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    A Kaleidoscope of play: a new approach to play analysis in childhood
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-07-17) Sparaci, Laura; Gallagher, Shaun
    Play is a frequent and relevant activity during childhood, and developmental psychologists agree that it offers a unique window on development. Play, however, remains a fuzzy concept, and difficulties persist in its definition, often leading to obstacles in building and comparing experimental studies. This may be due to widespread tendencies to define play by referring to non-observable inner states, to consider playing something that occurs in the head rather than in-the-world and to overreliance on developmental stages. Enactive approaches to child play have instead recently stressed the importance of play contexts, considering child play an activ ity in-the-world rather than a mental state, thereby de intellectualizing play and pretense. Along these lines, in this paper the authors propose a novel approach to the definition of play types by considering the roles of organism, environ ment, and task constraints, within the framework of Material Engagement Theory. Focusing on the material world sur rounding the child and the interactions which characterize play, we critically review the strategy of resorting to non observable categories in the study of play, and we propose a new model (the Kaleidoscope Model) for play analysis.
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    A philosophical approach to improving empirical research on posttraumatic growth
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-05-18) Brady, Michael; Jayawickreme, Eranda
    Post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been a key topic of research by psychologists over the last 25 years. But the idea that a person can benefit from adversity has been around for much longer, and is a stable in many mainstream cultures, and in theological and recent philosophical thinking. However, there has been, to date, little overlap between psychological research into PTG, and philosophical thinking about similar ideas. This is unfortunate, both because philosophers are not taking up potential sources of empirical support, and because psychological research into PTG is subject to a range of criticisms and concerns. In this paper, we aim to show how philosophical thinking can address some of these, and as a result put psychological research into PTG on a firmer theoretical footing.
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    A puzzle of epistemic paternalism
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-11-22) Aird, Rory
    Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, con spiracy theories, misinformation, and fake news about the virus have abounded, drastically affecting global health mea sures to oppose it. In response, different strategies have been proposed to combat such Covid-19 collective irrationalities. One suggested approach has been that of epistemic paternal ism – non-consultative interference in agents’ inquiries for their epistemic improvement. While extant literature on epis temic paternalism has mainly discussed whether it is (ever) justified, in this paper, I primarily focus on the potential imple mentation of widespread epistemically paternalistic policies (such as no-platforming and censorship) and its consequences. I argue that pursuing epistemic paternalism to combat Covid 19 collective irrationalities leads to a hitherto unnoticed puzzle for proponents of epistemic paternalism. Central to the puzzle is the idea those (governments, corporations, social media giants) who actually can (i.e., have the requisite power to) enact widespread epistemically paternalistic policies seem the institutions who are least suited to having such informa tional control over the populace. Thus, epistemic paternalism appears a sword without a hilt; while it may prove an effective strategy in tackling Covid-19 collective irrationalities, we do not have any way to use it without incurring serious risks.
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    Affordances and spatial agency in psychopathology
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-08-07) Krueger, Joel
    Affordances are action-possibilities, ways of relating to and act ing on things in our world. They help us understand how these things mean what they do and how we have bodily access to our world more generally. But what happens when this access is ruptured or impeded? I consider this question in the context of psychopathology and reports that describe this experience. I argue that thinking about the bodily consequences of losing access to everyday affordances can help us better understand these reports. An affordance-based approach to psychopathol ogy can illuminate some of the causes, as well as the experiential character and consequences, of affective disorders and dimin ished spatial agency in self-world disturbances. It also highlights some under-explored ethical and political dimensions of these issues that need further attention.
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    Apophasis, agency, and ecstasy: reading mysticism and madness in The Book of Margery Kempe
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-05-22) McCabe, Emma R.
    This paper argues for a reinterpretation of madness and mysticism through an apophatic lens. By using Wouter Kusters' theo-philosophical definition of madness, I argue for a re-evaluation of female mysticism which rethinks ecstatic and ascetic devotion as a form of agency. Focusing on The Book of Margery Kempe, I reconsider theological passion and ground Kempe’s madness within the historical tradition of affective piety, which expresses a desire to join with the humanity of Christ. Within modern readership, there has been an impulse to label Kempe and other mystics with specific psychiatric diagnoses. In resisting this urge, I instead argue for a convergence of madness and mysticism which enables a paradoxical agency through negation of thought and language. This apophatic agency is precisely what imbues female mysticism with the potential for radical, queer social resistance. In extending this discussion to issues of fasting and abstinence, I then consider the role eucharistic devotion plays in enabling women control over the gastro nomical and sexual parameters of their bodies. The denial of food and sex becomes integral to Kempe’s mysticism in asserting agency over the psychosexual self. Finally, I end with some reflections on how Kempe’s mysticism might influence contemporary discussions of mental health.
