Folk Psychology, Consciousness, and Context Effects

Arico, Adam

doi:10.1007/s13164-010-0029-9

Cited by 47 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…On average, participants found that each of the sentences involving an intentional psychological predicate sounded natural, giving high scores to sentences such as "Sony intends to release a new product in January to increase sales" (M=6.5) and "Destiny's Child wants to put on a better show tomorrow night" (M=6.0). A similar result was found by Adam Arico (2010). Further, Arico et al (under review) conducted a study to test whether people found such ascriptions to be literal; they found that even after restricting the data set to participants who performed well on figurative test sentences, most judged the sentences ascribing psychological predicates to group agents to be literally true.…”

Section: Some Empirical Work Relevant To the Animal Restrictionsupporting

confidence: 56%

The Proper Province of Philosophy

Sytsma

2010

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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The practice of conceptual analysis has undergone a revival in recent years. Although the extent of its role in philosophy is controversial, many now accept that conceptual analysis has at least some role to play. Granting this, I consider the relevance of empirical investigation to conceptual analysis. I do so by contrasting an extreme position (anti-empirical conceptual analysis) with a more moderate position (non-empirical conceptual analysis). I argue that anti-empirical conceptual analysis is not a viable position because it has no means for resolving conceptual disputes that arise between seemingly competent speakers of the language. This is illustrated by considering one such dispute that has been pressed by a prominent advocate of anti-empirical conceptual analysis: Bennett and Hacker (2003) assert that psychological predicates only logically apply to whole living animals, but many scientists and philosophers use the terms more broadly. I argue that to resolve such disputes we need to empirically investigate the common understanding of the terms at issue. I then show how this can be done by presenting the results of three studies concerning the application of "calculates" to computers.Conceptual analysis as a topic of philosophical discussion has seen something of a resurgence over the past decade. Much of this resurgence owes to Frank Jackson's (1998) defense of the practice. He argues that conceptual analysis is both more important and more common than has recently been thought (see also Jackson

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Section: Some Empirical Work Relevant To the Animal Restrictionsupporting

confidence: 56%

The Proper Province of Philosophy

Sytsma

2010

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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“…Moreover, as argued elsewhere (Arico, 2010; Sytsma and Machery, 2009), there are methodological worries with the Knobe and Prinz experiments that call their conclusion into question. For instance, Knobe and Prinz found that subjects rated sentences attributing phenomenal mental states to groups as sounding ‘weirder’ (less natural) than sentences attributing non‐phenomenal mental states to groups.…”

Section: Agency and Experience: A Dissociation?mentioning

confidence: 95%

The Folk Psychology of Consciousness*

Arico¹,

Fiala²,

Goldberg

et al. 2011

Mind &Amp; Language

Self Cite

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This paper proposes the 'AGENCY model' of conscious state attribution, according to which an entity's displaying certain relatively simple features (e.g. eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior) automatically triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity. To test the model's predictions, participants completed a speeded object/attribution task, in which they responded positively or negatively to attributions of mental properties (including conscious and non-conscious states) to different sorts of entities (insects, plants, artifacts, etc.). As predicted, participants responded positively to conscious state attributions only for those entities that typically display the simple features identified in the AGENCY model (eyes, distinctive motion, interaction) and took longer to deny conscious states to those entities.

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“…Elsewhere, I've argued that in metaphysics in 2 The empirical literature on folk opinion about group consciousness is more equivocal than I would have thought, however. See Knobe and Prinz 2008;Sytsma and Machery 2009;Arico 2010;Huebner, Bruno, and Sarkissian 2010;Phelan, Arico, and Nichols forthcoming. Few scholars have clearly endorsed the possibility of literal group consciousness. On group minds without literal consciousness see McDougall 1920;Wilson 2004; and the recent literature on collective intentionality (e.g., Gilbert 1989;Clark 1994;Bratman 1999;Rupert 2005;Tuomela 2007;Searle 2010;List and Pettit 2011;Huebner forthcoming).…”

Section: If Materialism Is True the United States Is Probably Consciousmentioning

confidence: 99%

If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious

Schwitzgebel

2014

Philos Stud

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Abstract:There seems to be no principled reason to deny entityhood to spatially distributed but informationally integrated beings. The United States can be considered as a concrete, spatially distributed but informationally integrated entity. Considered as such, the United States is at least a candidate for the literal possession of real psychological states, including phenomenal consciousness or subjective experience. The question, then, is whether it meets plausible materialistic criteria for consciousness. My suggestion is that if those criteria are liberal enough to include both small mammals and weird alien species that exhibit sophisticated linguistic behavior, then the United States probably does meet those criteria. The United States is massively informationally interconnected and responds in sophisticated, goal-directed ways to its surroundings. Its internal representational states are functionally responsive to its environment and not randomly formed or assigned artificially from outside by the acts of an external user.And the United States exhibits complex linguistic behavior, including issuing self-reports and self-critiques that reveal a highly-developed ability to monitor its evolving internal and external conditions. Keywords: metaphysics, consciousness, phenomenology, group mind, superorganism, collective If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably ConsciousIf materialism is true, the reason you have a stream of conscious experience -the reason there's something it's like to be you while there's (presumably!) nothing it's like to be a toy robot or a bowl of chicken soup, the reason you possess what Anglophone philosophers call phenomenology -is that the material stuff out of which you are made is organized the right way.You might find materialism attractive if you dislike the thought that people are animated by immaterial spirits or possess immaterial properties. 1Here's another thought you might dislike: The United States is, literally, like you, phenomenally conscious. That is, the United States, conceived of as a spatially distributed entity with people as (some of) its parts, literally possesses a stream of conscious experience over and above the experiences of its members considered individually. I will argue in this essay that accepting the materialist idea you probably like (if you're a typical early 21 st century philosopher) should draw you to accept some group consciousness ideas you probably don't like (if you're a typical early 21 st century philosopher) -unless you choose, instead, to accept some other ideas you probably ought to like even less.The argument in brief is this. If you're a materialist, you probably think that rabbits have conscious experience. And you ought to think that. After all, rabbits are a lot like us, biologically and neurophysiologically. If you're a materialist, you probably also think that conscious experience would be present in a wide range of alien beings behaviorally very similar 1 For purposes of this essay, I'm going to assume that we know, a...

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Folk Psychology, Consciousness, and Context Effects

Cited by 47 publications

References 18 publications

The Proper Province of Philosophy

The Proper Province of Philosophy

The Folk Psychology of Consciousness*

If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious

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