155 research outputs found
Doing without Deliberation: Automatism, Automaticity, and Moral Accountability,
Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account
Introspective insecurity
This paper examines the case for pessimism concerning the trustworthiness of introspection. I begin with a brief examination of two arguments for introspective optimism, before turning in more detail to Eric Schwitzgebel’s case for the view that introspective access to one’s own phenomenal states is highly insecure. I argue that there are a number of ways in which Schwitzgebel’s argument falls short of its stated aims. The paper concludes with a speculative proposal about why some types of phenomenal states appear to be more introspectively elusive than others
Introspection and intuition : a reply to Maximilian H. Engel
This paper is a response to Maximilian H. Engel’s commentary on my target paper, in which I provided a critical examination of pessimism accounts of the trustworthiness of introspection. Engel’s focuses on the distinction that I drew between two kinds of introspective judgments, scaffolded judgments and freestanding judgments, and suggests that this distinction might fruitfully illuminate the epistemology of intuitive judgments. I present some doubts about whether the distinction can be transferred to intuition in this way, and also sketch a more fundamental contrast between introspective judgments and intuitive judgments
Bottom-Up or Top-Down? Campbell's Rationalist Account of Monothematic Delusions
A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell (2001) calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism Campbell offers a rationalist account of monothematic delusions, according to which delusional beliefs are understood as Wittgensteinian framework propositions. We argue that neither Campbell's attack on empiricism nor his rationalist alternative to empiricism is successful
Experience, Belief and the Interpretive Fold
Response to commentarie
Phenomenology and delusions: Who put the 'alien' in alien control?.
Although current models of delusion converge in proposing that delusions are based on unusual experiences, they differ in the role that they accord experience in the formation of delusions. On some accounts, the experience comprises the very content of the delusion, whereas on other accounts the delusion is adopted in an attempt to explain an unusual experience. We call these the endorsement and explanationist models, respectively. We examine the debate between endorsement and explanationist models with respect to the 'alien control' delusion. People with delusions of alien control believe that their actions and/or thoughts are being controlled by an external agent. Some accounts of alien control (e.g., Frith, Blakemore, & Wolpert, 2000a) are best thought of in explanationist terms; other accounts (e.g., Jeannerod, 1999) seem more suited to an endorsement approach. We argue that recent cognitive and neurophysiological evidence favours an endorsement model of the delusion of alien control
Institutional contexts in supporting quality online postgraduate education:Lessons learned from two initiatives at the University of Edinburgh
While there are a range of practices and principles that underpin quality online postgraduate education, this work cannot all be done through course design and teaching. Good educational practice is also embedded in institutional policies, strategies, cultures and infrastructures. In this chapter, we examine two very different initiatives at the University of Edinburgh—the Distance Education Initiative (DEI) and the Near Future Teaching project (NFT)—to discuss the challenges of generating coherent institutional change towards supporting quality online postgraduate taught (PGT) education. In doing so, we highlight the importance of meaningful negotiation of central and local aims and values, through faculty development, communication between educational and leadership networks, and the embedding of educational practitioners within leadership constellations
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