Gonzalo Guerrero and the Psychology of Identity

Historiographic analysis is underused in academic psychology. In this expository essay, I intend to show that historical events or persons can be described with reference to theory and research provided by empirical psychology. Besides providing evidence-based grounds for a more penetrating historical account, the conclusions drawn from a historiographic analysis may feedback into psychological theory by generating new testable hypotheses. Whereas standard empirical research is focused on statistical associations among quantitative variables obtained in random samples, historiographic analysis is most informative with the use of extreme cases, that is, by asking and showing the limits of what is possible. This essay focuses on the story of Gonzalo Guerrero to explore psychological processes involved in identity transformation.

The pragmatic use of metaphor in empirical psychology

Metaphors of mind and their elaboration into models serve a crucial explanatory role in psychology. In this article, an attempt is made to describe how biology and engineering provide the predominant metaphors for contemporary psychology. A contrast between the discursive and descriptive functions of metaphor use in theory construction serves as a platform for deliberation upon the pragmatic consequences of models derived therefrom. The conclusion contains reflections upon the possibility of an integrative interdisciplinary psychology.

Stability, A Sense of Justice, and Self-Respect

This essay reviews the role of a sense of justice and self-respect in Rawls’ arguments in A Theory of Justice that a well-ordered society based on his principles of justice would be relatively stable. Questions concern Rawls’ conception of the relation between ethics and empirical psychology, the potential value of his discussion of a sense of justice independently of the particular developmental story that he proposes (following Kohlberg), Rawls’ conception of self-respect, and how it differs from a Kantian conception of self-respect, and Rawls’ reasons for abandoning his argument for stability in A Theory of Justice in favor of an argument from overlapping consensus in Political Liberalism.

Dying for a Cause: Meaning, Commitment, and Self-Sacrifice

Some people willingly risk or give up their lives for something they deeply believe in, for instance standing up to a dictator. A good example of this are members of the White Rose student resistance group, who rebelled against the Nazi regime and paid for it with their lives. I argue that when the cause is good, such risky activities (and even deaths themselves) can contribute to meaning in life in its different forms – meaning-as-mattering, meaning-as-purpose, and meaning-as-intelligibility. Such cases highlight the importance of integrity, or living up to one's commitments, in meaningful living, or dying, as it may be, as well as the risk involved in commitment, since if you die for a bad cause, you have only harmed yourself. However, if leading a more rather than less meaningful life benefits rather than harms you, there are possible scenarios in which you yourself are better off dying for a good cause than living a longer moderately happy life. This presents a version of a well-known puzzle: what, then, makes dying for a cause a self-sacrifice, as it usually seems to be? I sketch some possible answers, and critically examine relevant work in empirical psychology.

Evidence Law and Empirical Psychology

Empirical psychology is a natural fit for understanding the law of evidence but is also substantially at odds with it. Since the early twentieth century, researchers have begun applying the insights from experimental psychology to various aspects of courtroom adjudication, including the assumptions underlying the Federal Rules of Evidence and the effects of the rules on litigants and the public. At the same time, the law has struggled with whether and how to incorporate insights from an academic discipline that embodies goals and methodologies that are, in many ways, dramatically different from its own. This chapter unfolds a brief historical account of the relationship between empirical psychology and the law of evidence, specifies the major contributions that psychologists have made to our understanding of evidence law, highlights recent, cutting-edge research, and makes several suggestions for how future research can assist in maintaining the relevance of psychology to sound evidentiary policy.

Honesty

Honesty is clearly an important virtue. Parents want to develop it in their children. Close relationships typically depend upon it. Employers value it in their employees. Yet philosophers have said almost nothing about the virtue of honesty in the past fifty years. This book aims to draw attention to this surprisingly neglected virtue. Part I looks at the concept of honesty. It takes up questions such as what honesty involves, the motives of an honest person, how practical wisdom relates to honesty, and whether there is anything that connects all the different sides of honesty, including not lying, not stealing, not breaking promises, not misleading others, and not cheating. A central idea is that the honest person reliably does not intentionally distort the facts as she takes them to be. Part II looks at the empirical psychology of honesty. It takes up the question of whether most people are honest, dishonest, or somewhere in between. Drawing extensively on recent studies of cheating and lying in particular, the emerging model ends up implying that most of us have a long way to go to reach an honest character. Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue thus provides a richer understanding of what our character actually looks like as well as what the goal of being an honest person really involves. It will then be up to us to decide if we want to take steps to shrink the character gap between the two.

