Internalism to the Rescue?

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-48
Author(s):  
Mark Richard
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Conditional Credence

If meanings are interestingly like species, meanings are multitudes and what our words mean isn’t up to us. This chapter doesn’t deny that one finds things that can reasonably be labeled ‘meanings’ at the level of the individual, or that these are of theoretical interest. It does deny that internalist theorizing about meaning provides a way to resuscitate the notion of analyticity. It also argues that meanings turn out to be much like diachronic ensembles of mental states related by analogs of descent—i.e. analogous to species. The first half of this chapter discusses a popular response to ‘Two Dogmas’ and demonstrates that this response requires an untenable picture of meaning. The second half takes up an internalist response to Quine due to David Chalmers, who suggests we think of conceptual constancy only in the intrapersonal case, identifying it with constancy of conditional credence. Chalmers’ proposal is worth serious consideration. But even from an internalist perspective, it’s unacceptable.

Psychological Determinants of Personaliti Bullying in the Sociometric Dimension

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
International Partnership ◽  
Psychological Determinants ◽  
Exchange Program ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Degree

The article considers the main problems that arise when conflicts of interest between people in the sociometric dimension. The need for their comprehensive study will help to eliminate the negative consequences and use positive solutions to these conflicts for the development of the individual, his integration into society. The urgency of the work lies in the search for rational approaches to the origin and prevention of psychological bullying in the sociometric dimension as a consequence of the conflict of personality in agreement with its characterological education, psychological attitudes and beliefs. that is why the problem of bullying deserves in-depth study. The aim of the article is to study the influence of bullying on the uncertainty of adolescents in the sociometric dimension. The work is based on the provisions of prevention and reduction of external discrimination, isolation, humiliation and harassment, which will serve as factors to prevent personal uncertainty in the future. Bullying undermines the victim's self-confidence, destroys health, self-esteem and human dignity. There is a bullying structure, which is a social system that includes the offender, the victim and observers. Methods of measuring the manifestations of psychological bullying are determined, the corresponding set of methods of psychodiagnostics is presented and tested. Empirical data show that with insufficient and excessive mobilization of the individual there are with a high degree of probability such mental states that disturb the adaptive balance. Thus, with insufficient mobilization in a difficult life situation, it is likely to appear apathy and reduce energy expenditure. On the other hand, in a situation of excessive mobilization there is a state of high voltage against the background of excessive energy consumption. The results of this study are important in establishing international cooperation in the study of programs and projects in the context of transforming the human health system in accordance with international partnership standards and implementing a cultural exchange program for education and culture between countries.

Coming to Understand the Social and Physical Worlds

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Theory Change ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Load Force ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Underlying Processes ◽  
Adaptation Task

Children’s conceptual development has been described as a process of“theory change.” Specifically, children begin with an idea and then iteratively update that idea by combining existing and new information, making and testing predictions and then revising their idea based on new data again. Similar processes have been postulated to account for adaptive phenomenon in perceptual psychology and motor control. The similarities between the two processes suggest that performance on tasks that measure conceptual and sensory‐motor “theory change”respectively may be related. The goal of the present study is to determine whether children’s development in a complex conceptual domain, theory of mind, is associated with children’s performance in a load force adaptation paradigm. Theory of mind is broadly defined as the ability to understand how mental states, such as beliefs and desires, motivate ourown and other people’s actions. In contrast, load force adaptation is the ability to gradually adjust the amount of force exerted on an object in order to smoothly lift it up, as experience with the weight of the object is gained. To explore the mechanisms underlying these two processes, children between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years participate in a load force adaptation task and a battery of theory of mind tasks. We predict that since the underlying processes appear to be theoretically similar, the individual differences in the ability to adapt load force and in theory of mind ability will be positively correlated.   

The Angler in the Environment: Social, Economic, Biological, and Ethical Dimensions

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
Recreational Fishing ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Catch And Release ◽  
Individual Fish ◽  
Recreational Angling ◽  
The Individual

<i>Abstract</i>.—Ever since fishing was called recreational fishing, a cruelty charge has hovered around somewhere in the background. In recent times, however, it has made it to the fore substantiated by anthropomorphic reasoning and fuelled by high-visibility papers claiming that fish can feel pain and suffer. Because some segments of the public perceive the infliction of these mental states to fish as abhorrent and not outweighing the costs imposed on the individual fish by appropriate benefits to the human, recreational fishing is coming under attack on moral grounds. Other challenges have also emerged that do not center on the issue of whether fish are sentient or not. In this paper, we describe five of the most prevalent moral challenges to recreational angling, two of which—animal welfare and wilderness-centered perspectives—can offer a constructive outlook by calling upon improved treatment of individual fish (animal welfare) and generally more sustainable management (wilderness perspective). In contrast, if one subscribes to animal liberation or animal rights philosophies, the outlook for recreational fishing is generally negative: it has to stop. A final challenge is associated with the motivations of anglers. The moral argument there is that the activity is carried out largely for angler pleasure rather than as a means of securing survival. The outlook of this ethical challenge sometimes leans towards only accepting one form of recreational fishing: catching, killing, and eating. Voluntary catch-and-release fishing and practices such as tournament fishing with a strict total catch-and-release policy would then not be ethically permissible. In this paper, we highlight the origin and background of each of the five ethical challenges and explain their implications for recreational fishing.

