The power of powerless speech: The effects of speech style and task interdependence on status conferral

Two studies examine the effects of speech styles and task interdependence on status conferral judgments. In both studies, participants were exposed to an individual who used either a powerful or powerless speech style in a low or high task interdependence group, and made judgments about the amount of status to confer to the individual. When task interdependence was low, participants conferred more status to powerful speakers, whereas when interdependence was high, participants conferred more status to powerless speakers. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrated that speech styles influenced trait inferences about the speaker (agency and communality), but these traits were weighted differently in status conferral judgments across groups. These findings provide insight into both the relationship between observed behaviors and status positions and the decision process underlying status conferral judgments.     

Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral

Four studies examined status conferral (decisions about who should be granted status). The studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the 1st study, participants supported President Clinton more when they viewed him expressing anger about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than when they saw him expressing sadness about the scandal. This effect was replicated with an unknown politician in Study 2. The 3rd study showed that status conferral in a company was correlated with peers' ratings of the workers' anger. In the final study, participants assigned a higher status position and a higher salary to a job candidate who described himself as angry as opposed to sad. Furthermore, Studies 2-4 showed that anger expressions created the impression that the expresser was competent and that these perceptions mediated the relationship between emotional expressions and status conferral.     

Problems with the ‘physical’ in physicalism

Hempel's Dilemma is a challenge that has to be met by any formulation of physicalism that specifies the physical by reference to a particular physical theory. It poses the problem that if one's specification of the physical is ‘current’ physical theory, then the physicalism which depends on it is false because current physics is false; and if the specification of the physical is a future or an ideal physics, the physicalism based on it would be trivial as it would be tautologously true, or because very little (if anything at all) can be inferred from or about a physics that does not yet exist. I review the reasons for thinking that the dilemma is a perpetual problem for currentist specifications of the physical, then introduce the argument that the standard positions on the specification question are wanting because they lack a generality which physicalism is generally accepted to have. I end with a suggestion for a way forward for physicalism.     

Two Second‐Personal Conceptions of the Dignity of Persons

In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second‐personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second‐personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second‐personal conception, one I will call relational, promises to solve the dilemma by avoiding both the problem of antecedence and the wrong kind of reasons problem. More generally, distinguishing these two second‐personal conceptions of the dignity of persons is important to enrich the available philosophical accounts of human dignity.     

TOWARD A WEAK ANTHROPOCENTRISM

In his work on the moral status of nonhuman animals, David Clough rejects the theory of anthropocentrism while accepting its practical importance. He thus leaves theology in a dilemma: reflection on animals should not support the very concept that practical approaches to animals require. An alternative is a “weak anthropocentrism” along the line of Gianni Vattimo's “weak ontology.” A weak anthropocentrism is better suited to a Neoplatonic theory of participation, not the traditional framework of creation out of nothing, and it also can give new meaning to the idea of imago Dei and a Christocentric affirmation of nonhuman value.     

The effects of social (dis)engagement on status conferral: A context dependent account

The functionalist perspective of status suggests that, to attain status, individuals need to be socially engaging and contribute to a group. In contrast, the signaling perspective of status indicates that people often perceive a lack of social engagement as a status cue and thus confer status on someone who is socially disengaging. Integrating these two important perspectives in the status literature, we propose a context dependent account of social (dis)engagement and status conferral in groups and organizations. Whereas social engagement (e.g., contributing to a group and connecting with its members) results in status attainment in task contexts, social disengagement (e.g., withholding benefits from a group and distancing oneself from its members) leads to status attainment in social contexts. A laboratory study and an online experiment provide partial empirical support for our predictions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

