Tinkerbell effect

Last updated December 23, 2024

The Tinkerbell effect is an American English expression describing the phenomenon of thinking something exists only because people believe in it. The effect is named after Tinker Bell, the fairy in the play Peter Pan , who is revived from near death by the belief of the audience.

Another form is called the Reverse Tinkerbell effect, a term coined by David Post in 2003.^[1]^[2] It stipulates that the more you believe in something the more likely it is to vanish. For example, as more people believe that driving is safe, more people will drive carelessly, in turn making driving less safe.

Various applications

As an expression, the Tinkerbell effect is applicable to various situations and can be used to better explain concepts and support arguments.

In motion perception

In the Journal of Consciousness Studies , Frank H. Durgin applies this expression to the study of human motion detection and perception in his paper "The Tinkerbell Effect: Motion Perception and Illusion".^[3] He questions the common belief that visual consciousness is a direct translation of the information the visual sensory organs collect. He argues that "perceptual awareness pretends to have access to more information than is actually available to visual cognition". He relates his argument about the indirectness in motion perception to how, in the play version of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell's revival depends on the live audience expressing their belief in fairies through clapping. The Tinkerbell effect points out a significant flaw in the brain's system of receiving and interpreting visually available information: it is not directly representative of reality. With the overwhelming amount of sensory information, the brain summarizes it by filling in what it cannot make sense of. In other words, it is an act of imagination.^[3]

In education reform

David C. Paris (1997) uses the Tinkerbell effect to explain inconsistency in national education reform. He points out that while reform may be set nationally, it tends to vary depending on the school and on how individual schools manipulate it to suit their current education system. Even though reforms are intended to impact schools, schools often change reforms. Education reform can be complicated because the nature of change works from inside the institutions – driven by teachers, students, and administrators alike – outwards. "Because the reform process often works this way-from the inside out, what succeeds at the school and district level can vary widely."^[4] Paris states there is also no right way to create a better school. There is no set curriculum or teaching style that guarantees a school's successful reform. Rather, some schools seem to succeed because there is widely shared and deeply rooted belief that their unique system works. This culture of belief affects all the critical influencers on the inside, where change can begin and develop. If the school's teachers believe the work they are doing is special and valuable, the students may likely believe that as well.^[4]

In this application, hard work is equivalent to the claps of Peter Pan's live audience. If an institution has greater confidence in its methods (by having effective teachers who promote clear goals and who pay personal attention to their students), it is more likely to receive the "claps" needed for its continued success. Similar to the way in which Tinkerbell's life depends on the audience's belief in her, schools depend on this belief-culture to survive. While this culture of belief in education appears to be beneficial, it cannot be standardized among all schools. Paris argues that without some set measure of program effectiveness, the Tinkerbell effect, that helped some institutions succeed, could hold negative effects on necessary reform. Overconfidence in a system can prevent further improvement and compromise the quality of the program.^[4]^{[ need quotation to verify ]}

In the rule of law

Cameron Stewart uses the Tinkerbell effect to explain why readers should "clap" for the rule of law principle. The rule of law is "a fundamental ideological principle of modern Western democracies, and as such, we are often asked to believe in it with unquestioning acceptance, even though Western states often honour the principle in the breach."^[5] Stewart states that this concept is much like the character Tinkerbell in that she cannot exist unless people believe in her. He says the rule of law does not currently exist in its entirety. He describes the attempts to implement the liberal philosophies embodied by this principle as the basis of common law constitution. This states that "the rule of law, and not parliamentary sovereignty, is the supreme authority of law, placing real limits on the exercise of legislative and executive power."^[5] The issue is that it is not easy to formulate and has turned into a product of legal imagination. The author proposes that a connection between the rule of law and democracy is needed to ensure its existence. The Tinkerbell effect is used to try to effectively convince his readers to support his argument. He emphasizes the importance of adhering to or "clapping" for the rule of law because it is so dependent on our belief.^[5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Reid</span> Scottish philosopher (1710–1796)

Thomas Reid was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his theory of perception, and its wide implications on epistemology, and as the developer and defender of an agent-causal theory of free will. He also focused extensively on ethics, theory of action, language and philosophy of mind.

Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within the universe, as opposed to that which is only imaginary, nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown.

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.

A belief is a subjective attitude that something is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent, but can instead be dispositional.

In the philosophy of mind, mind–body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical, or that the mind and body are distinct and separable. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, as well as between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind–body problem.