The Unity of the Rational Mind

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Eric Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Metaphysical Necessity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Rational Mind ◽  
The Individual

I argue that inference is a self-conscious act. The account appeals to the ‘being-in-mind-together’ of beliefs. Beliefs that are in mind together are subject to rationally grounded metaphysical necessity. Because one believes p, one can’t or must believe q. But what ultimately explains this sort of necessity? If it is impossible to hold a pair of mental states in mind at once and the impossibility has its source in our understanding of the necessary falsehood of a conjunction, then the subject has knowledge not just of the individual states they’re in but also of their combination. What, then, is the relation between the unity of our beliefs and consciousness of this unity? My answer: the unity of the rational mind consists in the subject’s consciousness of that unity.

How To Make No Sense of Marx

1989 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 105-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Explanation ◽  
Individual Actions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Methodological Collectivism

Professor Jon Elster advances the proposal that Marx – and Marxists–really stand for ‘methodological individualism,’ as opposed to ‘methodological collectivism.’ He defines ‘methodological individualism’ in the following terms: Social science explanations are seen as three-tiered. First, there is a causal explanation of mental states, such as desires and beliefs … Next, there is intentional explanation of individual action in terms of the underlying beliefs and desires … Finally, there is causal explanation of aggregated phenomena in terms of the individual actions that go into them. The last form is the specifically Marxist contribution to the methodology of the social sciences.1

Reflex, Automatic, and Unconscious Cerebration: A History and a Criticism

1876 ◽  
Vol 22 (97) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Thomas Laycock
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Spinal Reflex ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Organic Bases ◽  
Reflex Action ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The Individual

VIII.—Turning from the living mechanism and its energies, to the energies derived from without that move it—the “strings of the puppet”—to use the mechanical phraseology, we come upon another class of words and phrases which are ambiguously used in the “old metaphysics,” but which have a definite and wholly different meaning in studying the organic bases of mental life. These are such words as impression, irritation, suggestion, and the like. I may be permitted to state, somewhat dogmatically, what is now admitted generally, that all changes in the constituent matter of living things result from the operation of physical or molecular energies therein. This being so, the cerebral series of changes involved in mental states of the individual, and constituting the process termed cerebral reflex action, are due to as purely physical causes as those on which spinal reflex action depends. And this is true, not less as regards feelings like corporeal pain, and sensations, than as regards the highest work of the intellectual faculties. This operation of physical energies, however, was not recognised by Marshall Hall and Dr. Carpenter in 1838, nor, indeed, by physiologists in general. One source of the difficulty experienced in doing this is in the imperfect appreciation of what is physically included under the word impression. Thus, an anonymous defender of the views of the eminent physiologists named observes, in 1846, in opposition to my views—

MEANING OF LIFE STATES: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND EMPIRICAL TYPOLOGY

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
K. Karpinski
Keyword(s):  
Self Regulation ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Integral Form ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
Life Tasks ◽  
Crisis Of Meaning ◽  
The Individual

The article presents the results of theoretical and empirical research devoted to the psychological regularities of the formation of the individual as a subject of life in the process of solving meaning of life tasks. This class of tasks of personal development includes the search, preservation and practical implementation of the individual meaning of life. Psychological indicators of the process and the results of solving life meaning tasks are subjective experiences of meaningfulness of life and crisis of meaning. In order to denote the integral form of feedback functioning in the system of self-regulation of the individual as a subject of life, the concept of «meaning of life state» is proposed and theoretically substantiated. Meaning of life states are understood as a specific category of permanent mental states that reflect the status of the subject-object relationship of the individual with his own life. Contrary to the common in psychological science notions of incompatibility and mutual exclusiveness of experiences of meaningfulness of life and meaning of life crisis, the hypothesis that the meaning of life is a specific form of conjugation and integration of these subjective experiences is theoretically argued. On the empirical material it is shown that there are typical combinations of these experiences, which form stable meaning-life states of the person: prosperous, crisis, conflict and stagnant. It is established that the dominant type of the meaning of life state of a person depends on its internal position in relation to the meaning of life tasks, expressed by their acceptance or non-acceptance, as well as on the productivity of their solution in everyday life. As a promising line of development of the present study longitudinal strategy, designed to reveal the psychological mechanisms and regularities of their mutual transitions and transformations, which are conditioned by the dynamics of solving meaning of life tasks.

scholarly journals Apical amplification—a cellular mechanism of conscious perception?

