Thinking Off Your Feet: How Empirical Psychology Vindicates Armchair Philosophy, by Michael Strevens

Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Buckwalter
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Armchair Philosophy

Confession, the New Psychology, and Birth Control, 1920–60

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Psychological Benefits ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
The Face ◽  
Catholic Tradition

The chapter addresses challenges from empirical psychology and psychiatry that called into question some of the inherited conceptions of sin and guilt. Those relatively new sciences caused some in the Catholic tradition to oppose the psychological approaches as a threat to the confessional tradition and others to reconsider confession in the face of the emerging sciences and to emphasize the benefits of the new psychology for understanding neuroses and mental illnesses that confessors periodically encountered in the confessional. Some, too, underlined the therapeutic and psychological benefits of auricular confession that were consistent with the new sciences. The moral issue of birth control also arose for Catholics in the early 1930s when Pope Pius XI condemned the use of all artificial means of birth regulation. Anecdotal and statistical evidence seems to indicated that significant numbers of childbearing Catholics practiced birth control and a few ceased going to confession because of it.

The Psychology of Knowledge Ascriptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Gerken
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Process Framework ◽  
Intuitive Judgments ◽  
Ordinary Knowledge

Chapter 5 surveys some empirical psychology and outlines some folk epistemological principles. By considering the heuristic and biases tradition, it is argued that ordinary knowledge ascriptions are standardly driven by heuristic processes and, therefore, associated with biases. This idea is integrated with a dual process framework for mental state ascriptions. On this basis, some of the central heuristic principles that govern intuitive judgments about knowledge ascriptions are articulated, and some of the biases associated with these principles are identified. The result is an account of an epistemic focal bias in intuitive judgments about knowledge ascription. Thus, Chapter 5 provides both a survey of relevant psychology and a development of the folk psychological principles governing knowledge ascriptions.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Terence Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Behavioral Approach ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
The Common

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to argue that, just as in economics and law, normative democratic theory must begin to pay attention to the picture of human choice described by empirical psychology. Thus, it develops a behavioral approach to normative democratic theory. The book focuses on judgment-based theories—those that construe votes as judgments about the common good (or collective interest), rather than as individual preferences over electoral outcomes. It also focuses on framing effects, which occur when different but equivalent formulations of a problem result in substantively different decisions being made. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The pragmatic use of metaphor in empirical psychology

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110473
Author(s):  
Rami Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Theory Construction ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Metaphor Use

Metaphors of mind and their elaboration into models serve a crucial explanatory role in psychology. In this article, an attempt is made to describe how biology and engineering provide the predominant metaphors for contemporary psychology. A contrast between the discursive and descriptive functions of metaphor use in theory construction serves as a platform for deliberation upon the pragmatic consequences of models derived therefrom. The conclusion contains reflections upon the possibility of an integrative interdisciplinary psychology.

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