Anderson and Belnap’s Invitation to Sin

Quine has argued that modal logic began with the sin of confusing use and mention. Anderson and Belnap, on the other hand, have offered us a way out through a strategy of nominalization. This paper reviews the history of Lewis’s early work in modal logic, and then proves some results about the system in which “A is necessary” is intepreted as “A is a classical tautology.”     

How Gendered Attitudes Relate to Women’s and Men’s Sexual Behaviors and Beliefs

This study examines associations between endorsement of a sexual double standard, gender role attitudes, and sexual behaviors and beliefs. First year university students in the northeastern United States (N = 434; 52 % female; 33 % Black, 29 % Latino, 39 % White; ages 17–19) participated during their first year of college. Endorsement of a sexual double standard was associated with more conventionally gender-stereotyped sexual behaviors and beliefs, specifically, more sexual partners and fewer perceived barriers to condom use for young men, and more perceived barriers to condom use for young women. Women who were more conventional about men’s roles in society tended to use condoms less, whereas women who were more conventional about women’s roles tended to use condoms more. Men who were more conventional about men’s roles tended to have fewer sexual partners. Findings suggest the importance of examining gender’s role in sexual behaviors and beliefs by assessing multiple gendered attitudes, rather than simply considering biological sex.     

Reply to Kurth,Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions,Values, and Agency

In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions are a kind of perceptual experience which can confer epistemic justification of our evaluative beliefs. Finally, I suggest that the perceptual theory is in a position to nicely capture what happens when we disagree about evaluative issues.     

Role as Norm,Role and Norm: Homer’s Hero,Hesiod’s Just City,and Plato’s Kallipolis

Role as Norm, Role and Norm: Homer’s Hero, Hesiod’s Just City, and Plato’s Kallipolis     

Patients’ Initial Doubts, Reservations and Objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their Application

This exploratory research set out to develop an initial framework and categorization scheme for understanding patients’ initial doubts, reservations and objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their application. 60 patients were asked to write down their doubts following a pre-therapy “Introduction to REBT” session. Subsequently, an emergent content analysis was carried out to identify main themes. The content analysis revealed five general categories, of which the two largest ones concerned theoretical doubts about the ABC model, and doubts about putting the ABC model into practice. Further sub-categorization revealed a variety of concerns that related to these categories. For example, a large proportion of doubts about putting the ABC model into practice were sub-categorized as concerning the perceived difficulty of doing so. In turn, this sub-category contained further sub-categories of difficulty-related beliefs.

Using Egalitarian Items to Measure Men’s and Women’s Family Roles

This study was designed to show that measuring gender ideology by egalitarian items might be problematic, as gender egalitarianism is not simply the reverse of gender traditionalism and includes very different stances. Egalitarian items are likely to lead to an insufficient discrimination between traditional and non-traditional respondents. While the former often ignore the egalitarian stance, the latter hold different egalitarian positions which prevents agreement with any specific item. Empirical evidence is reported from quantitative and qualitative data: an international survey based on random samples (n?=?5.692) and a cognitive study, which was conducted in Germany by both internet (n?=?889) and telephone (n?=?285). Here, the selection of a response category was analyzed by using probing questions.     

Child age, parent and child gender, and domain differences in parents’ attributions and responses to children’s outcomes

The influence of children’s age, and parents’ and children’s gender on parents’ attributions and emotional and behavioral responses to their children’s successful and unsuccessful social and academic outcomes, was investigated. Seventy-six dual-parent families (mothers and fathers) of fifth (n=28), eighth (n=23), and eleventh grade (n=25) children participated. The results of this study suggest that from fifth grade on, at least, the ways parents explain the causes of and respond to their children’s social behavior and academic outcomes involves a complex interaction of children’s age, children’s gender, parents’ gender, domain, and outcome. Results are discussed in terms of children’s socialization. This paper is based in part on a master’s thesis at Clark University by the first author. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Providence, RI, April 1994. The authors would like to thank the parents, teachers, and school administrators of Holden and Auburn, Massachusetts, who participated in this project. We would also like to thank Kristen Rotis and Leslie Edwards for their tireless help in revising and preparing the questionnaires, and for entering data for this project.     

The Relation of Exposure to Parental Criminal Activity,Arrest, and Sentencing to Children’s Maladjustment

We examined the psychosocial maladjustment of 32 children with an incarcerated parent from the child’s perspective as well as from the perspective of their caregiver. We focused on the relation between the incarcerated parent’s report of children’s exposure to parental criminal activity, arrest, and sentencing and caregivers’ and children’s self-reports of maladjustment. Results indicate that witnessing these events is associated with more behavior problems according to caregivers’ and children’s self-reports. Moreover, incarcerated parents’ reports of children’s exposure to these events predicted caregivers’ and children’s reports of maladjustment over a 6 month period. Our results also suggest that children with incarcerated mothers, in comparison to children with incarcerated fathers, are exposed to more of these events and may be experiencing greater maladjustment. Implications of these findings are discussed within a proactive context and the use of procedures that take children’s reactions to witnessing parental arrest and sentencing into consideration.     

