Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by  Victor Lange (University of Copenhagen) and Thor Grünbaum (University of Copenhagen) on their recent paper, " Transparency and the mindfulness opacity hypothesis " ( The Philosophical Quarterly, 2023)  Victor Lange Imagine that you are standing in front of Delacroix’s famous painting, Liberty Leading the People . In one situation, you might perceive the lines and colours as objects and properties of objects. The yellowness appear as the woman’s dress and the thin light blueness appear as the sky above her. In such a case, we say that these properties appear as representational properties.  In another situation, you might perceive the lines and colours as merely paint on the canvas. Say that you are interested in Delacroix’s technique, so you move closer to examine his brush strokes. Here, the yellowness and light blue do not appear as objects or properties of objects. Instead, they appear as features of the painting itself. In such case, we say that

In this post, Kathleen interviews Matthew Cull (University of Edinburgh), Jules Holroyd (University of Sheffield), and Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton) on their funded exchange project ' Inclusive Language in Perinatal and Postnatal Care '.  Poster from https://engagedphilosophy.org/inclusive/ Hello! Can you tell us a little bit about your recent project? The project is a knowledge exchange project, about how to make language gender inclusive in perinatal and postnatal care. We’ve recently written a paper, which we’re nearly ready to submit for publication, about how standard approaches to inclusive language tend to be ‘monistic’: they aim to use one strategy, either making language gender-neutral (e.g. replacing ‘pregnant women’ with ‘pregnant people’) or gender additive (e.g. writing ‘pregnant women, trans men and nonbinary people’). Working through a number of case studies, we find that no single strategy can meet the moral and communicative goals in all contexts.

Today's post is by Paweł Gładziejewski  (Nicolaus Copernicus University) on his recent paper, " From Altered States to Metaphysics: The Epistemic Status of Psychedelic-induced Metaphysical Beliefs "  ( Review of Philosophy and Psychology , 2023).  Paweł Gładziejewski  Psychedelic experiences sometimes lead people to revise their belief systems in far-reaching ways. My paper deals with the epistemic status of a particular class of beliefs that people sometimes acquire after a psychedelic session. These are the metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality itself. Imagine someone in a deep psychedelic state, where their usual sense of self dissolves into an all-encompassing unity lacking an subject-object distinction. Chances are that the experience will inspire this person to modify her beliefs about the existence of God or the relation between consciousness and the physical world. Is updating metaphysical beliefs in this manner epistemically irrational? Or

On the blog today, Kathleen speaks to Alfred Archer and Heidi Maibom about the journal ' Passion ', which was launched relatively recently. Alfred and Heidi are editors-in-chief of the journal.   Alfred Archer   KMH: Could you tell us a little bit about Passion, and its links to EPSSE? AA & HM: Certainly. 2014, The European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE) has been going for ten years now and has grown into a wonderful, lively and welcoming group of scholars working on philosophical issues related to emotions. Several years ago, it was suggested that the society could look into starting its own journal . The main reason for this was that while EPSSE’s members were publishing their work in a range of philosophical and interdisciplinary journals, there was no academic journal dedicated to publishing the kinds of papers that EPSSE members were writing. Between 2017 and 2020 the executive board, then led by Achim Stephan, explored various options for

In today's post,  François Kammerer and Keith Frankish  write about their recent special issue ' What Forms Could Introspective Systems Take?'. François is a philosopher of mind. He holds a PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris (France) and currently works as a postdoc researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany). His work focuses on consciousness and introspection.  Keith is Honorary Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK, Visiting Research Fellow at The Open University, UK, and Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete, Greece. He works mainly in the area of philosophy of mind and is well known for his 'illusionist' theory of consciousness.  François Kammerer Human beings can introspect. They can look inwards, as it were, at their own minds and tell what thoughts, experiences, and feelings they have. That is, they can form representations of their own current mental states.