Martin Davies

The question posed by Dunn and Kirsner (D&K) is an instance of a more general one: What can we infer from data? One answer, if we are talking about logically valid deductive inference, is that we cannot infer theories from data. A theory is supposed to explain the data and so cannot be a mere summary of the data to be explained. The truth of an explanatory theory goes beyond the data and so is never logically guaranteed by the data. This is not just a point about cognitive neuropsychology, or even about psychology in general. It is a familiar point about all science

This paper addresses a problem about epistemic warrant. The problem is posed by philosophical arguments for externalism about the contents of thoughts, and similarly by philosophical arguments for architecturalism about thinking, when these arguments are put together with a thesis of first person authority. In each case, first personal knowledge about our thoughts plus the kind of knowledge that is provided by a philosophical argument seem, together, to open an unacceptably ‘non-empirical’ route to knowledge of empirical facts. Furthermore, this unwelcome prospect of transferring a ‘non-empirical’ warrant from premises about our own mental states and about philosophical theory to a conclusion about external environment or internal architecture seems to depend upon little more than the possibility of knowledge by inference. (The use of the scare-quoted term ‘non-empirical’ is explained a couple of paragraphs further on.)

Starting from Dennett's distinction between personal and sub-personal levels of description, I consider the relationships amongst three levels: the personal level, the level of information-processing mechanisms, and the level of neurobiology. I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal level and the sub-personal level of information-processing mechanisms as interaction without reduction . Even given a nonreductionist conception of persons, philosophical theorizing sometimes supports downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level. An example of a downward inference is provided and an objection is considered

Anosognosia is literally ‘unawareness of or failure to acknowledge one’s hemi- plegia or other disability’ (OED). Etymology would suggest the meaning ‘lack of knowledge of disease’ so that anosognosia would include any denial of impairment, such as denial of blindness (Anton’s syndrome). But Babinski, who introduced the term in 1914, applied it only to patients with hemiplegia who fail to acknowledge their paralysis. Most commonly, this is failure to acknowledge paralysis of the left side of the body following damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. In this paper, we shall mainly be concerned with anosognosia for hemiplegia. But we shall also use the term ‘anosognosia’ in an inclusive way to encompass lack of knowledge or acknowledgement of any impairment. Indeed, in the construction ‘anosognosia for X’, X might even be anosognosia for some Y.

Glyn Humphreys' research on attention and binding began from feature‐integration theory, which claims that binding together visual features, such as colour and orientation, requires spatially selective attention. Humphreys employed a more inclusive notion of binding and argued, on neuropsychological grounds, for a multi‐stage account of the overall binding process, in which binding together of form elements was followed by two stages of feature binding. Only the second stage of feature binding, a re‐entrant (top‐down) process beginning in posterior parietal cortex and returning to early visual areas, required attention. In line with his commitment to converging evidence, Humphreys considered that investigating the role of attention in motion‐induced blindness could be a route to better understanding of the cognitive role of the attention‐dependent second stage of feature binding. He suggested that this role might be to resolve ambiguity and to generate a single consistent interpretation of the perceptual input.

Inattentional blindness studies have shown that an unexpected object may go unnoticed if it does not share the property specified in the task instructions. Our aim was to demonstrate that observers develop an attentional set for a property not specified in the task instructions if it allows easier performance of the primary task. Three experiments were conducted using a dynamic selective-looking paradigm. Stimuli comprised four black squares and four white diamonds, so that shape and colour varied together. Task instructions specified shape but observers developed an attentional set for colour, because we made the black–white discrimination easier than the square–diamond discrimination. None of the observers instructed to count bounces by squares reported an unexpected white square, whereas two-thirds of observers instructed to count bounces by diamonds did report the white square. When attentional set departs from task instructions, you may fail to see what you were told to look for

The rubber hand paradigm is used to create the illusion of self-touch, by having the participant administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner, with an identical stimulus , administers stimulation to the participant’s hand. With synchronous stimulation, participants experience the compelling illusion that they are touching their own hand. In the current study, the robustness of this illusion was assessed using incongruent stimuli. The participant used the index finger of the right hand to administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner used a paintbrush to administer stimulation to the participant’s left hand. The results indicate that this violation of tactile expectations does not diminish the illusion of self-touch. Participants experienced the illusion despite the use of incongruent stimuli, both when vision was precluded and when visual feedback provided clear evidence of the tactile mismatch

Consciousness is, perhaps, the aspect of our mental lives that is the most perplexing for both psychologists and philosophers. Daniel Dennett has described it as 'both the most obvious and the most mysterious feature of our minds' and attempts at definition often seem to move in circles. Thomas Nagel famously remarked that 'without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.'. These observations might suggest that consciousness - indefinable and mysterious - falls outside the scope of rational enquiry, defying both scientific and philosophical investigation. In reality, however, the topic has been a focus of psychological investigation since William James and is increasingly vital in philosophical research. This book illustrates the various, interdisciplinary approaches to the problem, providing both pointers to a solution and a summary of the key positions.

The problem of armchair knowledge arises when there are armchair warrants for believing the premises of a palpably valid argument, yet it is implausible that the question whether or not the conclusion of the argument is true can be settled from the armchair. In the first lecture, I presented three instances of the problem, arising from an architecturalist argument, (LOT), an externalist argument, (WATER), and an argument about colour concepts, (RED). Other instances could be presented; I shall mention some later in this lecture

I review and reconsider some of the themes of ‘Two notions of necessity’ (Davies and Humberstone, 1980) and attempt to reach a deeper understanding and appreciation of Gareth Evans’s reflections (in ‘Reference and contingency’, 1979) on both modality and reference. My aim is to plot the relationships between the notions of necessity that Humberstone and I characterised in terms of operators in two-dimensional modal logic, the notions of superficial and deep necessity that Evans himself described, and the epistemic notion of a priority

In August, Amnesty International and the World Medical Association expressed concern at reports that a judge in Saudi Arabia had asked several hospitals in the country whether they could perform an operation to damage a man's spinal cord as punishment for attacking another man and leaving him paralysed. The man had already been sentenced to seven months imprisonment for the crime, the injured victim requested the further sentence under Sharia Law, which is strictly enforced across Saudi Arabia. According to reports, one of the hospitals approached declined on ethical grounds. Another hospital stated that it was possible to damage the spinal cord in the way requested, but that the procedure would have to be done at a specialised hospital. 1In its statement, Amnesty International urged the authorities not to carry out the sentence, which it argued would be a grave violation of international human rights law and contravene the United Nations convention against Torture, to which Saudi Arabia is a state party. 2 The WMA expressed its support for the physicians who refused to carry out the request by the Saudi court, participation in which would constitute a severe breach of medical ethics. 3 The WMA reminded doctors that the Declaration of Tokyo clearly states that no physician should participate in the practice of torture or any other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, whatever the offence of which the victim of such procedures is suspected, accused or guilty of. The Declaration also includes a prohibition of participation in the planning or advising for such a procedure. NHS white paperIn July 2010 the government published a White Paper outlining its plans to transform the delivery of National Health Services in England. 4 The White Paper has been described as ‘one of the biggest shake ups of the health system …