Assertions about metaphysical modality (hereafter modality) play central roles in philosophical theorizing. For example, when philosophers propose hypothetical counterexamples, they often are making a claim to the effect that some state of affairs is possible. Getting the epistemology of modality right is thus important. Debates have been preoccupied with assessing whether imaginability—or conceivability, insofar as it's different—is a guide to possibility, or whether it is rather intuitions of possibility—and modal intuitions more generally—that are evidence for possibility (modal) claims. The dissertation argues that the imagination plays a subtler role than the first view recognizes, and a more central one than the second view does. In particular, it defends an epistemology of metaphysical modality on which someone can acquire modal knowledge in virtue of having performed certain complex imaginative exercises.

This research introduces a new theoretical perspective (termed the Adaptive Processing Perspective) that reexamines how consumers should think before making decisions and the optimal outcomes that result. New insights into conscious (“careful deliberation”), unconscious (“sleeping on it”), and intuitive (“going with your gut”) thought processes are provided. Across four studies, empirical evidence demonstrates that consumers can make significantly better decisions by thinking more about routine choices, using their intuition for occasional purchase decisions, and distracting themselves before making major purchase decisions. Specifically, in study 1, increased conscious thought optimized routine decision making due to increases in openness to information. In study 2, consumers using intuition optimized an occasional purchase decision by focusing attention on relevant information. Study 3 demonstrated unconscious thought to be optimal for consumers when making a major purchase decision via their engagement in associative processing. Lastly, study 4 provided further support for the Adaptive Processing Perspective by manipulating the decision setting (i.e., routine, limited, extensive) across a common product and replicating the earlier study results. Several theoretical and practical advances to the domains of information processing and consumer decision making are offered and discussed.

A presente tese pretende investigar, no âmbito do pensamento de Henri Bergson, a questão do impulso criador a partir de sua realização como arte, mas não apenas ali, isto é, na medida em que esse impulso se caracteriza como esforço de invenção, sua investigação dirá respeito também aos possíveis desdobramentos concernentes à vida intelectual, moral e social. Serão examinados elementos que permitam discutir o tema da invenção noção que em Bergson se apresenta de maneira indissociada da discussão acerca da intuição a partir da relação entre percepção, esforço intelectual e criação. Mais precisamente, importa aprofundar o conhecimento a respeito do modo e das condições de possibilidade de inserção dessa experiência criadora no mundo, isto é, numa história, como fazer. A potência criadora, suas ações e suas obras deverão, assim, ser examinadas à luz de uma leitura bergsoniana que compreende a realidade da vida a partir de seus dois sentidos, a saber: o aberto e o fechado, ou, o que é o mesmo, o estático e o movente, o necessário e o contingente, o biológico e o metafísico, o da servidão e, enfim, o da liberdade. O propósito deverá ser, por fim, o de tirar as conseqüências filosóficas dessas diferenças que se apresentam como a própria realidade da vida / The present thesis intends to investigate, in the scope of Henri Bergsons thought, the issue of the creator impulse from its realization as art, but not only there, that is, while this impulse is characterized as invention effort, its inquiry will also deal with the possible unfolding pertaining to the intellectual, moral and social life. Elements that allow discussion of the theme invention will be examined - notion that in Bergson is presented as an attached manner to the debate on intuition - from the relationship between perception, intellectual effort and creation. In particular, it is important to deepen into the knowledge regarding the mode and the conditions of insertion possibility of this creator experience in the world, that is, in a history, how to make it. The creator power, its action and its masterpiece will be examined upon the light of a bergsonians reading that comprises the reality of life from its two directions: open and the closed one, or with the same meaning, the static and the moving one, the necessary and the contingent, the biological and the metaphysical, that of the servitude and, at last, that of the freedom. The purpose will be, finally, to draw the philosophical consequences of these differences that are shown as the reality of life itself

