The Paradox of Belief Instability and a Revision Theory of Belief

The epistemic paradox of 'belief instability' has recently received notable attention from many philosophers. In this paper I offer a new proposal, which I call a 'revision theory of belief'. This theory is in many respects an application of Gupta's and Belnap's revision theory of truth. They argue that the Liar paradox arises because our notion of truth is circular. I offer a similar proposal for handling the paradox of belief instability. In particular, I argue that our notion involved in the paradox of belief instability is circular, and this circularity of belief is the source of the paradox.     

What's in a function?

In this paper we argue that Revision Rules, introduced by Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap as a tool for the analysis of the concept of truth, also provide a useful tool for defining computable functions. This also makes good on Gupta's and Belnap's claim that Revision Rules provide a general theory of definition, a claim for which they supply only the example of truth. In particular we show how Revision Rules arise naturally from relaxing and generalizing a classical construction due to Kleene, and indicate how they can be employed to reconstruct the class of the general recursive functions. We also point at how Revision Rules can be employed to access non-minimal fixed points of partially defined computing procedures.I thank Nuel Belnap, Rich Thomason, Ken Manders, and Jamie Tappenden for much helpful advice given while I was trying to get clear on the ideas presented here. I also thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms on an earlier version of this paper.     

Less willing to pay but more willing to buy: How the elicitation method impacts the valuation of a promotion

Willingness to pay (WTP—how much one is willing to pay for something) and willingness to buy (WTB—whether one is willing to buy something at a given price) are two common methods to elicit valuations and normatively should yield the same valuation order between two options. However, this research finds that WTP and WTB can yield opposite valuation orders between the regular offer and the promotional offer of a product. Specifically, it demonstrate that, (a) if the valuation of a product is only elicited with WTP, consumers value the product less when it is offered with a price promotion than when it is not; (b) if the valuation of a product is only elicited with WTB, consumers value the product more when it is offered with a price promotion than when it is not; and (c) if the valuation of a product is first elicited with WTP and then elicited with WTB, consumers always value the product less when it is offered with a price promotion than when it is not. A value‐inference account is proposed for the above findings, according to which, consumers infer the value of a promoted product differently when the valuation is elicited only with WTP or only with WTB. Theoretically, this research extends prior literature on sales promotion, showing that the valuation of a promotion is subject to the elicitation method. Practically, this research suggests how to help consumers manage their purchase intentions for promoted products.     

Distinct conflict resolution deficits related to different facets of Schizophrenia

An important issue in understanding the nature of conflict processing is whether it is a unitary or multidimensional construct. One way to examine this is to study whether people with impaired conflict processing exhibit a general pattern of deficits or whether they exhibit impairments in distinct aspects of conflict processing. One group who might exhibit conflict deficits are people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder, with one way to break down the heterogeneity of schizophrenia is to examine specific symptoms. Previous research has found that specific symptoms of schizophrenia are associated with specific deficits in conflict processing. In particular, disorganization is associated with increased response conflict, alogia is associated with increased retrieval conflict, and anhedonia is associated with increased emotional conflict. Moreover, there is evidence that different types of conflict processing are unassociated with each other. This evidence suggests that conflict processing is a multidimensional construct and that different aspects of schizophrenia are associated with impairments in processing different types of conflict.     

A Direct Method for Obtaining Approximate Standard Error and Confidence Interval of Maximal Reliability for Composites With Congeneric Measures

Unlike a substantial part of reliability literature in the past, this article is concerned with weighted combinations of a given set of congeneric measures with uncorrelated errors. The relationship between maximal coefficient alpha and maximal reliability for such composites is initially dealt with, and it is shown that the former is a lower bound of the latter. A direct method for obtaining approximate standard error and confidence interval for maximal reliability is then outlined. The procedure is based on a second-order Taylor series approximation and is readily and widely applicable in empirical research via use of covariance structure modeling. The described method is illustrated with a numerical example.     

Responding to the emotions of others: dissociating forms of empathy through the study of typical and psychiatric populations

Empathy is a lay term that is becoming increasingly viewed as a unitary function within the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, a selective review of the empathy literature is provided. It is argued from this literature that empathy is not a unitary system but rather a loose collection of partially dissociable neurocognitive systems. In particular, three main divisions can be made: cognitive empathy (or Theory of Mind), motor empathy, and emotional empathy. The two main psychiatric disorders associated with empathic dysfunction are considered: autism and psychopathy. It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy. In contrast, individuals with psychopathy show clear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive and motor empathy.     

