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Recent Publications[Book Reviews are below articles] [Movie Reviews are below that]
Articles:(Please contact me by email for copies of papers that are not online here. My address is at the bottom of the page). Adams, W.A. (2000).
Introspectionism Reconsidered. Presented at Toward a Science of
Consciousness: Tucson 2000. Tucson, AZ, 10-15April, 2000. Adams, W.A.
(1999). Why The Introspectionist school went bankrupt. Unpublished. Adams,
W.A. (2001). The motivational context. In Akman, V., Bouquet, P.,
Thomason, R., & Young, R.A. (Eds.), Modeling and Using Context. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag, pp. 409-412. Presented at Context-01, Dundee, Scotland, 27-30
Jul 20001. Adams, W.A. (2001).
Intersubjective Transparency and Artificial Consciousness Presented
at Toward a Science of Consciousness: Sweden 2001. Skövde, Sweden, 7-11
August 2001. Adams,
W.A. (2004). Machine
Consciousness: Plausible Idea or Semantic Distortion? Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 11 (9), 46-56. Adams, W.A. (2006). Transpersonal Heterophenomenology. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (4), 89-93. Transpersonal psychology, which often studies personally transcendent phenomena such as religious experience and peak-experiences, claims to be post-Cartesian, or non-dualistic (no subject-object or mind-body split). An article by Anthony Freeman documented the ways in which the field was in fact hopelessly dualistic, but proposed that Daniel Dennett's concept of heterophenomenology could be brought to the rescue. My commentary argues that heterophenomenology is a functionalism that would merely displace the problem of dualism, not solve it.
Book Reviews(Click on the book image to see the full review, or Email me for a .pdf copy).  Adams, W. A.
(2004). Are People Computers? [Review of the book What
Is Thought?]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, October 5, 49 (Supplement 2).
Retrieved Eric Baum thinks the mind is literally a
computer, programmed by our DNA to detect the invariant patterns in the
world. It's an interesting idea, but it requires a homunculus, a ghost in the
machine, to interpret the computer's output. His argument is a good example of how extreme
reductionism applied to the mind leads to absurdity.
Half the papers in this book argue that consciousness is two-tiered. You become conscious when you are aware that you are thinking about something. Otherwise, you are just thinking about it "absent-mindedly." The second half of the book tears that theory to shreds. I think there is a germ of truth in the two-tiered model, but it has been vastly over-interpreted, as the critics amply point out.
 Adams, W. A.
(2005). Is Psychology Scientific? [Review
of the book Dualism: The
Original Sin of Cognitivism]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, January 26, 50 (4), Article 3.
Retrieved William Uttal thinks that cognitive psychology is not, and cannot ever be, a science, because it is fundamentally dualistic in attempting to correlate mind and body. Mentalism of any kind is not susceptible to scientific investigation, he says. He believes that behaviorism is the only possible scientific psychology. I disagree, because behaviorism rests on a foundation of implicit introspection and intersubjectivity. It is impossible to define a unit of behavior without first deciding what it means; what the animal intends by it. But I agree with him that contemporary cognitive psychology doesn't cut the scientific mustard either, for that same reason.
 Adams, W. A.
(2005). Timeline of Vision Research [Review of the
book Perspective and Illusion:
Historical Perspectives]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, May 4, 50 (No. 18), Article 8.
Retrieved Nicholas Wade presents a timeline of important events in the history of research in vision, from Aristotle to Helmholtz, and on into modern neuroscience. Each event is presented as a vignette, without much intellectual context, so the book does not add up to a proper history of ideas. It also has virtually nothing to do with perceptual illusion, so the title is illusory. But it's not a bad reference book for a quick summary of events in research into human vision.
 Adams, W. A.
(2005). "We don't want the smoking gun to
be a mushroom cloud." [Review of the
book, Laws of Fear: Beyond the
Precautionary Principle]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, Aug 3, 50 (No. 31), Article 9.
Retrieved The precautionary principle (PP) is, "Better safe than sorry." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice used it to justify the invasion of Iraq. Author Cass Sunstein says the principle is incoherent and only seems like a policy guide because most people do not think rationally, especially when fear is involved. He rejects the PP in favor of a rational cost-benefit analysis. His narrow focus on probabilistic reasoning and behavioral economics misses a chance to explore the cognitive foundations of rationality or the moral principles implicit in the precautionary principle.
![[book cover]](SocialDreaming.jpg) Adams, W. A.
(2005). A Consultant's Dream [Review of the
book, Social Dreaming:
Transforming Thinking]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, Oct 26, 50 (No. 43), Article 14.