Contexto: Os estudos em tomadas de decisão vêm ganhando novo fôlego desde a introdução da neuroeconomia. Neste contexto, o entendimento dos processos não-declarativos exacerba a necessidade de novos desenvolvimentos teóricos e experimentais. Objetivos: Apresentar uma nova teoria em processos não-declarativos em tomadas de decisão e os resultados de quatro experimentos relacionados à mesma. Métodos: A teoria parte da identificação e modelagem dos processos psicológicos, cognitivos e neurobiológicos relacionados à maximização da utilidade quando os processos analíticos resultam em indecisão (incerteza pós-analítica), fenômeno o qual denominamos Intuição Derradeiramente Deliberativa (IDD). O primeiro experimento avalia respostas eletrofisiológicas (RGP) a três tipos de problemas decisionais, concebidos como conflitos; o segundo visa generalizar a principal conclusão do anterior. O terceiro avalia respostas eletrofisiológicas (RGP, EMG, EEG) a dois novos tipos de problema; enquanto o último apresenta a validação de duas escalas. Resultados: A nova teoria (IDD) supera limitações identificadas nas teorias atuais da intuição decisional. O primeiro experimento demonstra que quedas na valência de cenários futuros deixam as pessoas menos intuitivas. O segundo revela que este fenômeno reflete uma tendência espontânea à consonância cognitiva. O terceiro experimento sugere que decidir olhando para o passado (MTT retrospectiva) ou para o futuro (prospectiva) recruta níveis idênticos de ativação eletrofisiológica. As escalas validadas são: Preference for Intuition and Decision Making (Betsch, 2004) e Procrastination Scale (Frost e Shown, 1993) / Context: Studies on decision-making are gaining a new momentum since the introduction of neuroeconomy. In this context, the understanding of non-declarative processes reveals the necessity of new theoretical and experimental developments. Objectives: Introduce a new theory in non-declarative processes in decision-making and the results of four related experiments. Methods: The theory is based upon the identification and modeling of psychological, cognitive, and neurobiological processes supporting the maximization of utility, when analytical processes result in indecisiveness (post-analytical uncertainty), which we propose to call Deliberative Intuition (DI). The first experiment evaluates electrophysiological responses (GSR) to three types of decisional problems treated as conflicts; the second expands the main conclusions of the former. The third evaluates electrophysiological responses (GSR, EMG, EEG) to two new types of decisional problems; while the last validates two new scales. Results: The new theory (DI) overcomes limitations identified in the current theories of intuitive decision making. The first experiment shows that drops in overall valence of future scenarios make people less intuitive. The second concludes that this phenomenon may reflect a tendency toward cognitive consonance. The third experiment suggests that choices made while the subject is looking torward the past (retrospective MTT) or toward the future (prospective MTT) recruit similar electrophysiological activation. The validated scales are: Preference for Intuition and Decision-Making (Betsch, 2004) and Procrastination Scale (Frost & Shown, 1993)

Esta pesquisa procurou demonstrar que as decisões de qualidade, na área de administração, dependem de uma série de fatores que, em maior ou menor medida, influenciaram-na. O estudo baseou-se na premissa de que o conhecimento e a intuição são fatores que podem influenciar na tomada de decisões de qualidade. A partir disso, foi realizado, tendo por base amplo referencial teórico, estudo de campo com o objetivo de avaliar, através da solução de casos práticos de tomada da decisão, se os indivíduos com maior nível de conhecimento e tipificados como “intuitivos" tomaram melhores decisões em relação a suas contrapartes. A metodologia adotada valeu-se de levantamento de dados, com amostragem intencional, junto a 109 profissionais na área de Administração da Pós-Graduação (latu sensu) em Master Business Administration – MBA da Fundação Instituto de Administração – FIA da Universidade de São Paulo. As técnicas de análise estudadas foram teste de correlação e cluster. Os resultados da pesquisa mostraram que indivíduos formados em faculdades localizadas em universidades estaduais, - por sua vez classificadas pelo Ministério de Educação e Cultura –MEC como de qualidade -, demonstraram possuir maior nível de experiência, tendo sido tipificados como “não intuitivos", fizeram as melhores decisões. / This research aims to demonstrate that quality decisions, within the administration field, depend on several factors that, somehow, may have influence upon them. The study is based on the premise that knowledge and the intuition are factors that may influence (or not) decisions quality. For this purpose it has been carried out a field research based on wide range of theoretical references. The field study had the goal to analyze through solving practical cases studies concerned to decision making, taking into account those individuals with high level of knowledge and typified as “intuitive" whether they make better decisions than their counterparts. The methodology tool was applied to 109 professionals (intentional sampling)coming from the area of Administration of the MBA course established at the Institute of Administration Foundation of University of São Paulo. The applied methodological techniques aiming to analyze the data were correlation test and cluster analysis. At the end of the research, results have demonstrated that individuals formed at State Universities recognized by the Ministry of Education (MEC) as of high quality, with large experience in their field study, and typified as “not intuitive" make better decisions.

