection, qualia, biological substrate, access, or ontology. It fixes only consciousness as local readability within configurational maintainability. -/- No interiority is presupposed. No subjectivity is introduced. No self-awareness is established. No cognition is restored. No mental state is introduced. No qualia is secured. No completion is introduced. (shrink)

Sometimes we do what other people tell us to. A natural thought is that the motivation to act on an instruction comes about rationally as the result of interpreting an imperative and deciding to act on it; that is, by updating on information that gets mediated through belief‐desire reasoning. We defend an alternative “Spinozan” view about how instructions—specifically those performed with imperative sentences—might give rise to a motivation to act, namely, that when someone is told to do something, this activates (...) motivations directly, without the person updating on information that gets mediated through belief‐desire reasoning. We will discuss two general strategies for thinking about how imperatives might supply motivation that are consistent with this view—one based on models of dissonance reduction and the other involving a more direct link between imperative utterances and motivational mental states. We will conclude with a discussion of how ecological considerations might favor a Spinozan process of motivation from imperatives. (shrink)

“万物皆备于我矣，反身而诚，乐莫大焉。”（《孟子・尽心上》）是孟子心性论的核心命 题，亦是中国哲学史上阐释分歧最多、争议最久的经典公案。程朱理学将其释为 “万 物之理皆备于我性分之内”，陆王心学则解作 “万物之理皆在我心中”，二者均在原文基 础上添加了 “理” 或 “心即理” 的预设，致使千年诠释始终围绕心物关系纠缠不清。本 文以 “一源多元论”“玄弦论”“三相感”“各归其正” 为原创理论框架，对孟子此句进行系 统性文本还原与方法论诊断。研究指出：“万物皆备于我” 中的 “万物”，并非外在物理 之物，亦非 “万物之理”，而是指人心所能呈现的各类状态 —— 情绪、心念、四端、 习气等有情世界现象。孟子此句意在阐明：人心本具一切可能的心性状态（恻隐、羞 恶、辞让、是非等），是为 “万物皆备”；反身内求、使心回归真实无妄的清净状态 （诚），即可获得至深之乐（乐莫大焉）。这一解读无须添加 “理” 字，亦无须预设 “心 即理”，仅依文本字面与上下文贯通即可成立。本文以此新解驳斥程朱、陆王的添加式 诠释，并指出心学将 “万物” 误释为外在事物或万物之理，本质是混淆心性领域与物理 领域的存在层次，属于方法论错位。本文提出修正路径：心归心（修心以玄弦论），物 归物（物理以科学），经典诠释归经典诠释（文本考据与义理贯通），各归其正。这一 分析既还原孟子本义，也为经典诠释提供方法论参照。.

The thesis that knowledge is a factive mental state plays a central role in knowledge-first epistemology, but accepting this thesis requires also accepting an unusually severe version of externalism about the mind. On this strong attitude externalism, whether S is in the mental state of knowledge can and often will rapidly change in virtue of changes in external states of reality with which S has no causal contact. It is commonly thought that this externalism requirement originates in the factivity of (...) knowledge. However, despite a number of recent defenses of non-factive accounts of knowledge, epistemology has yet to consider whether a non-factive approach might produce a version of the mental state thesis that can avoid strong externalism. Here I do just that, exploring how three different proposals for weakening factivity might be adapted to theories of knowledge as a non-factive mental state. Contrary to what we might expect, however, none of these proposals are compatible with anything close to attitude internalism about knowledge—or even a substantially weaker externalism. All told, the widespread view that wraps up the severe externalism required for knowledge to be a mental state in factivity is mistaken. Knowledge’s external-world connection runs far deeper than the factivity constraint. (shrink)

