Can infants attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action?

The present research investigated whether 13.5-month-old infants would attribute to an actor a disposition to perform a recurring action, and would then use this information to predict which of two new objects-one that could be used to perform the action and one that could not-the actor would grasp next. During familiarization, the infants watched an actor slide various objects forward and backward on an apparatus floor. During test, the infants saw two new identical objects placed side by side: one stood inside a short frame that left little room for sliding; the other stood inside a longer frame that left ample room for sliding. The infants who saw the actor grasp the object inside the short frame looked reliably longer than those who saw the actor grasp the object inside the long frame. This and control results from a lifting condition provide evidence that by 13.5 months, infants can attribute to an actor a disposition to perform a particular action.     

Angels: a bridge to a spiritual pedagogy?

This article is the result of an Early Childhood Care and Education undergraduate pilot project through a university on the West Coast of Canada. It weaves together poststructural interpretations and a hermeneutic phenomenological recounting of an experience of inquiring about angels with young children. The angel inquiry became a point of entry into a holistic spiritual pedagogy that attends to the whole of a matter, while also paying attention to the significance of each part. Contributing to the interpretations made in this study is Ted Aoki’s philosophy of the space between where the planned curriculum and the lived curriculum (or lived experiences) meet in a third and overlapping tensional space; Max van Manen’s emphasis on lived experiences as ‘breathing meaning’ also contribute to the choices and interpretations made. Blended through the study are the understandings of Tobin Hart and Kate Adams from their investigations of children’s lived experiences with mystical unseen worlds. The area of invisible mystery proves to be more delicate to negotiate than the world of physical embodiments and the world of complete fantasy of the mind; this is the area of the spiritual – the meeting of body and mind with a third and overlapping space. This space goes by many names and many definitions, but ultimately remains indefinable and intangible. But during the pilot project, meaning did come through the inquiring and through the themes that emerged of ‘who we are’ in relation to angels; race, gender and the role of nurturer; and familial angel ownership. Children yearn for allowing spaces to safely express these ideas about, and experiences with, mystery worlds. It is the connection with the inner life through small moments and engagements with the big life questions that the entangling of the physical, the mental and the spiritual creates the intuitive, integrated heart space of a holistic spiritual pedagogy.     

When is a mental health professional competent to assess a person's decision to hasten death?

As the country continues to debate the legality of aid-in-dying, it appears inevitable that at some point there will be a need for mental health professionals to be involved in assessments of individuals asking for a hastened death. I designed this article to provide a set of guidelines that will allow both mental health professionals and potential consultees to determine if a professional has the training and expertise necessary to be a competent consultant.     

Is Explanatoriness a Guide to Confirmation? A Reply to Climenhaga

We (2013, 2014) argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr(H | O & E) = Pr(H | O). We defended this screening-off thesis (SOT) by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga (Philos Sci, forthcoming) argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called “SOT*”, and contends that it too gives the wrong result. We here reply to Climenhaga’s arguments and suggest that SOT provides a criticism of the widely held theory of inference called “inference to the best explanation”.     

Is a Stage Model a Useful Approach to Explain Car Drivers' Willingness to Use Public Transportation?

The paper empirically evaluates the utility of a stage approach in describing car drivers' decisions to change to public transportation. Data from 2 samples are used to test whether 5 subgroups assumed to represent an ordered sequence of decision stages derived from an extended version of the model of action phases ( Gollwitzer, 1996 ) is clearer than the changed one. Contrary to expectations, cluster analysis indicates that a 4-cluster solution is most adequate. Whereas the profiles of 3 clusters fit the expected features of the precontemplation, contemplation, and maintenance stages, the existence of separated preparation and action stages was not confirmed. Evidence was also mixed for the assumption that the assignment to the decision stages can be predicted by specific motivational variables.     

How to Lewis a Kripke–Hintikka

It has been argued that a combination of game-theoretic semantics and independence-friendly (IF) languages can provide a novel approach to the conceptual foundations of mathematics and the sciences. I introduce and motivate an IF first-order modal language endowed with a game-theoretic semantics of perfect information. The resulting interpretive independence-friendly logic (IIF) allows to formulate some basic model-theoretic notions that are inexpressible in the ordinary quantified modal logic. Moreover, I argue that some key concepts of Kripke’s new theory of reference are adequately modeled within IIF. Finally, I compare the logic IIF to David Lewis counterpart theory, drawing some morals concerning the interrelation between metaphysical and semantic issues in possible-world semantics.     

Replies to Comesaña and Yablo

There are few indulgences academics can crave more than to have their work considered and addressed by leading researchers in their field. We have been fortunate to have two outstanding philosophers from whose work we have learned a great deal give ours their thoughtful attention. Grappling with Stephen Yablo’s, and Juan Comesaña’s comments and criticisms has helped us gain a better understanding of our ideas as well as their shortcomings. We are extremely grateful to them for the attentiveness and seriousness with which they have considered our arguments and to philosophical studies for giving us this opportunity. Given the substantive difference between the two response papers, there is not much beyond sincere gratitude that we can covey to them jointly. We will therefore address them in turn.     

Who wants to be a psychologist?

