Given that the core issues of attention research have been recognized for millenia, we do not know as much about attention as we should. I argue that the reasons for this failure are (1) we create spurious dichotomies, (2) we reify attention, treating it as a cause, when it is an effect, and (3) we equate a collection of facts with a theory. In order to correct these errors, we need a new techn...

Is the Introspection Thesis true? It certainly isn’t obvious. Introspection is the faculty by which each of us has access to his or her own mental states. Even if we were to suppose that mental states are identical to brain states, it doesn’t follow immediately from this supposition that we can introspect our mental states as brain states. This point is analogous to the following. It doesn’t fo...

conomists love to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But the Chilean government agency responsible for school grants, Junta Nacional de Auxilio Escolar y Becas (JUNAEB), is an exception to the rule. During the school year, JUNAEB provides breakfast and lunch for 2 million children in primary and secondary public schools. In a developing country where about 14 percent of children u...

In a country with inadequate policing and an overloaded judicial system, communities find it more expedient to take criminal matters into their own hands. Until such rural populations feel suitably supported, they will continue to implement this flawed and dubious form of retribution. Medical practitioners must recognise CA as being lifethreatening and treat patients aggressively. Given the com...

BACKGROUND Querulous paranoia may have disappeared from the psychiatric literature, but is it flourishing in modern complaints organisations and the courts? AIMS To investigate the unusually persistent complainants who lay waste to their own lives and place inordinate demands and stress on complaints organisations. METHOD Complaints officers completed questionnaires on both unusually persis...