Retrieved Author W. Gordon Lawrence seems to draw from Jung's concept of the collective unconscious when he says that there are transpersonal ideas, images and dreams floating "out there," not attached to any individual psyche. Dreams can be interpreted as expressions of the unconscious concerns of a group of people. Individuals donate dreams to the group, which then free-associates to find a collective, social meaning. Lawrence has established an international consulting practice based on this idea. What dream is your company having? It's an interesting idea without a shred of evidence.
 Adams, W. A.
(2006). A Re-Introduction to Psychology [Review of the
book, Psychology and Experience]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary
Psychology: APA Review of Books, Feb 8, 51 (No. 6), Article 14. Retrieved
February 11, 2006 from the PsycCRITIQUES database (http://www.psycinfo.com/psyccritiques/).
Benjamin Bradley objects to the way that psychologists are trained as scientists. Psychological practice is "artistry," he believes, not science. He proposes a complete re-think of psychology as the description of human experience, not a science. The new psychology would be radically present-centric, since psychological change happens "right now," not as the result of what occurred in the past. There is some intuitive appeal to that idea, but by rejecting the notion of efficient cause in psychology, Bradley throws out not just science, but objectivity, human development, and any possibility of explanation. That doesn't leave a practitioner much to go on. Why bother to train professionals at all then?
In presenting the personal letters of some of the great figures in the history of psychology, Ludy Benjamin humanizes these icons. It is fun to learn that James Cattell hated to hear Wilhelm Wundt drone on about the opera, but thought Mrs. Wundt was quite nice. Did you know that Sigmund Freud got terrible food poisoning on his only trip to America in 1909, or that William James was obsessively occupied by the possibility of communicating with the dead? Students apparently love this book, but I don't agree with the ad hominem approach to intellectual history. I would rather focus on the genesis and development of the main ideas of our discipline. The author of "A history of psychology in letters" did not care for my review and published a response that said, in part, "This book is not a history of ideas, nor is it a treatise in the philosophy of science. It is clearly not the book Adams wants to use for his course, but then I did not write it for the kind of history course he wants to teach. This book is intended as a supplemental text. As such, it is meant to extend the standard textbook coverage, not to duplicate it. In several places, the reviewer focuses on trivial details in the letters to suggest that the chapters themselves must also be trivial. He makes that claim emphatically in labeling the letters as banal and the book as “largely relevant to nothing.” That is a harsh indictment and one that may be impossible to defend against given the apparent mind-set of the reviewer." Point/Counterpoint—A Forum for Discussion of Reviews and Books Reviewed Response to “Mrs. Wundt Serves Supper” by Benjamin T. Ludy.
I replied thus: PsycCRITIQUES - Response to Ludy T. Benjamin by William A. Adams
"I appreciate what Benjamin writes about the importance of contextualizing the history of psychology. Students do not enjoy dead and dusty history for its own sake. I would love to read the book he describes in his response to my review, one which, for example, explains how World War II affected currents in psychology, Freud's later thinking, Jung's idea of the shadow, T.W. Adorno's F scale, and Stanley Milgram's obedience study. It would be fascinating to read about the battle between pseudoscience and scientific psychology at the end of the 19th century. I agree that context is what we need. In my view, Benjamin's brief introductions and epilogues do not provide adequate context for the letters, not even for linking them to a traditional history text, so they remain isolated from the flow of mainstream ideas in the history of psychology. I had no biases going into A History of Psychology in Letters, but my honest reaction was disappointment. The book is more suited to those who enjoy a biographical approach to history."
This is one of the most exciting books I've read in a long time, although it is difficult. Philosopher Dan Zahavi takes a first-person, phenomenological approach to some questions that are dizzying to consider. What is subjectivity? Why are we self-aware? What is the self? How do we read each other's minds? Zahavi is a specialist in translating and explaining the works of Edmund Husserl, the founding father of phenomenology and his arguments rely on Husserl's writings. The journey is a real head trip and the destination actually has some practical considerations for personality theory, clinical and abnormal psychology, and consciousness studies. And the answer is yes: subjectivity is a knife that can cut itself.
Social psychologist Sandra Jovchelovitch objects to the notion that an individual mind can acquire knowledge of anything, because each of us is always situated in some social context, and because knowledge is a social product, produced by a social process. The presumption of the scientific "view from nowhere" that produces objective, context-free knowledge, is self-delusional fantasy, she argues. That's a radical, but interesting and plausible idea. Unfortunately, the author's alternative approach to knowledge is self-contradictory. Each community defines local reality and truth through its dialogs and traditions. Furthermore, no single representation is better or more valid than any other. All knowledge sets coexist and we need to respect them all, she says. What? Astrology and astronomy are equivalent? Nothing is true if everything is true. Local knowledge sets cannot even be compared because there is no omniscient point of view from which to do so, by the author's own theory. If postmodern theorists really believe that knowledge and reason are local constructions why do they keep writing books from an omniscient point of view?