Every significant piece of public policy, every important generalization in history, economics, political science, and sociology depends on (largely unevaluated) assumptions about human nature. Personality psychology concerns the nature of human nature; it is, therefore, concerned with one of the most powerful and dangerous forces on earth. Developing adequate methods for conceptualizing human nature and forecasting significant components of social behavior-for example, integrity, creativity, leadership-would seem to be a matter of real urgency. Nonetheless, personality psychology has a minor and marginal status in academic psychology. I have spent my career trying to understand the origins of human behavior, trying to develop measurement models for capturing key elements of social performance, and trying to defend the study of personality against the complaints of a seemingly endless supply of academic critics.     

What is a reason to act?

Argues for a conception of reasons as premises of practical reasoning. This conception is applied to questions about ignorance, advice, enabling conditions, “ought,” and evidence.     

Does a rat release a soaked conspecific due to empathy?

In Experiment 1, rats choosing in an E maze preferred to release a rat standing in a pool of water to dry ground over a rat already standing on dry ground. Five additional experiments showed that the choosing rat’s preference for releasing the wet rat was maintained by two separable outcomes: (1) the social contact offered by the released rat and (2) the reinforcing value of proximity to a pool of water. These results call into question Sato et al.’s (Anim Cogn 18:1039–1047, 2015) claim to have demonstrated that a rat’s releasing of a wet rat to dry ground is empathically motivated.     

How to Husserl a Quine — And a Heidegger,too

Is consciousness or the subject part of the natural world or the human world? Can we write intentionality, so central in Husserl's philosophy, into Quine's system of ontological naturalism and naturalized epistemology — or into Heidegger's account of human being and existential phenomenology? The present task is to show how to do so. Anomalous monism provides a key.     

Why a feminist approach to bioethics?

Many have asked how and why feminist theory makes a distinctive contribution to bioethics. In this essay, I outline two ways in which feminist reflection can enrich bioethical studies. First, feminist theory may expose certain themes of androcentric reasoning that can affect, in sometimes crude but often subtle ways, the substantive analysis of topics in bioethics; second, it can unearth the gendered nature of certain basic philosohical concepts that form the working tools of ethical theory.     

What to do with a forecast?

In the literature one finds two non-equivalent responses to forecasts; deference and updating. Herein it is demonstrated that, under certain conditions, both responses are entirely determined by one’s beliefs as regards the calibration of the forecaster. Further it is argued that the choice as to whether to defer to, or update on, a forecast is determined by the aim of the recipient of that forecast. If the aim of the recipient is to match their credence with the prevailing objective chances, they should defer to the forecast; if it is to maximize the veritistic value of their beliefs, they should update on the forecast.     

Beyond Recovery? a Reply to Tennant

In his paper ‘Changing the Theory of Theory Change: Reply to My Critics’, N. Tennant (1997b) reacts to the critical reception of an earlier article of his. The present note rectifies some of the most serious misrepresentations in Tennant's reply. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The motivation to breastfeed: a fit to the opponent-process theory?

The opponent-process theory, a dynamic model of acquired motivation presented by Solomon and Corbit (1974), was applied to the process of breastfeeding. A modified form of the Nowlis Mood Adjective Checklist (MACL, Nowlis, 1965, 1970) and a discomfort measure were used in assessing through recall the affective course predicted by the theory. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and correlational procedures. Results were highly significant: Women who breastfed for relatively long periods recalled positive affective responses while the baby was at breast and a subsequent negative or dysphoric response. The additional characteristics of acquired motivation, habituation, and withdrawal, were also evidenced in the data. As a control for possible confounding demand characteristics inherent in the methodology, a sample of childless women was surveyed using an "as-if" form of the same questionnaire. Very little similarity to the breastfeeders was found in the pattern of responses yielded by this group. It was concluded that our major findings are quite likely free of influence from this source.     

Building Schools’ Readiness to Implement a Comprehensive Approach to School Safety

Research consistently finds that a comprehensive approach to school safety, which integrates the best scientific evidence and solid implementation strategies, offers the greatest potential for preventing youth violence and promoting mental and behavioral health. However, schools and communities encounter enormous challenges in articulating, synthesizing, and implementing all the complex aspects of a comprehensive approach to school safety. This paper aims to bridge the gap between scientific evidence and the application of that evidence in schools and communities by defining the key components of a comprehensive approach to school safety and describing how schools can assess their readiness to implement a comprehensive approach. We use readiness and implementation data from the Safe Communities Safe Schools project to illustrate these challenges and solutions. Our findings suggest that (1) readiness assessment can be combined with feasibility meetings to inform school selection for implementation of a comprehensive approach to school safety and (2) intentionally addressing readiness barriers as part of a comprehensive approach may lead to improvements in readiness (motivation and capacity) to effectively implement a comprehensive approach to school safety.     

When do infants expect hands to be connected to a person?

A violation-of-expectation paradigm was used to test whether infants infer a person based on the presence of hands alone. Infants were familiarized to a pair of hands that extended out from a curtain to play with a rattle, after which the curtain was opened to reveal either a real person or a mannequin. Infants’ looking at these outcomes was compared with baseline looking at the person and the mannequin. Experiment 1 showed that 9-month-olds looked significantly longer at the mannequin than at the person after familiarization to hands. Experiment 2 ruled out a low-level feature matching interpretation by showing the same looking pattern in 9-month-olds even when the hands were covered with silver gloves. In Experiment 3, 6-month-olds showed no differential looking at the mannequin and person after familiarization to hands. Taken together, these experiments suggest that infants acquire the expectation that hands are connected to a person between 6 and 9 months of age. This finding has implications for how infants’ attribute goals to manual actions.