The Existential Quantifier, Composition and Contingency

There is a good deal of disagreement about composition. There is first-order disagreement: there are radically different answers to the special composition question—the question of under what circumstances the xs compose a y. There is second-order disagreement: there are different answers to the question of whether first-order disagreement is real or merely semantic. Virtually all disputants with respect to both the first- and second-order issues agree that the answer or answers to the special composition question will take the form of a necessary truth or truths even though, as I will argue, such answers do not appear to be good candidates to be necessary truths. This paper provides an analysis of the concept of <exists> as it pertains to concrete objects, that fulfils two functions. First, it explicates the sense in which claims about composition are contingent and the sense in which they are necessary, and second, it provides a way of understanding when first-order disputes are substantial and when they are merely semantic.     

Side-effect actions,acting for a reason,and acting intentionally

What is the relation between acting intentionally and acting for a reason? While this question has generated a considerable amount of debate in the philosophy of action, on one point there has been a virtual consensus: actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional. Recently, this consensus has been challenged by Joshua Knobe and Sean Kelly, who argue against it on the basis of empirical evidence concerning the ways in which ordinary speakers of the English language describe and explain certain side-effect actions. Knobe and Kelly's argument is of interest not only because it challenges a widely accepted philosophical thesis on the basis of experimental evidence, but also because it indirectly raises an important and largely neglected question, the question of whether or in what sense an agent can perform a side-effect action for a reason. In this article, I address this question and provide a positive answer to it. Specifically, I argue that agents act for a reason whenever they perform side-effect actions as trade-offs. Thus, I claim that there are three distinct types of rational action: actions performed as ends in themselves, actions performed as means to further ends, and side-effect actions performed as trade-offs. Given this multiplicity of types of rational action, the question of whether or not actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional is in need of refinement. The more specific question that lies at the heart of this article is whether or not side-effect actions performed as trade-offs are necessarily intentional. I conclude that, contrary to what Knobe and Kelly suggest, the question remains open.     

Validation,Persuasion and Recycling: Capitalizing on the Social Ecology of Newspaper Use

Two experiments used clinical validation to increase scrutiny of messages posted in public settings. The first experiment used a 2 (validation: no/yes) × 2 (persuasion: none/"it is important") factorial design to develop messages about newspaper recycling. The prompt (no validation/no persuasion) had little impact on newspaper recycling, but the other 3 signs all resulted in increased recycling while the signs were in place. After signs were removed, recycling remained significantly higher than baseline (marginally significant for validation/persuasion). At the end of the study, number of cognitions favoring recycling was significantly higher in the validation-only condition and was lower in the validation/persuasion condition. Experiment 2 tested whether signs would have more impact if they were sensitive to the social ecology of newspaper recycling; that is, readers' tendency to leave newspapers behind so others may read them. Messages based on a 2 (message: validation-only/validation plus persuasion) × 2 (ecology: no social ecology/social ecology) factorial design supported social ecology's importance. Furthermore, because of the increased sharing in the social ecology conditions, total numbers of newspapers used was significantly lower in those buildings. Validation only yielded sustained behavior change in both Experiments 1 and 2, supporting additional research on the question of whether validation can, by itself, lead to cognitive elaboration and self-persuasion.     

Deliberation,Reasons, and Alternatives

A plausible constraint on normative reasons to act is that it must make sense to use them as premises in deliberation. I argue that a central sort of deliberation – what Bratman calls partial planning – is question‐directed: it is over, and aims to resolve, deliberative questions. Whether it makes sense to use some consideration as a premise in deliberation in a case of partial planning can vary with the deliberative question at issue. I argue that the best explanation for this is that reasons are contrastive or relativized to deliberative questions.     

Determining who to question, what to ask, and how much information to ask for: the development of inquiry in young children

To obtain reliable information, it is important to identify and effectively question knowledgeable informants. Two experiments examined how age and the ease of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources influence children’s ability to effectively question those sources to solve problems. A sample of 3- to 5-year-olds was introduced to a knowledgeable informant contrasted with an informant who always gave inaccurate answers or one who always indicated ignorance. Children were generally better at determining which informant to question when a knowledgeable informant was contrasted with an ignorant informant than when a knowledgeable informant was contrasted with an inaccurate informant. In some cases, age also influenced the ability to determine who to question and what to ask. Importantly, in both experiments, the strongest predictor of accuracy was whether children had acquired sufficient information; successful problem solving required integrating knowledge of who to question, what to ask, and how much information to ask for.     

Mathematics,science and ontology

According to quasi-empiricism, mathematics is very like a branch of natural science. But if mathematics is like a branch of science, and science studies real objects, then mathematics should study real objects. Thus a quasi-empirical account of mathematics must answer the old epistemological question: How is knowledge of abstract objects possible? This paper attempts to show how it is possible. The second section examines the problem as it was posed by Benacerraf in ‘Mathematical Truth’ and the next section presents a way of looking at abstract objects that purports to demythologize them. In particular, it shows how we can have empirical knowledge of various abstract objects and even how we might causally interact with them. Finally, I argue that all objects are abstract objects. Abstract objects should be viewed as the most general class of objects. The arguments derive from Quine. If all objects are abstract, and if we can have knowledge of any objects, then we can have knowledge of abstract objects and the question of mathematical knowledge is solved. A strict adherence to Quine's philosophy leads to a curious combination of the Platonism of Frege with the empiricism of Mill.     

