Michael Roberts

This PhD thesis concerns introspective approaches to the study of the mind. Across three standalone papers, I examine the significance of introspective data and advise on appropriate kinds of training for the production of such data. An overview document first introduces major themes, methods and arguments of the thesis. Paper 1 then begins the argumentative work, interrogating the constraining function of introspection in cognitive science. Here, I evaluate “enactivist” claims about the significance of introspection, clarifying central enactivist suggestions to draw out the broader importance of introspection in science and philosophy. Paper 2 then examines the proposed employment of Buddhist meditation practices in the production of rigorous introspective data. I defend such proposals against concerns that meditators yield ungeneralizable data, given the transformative character of these attention-training techniques. I argue that some meditation-trained transformations are actually epistemically-beneficial, undermining popular associations between transformation and “distortion”. Paper 3 then reviews difficulties involved in integrating meditative training into research. I emphasise the importance of specific contextual supports to meditation as critical ingredients of introspective proficiency, showing how difficulties replicating these threaten to limit the scope of meditation’s scientific benefits. I layout methodological responses to this that can maximise meditation’s positive impact going forwards.

Sugar consumption has long been linked with a host of chronic health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. To reduce Americans’ intake, many have called for taxing sugary products or limiting access in certain environments like schools and workplaces. These sometimes controversial calls for new public policy to curb consumption may soon be eclipsed by newly emerging links between sugar and addiction.Attaching the label “addictive” to a substance like sugar, which is necessary for human life, challenges widely held beliefs about addiction. But the extraordinary increase in sugar consumption during the past century, with related tripling of chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes, means our common understandings may be outdated.Part I of this paper will define “addiction” — especially as it relates to what was once a naturally occurring food nutrient and now is a highly concentrated food additive — and present evidence of the addictive potential of sugar.

Deterministic models have a long history of being applied to the study of infectious disease epidemiology. We highlight and discuss nine challenges in this area. The first two concern the endemic equilibrium and its stability. We indicate the need for models that describe multi-strain infections, infections with time-varying infectivity, and those where superinfection is possible. We then consider the need for advances in spatial epidemic models, and draw attention to the lack of models that explore the relationship between communicable and non-communicable diseases. The final two challenges concern the uses and limitations of deterministic models as approximations to stochastic systems.