Vocab List for Philosophy of Psychology Flashcards
Affective Appraisal
A rapid, sub-cognitive, unconscious evaluation of a particular stimulus in terms of its significance for the organism (specifically, whether it “matters” to the organism’s survival, wants, purposes or goals). Often, affective appraisals are tied to certain physiological (bodily) responses. In her non-cognitivist account, Jenefer Robinson associates affective appraisals with emotions.
Akrasia
Weakness of will, that is, acting against one’s best interest
Autonomous Mind Theory
The idea that the personal (i.e. Folk Psychological) and sub-personal levels of explanation are radically incommensurable: in other words, we can expect a failure or fit, or a failure of intertheoretic reduction, due to a fundamental incompatibility between these two levels of explanation
The Censor
An entity standing at the border between the conscious and the unconscious, which mediates between the two. Specifically, the censor decides, on the basis of the goal of self-preservation of the conscious, which urges/desires/beliefs may be allowed expression ( and how these are expressed) in the conscious, as well as which of these urges/desires/beliefs will be repressed, and relegated to the unconscious.
Cognitive Penetrability
The idea that our beliefs, desires, and other mental states should be rationally sensitive to other beliefs, desires, and mental states. For example, if I have the desire to smoke, but strongly believe that smoking is not good for me, then that should impact on (although not necessarily eradicate) my desire to smoke.
Compatibilism
The idea that determinism is compatible with free will and/or moral responsibility. Most compatibilists cash out this claim by arguing that we are free/morally responsible if the chain of causation passes through the will of the agent
Determinism
The idea that every event has a cause (and that that in turn has a cause, and so on ad infinitum).
First-Order Desire
A desire for something (or, to put it in negative terms, a desire that does not concern or involve another desire). Examples: Harry wants Sally; Sally wants chocolate; Murray wants to win the game.
The Will
An effective first-order desire - that is, the desire that succeeds in moving us to action
Indubitability
The idea that I cannot be in doubt as to my own mental states - for instance, if I am scared of something, it is not possible that I can be in doubt as to whether I am scared of it.
Inferential Integration
The idea that our beliefs, desires and other mental states are logically related to one another. For example, inferential integration entails that I not hold contradictory beliefs of the form “p and not-p”; it would also entail, if I believe that p, and I believe that p implies q, that I believe q.
Inferential object
The object, or state of affairs, that a particular propositional attitude, judgment or belief is about, or concerns. E.g., John’s anger at Bob’s stealing his car has as its intentional object his car.
The Knowing Dupe Strategy
The Knowing Dupe strategy is an attempt to dissolve the paradoxes of strong self-deception. These paradoxes arise because, when we decieve ourselves, it seems that we must both believe in the truth of a proposition (as the decieved party) and know that it false (as the decieving party). The Knowing dupe strategy solves this problem by divorcing our present self (the deceiver) from our future self (the deceived). For example, I might undertake, in the present moment, a strategy to deceive myself, while knowing that in the future I will have forgotten that I have undertaken this strategy, and so will be deiceved. In this case, the person deceived (future me) is different from the person deceiving (past me).
Libertarianism
The idea that determinism is false, and that we are (consequently) free
The Medea Principle
The idea that, when we act irrationally, this is due to our (intrinsically) rational minds’ being hijacked by outside forces
The Modularity Principle
A principle of intertheoretic reduction proposed by Steven Stich, whereby reduction is affected by means of correlating “naturally isolable” parts of folk psychology (e.g. entities like beliefs and desires) with naturally isolable parts of the cognitive system under consideration (e.g. mapping individual memories, on the folk psychological level, to individual sentence-like structures within a cognitive science model of memory)
Personal Level of Explanation
Explanations, usually of a Folk Psychological nature, that attempt to explain and predict behavior by means of situating the person as an agent, within a broader normative/rational framework. Such explanations usually involve the ascriptions of properties that are true of the whole person (e.g. “Jane is sad”, where sadness is something we ascribe to Jane as a whole, rather than merely parts of Jane)
Placebo
A substance or treatment that is therapeutically inert. The Placebo Effect, then, is when these therapeutically inert substances nonetheless have an effect that mirrors an active substance. For example, vitamin C is therapeutically inert as a pain killer - but, if I am told that a vitamin C pill is a pain killer, I may experience a placebo effect, in the form of pain reduction.
The Plato Principle
The idea that, when we act irrationally, this is due to mistaken beliefs (or cognitive error, more generally). Conversely, once we are aware of these mistaken beliefs, we can adjust, and so return to rationality.
Second-Order Desire
A desire that concerns another, first-order, desire, typically phrased in terms of negation (i.e. not desiring the first-order desire) or affirmation (i.e. desiring it). E.g., Sally doesn’t want to want Harry.
Volition
A second-order desire that concerns the will - effectively, what distinguishes volitions from second-order desires generally is that a volition concerns the will (i.e. it is invested in which desire, ultimately speaking, moves us to act), and it reflects a high degree of care, or investment, in the will. Crucially, for Frankfurt, the possession of second-order volitions (as opposed to merely to second-order desires) is what distinguishes persons from non-persons, which Frankfurt refers to as wantons
Strong Self-Deception
Otherwise known as deep self-deception, strong self-deception involves the paradoxical state of affairs whereby someone is decieved into believing that a proposition, p, is true, and is at the same time the one decieving, and who knows that p is false. The result is that, in strong self-deception, someone both believes (as deceived) and disbelieves (as deceiver) a particular proposition.
Sub-Personal Level of Explanation
Explanations that involve sub-systems of persons e.g. their cognitive systems (usually studied by ‘scientific psychology’) and their brains. Such explanations typically invoke causal/mechanical laws in order to explain phenomena, rather than the normative framework of personal-level explanations, and rarely, if at all, make reference to the person as a whole (e.g. “Jane’s serotonin levels are low”).
Unconscious
The unconscious is, simply enough, a part of the mind, the contents of which we are unaware. In Freud’s early models of the mind, he distinguished the descriptive unconsicous and the dynamic unconscious:
