Hume's refutation of the cosmological argument

Conclusion Let me summarize the results of this paper in a way that seems fitting to Hume's discussion of the cosmological argument. There are some philosophers who adopt the most stringent empiricist principles. Such men and women would reject any notion of necessity that is not analytic, and for this reason they would never admit a proof of the necessary existence of anything. Other philosophers, though empiricists, are not so dogmatic. They question the need for, not the coherence of, necessary existence. They believe that the material universe is nothing over and above the sum of its material parts and, thus, see no reason to conclude that a necessary being exists based on PSR. Still others are driven by a rationalist persuasion. They would gladly recognize the existence of almost anything provided it be proven by reason and argument. When they confront the cosmological argument they do indeed find it compelling but still see no reason to conclude that God, or any transcendent being, necessarily exists. The entity established need be nothing more than the universe itself. Therefore, as Hume has demonstrated, no philosopher need accept the conclusion of the cosmological argument.     

Hierarchical causes in the cosmological argument

I would like to thank Linda Zagzebski for her very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Temporal properties of responding during stimuli that precede response-independent food

Pigeons' keypecks were reinforced with grain on the average of once per minute by schedules that maintained low response rates and by schedules that maintained high response rates. During these schedules, a fixed-duration conditioned stimulus (CS) ranging from 7.5 to 120 sec in duration across conditions terminated with response-independent food. Response rates during the CS were inversely related to CS duration. The rates and the temporal patterns of responding during the shortest CS were similar whether the ongoing schedule maintained high response rates or low response rates. As CS duration increased, the rate and pattern of responding during the CS converged on the rate and pattern of responding maintained by the baseline schedule. These data indicate that changes in responding during stimuli that signal response-independent reinforcement are not homogeneous throughout the CS; that response measures, such as “suppression ratios”, which presume homogeneity may mislead us; and that conditioned suppression and conditioned enhancement may be better talked about in terms of species-specific approach and avoidance than in terms of emotional states.     

Control of responding during stimuli that precede transitions in reinforcement frequency

Pigeons' responses were reinforced on a variant of a mixed variable-interval extinction schedule of reinforcement in which the transition to the higher reinforcement rate was signaled by a trace stimulus projected on the response key prior to the onset of the component correlated with food delivery. In the first of two experiments, the duration of the trace stimulus preceding the component correlated with food delivery was varied from 1.5 to 50.0 s and in the second experiment, the reinforcement frequency in the same component was varied from 10 to 60 reinforcers per hour. Pigeons pecked at the trace stimulus preceding the onset of the component correlated with food delivery even though responding was not reinforced in its presence and only one of the changes in reinforcement rate (i.e., from extinction to reinforcement) was signaled. The rate of pecking during the trace stimulus was a function of its duration but not of the reinforcement frequency in the following component. Higher rates generally occurred at the shorter trace-stimulus durations. Component responding following the offset of the trace stimulus was under discriminative control of the trace stimulus whether or not responding occurred in the presence of the trace stimulus.     

On the conditions necessary for obtaining argument structure complexity effects.

Schmauder (1991), studying eye movements during reading, cross-modal naming, and cross-modal lexical decision (CMLD) tasks, failed to find evidence of verb argument structure complexity as Shapiro, Zurif, and Grimshaw (1987) had reported for the CMLD task. Shapiro, Brookins, Gordon, and Nagel (1991) suggested that Schmauder did not detect the effect in the CMLD task because the monosyllabic secondary lexical decision (LD) probes she used did not produce enough processing load to detect an effect of argument structure complexity. The present experiment compared the LD probes used by Schmauder with the LD probes used by Shapiro et al. (1987) and failed to find any evidence for the argument structure complexity effect for either type of probe.     

An analysis of the argument that clinicians under-predict sexual violence in civil commitment cases

This paper presents the results of an analysis that evaluated the assumptions and arguments set forth in a recent paper (Doren, 1998), which concluded that clinicians under-predict the risk that candidates for commitment as dangerous sex offenders will recidivate. This analysis indicates that such a conclusion is untenable because almost all of the assertions on which it is based might be disputed in one way or another. These flaws undermine the paper's value as a source of secondary authority in hearings pertaining to the commitment of dangerous sex offenders. Nonetheless, its publication will probably be beneficial for professional practice in this arena because it raises several important issues that stand in need of resolution.     

A reply to Belkin's argument that ending the "gay ban" will not influence military performance

Belkin's recent arguments in favor of replacing the current U.S. military policy on homosexuality are discussed. A variety of issues, especially sexual asymmetries, are cited as reasons that would make open acceptance of homosexuality problematic in the military as well as the enforcement of sexual harassment regulations.     

Walking through doorways causes forgetting: environmental effects

Previous work has shown a decline in memory for objects carried through a doorway versus across a room. The aim of the current study is to extend this work to understand how variations in perceptual experience during these event shifts influence this finding. First a change in procedure to reduce memory load to a single item was assessed. Next we explored whether performance is influenced by spatial distance versus spatial categories, the ability to perceptually preview the next location, and changes in the colour and texture of the walls. The location updating effect was consistently observed for all manipulations, suggesting that such event transformations have a robust influence on human memory. This suggests that event cognition is driven more by the use of perceptual information to infer or impose a categorical shift from one event to another rather than by the nature of perceptual information available at the time.     

Reply to Schumm's argument that ending the gay ban will morally "injure" some service members

Schumm does not explain why moral injuries that would ensue from serving alongside peers who utter the words "I am gay" warrant protection in federal law.     

A note on final causes and their role in contextualism

According to the contextualist world view, it is not possible to specify before-hand the formal characteristics of the outcomes of development. Some authors have claimed that this constitutes a rejection of final causes. This note distinguishes between the two kinds of final cause, “end stages” and “functions,” both of which can be found in the literature and traced back to Aristotle. It is argued that only one kind of final cause (end stages) is rejected in contextualism and that the other kind (functions) may even be useful to contextualism.     

On the causes and effects of inhibition of return

Unpredictive visual transient cues have a biphasic effect on reaction times (RTs) to peripheral onset targets. At relatively short (e.g., 150-msec) cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), RTs to targets at cued versus uncued locations are facilitated, whereas at relatively long SOAs (e.g., beyond 300 msec), they are inhibited. The present review explores the conditions under which this latter, inhibitory, effect-referred to as inhibition of return (IOR; Posner & Cohen, 1984)—is revealed and those conditions under which it is generated. We argue that the extant literature converges on the view that IOR reflects a motor response bias that is generated by the activation of an oculomotor program to fixate the cue. However, we reveal that current conceptualizations of IOR are based on a limited sampling of possible tests of the generation and measurement of IOR and indicate where further experimental research is critical.     

The role of verb argument structure in sentence processing: Distinguishing between syntactic and semantic effects

This paper describes an ongoing research program designed to investigate how syntactic and semantic aspects of lexical information become available to the sentence processing system. The two experiments described here distinguished between syntactic and semantic representations by using cross-modal naming and lexical decision in a new way. The relationship between the main verb and the probe word was varied such that the probe word met either the syntactic criteria to be an argument, the semantic criteria, neither, or both the syntactic and semantic criteria. Lexical decision times were sensitive to both syntactic and semantic congruity, while naming times were sensitive only to syntactic congruity. The two tasks were then used to investigate syntactic and semantic representations when verb argument structure was ambiguous. Subcategorized structures were constructed without regard for biasing context, but the contextually inappropriate thematic frame was ruled out while the inappropriate syntactic frame was still available.