Both artists and business executives state the importance of intuition in their professional practice. Current research suggests that intuition plays a significant role in cognition, decision-making, and creativity. Intuitive perception is beneficial to management, entrepreneurship, learning, medical diagnosis, healing, spiritual growth, and overall well-being, and is furthermore, more accurate than deliberative thought under complex conditions. Accordingly, acquiring intuitive faculties seems indispensable amid present day’s fast-paced multifaceted society and growing complexity. Today, there is an overall rising interest in intuition and an existing pool of research on intuition in management, but interestingly an absence of research on intuition in the field of art. This qualitative-phenomenological study explores the experience of intuition in both professional practices in order to show comparability and extend the base of intuition, while at the same time revealing what is unique about its emergence in art practice. Data gathered from semi-structured interviews and online-journals provided the participants’ experience of intuition and are presented through individual portraits, including an introduction to their work, their worldview, and the experiences of intuition in their lives and professional practice. Framing outcomes through concepts of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, theology, noetic sciences, quantum physics, metaphysics, and art theory, resulted in the emergence of five themes that offered perspectives on the purpose of intuition, optimum conditions for intuiting, spiritual aspects of intuition, conduits for intuitive knowledge, and suggested connections between art and intuition. The findings of the study suggest that the artists experienced heightened levels of intuition that the business executives did not. Data indicate that experiences of intuition are enhanced through methods of quieting the mind, which can be found in Eastern practices and that show similarities to processes in art practice, such as transcendence, focus, non-attachment, visualization, a body-mind-spirit connection, and intention. The findings suggest that distinct qualities of art practice allow for alternative knowledge-making methods that can create preferable conditions for intuition to flourish in art education, such as generating inclusive dialog, increasing self-awareness, processing emotions, developing focus, refining the senses, and fostering ethicality, all of which may awaken and strengthen abilities of intuition.

Research is concerned with communication of design thinking, from the perspective of a designer, and in relation to the process, product, and user experience of design. It is a study of the act of persuasion within the processof a designer’s thinking, and is concerned with interpretation of the relation between words and images. The role of technology, intuition, and visual thinking are identified as three key components of design thought, and the way these three constituent parts inter-relate is the subject matter of inquiry. Research is conducted from a theoretical and practical perspective, and throughout the inquiry, a balance between subjective and objective informationis retained. An essentially holistic approach to understanding the designer’s decision-making process is adopted, and as such, the research does not separate the act of thinking from the act of doing. The inquiry concentrates on exposing the tacit dialogue of a designer througha series of five discourses. Each discourse begins with a preface, a contextual statement that frames the line of inquiry. The first discourse introduces the research methodology; discourse two reviews the literature surrounding communication of design thinking, and observes the design process through documentation and communication of 97 examples; discourse three interviews five professional designers and listens to how they visually communicate the physical and emotional experience of being a designer; discourse four questions a designer’s tacit understanding of visual thinking and exposes the surrounding assumptions, and the fifth discourse closes this inquiry by communicating the activity of rhetoric, describing rhetoric as the relation and inter-relation between the implicit and explicit processes of looking, listening and questioning. The visual methodology provides a context that allows the designer’s qualitiesof judgement and experience to become subjects in themselves. Each discourse attends to the unfolding nature of a network of relationships that developed amongst the roles of intuition, visual thinking and technology. In doing so, the inquiry proposes to contribute to knowledge by: communicating the significance of visual thinking as a methodology for doctoral design research; the role of computer technology as a tool for looking, listening and questioning the activityof rhetoric; intuition as a facilitator of rhetoric and rhetoric as an interrogator of intuition.

