Personality predicts musical sophistication

There is little research on the role of personality in musical expertise. We address this gap in the literature by using data from a large national study (N = 7870) to examine how scores on 10 facets of the Big Five dimensions of personality predicted self-reported musical sophistication and performance on two behavioral tests (melodic memory and rhythm perception). Personality predicted musical sophistication even after controlling for demographic variables and musicianship, with Openness to Aesthetics the best trait predictor. Substance use also predicted musical sophistication for various subscales and the behavioral tests. These findings replicated in both musician and non-musician subgroups.     

Understanding and philosophical methodology

According to Conceptualism, philosophy is an independent discipline that can be pursued from the armchair because philosophy seeks truths that can be discovered purely on the basis of our understanding of expressions and the concepts they express. In his recent book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, Timothy Williamson argues that while philosophy can indeed be pursued from the armchair, we should reject any form of Conceptualism. In this paper, we show that Williamson??s arguments against Conceptualism are not successful, and we sketch a way to understand understanding that shows that there is a clear sense in which we can indeed come to know the answers to (many) philosophical questions purely on the basis of understanding.     

An ethnographic study of consumer financial sophistication

Existing research profiling consumer financial sophistication has examined specific decision errors that consumers may make in financial matters. While these errors have been replicated in multiple studies over the years, most have emerged from highly controlled experimental settings or through consumer surveys that measure only specific categories of financial behavior. This paper extends existing research on financial sophistication by utilizing an ethnographic study conducted over a 5‐year time period. Results indicate that while some of the traditional categories of decision errors defined in earlier research affect consumers, decision errors not thoroughly examined in previous academic studies can have a notable and growing effect on consumers' financial decisions. Emerging categories of financial decision errors are identified, and shifts in consumers' financial behavior resulting from the financial crisis are profiled. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experimental philosophy and philosophical intuition

The topic is experimental philosophy as a naturalistic movement, and its bearing on the value of intuitions in philosophy. This paper explores first how the movement might bear on philosophy more generally, and how it might amount to something novel and promising. Then it turns to one accomplishment repeatedly claimed for it already: namely, the discrediting of armchair intuitions as used in philosophy.

Metaphysics and the philosophical imagination

Methods and goals in philosophy are discussed by first describing an ideal, and then looking at how the ideal might be approached. David Lewis??s work in metaphysics is critically examined and compared to analogous work by Mackie and Carnap. Some large-scale philosophical systematic work, especially in metaphysics, is best treated as model-building, in a sense of that term that draws on the philosophy of science. Models are constructed in a way that involves deliberate simplification, or other imaginative modification of reality, in order to make relationships visible or problems tractable.     

On philosophical subjects and methods

With the consideration of some issues in contemporary philosophy, this thesis attempts to analyze being, thinking and language as philosophical subjects, and clear up the multiple meanings for each of them. It will also inquire the traditional methods in both Chinese and Western philosophy, and those in contemporary thinking. Finally, it puts forward a theory of “the critique without principles”. The thesis aims to explore a new way to solve the problems of contemporary philosophy by changing its subjects and methods. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Studies), 2005 (3) by Cheng Xuemeng     

Contested terms and philosophical debates

There are two standard theoretical responses to putative errors in ordinary thinking about some given target property: eliminativism or revisionism. Roughly, eliminativism is the denial that the target property exists, and revisionism is the view that the property exists, but that people tend to have false beliefs about it. Recently, Shaun Nichols has proposed a third option: discretionism. Discretionism is the idea that some terms have multiple reference conventions, so that it may be true to say with eliminativists that the property does not exist, and true to say with revisionists (and others) that the property does exist. This article explores the viability of discretionism, and argues that it faces serious difficulties. Even if the difficulties faced by discretionism can be overcome, it is unclear that discretionism secures anything beyond what is already available to standard revisionist views. The article concludes with some reflections about Nichols’ account of the bare retributive norm.