Intentionality is the mental ability to refer to or represent something. Sometimes regarded as the mark of the mental, it is found in mental states like perceptions, beliefs or desires. For example, the perception of a tree has intentionality because it represents a tree to the perceiver. A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of intentional inexistence: to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states.

Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth.

Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity.

Reality tunnel is a theory that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder". It is similar to the idea of representative realism, and was coined by Timothy Leary (1920–1996). It was further expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007), who wrote about the idea extensively in his 1983 book Prometheus Rising.

Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomena. The term is now used mostly in the history of philosophy and of psychology. One idea was thought to follow another in consciousness if it were associated by some principle. The three commonly asserted principles of association were similarity, contiguity, and contrast, while numerous others had been added by the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the significant impact of physiological psychology lead to much of the older associationist theories being rejected.

The Grammar of Science is a book by Karl Pearson first published in hardback in 1892. In 1900, the second edition, published by Adam & Charles Black, appeared. The third, revised, edition was also published by Adam & Charles Black in 1911. It was recommended by Einstein to his friends of the Olympia Academy. Several themes were covered in this book that later became part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists, such as:

The philosophy of artificial intelligence is a branch of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of computer science that explores artificial intelligence and its implications for knowledge and understanding of intelligence, ethics, consciousness, epistemology, and free will. Furthermore, the technology is concerned with the creation of artificial animals or artificial people so the discipline is of considerable interest to philosophers. These factors contributed to the emergence of the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

This glossary of philosophy is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to philosophy and related disciplines, including logic, ethics, and theology.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception.

Udayana, also known as Udayanācārya, was an Indian philosopher and logician of the tenth century of the Nyaya school who attempted to devise a rational theology to prove the existence of God using logic and counter the attack on the existence of God at the hands of Buddhist philosophers such as Dharmakīrti, Jñānaśrī and against the Indian school of materialism (Chārvaka). He is considered to be the most important philosopher of the Nyāya tradition.

Libertarian Christianity is a designation that encompasses a variety of people, ideologies, philosophies, etc., the commonality of which is that each of these claims some commitment to both libertarianism and Christianity. Libertarianism and Christianity, as societal entities, are each composed of a variety of factions, each of which claims some distinguishing features that make such faction more libertarian, or more Christian, than other factions operating under the same libertarian or Christian banner. Libertarian Christians are yet another faction within each of these two internally diverse superstructures. What makes libertarian Christianity unique is that people who claim to be libertarian Christians are people who either implicitly or explicitly claim to have found some kind of ideological bridge that makes libertarianism and Christianity compatible. Whether people who claim to be libertarian Christians have discovered an ideological bridge that is genuinely faithful to the fundamental tenets of both libertarianism and Christianity is inevitably a question whose answer determines whether the libertarian Christian's bridge is ideologically sound or is based on pure presumption and wishful thinking.

<i>Tattva</i> (Jainism) Fundamental elements in Jainism

Jain philosophy explains that nine or seven tattva constitute reality. These are:

jīva – the soul which is characterized by consciousness
ajīva – the non-soul
puṇya (alms-deed) – which purifies the soul and provide happiness to others
pāpa – which impurifies the soul
āsrava (influx) – inflow of auspicious and evil karmic matter into the soul.
bandha (bondage) – mutual intermingling of the soul and karmas.
saṃvara (stoppage) – obstruction of the inflow of karmic matter into the soul.
nirjarā – separation or falling-off of parts of karmic matter from the soul.
mokṣa (liberation) – complete annihilation of all karmic matter.

This is a glossary of terms used in New Thought.

In the United States, some categories of speech are not protected by the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Constitution protects free speech while allowing limitations on certain categories of speech.

References

↑ Kieran Healy (January 29, 2003). "Reverse Tinkerbell Example" . Retrieved September 14, 2015.
↑ David G. Post, "The Reverse Tinkerbell Effect: You Heard it Here First," The Volokh Conspiracy Blog, Jan. 26, 2003, http://volokh.com/2003_01_26_volokh_archive.html#90251142 (last visited May 17, 2019)
1 2 Durgin, Frank H. (2002). "The Tinkerbell Effect: Motion Perception and Illusion" (PDF). Journal of Consciousness Studies. 9 (5–6): 1–14.
1 2 3 Paris, D.C. (1997). "School Reform: Too much talk, too little action". Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy. 12 (3): 46–56. ProQuest 235137880.
1 2 3 Stewart, Cameron (2004). "The Rule of Law and the Tinkerbell Effect: Theoretical Considerations, Criticisms, and Justifications for the Rule of Law". Macquarie Law Journal . Retrieved 9 November 2015. Also available here.