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    Bayesian belief protection: A study of belief in conspiracy theories
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-01-31) Poth, Nina; Dolega, Krzysztof
    Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reason ing. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an inadequate response to disconfirming evidence and internal incoher ence. Drawing analogies to Lakatosian research programs, we argue that maintaining a core conspiracy belief can be Bayes-rational when it is embedded in a network of auxiliary beliefs, which can be revised to protect the more central belief from disconfirmation. We propose that the (ir)ration ality associated with conspiracy belief lies not in a flawed updating method, but in their failure to converge toward well-confirmed, stable belief networks in the long run. This approach not only reconciles previously disjointed views, but also points toward more specific hypotheses explaining why some agents may be prone to adopting beliefs in conspiracy theories
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    Belief in free will: Integration into social cognition models to promote health behavior
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-11-07) Quinton, Tom St; Crescioni, A. William
    The question of whether free will exists has been debated extensively for centuries. Instead of debating this complex issue, recent work in psychology has sought to understand the consequences of beliefs in free will. That is, how are people’s behaviors influenced when they either believe or do not believe in free will? Amongst many outcomes, research has identified free will beliefs to influence achieve ment, perseverance, and aggressiveness. We believe that beliefs in free will could also exert influence on health beha viors. Health promotion from a psychological perspective has typically adopted social cognitive models to understand and predict health behaviors. We contend that free will beliefs could be included in these models to understand and change health behavior. We provide examples of how a popular social cognition theory, the theory of planned behavior, could be aligned with beliefs in free will. We suggest that the relationship between free will beliefs and theory con structs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral con trol, intention) could be positive in health enhancing behaviors and negative in health risk behaviors. Experimentally testing these relationships is needed in future research. This may provide further insights into the conse quences of free will and contribute to the explanation of health behavior
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    Beliefs, values and emotions: An interactive approach to distrust in science
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-10-09) Furman, Katherine
    Previous philosophical work on distrust in science has argued that understanding public distrust in science and scientific interventions requires that we pay careful attention not only to epistemic considerations (that is, beliefs about science), but also to values, and the emotional contexts in which assessments of scientific credibility are made. This is likely to be a truncated list of relevant factors for understanding trust/distrust, but these are certainly key areas of concern. The aim of this paper is not to further innumerate the list of relevant factors. Rather, it is to map the ways that these key areas (beliefs, values, and emotions) are related to each other. These are not distinct categories, but rather they inter act, making our picture of distrust more complicated than we might otherwise imagine. This discussion will take place in the context of resistance to medical interventions. Notably, Ebola interventions in West Africa, HIV/AIDS testing in South Africa, and vaccines across the world
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    Believing badly ain’t so bad
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-05-29) Bissett, Ema Sullivan
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    Body maps of loves
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-09-05) Rinne, Pärttyli; Tavast, Mikke; Glerean, Enrico; Sams, Mikko
    Love is an essential biological, psychological, sociological, and religious phenomenon. Using various conceptual mod els, philosophers have often distinguished between different types of love, such as self-love, romantic love, friendship love, love of God, and neighborly love. Psychologists and neuros cientists on the other hand have thus far focused predomi nantly on understanding the emotions and behavioral and neural mechanisms associated with romantic love and par ental love. We do not yet know how the models construed by philosophers are related to actual experiences of love, and to which extent they are merely nominal creations connecting phenomena that in fact have little to do with each other. We lack empirical knowledge of how different types of love are experienced as embodied feelings, and how these experi ences are related to one another. Here we distinguished between 27 different types of love. Using self-report meth ods, we measured 1) how subjective feelings of different types of love are topographically embodied; 2) how different types of love are associated with self-reported emotional valence, strength of the bodily and mental experience, asso ciation with touch, time elapsed since last experienced, and controllability; and 3) how similar different types of love feel. Our study provides the first mapping of embodied experi ences associated with different types of love. The results show that the subjective feelings associated with the love types form a continuum from strongly to weakly felt loves.