I present a new attitude puzzle involving disjunction. Specifically, though it can sound strange to ascribe the belief that or when and are about very different subject‐matters, we can assure ourselves that the strangeness is merely pragmatic because of the alethic properties of disjunction. But frustration‐ and other non‐doxastic attitude‐ascriptions also sound very strange. Are the corresponding frustratingness, etc. properties of disjunction the same as with truth? I will argue that they are not: frustratingness and desirability, and likely the other (...) non‐doxastic analogues (e.g., for sadness, fear, regret, etc.) do not work at all like truth does for belief. That means there is no obvious route to make sense of the strangeness of the relevant frustration‐ and desire‐ascriptions with disjunctive contents with very unrelated disjuncts. I argue that frustratingness's and desirability's behavior in this respect, while not to my knowledge noticed before, seems to arise from natural and general structural features of that kind of property: roughly, frustratingness requires that each property essential to the given state of affairs said to be frustrating contribute to the frustratingness of the state of affairs. This suggests that we just do not have these attitudes, not just that the ascriptions sound strange. (shrink)

I investigate the semantics of conditionals with proposition-taking attitude expressions in their consequents. I defend a “face-value” interpretation of non-doxastic versions, arguing that everyone is committed to the truth of such interpretations in circumstances that would otherwise prompt theorists to interpret them in other ways. I do this by arguing from the obvious acceptability of attitude ascriptions with ‘ever’ free relatives. Doxastic conditionals require complicating my account somewhat; I show how to demarcate the class, and then argue that we aren’t (...) committed to the truth of a face-value interpretation of such conditionals. In handling the non-doxastic conditionals, we need say nothing semantically novel at all. I leave the details of doxastic attitude conditionals for future work. (shrink)

Is all consciousness ultimately perceptual in nature? Many have thought so, and for good reason: if this is not the case, then popular reductive representationalist theories of consciousness are false. Enter reductive sensory views. These views attempt to reduce cognitive, affective, and agentive phenomenology to the phenomenology of familiar sensory modalities, such as sight, hearing, touch, proprioception, and so on. In this paper, I offer a novel argument against reductive sensory views of agentive phenomenology. The idea is something like this: (...) with some notable exceptions, the literature has tended to focus on the phenomenology of controlled bodily movement. But moving our bodies is not the only thing we do as agents. We also, for example, reason, imagine, focus, and resist temptation. These are controlled mental events, and as others have noted, a complete theory of what it’s like to act as an agent ought to account for the phenomenology of mental actions as well as bodily actions. To make my case, I focus on a specific, common example of a deficit in agentive phenomenology that has been underappreciated in the literature on mental action–the feeling of lacking control over eating urges. This feeling is well-documented, and characterizes binge eating episodes as well as the eating disorders of which binge eating is a symptom. I argue that even if reductive sensory theories can account for the feeling of lacking control over bodily movement, they lack the resources to account for the feeling of lacking control over urges. In the end, perceptual reductionism about agentive phenomenology is out, and the implications for reductive representationalist theories of consciousness are grim. (shrink)

Are doubt and suspension of judgment similar attitudes? In the burgeoning literature on suspension of judgment, the notion of doubt is curiously absent. This paper aims to argue for the plausibility of an identity claim, which I term the “No-Difference View.” This view suggests that there is no substantial difference between being in doubt and suspending judgment. The argument will draw on historical and systematic considerations that support the No-Difference View as a plausible view within the logical space of positions.

Many philosophers claim that we have a duty to know our motives. However, prominent theories of the mind suggest that we can’t. Such scepticism about knowledge of one’s motives is based on psychological evidence. I show that this evidence only mandates scepticism about knowledge of one’s motives if we rely on a mistaken assumption which I call ‘the myth of the one true motive’. If we reject this myth, we see that there is space to plausibly interpret the empirical data (...) such that knowledge of one’s motives is difficult, but not impossible. (shrink)

This article establishes a dialogue between the work of David Yaden and Andrew Newberg in The Varieties of Spiritual Experience (2023) and the philosophical-theological framework of Thomas Aquinas. Drawing on three key categories from the book – the triggers of spiritual experiences, their classification into six types (numinous, revelatory, synchronic, mystical, aesthetic, and paranormal), and their transformative outcomes – we employ Thomistic concepts such as hylomorphism, the person as capax Dei, the nature-grace relationship, extraordinary spiritual gifts, and the role of (...) the will in the acquisition of virtues, to show how the Thomistic approach brings light to contemporary research on spiritual experience and is open to learning from new data. (shrink)

