The Ubiquity of Self-Deception

My paper is a discussion of Bas van Fraassen’s important, but neglected, paper on self-deception, “The Peculiar Effects of Love and Desire.” Paradoxes of self-deception are widely thought to follow from the ease with which we know ourselves. For example, if self-deception were intentional, how could we fail to know as target of our own deception just those things necessary to undermine the deception? Van Fraassen stands that reasoning on its head, arguing that is the ease with which we accuse ourselves of self-deception that undermines our confidence in our claims to know ourselves. I unpack and modify his argument, attempting to show that it makes a powerful case for scepticism about self-knowledge. I argue, contra van Fraassen, that local scepticism about self-knowledge threatens our claims to know ourselves in a way that global scepticism does not threaten our claims about the external world. I support this claim by showing that the Wittgensteinian response to the sceptic in On Certainty—that we don’t know what to do with the sceptic’s doubts, that we don’t know how to incorporate those doubts into our practices—does not succeed in deflecting scepticism about self-knowledge because the local sceptic’s doubts—about whether we can distinguish genuine claims to know ourselves from self-deceived claims—are integral to language game of self-knowledge. The local sceptic’s doubts are our doubts because it is natural to ask whether we are deceiving ourselves when we claim to know ourselves. However, because, we have no way of distinguishing genuine claims to know ourselves from self-deceived claims, our claims to self-knowledge are systematically undermined.     

Ubiquity of schedule-induced polydipsia

Spaced feeding of individual food pellets to food-deprived rats induced excessive drinking after pellet delivery if water was continuously available. When access to water was restricted to a portion of the inter-pellet interval, and competition from food-reinforced bar pressing was removed, excessive drinking occurred whenever drinking was possible. This finding extends the generality of accounts of excessive behavior that implicate induction by apparently unrelated scheduling characteristics of the environment.     

The Incest Taboo and Family Structure

The evolutionary advantage of outbreeding has influenced the family structure and the mating, attachment, and dominance behaviors of all animals. Nature has selected for those species that have evolved family structures with detachment and dominance patterns that create a relatively intact incest barrier. Man inherits from his animal forebears the biological imperative of an incest barrier but brings to it his special complexity of psychology and symbolization--incest barrier becomes incest taboo. We present a discussion of human patterns of speparation-individuation and Oedipal conflict and relate this to the detachment and dominance behaviors of animals. This is an interface between psychoanalysis, family theory, and ethology. In addition, we pursue in detail the asymmetrical operation of the incest taboo within the family: that it is stronger for mother-son than for father-daughter than for brother-sister.     

The Utility of Utility Analysis

Recent research on utility analysis that focuses on estimating the dollar value of performance gains was critically reviewed and a case was made that other metrics for expressing utility may be desirable. The need to validate the accu- racy of utility predictions was emphasized, and factors that could adversely affect their accuracy were described in a framework of criteria types and job types. A set of research propositions was offered and implications for future work on utility were discussed. In addition to its traditional role as an aid to decision making, utility analysis as a means to understanding the perform- ance construct was emphasized.     

Luther on Ubiquity and a Theology of the Public

Abstract:  In this article, I contest Milbank's critiques of Luther by underscoring the participatory theme in his treatment of faith. After considering faith's relation to the presence of Christ, I explore Luther's treatment of real presence in his theology of the Lord's Supper. His appeal to ubiquity in this regard functions doxologically to counter the possibility of the orchestration of Christ's presence. The promised nature of that presence, however, emphasizes that God graciously elicits a faith which apprehends absence as a profound mode of presence and so grounds a theology of the public in which the church, by theosis , shares Christ's definitive, rather than ubiquitous, presence.     