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    Can affordances be reasons?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-10-23) Starzak, Tobias; Schlicht, Tobias
    We discuss whether affordances can be reasons, against the background of two interlocked considerations: (1) While the problematic degree of idealization in accounts of reasons that treat them as mental states speaks in favor of the alter native view which treats them as facts , a cognitive consid eration relationship is still required to account for the motivating role of reasons. (2) While recent enactive accounts of cognition hold promise to avoid over-intellectualization of acting for reasons, these are so far either underdeveloped or treat reasons as mental states after all . Considering affor dances as reasons promises to strengthen the enactivist project. We first motivate factualism about reasons, then introduce enactivism and finally discuss whether affordances can play the three roles of explanatory, justifying and moti vating reasons. Since we do not take this discussion to be exhaustive but rather as outlining a research program, we point to desiderata for further work
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    Can we read minds by imaging brains?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-02-23) Rathkopf, Charles; Heinrichs, Jan Hendrik; Heinrichs, Bert
    Will brain imaging technology soon enable neuroscientists to read minds? We cannot answer this question without some understanding of the state of the art in neuroimaging. But neither can we answer this question without some under standing of the concept invoked by the term “mind reading.” This article is an attempt to develop such understanding. Our analysis proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, we provide a categorical explication of mind reading. The categorical explication articulates empirical conditions that must be satisfied if mind reading is to be achieved. In the second stage, we develop a metric for judging the proficiency of mind reading experiments. The conception of mind reading that emerges helps to reconcile folk psychological judgments about what mind reading must involve with the constraints imposed by empirical strategies for achieving it
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    Challenge and Support: Worldview Champions Promote Spiritual Wellness
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-11-07) Staples, B. Ashley; Shaheen, Musbah; Mayhew, Matthew J.; Rockenbach, Alyssa N.
    Extending research on encouraging students’ spiritual explorations in ways that enhance their overall wellbeing, this study examined how faculty and staff provided support to college students dealing with challenges to their spiritual wellness. Findings suggest that common challenges to spiritual wellness, such as encountering spiritual dissonance or feeling spiritually stifled, can be ameliorated when faculty and staff function as worldview champions who provide support by promoting spiritual self-leadership, helping students find their place in a spiritual community, and advocating for spaces for spiritual engagement
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    Conceptualization for intended action: A dynamic model
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-01-06) Kaipainen, Mauri; Hautamäki, Antti; Parthemore, Joel
    Concepts are the building blocks of higher-order cognition and consciousness. Building on Conceptual Spaces Theory (CST) and proceeding from the assumption that concepts are inherently dynamic, this paper provides historical context to and significantly elaborates the previously offered Iterative Subdivision Model (ISDM) with the goal of pushing it toward empirical testability. The paper describes how agents in con tinuous interaction with their environment adopt an inten tional orientation, estimate the utility of the concept(s) applicable to action in the current context, engage in practical action, and adopt any new concepts that emerge: a largely pre-intellectual cycle that repeats essentially without interrup tion over the conceptual agent’s lifetime. This paper elaborates utility optimization by establishing three constraints on con cept formation/evaluation – non-redundancy, distinctiveness, and proportionality – embedding them in a quasi mathematical model intended for development into a formal logic. The notion of a distinctor – a quality dimension of the conceptual space in focus at any given time, used for making what we call a difference distinction – is key. The primary contribution of the revised ISDM is the way it relates concepts to action via utility optimization/actualization and the way it describes the emergence of quality dimensions through trial by-action (trial and error), something previous presentations of CST have failed to address
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    Connecting the methods of psychology and philosophy: Applying Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs) to identify ethical principles underlying the evaluation of bioinspired technologies
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-09-06) Höfele, Philipp; Reuter, Lisa; Estadieu, Louisa; Livanec, Sabrina; Stumpf, Michael; Kiesel, Andrea
    One major challenge of the 21st century is the increas ingly rapid development of new technologies and their evaluation. In this article we argue for an interdisciplinary approach to meet this demand for evaluating new and specifically bioinspired technologies. We combine the consideration of normative principles in the field of ethics with psychological-empirical research on attitudes. In doing so, the paper has a twofold concern: first, we dis cuss how such an interdisciplinary collaboration can be implemented by using the method of Cognitive-Affective Mapping. Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs) enable a graphical representation of attitudes, including cogni tive and affective aspects. Second, we argue that CAMs can be helpful to remedy the deficits of traditional ethical approaches. We applied CAMs in the context of an ethics seminar in which students were instructed to create CAMs based on bioinspired technologies twice – prior to the seminar to assess their evaluation on bioinspired technol ogies per se (pre-assessment) and after the seminar to assess how their evaluation might have changed and especially which normative ethical principles might have been additionally considered (post-assessment). As could be shown, CAMs can visualize the students’ attitudes, including the valence of ethical principles. Further, com paring pre- and post-CAMs indicated students’ attitude change.
