Self-ascriptions of one’s current mental states often enjoy a distinctively strong presumption of truth. Some philosophers claim that this ascriptive authority is _non-transferable_ in the sense that it cannot be matched or surpassed by anyone else. In this paper I examine this non-transferability claim in the light of potential extended mentality cases. These cases threaten to show that popular accounts of ascriptive authority do not vindicate its alleged non-transferability. However, I also argue that a less popular account of ascriptive (...) authority can do so. (shrink)

Reflecting on modern ideas about the diversity of intelligence, the author of the article refers to the phenomenon of mentality as a relatively holistic set of thoughts, beliefs, and spiritual skills that creates a picture of the world and holds together the unity of a cultural tradition or some community. Mentality is considered as a stable attitude of the inner world of people, which unites them into social and historical communities, and in the socio-psychological and epistemological sense is (...) a set of attitudes and predispositions of an individual to a certain type of thinking and action. The article distinguishes between mentality and public attitudes, mentality and value orientations, mentality and ideology. It is shown that mentality goes back to the unconscious depths of the psyche, and in this sense it is not always articulated by its bearers. Mentality is reconstructed by the author of the article in a research way through comparison with another mentality. (shrink)

The concept of mentality in the context of today's post-pandemic society, its role in the development of historical and socio-postmodern scientific thought are analyzed. Its correlation with other categories has been determined, revealing phenomena that are close in meaning. Revealed the significance of the category of mentality for the study of the development of society.Mentality as a system is a categorical characteristic of a nation, and hence of a society, the core of which is a given nation. (...) The study of mentality allows us to understand the internal relationships in society identify the internal reasons for the development of society and do praxeological research. The analysis of mentality within the framework of social philosophy cannot be limited to a certain time period, this category characterizes the nation and society at the present stage, accumulating in itself all the historical influences and changes projected at the present.The article examines the phenomenon of mentality as a system of internal deep-psychological socio-cultural attitudes of the individual. The article considers and substantiates a mental approach to understanding the phenomena of socially individual life. The philosophical and educational aspects of the formation of personality mentality and the main "problematic sides" of modern education through the prism of the mental approach are actualized. (shrink)

Although now marginalized, Lévy-Bruhl's theory of primitive mentality played a pivotal role in the formation of anthropology as an academic discipline ‒ particularly in France ‒ and stands as one of the foundational theoretical constructs in its intellectual history. This paper proceeds from the assumption that the theory's ambivalence ‒ its simultaneous reliance on universalist and relativist assumptions ‒ combined with its disciplinary foundationality, may justify its reconsideration within a contemporary epistemological framework. Through a comparative analysis of key interpretive (...) traditions (sociologistic, psychologistic, and linguistic), the paper demonstrates how Lévy-Bruhl's conception of mentality exposes fundamental tensions within the theoretical architecture of anthropology, particularly between universalism and cultural relativism. If this ambivalence is consistently reconstructed, Lévy-Bruhl's theory can be reinterpreted as a lens through which to gain deeper insight into the epistemological and methodological presuppositions of anthropology as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

This edition's postscript includes further reflections on these themes and others, and relates them to recent writings of other philosophers and computer ...

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The question of national mentality influence on the Ukrainian legal culture development has been studied in the article. It has been noted that the highest peak of its development the Ukrainian legal culture achieved when the emotional and perceptible components were accompanied by active intellectual work of mind. This fact has been proved by legal culture relics of the princedom and Cossack state building epochs. Key words: National mentality, legal culture, national identity, outlook, outlook, legal consciousness, spirituality.

As a result of the dynamic structure of society, there is a constant change in social life and researching the change is among the unit analysis of the field of sociology that takes society as a subject matter for itself. There are various ways to examine the change that has taken place in society. One of them is the implicit reference system thereby examining mindset structures. There are many factors such as economy, culture, and education which constitute mentalities and one (...) of them is religion. Religions because of their unique characters have an aspect to influence mentalities. From this point of view, the first issue in this article to be examined is the relationship between mentality-social change. Subsequently, insights will be given about mentality-religion relations, and lastly, an attempt to unearth the impact of religion-social change relations on mentalities will be made. For further clarification of all this process through an example, Sabri F. Ülgener's Zihniyet ve Din (Mentality and Religion) will be examined and Ülgener's views will be analyzed on the ground of religion-change relation. (shrink)