宗教禁忌与人类文明的发展

宗教,是人类历史上最古老的文化现象之一,它在人类文明的历史长河中留下了悠长而深重的刻痕,并逐渐演化为人类的社会意识,影响着一代又一代人的精神生活和物质生活。人类文明发展至今,宗教的历史一直伴随着人类的发展,人类也在对自然界认识深化的过程中,不断冲破宗教的樊篱,把文明推向更高的阶段。一、宗教禁忌是宗教的重要组成部分宗教产生于人类的远古时代,由于人们对自然界的发生、发展不能给予正确的认识,对自己的身体构造和生理现象的无知,对梦境和死亡现象的不理解,产生了万物有灵和灵魂观念。他们认为,人的思维和感觉不是身体的活动,…     

"道"之永生

我们该如何去理解毛泽东思想这一非凡的整体呢?这个人与他的思想融成了一个宏大的意象,这一意象既成为追求革命不朽(revolutionary immortality)的动力,又构成了革命不朽的实质。一位政治领袖被人为神化,这在历史上远不     

台湾军中的信与忌

在台湾部队中,禁忌很多,迷信盛行。特别是空军中,禁忌更多。听起来,有的令人啼笑皆非。吃鱼不改“翻” 海军中最耳熟能详的禁忌就是吃鱼时不能翻过来吃。因为翻鱼的翻和翻船的翻是同一个字,据说,说了“翻”就预示着可能会翻船,因此“翻”这个字是海军中绝对禁用     

Taboo desires,creativity, and career choice

Two studies suggest that Protestants are more likely than Catholics or Jews to sublimate taboo desires into motives to pursue creative careers. The results are consistent with a synthesis of psychological and classic sociological theories. In Study 1, Protestants induced to have taboo sexual desires were likely to express a preference for creative careers (as opposed to prosocial ones). In Study 2, a national probability sample revealed that “conflicted” Protestants—who had taboo desires but tried to rule their sexual behavior according to their religious beliefs—worked in the most creative jobs. The effects in both studies did not hold for Catholics and Jews. Results suggest that intrapsychic conflict can partially motivate important real-world decisions, such as the choice to pursue a creative career.     

The Word-length Effect and Disyllabic Words

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.     

拖延行为个体对人格特征词、拖延词的注意偏向

本文研究拖延行为与大五人格因素相关关系及其对不同人格评价词、拖延词的注意偏向.研究1对352名大学生的拖延行为与大五人格特征进行问卷测量;研究2和3采用情绪Stroop范式对高低拖延行为个体对人格特征词、拖延词的注意偏向进行实验研究.结果发现(1)拖延程度与神经质、开放性呈显著正相关;与其他三种人格特质呈显著负相关.(2)拖延行为高低分组在神经质、严谨性词和拖延词上的Stroop效应差异显著.高拖延行为个体对神经质评价词和拖延词存在注意偏向;低拖延行为个体对严谨性评价词存在注意偏向.     

Taboo words: The effect of emotion on memory for peripheral information

In three experiments, we examined memory for peripheral information that occurred in the same context as emotion-inducing information. In the first two experiments, participants studied either a sentence (Experiment 1) or a pair of words (Experiments 2A—2C) containing a neutral peripheral word, as well as a neutral, negative-valence, or taboo word, to induce an emotional response. At retrieval, the participants were asked to recall the neutral peripheral word from a sentence fragment or emotion-inducing word cue. In Experiment 3, we presented word pairs at encoding and tested memory with associative recognition. In all three experiments, memory for peripheral words was enhanced when it was encoded in the presence of emotionally arousing taboo words but not when it was encoded in the presence of words that were only negative in valence. These data are consistent with priority-binding theory (MacKay et al., 2004) and inconsistent with the attention-narrowing hypothesis (Easterbrook, 1959), as well as with object-based binding theory (Mather, 2007).     