A Filosofia do Espírito é a forma de autoconhecimento, na medida em que traça o percurso do princípio espiritual em seu processo de criação. O primeiro momento desse processo da Criação consiste na diferenciação da Unidade na multiplicidade de seres naturais. Desse modo constitui-se a fenomenologia da vida, cujo prolongamento, para Bergson, é a fenomenologia do espírito. Tal processo permite descrever a gênese do intelecto, de modo a fundamentar sua estrutura analítica e estabelecer uma crítica do conhecimento. O intelecto, dada a sua vocação pragmática, é que vai pautar os procedimentos racionais da ciência; porém, dada a sua concepção quantitativa do real aparente, não se presta ao conhecimento da metafísica. À inteligência cumpre, porém o papel inicial de procurar a presença imanente no mundo fenomênico, dando acesso, portanto ao espírito subjetivo de conhecer a substância espiritual em si mesma, em sua imediatez. Acompanhar o processo do desdobramento do Espírito em sua imediatez só é possível pela intuição, que permite uma identificação em essência com o processo gerador, de modo a constituir assim uma metafísica positiva, como pedra angular na edificação de uma Enciclopédia das Ciências ,assim como a possibilidade de cumprir com a finalidade interna, que é criar infinitamente. / The Philosophy of the Spirit is the form of self-knowledge, as it outlines the path of the spiritual principle in its process of creation. The first moment of this process of the Creation consists of the differentiation of the Unit in the multiplicity of natural beings. In this manner, phenomenology of the life is defined, whose prolongation, for Bergson, is the phenomenology of the spirit. Such process allows one to describe the genesis of the intellect, in order to base its analytical structure and to establish knowledge critics. The intellect, given its pragmatic vocation, is what will define the rational procedures of science; however, given its quantitative concept of the apparent real, it does not serve to metaphysical knowledge. Thus, intelligence triggers the initial search process for emanating presence in the phenomenon world, consequently giving access to the subjective spirit of knowing the spiritual substance in one self in its immediateness. To follow the process of development of the spirit in its immediateness is only possible by intuition, allowing identification, in essence, with the generator process, in a way to constitute a positive metaphysic, as a foundation pillar in a Science Encyclopedia, as well as the possibility to fulfill the internal objective, to create infinitely.

Traditional philosophy has been under attack from several quarters in recent years. The traditional philosopher views philosophy as an armchair discipline relying, for the most part, on reason and reflection. Some philosophers doubt the legitimacy of this type of inquiry. Their arguments usually occur along two dimensions. Some argue that the primary data source for the armchair philosopher--intuition--does not provide evidence for philosophical theories. Others argue that conceptual analysis, which is the preferred method of inquiry for armchair philosophers, can't yield the results the philosopher is looking for, since concepts like 'knowledge' or 'free-will' vary from culture to culture or even between persons within a culture. Finally, some philosophers argue that we should abandon the armchair program because philosophy should be an empirical enterprise continuous with the sciences. I argue that attempts to undermine intuition fail and that one can justify the evidential status of intuition in a non-question begging way. I then argue that attacks on the belief in shared concepts do not succeed because they often conflate the nature of scientific objects with those of interest to the philosopher. However, if concepts do vary from culture to culture, I show that the philosopher need not abandon the armchair. She can still do conceptual analysis but it will be only the entry point into the philosophical dialogue. I apply this approach to epistemology arguing that the central epistemic questions ought to be the existential and the normative. This approach helps to vindicate epistemic internalism.

Discussion of the artist statement and critique.