Semantic closure

This paper argues for tlie claims that a) a natural language such as English is semanticaly closed b) semantic closure implies inconsistency. A corollary of these is that the semantics of English must be paraconsistent. The first part of the paper formulates a definition of semantic closure which applies to natural languages and shows that this implies inconsistency. The second section argues that English is semeantically closed. The preceding discussion is predicated on the assumption that there are no truth value gaps. The next section of the paper considers whether the possibility of these makes any difference to the substantive conclusions of the previous sections, and argues that it does not. The crux of the preceding arguments is that none of the consistent semantical accounts that have been offered for solving the semantical paradoxes is a semantic ofEnglish. The final section of the paper produces a general argument as to why this must always be the case.     

The effects of modifying consummatory behavior on the topography of the autoshaped pecking response in pigeons

The autoshaped responses of two debeaked pigeons that had developed modified eating behavior were compared to the autoshaped responses of three control subjects that ate grain normally. The control subjects exhibited keylight responding that was judged normal by two independent raters. The debeaked subjects pecked the key and ate grain with both normal and modified responses. The results of this study demostrate that an autoshaping procedure using grain as an appetitive stimulus may be used to establish a response that is not biologically preorganized.     

Exploration of an adaptive training regimen that can target the secondary memory component of working memory capacity

The dual-component model contends that working memory (WM) capacity consists of two components. The first is a flexible attention component that involves the active maintenance of a limited amount of information in primary memory (PM), and the second is a controlled retrieval component that involves a cue-dependent search of secondary memory (SM) for information that has been lost from PM. Recent evidence has suggested that the adaptive WM training regimen known as “Cogmed-RM” is not optimally designed, because it only targets PM abilities, not SM abilities. The present study was conducted to investigate whether Cogmed-RM could be modified to target SM abilities by decreasing the recall accuracy threshold that defines individual ability during training. The main findings suggested that the SM component of WM capacity could be targeted by lowering the recall accuracy threshold. The present findings are important because they suggest that adaptive training regimens can be designed that selectively target specific components of WM capacity, and they raise the possibility that the potency of existing training regimens can be increased.     

An experimental synthesis of the associations and gestalt accounts of the perception of size: Part I

The Associationists state that our everyday impressions of size are a product of past experience. The Gestalt psychologists state that they are immediately or directly given in present experience. The experiment described here suggests that both past and present experience are simultaneously involved, and that a synthesis of the two accounts is required.     

The Poggendorff and its variants do arouse the same perceptual process

The first two of five experiments reported show that the complete Poggendorff and three of its variants all produce the same illusory effect and that, for all four patterns, that effect is increased as the angle of interception of the obliques decreases and as the separation of the parallels increases. The third experiment shows that the differences in the magnitude of illusion produced by the variants is most probably due to the components retained in a particular variant and not to the simple reduction in the total amount of illusion pattern retained, which also correlates with magnitude of illusion. The final two experiments show that equal or greater positive transfer to the complete pattern is obtained from the variants as from the complete pattern after equal amounts of practice. The conclusion is reached that the complete pattern and the variants arouse the same single perceptual process. The data do not permit identification of that process.     

Inferring the mental processes of other minds

In 4 experiments, the authors examined how several variables influence the quality and quantity of information that people use to make judgments about other people. The results showed that when possible, participants consistently responded appropriately to variables that influenced information that they used to make inferences about other minds. The results also suggested that under circumstances with no opportunity to contrast behavior in different situations, people might not be sensitive to the quality and quantity of information present. The authors interpreted results to mean that under most circumstances, people make inferences in a way that efficiently uses information about the causes of behavior.     

RESPONSE‐DEPENDENCE ABOUT AESTHETIC VALUE

The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response‐dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs:

• 1 The belief that challenges brought against response‐dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response‐dependent accounts of aesthetic value.
• 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates this purported fact.
• 3 The belief that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates the widely acknowledged anthropocentricity of aesthetic value.
• 4 The belief that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates aesthetic normativity.

We argue that each of these beliefs is false, and that the dominance of response‐dependent accounts of aesthetic value is therefore largely without foundation.     

