Are affordances normative?

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity....     

Are numbers properties of objects?

Conclusion Part of Frege's concern about whether number words are properties of objects was that if they could be construed as such it would lend support to the view that truths of arithmetic were empirical truths. Such concern is ill-founded. Even if number words do apply to objects as predicates, this does not entail that numerical truths would be empirical, any more than the fact that bachelor and unmarried are predicates of objects entails that their relationship is an empirical one. The account of number words as predicates given here, consequently, should not be taken as supportive of any one particular theory concerning arithmetic truth rather than another.The view of number words that emerges above from the criticism of Frege's arguments is that sentences containing number words can and do say something about objects in a collective and syncategorematic way. That is, they say something about classes of objects, when it is clear what is to count as an object. Whether this view commits us to accepting certain ontological entities, classes of individuals, above and beyond individuals themselves, I am not prepared to say, and at any rate this question falls beyond the intended scope of this essay. To those who would eschew abstract entities, however, it may be noted that the ontological problems that arise are not peculiar to this view; they seem no more or less severe than those that arise in connection with other collective predicate statements, as, for example, Blue whales are becoming extinct.The view presented here also does not pretend to be a fatal criticism of the logicist program. Taking our cue from the above noted fact that syncategorematic predicates share in a common partial abstract sense, it seems reasonable to say that it is just the set of such partial senses of number words, and the relationships that hold between such senses, that the logicist and the pure number theorist investigate.     

Are verbal transformations sensitive to age differences and stimulus properties?

Verbal transformations are illusory changes that arise from listening to a spoken word repeated over and over for a prolonged period of time. Past research has yielded some evidence of age differences in participants' reports of verbal transformations. The goal of the present study was to examine reports of illusory percepts in young and older adults to determine whether participant characteristics (i.e., age, cognitive integrity, hearing acuity, vocabulary knowledge, and mood) and differences in sensitivity to properties of the stimulus material could account for age-related declines in reports of illusory changes. We observed age-related declines in new forms (illusory percepts) but merely a trend in the same direction for transitions (changes from the veridical sensory experience to illusory percepts and reversals to either the veridical sensory experience or other percepts). There was no evidence that participant characteristics other than age accounted for reports of illusory changes. However, we found age differences in participants' sensitivity to properties of the stimulus material: Young adults but not older adults were sensitive to the frequency of the veridical percepts. In contrast, both age groups were sensitive to the size of the neighborhood of similar-sounding words. These findings are discussed regarding the transmission deficit hypothesis (MacKay & Burke, 1990).     

Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong (e.g. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists.     

Can Evaluativism about unpleasant pains meet the normative condition?

This paper assesses whether Evaluativism, as a view about the nature of unpleasant pains, can meet a specific normative condition. The normative condition says whatever candidate state is offered as an analysis of unpleasant pain should be intrinsically phenomenally bad for its subject to be in. I first articulate a method reflecting this condition, called the normative contrast method, and then frame Evaluativism in detail. The view is then tested through this method. I show that Evaluativism can explain why cases of evaluative thought, with the same contents as unpleasant pains, are not intrinsically phenomenally bad for their subjects to be in by appeal to intentional modes. However, I argue the appeal to perceptuality, which is central to this response is problematic, and therefore it remains unclear whether Evaluativism, as standardly articulated, can meet the normative condition on unpleasant pains.     

Is believing for a normative reason a composite condition?

Here is a surprisingly neglected question in contemporary epistemology: what is it for an agent to believe that p in response to a normative reason for them to believe that p? On one style of answer, believing for the normative reason that q factors into believing that p in the light of the apparent reason that q, where one can be in that kind of state even if q is false, in conjunction with further independent conditions such as q’s being a normative reason to believe that p. The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate that that style of answer cannot be right, because we must conceive of believing for a normative reason as constitutively involving a kind of rationality-involving relation that can be instantiated at all only if there is a known fact on the scene, which the agent treats as a normative reason. A secondary objective, achieved along the way, is to demonstrate that in their Prime Time (for the Basing Relation) Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan do not succeed in undermining the factoring picture in general, only a simple-minded version of it.

     

Are Dispositions Reducible?

The traditional analysis of dispositions as conditionals is subject to in-superable difficulties. Recently David Lewis has offered a new, reformed analysis intended to meet objections to the old accounts while remaining reductionist about causal powers. I argue that it succeeds in meeting only some of the objections to its predecessors. For the reductionist programme to succeed, more is needed than the correct analysis of dispositions. If dispositional properties are to be reduced, then the world must contain a reduction base. Prima facie this is not the case: the dispositions of medium-sized objects are only reducible to dispositional properties of the structural parts of the objects. The physically ultimate constituents of matter, sub-atomic particles, are simple, and have no properties that could serve as the grounding of their dispositions. Reductionists make three major responses to this argument, which I evaluate. I conclude that the world does not contain anything to which dispositions could be reduced.     

Are creationists rational?

