Category: books

Who needs a theory of attention?

Action / Attention / Consciousness / metaphysics of mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

Let me tell you about my friend Jayden: these days, Jayden gives a lot of her attention to community work. Jayden has always paid attention to what matters morally over anything else. Her attention somehow just tends to be drawn to the suffering of others. Her own achievements, by contrast, …

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The Philosophy of Philip Kitcher

books / Philosophy of Science

I am writing to inform readers of Brains about a recent volume titled The Philosophy of Philip Kitcher. Kitcher’s work has been influential in many areas of philosophy. This volume surveys a range of Kitcher’s work, by a well-known group of contributors. Subjects covered include philosophy of science, philosophy of …

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Is Well-being a Number?

Anna Alexandrova: A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being / Ethics / Philosophy of Science

Suppose you agreed with me that the science of well-being should strive to be value-apt, that mid-level theories is the way to provide value-aptness, and that all of this is compatible with scientific objectivity. Even so, you could still remain a skeptic about the very possibility of such a science. …

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Can the science of well-being be value free?

Anna Alexandrova: A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being / Ethics / Philosophy of Science

  Here’s an attitude I sometimes encounter among scientists: “It is not my job as a scientist to figure out what true well-being is and to choose my constructs accordingly. My job is to study empirical relations between people’s subjective experiences and various factors, such as personality traits, behavior, socioeconomic …

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What to expect when you are theorising well-being?

Anna Alexandrova: A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being / Ethics / Philosophy of Science

Different people expect different things from theories of well-being. Some expect that they systematise in a maximally general way intuitions about goods that constitute well-being, others that they states most important causes of well-being, still others that they help them to lead a good life. I for one ask that …

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Is there a single concept of well-being?

Anna Alexandrova: A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being / Ethics / Psychology

My interest in what is now called the science of well-being dates back to my graduate school days at UC San Diego. Sometime in the mid-aughts I came across a debate between psychologists who advanced ‘hedonic profile’ measures of happiness and those who favoured life satisfaction questionnaires. The former argued …

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