Testing the predictions of the central capacity sharing model

The divergent predictions of 2 models of dual-task performance are investigated. The central bottleneck and central capacity sharing models argue that a central stage of information processing is capacity limited, whereas stages before and after are capacity free. The models disagree about the nature of this central capacity limitation. The central bottleneck model claims that central processing acts on only 1 task at a time and, therefore, constitutes a bottleneck that processes tasks serially. The central capacity sharing model postulates that the central stage is a limited-capacity parallel processor that divides resources among to-be-performed tasks. As a result of this difference, in the psychological refractory period paradigm, the central capacity sharing model predicts that lengthening Task 2 precentral processing will improve Task 1 performance at short stimulus onset asynchronies, whereas the central bottleneck model does not. Results of 2 experiments confirm the prediction of the central capacity sharing model.     

A heterodox defense of the actualist higher-order thought theory

I defend the actualist higher-order thought theory against four objections. The first objection contends that the theory is circular. The second one contends that the theory is unable to account for the alleged epistemic position we are in with respect to our own conscious mental states. The third one contends that the theory is unable to account for the evidence we have for the proposition that all conscious mental states are represented. The fourth one contends that the theory does not accommodate the intimacy we have with our own conscious mental states. To some extent, my defense will be heterodox, in the sense that I will show that some objections are satisfactorily answerable even if we concede to the objectors a point that higher-order theorists do not seem to be willing to concede, that is, that the theory is the result of conceptual analysis.

     

Assessing the Relationships Among Wisdom,Humility, and Life Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses that specify different ways of configuring the interface between wisdom and humility. The first hypothesis specifies that greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed in order to know when to activate the virtue of humility. The second hypothesis specifies that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction will vary according to the level of wisdom that is possessed by study participants. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed to successfully implement and regulate humility once it has been activated. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older adults (N = 1535). The data support both hypotheses. First greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. Second, the results suggest that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction varies across levels of wisdom. The findings help ground the study of wisdom more firmly in the literature on virtues.     

Interpretation of Poverty in St. Louis County,Minnesota

The paper analyzes subjective poverty in St. Louis County, Minnesota with the methods of systematic data collection. The initial hypothesis states that American people blame the individuals for their poor living conditions. Based on the Easterlin paradox, the next hypothesis states that subjective and absolute poverty lines are independent. Taking into account that the USA is a developed country, subjective wellbeing is supposed to be associated with relative deprivation. The paper concludes that the items most related to poverty are “no job”, “no access to basic needs” and “addiction”. The main causes of poverty are “cycle of poverty”, “no job” and “addiction”. The main consequences of poverty are “no access to basic needs”, “poor health” and “minimum education”. The results revealed that the most important items related to poverty and the main causes and consequences of poverty cannot be classified unambiguously as being individualist, structural or fatal. The analysis showed that subjective poverty line is different from the objective lines. This result supports the Easterlin paradox and implies that people can be dissatisfied with their lives even when they are above the poverty line according to the official statistics. Elimination of absolute poverty may therefore not be enough to improve subjective well-being. The evidence that relative income assessment is not correlated with subjective well-being implies that people are not concerned with their relative income position.     

Of Keys and Gifts: How to Read The Gift of Authority

Abstract

The Gift of Authority has received a cautious welcome from Anglicans. A reason for this, it is said, is that its language or culture are insufficiently Anglican. The article argues that this should not deter anyone because there are non-Anglican ecclesiologies – most notably that of Medard Kehl – which contain a vision of the Church that is basically the same as that behind The Gift, and which at the same time bear a close family resemblance to principles of Anglican ecclesiology. It is argued that using these as an Anglican ‘hermeneutical key’ to The Gift instead of focusing primarily on the language used, would substantially increase Anglican understanding and appreciation of the report.     

Decision-making and the Backward Induction Argument

The traditional form of the backward induction argument, which concludes that two initially rational agents would always defect, relies on the assumption that they believe they will be rational in later rounds. Philip Pettit and Robert Sugden have argued, however, that this assumption is unjustified. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the argument without using this assumption. The formulation offered concludes that two initially rational agents would decide to always defect, and relies only on the weaker assumption that they do not believe they will not be rational in later rounds. The argument employs the idea that decisions justify revocable presumptions about behavior.     