Creationism is usually regarded as an irrational set of beliefs. In this paper I propose that the best way to understand why individual learners settle on any mature set of beliefs is to see that as the developmental outcome of a series of “fast and frugal” boundedly rational inferences rather than as a rejection of reason. This applies to those whose views are opposed to science in general. A bounded rationality model of belief choices both serves to explain the fact that folk traditions tend to converge on “anti-modernity”, and to act as a default hypothesis, deviations from which we can use to identify other, arational, influences such as social psychological, economic and individual dispositions. I propose some educational and public policy strategies that might decrease the proportion of learners who find creationism and anti-science in general a rational choice.     

Are models necessary?

Modelling is currently one of the most successful and popular ways of dealing with some neurotic problems. It is based on a social learning theory that amongst other virtues takes into account cognitive variables. helps shed light on the aetiology of some neurotic disorders (Rachman. 1972). and seems particularly relevant to the understanding of much child behaviour.The technique of the modelling treatment has been refined over the years, largely through the work of Bandura, and the contention to date has been that behavioural improvement is brought about by vicarious processes (Bandura, 1969). However, since a modelling procedure by necessity involves exposure to a phobic object it is possible that vicarious processes are in fact redundant and that improvement is affected by ‘straightforward’ extinction processes. In short the contention is that interaction with a model disguises the fact that the modelling situation is no more than a modified flooding session. In one of the few studies to test this hypothesis Bandura, Grusec and Menlove (1967) found that exposure alone resulted in some gains for dog-phobic children, but that these changes were neither as great nor as stable as those achieved by similar children in a modelling treatment. Other indirect evidence for this hypothesis can be found by-relating the amount of exposure to the phobic object to outcome in modelling studies. Despite obvious difficulties in cross-trial comparison, rate of success for longer exposure treatments would constitute some support, albeit very tentative, for this hypothesis. Unfortunately, few of the studies contained enough reliable information on the relevant variables to reveal much. Bandura et al. (1967) used 80 min of exposure in all, with success rates of 70%, whilst less exposure time resulted in worse outcome in studies by Spiegler et al. (1969) and Ritter (1969). However, against this, Hill et al. (1968) and Rimm and Mahoney (1969) both report good results with brief participant modelling. The fact that participant modelling seems to be more beneficial than symbolic modelling, may be regarded as some support for the exposure hypothesis, since presumably exposure in these cases is more intense.However, these studies are largely indirect and one test of the hypothesis requires a comparison between groups one of which is exposed to both phobic object and model interaction (symbolic modelling) and one of which is exposed just to the phobic object.     

What Are Quantities?

This paper presents a view of quantities as ‘adverbial’ entities of a certain kind—more specifically, determinate ways, or modes, of having length, mass, speed, and the like. In doing so, it will be argued that quantities as such should be distinguished from quantitative properties or relations, and are not universals but are particulars, although they are not (Fregean) objects, either. A main advantage of the adverbial view over its rivals will be found in its superior explanatory power with respect to both certain fundamental principles of quantity and ordinary quantitative reasoning involving quantitative relations like three times as long as and 2 metres longer than.     

Are adjustments insufficient?

Many judgmental biases are thought to be the product of insufficient adjustment from an initial anchor value. Nearly all existing evidence of insufficient adjustment, however, comes from an experimental paradigm that evidence indicates does not involve adjustment at all. In this article, the authors first provide further evidence that some kinds of anchors (those that are self-generated and known to be incorrect but close to the correct answer) activate processes of adjustment, whereas others (uncertain anchors provided by an external source) do not. It is then shown that adjustment from self-generated anchors does indeed tend to be insufficient, both by comparing the estimates of participants starting from different anchor values and by comparing estimates with actual answers. Thus, evidence is provided of adjustment-based anchoring effects similar to the accessibility-based anchoring effects observed in the traditional anchoring paradigm, supporting theories of social judgment that rely on mechanisms of insufficient adjustment.     

Are beliefs signals?

Eric Funkhouser argues that beliefs can function as social signals. I argue that Funkhouser’s argument for this conclusion rests on a problematic definition of “signal,” and that on standard definitions, the imperceptibility of beliefs disqualifies them from counting as signals. However, I also argue that Funkhouser’s insights about the social functions of beliefs can be true even if his claim that beliefs are signals is false.     

Are Fallacies Vices?

Why are some arguments fallacious? Since argumentation is an intellectual activity that can be performed better or worse, do we evaluate arguments simply in terms of their content, or does it also make sense to evaluate the arguer in light of the content put forward? From a ‘virtue’ approach, I propose understanding fallacies as having some link with intellectual vice(s). Drawing from recent work by Paul Grice, Linda Zagzebski, Andrew Aberdein, and Douglas Walton, this essay argues that if there is some sense of argumentation where an argument is (1) truth-propagating and not (2) put forward in order to ‘win’, fallacies may be the vicious element in arguments that undermines (1), most often because the arguer’s goal is only (2). From this perspective, fallacies may not only be improper ‘moves’ in an argument, but may also reveal something lacking in the arguer’s intellectual character.