ETERNAL TRUTHS AND CARTESIAN CIRCULARITY

Bennett has said that ‘Voluntarism casts no useful light on those aspects of the Meditations that have received the most attention: the truth rule, divine veracity, the relation between those, the Cartesian Circle’.¹ In this paper, I shall draw together various strands from recent Descartes scholarship to argue that this is entirely false. When Descartes's voluntarism is understood as central to his epistemological project, not only does it allow us to make more sense of what he says on all these issues, but also it allows us to see what he says as, on certain assumptions, unassailable. The only difficulty that then remains is that these assumptions are widely held to be necessarily false.     

DESCARTES AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ETERNAL TRUTHS

Descartes's view that the eternal truths of mathematics and logic have been established by God and depend on his will does not merely commit him (as some commentators have suggested) to denying that such truths are necessarily necessary; it abolishes their necessity altogether. For similar reasons, some contemporary views also unwittingly abolish necessity.     

TOWARD AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF CERTAIN SUBSTANTIVE A PRIORI TRUTHS

Abstract: This article explains and motivates an account of one way in which we might have substantive a priori knowledge in one important class of domains: domains in which the central concepts are response-dependent. The central example will be our knowledge of the connection between something's being harmful and the fact that it is irrational for us to fail to be averse to that thing. The idea is that although the relevant responses (basic aversion in the case of harm, and a kind of interpretive failure in the case of irrationality) are produced by independent psychological mechanisms, they have distal causes that turn out to be related in ways that—once language enters the picture—yield epistemically accessible necessary connections between the referents of their corresponding terms.     

ON THE BUDDHIST TRUTHS AND THE PARADOXES IN POPULATION ETHICS

Starting point The starting point of this paper is the following citation concerning the state of contemporary population ethics:

Most discussion in population ethics has concentrated on how to evaluate populations in regard to their goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations ‘is better than’ and ‘is as good as’. This field has been riddled with paradoxes which purport to show that our considered beliefs are inconsistent in cases where the number of people and their welfare varies. (Arrhenius 2004, 201)

Type of problem The best known and most discussed example shattering our intuitions is Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox. This paper explores the potential of the Buddhist Truths to answer the following questions: What is at the source of the Mere Addition Paradox? and Why are paradoxes unavoidable in population ethics?

Results The comparison of classical utilitarian and Buddhist intuitions demonstrates the close tie between intuitions and interests. The perplexing Buddhist intuition about non-existence can be explained (except for metaphysical reasons) by a radically different priority given to survival. The method of measuring the quality of life is not decisive for the existence of paradoxes; the Buddhist axiology changes but does not remove counter-intuitive combinations. If the conflict of interest (quantity versus quality) is described within a two-parameter model, it causes conflicting intuitions; in axiologies that favour quantity (utilitarianism) or quality (perfectionism), the conflicting intuitions inevitably lead to paradoxes. In order to find a compromise, one would have to find a universal interest and a corresponding universal intuition; the obvious candidate to meet this request is sympathy but, since there is no universal consensus on the desirable degree of sympathy, the normative force of such an approach is limited. Breaking out of the two-parameter model and accepting the incommensurability of certain qualities threatens the normative claim of population ethics.     

SIGNALING STATIC: ARTISTIC,RELIGIOUS, AND SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS IN A RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY

Abstract. In this essay I point toward the difficulties inherent in ontological objectivity and seek to restore our truth claims to validity through a relational ontology and the dynamic of coimplication in signals and noise. Theological examination of art and science points toward similarities between art, religion, and science. All three have often focused upon a “metaphysics of presence,” the desire for absolute presence of the object (the signified, the divine, the natural object). If we accept a relational ontology, however, we must accept that the revelation of presence is always simultaneously a concealment. This helps explain technoscientific achievement without recourse to a philosophically flawed objectivity. Twentieth‐century information theory shows the impossibility of a “pure signal.” By accepting that signal and noise are permanently interconnected, we begin to see how noise makes signal possible and even how noise becomes signal (allowing the discovery of novel facts). Information theory thus underscores important similarities and leads toward new approaches in aesthetics, Christian theology, and scientific research. By comparing art, religion, and science, I argue that rejecting a metaphysics of presence without rejecting presence itself allows human beings to know the world. Although religion, science, and art often seek the absolute presence of their objects, they function better without.     

ON THE WHAT‐IT‐IS‐LIKE‐NESS OF EXPERIENCE

It is common for philosophers to hold that experience can be characterized in a basic way as being something it is like for someone to undergo. In the paper it is argued that when this slogan is examined it is in some respects trivial and in others mistaken. It is concluded that the slogan should be abandoned.     

Two‐year‐olds’ understanding of self‐symbols

This study investigated 48 2.5‐year‐olds’ ability to map from their own body to a two‐dimensional self‐representation and also examined relations between parents’ talk about body representations and their children's understanding of self‐symbols. Children participated in two dual‐representation tasks in which they were asked to match body parts between a symbol and its referent. In one task, they used a self‐symbol and in the other they used a symbol for a doll. Participants were also read a book about body parts by a parent. As a group, children found the self‐symbol task more difficult than the doll‐task; however, those whose parents explicitly pointed out the relation between their children's bodies and the symbols in the book performed better on the self‐symbol task. The findings demonstrate that 2‐year‐old children have difficulty comprehending a self‐symbol, even when it is two‐dimensional and approximately the same size as them, and suggest that parents’ talk about self‐symbols may facilitate their understanding.     