It is common to think of reflection as giving rise to second order belief. Yet then it is open to Kornblith's critique: Why wouldn’t the problems that arise the first order not arise at the second order as well? And why should we think of reflection as reliable—especially since empirical research shows it not to be? In this chapter, I argue that the problem lies not with reflection as such but with Kornblith’s conception of reflection as second order belief. This (...) conception is distorting because it reifies the mind: it conceptualizes our believing something as being the kind of thing that persists as it is, independently of our attitudes. Yet our beliefs do not persist as they are, independently of our attitudes, precisely because they form part of our attitudes. Instead, I conjecture, reflection brings into view the way in which our beliefs and other attitudes are essentially social. (shrink)

This essay offers an explanation of how assertions express that the speaker has a propositional attitude toward what's asserted. The explanation is that this feature of assertion is owed to a hearer's spontaneous mindreading. I call this the assertoric mindreading hypothesis. Once developed and defended, the hypothesis is used to investigate which attitude is expressed. Since the attitude expressed is the attitude tracked during mindreading, the attitude must have a certain profile. It is argued that only factive attitudes like knowledge (...) have this profile. Non‐factive attitudes like belief or acceptance are ineligible. (shrink)

Across numerous languages, the attitude verb _think_ is learned later than other attitude verbs like _want_. But why? This essays advances a new hypothesis: children initially treat _think_ as a veridical yet non-factive verb akin to a class of verbs I call confirmatives. This hypothesis is argued to better explain existing data that troubles other hypotheses, and to find support from the ease with which children represent knowledge but not belief.

摘要:【目的】 本文旨在超越西方情绪理论在分类学上的局限，通过整合《易 经》六十四卦的符号系统、《中庸》的"中和"哲学以及组合数学，构建一个名为 "情绪动态平衡模型"的新理论框架，以系统阐释情绪从本源到现象的完整谱系。 【方法】首先，将《中庸》"未发之中"界定为情绪系统的本源基准状态（对应乾 卦），将"发而中节之和"定义为情绪的理想功能状态；继而，借鉴卦爻结构提出 六个基本的情绪心理维度，通过二进制编码与六十四卦建立映射；最后，利用组 合数学严格推导情绪状态总数，并阐述其与中医脏腑功能的对应关系。【结果】 研究结果表明:（1）情绪系统存在一个本源基准状态（"未发之中"）与一个最佳 功能状态（"发而中节之和"），六十三种具体情绪状态是偏离此"中和"状态的表 现；（2）情绪状态的总数 TT 可由公式 T=∑k=16C(6,k)=63T=∑k=16​ C(6,k)=63 精确描述，并与六十四卦（除乾卦外）形成结构性映射；（3）该模 型在哲学基础、心理结构与生理机制上，实现了与中医情志理论及现代神经科学 视角的初步对接。【结论】本模型为理解复杂情绪提供了一个兼具文化底蕴、数 理逻辑与生理基础的全新范式，不仅为情绪分类学贡献了一个系统性框架，也 为未来的实证研究与临床应用开辟了跨学科的新路径。.

摘要：本文旨在系统探讨《黄帝内经》中提出的七情（喜、怒、忧、思、悲、恐、 惊）学说，并基于阴阳五行理论，构建一个阐释情志活动影响人体健康的结构化 模型。论文首次明确提出七情内在的阴阳属性划分（如怒为阳、郁为阴）及其与 五脏（肝、心、脾、肺、肾）五行配属的对应关系，揭示了情志致病的动态病理 学路径。通过跨学科的文献分析与理论思辨，本研究将《黄帝内经》“恬淡虚无， 真气从之”的核心养生理念，与现代神经科学、内分泌学的“稳态平衡”概念进 行深度对话与互释。研究提出：“恬淡虚无”可理解为一种理想的中枢情绪稳态， 而“真气从之”则是以此为基础的自主神经平衡与内分泌功能的最佳运行状态。 本文论证了负面情志通过“扰动气机”这一中介环节，破坏阴阳平衡与五行生克， 进而引发特定脏腑的神经功能紊乱与激素分泌失调，最终导致疾病的现代科学内 涵。本研究不仅为传统中医情志理论提供了清晰的现代化阐释框架，也为现代心 身医学、心理生理学及压力管理等领域提供了源自东方智慧的独特理论贡献与实 践启示。.