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    Determinism and attributions of consciousness
    (Taylor & Francis, 2020-04-18) Björnsson, Gunnar; Shepherd, Joshua
    The studies we report indicate that it is possible to manip ulate explicit ascriptions of consciousness by manipulating whether an agent’s behavior is deterministically caused. In addition, we explore whether this impact of determinism on consciousness is direct, or whether it is mediated by notions linked to agency – notions like moral responsibility, free will, deliberate choice, and sensitivity to moral reasons. We pro vide evidence of mediation. This result extends work on attributions of consciousness and their connection to attribu tions of agency by Adam Arico, Brian Fiala, and Shaun Nichols and supports it against recent criticisms.
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    Does the Phineas Gage effect extend to aesthetic value?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-08-24) Mikalonytė, Elzė Sigutė; Canonne, Clément
    In the last 20 years, a large number of studies have investi gated judgments of the identity of various objects (e.g., per sons, material objects, institutions) over time. One influential strand of research has found that identity judgments are shaped by normative considerations. People tend to believe that moral improvement is more compatible with the conti nuity of identity of a person than moral deterioration, suggest ing that persons are taken to be essentially morally good. This asymmetry is often referred to as the “Phineas Gage effect”. However, normativity extends beyond morality. In particular, it is unknown whether changes in aesthetic value have a similar impact on identity judgments. We investigate whether works of art would be analogously seen as essentially aesthetically valuable. We ran four studies (N = 1264) to explore whether aesthetic considerations have a similar influence on judgments of the identity of artworks. We presented the participants with stories describing either a painting or a musical work which undergoes changes and becomes either more or less aesthe tically valuable. Overall, we found only mixed evidence for the Phineas Gage effect in relation to the aesthetic value of art works. Other factors, such as moral value, seem to have a bigger impact on judgments of persistence.
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    Epistemic injustice in psychiatric research and practice
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-12-20) Kidd, Ian James; Spencer, Lucienne; Carel, Havi
    This paper offers an overview of the philosophical work on epistemic injustices as it relates to psychiatry. After describ ing the development of epistemic injustice studies, we sur vey the existing literature on its application to psychiatry. We describe how the concept of epistemic injustice has been taken up into a range of debates in philosophy of psychiatry, including the nature of psychiatric conditions, psychiatric practices and research, and ameliorative projects. The final section of the paper indicates future directions for philoso phical research of epistemic injustices and psychiatry, con cerning neurocognitive disorders, identity prejudices in psychiatric illness, concepts of epistemic privilege in psychia try, and the prospects for combining phenomenological psy chopathology and epistemic justice. We argue that much remains to be done in the conceptualization of these episte mic injustices and suggest that this future work should be multidisciplinary in character and sensitive to the phenom enology of psychiatric conditions
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    Explanation in theories of the specious present
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-08-04) Arstila, Valtteri
    Time-consciousness theories aim to explain what our experi ences must be like so that we can experience change, succes sion, and other temporally extended events (or at least why we believe we have such experiences). The most popular and influential explanations are versions of theories of the spe cious present, which maintain that what we experience appears to us as temporally extended. However, the role that specious presents have in bringing about temporal experiences remains undescribed. The briefly mentioned suggestions maintain that having temporally extended experiential content is either necessary or sufficient for hav ing temporal experiences, or that the contents provide input for separate perceptual processes. In this paper, I argue that none of these suggestions succeed. Consequently, the the ories of the specious present have not provided a satisfactory explanation of temporal experiences and their central moti vation is lost.
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    Exploratory hypothesis tests can be more compelling than confirmatory hypothesis tests
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-08-26) Rubin, Mark; Donkin, Chris
    Preregistration has been proposed as a useful method for making a publicly verifiable distinction between confirma tory hypothesis tests, which involve planned tests of ante hoc hypotheses, and exploratory hypothesis tests, which involve unplanned tests of post hoc hypotheses. This distinction is thought to be important because it has been proposed that confirmatory hypothesis tests provide more compelling results (less uncertain, less tentative, less open to bias) than exploratory hypothesis tests. In this article, we challenge this proposition and argue that there are several advantages of exploratory hypothesis tests that can make their results more compelling than those of confirmatory hypothesis tests. We also consider some potential disadvantages of exploratory hypothesis tests and conclude that their advantages can outweigh the disadvantages. We conclude that exploratory hypothesis tests avoid researcher commitment and researcher prophecy biases, reduce the probability of data fraud, are more appropriate in the context of unplanned deviations, facilitate inference to the best explanation, and allow peer reviewers to make additional contributions at the data analysis stage. In contrast, confirmatory hypothesis tests may lead to an inappropriate level of confidence in research conclusions, less appropriate analyses in the context of unplanned deviations, and greater bias and errors in theore tical inferences.