Disagreement, consensus, and moral integrity

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments experienced some disagreements among its members in the course of its work. An epistemological controversy over the nature and degree of evidence required to draw ethical conclusions pervaded the Committee's deliberations. Other disagreements involved the proper role of a governmental advisory committee and the question of when it is appropriate to notify people that they were unknowing subjects of radiation experiments. In the end, the Committee was able to reach consensus on almost all of its findings and recommendations through a process that preserved the integrity of its members.     

On Faith,Merit, and Eternal Life

Can eternal life be merited? The traditional Lutheran answer to this question has been negative. However, the question is not as simple as it first seems. For example, recently, Mats Wahlberg has argued that Lutherans should admit that eternal life can be merited, especially if they support the “Finnish Luther interpretation.” Although I find much to commend in Wahlberg's reading, there are at least two problems in his proposal. First, the language of merit is tied to a particular philosophical framework that is not shared ecumenically; and second, all Lutherans do not share all the details of the Finnish reading of Luther. However, both Wahlberg's proposal and the Finnish interpretation of Luther have genuine ecumenical potential if they are developed so that they can address the concerns related to the philosophy of action and Christian life.     

Stereotypes,Prejudice, and the Taxonomy of the Implicit Social Mind1

How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit (roughly, nonconscious or involuntary). This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that “implicit stereotypes” and “implicit prejudices” constitute two separate constructs, reflecting different mental processes and neural systems. On this basis, some have also argued that interventions to reduce discrimination should combat implicit stereotypes and prejudices separately. We propose an alternative (anti‐Humean) framework. We argue that all putative implicit stereotypes are affect‐laden and all putative implicit prejudices are “semantic,” that is, they stand in co‐activating associations with concepts and beliefs. Implicit biases, therefore, consist in “clusters” of semantic‐affective associations, which differ in degree, rather than kind. This framework captures the psychological structure of implicit bias, promises to improve the power of indirect measures to predict behavior, and points toward the design of more effective interventions to combat discrimination.     

Imagery,propositions, and the form of internal representations

This paper has four major sections: First, we review the basic arguments offered by Pylyshyn (Psychological Bulletin, 1973, 80, 1–24) and others against using imagery as an explanatory construct in psychology. Second, we consider each of these points and find none that speak against any but the most primitive notions of imagery. Third, we review the results of various experiments on imagery. In each case, we compare two explanations of the findings: one which assumes the existence of a surface image manifesting emergent properties, and one which assumes that all internal representations are coded in terms of “abstract propositions.” We find imagery hypotheses to be at least as adequate as those based on propositional representation. Finally, we conclude that debate about the ultimate foundations of internal representation is fruitless; the empirical question is whether images have properties that cannot be derived directly from more abstract propositional structures.     

Phenomenology of the Body and its Implications for Humanistic Ethics and Politics

This paper explores the question of embodiment/disembodiment discussed by Hwa Yol Jung mainly in his recent work, Rethinking Political Theory (1993a) in tandem with an examination of some recent developments in Korean scholarship on the same subject. To sum up, the following three points are emphasized. First, this living body does not exist except in specific modalities. In this sense, Gabriel Marcel's paradigmatic affirmation that I am my body requires an elaboration of the specific modalities of the living body as a being in the world. Second, the way a living body exists is not exclusively mental or physical, but both. In short, it is phenomenal. Third, the point of the whole argument can be summed up as follows: to conceal one's own body is natural, but to forget it is dangerous. The primary task of phenomenology is not to denude human beings, but to reawaken ourselves to the idea that we are beings who live with and through bodies.     

Working memory representations persist in the face of unexpected task alterations

It is well known that information can be held in memory while performing other tasks concurrently, such as remembering a color or number during a separate visual search task. However, it is not clear what happens to stored information in the face of unexpected tasks, such as the surprise questions that are often used in experiments related to inattentional and change blindness. Does the unpredicted shift in task context cause memory representations to be cleared in anticipation of new information? To answer this question, we ran two experiments where the task unexpectedly switched partway through the experiment with a surprise question. Half of the participants were asked to report the same attribute (Exp. 1?=?Identity, Exp. 2?=?Color) of a target stimulus in both presurprise and postsurprise trials, while for the other half, the reported attribute switched from identity to color (Exp. 1) or vice versa (Exp. 2). Importantly, all participants had to read an unexpected set of instructions and respond differently on the surprise trial. Accuracy on the surprise trial was higher for the same-attribute groups than the different-attribute groups. Furthermore, there was no difference in reaction time on the surprise trial between the two groups. These results suggest that information participants expected to report can survive an encounter with an unexpected task. The implication is that failures to report information on a surprise trial in many experiments reflect genuine differences in memory encoding, rather than forgetting or overwriting induced by the surprise question.     

