Author: Franz Huber Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199976112 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
"This book is the first of two volumes on belief and counterfactuals. It consists of six of a total of eleven chapters. The first volume is concerned primarily with questions in epistemology and is expository in parts. Among others, it provides an accessible introduction to belief revision and ranking theory. Ranking theory specifies how conditional beliefs should behave. It does not tell us why they should do so nor what they are. This book fills these two gaps. The consistency argument tells us why conditional beliefs should obey the laws of ranking theory by showing them to be the means to attaining the end of holding true and informative beliefs. The conditional theory of conditional belief tells us what conditional beliefs are by specifying their nature in terms of non-conditional belief and counterfactuals. In addition, the book contains several novel arguments, accounts, and applications. These include an argument for the thesis that there are only hypothetical imperatives and no categorical imperatives; an account of the instrumentalist understanding of normativity, or rationality, according to which one ought to take the means to one's ends; as well as solutions to the problems of conceptual belief change, logical learning, and learning conditionals. A distinctive feature of the book is its unifying methodological approach: means-end philosophy. Means-end philosophy takes serious that philosophy is a normative discipline, and that philosophical problems are entangled with each other. It also explains the importance of logic to philosophy, without being a technical theory itself"--
Author: Moritz Schulz Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019878595X Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Moritz Schulz explores counterfactual thought and language: what would have happened if things had gone a different way. Counterfactual questions may concern large scale derivations (what would have happened if Nixon had launched a nuclear attack) or small scale evaluations of minor derivations (what would have happened if I had decided to join a different profession). A common impression, which receives a thorough defence in the book, is that oftentimes we find it impossible to know what would have happened. However, this does not mean that we are completely at a loss: we are typically capable of evaluating counterfactual questions probabilistically: we can say what would have been likely or unlikely to happen. Schulz describes these probabilistic ways of evaluating counterfactual questions and turns the data into a novel account of the workings of counterfactual thought.
Author: Peter Mitchell Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 1317715225 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 430
Book Description
This fresh and dynamic book offers a thorough investigation into the development of the cognitive processes that underpin judgements about mental states (often termed 'theory of mind') and addresses specific issues that have not been adequately dealt with in the past, and which are now being raised by some of the most prominent researchers in the field.
Author: Simon Baron-Cohen Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191668796 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 525
Book Description
This book comprises 26 exciting chapters by internationally renowned scholars, addressing the central psychological process separating humans from other animals: the ability to imagine the thoughts and feelings of others, and to reflect on the contents of our own mindsa theory of mind (ToM). The four sections of the book cover developmental, cultural, and neurobiological approaches to ToM across different populations and species. The chapters explore the earliest stages of development of ToM in infancy, and how plastic ToM learning is; why 3-year-olds typically fail false belief tasks and how ToM continues to develop beyond childhood into adulthood; the debate between simulation theory and theory theory; cross-cultural perspectives on ToM and how ToM develops differently in deaf children; how we use our ToM when we make moral judgments, and the link between emotional intelligence and ToM; the neural basis of ToM measured by evoked response potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and studies of brain damage; emotional vs. cognitive empathy in neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and psychopathy; the concept of self in autism and teaching methods targeting ToM deficits; the relationship between empathy, the pain matrix and the mirror neuron system; the role of oxytocin and fetal testosterone in mentalizing and empathy; the heritability of empathy and candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with empathy; and ToM in non-human primates. These 26 chapters represent a masterly overview of a field that has deepened since the first edition was published in 1993.
Author: Garth J. O. Fletcher Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0470998547 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 634
Book Description
This authoritative handbook provides a cutting-edge overview of classic and current research as well as an assessment of future trends in the field of interpersonal processes. Ensures thorough and up-to-date coverage of all aspects of interpersonal processes Includes contributions by academics and other experts from around the world to ensure a truly international perspective Provides a comprehensive overview of classic and current research and likely future trends Fully referenced chapters and annotated bibliographies allow easy access to further study Now available in full text online via xreferplus, the award-winning reference library on the web from xrefer. For more information, visit www.xreferplus.com
Author: Anna Abraham Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108429246 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 865
Book Description
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
Author: John Collins Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262532563 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 500
Book Description
One philosophical approach to causation sees counterfactual dependence as the key to the explanation of causal facts: for example, events c (the cause) and e (the effect) both occur, but had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. The counterfactual analysis of causation became a focus of philosophical debate after the 1973 publication of the late David Lewis's groundbreaking paper, "Causation," which argues against the previously accepted "regularity" analysis and in favor of what he called the "promising alternative" of the counterfactual analysis. Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection between—counterfactuals and causation, including the complete version of Lewis's Whitehead lectures, "Causation as Influence," a major reworking of his original paper. Also included is a more recent essay by Lewis, "Void and Object," on causation by omission. Several of the essays first appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy, but most, including the unabridged version of "Causation as Influence," are published for the first time or in updated forms. Other topics considered include the "trumping" of one event over another in determining causation; de facto dependence; challenges to the transitivity of causation; the possibility that entities other than events are the fundamental causal relata; the distinction between dependence and production in accounts of causation; the distinction between causation and causal explanation; the context-dependence of causation; probabilistic analyses of causation; and a singularist theory of causation.
Author: Franz Huber
Author: Moritz Schulz
Author: William Leonard Harper
Author: Cristina Bicchieri
Author: Peter Mitchell
Author: Simon Baron-Cohen
Author: Timothy L. S. Sprigge
Author: Garth J. O. Fletcher
Author: Anna Abraham
Author: John Collins