Does Klein’s infinitism offer a response to Agrippa’s trilemma?

The regress of reasons threatens an epistemic agent’s right to claim that any beliefs are justified. In response, Peter Klein’s infinitism argues that an infinite series of supporting reasons of the right type not only is not vicious but can make for epistemic justification. In order to resist the sceptic, infinitism needs to provide reason to think that there is at least one justified belief in the world. Under an infinitist conception this involves showing that at least one belief is supported by an infinite series of supporting reasons. This paper argues that showing this makes problems for the infinitist. The finite minds problem that prevents completion of an infinite series is well documented. This paper examines alternative attempts to provide evidence of infinity that the infinitist might take, whether by using a notion of justification without infinite reasons or by altering the notion of evidence. It concludes that both of these fail and consequently infinitism is unable to offer a solution to Agrippa’s trilemma.     

A response to Penrose’s “Sandel on enhancement: A response to Van Niekerk”

In this article the author responds to Brian Penrose’s critical response to his (Van Niekerk’s) article “Biomedical enhancement and the pursuit of mastery and perfection: a critique of the views of Michael Sandel” that appeared in the PSSA conference edition of the SAJP 33(2), 2014. While Van Niekerk is appreciative of the opportunity for spirited dialogue that Penrose’s response provides, he nevertheless takes issue with several charges Penrose raises. He responds to Penrose’s claims that Van Niekerk does not fully understand “the Sandel project” and thus that Van Niekerk creates and shoots down a straw man in his argument against Sandel. Van Niekerk argues that Penrose’s claims are indicative of significant methodological differences between their respective approaches. Penrose acknowledges the “fuzziness” of Sandel’s arguments with regards to biomedical enhancement. He then develops an interpretation of Sandel’s views that claims to have “filled in the complete picture” of what Sandel attempts to do, and then reproaches Van Niekerk for not responding to that “completed picture”, i.e. the “Sandel project”. Van Niekerk finds this to be an unreasonable and methodologically highly problematic demand on him. Van Niekerk responds to a number of Penrose’s arguments, and then concludes that while there are, of course, good reasons to exercise caution at the prospect of biomedical enhancement with regard to its risks, the possibilities offered by enhancement need not elicit a prima facie reaction of pessimism. Rather, such prospects can also be regarded in a positive light as an exciting opportunity to take our own evolution in hand.     

The latency of response in relation to Bloch’s law at threshold’

Bloch’s law failed to hold for latencies of response in a threshold experiment where frequencies ofresponse did, nevertheless, obey the law. Dark-adapted Ss were instructed to respond as soon as they detected flashes of various luminances and durations. The frequency of response increased with increases in stimulus energy (luminance times duration); it was constant when energy was constant. The latency of response, measured from stimulus onset. varied inversely with energy; it also varied inversely with the luminance of flashes that were constant in energy. The results were consistent with data from earlier threshold and simple reaction time experiments.     

A response to William Meredith-Owen’s ‘Alchemical dragons: Winnicott’s reaching towards the objective psyche’

This paper was presented as a response to Meredith-Owen’s paper at the inaugural joint conference of The Society of Analytical Psychology and the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy in autumn 2020. The author considers the constraints on the personal mother’s capacity to facilitate the integration of both the shadow and the unrepressed unconscious. Such a difficult task requires the involvement of an enabling cultural matrix mediated by socio-political systems and structures. The improvement of this cultural matrix relies on alchemical-like processes which would help understanding develop beyond one’s own point of view.     

A response to Martina and Wimmer’s review of The Given

In this paper I respond to Martina and Wimmer’s review of The Given, focusing on their criticisms of the awareness of awareness thesis.     

Naive misconceptions of Cooke and Breedin’s research: response to Ranney

In this paper, we respond to Ranney's (1994) comment on our paper on naive physics (Cooke & Breedin, 1994). In his comment, Ranney criticizes our methods and analyses, as well as our claims of theoretical inconsistency. In response to Ranney, we show that mast of his criticisms can be traced to several misconceptions. Some of these misconceptions seem to stem from his drawing of inappropriate similarities between his own research and ours. Specifically, ftanney seems to hall faun' misconceptions about our research: (1) the belief that trajectory responses in our study were relevant to our claims about theoretical consistency, (2) tie belief that aggregation of theoretical variations weakens claims of inconsistency, (3) the belief that the method of written reports is inferior to the method of structured interviews, and (4) the belief that our proposal of on-the-fly theorizing is at odds with temporal consistency and nonimpetus beliefs.     

A naturalist response to Kingma’s critique of naturalist accounts of disease

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Elselijn Kingma maintains that Christopher Boorse and other naturalists in the philosophy of medicine cannot deliver the value-free account of disease that they...     

Everlasting check or philosophical fiasco: a response to Alexander George’s interpretation of Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’

In his The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles, Alexander George claims to provide readers with a single unified interpretation of Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’ that demonstrates Hume’s actual argument is philosophically rich and far more robust than is generally thought. This response argues that George is unsuccessful, ignoring crucial passages and misinterpreting others.     