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) systems with sophisticated and increasingly humanlike conversational capabilities, especially large language models (LLMs), has intensified public and scholarly debates about machine minds. It is now by no means uncommon for users to describe AI companions and assistants in terms once reserved for humans and animals, attributing to them beliefs, intentions, or even feelings. Yet cognitive science remains deeply divided, in part because questions of consciousness and intentionality appear intractable. Largely bracketing these metaphysical controversies, (...) this paper analyses three broad frameworks for interpreting mental state attributions to AI, with particular focus on LLMs. -/- I begin by outlining the growing prevalence of such attributions and argue that they reflect what I call the Anthropomimetic Turn in AI development, namely the fusion of advanced problem-solving capacities with intuitive humanlike conversational interfaces. I then consider three frameworks for understanding such attributions. The first holds we should treat LLMs as mindless machines, claiming their behaviour can be fully explained in algorithmic or implementational terms without invoking psychological states. The second approach is the roleplay view, which holds that attributions of mentality should be understood analogously to our engagement with fiction: useful heuristics for prediction but not to be taken literally. The third proposes that LLMs can be regarded as minimal cognitive agents, warranting the attribution of beliefs, desires, and intentions insofar as such attributions track stable behavioural dispositions and support predictive and explanatory success. -/- While identifying the limitations of each framework, I suggest that all three can contribute insights to the project of understanding and assessing the appropriateness of attributions of mentality to artificial systems. Clarifying these options provides cognitive science with a constructive role in shaping folk attitudes, informing policy debates, and guiding ethical reflection on the rapidly expanding domain of human–AI interaction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Studies on bottom-line mentality suggest that an exclusive focus on bottom-line outcomes has detrimental consequences; however, it is not clear when this leads to negative outcomes. This study examines the role of supervisors’ BLM in fostering workaholism in subordinates. These supervisors, by creating a bottom-line driven environment, may intensify workaholism, leading to workplace cheating behavior. However, not all subordinates react in the same manner. We theorize that the positive relationship between supervisor BLM and workplace cheating behavior through workaholism (...) is strengthened when the psychological entitlement is high. The moderation-mediation model was tested with data from 193 employees working in various industries. Our findings demonstrate that under conditions of high psychological entitlement, workaholism resulting from supervisor BLM leads to workplace cheating behavior. Implications of these findings have been discussed. (shrink)

John Searle distinguished between weak and strong artificial intelligence (AI). This essay discusses a third alternative, mild AI, according to which a machine may be capable of possessing a species of mentality. Using James Fetzer's conception of minds as semiotic systems, the possibility of what might be called ``mild AI'' receives consideration. Fetzer argues against strong AI by contending that digital machines lack the ground relationship required of semiotic systems. In this essay, the implementational nature of semiotic processes posited (...) by Charles S. Peirce's triadic sign relation is re-examined in terms of the underlying dispositional processes and the ontological levels they would span in an inanimate machine. This suggests that, if non-human mentality can be replicated rather than merely simulated in a digital machine, the direction to pursue appears to be that of mild AI. (shrink)

Some fashionable leftist movements and populist intellectuals habitually blame the sources of information for public ignorance about the miserable state of the world. It could be argued, however, that the masses are ignorant because they prefer ignorance. A mass individual is politically apathetic and intellectually lazy. As a result, even when huge amounts of information are available, which is the case in this epoch, the masses insist on choosing ignorance. It is true that there is not enough information about what (...) has happened in a place such as Darfur, but the masses choose not to access even the amount of information that is available. The great majority of people in China, Iran, and America, despite the fact that they have varying amounts of access to various types of “knowledge,” still tend to be misinformed. It seems that a mass individual is curious only about what directly affects his/her own personal life. I will explore the connection between mass mentality and the culture industry in order to capture the essential role of the former in the latter. I will also argue that a mass individual is the source of fascism although fascism as a phenomenon needs a mass culture in which to flourish. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the thought and behavior involved in drug dependence is associated with a certain pre-theoretic conception of the self that finds philosophical expression as a grossly simplified form of materialism. Addicts tend not to take mentality seriously: They do not understand themselves as minded beings capable of self-awareness and development through intentional action. Recognizing the practical implications of accepting this philosophically unconvincing view, I argue, encourages a modification of self-conception that is instrumental to the (...) process of recovery from addiction. Using a combination of philosophical analysis and close reading of a trio of narratives that describe drug dependence and recovery, I pursue the possibility that rehabilitation may involve the clarification and alteration of self-conception in such a way that emphasizes autonomous agency and certain values that have not yet been embraced by twelve-step programs, namely, integration, apprehension, moderation, and self-discipline. The rich and substantial history of analytic–philosophical thought about the self is of immense practical value to people impacted by drug dependence and/or engaged in recovery from it; philosophy offers us a set of investigative tools, terms, and concepts that may help to map the different cognitive routes to successful self-rehabilitation. A philosophical consideration of the use of self-related words and ideas within the context of narratives of addiction and recovery may bear directly and significantly on the improvement of the lives of those persons who struggle to overcome drug dependence. (shrink)

