1,059 research outputs found
Introspective Training Apprehensively Defended: Reflections on Titchener's Lab Manual
To study conscious experience we must, to some extent, trust introspective reports; yet introspective reports often do not merit our trust. A century ago, E.B. Titchener advocated extensive introspective training as a means of resolving this difficulty. He describes many of his training techniques in his four-volume laboratory manual of 1901- 1905. This paper explores Titchener's laboratory manual with an eye to general questions about the prospects of introspective training for contemporary consciousness studies, with a focus on the following examples: introspective knowledge of the combination tones that arise when a musical interval is played; the 'flight of colours' in the afterimage of a field of bright, broad- spectrum light; and the possibility of non-obvious visual illusions. Introspective training appears to have some merit, but also to involve significant hazards
Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?
In the 1950's, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black-and-white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming presume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black-and-white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black-and-white was connected with this change in media technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the phenomenology of our own dreams is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be
Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicistsâand political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicistsâvoted in eight yearsâ worth of elections. We compared ethicistsâ and political philosophersâ voting rates with the voting rates of three other groups: philosophers not specializing in ethics, political scientists, and a comparison group of professors specializing in neither philosophy nor political science. All groups voted at about the same rate, except for the political scientists, who voted about 10â15% more often. On the face of it, this finding conflicts with the expectation that ethicists will behave more responsibly than non-ethicists
Schumannâs Frauenliebe Und Leben: An analysis of âNun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getanâ
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan ( Now you have caused me pain for the first time ) is the eighth and final song in Robert Schumann\u27s Frauenliebe Und Leben song cycle, based upon a poem cycle by Adelbert con Chamisso, which follows the stages of love as told by the womanâthe narrator. Unique from the previous seven songs in both content and musicality, this song mourns the loss of the woman in the poemâs husband. Schumann uses techniques such as tonal unclarity, dynamics, tempo markings, and a lack of cadences in order to connect the music to Chamisso\u27s words, expressing the somber mood of the poem. Each of the three sections in the song capture a different part of the womanâs feelingsâinitial sadness, emptiness, and finally, reminiscenceâand are accompanied with different harmonies, dynamics, and tempos accordingly. A piano coda in the reminiscent section repeats melodic material from song one in the cycle, bringing the whole cycle full-circle. The unification of the words and music presents a more persuasive and expressive interpretation of the womanâs feelings in the poem from beginning to end, making this song the most important in the cycle
How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation
Researchers from the 1940's through the present have found that normal, sighted people can echolocate - that is, detect properties of silent objects by attending to sound reflected from them. We argue that echolocation is a normal part of our conscious, perceptual experience. Despite this, we argue that people are often grossly mistaken about their experience of echolocation. If so, echolocation provides a counterexample to the view that we cannot be seriously mistaken about our own current conscious experience
Women in Philosophy: Quantitative Analyses of Specialization, Prevalence, Visibility, and Generational Change
Abstract: We present several quantitative analyses of the prevalence and visibility of women in moral, political, and social philosophy, compared to other areas of philosophy, and how the situation has changed over time
Virtual Library MatthÀus Daniel Pöppelmann
The âVirtual Library MatthĂ€us Daniel Pöppelmannâ is planned as a book index with attached weblinks to digitized historical printed works and reflects the former, in original lost private library of the famous baroque architect in Dresden. The index was developed in 2013/14 by the subproject-team of the TU Dresden within the European Network of Baroque Cultural Heritage (ENBaCH). In 2017 the virtual library has been brought up-to-date with regard to the transcribed book titles and the additional weblinks within the context of the Project MatthĂ€us Daniel Pöppelmann (1662-1736): Die Schloss- und Zwingerplanungen fĂŒr Dresden. Planen und Bauen im âmodus romanusâ of the TU Dresden, supported by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung
Do things look flat
Abstract Does a penny viewed at an angle in some sense look elliptical, as though projected on a two-dimensional surface? Many philosophers have said such things, from Malebranche (1674/1997) and Hume (1739Hume ( /1978, through early sense-data theorists, to Tye Abstract Word Count: 124 Text Word Count: 337
The Nature of Belief From a Philosophical Perspective, With Theoretical and Methodological Implications for Psychology and Cognitive Science
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