Homelessness and the problem of containment

Homelessness is a problem that is hardly spared to any society in our modern world. Usually discussed by people concerned with social policy, sociology, public health and politics, homelessness has only quite recently begun to command the attention of professionals concerned with psychological and psychotherapeutic processes. Following from the author's experience of working therapeutically with homeless people, as well as in discussions with homeless services, the paper follows a line of thinking around homelessness that is explicitly psychodynamic in orientation. The central argument here is that homelessness is an experience that is, so to speak, waiting to happen. Homelessness is portrayed as a natural extension of an underlying experience of the sister states of uncontainment and alienation. I argue that the homeless person not only experienced a lack of containment in his earliest interactions, but has grown through life with significant difficulties in this area. Homelessness then is an extreme response to a deeper psychological reality that projects into a part of the person's life the agonies associated with uncontainment. Homelessness is the realization of an internal situation –a shifting of a personal struggle into a new and more visible stage. This view of homelessness is designed to provide an amendment to current views that privilege the roles of poverty and social exclusion in the origins of homelessness rather than as an alternative account of the origins of homelessness.     

Adolescents' communication styles and learning about birth control

Adolescents have different communication styles for acquiring information about birth control from a mass medium--interactant or noninteractant, depending on whether they involve communication with others in the process of media use. Three interactant styles are identified: a home-oriented style, where communication is primarily with immediate members and friends; a peer-oriented style, where communication is primarily with own-age peers and personal friends; and multi-source user, where communication is with more than one cluster of sources and the majority of one's communication is not with any particular source. The noninteractant style identified is a media-oriented style, where the adolescent relies exclusively on the mass media for information acquisition without communicating with anyone about the content or process of learning. Data suggest that the interactant style, especially for the multi-source user, is most beneficial for new learning. Gender and the presence of siblings at home are important moderators of the relationship between communication styles and knowledge of birth control. For example, females with a media-oriented style know more about birth control than females with a home-oriented style. Implications of the findings for the delivery of birth control information to adolescents are discussed.     

Implicit action encoding influences personal-trait judgments

When an observed action (e.g., kicking) is compatible to a to be produced action (e.g., a foot-key response as compared to a finger-key response), then the self-produced action is more fluent, that is, it is more accurate and faster. A series of experiments explore the notion that vision-action compatibility effects can influence personal-trait judgments. It is demonstrated that when an observed individual carries out an action that is compatible with the participants' response, (1) this individual is identified more fluently, and (2) the observed individual's personality is attributed with the properties of the observed action. For example, if it is easier to identify one individual with a foot-response when he is seen kicking a ball, as compared to typing, he is perceived to be more 'sporty'. In contrast, if it is easier to identify one individual with a finger response when he is seen typing as compared to kicking a ball, he is associated with the 'academic' trait. These personal-trait judgment effects can be observed with explicit measures, where participants are asked to rate the sporty/academic nature of the person on a scale. They are also obtained when implicit measures are taken in a priming task, where participants are never explicitly asked to rate the personalities of the individuals. A control experiment rules out that these personal-trait effects are merely due to an association of motor responses (foot, finger) to individuals while identifying them, but that these effects depend on a prior manipulation of vision-action fluency.     

The body of the other: intercorporeality and the phenomenology of agoraphobia

How is our experience of the world affected by our experience of others? Such is the question I will be exploring in this paper. I will do so via the agoraphobic condition. In agoraphobia, we are rewarded with an enriched glimpse into the intersubjective formation of the world, and in particular to our embodied experience of that social space. I will be making two key claims. First, intersubjectivity is essentially an issue of intercorporeality, a point I shall explore with recourse to Merleau-Ponty’s account of the prepersonal body. The implication of this claim is that evading or withdrawing from the other remains structurally impossible so long as we remain bodily subjects. Second, the necessary relation with others defines our thematic and affective experience of the world. Far from a formal connection with others, the corporeal basis of intersubjectivity means that our lived experience of the world is mediated via our bodily relations with others. In this way, intercorporeality reveals the body as being dynamically receptive to social interactions with others. Each of these claims is demonstrated via a phenomenological analysis of the agoraphobe’s interaction with others. From this analysis, I conclude that our experience of the world is affected by our experience of others precisely because we are in a bodily relation with others. Such a relation is not causally linked, as though first there were a body, then a world, and then a subject that provided a thematic and affective context to that experience. Instead, body, other, and world are each intertwined in a single unity and cannot be considered apart.     

Localism vs. Individualism for the Scientific Realism Debate

Abstract

Localism is the view that the unit of evaluation in the scientific realism debate is a single scientific discipline, sub-discipline, or claim, whereas individualism is the view that the unit of evaluation is a single scientific theory. Localism is compatible, while individualism is not, with a local pessimistic induction and a local selective induction. Asay presents several arguments to support localism and undercut globalism, according to which the unit of evaluation is the set of all scientific disciplines. I argue that some of his arguments clash with localism as well as with globalism and support individualism, and that individualism goes hand in hand, while localism does not, with the basic rule of how to evaluate an argument.     