This paper probes the explanatory value of mentality as a social emergent in general and of the Zeitgeist in particular. Durkheim’s contention that social facts have emergent properties is open to the charge that it implies logically inconsistent “downward causation.” On the basis of an analogy with the brain–mind dilemma and mental emergentism, the first part of the essay discusses and dismisses the notion of social emergent properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of their component parts—individuals—and their (...) internal relations. However, ontological individualism need not compel us to methodological individualism. The second part introduces two challenges to methodological individualism. The most radical is Rajeev Bhargava’s assertion that the meaning of a belief is determined not by the individual holding the belief but by the entire linguistic community. Bhargava’s “contextualism” is closely related to the structural demand that we focus on discourse as a communal entity instead of continuing a delusive quest for the intentions of individual speakers. A more modest alternative is Margaret Gilbert’s plea for using “plural subjects”—social groups in which “participant agents” act jointly or have a jointly accepted view—in the practical syllogisms that are central to rationalizing action explanation. The notion of plural subjects lends credence to, and is reinforced by, “situationist” social psychology, which shows how people conform to peer groups, authorities, and roles. Building on Wesley Salmon’s and Peter Railton’s ecumenical accounts of explanation, the essay argues that both individual rationalizing action explanations and explanations based on plural agents can give explanatory information: we need not choose one or the other. The third part discusses how the Zeitgeist can provide added explanatory value in an analysis of the New Left. This is possible if the “spirit of the sixties” is seen as representing the values and worldviews of the “sixties generation” as a social group in Gilbert’s terms. Radical youth would suspend judgment and pool their wills to conform to what they perceived were the views of the imagined “sixties community” or—rendering more explanatory force—to smaller parts of it in the guise of peer groups and organizations. (shrink)

In the article there has been carried out the retrospective analysis of understanding mentality. The author accentuates the vision of mentality as the expression of the most essential relations of actuality. The term is interpreted from ontological positions. Ontological basics of mentality are given through its functioning as a priori structure which has level character. There has been formulated the definition of mentality. There have been outlined the subjects of mentality. There is proposed the vision (...) of mentality as a philosophical category. There is positioned its use while researching the patterns of culture development with internal processes of self-organisation and external constructive impacts. Mentality is interpreted as a principle of thinking which means the unity of biological, psychological and cultural basics in socio-cultural subjects. There is proposed the idea of using a category "mentality" as a principle of thinking in different sciences such as history, philosophical anthropology, psychology etc. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore three alternative frameworks for understanding the nature of language and mentality, which accent syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical aspects of the phenomena with which they are concerned, respectively. Although the computational conception currently exerts considerable appeal, its defensibility appears to hinge upon an extremely implausible theory of the relation of form to content. Similarly, while the representational approach has much to recommend it, its range is essentially restricted to those units of language (...) that can be understood in terms of undefined units. Thus, the only alternative among these three that can account for the meaning of primitive units of language is one emphasizing the basic role of skills, habits, and tendencies in relating signs and dispositions. (shrink)

This paper reexamines the case for mentality — the thesis that knowledge is a mental state in its own right, and not only derivatively, simply by virtue of being composed out of mental states or by virtue of being a property of mental states — and explores a novel argument for it. I argue that a certain property singled out by psychologists and philosophers of cognitive science as distinctive of skillful behavior (agentive control) is best understood in terms of (...) knowledge. While psychological theories of agentive control that appeal to monitoring mechanisms, such as attention, have been proposed, these theories cannot account for the full scope of controlled action. By contrast, I argue that an epistemic theory of agentive control that invokes knowledge is extensionally adequate. It is when it comes to understanding the hallmarks of skillful performance that the theoretical benefits of thinking of knowledge as mental can be fully appreciated. (shrink)

El objetivo de este estudio es acercarnos a la mentalidad y la ideología de las personas que vivían a finales del siglo XV en “Améric”: los recién llegados y los nativos. Basaremos nuestra investigación en dos cartas, una de Diego Álvares Chanca (antiguo médico real) y otra de Michele da Cuneo (¿mercader? italiano). Con ello pretendemos contribuir al estudio de las mentalidades e ideologías desde una perspectiva lingüística. Utilizaremos datos históricos, herramientas de la ecdótica y del análisis del discurso y (...) el concepto de tradiciones discursivas. Estas cartas están entre los primeros ejemplos de textualidad colonial americana. Creemos que los datos de estos textos nos permiten hacernos una idea de las cuitas y la mentalidad de los protagonistas de aquellos hechos, pero no de su ideología en el sentido clásico del término. (shrink)