Suspension of judgment is often viewed as a member of the doxastic club, alongside belief and disbelief. In this paper, I challenge the widespread view that suspension is a commitment-involving stance on a par with belief and disbelief. Friedman's counterexamples to the traditional view that suspended judgement merely requires considering a proposition and being in a state of non-belief are criticized. I introduce a refined conception, emphasizing that suspension involves a proximal causal link between examining a proposition and the resulting (...) non-belief state. This episode manifests as an incapacity at making a judgement, occurring under specific circumstances. The refined view clarifies the nature of suspended judgement. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the elucidation of the nature of inquiry. I start with some common desiderata for any theory of inquiry. I then categorize inquiry as a structured process. By focusing on its essential components, I advance a new characterization of inquiry as a combination of questioning attitudes guiding actions. Finally, I turn to the recent objection that questioning attitudes are not necessary for inquiry. I argue that inquiry is a structured process essentially constituted by questioning attitudes (...) having two precise functional roles, initiating and guiding the deployment of cognitive capacities towards an epistemic goal. (shrink)

What is curiosity? An attractive option is that it is a desire to know. This analysis has been recently challenged by what I call interrogativism, the view that inquiring attitudes such as curiosity have questions rather than propositions as contents. In this paper, I defend the desire-to-know view, and make three contributions to the debate. First, I refine the view in a way that avoids the problems of its simplest version. Second, I present a new argument for the desire-to-know view (...) that focuses on ascriptions of the form ‘S is curious to ϕ’, which, despite their prevalence, have been ignored in the literature. Third, I examine the central motivation for interrogativism – the argument from metacognition, according to which animals can be curious yet do not have the metacognitive capacities required by desires to know – and argue that it rests on questionable assumptions about desires and attitude ascriptions. (shrink)

It is common to explain agreement and disagreement in terms of relations among mental states. The main purpose of the present discussion is to present an alternative way of thinking about the relationship between mental states and agreement and disagreement. The idea is to connect agreement and disagreement with the individuation of mental states. More specifically, for at least some mental states, standing in the same relations of agreement and disagreement is both necessary and sufficient for identity. This provides us (...) with a framework for discussing issues related to agreement and disagreement. It is for instance well-known that de se beliefs raise questions about agreement and disagreement. The present framework allows us to discuss such beliefs while relying on assumptions that are interestingly different from the standard assumptions in the literature. While most of the discussion focuses on beliefs, there are other mental states, such as desires, that can seemingly also stand in relations of agreement and disagreement. This raises questions about how far the framework can be extended. (shrink)

O estudo da mente envolve um universo múltiplo e infinito. Assim, o pesquisador que se dedica a esse campo não pode ter como objetivo chegar a respostas fechadas e absolutas, mas deve prezar pela construção de raciocínios científicos sérios e embasados. Nesta obra, fazemos a você o convite de investigar o que é a mente, o cérebro e a consciência. Juntos, vamos desenvolver formas de explorar essas questões de maneira objetiva, buscando compreender conceitos e teorias que versam sobre esses e (...) outros elementos. (shrink)

Recently, an increasing number of scholars have been showing interest in old-fashioned racism again. While recent studies on old-fashioned racism apparently increase our knowledge of this psychological theory of racism, the studies actually shed light on a different type of racism, namely offensive racism. The aim of this text is to argue that psychological theories of racism, like old-fashioned racism and modern racism, depend on societies’ social norms. I will show that questionnaires are highly sensitive to social norms, and if (...) there is change in social norms, the original measurement object alters. The theory of old-fashioned racism implicitly assumes agents that follow (or conform to) the social norm to behave prejudiced. Today, however, this social norm does not exist in Western societies. If agents express the same prejudices today, they indicate their willingness to breach the social norm to behave unprejudiced. Thereby, classic old-fashioned racism measures reflect a new kind of racism today. (shrink)

