Being and feeling liked by others: How social inclusion impacts health

This study examined the effects of perceived and actual social inclusion on health across and within individuals from a network perspective. During the first semester, 75 freshmen students provided bi-weekly ratings on their perceived social inclusion and health. To capture actual social inclusion, each student nominated liked and disliked fellow students. Perceived social inclusion mediated the effect of actual social inclusion on health. Specifically, students with more ‘likes’ perceived more social inclusion and those with higher perceived inclusion reported a better health status (between-person effect). In addition, at time points, when students received more ‘likes’ they also perceived more social inclusion. They reported better health at times when they felt more included (within-person effect). Thus, the perception of social inclusion is rooted in reality and actual social inclusion has an impact on health when passing the filter of perception.     

Nietzsche and decadence: The revaluation of morality

The creation of moralities is necessary for the enhancement of the species, yet, the assigning of values is a sign of decadence. According to Nietzsche, this is the problem of decadence with which human beings (in particular philosophers) must contend: they must place a value on life, but placing a value on life (even on one's individual life) is problematic because it involves fracturing the whole of life into pieces. The primary objective in this paper is to address Nietzsche's own battle with the problem of decadence as it applies to individuals. I will argue that in this battle, Nietzsche carried out a revaluation of decadence and transformed himself into a strong decadent. In calling himself a strong decadent, Nietzsche not only admitted to his own decadence, but also provided himself as an example for how other strong types might contend with the problem of decadence.     

Being all that you can be: the weighting of potential in assessments of self and others

An accurate assessment of an individual often requires taking their potential into account. Across six studies the authors found that people are more inclined to do so when evaluating themselves than when evaluating others, such that people credit themselves for their perceived potential more than they credit others for theirs. Participants rated potential as a more telling component of the self than of others, and the importance participants placed on their own potential led to attentional biases toward information about their own future potential that did not apply to information about the potential of others. Furthermore, when assessing themselves and other people, participants required more tangible proof that someone else has a given level of potential than they required of themselves, and they relied more on how they would ideally perform in self-assessment but more on how others actually performed in judging them.     

Behavior analysis and revaluation

Revaluation refers to phenomena in which the strength of an operant is altered by reinforcer-related manipulations that take place outside the conditioning situation in which the operant was selected. As an example, if lever pressing is acquired using food as a reinforcer and food is later paired with an aversive stimulus, the frequency of lever pressing decreases when subsequently tested. Associationist psychology infers from such findings that conditioning produces a response-outcome (i.e., reinforcer) association and that the operant decreased in strength because pairing the reinforcer with the aversive stimulus changed the value of the outcome. Here, we present an approach to the interpretation of these and related findings that employs neural network simulations grounded in the experimental analysis of behavior and neuroscience. In so doing, we address some general issues regarding the relations among behavior analysis, neuroscience, and associationism.     

Being better than others but otherwise perfectly normal: Perceptions of uniqueness and similarity in close relationships

The current research addresses individuals' self-generated thoughts regarding their own and others' relationships, examining the ways in which perceptions of uniqueness and similarity are manifested in judgments regarding own and others' responses to dissatisfying incidents. Consistent with the uniqueness bias, participants characterized their own relationships by a greater number of constructive responses and a smaller number of destructive responses relative to characterizations of others' relationships. Moreover, external raters judged own constructive responses to be more constructive than others' constructive responses. Consistent with the similarity bias, external raters judged items describing others' responses to be less frequently occurring and more extreme than their own responses. Also, this research revealed support for the claim that the similarity bias is more pronounced for destructive responses than for constructive responses. A recall task corroborated these findings, revealing very good recall for destructive responses enacted by others and poor recall for destructive responses enacted by oneself.     

Stimulus salience and retrospective revaluation

The effect of conditioning or extinguishing the more salient element of a previously reinforced compound on responding to the less salient element of that compound was assessed in rats. Experiment 1 established that the 2 elements making up an audiovisual compound differed significantly in salience. In Experiment 2A, compound conditioning was followed by either reinforcement or extinction of either the less or more salient element. On test, evidence of retrospective revaluation of the less salient element was found but not of the more salient element. In Experiment 2B, extinction of the more salient element was found to be more effective than its reinforcement in producing retrospective revaluation of the less salient element. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Nietzsche's Meta-axiology: Against the Sceptical Readings

In this paper, I treat the question of the meta-axiological standing of Nietzsche's own values, in the service of which he criticizes morality. Does Nietzsche, I ask, regard his perfectionistic valorization of human excellence and cultural flourishing over other ideals to have genuine evaluative standing, in the sense of being correct, or at least adequate to a matter-of-fact? My goal in this paper is modest, but important: it is not to attribute to Nietzsche some sophisticated meta-axiological view, because I am doubtful that he has one. It is, however, to show that Nietzsche's texts do not necessitate the sceptical meta-axiological positions that have been attributed to him in the recent secondary literature. And it is thereby to suggest that we need not give up on the idea that Nietzsche takes the values he champions to have genuine evaluative standing – not because he has some sophisticated realist theory to this effect, but in a more philosophically unreflective way.     

Paradox,truth and logic part I: Paradox and truth

Conclusion The discussion of the semantics of inconsistent truth theories now comes to a pause. The preceding is of course but a sketch; many interesting questions remain to be answered. The second part of this essay, however, will not seek to answer them. Rather, I will turn to the discussion of the proof theory of truth theory: the local and global logic of truth.Under the first heading, I show how to replace the inductive construction of models with an appropriate infinitary proof theory, and relate this on the one hand to the so-called dependence approach to inductive truth theories (Davis, 1979; Yablo, 1982) and on the other to van Fraassen's fact semantics for relevance logic.Under the second heading, I offer formals systems which capture the inferences valid in all approximate models. Not surprisingly, these turn out to be relevant logics.With formalism in hand, I discuss finally the extent to which the gap and/or glut approach can in fact be said to solve the paradoxes; that is, to allow us to say that the very language we are speaking is of the sort described in our theory.     

Nietzsche's notion of amor fati

In this paper I advance an interpretation of Nietzsche's notions of amor fati and eternal recurrence in which they are taken to delimit the project of becoming well-disposed to life and oneself. I argue that interpreted in this way these notions do not have the problematic implications which stand in the way of our adopting them and, in fact, cast light on how we may theoretically understand and practically live our lives.