The True Self: Are you yourself on medication?

The true self is becoming increasingly important for justifying everyday decisions. At the same time, medication use against mental illnesses is on the rise. How do these two concepts relate to each other? Do we feel like our true self on medication? Can medication help us find our true self? How do we use the true self in everyday life? Do we actually refer to our true self, or to values? We asked ordinary people that take medication for mental illnesses, questions like these in an attempt to find out about their intuition. Are you interested in our findings? Come and visit us on project presentation day!

Dualism and its influence on adolescent’s health-conscious choices and level of body appreciation

Dualism is a philosophical theory that suggests that the mind and the body are two radically separate entities. The potential influence that dualistic beliefs have on our lifestyle and behaviour is not something that seems obvious to people. However, previous research has shown that a correlation between dualism and health engaging behaviours as well as body appreciation does exist. Our research updates older findings and proposes that dualistic beliefs do not play such a significant - at least in teenagers and young adolescents - role in how we engage in healthy behaviours and how we view our own body as previously thought.

Personality Change Based on Will

In our conceptual and empirical research, we studied whether it is possible for people to change their own personality. From a philosophical and psychological perspective we looked at concepts as agency and intrinsic and external motivation, and we conducted a survey to see how folk intuitions are on personality change.

The essence of gender

Gender has become an increasingly pertinent topic over the past years. One question is especially relevant, namely, what makes someone a man, woman, or (none or) both? That question is closely tied to the philosophical investigation into the essence of gender. With interviews, we tried to identify ordinary people’s intuitions about gender. That could help philosophers find whether there is an essence to gender and if so, what it is.

Consider me conscious

The question of consciousness remains one of the most troubling problems of the mind, especially concerning non-human entities. Both the existence and the nature of such non-human consciousness are still very much debated, along with moral, ethical and judicial implications bearing a lot of weight. Our project was focused on investigating how people view animal consciousness: we hope that empirical evidence from people like you and me would help us understand it better.