In this reply to comments by Neera Badhwar and Barbara Montero, I examine more deeply the nature of cognitive engagement and how it is distinct from other forms of cognitive activity; revisit the distinction between interesting and boring experiences; and present an analysis of all-things-considered value that illustrates the contributions that the interesting makes. I conclude by considering what all-things-considered value becomes for patients with severe cognitive impairments.

The essay contributes to the philosophical literature on emotions by advancing a detailed analysis of jadedness and by investigating whether jadedness can be subject to the various standards that are often thought to apply to our emotional states. The essay argues that jadedness is the affective experience of weariness, lack of care, and mild disdain with some object, and that it crucially involves the realisation that such an object was previously, but is no longer, significant to us. On the basis (...) of such a characterisation, jadedness is shown to be an affective call to restructure our commitments and values in a manner that we no longer assign any kind of significance to its object. Precisely because of its potential to affect our lives in such a fashion, jadedness is shown to carry philosophical, psychological, and even social importance. (shrink)

-/- Zuk et al. (2023) examined researchers’ views on how deep brain stimulation may impact patients’ personality, mood, and behaviour (PMB). The team found that experts vary substantially in the notion of personality they employ. However, despite noting the lack of conceptual precision, no attempt was made at scientifically defining any of the involved concepts, so that the results of the different interviews remain largely incommensurable. In this comment, I am doing the interpretative work that the authors should have undertaken (...) following the descriptive part of the paper: first, disentangling the PMB cluster by defining what exactly constitutes personality, mood, and behaviour; and secondly, conceptualising the notion of personality change. I am arguing that what sets personality changes apart from other modifications is diachronic persistence. (shrink)

This paper aims to present and evaluate Brentano’s account of the individuation of mental acts. In his early works, Brentano assimilated mental acts to tropes; however, he encountered difficulties in explaining their individuation, since the usual solutions for the individuation of tropes were not readily applicable to his theory of mental acts. In a later period, Brentano introduced into his psychology what he called the “soul”, and this allowed him to explain the individuation of mental acts. Finally, after his “reistic” (...) turn, he excluded mental acts from his ontology, for he rejected abstracta of any kind, including abstract particulars, and admitted only things, or res (in Latin), that is, concrete particulars; in his late philosophy, there are no “thinkings”, but only “thinkers”. However, he still needed to explain what individuates different thinkers, and this was again the soul. In the conclusion, the paper critically compares the different theoretical options considered by Brentano. (shrink)

People reason not only in beliefs, but also in intentions, preferences, and other attitudes. They form preferences from existing preferences, or intentions from existing beliefs and intentions, and so on. This often involves choosing between rival conclusions. Building on Broome (Rationality through reasoning, Hoboken, Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118609088, 2013) and Dietrich et al. (J Philos 116:585–614. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20191161138, 2019), we present a philosophical and formal analysis of reasoning in attitudes, with or without facing choices in reasoning. We give different accounts of choosing, in (...) terms of a conscious activity or a partly subconscious process. Reasoning in attitudes differs fundamentally from reasoning _about_ attitudes, a form of theoretical reasoning in which one discovers rather than forms attitudes. We show that reasoning in attitudes has standard formal properties (such as monotonicity), but is indeterministic, reflecting choice in reasoning. Like theoretical reasoning, it need not follow logical entailment, but for a more radical reason, namely indeterminism. This makes reasoning in attitudes harder to model logically than theoretical reasoning. But it can be studied abstractly, using indeterministic consequence operators. (shrink)