In the contemporary era, thinkers abandoned the issue of the mind in a way that gives rise to the idea that it is essence or material, and addressed the issue of what are mental states, what are their characteristics? On the other hand, Islamic thinkers has always been concerned to the human soul. Fakhr Razi, a famous Muslim theologian, has significant opinions in the discussion of philosophical psychology. He considers the soul to be different from the body, and he has (...) studied a number of soul states and some of their characteristics. The current research deals with the question: what is the relationship between the states and qualities of the soul from Fakhr Razi's point of view and mentality in the contemporary philosophy of mind? In this search, some similarities between Fakhr Razi's opinions and contemporary mentality will be clarified; Emotional states such as pain and pleasure, and perceptual states from the point of view of Fakhr have certain characteristics such as the phenomenality and direct experience of these states for the soul. He has criticized Ibn Sina for not paying attention to these states in the definition of pleasure and pain. He also paid attention to science, which is one of the cognitive states, and it seems that by proposing the addition theory, he intended the consciousness for soul. (shrink)

Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant "physicalists" who view consciousness as an emergent property of the brain's neural networks. On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, "funda-mentalists"). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult (...) issues of consciousness and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's "objective reduction" (OR), a self-organizing "collapse" of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of space-time geometry. In the Penrose- Hameroff model of "orchestrated objective reduction" (Orch OR), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons. The basic thesis is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to a self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality. (shrink)

MATERIALISTS claim that in principle mentality could be accounted for entirely by properties of matter. They must, of course, clarify, as far as possible, the precise scope of the concept "properties of matter." According to materialists there exists only one type of "substance" in the universe, namely matter. Sophisticated experimental and theoretical analyses have led contemporary physicists to interpret known material entities as being composed of two classes of elementary particles, namely quarks and leptons and constituents of interaction fields (...) that mediate interactions between some or all of the elementary particles and which comprise photons, gluons, intermediate bosons and gravitons. For instance, protons and neutrons are composed--by hypothesis--of quarks, while electrons are probably the most familiar leptons. Whether any analyzed and postulated elementary particles and constituents of interaction fields are "ultimate" components of matter can never be known. It remains always possible that more basic subcomponents of known components will be discovered. This has happened repeatedly throughout the history of physics. Hence, what physicists understand by the "physical properties" of the basic components of matter must always remain expressed in terms of usually intricate hypothetico-deductive theories which are tentative and fallible. Contemporary relativistic quantum mechanics of elementary particles and of interaction fields provide typical examples of such hypothetico-deductive theories relating to present known basic components of matter. (shrink)

According to Jessica M. Wilson, physicalism is incompatible with the existence of fundamental mentality. Although widely endorsed, this No Fundamental Mentality constraint faces serious challenges, including alleged counterexamples. In this paper, I clarify the constraint, defend it against objections, and explain its basis.

Many business leaders vigorously and single-mindedly pursue bottom-line outcomes with the hope of producing superior results for themselves and their companies. Our study investigated two drawbacks of such leader bottom-line mentality. First, based on leaders’ power over followers, we hypothesized that leader BLM promotes unethical pro-leader behaviors among followers. Second, based on cognitive dissonance theory, we hypothesized that UPLB, and leader BLM via UPLB, increase turnover intention among employees with a strong moral identity. Data collected from 153 employees of (...) various organizations supported our hypotheses. In particular, leader BLM was positively related to followers’ UPLB. Further, for employees with a stronger moral identity: UPLB was positively related to turnover intention; and leader BLM was related to turnover intention via UPLB. (shrink)

There appears to be a bewildering variety of phenomena that the study of the mind classifies as unconscious, but does anything unite all these phenomena? Does the unconscious have an essence? Can there be a general theoretical account of unconscious mentality? We proceed in this chapter with three aims. The first is to dispute the standard view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious mentality, and with it, the standard view of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. The (...) second is to lay out several options for replacing the standard view, ones that allow for substantive differences between conscious and unconscious mentality. The third is to sketch the foundations of a unifying conception of the unconscious across the various disciplines that study the mind. Along the way, we apply these conjectures to examples of implicit cognition. (shrink)

