Empiricism, Time-Awareness, and Hume's Manners of Disposition

The issue of time-awareness presents a critical challenge for empiricism: if temporal properties are not directly perceived, how do we become aware of them? A unique empiricist account of time-awareness suggested by Hume's comments on time in the Treatise avoids the problems characteristic of other empiricist accounts. Hume's theory, however, has some counter-intuitive consequences. The failure of empiricists to come up with a defensible theory of time-awareness lends prima facie support to a non-empiricist theory of idea

The Truth About Denial

It is a striking—yet all too familiar—fact about human beings that our belief-forming processes can be so distorted by fears, desires, and prejudices that an otherwise sensible person may sincerely uphold false claims about the world in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When we describe someone as being “in denial,” we mean that he or she is personally, emotionally threatened by some situation—and consequently has failed to assess the situation properly according to the evidence. People in denial engage in motivated reasoning about their situation: They (sincerely) argue and interpret evidence in light of a preestablished conclusion. One significant type of reason-distorting emotional threat is a threat to one’s ideological worldview. When group interests, creeds, or dogmas are threatened by unwelcome factual information, biased thinking becomes ideological denialism. (One critical example of such denialism is the widespread denial of settled climate science.) Denial can stand in the way of individual well-being, and ideological denialism can stand in the way of good public policy. This book is a wide-ranging examination of denial and denialism. It offers a readable overview of the social psychology of denial, and examines the role of ideological denialism in conflicts over public policy, politics, and culture. Chapters focus on our philosophical and scientific understanding of denial, denial of scientific consensus, denialism in political economy, and denialism in religious belief. An afterword examines proposals for improving science communication in light of findings about motivated reasoning and denial

Non-Standard Errors

In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data‐generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence‐generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer‐review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants

Explaining Temporal Phenomenology: Hume’s Extensionalism and Kant’s Apriorism

Abstract The empiricist needs to explain the origin, in perception, of the idea of time. Kant believed the only answer was a kind of idealism about time. This essay examines Hume’s extensionalism as a possible answer to Kant. Extensionalism allegedly accounts for the experience of time via the manner of presentation of experiences, rather than the content of experience.</jats:p