Simulation is widely invoked in cognitive science, yet the criterion that distinguishes it from modeling or inference remains unclear. The dominant replication assumption holds that simulation requires concrete resemblance: the simulating system works by the same principles or undergoes the same kinds of states as its target. I argue that this assumption can neither demarcate simulation nor fix simulation content. Neural reuse shows why: the same experiential resources participate in multiple task dependent mappings, so resemblance alone underdetermines what is being simulated. Paradigmatic cases point the same way. Flight simulators, wind tunnel models, and neural mirroring succeed not by sharing materials, forces, or state types with their targets, but by preserving dependency structure. I therefore propose a structural account. Generic simulation operationally realizes target relevant dependencies in a way that supports counterfactual surrogative reasoning. Cognitive simulation is a species of this genus: it realizes such dependencies in experiential systems, including perceptual, motor, proprioceptive, vestibular, or affective systems, rather than encoding them propositionally. Because these systems are multifunctional, cognitive simulation also requires contextual selection: current task, neural configuration, and downstream use fix which correspondence is operative. This account preserves the simulation and theory contrast without appealing to replication.
As scholars and activists have begun to note, without the ability to feel despair we might lack the necessary clarity to abandon failing pursuits and find new directions. In this paper, I add to the current debate regarding the nature and value of despair. I argue that despair should not be viewed strictly as a form of sadness but rather as an emotional reaction through which we apprehend the loss of a future as likely. As such, despair is not only valuable because it provides a reflective break. Instead, it is a response of restless apathy which prepares us both to retreat and renounce our commitments, and to launch last resort "desperate" acts. Despair is not only valuable as an antidote to wishful hoping but, more fundamentally, because it counteracts our resistance to reconsidering plans we are diachronically committed to. As beings with temporally extended agency, we form intentions that guide, monitor, and rationally control action across time. Despair allows us to respond to the disheartening lowering of chances of success by urgently reconsidering our plans, in spite of our inherent resistance to doing so.
In this commentary on & Scedil;erife Tekin's book Reclaiming the Self in Psychiatry: Centering Personal Narratives for a Humanist Science, I explore the following question: does Tekin's conception of expertise by experience capture all the areas of expertise that patients can have? To do so, I first reconstruct Tekin's argument regarding the idea that patients are experience-based experts and show how it fits into the broader view that psychiatry should aim for a social form of objectivity. I then draw on two theoretical frameworks from feminist philosophy of science - social objectivity (the one endorsed by Tekin) and feminist standpoint theory - to reflect further on patients' roles in knowledge making practices in psychiatry. I question whether the additional patients roles revealed by social objectivity and feminist standpoint theory correspond to the concept of expertise used by Tekin. I close by further reflecting on the concept of expertise itself and on why it is seen as a powerful tool for considering the important integration of patients into psychiatric epistemology.
Many people experience "resilient grief," i.e. a rapid emotional recovery after bereavement, leading philosophers to ask whether grief fittingly diminishes or ends despite remaining fitting. In this paper, I argue that grief fittingly diminishes due to a revision of the griever's projects and expectations. Grief involves attending in a way that allows us to grasp and adjust to the world after the loss. This process alters the place of the deceased in the griever's projects, changing their agent-centered reasons and diminishing the fitting intensity of grief. Nonetheless, I will argue that grief does not altogether cease to be fitting, and that grief also rationally diminishes in accordance with our all-thing-considered reasons. Finally, I will address whether it is regrettable that we change to adjust to the loss, arguing that we may indeed regret the loss of the motivational structure that gave rise to grief, but that the perspective offered by the end of grief is accurate.
An influential survey by Joshua Knobe (2003) indicates that the cognitive process ascribing intentionality to an agent is mediated by the perceived moral worth of the action. To assess the external validity of the finding and to obtain more precise estimates of effect sizes, the present study replicates this canonical experiment with a large scale random sample of the German population (N = 2,295). The difference we observe between the harm and help scenarios is more pronounced than in nearly all previous studies (90.5% [88.754, 92.148] attribute intentionality in the harm scenario, 92.5% [90.947, 94.005] do not do so in the help scenario). In exploratory multivariate analyses, we also investigate whether the magnitude of the Knobe effect differs between different population groups, as characterized by a broad set of socio-demographics and personality traits as given by the Big Five. We find that the magnitude of the Knobe effect varies with gender, migration status, and being in a managerial position.
The standard argument for the causal theory of memory relies on intuitions about scenarios in which subjects accurately represent events from their pasts but do so in a "causally defective" manner. Examples include representations based on suggestion and representations based on relearned information. According to causalists, these scenarios, intuitively, are not cases of remembering. This paper applies the methods of experimental philosophy to determine whether laypeople share causalist intuitions. We find that, in scenarios in which all of the causal theory's requirements for remembering are fulfilled and in scenarios in which none of these requirements are fulfilled, laypeople's intuitions align with the causal theory's verdicts: they clearly ascribe remembering in the former scenarios and clearly deny remembering in the latter scenarios. In causally defective scenarios - scenarios in which some but not all of the requirements of the causal theory are fulfilled - a more complex pattern of responses is observed, with some participants ascribing remembering even in cases that do not satisfy causalist requirements. In particular, while many participants deny that remembering occurs in relearning, many do the opposite. These results suggest that folk ascriptions of remembering only partly align with the causal theory of memory.