Ted Honderich defines “mentality” as “conscious and unconscious states and events that are explanatory of at least behavior,” the latter both receptive and productive. I will explore the possibility that conscious and unconscious states interact so closely in explanation of behavior and thought that the elements of consciousness cannot be extricated without seriously misrepresenting mental life, in particular the nature of consciousness; and that unconscious processes and states that are inaccessible to introspection are interwoven inextricably in our mental acts. (...) The use and understanding of language offer a rich territory to explore in this connection. (shrink)

All favoring relations must have a mind as their bearer. The idea of a favoring attitude being borne by something non-mental is incoherent, as is the idea of a favoring attitude that lacks any bearer at all. As all normative reasons are favoring relations, then all normative reasons must have a mind to bear them. This means that all objectivist naturalist and non-naturalist analyses of normative reasons are false, indeed incoherent. They all, by definition, turn out either to be identifying (...) normative reasons with something other than a favoring relation, or to be supposing that favoring relations can be borne by something other than a mind, be it either some objective natural or non-natural feature, or nothing whatsoever. (shrink)

Intentionalism about mentality is the view that all and only mental phenomena are intentional. Experientialism about mentality is the view that mental phenomena are experienced by, or given to, the subject in a way physical phenomena are not. Put differently, the idea advocated by experientialists is this: there is a distinctive way mental phenomena manifest themselves in subjective experience—there is a distinctive ‘phenomenology’ of mentality. It is usually held that Brentano is intentionalist across the board rather than (...) experientialist. In this paper I argue for two claims: (i) the idea of several, mutually reinforcing ‘marks of the mental’ is central to Brentano’s conception of mentality, and (ii) inner perception, which is one of Brentano’s marks, is best understood as a distinctive way mental phenomena appear to the subject or are given to her, viz. in experientialist rather than intentionalist terms. The upshot is that Brentano’s conception of mentality is much more subtle than usually believed. (shrink)

Study based on Pali canonical literature.

Offering a model of mentality that sets psychology and philosophy on common footing, this book eliminates the breach between the sciences and the humanities.

Nobody should want to rid his mind of science, but why should science want to rid us of our minds? In the name of science, however, clever men have given their minds to that very enterprise, although no doubt with the explanation that they were only ridding us of what we had falsely thought to be our minds. Thus in the eighteenth century La Mettrie presented the thesis that man was a machine. In the nineteenth, Huxley tried to show that (...) we were conscious automata. In the twentieth, Mr. Hogben,1 among others, professes to deduce from Pavlov's2 experimental results that consciousness is a superstition, being only a misdescription of conditioned reflexes. I propose, then, to examine the modish form of this persistent doctrine. (shrink)

도덕과 수업의 주요 변인 가운데 하나인 학생변인 즉 학생들의 심리 상태에 대한 분석은 도덕교육의 논의에서 상당한 의미를 갖는다. 그것은 첫째, 학생 저마다 갖고 있는 마음의 상태는 곧 그들의 인성, 도덕성의 정황을 드러내는 시금석일 수 있기 때문이며, 둘째, 학생 심리분석은 각기 학생에 대한 도덕교육에서 무엇을, 어떻게 교육할 것인가에 대한 중요한 단서를 제공하기 때문이다. 학생의 심적 특성에 적합한 도덕교육의 목적, 방법이 제공되어야 하는 동시에 심리적인 문제를 겪고 있는 학생들에 대한 도덕교육은 마음치유와 같은 심리 치료적 측면이 강조되어 이루어져야 할 것이다. 에니어그램, 얼굴심리학, 사이코패시와 (...) 소시오패시 체크리스트가 도덕교육에 주는 의의는 첫째, 에니어그램은 개인 저마다 지니고 있는 성격 유형을 파악하는 용이한 자료로 활용 가능하며, 둘째, 얼굴심리학은 학생들이 감추고 있는 심리상태를 학생들의 미세표정을 근거로 파악할 수 있는 안내 자료를 제시해 주기 때문이고, 셋째, 사이코패시와 소시오패시 진단 항목은 도덕교육의 방법 및 접근 방향을 위한 대상 선별과 처우에 유의미한 정보를 제공해 주기 때문이다. 그러나 이 세 가지 유형은 단지 학생들이 드러내주지 않는 그들의 내면을 살펴볼 수 있는 실마리가 될 뿐이며 획득된 정보의 신뢰성과 이를 어떻게 활용하여 적용할 것인가는 순전히 도덕교육을 담당한 교사의 몫일 것이다. 교사는 이러한 작업을 통해 학생들의 내적 측면이 도덕적으로 방향을 잡아갈 수 있도록 안내하고 도와주어야 할 것이다. 도덕교육은 하나의 이론이 아닌 학생 개개인을 도덕적으로 양육해가는 실제적 과업임을 유념할 필요가 있다. (shrink)