I make a proposal about what wondering is and how it differs from other mental phenomena like curiosity. I argue that, though it's tempting to analyze wondering as a desire to know the answer to the question one wonders about, that would be wrong, since wondering is an activity rather than a state, i.e., something we do. I also argue that wondering about a question needn't even essentially involve a desire to know the answer to that question, even as a (...) necessary part of what rationalizes the wondering. Instead, on my account, to wonder about a question is to consider various possible answers as possible answers, guided by mechanisms whose function is to make the subject epistemically better off with respect to those answers, and which considering ceases at least when a person is consciously certain of the answer to their question. This allows wondering to not be objectionably metacognitive, and allows us to make sense of cases in which the motivating desire isn't to know an answer but just to wonder itself. (shrink)

My dissertation puts forward a critique of the phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT). According to standard accounts of PIT, all genuine intentionality is either identical to or partly grounded in phenomenal consciousness. I argue that it is a conceptually significant mistake to construe conscious experiences in terms of token mental states that instantiate phenomenal properties. This mistake is predicated on ignoring an important difference in the temporal character—what I call the “temporal shape”—between states and properties as opposed to conscious experiences. States (...) and properties lack a temporal shape, but conscious experience has a temporal shape. Thus, in order to adequately capture our phenomenology of temporality we need a mental ontology that adequately reflects this distinction. A second aim of this dissertation is to defend a mereological account of phenomenal intentionality, which says that phenomenality and intentionality are related by being proper parts of a first-personal, subjective, mental event. On this approach, the conditions of satisfaction for a subject’s first-personal, subjective, mental event just are the conditions of satisfaction for phenomenal intentionality. I explore the theoretical grounds for a mereological account of phenomenal intentionality and conclude that it does a better job of explaining difficult cases like the problem of unconscious thought (e.g., your belief that “grass is green”). Thus, we have prima facie support for a mereological account of phenomenal intentionality exactly where competing accounts fail. (shrink)

This volume provides novel approaches to a variety of questions about ambivalence and the role it plays in our lives. As the contributions illustrate, ambivalence finds its way into a gamut of philosophical and psychological debates about rationality, skepticism, emotions, intentionality, racism, global justice, well-being, mindfulness, and intersubjectivity. These debates concern questions like: “Is ambivalence distinct from uncertainty?”, “Does ambivalence affect the way we respond to paradoxes?”, “How can two nations come to an agreement about nuclear disarmament?”, “Is ambivalence irrational (...) when it frustrates effective action?”, “Why do people who have had training in law enforcement commit such heinous acts of violence?”, “How does mindfulness resolve ambivalence?”, and “Why isn’t valuing your interests and ends and taking them seriously sufficient for self-love?” . (shrink)

Trois questions principales sont examinées dans cette entrée encyclopédique : 1) Qu’est-ce que la suspension du jugement? Quelle est la relation entre la suspension du jugement et l’enquête? 3) Quelle est la valeur de la suspension du jugement?

Why do we tend to think that phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem? The answer seems to lie in part in the fact that we have the impression that phenomenal experiences are presented to us in a particularly immediate and revelatory way: we have a sense of acquaintance with our experiences. Recent views have offered resources to explain such persisting impression, by hypothesizing that the very design of our cognitive systems inevitably leads us to hold beliefs about our own experiences (...) with certainty. I argue against this kind of “designed certainty” views. First, I claim that it is doubtful that we really hold beliefs about our own experiences with certainty—in any sense of certainty that would make our phenomenal beliefs special. Second, I claim that, even if it were the case that we hold beliefs about experiences with certainty, this would fall short of explaining our sense of acquaintance. (shrink)

Self-deception makes best sense as a self-defensive mechanism by which the self protects itself from painful reality. Hence, we typically imagine self-deceivers as people who cause themselves to believe as true what they want to be true. Some self-deceivers, however, end up believing what they do not want to be true. Their behaviour can be explained on the hypothesis that the function of this behaviour is protecting the agent's perceived focal benefit at the cost of inflicting short-term harm, which is (...) a basis for a unified account of the phenomenon. In this paper, I argue that this view is narrow. Cases of altruistic, benevolent, and even self-punishing self-deception also exist. There, the function is not the self-deceiver's benefit. In fact, self-deception may have no function at all. Therefore, I put forward a novel account that analyses the function of self-deception on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

