IS A LITTLE (PSYCHIATRIC) KNOWLEDGE A DANGEROUS THING?

One hundred thirty-four participants completed a revised Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ), which included criteria for premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Two weeks later the participants again completed the revised MDQ after reading either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnostic criteria for the PMDD or a copy of the same criteria retitled Episodic Dysphoric Disorder, with all menstrual cycle references removed. Knowledge of the diagnosis did not affect women's perceptions of their own menstrual cycle-related symptoms, but it increased participants' perceptions of premenstrual changes as a problem for women in general. Chi-square analyses revealed that participants were more willing to attach a psychiatric diagnosis to women they know if they believed the diagnosis was related to the menstrual cycle.     

ONE TRUE LOGIC?

This is a paper about the constituents of arguments. It argues that several different kinds of truth-bearer may be taken to compose arguments, but that none of the obvious candidates—sentences, propositions, sentence/truth-value pairs etc.—make sense of logic as it is actually practiced. The paper goes on to argue that by answering the question in different ways, we can generate different logics, thus ensuring a kind of logical pluralism that is different from that of J. C. Beall and Greg Restall.     

WHEN DOES FALSEHOOD PRECLUDE KNOWLEDGE?

Falsehood can preclude knowledge in many ways. A false proposition cannot be known. A false ground can prevent knowledge of a truth, or so we argue, but not every false ground deprives its subject of knowledge. A falsehood that is not a ground for belief can also prevent knowledge of a truth. This paper provides a systematic account of just when falsehood precludes knowledge, and hence when it does not. We present the paper as an approach to the Gettier problem and arrive at a relatively simple theory with virtues linked to several issues at the heart of contemporary epistemology.     

IS MATCHING INNATE?

Experimentally naive mice matched the proportions of their temporal investments (visit durations) in two feeding hoppers to the proportions of the food income (pellets per unit session time) derived from them in three experiments that varied the coupling between the behavioral investment and food income, from no coupling to strict coupling. Matching was observed from the outset; it did not improve with training. When the numbers of pellets received were proportional to time invested, investment was unstable, swinging abruptly from sustained, almost complete investment in one hopper, to sustained, almost complete investment in the other-in the absence of appropriate local fluctuations in returns (pellets obtained per time invested). The abruptness of the swings strongly constrains possible models. We suggest that matching reflects an innate (unconditioned) program that matches the ratio of expected visit durations to the ratio between the current estimates of expected incomes. A model that processes the income stream looking for changes in the income and generates discontinuous income estimates when a change is detected is shown to account for salient features of the data.     

IS VIOLENCE NATURAL?

Abstract. The balance of obedience/aggressiveness is necessarily skewed to the left in infancy; maturation shifts it to the right. Hierarchies greatly reduce overt violence. Positional shifts in a hierarchy take place through violence or the threat of violence. Self-serving individuals tend to upset hierarchical balance. Peace is served by the acceptance of a sovereign power (like the nation), which gives justice precedence over fairness. "Justice as fairness" is a pernicious doctrine. Religion has in the past favored secular sovereignty for the sake of peace; hence the protection of religions by sovereign powers.