Knowing Other People’s Mental States as if They Were One’s Own

2009 ◽  
pp. 283-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
As If

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 263-266
Author(s):  
Alexander Sarch
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Legal Fiction ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Fictions ◽  
As If

The conclusion of Criminally Ignorant: Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don’t provides an overview of the main takeaways from the book. At its broadest, this is a book about a common legal fiction: the criminal law’s practice of pretending we know what we don’t. Maybe one instinctively feels scandalized by legal fictions. It’s natural to want the law to be honest and accurate. Nonetheless, this book has tried to give reasons not to be so worried and actually get on board with the kind of legal fiction at issue here. The book has argued that equal culpability imputation involves a justified fiction that promotes valuable aims. At least when properly constrained, it is justified for the law to treat you as if you had certain culpability-relevant mental states (like knowledge of inculpatory facts or awareness of risks) that you didn’t literally possess. What justifies it? The same purposes the criminal law generally serves: protecting our core interests, rights, and values.

scholarly journals Undercutting Defeat and Edgington’s Burglar

2021 ◽  
pp. 174-194
Author(s):  
Scott Sturgeon
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Mental States ◽  
English Word ◽  
Category Mistake ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Conceptual Confusion ◽  
As If

Defeasible reasons are normally thought of as mental states of some kind. In the verbal tradition, at least, reputable philosophers sometimes react to this fact as if the whole idea of a defeasible reason is based on some kind of conceptual confusion or category mistake. Their idea, basically, is that the English word ‘reason’ already has a meaning which rules out mental states as part of its extension. For this reason they see the idea of mental states as reasons as itself utter confusion. This chapter does four things. It lays out an orthodox position on reasons and defeaters. Then it argues that the position just sketched is mistaken about ‘undercutting’ defeaters. Then it explains an unpublished thought experiment by Dorothy Edgington. And then it uses that thought experiment to ground a new approach to undercutting defeaters.

Soul as Subject in Aristotle's DeAnima

1988 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher shields
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
De Anima ◽  
As If

In the largely historical and aporetic first book of theDe Anima (DA), Aristotle makes what appear to be some rather disturbing remarks about the soul's status as a subject of mental states. Most notably, in a curious passage which has aroused the interest of commentators, he seems to suggest that there is something wrong with regarding the soul as a subject of mental states:Thus, saying that the soul is angry is the same as if one were to say that the soul builds houses and weaves: for it is perhaps better to say not that the soul pities or learns or thinks, but that the man does [these things] with his soul. (DA408bll–15)

scholarly journals Can Fictional Superhuman Agents have Mental States?

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 425-448
Author(s):  
Gabriel Levy
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Legal Fictions ◽  
As If

AbstractAccording to Deborah Tollefsen, from the analytic perspective called “interpretivism”, there is a reasonable way in which groups can be said to have mental states. She bases her argument on the every-day use of language, where people speak as if groups have states such as intentions, desires and wishes. Such propositional attitudes form the basis of any account of truth-conditional semantics, the rules by which people grasp the conditions under which an utterance is true. If groups (abstract units of people) have mental states, perhaps superhuman agents have them too. One argument that may contradict this premise is one that says that, whereas groups exist, superhuman agents do not. However, if groups exist on the basis of normative narratives about them and the institutionalized actions they carry out in the world, the same can be said for superhuman agents. They are like legal fictions: fictional but real. Superhuman agents are fictional and real in a similar sense as groups.1

Criminally Ignorant

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Sarch
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Willful Ignorance ◽  
Legal Fiction ◽  
Normative Foundation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Fictions ◽  
As If

Criminally Ignorant: Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don’t is about the legal fiction that we know what we don’t. If you bury your head in the sand rather than learn you’re committing a crime, you can be punished as if you knew. How can that be justified? This book offers a framework to explain why it’s not as puzzling as it seems. When remaining ignorant of the facts is sufficiently culpable, the interests and values protected by the criminal law are served by punishing you as though you knew those facts. This idea—imputing mental states based on equal culpability—is what this book seeks to justify (at least within limits). The resulting theory shows that some legal fictions—like the willful ignorance doctrine—require reform. At the same time, it shows why we also need more legal fictions of this kind. Moreover, they should be extended to impose further accountability on corporations. Still, equal culpability imputation can be taken too far. We need to determine its limits to avoid injustice. Thus, the book seeks to place equal culpability imputation on a solid normative foundation, while demarcating its proper boundaries. The resulting theory of when and why the criminal law can pretend we know what we don’t has far-reaching implications for legal practice and reveals the pressing need for reform.

Improvement of an artificial test substrate technique for evaluation of em immunocytochemical labeling

1987 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 762-763
Author(s):  
G. D. Gagne ◽  
M. F. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Bovine Serum Albumin ◽  
Serum Albumin ◽  
Bovine Serum ◽  
Artificial Substrate ◽  
Chemical Fixation ◽  
As If

We recently described an artificial substrate system which could be used to optimize labeling parameters in EM immunocytochemistry (ICC). The system utilizes blocks of glutaraldehyde polymerized bovine serum albumin (BSA) into which an antigen is incorporated by a soaking procedure. The resulting antigen impregnated blocks can then be fixed and embedded as if they are pieces of tissue and the effects of fixation, embedding and other parameters on the ability of incorporated antigen to be immunocyto-chemically labeled can then be assessed. In developing this system further, we discovered that the BSA substrate can also be dried and then sectioned for immunolabeling with or without prior chemical fixation and without exposing the antigen to embedding reagents. The effects of fixation and embedding protocols can thus be evaluated separately.

When Mother Earth Rises Up

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sacchi ◽  
Paolo Riva ◽  
Marco Brambilla
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Disaster Victims ◽  
Willingness To Help ◽  
Mother Earth

Anthropomorphization is the tendency to ascribe humanlike features and mental states, such as free will and consciousness, to nonhuman beings or inanimate agents. Two studies investigated the consequences of the anthropomorphization of nature on people’s willingness to help victims of natural disasters. Study 1 (N = 96) showed that the humanization of nature correlated negatively with willingness to help natural disaster victims. Study 2 (N = 52) tested for causality, showing that the anthropomorphization of nature reduced participants’ intentions to help the victims. Overall, our findings suggest that humanizing nature undermines the tendency to support victims of natural disasters.

Temporal Control of Mental States in Pigeons

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Cook ◽  
Hara A. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Temporal Control
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