Schizotypy and hemisphericity

There is considerable evidence that schizophrenia spectrum disorders are associated with a variety of abnormal asymmetries of brain structure, function, and behavior. Schizotypy is a personality trait dimension extending into the normal range, which at its extreme, is associated with a vulnerability to schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Schizotypy in the normal range is also associated with a variety of neurobiological characteristics associated with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including abnormal brain and behavioral asymmetries. Previous studies have suggested that normal schizotypy (as well as belief in the paranormal) is associated with an increased reliance on the right hemisphere in a variety of tasks. Hemisphericity is a trait-related characteristic preference for the cognitive mode of one or the other cerebral hemispheres, putatively related to hemispheric activation asymmetry. A sample of 256 undergraduates was administered five schizotypy scales, as well as three hemisphericity measures. Higher schizotypy scores were associated with an increase in right hemisphericity and a decrease in integrated hemisphericity. Although the construct of hemisphericity has been criticized, there is evidence to suggest that questionnaire and eye movement measures of hemisphericity may yet have construct validity, and further research on hemisphericity may be warranted.     

Review

I argue in this paper that anyone who accepts the ontology of scientific realism can only accept a pragmatic theory of truth, i.e., a theory on which truth is what it is epistemically right to believe. But the combination of realism with such a theory of truth is a form of internal realism; therefore, a scientific realist should be an internal realist. The strategy of the paper is to argue that there is no adequate semantic or correspondence theory of truth compatible with a realist ontology, that a redundancy theory cannot account for the value of truth, and that the only kind of truth theory which can account for the value of truth, and is compatible with a realist ontology, is a pragmatic theory. The kind of truth theory I wish to defend is objective and naturalistic, and the ontology is realistic. My position is, therefore, one of objective, naturalistic realism.     

An Axiomatisation of a Pure Calculus of Names

A calculus of names is a logical theory describing relations between names. By a pure calculus of names we mean a quantifier-free formulation of such a theory, based on classical propositional calculus. An axiomatisation of a pure calculus of names is presented and its completeness is discussed. It is shown that the axiomatisation is complete in three different ways: with respect to a set theoretical model, with respect to Le?niewski??s Ontology and in a sense defined with the use of axiomatic rejection. The independence of axioms is proved. A decision procedure based on syntactic transformations and models defined in the domain of only two members is defined.     

Slope of regard as a distance cue

It is proposed that some distance cues are learned when a perceptual parameter that varies with observation distance is regularly associated with objects whose distances are perceived because another distance cue operates. If that is the way distance cues can come into existence, it may be possible to identify a parameter that varies with distance but is not a known distance cue and to show that it functions as one. The slope of regard with which an object on the ground is viewed is such a potential distance cue. Its angle varies approximately with the reciprocal of distance. An experiment was done that showed that this slope angle functions as a distance cue. Subjects who looked through a device that altered slope angles gave estimates of the dimensions of an object on the ground. Perceived sizes, which vary inversely with distance, were found to be altered in accordance with the altered slope angle.     

The horizontal-vertical illusion in photographs of concrete scenes with and without depth information

On the basis of the hypothesis of misapplied constancy scaling, the perception of an abstract horizontal-vertical illusion figure embedded in photographs of natural scenes with depth cues is investigated. The effect is compared with that of a figure on photographs containing no depth information and with a figure on a neutral surface. It is shown that the magnitude of the illusion in the perspective scenes is greater than in the other two conditions. The results are considered compatible with a constancy theory of the illusion. Finally, the evidence for misapplied constancy scaling in the horizontal-vertical illusion in relation to a retinal theory is discussed.     

The ontological character of anxiety

Conclusion We conclude from our analysis of Tillichian and Rogerian anthropology that anxiety is ontological in character. It is ontological because it is the necessary concomitant condition of the fact and structures of existence. Man is faced with one basic threat—the possibility of non-being. In an absolute form, he is threatened with the total extinction of being. In an absolute form, he is threatened with the total extinction of being. In a relative form, he is threatened with personal death and with the failure of personal fullillment—with the loss of being and becoming. Ontological anxiety has to do with the absolute threat of extinction and ontic anxiety with the relative threat to self-preservation and self-enhancement. From this condition there is no escape. Refusal to accept the inescapable results in neurotic anxiety, a nonessential concomitant of being which, therefore, can be removed. These distinctions are revealed by an ontological and phenomenological analysis of human existence that brings ontology and psychology into a complementary relationship.