Review of Philosophy and Psychology

Başoğlu, Yavuz Recep

doi: 10.1007/s13164-026-00833-zpmid: N/A

According to a strong “hearing-meanings” version of high-levelism about perceptual experience, distinct utterance meanings can themselves figure in the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Existing debates press this thesis from two directions: homophone-based objections and context-sensitivity objections. This paper develops a bilingual version of both pressures by focusing on interlingual homophonic sentences and standard models of bilingual lexical access. Empirical work suggests that, in fluent bilinguals, lexical candidates from both languages are activated non-selectively, and that extra-linguistic cues, encoded in beliefs and expectations about which language is being used, guide the inhibition of non-target candidates. When a strong hearing-meanings thesis is combined with such models of bilingual lexical access, the resulting view incurs a substantial commitment to systematic cognitive penetration in bilingual overlap cases. This commitment is both theoretically costly and empirically ill-supported, and it provides a principled reason to resist the strong hearing-meanings thesis.

Huang, Linus Ta-Lun; Lin, Ying-Tung; Sechman, Michael Scott

doi: 10.1007/s13164-026-00814-2pmid: N/A

Current AI-assisted debiasing interventions assume a defeatist premise: biased minds cannot be changed, only contained. These “outcome-focused” tools mask demographic information or correct decisions post hoc, leaving underlying psychological mechanisms untouched. We argue that this pessimism is premature. The disappointing record of “change-based” interventions partly stems from a mismatch between simple intervention designs and the pluralistic, dynamically interacting memory systems that sustain bias. Drawing on 4E cognitive science, Intergroup Contact Theory, multiple memory systems research, and the Heterarchical Control Network model of implicit bias, we articulate six design principles for next-generation interventions and demonstrate how Generative AI and immersive Virtual Reality make it possible to scale optimal debiasing conditions. Using recruitment as our example, we sketch a training module where recruiters engage in intergroup interaction under controlled yet ecologically valid conditions. Finally, we address the ethical risks that arise when AI is used not merely to sanitize outputs, but to transform minds.

Parvizi-Wayne, Darius; Pedersen, Rasmus; Rankin, Jules

doi: 10.1007/s13164-026-00828-wpmid: N/A

Despite our proclivity to make either tacit or overt passage of time judgments in daily life, insufficient work has been done to uncover the neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning such determinations. A prima facie promising account of passage of time judgments derives from the predictive processing framework. More precisely, Hohwy et al. (2016) propose that the reported speed of the experienced passage of time is a function of how rapidly the perceptual system "distrusts the present" current perceptual hypothesis in favour of a new one. We will propose that this account suffers from an incapacity to explain the relevant empirical data related to passage of time judgments and also possesses its own internal shortcomings. In its place, we offer a predictive processing theory of passage of time judgments based on "error dynamics", according to which the sense of time moving quickly is grounded in the cognitive system’s subdoxastic detection that it is minimising prediction error at a faster rate than it expected. If, on the other hand, prediction error is being minimised at a slower rate than expected, time will be sensed to be moving slowly, and a more protracted PoTJ will be reported. We will demonstrate the internal consistency of this proposition, as well as its ability to account for the key empirical findings any model of passage of time judgments ought to explain.

Smart, Paul; Clowes, Robert; Krueger, Joel; Boniface, Michael

doi: 10.1007/s13164-026-00831-1pmid: N/A

The present paper explores how large language models (LLMs) can function as personal memory systems. Unlike conventional lifelogging technologies, which passively record data, LLMs can actively participate in memory processes through dialog, interpretation, and narrative generation. LLMs, we suggest, mark a new chapter in the history of memory technology, one characterized by the active solicitation of mnemonically-relevant information and the co-production of narrative artifacts. Courtesy of their conversational capabilities, LLMs are poised to influence memory in the manner of a human social companion. This, we suggest, blurs the distinction between technologically- and socially-situated approaches to the shaping of human memory.

Turner, Cody

doi: 10.1007/s13164-026-00819-xpmid: N/A

A pressing question for the philosophy of personal identity in the digital age is the extent to which people can be identical to their various digital self-representations, from virtual avatars and social media profiles to AI digital duplicates and future mind uploads. This article addresses this question in the case of virtual avatars: user-controlled, visual representations of self in online environments like video games and virtual reality worlds. I interpret the metaphysical relationship between avatar and user implied by the ‘avatar identity question’ through the lens of the extended self thesis. Drawing on the narrative theory of identity, I argue for the avatar extended self (AES): the view that virtual avatars can become constitutive components of a user’s personhood. After establishing criteria for avatar-user narrative integration and responding to objections to the view, I examine its ethical implications, arguing that AES raises the ethical significance of virtual actions involving one’s avatar and, in so doing, sheds light on the question of what grounds the moral weight of virtual phenomena.