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Philosophical Psychology

ISSN 0951-5089

65 papers in the library · 878 citations · publishing 1993-2026

Papers

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The cure for the cure: Networking the extended mind

Philosophical Psychology June 18, 2011 Michele Merritt 3 citations

The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC), or the claim that cognitive processes are not entirely organism-bound and can extend into the world, has received a barrage of criticism. Likewise, defenders of HEC have responded and even retreated into more moderate positions. In this paper, I trace the debate, rehearsing what I take to be the three strongest cases against HEC: nonderived content,...

The zombie's cogito: Meditations on type-Q materialism

Philosophical Psychology June 17, 2011 Josh Weisberg 6 citations

Most materialist responses to the zombie argument against materialism take either a “type-A” or “type-B” approach: they either deny the conceivability of zombies or accept their conceivability while denying their possibility. However, a “type-Q” materialist approach, inspired by Quinean suspicions about a priority and modal entailment, rejects the sharp line between empirical and conceptual...

Belief integration in action: A defense of extended beliefs

Philosophical Psychology April 1, 2011 Miriam Kyselo, Sven Walter 5 citations

Daniel Weiskopf has recently raised an apparently powerful objection against the so-called “extended mind thesis” with regard to beliefs. His argument is that since alleged cases of “extended beliefs” lack a characteristic feature of beliefs properly so called (newly acquired beliefs are usually integrated with already existing beliefs rapidly, automatically and unconsciously), they do not...

Reduction and the determination of phenomenal character

Philosophical Psychology March 26, 2011 Jennifer Matey 3 citations

A central task of philosophy of mind in recent decades has been to come up with a comprehensive account of the mind that is consistent with materialism. To this end, philosophers have offered useful reductive accounts of mentality in terms that are ultimately explainable by neurobiology. Although these accounts have been useful for explaining some psychological states, one feature—phenomenality...

Consciousness and false HOTs

Philosophical Psychology October 1, 2010 Jonah Wilberg 21 citations

In this paper I aim to defend David Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against a prominent objection. The central claim of HOT theory is that a mental state is conscious only if one has the HOT that one is in that state. In broad outline, the objection is that HOT theory is unable to account for cases where the relevant HOTs are false. I consider two variants of the...

Neutral monism reconsidered

Philosophical Psychology April 1, 2010 Erik Banks 43 citations

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion...

Kicking the Kohler Habit

Philosophical Psychology September 22, 2007 Colin Klein 8 citations

Kohler's experiments with inverting goggles are often thought to support enactivism by showing that visual re-inversion occurs simultaneous with the return of sensorimotor skill. Closer examination reveals that Kohler's work does not show this. Recent work by Linden et al. shows that re-inversion, if it occurs at all, does not occur when the enactivist predicts. As such, the empirical evidence...

Two HOTs to Handle: The Concept of State Consciousness in the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness

Philosophical Psychology March 3, 2006 Jennifer Matey 10 citations

David Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory is one of the most widely argued for of the higher-order accounts of consciousness. I argue that Rosenthal vacillates between two models of the HOT theory. First, I argue that these models employ different concepts of ‘state consciousness’; the two concepts each refer to mental state tokens, but in virtue of different properties. In one model,...

The earliest sense of self and others: Merleau‐Ponty and recent developmental studies

Philosophical Psychology June 1, 1996 Shaun Gallagher, Andrew N. Meltzoff 337 citations

Recent studies in developmental psychology have found evidence to suggest that there exists an innate system that accounts for the possibilities of early infant imitation and the existence of phantom limbs in cases of congenital absence of limbs. These results challenge traditional assumptions about the status and development of the body schema and body image, and about the nature of the...

Brain waves and bridges: Comments on Hardcastle's “discovering the moment of consciousness?“

Philosophical Psychology June 1, 1996 Huib Looren de Jong

In this comment, a picture of ERP research is sketched that is slightly different from Hardcastle's account, in that it emphasises the functional characterisation of ERP components rather than the neurophysiological connections. It is suggested that selection pressure of ERP work on cognitive and neurophysiological theories and vice versa is a more apt metaphor for intertheoretical relations in...

Consciousness, dreams and virtual realities

Philosophical Psychology 1995 Antti Revonsuo 148 citations

In this paper I develop the thesis that dreams are essential to an understanding of waking consciousness. In the first part I argue in opposition to the philosophers Malcolm and Dennett that empirical evidence now shows dreams to be real conscious experiences. In the second part, three questions concerning consciousness research are addressed. (1) How do we isolate the system to be explained...

Tertium datur?Reflections on Owen Flanagan'sconsciousness reconsidered

Philosophical Psychology 1995 Allin Cottrell 2 citations

Owen Flanagan's arguments concerning qualia constitute an intermediate position between Dennett's “disqualification” of qualia and the thesis that qualia represent an insurmountable obstacle to constructive naturalism. This middle ground is potentially attractive, but it is shown to have serious problems. This is brought out via consideration of several classic areas of dispute connected with...

Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of mind

Philosophical Psychology 1994 William Epstein, Gary Hatfield 34 citations

The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind‐body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt...

Higher‐order thoughts and the appendage theory of consciousness

Philosophical Psychology 1993 David Rosenthal 45 citations

Theories of what it is for a mental state to be conscious must answer two questions. We must say how we're conscious of our conscious mental states. And we must explain why we seem to be conscious of them in a way that's immediate. Thomas Natsoulas (1993) distinguishes three strategies for explaining what it is for mental states to be conscious. I show that the differences among those...