Temporal context and conditioned reinforcement value

The effectiveness of a stimulus as a conditioned reinforcer depends on the temporal context of reinforcement, that is, the overall rate of reinforcement in the situation. The dominant view has been that context determines the learned value of a stimulus directly, according to delay-reduction theory. By contrast, the contextual choice model (CCM) maintains that value is independent of context and incorporates the effects of context on choice in the framework of the matching law. The authors report 2 experiments with pigeons as subjects that use transfer tests to assess the value of stimuli in the concurrent-chains procedure. Results strongly support the assumption of CCM that pigeons learn the temporal relations between events independently of context but that context modulates the expression of that learning as choice.     

Deconstructing the Doctrine of Double Effect

This paper examines the doctrine of double effect as it is typically applied. The difficulty of distinguishing between what we intend and what we foresee is highlighted. In particular, Warren Quinn's articulation of that distinction is examined and criticised. It is then proposed that the only credible way that we can be said to foresee that a harm will result and mean something other than that we intend it to result, is if we are not certain that that harm will result. The ramifications of this are explored. The paper concludes with a moral evaluation of a variety of cases that have harmful outcomes. It is recommended both that we abandon the doctrine of double effect and that we cease to describe cases with harmful outcomes in a dishonest way.     

Logical and psychological partitioning of mind: Depicting the same map?

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that empirically delimited structures of mind are also differentiable by means of systematic logical analysis. For the sake of this aim, the paper first summarizes Demetriou’s theory of cognitive organization and growth. This theory assumes that the mind is a multistructural entity that develops across three fronts: the processing system that constrains processing potentials, a set of specialized structural systems (SSSs) that guide processing within different reality and knowledge domains, and a hypercognitive system that monitors and controls the functioning of all other systems. The second part of the paper focuses on the SSSs, which are the target of our logical analysis, and it summarizes a series of empirical studies demonstrating their autonomous operation. The third part develops the logical proof showing that each SSS involves a kernel element that cannot be reduced to standard logic or to any other SSS. The implications of this analysis for the general theory of knowledge and cognitive development are discussed.     

Persons,Simplicity, and Substance

A novel argument has recently been advanced against materialism—the view that human persons are identical to composite, material objects. The argument claims that pairs of people are not conscious and that the only viable explanation for why they are not is because pairs of people are not simple. The argument concludes that only a simple thing can be the subject of conscious states. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation for why pairs of people are not conscious: pairs of people are not substances. I provide two characterizations of substantiality. The first proposal claims that substances have irreducible causal powers, and the second claims that substances cannot have other substances as proper parts. The alternative explanation based on these characterizations of substantiality shows that being conscious is compatible with materialism.     

Cast in six ponds and you'll reel in something: looking back on 25 years of research

The author describes his program of research over the past 25 years. This research falls into 6 areas that are interdependent and that inform each other. The overall program is guided by 3 bioecological principles that posit the need for proximal processes and motivation to actualize biological potential. The author presents examples of experiments that fall into each of the 6 areas and show that human potential is highly contextualized and that, consequently, the same person who fails at a task in one domain is often able to succeed at it in a different domain.     

Identifying phenomenal consciousness

This paper examines the possibility of finding evidence that phenomenal consciousness is independent of access. The suggestion reviewed is that we should look for isomorphisms between phenomenal and neural activation spaces. It is argued that the fact that phenomenal spaces are mapped via verbal report is no problem for this methodology. The fact that activation and phenomenal space are mapped via different means does not mean that they cannot be identified. The paper finishes by examining how data addressing this theoretical question could be obtained.     

The Biological Basis of Social Interaction

The fact that brain disorder can impair social interactions in different ways suggests that social competence has multiple components that have foundations in brain systems. The physiological basis of one aspect of social cognition, theory of mind, is just beginning to be understood. Brain-imaging studies suggest that a network of areas linking medial prefrontal and temporal cortex forms the neural substrate of mentalizing, that is, representing one's own and other people's mental states. The medial prefrontal areas are prominent also in tasks that involve self-monitoring, whereas the temporal regions are prominent also in tasks that involve the representation of goals of actions. We speculate that the precursors of mentalizing ability derive from a brain system that evolved for representing agents and actions, and the relationships between them.