ROCK BOTTOM: COHERENTISM'S SOFT SPOT

Often coherentism is taken to be the view that justification is solely a function of the coherence among a person's beliefs. I offer a counterexample to the idea that when so understood coherence is sufficient for justification. I then argue that the counterexample will still work if coherence is understood as coherence among a person's beliefs and experiences. I defend a form of nondoxastic foundationalism that takes sensations and philosophical intuitions as basic and sees nearly all other justification as depending on inference to the best explanation. I take up Wilfrid Sellars's Dilemma, which starts with the idea that the foundations must be either propositional in nature or not. The argument continues: if they are, they stand in need of justification; if they are not, they cannot confer justification. It concludes that there cannot be foundations that confer justification on other beliefs. I deny both horns of this dilemma, arguing that philosophical intuitions are propositional but do not stand in need of justification and that sensations are not propositional but can confer justification on perceptual beliefs.     

Tarski ‐ a dilemma

Tarski's correspondence theory of truth (which he spells out in his semantic conception of truth) is open to two interpretations. This ambiguity in the theory has led philosophers to find support in it for metaphysical reali sm. In fact, Tarski's theory turns out to support a form of ontological relativism. In different passages Tarski himself gives support to each of these interpretations. The first interpretation leads to ontological relativism, while the second sacrifices the connection between language and the world. I clarify the dilemma that I see in having to choose between these two interpretations, explain how these interpretations have their source in different problems which occupied Tarski, and consider a possible solution to the dilemma. Finally, finding good reasons to claim that Tarski's theory is indeed a correspondence theory of truth, I argue in favour of the first interpretation with its relativistic implications.     

No Place to Hide: When Shame Causes Proselfs to Cooperate

Shame is considered a social emotion with action tendencies that elicit socially beneficial behavior. Yet, unlike other social emotions, prior experimental studies do not indicate that incidental shame boosts prosocial behavior. Based on the affect as information theory, we hypothesize that incidental feelings of shame can increase cooperation, but only for self-interested individuals, and only in a context where shame is relevant with regards to its action tendency. To test this hypothesis, cooperation levels are compared between a simultaneous prisoner's dilemma (where “defect” may result from multiple motives) and a sequential prisoner's dilemma (where “second player defect” is the result of intentional greediness). As hypothesized, shame positively affected proselfs in a sequential prisoner's dilemma. Hence ashamed proselfs become inclined to cooperate when they believe they have no way to hide their greediness, and not necessarily because they want to make up for earlier wrong-doing.     

The A Priori and the Empirical in Theories of Emotion: Smedslund's “Conceptual Analysis” of Emotion

Abstract

This paper examines the suggestion made by Smedslund that the empirical laws of emotion proposed by Frijda are a priori necessities, derivable from a definition of emotion Smedslund proposes. First, a distinction is drawn between a causal and non-causal reading of Smedslund's own definition of emotion. The suggestion is made that although on the causal reading the definition might provide sufficient conditions for being in an emotional state, causal regularities are empirical, so this reading would not meet his own criteria for an a priori definition. Moreover, showing that Frijda's laws are derivable from the definition thus understood would not undermine their empirical status. The non-causal reading is then examined and questions are raised about whether it can provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a state to be a state of emotion. Finally, the suggestion is made that the central issue in the question of whether or not a theory of emotion is wholly empirical turns not on whether it can be derived from a definition of emotion, but, rather, on the extent to which the explanations proposed of the regularities governing emotions must appeal to a priori rationality constraints.     

The Divine Horizon: Rethinking Political Community in Luce Irigaray's “Divine Women”

The question of the transcendent, that which operates above and beyond the material stuff of the world, remains an enduring one for feminism, bound up as it is with the foundations of feminism's corporeal politics and the definition of its political subject. With the specificity of the situated and meaningful body grounding feminist politics, the universal and neutral status of the speaking subject has been diagnosed as masculine, and unable to properly account for sexed differences. On this basis, political community, collectivity forged along the lines of a common identity, is considered important in the realization of feminist political goals, yet is also problematic in view of its reliance upon a universal category of identity through which to motivate for political change. Acknowledging these tensions, this paper revisits Luce Irigaray's essay “Divine Women” to suggest that in her rethinking of the divine as a shared horizon through which women can potentially achieve autonomy, the nature of the transcendent, the universal, and the identity of the feminine are also reconfigured in surprising ways. In a specific address to the dilemma of political community, Irigaray makes available a notion of the divine that is already differently inhabited.     

