scholarly journals Belief Through Thick and Thin

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Buckwalter ◽  
David Rose ◽  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
The Relationship

We distinguish between two categories of belief—thin belief and thick belief—and provide evidence that they approximate genuinely distinct categories within folk psychology. We use the distinction to make informative predictions about how laypeople view the relationship between knowledge and belief. More specifically, we show that if the distinction is genuine, then we can make sense of otherwise extremely puzzling recent experimental findings on the entailment thesis (i.e. the widely held philosophical thesis that knowledge entails belief). We also suggest that the distinction can be applied to debates in the philosophy of mind and metaethics.

scholarly journals Folk Psychology Revisited: The Methodological Problem and the Autonomy of Psychology

2017 ◽  
pp. 22-54
Author(s):  
Daniel F. Hartner
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Methodological Problem ◽  
Special Science ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
The Relationship

'Folk psychology' is a term that refers to the way that ordinary people think and talk about minds. But over roughly the last four decades the term has come to be used in rather different ways by philosophers and psychologists engaged in technical projects in analytic philosophy of mind and empirical psychology, many of which are only indirectly related to the question of how ordinary people actually think about minds. The result is a sometimes puzzling body of academic literature, cobbled together loosely under that single heading, that contains a number of terminological inconsistencies, the clarification of which seems to reveal conceptual problems. This paper is an attempt to approach folk psychology more directly, to clarify the phenomenon of interest, and to examine the methods used to investigate it. Having identified some conceptual problems in the literature, I argue that those problems have occluded a particular methodological confound involved in the study of folk psychology, one associated with psychological language, that may well be intractable. Rather than attempt to solve that methodological problem, then, I suggest that we use the opportunity to rethink the relationship between folk psychology and its scientific counterpart. A careful look at the study of folk psychology may prove surprisingly helpful for clarifying the nature of psychological science and addressing the contentious question of its status as a potentially autonomous special science.

scholarly journals Production of the Siderophore 2,3-Dihydroxybenzoic Acid Is Required for Wild-Type Growth of Brucella abortus in the Presence of Erythritol under Low-Iron Conditions In Vitro

2003 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 2927-2832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan H. Bellaire ◽  
Philip H. Elzer ◽  
Cynthia L. Baldwin ◽  
R. Martin Roop
Keyword(s):  
Brucella Abortus ◽  
Reproductive Tract ◽  
Iron Acquisition ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Growth Defect ◽  
Wild Type ◽  
Dihydroxybenzoic Acid ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACT Production of the siderophore 2,3-dihyroxybenzoic acid (2,3-DHBA) is required for the wild-type virulence of Brucella abortus in cattle. A possible explanation for this requirement was uncovered when it was determined that a B. abortus dhbC mutant (BHB1) defective in 2,3-DHBA production displays marked growth restriction in comparison to its parent strain, B. abortus 2308, when cultured in the presence of erythritol under low-iron conditions. This phenotype is not displayed when these strains are cultured under low-iron conditions in the presence of other readily utilizable carbon and energy sources. The addition of either exogenous 2,3-DHBA or FeCl3 relieves this growth defect, suggesting that the inability of the B. abortus dhbC mutant to display wild-type growth in the presence of erythritol under iron-limiting conditions is due to a defect in iron acquisition. Restoring 2,3-DHBA production to the B. abortus dhbC mutant by genetic complementation abolished the erythritol-specific growth defect exhibited by this strain in low-iron medium, verifying the relationship between 2,3-DHBA production and efficient growth in the presence of erythritol under low-iron conditions. The positive correlation between 2,3-DHBA production and growth in the presence of erythritol was further substantiated by the observation that the addition of erythritol to low-iron cultures of B. abortus 2308 stimulated the production of 2,3-DHBA by increasing the transcription of the dhbCEBA operon. Correspondingly, the level of exogenous iron needed to repress dhbCEBA expression in B. abortus 2308 was also greater when this strain was cultured in the presence of erythritol than that required when it was cultured in the presence of any of the other readily utilizable carbon and energy sources tested. The tissues of the bovine reproductive tract are rich in erythritol during the latter stages of pregnancy, and the ability to metabolize erythritol is thought to be important to the virulence of B. abortus in pregnant ruminants. Consequently, the experimental findings presented here offer a plausible explanation for the attenuation of the B. abortus 2,3-DHBA-deficient mutant BHB1 in pregnant ruminants.

The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Moral psychology, for purposes of this volume, encompasses issues in metaethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action, including questions concerning the objectivity of morality, the relationship between moral judgment and emotion, the nature of the emotions, free will, and moral responsibility, and the structure of the mind as that is relevant to the possibility of moral action and judgment. Nietzsche’s “naturalism” is introduced and explained, and certain confusions about its meaning are addressed. An overview of the volume follows

scholarly journals Autonomy of Folk Psychology Reconsidered

2017 ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Taavi Laanpere
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Small Segment ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The One ◽  
Classic Argument ◽  
Normative Content

It has been a recurring theme in the philosophy of mind that folk psychology is autonomous. This paper has three goals. First, it aims to clarify what the term 'folk psychology' could mean in different contexts. Four widespread senses of the term are distinguished and the one eligible for autonomy is picked out. Secondly, a classic argument for autonomy is introduced and motivated. This is the argument from the normativity of folk psychology, based on its constitutive rationality. According to this argument, mentalistic concepts are to be understood as components of prescriptions for a rational course of action, rather than descriptions. Thirdly, limits of the argument from normativity are demonstrated. At best, the argument applies to merely a small segment of explanations in terms of mentalistic vocabulary, as the latter is meant to convey much more than simply normative content about the rational profile of an agent.

Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind

1994 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-370
Author(s):  
Michael Watkins ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Folk Psychology

Consciousness and Selfhood

2020 ◽  
pp. 634-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Relationship

Not that long ago, discussions of selfhood in philosophy of mind tended to focus on diachronic identity and the so-called persistence question. Important as this question might be, it does, however, not exhaust the topic of selfhood. In recent years, the focus has shifted somewhat from diachronic to synchronic identity and given rise to a lively debate concerning the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and selfhood. Are our conscious experiences self-involving or self-disclosing (in a manner yet to be determined), or was Lichtenberg right in his famous objection to Descartes: Experiences simply take place, and that is all. Is saying cogito and affirming the existence of an I already saying too much?

scholarly journals Interaction of the Nucleation Phenomena at Adjacent Sites in Nucleate Boiling

1983 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Sultan ◽  
R. L. Judd
Keyword(s):  
Active Sites ◽  
Heating Surface ◽  
Nucleate Boiling ◽  
Copper Surface ◽  
Nucleation Sites ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels

The present investigation is an original study in nucleate pool boiling heat transfer combining theory and experiment in which water boiling at atmospheric pressure on a single copper surface at two different levels of heat and different levels of subcooling was studied. Cross spectral analysis of the signals generated by the emission of bubbles at adjacent nucleation sites was used to determine the relationship of the time elapsed between the start of bubble growth at the two neighbouring active sites with the distance separating them. The experimental results obtained indicated that for the lower level of heat flux at three different levels of subcooling, the elapsed time and distance were directly related. Theoretical predictions of a temperature disturbance propagating through the heating surface in the radial direction gave good agreement with the experimental findings, suggesting that this is the mechanism responsible for the activation of the surrounding nucleation sites.

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