重建人类禁忌观念

禁忌是指被禁止或忌讳的言行,在古代被认为是不可触犯的戒律。禁忌作为人类最古老的观念,从原始社会到传统社会一直是人类生命安全的守护神。然而,近代以来市场经济、工业革命和现代科技汇聚成的巨大力量使过去建立在畏惧敬畏对象和恇畏对象基础上的禁忌消失殆尽,导致了许多前所未有的重大社会问题和灾难性事件。因此,重建近代以来被否弃的禁忌观念必须提上议事日程。今天的禁忌对象也无非就是敬畏对象和恇畏对象这两大类,前者包括自然、神灵和祖先,后者包括战争、恐怖主义、干预人类自然生长和生活的各种科学研究,以及毒品、性乱、谣言、不讲卫生等。重建禁忌观念,就是要努力促使人们将禁忌内化为自己的底线生存观念,从而在内心深处对触犯禁忌感到羞耻和有罪。当前尤其要注重从小培养人们的畏惧和禁忌意识,强化触犯禁忌的耻感和罪感,营造切忌触犯禁忌的舆论氛围,用法律和道德促进禁忌观念形成。     

阿昌族民间的月经禁忌与信仰习俗

由于受认识水平的限制,生活在云南西部的阿昌族民众往往把妇女在月经期间正常的流血现象与恐惧和死亡的观念联系起来,认为经血会带来极其可怕的后果,进而把所有曾与月经有任何联系的人与物都看成是不洁的.在阿昌族社会,针对经期妇女的这种错误认知起到了负面的影响,行经妇女被看作一个特殊身份的群体而受到村民的歧视,她们的行为方式也受到各种传统禁忌与习俗的制约.     

Actual Utility, The Objection from Impracticality, and the Move to Expected Utility

Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would lead to the best outcome. So we can’t use the classic principle to determine what we should do. It’s not “practical”; it’s not “action-guiding”. Some take this to be a serious objection to utilitarianism, since they think a moral theory ought to be practical and action-guiding. In response, some utilitarians propose to modify utilitarianism by replacing talk of actual utility with talk of expected utility. Others propose to leave the original utilitarian principle in place, but to combine it with a decision procedure involving expected utility. What all these philosophers have in common is this: they move toward expected utility in order to defend utilitarianism against the impracticality objection. My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on this way of replying to the objection. My central claim is that if utilitarians are worried about the impracticality objection, they should not turn to expected utility utilitarianism. That theory does not provide the basis for a cogent reply to the objection. Originally presented at the 2004 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, Bellingham Washington, August 2, 2004, with comments by Gustaf Arrhenius and Elizabeth Harman. I am grateful to Arrhenius and Harman for their challenging criticism, as well as to Chris Heathwood, Michael Zimmerman, Owen McLeod, Elinor Mason, Eric Moore and other participants at the Bellingham Conference for comments and suggestions. In October, 2004 I discovered Mark Strasser’s ‘Actual Versus Probable Utilitarianism’. I see that in that paper Strasser anticipates a number of the points I make here.     

The Causal Structure of Utility Conditionals

The psychology of reasoning is increasingly considering agents' values and preferences, achieving greater integration with judgment and decision making, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Some of this research investigates utility conditionals, ‘‘if p then q’’ statements where the realization of p or q or both is valued by some agents. Various approaches to utility conditionals share the assumption that reasoners make inferences from utility conditionals based on the comparison between the utility of p and the expected utility of q. This article introduces a new parameter in this analysis, the underlying causal structure of the conditional. Four experiments showed that causal structure moderated utility‐informed conditional reasoning. These inferences were strongly invited when the underlying structure of the conditional was causal, and significantly less so when the underlying structure of the conditional was diagnostic. This asymmetry was only observed for conditionals in which the utility of q was clear, and disappeared when the utility of q was unclear. Thus, an adequate account of utility‐informed inferences conditional reasoning requires three components: utility, probability, and causal structure.     

Utility and Language Generation: The Case of Vagueness

This paper asks why information should ever be expressed vaguely, re-assessing some previously proposed answers to this question and suggesting some new ones. Particular attention is paid to the benefits that vague expressions can have in situations where agreement over the meaning of an expression cannot be taken for granted. A distinction between two different versions of the above-mentioned question is advocated. The first asks why human languages contain vague expressions, the second question asks when and why a speaker should choose a vague expression when communicating with a hearer. While the former question is purely theoretical, the latter has practical implications for the computational generation of utterances in Natural Language Generation (NLG).