Allan Paivio’s response to Delprato’s review of Mind and its evolution: A dual-coding theoretical approach

The Psychological Record -     

Influence of following vehicle’s tailway and classification on subject driver’s response to the circular yellow indication

Traffic crashes at signalized intersections are frequently linked to driver behavior at the onset of the circular yellow (CY) indication. To better understand behavioral factors that influence a driver’s decision to stop or go at an intersection, this study analyzed the behavior of the driver of a subject vehicle at the onset of the CY indication. Driver performance data from 53 participants were collected in the Oregon State University Driving Simulator, simulating scenarios of driving through high-speed intersections under various conditions. Data included interactions where the driver stopped at the stop line (n = 644) or proceeded through the intersection (n = 628) in response to a CY indication. Data were analyzed as panel data while considering 12 indicator variables related to the driver’s stop/go decision. These indicator variables included time to stop line (TTSL), tailway time, following vehicle type, vehicle speed at the onset of the CY indication, and demographics (age, gender, driving experience, level of education, personal vehicle type, number of times driving per week, number of miles driving last year, participation in previous simulation studies. A random-parameter binary logit model was used to determine contributing factors for driver decision making at the onset of CY indication while accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. Four indicator variables were significantly related to the driver’s stop/go decision, but three factors varied across observations. Findings showed that a driver’s stop/go decision in response to a CY indication was associated with the time to the stop line (TTSL), tailway time to the following vehicle, subject vehicle speed at the onset of the CY indication, and driver’s age (20–36 years), but was not significantly associated with classification of the following vehicle. Also, the findings indicated that a shorter tailway increased a subject driver’s red-light running frequency. These findings provide insights into variables that affect driver decisions in a vehicle-following situation at the onset of the CY indication. This information can help make better decisions in smart traffic control systems such as to extend/decrease the green interval slightly to avoid decisions that are more difficult.     

Qeauty and the books: a response to Lewis’s quantum sleeping beauty problem

In his 2007 paper “Quantum Sleeping Beauty”, Peter Lewis poses a problem for the supporters’ of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics appeal to subjective probability. Lewis’s argument hinges on parallels between the traditional “sleeping beauty” problem in epistemology and a quantum variant. These two cases, Lewis argues, advocate different treatments of credences even though they share important epistemic similarities, leading to a tension between the traditional solution to the sleeping beauty problem (typically called the “thirder” solution) and Everettian quantum mechanics. In this paper I examine the metaphysical and epistemological differences between Lewis’s two cases, and, in particular, I show how diachronic Dutch book arguments support both the thirder solution in the traditional case and the Everettian’s solution in the variant case. These Dutch books, I argue, reveal an important disanalogy between Lewis’s two cases such that Lewis’s argument does not reveal an inconsistency in either the Everettian’s or the thirder’s assignment of credences.     

Anger in response to challenge: children’s emotion socialization predicts approach versus avoidance

Negative emotion is typically associated with avoidance behavior; however, recent advances in the adult literature show that unlike some emotions (sadness, shame), anger predicts both approach and avoidance. Here we propose that socialization to suppress anger will play a role in whether children who express anger respond to a performance challenge with approach or avoidance. Children (N = 79; M _age  = 11.4 years) reported perceptions of parental use of positive conditional regard (PCR) to socialize anger suppression and worked on four unsolvable puzzles. We measured change in verbalized puzzle-solving strategies during failure, and coded emotion expression on the final puzzle. We examined whether negative emotion type (shame/sadness vs. anger) and PCR for anger predicted change in strategy use, and whether the association between level of PCR for anger and approach-avoidance (change in strategy use) depended on type of negative emotion expressed. Neither emotion expression nor level of PCR anger predicted strategy use; however, type of negative emotion moderated the association between PCR anger and change in strategy use, controlling for NCR anger. For children who displayed anger, low PCR was associated with increased strategy use, and high PCR was associated with decreased strategy use. We discuss the role of emotion socialization in shaping approach and avoidance motivation.     

Classical conditioning of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response to a piezoceramic vibrotactile CS

The present paper reports the development of a transducer system for delivery of a noiseless vibrotactile stimulus that was successfully employed as a conditioned stimulus in classical conditioning of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response (NMR). In addition, the postasymptotic determination of the relationship between the amplitude and frequency of vibrotactile stimulation and the frequency of conditioned NMRs were found to be monotonically increasing functions. Accordingly, the vibrotactile transducer appears to provide a tractable CS that can be used by itself or in conjunction with visual and auditory stimuli to study a range of issues in animal learning.     

Wittgenstein’s challenge to enactivism

Many authors have identified a link between later Wittgenstein and enactivism. But few have also recognised how Wittgenstein may in fact challenge enactivist approaches. In this paper, I consider one such challenge. For example, Wittgenstein is well known for his discussion of seeing-as, most famously through his use of Jastrow’s ambiguous duck-rabbit picture. Seen one way, the picture looks like a duck. Seen another way, the picture looks like a rabbit. Drawing on some of Wittgenstein’s remarks about seeing-as, I show how Wittgenstein poses a challenge for proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, like O’Regan and Noë, namely to provide a sensorimotor framework within which seeing-as can be explained. I claim that if these proponents want to address this challenge, then they should endorse what I call Sensorimotor Identification, according to which visual experiences can be identified with what agents do.