Early Sartre on Freedom and Ethics

This paper offers a revisionary interpretation of Sartre's early views on human freedom. Sartre articulates a subtle account of a fundamental sense of human freedom as autonomy, in terms of human consciousness being both reasons‐responsive and in a distinctive sense self‐determining. The aspects of Sartre's theory of human freedom that underpin his early ethics are shown to be based on his phenomenological analysis of consciousness as, in its fundamental mode of self‐presence, not an object in the world (Section 1). Sartre has a multi‐level theory of the reasons‐sensitivity of consciousness. At one level, consciousness's being alive to reasons is a matter of the affective perception of values and disvalues as features of phenomenal objects (Section 2). This part of his theory, a development of Scheler's, is, however, situated within a broader phenomenological analysis resulting in the claim that the ultimate reasons acknowledged by consciousness neither are nor justifiably could be values adequately presentable as intentional objects. Consciousness's ultimate reasons are, in this sense, not given by the world but by itself (Section 3). Section 4 reconstructs and assesses Sartre's argument that consciousness cannot rationally have an ultimate end other than self‐transparent (‘authentic’) freedom itself.     

Understanding Humility and Its Role in Relational Therapy

Humility is a character trait and virtue that has received scant attention in psychotherapy literature. A panel of experts was assembled to confer on their beliefs about humility for this Delphi study. They responded to a proposed definition of humility and provided a variety of statements regarding the role of humility in client change and relational therapy in general. The results suggest that key elements of change that occur during the process of relational therapy (including certain “common factors”) seem to be related to humility. Also, humility’s unique relationship to self and other suggests it is often at work in relational change. The authors propose further exploration of humility and its role as a pre-cursor to client change efforts. Humility’s role in the Transtheoretical Model of Change is hypothesized and future directions for theory and research are suggested.     

The Epistemology of Testimonal Trust

According to a strong assurance view of testimonial trust, a speaker's assurance that p grounds a reason for the hearer to believe p. While the strong view offers a genuinely inter-personal account of testimony, it faces a problem about bootstrapping: how can trust generate epistemic reasons when trust can obtain between unreliable speakers and hearers? In contrast, a weaker assurance view holds that a speaker's assurance that p grounds a reason for the hearer to believe p only if the speaker is reliable. While the weaker view offers an epistemic account of testimony, it faces a problem about redundancy: how can trust play any epistemic role when the speaker's reliability seems to pre-empt any contribution that trust may make towards such epistemic reason? This paper argues that neither horn of this dilemma is convincing once proponents of assurance views avail themselves of an epistemic distinction between reasons of rationality as a guide to reasonable belief and reasons of justification as a guide to true belief. Whereas testimonial assurance grounds rational reasons, which need not make probable the beliefs they make reasonable, testimonial reliability grounds justificatory reasons, which need not make reasonable the beliefs they make probable.     

The Japanese Tea Ceremony and Pancultural Definitions of Art

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a unified conception of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism.     

NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORY: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

In the present article, the neo-Piagetian theories that were presented in the previous articles are placed in historical context; then compared and contrasted. It is suggested that all the theories arose in response to a common dilemma, namely that of building a revised theory of development which would preserve the strengths of classical Piagetian theory, while elminating its weaknesses. Since one of the strengths of the classical theory was its ability to explain the universal features of cognitive development, most of the new theories retained the core set of structural postulates which made this explanation possible. This gives the new theories a strong family resemblance with regard to their structural claims. Since one of the weaknesses of the classical theory was its inability to explain the aspects of cognitive development that are not universal, most of the new theories have modified and/or added to this set of core postulates, and specified a set of structural transformation processes which go beyond the classical theory as well. In this latter regard there are more dissimilarities among the new theories than there are similarities. Two reasons for this divergence are suggested. The first is that Piaget's structural transformation model was less clearly falsified than other aspects of his theory, by the data on cognitive-developmental non-universality. It was therefore less clear which aspects of the transformation model should be retained, and which eliminated. The second reason is that current theorists are divided on the question of which other theoretical approach - among those that are currently available in other branches of psychology - offers the greatest promise, when it comes to extending Piaget's transformation model in a productive fashion.     

