Philosophical Psychology

Authors Nicolas J. Bullot, Rolf Reber Abstract People use their commonsense thinking about the past to inform their decisions. Intuitive historical thinking is therefore pervasive in the social and cognitive lives of humans. This type of cognition, however, has not been systematically researched. Recent philosophical psychology is dominated by works that investigate cognitive tools used by intuitive historical thinking – such as episodic memory, mental time travel, causalreas

Authors William Forde Thompson, Nicolas J. Bullot, and Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis Abstract Research has investigated psychological processes in an attempt to explain how and why people appreciate music. Three programsof research have shed light on these processes. The first focuses on the appreciation of musical structure. The second investigates self-oriented responses to music, including music-evoked autobiographical memories, the reinforcement of a sense of self, and ben

Author Nicolas J. Bullot Abstract Research seeking to explain the perpetration of violence and atrocities by humans against other humans offers both social and individualistic explanations, which differ namely in the roles attributed to empathy. Prominent social models suggest that some manifestations of inter-human violence are caused by parochial attitudes (attitudes characterized by interests centred on one's own community) and obedience reinforced by within-group empathy.

Authors Rolf Reber and Nicolas J. Bullot Abstract This chapter introduces a research strategy – which we call conditional objectivism  – that offers researchers a heuristic for taking into account a plurality of value systems while pursuing professional scientific research. This strategy aims to make empirical research in the social sciences available to value-based decision-making. Conditional objectivism draws from research in different branches of philosophy and the method