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Marvan ◽  
Michal Polák ◽  
Talis Bachmann ◽  
William A Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cellular Mechanism ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Processing Theory ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Apical Dendrites ◽  
Integrated Information Theory

Abstract We present a theoretical view of the cellular foundations for network-level processes involved in producing our conscious experience. Inputs to apical synapses in layer 1 of a large subset of neocortical cells are summed at an integration zone near the top of their apical trunk. These inputs come from diverse sources and provide a context within which the transmission of information abstracted from sensory input to their basal and perisomatic synapses can be amplified when relevant. We argue that apical amplification enables conscious perceptual experience and makes it more flexible, and thus more adaptive, by being sensitive to context. Apical amplification provides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized by global neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells receiving the broadcast. It also provides mechanisms that contribute to the holistic aspects of integrated information theory. As apical amplification is highly dependent on cholinergic, aminergic, and other neuromodulators, it relates the specific contents of conscious experience to global mental states and to fluctuations in arousal when awake. We conclude that apical dendrites provide a cellular mechanism for the context-sensitive selective amplification that is a cardinal prerequisite of conscious perception.

scholarly journals Detecting expert’s eye using a multiple-kernel Relevance Vector Machine

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Boccignone ◽  
Mario Ferraro ◽  
Sofia Crespi ◽  
Carlo Robino ◽  
Claudio De’Sperati
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Feature Space ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Relevance Vector Machine ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Oculomotor Behavior ◽  
Overt Behavior ◽  
Additional Signal ◽  
Applied Machine Learning ◽  
The Individual

Decoding mental states from the pattern of neural activity or overt behavior is an intensely pursued goal. Here we applied machine learning to detect expertise from the oculomotor behavior of novice and expert billiard players during free viewing of a filmed billiard match with no specific task, and in a dynamic trajectory prediction task involving ad-hoc, occluded billiard shots. We have adopted a ground framework for feature space fusion and a Bayesian sparse classifier, namely, a Relevance Vector Machine. By testing different combinations of simple oculomotor features (gaze shifts amplitude and direction, and fixation duration), we could classify on an individual basis which group - novice or expert - the observers belonged to with an accuracy of 82% and 87%, respectively for the match and the shots. These results provide evidence that, at least in the particular domain of billiard sport, a signature of expertise is hidden in very basic aspects of oculomotor behavior, and that expertise can be detected at the individual level both with ad-hoc testing conditions and under naturalistic conditions - and suitable data mining. Our procedure paves the way for the development of a test for the “expert’s eye”, and promotes the use of eye movements as an additional signal source in Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) systems.

scholarly journals Application of Non-drug Methods in the Complex Rehabilitation of Children with Congenital Epidermolysis Bullosa

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
Olga M. Konova ◽  
Tatiana V. Sviridova ◽  
Svetlana B. Lazurenko ◽  
Irina P. Brazhnikova ◽  
Svetlana V. Isaenkova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Epidermolysis Bullosa ◽  
Specific Treatment ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Rehabilitation Program ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
State Evaluation ◽  
Questionnaire Assessment ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Parental Commitment

Congenital epidermolysis bullosa is known to be on the list of rare diseases for which there is no specific treatment. Determining thecontent and means of the rehabilitation program for patients with epidermolysis bullosa is not an easy task and involves a carefulselection of methods for each patient. Aim. The article analyzes the results of the use of non-drug methods in the complex rehabilitation of 90 children (from 6,5 to 18 years)with congenital epidermolysis bullosa. Material and methods. To assess the effectiveness of rehabilitation in the study before and after treatment we used methods ofclinical examination with skin state evaluation and standard psychological and pedagogical examination to determine the degree ofsocial adaptation of patients (analysis of medical and psychological and pedagogical documentation, structured conversation aboutsocial conditions of the child’s life, “Color diagnostic test of nervous and mental states and relations” (V.I. Timofeev and Y.I. Filimonenko),the method “Drawing of an unknown animal” (M.Z. Dukarevich, adaptation by A.L. Venger), “The T.V. Dembo-S.Y. Rubinstein Self-AssessmentResearch Method, the Self-Concept Scale” (E. Pierce, L. Harris, adapted by A. M. Prikhozhan), questionnaire “Assessment ofparental compliance” (D.E. Morisky, L.V. Green), questionnaire “Feeling, activity, mood” (V.A. Doskin, N.A. Lavrentieva, V.B. Sharay andM.P. Miroshnikov). The way in which diagnostics was organized varied taking into account the individual psychophysical capabilitiesof the child. Results. The effectiveness evaluation of the complex rehabilitation of children with epidermolysis bullosa showed an improvementin the clinical condition of the children (significant reduction/elimination of dryness and itching of the skin) and the indicators of wellbeing(mean value: before 30 points after 45, p ≤0.05), activity (mean value: before 25 after 34, p ≤0.05), mood (mean value: before 44,after 51, p ≤0.05) of patients (WAM questionnaire), an increase in the degree of parental commitment to treating children (Moriski-Green questionnaire) from medium to medium and high values. Conclusion. The inclusion of physical therapy and psychological and pedagogical methods of assistance in the process of rehabilitationtreatment increases its effectiveness, activates the compensatory potential of the child’s body, promotes harmonization of intrafamilyrelationships, and thus improves the quality of life of the child and his or her relatives.

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