People are systematically biased against the possibility that ideas are innate. Berent (2020) traces these attitudes to an ontological dissonance, arising from the collision of two fundamental principles of human cognition -- dualism and essentialism. Carruthers (this issue) challenges this hypothesis and attributes our empiricist bias primarily to mindreading intuitions. Here, I counter Carruthers' concerns and show that mindreading cannot be the sole source of the empiricist bias. Specifically, mindreading fails to explain why our empiricist intuitions depend on the perceived (...) immateriality of ideas. The ontological dissonance hypothesis accounts for these facts. Because essentialism requires innate traits to be material, and because, per dualism, ideas are immaterial, people conclude that ideas cannot be innate. (shrink)

Cushman claims that post hoc rationalization of habitual behavior can improve future reasoning. His characterization of habits includes two components: habitual behavior is a non-rational process, and habitual behavior is sometimes rationalized. We argue that Cushman fails to show any habits that are apt targets for rationalization. Thus, it's unclear when – if ever – rationalizing habits would improve reasoning.

I draw on empirical results from perceptual and motor learning to argue for an anti-intellectualist position on skill. Anti-intellectualists claim that skill or know-how is non-propositional. Recent proponents of the view have stressed the flexible but fine-grained nature of skilled control as supporting their position. However, they have left the nature of the mental representations underlying such control undertheorized. This leaves open several possible strategies for the intellectualist, particularly with regard to skill learning. Propositional knowledge may structure the inputs to (...) sensorimotor learning, may constitute the outcomes of said learning, or may be needed for the employment of learned skill. I argue that sensorimotor learning produces multi-scale associational representations, and that these representations are of the right sort to underlie flexible and fine-grained control. I then suggest that their content is vitally indeterminate with regard to propositional content attribution, because they exhibit a kind of open-ended structure. I articulate this kind of structure, and use it to respond to the three intellectualist strategies. I then show how the perspective I advance offers insights for understanding both instruction and expert practice. (shrink)

Intellectual humility has attracted attention in both philosophy and psychology. Philosophers have clarified the nature of intellectual humility as an epistemic virtue; and psychologists have developed scales for measuring people’s intellectual humility. Much less attention has been paid to the potential effects of intellectual humility on people’s negative attitudes and to its relationship with prejudice-based epistemic vices. Here we fill these gaps by focusing on the relationship between intellectual humility and prejudice. To clarify this relationship, we conducted four empirical studies. (...) The results of these studies show three things. First, people are systematically prejudiced towards members of groups perceived as dissimilar. Second, intellectual humility weakens the association between perceived dissimilarity and prejudice. Third, more intellectual humility is associated withmoreprejudice overall. We show that this apparently paradoxical pattern of results is consistent with the idea that it is both psychologically and rationally plausible that one person is at the same time intellectually humble, epistemically virtuous and strongly prejudiced. (shrink)

In “Against alief”, Mandelbaum :197–211, 2013) argues that if aliefs—a sui generis kind of mental states originally posited by Gendler :634–663, 2008a; Mind Lang 23:552–585, 2008b; Analysis 72:799–811, 2012)—are to play the explanatory role that is usually ascribed to them, their contents must be propositionally structured. However, he contends, if aliefs have propositional contents, it is unclear what distinguishes them from beliefs. I find Mandelbaum’s arguments in favour of the idea that aliefs must have propositional contents to be compelling. However, (...) I think aliefs should only be credited with a deflated kind of propositional content that I will baptize as “semi-structured propositional contents”, since they are composed by representational units that are neither fully un-detachable nor fully re-combinable. As I will argue, this way of understanding the content of aliefs not only allows us to accommodate all the worries raised by Mandelbaum regarding the nature of their contents, but it also it helps explain why aliefs have some of the peculiar features that Gendler ascribes to them. Consequently, it gives to the advocates of aliefs new tools to defend, against Mandelbaum, that these are sui generis mental states with their distinctive functional role in our cognitive lives. (shrink)