Epistemic Norms and Democracy: a Response to Talisse

John Rawls argued that democracy must be justifiable to all citizens; otherwise, a democratic society is oppressive to some. In A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy ( 2007 ), Robert B. Talisse attempts to meet the Rawlsian challenge by drawing from Charles S. Peirce's pragmatism. This article first briefly canvasses the argument of Talisse's book and then criticizes its key premise concerning (normative) reasons for belief by offering a competing reading of Peirce's “The Fixation of Belief” ( 1877 ). It then proceeds to argue that Talisse's argument faces a dilemma: his proposal of epistemic perfectionism either is substantive and can be reasonably disagreed about or is minimal but insufficient to ground a democratic society. Consequently, it suggests that the Rawlsian challenge can only be solved by abandoning Rawls's own notion of reasonableness, and that an interesting alternative notion of reasons can be derived from Peirce's “Fixation.”     

塔斯基的真理定义与物理论

塔斯基（Tarski）于1933年发表了他著名的真理定义,并相信该定义能够为其物理论的哲学立场服务;但费尔德（Field）批评说,塔斯基实际上所给出的真理定义并没能成功地达成这个目标。不过,费尔德同时也认为,一个部分奠基在塔斯基真理定义之上、并且是物理论者可以接受的化约性真理理论并非不可能。费尔德对于塔斯基真理定义的这些批评,在哲学家中曾经引起了许多意见不一的反应。本文的目的是想回答在这些讨论当中曾经被提出过的三个问题。首先,塔斯基实际上所给出的真理定义是不是一个物理论者可以接受的化约性定义？其次,费尔德所设想的那种可被物理论者所接受的化约性真理理论是否可能成功？最后,如果塔斯基实际上所给出的定义并不能符合物理论的化约目标,那么,一个物理论者是否便应该据此去反对塔斯基的真理定义？本文的最终结论是：这三个问题的正确答案都是否定的。     

Self‐Consciousness,Normativity and Abysmal Freedom

This article critically examines Christine Korsgaard's claim in her Tanner Lectures to find in self‐consciousness itself the norms that would answer our need for practical reasons, insofar as that need is constituted through our capacity for reflection. It shows that the way in which Korsgaard sees “the need for a reason” as arising out of self‐consciousness implies a dilemma: on the one hand, we want as the ultimate source of our reasons an authority of which we cannot coherently demand legitimation in turn; on the other, our freedom demands that nothing count for us as a reason except insofar as it is in turn endorsed in reflection. Relying on resources drawn from the tradition of reflection, this paper argues that Korsgaard's attempt to resolve this tension is unsuccessful and appeals, in response to this failure, to faith in the authority of our reasons in the absence of foundational justification of them.     

Holism and eclecticism in the theory of concepts

Abstract

Howard (1992) defines concepts as the information that a person has about a category, and argues for an eclectic theory of concepts on the basis of this definition. We argue that this definition is unacceptable and hence that eclecticism does not follow. First, the definition is circular as it stands. Secondly, when it is modified to avoid circularity, it implies conceptual holism, according to which concepts are not useful explanatory constructs in psychology. Thirdly, we argue that Howard's argument relies essentially on this unacceptable definition: alternative accounts of concepts, namely categorisational or representational views, do not support it. Having countered the argument for eclecticism, we then argue against it directly on methodological grounds.