Kant’s,Hegel’s and Cousin’s Perceptions of China and Non-European Cultures: Racialism,Historicism and Universalism,and the Methodology of Comparative Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to discuss some assumptions of comparative philosophy by providing a critical analysis of Hegel’s perception of China and other non-European cultures in relation to Kant’s anthropological works. The main assumption of comparative philosophy is that the temporal-cognitive distance between Plato and Diderot is irrelevant compared to the geographic-cultural distance between Plato and Confucius or Diderot and Dai Zhen. This paper will demonstrate that this culturalist assumption is also a legacy of Hegel’s history of philosophy, whose anthropological basis and historicist framework needs to be deconstructed. Finally, this paper will make reference to Victor Cousin, the French philosopher who introduced German philosophy in France, to show how this thinker’s adaptation of Hegel’s history of philosophy allows us to propose a more inclusive conception of the value of non-European cultures’ intellectual productions and to elaborate, on this basis, a radically non-culturalist framework for comparative philosophy.     

The contribution of temperament,popularity, and physical appearance to children’s happiness

The relation between the happiness of 9–12 year old children and their temperament, popularity, and physical appearance was examined. Participants included 432 children and their parents and teachers. Happiness in children was assessed using a self-rating scale, parents’ ratings, teachers’ ratings, and the Happiness and Satisfaction Subscale of the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale 2 (Piers-Harris 2) [Piers, E. V., & Herzberg, D. S. (2002). Manual for the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services]. Estimates of children’s temperament, popularity, and physical appearance included parents’ ratings, individual items on the Piers-Harris 2, and three domain scales from the Piers-Harris 2: the Freedom From Anxiety Subscale, Popularity Subscale, and Physical Appearance and Attributes Subscale. Children’s happiness was correlated with and predicted by ratings of their temperament, popularity, and appearance. Demographic variables did not account for appreciable variance in children’s happiness. The results parallel the common finding that internal factors (e.g., personality), but not external factors (e.g., demographics), predict adults’ happiness.     

Richard Lynn’s contributions to personality and intelligence

An evaluation is presented of Lynn’s work on national differences in personality, race differences in intelligence, national IQs & economic development, correlates of national IQs, the Flynn effect, sex differences, eugenics and dysgenics, race differences in psychopathic personality, and intelligence of the Jews.     

Brightnesses,luminances, and Fechner’s paradox

Monocular brightnesses were varied, without varying monocular luminances, both by means of simultaneous contrast and by means of changes in the level of adaptation. Binocular brightness was shown to change in accord with monocular brightness, independent of monocular luminances.     

Debunking,supervenience, and Hume’s Principle

ABSTRACT

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same.     

Relationships Between Men’s and Women’s Body Image and Their Psychological, Social, and Sexual Functioning

This study was designed to examine the relationships between different aspects of body image and psychological, social, and sexual functioning throughout adulthood. The respondents were 211 men and 226 women (age range 18–86 years; mean = 42.26). Respondents completed measures of self-rated attractiveness, body satisfaction, body image importance, body image behaviors, appearance comparison, social physique anxiety, self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and social and sexual functioning. Body image was associated with self-esteem for all groups, but was unrelated to other aspects of psychological, social, and sexual functioning. There were some exceptions; a disturbance in body image was related to problematic social and sexual functioning among middle-aged men and to depression and anxiety symptoms in late adulthood among men and women. Middle-aged men who presented with the type of body image disturbance typical of women were more likely to have impaired interpersonal functioning. These results demonstrate that social aspects of body image appear to be important in understanding psychological functioning in later life.     

Courage,cowardice, and Maher’s misstep

Could a Nazi soldier or terrorist be courageous? The Courage Problem asks us to answer this sort of question, and then to explain why people are reluctant to give this answer. The present paper sheds new light on the Courage Problem by examining a controversy sparked by Bill Maher, who claimed that the 9/11 terrorists’ acts were ‘not cowardly.’ It is shown that Maher’s controversy is fundamentally related to the Courage Problem. Then, a unified solution to both problems is provided. This solution entails that gutsy people who lack good ends are not courageous.     

Home to men’s business and bosoms: philosophy and rhetoric in Francis Bacon’s Essayes

This article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as Baconian contributions to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct.     

Anorexia Nervosa and the Analyst’s Paternal Function: Response to Schoen,Zerbe, and Boulware

To expand upon the commentaries by Schoen, Zerbe, and Boulware (this issue), I clarify my thinking about the entropic body as a defensive structure. I then introduce my own theorizing about the relationship between agency and anorexia nervosa. In agreement with Schoen that these patients relegate their agency to the somatic realm, I highlight the aggressivity of that agency. Amplifying Zerbe’s recognition of the patient’s “father hunger,” I point out the importance of the paternal presence in helping these patients to modulate their aggression and, in the process, develop their agency.