The trouble with overconfidence

The authors present a reconciliation of 3 distinct ways in which the research literature has defined overconfidence: (a) overestimation of one's actual performance, (b) overplacement of one's performance relative to others, and (c) excessive precision in one's beliefs. Experimental evidence shows that reversals of the first 2 (apparent underconfidence), when they occur, tend to be on different types of tasks. On difficult tasks, people overestimate their actual performances but also mistakenly believe that they are worse than others; on easy tasks, people underestimate their actual performances but mistakenly believe they are better than others. The authors offer a straightforward theory that can explain these inconsistencies. Overprecision appears to be more persistent than either of the other 2 types of overconfidence, but its presence reduces the magnitude of both overestimation and overplacement.     

The trouble with Madeleine

I respond to Selinger and Mix (Selinger, E. and Mix, J. 2004. On interactional expertise: Pragmatic and ontological considerations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 145–163), concentrating on their charges that Collins (Collins, H. M. 2004a. Interactional expertise as a third form of knowledge. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 125–143) underrates the importance of interactional expertise as an expertise sui generis and that the paper fails to analyse the idea of embodiment sufficiently holistically, misleading treating the ‘body’ as no more than the linear sum of its parts. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The real trouble with intentionality

I argue that the project of naturalizing intentionality is misconceived. Intentionality should not be considered as a challenge to our naturalistic world-view, but rather as something which gives rise to a logical problem: how to save the principle of indiscernibility of identicals from apparent counterexamples arising from intensional discourse.     

The trouble with categorial consistency

Philosophical Studies -     

A patient who had trouble with geography

Aspects of geography are important in relation to the establishment of body ego, since they inevitably supply from the external world the early symbols that represent in the mind the basic elements of infantile experience in regard to body parts, functions, and relationships with primal objects. The accretional inter-twining of all subsequent psychic conflicts can therefore be expressed in symbolic geographic terms. These conflicts center on the developmentally evolving meanings of the mother's body as epitomized in the riddle of the Sphinx. Illustration of the concepts includes a brief clinical report and selected literary and mythological examples.     

与“藏独”势力作斗争，解铃别忘系铃人

历史的和现实的事实都充分说明,“藏独”发明者和最大的推动力就是英美等西方帝国主义和霸权主义;要解决“西藏问题”,就要从这个根本因素上着眼考虑对策,才能对症下药。     

More qualia trouble for functionalism: The Smythies TV-hood analogy

It is the purpose of this article to explicate the logical implications of a television analogy for perception, first suggested by John R. Smythies (1956). It aims to show not only that one cannot escape the postulation of qualia that have an evolutionary purpose not accounted for within a strong functionalist theory, but also that it undermines other anti-representationalist arguments as well as some representationalist ones.I should like to thank John R. Smythies for his helpful comments and advice. This article was written at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, in Uppsala, Sweden.     

Self-selection of standards by children: The relative effectiveness of pupil-selected and teacher-selected standards of performance

This study examines the effects of contingent reinforcement under conditions of pupil-selected and teacher-selected performance standards upon pupils' academic response rates. The academic response rate was measured by the number of correct responses emitted per session. Thirty pupils (15 second-graders and 15 third-graders) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups, based on matched triplets. One group worked under pupil-selected standards; the second group worked under standards selected by the experimenter with each pupil yoked to a member of the pupil-selected standards groups. Both groups participated in the calculation of their daily earnings. The third group served as a no-contingency control group. Baseline academic response rates on writing and math tasks were determined. During the experimental sessions reinforcement was provided in the form of points which were later traded for tangible rewards. The pupil-selected standards group showed a significantly greater number of correct responses in the writing and math tasks than the externally selected standards group.     

The stigma of having a parent with mental illness: Genetic attributions and associative stigma

Children often report associative stigma because they are ‘contaminated’ by association with a parent who has a mental illness. An exploratory study was conducted to investigate the role of genetic attributions in the aetiology of associative stigma. The first hypothesis was that genetic attributions would predict associative stigma over and above the contribution of biochemical and stressful‐event attributions, while the second hypothesis was that the relationship between genetic attributions and associative stigma would be mediated by the perceived likelihood that children would develop the same disorder as their parents. Two‐hundred‐and‐two individuals were asked to read a hypothetical scenario describing a teenage girl whose mother had been diagnosed with either schizophrenia or depression. Both hypotheses were supported. The findings of the study have implications for a number of professions working in the community such as teachers and psychologists. Additional avenues for future research are also explored.