Judgments of duration, figure-ground contrast, and size for words and nonwords

Does the word-superiority effect on letter discrimination result in a word-superiority effect on duration judgments? We examined this question in five experiments. In the first four experiments, we have demonstrated that (1) words shown for 32-80 msec were judged as presented longer than non-words shown for the same duration; (2) this word-superiority effect persists if the stimuli are shown for an objective duration of up to 250 msec; and (3) these effects can be extended to judgments of figure-ground contrast and letter size. These findings extend existing data on effects of processing fluency on perceptual judgments. In Experiment 5, we found that duration judgments were higher for words than for pronounceable nonwords, and duration judgments were higher for pronounceable non-words than for nonpronounceable nonwords. We discuss the implications of this finding for the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis.     

What makes a route appear longer? An experimental perspective on features, route segmentation, and distance knowledge

Five experiments performed in a desktop virtual-reality setting investigated the influence of environmental features—that is, noticeable landmarks along the route—on distance estimation. Landmarks were of two types: Either they simply “filled” the route or they “filled” and also segmented it, thereby inducing a hierarchical structuring of the route. Previous research had left the question open of whether a filling or a segmenting feature leads to an overestimation of a distance along the route. Our experiments showed different results dependent on the kind of space: If an environment was learned from a route perspective, filling and segmenting environmental features led to overestimations of distances, while the segmenting of a route induced by a grouping of similar features did not. If the environment was learned from a map that afforded a survey perspective, route structuring induced through a segmenting feature or by phenomenal grouping led to an overestimation of distances, whereas features that merely filled the route did not.     

The Philosophical Personality Argument

Perhaps personality traits substantially influence one??s philosophically relevant intuitions. This suggestion is not only possible, it is consistent with a growing body of empirical research: Personality traits have been shown to be systematically related to diverse intuitions concerning some fundamental philosophical debates. We argue that this fact, in conjunction with the plausible principle that almost all adequate philosophical views should take into account all available and relevant evidence, calls into question some prominent approaches to traditional philosophical projects. To this end, we present the Philosophical Personality Argument (PPA). We explain how it supports the growing body of evidence challenging some of the uses of intuitions in philosophy, and we defend it from some criticisms of empirically based worries about intuitions in philosophy. We conclude that the current evidence indicates that the PPA is sound, and thus many traditional philosophical projects that use intuitions must become substantially more empirically oriented.     

Parity effects in an implicit‐learning task

Is it possible to extract knowledge from complex material and then unknowingly use it? This key question in the field of implicit learning is addressed here in three experiments using the invariant paradigm. The experiments showed that after seeing a series of items consisting of pairs of 2‐digit numbers (e.g. [52; 74]) governed by a rule, subjects judged that new items that followed the rule were more familiar than ones that did not. Experiment 1 showed that this effect was observed when all bigrams seen in phase 2 were new. Experiments 2 and 3 controlled for some ‘classic’ biases and showed that the effect depended on what rule was at stake. An effect was observed only if the rule used brought to bear a salient categorical property in memory: parity.     

Feminist Philosophy and the Philosophy of Feminism: Irigaray and the History of Western Metaphysics

Irigaray demonstrates that metaphysics depends upon the specific negation and exclusion of the female body. Readings of Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman tend to highlight the status of this excluded materiality: is there an essential female body which precedes negation or is the feminine only an effect of exclusion? I approach Irigaray's work by way of another question: is it possible to move beyond a feminist critique of metaphysics and towards a feminist philosophy?     

Objective and epistemic gradability: Is the new angle on the Knobe effect empirically grounded?

According to the New Angle, any explanation of the Knobe effect must be gradable and asymmetric. It has been argued that only Hindriks’ approach meets both criteria. First, we argue that Holton’s hypothesis also meets the criteria. Second, we show that the authors are not justified in taking the criteria to be empirically justified. We have failed to replicate the asymmetry result in two experiments. Moreover, gradability can be objective or epistemic. We show that the New Angle presupposes objective gradability. In our experiments, the patterns of responses to questions about epistemic and objective gradability are the same, irrespective of whether the feature is objectively gradable (e.g., blameworthiness) or not (e.g., intentionality). Our results thus question the extent to which the New Angle is empirically grounded. Moreover, they raise doubt whether the answers to questions about epistemic and objective gradability can be taken at face value at all.

Abbreviations: NRH - normative reasons hypothesis; NVH - norm violation hypothesis; DQ - degree question; DAQ - degree of agreement question     

Rotating objects to recognize them: A case study on the role of viewpoint dependency in the recognition of three-dimensional objects

Successful object recognition is essential for finding food, identifying kin, and avoiding danger, as well as many other adaptive behaviors. To accomplish this feat, the visual system must reconstruct 3-D interpretations from 2-D “snapshots” falling on the retina. Theories of recognition address this process by focusing on the question of how object representations are encoded with respect to viewpoint. Although empirical evidence has been equivocal on this question, a growing body of surprising results, including those obtained in the experiments presented in this case study, indicates that recognition is often viewpoint dependent. Such findings reveal a prominent role for viewpointdependent mechanisms and provide support for themultiple-views approach, in which objects are encoded as a set of view-specific representations that are matched to percepts using normalization procedures.