An awful lot of money and the leadership of the United States are at stake in a presidential election, and the outcome depends on fickle voters like you and me. How do we make our choice? Candidates for elective office, their consultants, and campaign strategists would give anything to know exactly what it takes to win those precious votes. Political scientists Richard Lau and David Redlawsk offer empirical advice. They watched over 600 people make their choice for President of the U.S. in a series of mock elections simulated on a computer. The main finding? Lots of campaign information does not help you make a better choice and may even confuse you. Better to ignore most of it. All you need are a few heuristics. It's a startling finding, but I found the experiments, while ingenious, not very realistic, so I question the validity of the findings. Still, a fascinating read.
Editor Stein Bråten brings together seventeen papers that collectively argue that mind reading has been demonstrated scientifically and that it is innate. Many papers present evidence demonstrating empathy, the ability of one mind to enter into another’s experience and participate in it. For example, human infants only 42 minutes old can stick out their tongue in imitation of an adult's face. How else can that be explained except as some kind of innate social understanding? Other evidence of "intersubjectivity" or empathy, involves imitation, gaze-following, synchronous movement, altruism, language, and cooperative behavior of non-human primates. Mirror neurons in the brains of macaque monkeys fire when the monkey makes a goal-directed act or watches another monkey (or even a human) do the same. Thus, it is argued, the mirror neurons form a physical representation of intentional understanding, or mind-reading. It's nice to see intersubjectivity well documented, but I am not convinced that mirror neurons are the explanation of it. It is more prudent to say only that they are neural correlates.
Water is natural, especially if it falls from the sky, but what about distilled water, pure H2O: is that natural or artificial? Are these natural or artificial: landscaping, spider silk, seedless grapes, a suntan, a race horse, cheese, a rock used as a doorstop? Editors Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence present sixteen chapters written by psychologists, philosophers, and other academics, all trying to understand what artifacts are, how we learn about and understand them, and when artifacts emerged in evolution. Whether you categorize something as an artifact or as a natural object has consequences for what you think science is about, whether the intelligent design hypothesis makes sense, and whether phenomenology can really get to the essence of a thing. If a feathered wing is considered an artifact rather than a naturally occurring object, that implies an intelligent designer. If scientific categories, of species, for example, are designed for human needs and interests, they are artifacts, not descriptions of how the world really is. If there are mental categories wired into the brain or learned in infancy, then phenomenology is a waste of time. Unfortunately, the editors do not draw out such implications, but the sixteen papers, many presenting original scientific findings, are fascinating in themselves.
I once heard a customer in a pizza parlor ask the clerk, "How big is the fourteen inch pizza?" For the contributors to this volume, that is not an unreasonable question, because they believe that much perception is understood in relation to the body, its location in space, and its activity. Early theories of cognition focused on “disembodied” information processing, problem solving, memory retention, and computational linguistics. The embodied cognition movement arose in reaction, tapping sources like William James, Jean Piaget, James Gibson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Francisco Varela, who emphasized the importance of situational context, especially bodily context, in understanding cognition. Perception and action are not separate, content-agnostic cognitive modules, as traditionally taught. The sensorimotor cycle extends from the world through the brain, and back out again, without mentality. Paradoxically, however, most contributors to this volume are representationalists, a point of view that contradicts their basic assumptions of embodied cognition. .
Unpublished Book ReviewsUse this link to see other book reviews that are not peer-reviewed.
Published Movie ReviewsThese movie reviews go into a bit more psychological analysis than the brief synopses on my movie blog. Click the hyperlinks or the pictures below to see each review.
This is a family movie, an adventure of 8 sled dogs in Antarctica surviving heroically on their own of 8 sled dogs in Antarctica surviving heroically on their own when a team of researchers must evacuate their station. The heart of the story is how the dogs escape their collars, and sticking together like a family, survive the winter with intelligence and skill. Adams, W.A. (2007). Spiritualism: Illusion or Reality? [Review of the video, The Illusionist]. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, May 16, 2007, Vol. 52, Release 20, Article 18.
Adams, W.A. (2008). Blood and Music [Review of the video, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.] PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, September 17, 2008, Vol. 53, Release 38, Article 9.
Updated 17 Sep 08 |
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