8½

What is the point of self-reflexivity? What is the value of artworks that, like Federico Fellini’s 8½, deliberately reveal their own fictionality? Some think reflexivity has no value at all, being just a symptom of modern skepticism; others that it is designed merely to inform us of something; a third group, more compellingly, that it does something for the writer, allowing her to take a distance from her own beliefs; and a fourth, even more interestingly, that it opens a space for pathos in an otherwise cynical world. Drawing on empirical psychology, this chapter suggests a fifth possibility: that reflexivity can help readers and viewers fine-tune a mental capacity, the capacity to hold two conflicting attitudes at the same time. It gives us practice at doubting what we believe and believing what we doubt, and by so doing it provides us with a cognitive workout, making us better at sustaining illusions we know to be false. What if the ideal is as much truth as one can stand, coupled with a handful of necessary illusions, at the same time as an awareness that they are exactly that? If so, we’d better start watching some movies like 8½.

Empirical and Rational Psychology

This chapter examines the conceptions of rational and empirical psychology developed in the writings of Kant’s predecessors and in his own pre-critical writings. The views of the following figures are examined in detail: Wolff, Gottsched, Baumgarten, Meier, and the Kant of the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures. Once this background has been surveyed, the chapter goes on to explore: Kant’s conception of a distinctively pure rational psychology; his science of self-consciousness; and his two contrasting understandings of how rational psychology might be pursued. The chapter argues that Kant’s target in the Paralogisms chapter is an idealized ‘pure’ rational psychology, an aspiring a priori ‘science’ of the soul, whose closest antecedents in the tradition are the views of Baumgarten, on the one hand, and his own views in the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures, on the other.

La crítica de Dorion Cairns a las "Ideen" de Husserl

En el presente artículo analizo la lectura que hace Dorion Cairns, probablemente el más cercano de los seguidores de Husserl, del libro de Ideen y pondré de relieve las críticas que mi maestro le hizo a lo que Husserl había considerado una especie de manual de su filosofía fenomenológica. Lo que sigue es un resumen del seminario de 1964, dedicado a las Ideas. Siguiendo la estructura del libro, Cairns hace las siguientes observaciones: (a) consideraciones sobre la comprensión adecuada del título del libro, (b) reflexiones de Cairns sobre la relación entre la fenomenología trascendental y la psicología empírica y la relación entre lo eidético y lo trascendental. En tercer lugar, abordaré lo que probablemente sea la mayor diferencia entre la fenomenología de Cairns y las Ideas de Husserl, esto es, (c) la importancia de la “preconstitución”, un rico sustrato de los actos o acciones humanas, la cual desemboca en una critiqua de la noción de la intencionalidad presente en Ideas, como objetivadora. Cairns rechaza también la distinción hyle/ morphé y la sustituye por una más fundamental, la de sentir y sensa. También considera los aspectos fundamentales del (e) tiempo. En cuanto a la tercera parte de Ideas, Cairns pone de relieve algunas dificultadaes a la hora de clasificar los actos. Otro aspecto de la lectura de Ideas es la (f) insistencia en analizar los componentes subjetivos o irracionales en la teoría de la práxis, valores y conocimiento.In this paper I shall analyse Dorion Cairns´s, arguably Husserl´s closest follower, reading of the Ideen and I will emphasize criticisms that my teacher had of what Husserl considered a sort of manual for his phenomenological philosophy. What follows is a summary of the seminar from 1964, devoted to the Ideas. Following the structure of the book, Cairns points out the following remarks: (a) concerns about the proper understanding of the very title of the work, (b) Cairn´s consideration of the relation of transcendental phenomenology to empirical psychology and the relation of the eidetic and the transcendental. In the third place, probably the biggest difference between Cairn´s phenomenology and Husserl´s Ideas, that is, (c) the importance of the “preconstitution”, a rich substratum of human act or actions. This emphasis amounts to the critique of intentionality in Ideen as objectivating. Cairns also rejects (d) the hylē/morphē distinction and substitutes it by a more fundamental one of sensing and sensa. He also considers some fundamental aspects of (e) time. As to the third part of the Ideas, Cairns points out some difficulties in classification of acts. Other aspect of Cairn’s reading of Ideen is (f) the insistence on analysing the subjective or irrational components in the theory of praxis, values and knowledge.