Speech‐perception‐in‐noise deficits in dyslexia

Speech perception deficits in developmental dyslexia were investigated in quiet and various noise conditions. Dyslexics exhibited clear speech perception deficits in noise but not in silence. Place‐of‐articulation was more affected than voicing or manner‐of‐articulation. Speech‐perception‐in‐noise deficits persisted when performance of dyslexics was compared to that of much younger children matched on reading age, underscoring the fundamental nature of speech‐perception‐in‐noise deficits. The deficits were not due to poor spectral or temporal resolution because dyslexics exhibited normal ‘masking release’ effects (i.e. better performance in fluctuating than in stationary noise). Moreover, speech‐perception‐in‐noise predicted significant unique variance in reading even after controlling for low‐level auditory, attentional, speech output, short‐term memory and phonological awareness processes. Finally, the presence of external noise did not seem to be a necessary condition for speech perception deficits to occur because similar deficits were obtained when speech was degraded by eliminating temporal fine‐structure cues without using external noise. In conclusion, the core deficit of dyslexics seems to be a lack of speech robustness in the presence of external or internal noise.     

GTIDHNIHS: I knew‐it‐all‐along

Individuals who do insight problems are highly susceptible to hindsight bias. Two sets of studies assessed the impact of hindsight consequences on participants' judgements about anagram difficulty and specific factors for performance. In the first set, hindsight participants underestimated anagram difficulty relative to participants with task experience (worksight). Also, supportive evidence revealed that hindsight consequences were related to self‐perceptions of confidence, ability, performance satisfaction, and subsequent performance expectations. In the second, two different hindsight techniques differentially impacted the participant's assessment of anagram difficulty. When comparing hindsight participants with and without worksight experience, the latter judged the anagrams to be easier. It is appropriate to examine further the cognitive and motivational consequences of hindsight bias in achievement situations. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time‐of‐day variation of visuo‐spatial attention

Time‐of‐day variation of visuo‐spatial attention in relation to body temperature and subjective arousal was assessed. At five different times of day, alertness, covert, and overt orienting of attention were assessed in fifteen healthy subjects. Based on previous studies reporting a tight coupling of alerting and orienting the present study investigates potential attentional asymmetries induced by diurnal variations of arousal. Both covert and overt orienting of attention improved in the course of the day. However, no asymmetries between left and right visual hemifields could be detected. Covert orienting additionally covaried with body temperature, indicating a quite close relation between the attentional arousal and orienting system. Conversely, overt orienting only improved due to repeated testing but did not correlate with body temperature suggesting a partial independence of both modes of attentional orienting. It can be assumed that due to limited diurnal variations of arousal in the participants and practice effects caused by repeated testing, no attentional asymmetries could be provoked.     

Goal‐Proximity Decision‐Making

Reinforcement learning (RL) models of decision‐making cannot account for human decisions in the absence of prior reward or punishment. We propose a mechanism for choosing among available options based on goal‐option association strengths, where association strengths between objects represent previously experienced object proximity. The proposed mechanism, Goal‐Proximity Decision‐making (GPD), is implemented within the ACT‐R cognitive framework. GPD is found to be more efficient than RL in three maze‐navigation simulations. GPD advantages over RL seem to grow as task difficulty is increased. An experiment is presented where participants are asked to make choices in the absence of prior reward. GPD captures human performance in this experiment better than RL.     

Fourteen‐month‐old infants learn similar‐sounding words

Can infants, in the very first stages of word learning, use their perceptual sensitivity to the phonetics of speech while learning words? Research to date suggests that infants of 14 months cannot learn two similar‐sounding words unless there is substantial contextual support. The current experiment advances our understanding of this failure by testing whether the source of infants’ difficulty lies in the learning or testing phase. Infants were taught to associate two similar‐sounding words with two different objects, and tested using a visual choice method rather than the standard Switch task. The results reveal that 14‐month‐olds are capable of learning and mapping two similar‐sounding labels; they can apply phonetic detail in new words. The findings are discussed in relation to infants’ concurrent failure, and the developmental transition to success, in the Switch task.     

NEO‐MEINONGIAN NEO‐RUSSELLIANS

Neo‐Russellianism, which incorporates both Millianism (with regard to proper names) and the thesis of singular Russellian propositions, has widely been defended after the publication of Kripke's Naming and Necessity. The view, however, encounters various problems regarding empty names, names that do not have semantic referents. Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames have defended neo‐Russellianism against such problems in a novel way; to account for various intuitions of competent and rational speakers regarding utterances of sentences containing empty names, Salmon and Soames appeal neither to entities similar to Fregean senses, e.g. propositional guises or modes of presentation, nor to Gricean implicatures. In this paper, however, I argue that their view slips into neo‐Meinongianism; it is committed to nonexistent objects, assigns various properties to them, and allows quantifiers range over such entities. This, I conclude, makes Salmon and Soames' view less appealing, if not implausible.