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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Hallucination Proneness, Schizotypy And Meta-Cognition, John Stirling, Emma Barkus, Shon Lewis Dec 2011

Hallucination Proneness, Schizotypy And Meta-Cognition, John Stirling, Emma Barkus, Shon Lewis

Emma Barkus

Disordered or maladaptive meta-cognitive processing appears to be a prominent feature for some individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. We sought to establish whether healthy individuals distinguished either in terms hallucination proneness (HP) or level of schizotypy could also be differentiated on the sub-scales of the Meta-cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ), or a modified version of it in which items about worry were replaced with items specifically related to thinking. A total of 106 healthy volunteers completed the Oxford and Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences and Launay-Slade hallucination scale, the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and two versions of the MCQ: the original …


Evolution, Cognition And Argumentation, Cristian Santibanez Yanez, Michael A. Gilbert May 2011

Evolution, Cognition And Argumentation, Cristian Santibanez Yanez, Michael A. Gilbert

OSSA Conference Archive

Sperber and Mercier (2009, 2010) maintain that argumentation is a meta-representational module. In their evolutionary view of argumentation, the function of this module would be to regulate the flow of information between interlocutors through persuasiveness on the side of the communicator and epistemic vigilance on the side of the audience. The aim of this paper is to discuss this definition of argumen-tation by analyzing what they mean by “communicator’s persuasiveness” and “audience epistemic vigilance”


‘Cognitive Systemic Dichotomization’ In Public Argumentation And Controversies, Marcelo Dascal, Amnon Knoll, Daniel Cohen May 2011

‘Cognitive Systemic Dichotomization’ In Public Argumentation And Controversies, Marcelo Dascal, Amnon Knoll, Daniel Cohen

OSSA Conference Archive

We describe and analyze an important cognitive obstacle in inter- and intra-community ar-gumentation processes, which we propose to call 'Cognitive Systemic Dichotomization' (CSD). This social phenomenon consists in the collective use of shared cognitive patterns based upon dichotomous schemati-zation of knowledge, values, and affection. We discuss the formative role of CSD on a community’s collec-tive cognition, identity, and public discourse, as well as the challenges it raises to reasoned argumentation, and how different approaches to argumentation undertake to face this obstacle to the reasonable debate of issues of public concern.


Cognition And Literary Ethical Criticism, Gilbert Plumer, Louis Groarke May 2011

Cognition And Literary Ethical Criticism, Gilbert Plumer, Louis Groarke

OSSA Conference Archive

“Ethical criticism” is an approach to literary studies that holds that reading certain carefully selected novels can make us ethically better people, e.g., by stimulating our sympathetic imagination (Nussbaum). I will try to show that this nonargumentative approach cheapens the persuasive force of novels and that its inherent bias and censorship undercuts what is perhaps the principal value and defense of the novel—that reading novels can be critical to one’s learning how to think.


Cognitive Relatives Yet Moral Strangers?, Judith Benz-Scharzberg, Andrew Knight Apr 2011

Cognitive Relatives Yet Moral Strangers?, Judith Benz-Scharzberg, Andrew Knight

Animal Welfare Collection

This article provides an empirically based, interdisciplinary approach to the following two questions: Do animals possess behavioral and cognitive characteristics such as culture, language, and a theory of mind? And if so, what are the implications, when long-standing criteria used to justify differences in moral consideration between humans and animals are no longer considered indisputable? One basic implication is that the psychological needs of captive animals should be adequately catered for. However, for species such as great apes and dolphins with whom we share major characteristics of personhood, welfare considerations alone may not suffice, and consideration of basic rights may …


Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience, Marshall Battani Jan 2011

Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience, Marshall Battani

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Aesthetic experiences are generated in encounters with cultural objects and such experiences are marked by the free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts. Kant’s famous three types of pleasure, made infamous in social theory by Pierre Bourdieu, are examined in relation to the critical theoretical concept of aura, the social psychology of “flow,” and cognitive explanations of perception to explain experience in aesthetic fields. Theories of aesthetic experience developed at the crossroad of critical social thought and cognitive science hold promise for a social analysis able to avoid the usual sociological pitfalls of either ignoring aesthetics or …


Co-Creation Of Experiential Qualities, Vuk Uskoković Jan 2011

Co-Creation Of Experiential Qualities, Vuk Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Cognitive sciences have been interminably in search for a consistent philosophical framework for the description of perceptual phenomena. Most of the frameworks in usage today fall in-between the extremes of constructivism and objective realism. However, whereas constructivist cognitive theories face difficulties when attempting to explain the experiential commonality of different cognitive entities, objectivistic theories fail in explaining the active role of the subject in the formation of experiences. This paper undertakes to compare and eventually combine these two major approaches to describing cognitive phenomena. It is argued that constructivist explanations inevitably refer to a ‘hidden’ ontological source of experience, and …


Cannabis And Cognition: Short- And Long-Term Effects, Nadia Solowij, Nicole Pesa Jan 2011

Cannabis And Cognition: Short- And Long-Term Effects, Nadia Solowij, Nicole Pesa

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Twenty years ago cannabis was generally perceived to be a benign drug with few significant adverse effects. As outlined elsewhere in this book, evidence has since mounted in the scientific literature for a range of harms associated with the use of cannabis, including the development of dependence and health-related harms (see also Hall and Solowij, 1998; Hall and Degenhardt, 2009). As the overall theme of this book indicates, an association between cannabis use and the development of psychotic symptoms or overt psychosis has grown to be recognized as a significant potential harm, and investigating the mechanisms by which cannabis may …


Interpretations Of Embodied Cognition, Shaun Gallagher Jan 2011

Interpretations Of Embodied Cognition, Shaun Gallagher

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The concept of embodied cognition (EC) is not a settled one. A variety of theorists have attempted to outline different approaches and meanings related to this concept. They range from radical embodiment to minimal embodiment, and a number of positions in between. In addition, a variety of approaches to the study of cognition have been closely associated with the notion of embodiment – including enactive, embedded, and extended or distributed cognition approaches. Within these different perspectives there is no strong consensus on what weight to give to the concept of embodiment. Moreover, contrary to what some may think, not all …


Anti-Representationalism: Not A Well-Founded Theory Of Cognition, Michael Kirchhoff Jan 2011

Anti-Representationalism: Not A Well-Founded Theory Of Cognition, Michael Kirchhoff

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article argues for the conclusion that anti-representationalism in the cognitivesciences is not a well-founded theory of cognition. This conclusion is supported by the observationthat the link between the sceptical demonstrations and the anti-representational conclusion is tooweak for the demonstrations to justify anti-representationalism in general. Rather than denying theneed for internal representation, this article aim to establish that representational explanation -reconstructed within a dynamical agent-environment characterization - serves a necessary epistemicand ontological aim: It enables us to demarcate activities that presuppose intentionality andbehavioral autonomy from activities that are merely reactive and situation-determined.


Visual Search For Smoking Stimuli: Detection And Distraction, Jason A. Oliver Jan 2011

Visual Search For Smoking Stimuli: Detection And Distraction, Jason A. Oliver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extensive research has shown that the attentional systems of addicted individuals are biased towards drug-related stimuli, but despite several decades of effort these results have frequently been inconsistent. Though commonly believed to result from addiction and dependence, cognitive research would suggest that frequent exposure to drug-related stimuli could affect the attentional processing of drug-related cues even if no actual drug use occurs. The present investigation examined attentional bias for smoking cues using a novel visual search paradigm amongst smokers currently in nicotine withdrawal and fully satiated smokers, as well as a non-smoker control group. Variables related to smoking behavior, as …