Against Arguments from Reference*

It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such ‘arguments from reference.’ Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross‐cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture ( Machery et al. 2004 ). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.     

The Sortal Dependence of Demonstrative Reference

Abstract: ‘Sortalism about demonstrative reference’ is the view that the capacity to refer to things demonstratively rests on the capacity to classify them according to their kinds. This paper argues for one form of sortalism. Section 1 distinguishes two sortalist views. Section 2 argues that one of them is false. Section 3 argues that the other is true. Section 4 uses the argument from Section 3 to develop a new response to the objection to sortalism from examples where we seem to succeed in referring even though we get sortal classification wrong, or do not attempt to classify at all.     

基于预期理论的参照依赖

参照依赖是指个体基于某一参照点对得失价值进行判断:参照点之上,个体感受为收益,反之即为损失.参照依赖现象广泛存在于生活中的各种领域.当前,对参照依赖心理机制的解释主要有预期理论、后悔理论和三阶段参照点理论.参照依赖的影响因素主要包括经验、情绪状态、文化、目标和认知对象的特点等.未来的研究应主要集中于参照依赖的产生根源,深入探讨参照依赖的神经机制,加强动态参照点、多重参照点以及群体中参照依赖现象的研究.     

Arguments from Ostension

My purpose here is to describe a type of argument characterized by the fact that one of its premises is a directive—i.e. what is expressed by a directive sentence: a general instruction how to proceed or act. This directive premise brings an ostensive mechanism for the inclusion of visual or multimodal elements in an argument. If an argument is an invitation to inference (Robert Pinto), by using such a directive utterance the addresser is inviting the addressee to make an inference from an image, not from a proposition. Hence I will call them arguments from ostension or from deixis.     

Trying and the Arguments from Total Failure

New Volitionalism is a name for certain widespread conception of the nature of intentional action. Some of the standard arguments for New Volitionalism, the so-called arguments from total failure, have even acquired the status of basic assumptions for many other kinds of philosophers. It is therefore of singular interest to investigate some of the most important arguments from total failure. This is what I propose to do in this paper. My aim is not be to demonstrate that these arguments are inconsistent or that total failure and naked tryings are metaphysically impossible. Rather, my aim is be to build a case against the possibility of naked, independently existing tryings, by questioning how well we understand the scenarios invoked in their favour. Thus, rather than attempting to present a definitive metaphysical refutation of New Volitionalism, I attempt to diminish or demolish its underlying motivation.

Mathematical Indispensability and Arguments from Design

Philosophia - The recognition of striking regularities in the physical world plays a major role in the justification of hypotheses and the development of new theories both in the natural sciences...     

A General Structure for Legal Arguments About Evidence Using Bayesian Networks

A Bayesian network (BN) is a graphical model of uncertainty that is especially well suited to legal arguments. It enables us to visualize and model dependencies between different hypotheses and pieces of evidence and to calculate the revised probability beliefs about all uncertain factors when any piece of new evidence is presented. Although BNs have been widely discussed and recently used in the context of legal arguments, there is no systematic, repeatable method for modeling legal arguments as BNs. Hence, where BNs have been used in the legal context, they are presented as completed pieces of work, with no insights into the reasoning and working that must have gone into their construction. This means the process of building BNs for legal arguments is ad hoc, with little possibility for learning and process improvement. This article directly addresses this problem by describing a method for building useful legal arguments in a consistent and repeatable way. The method complements and extends recent work by Hepler, Dawid, and Leucari (2007) on object‐oriented BNs for complex legal arguments and is based on the recognition that such arguments can be built up from a small number of basic causal structures (referred to as idioms). We present a number of examples that demonstrate the practicality and usefulness of the method.     

Moral Reasoning and Rhetoric: The Acceptability of Arguments About AIDS-Related Dilemmas1

The disease AIDS has given rise to a host of social dilemmas. Here we explore the rhetoric that affects people's reasoning about actions taken in the face of such dilemmas. We presented a group of 514 undergraduates with vignettes depicting dilemmas having to do with the distribution of sexually explicit educational material to high school students and with the forced HIV blood testing of factory workers. Subjects rated the acceptability of arguments for and against courses of action taken by persons in the vignettes. The arguments embodied concerns typical of moral reasoning at each of Kohlberg's six stages. We found that the acceptability of stage-typical moral arguments about AIDS-related dilemmas depends on both the dilemma at hand and the course of action being argued for. We argue that knowledge of how people respond to different kinds of moral arguments concerning AIDS-related dilemmas is valuable for informing efforts to advocate humane and lifesaving policies to particular audiences.     

Worry and Sleep Length Revisited: Worry,Sleep Length,and Sleep Disturbance Ascribed to Worry

The author administered university students (N = 222; 152 women, 70 men) the Worry Domains Questionnaire (F. Tallis, G. C. L. Davey, & A. Bond, 1994) and a newly constructed scale (the Sleep Disturbance Ascribed to Worry Scale) to measure sleep disturbance attributed to worry. To revisit previous studies (i.e., E. Hartmann, F. Baekeland, & G. R. Zwilling, 1972; S. J. H. McCann & L. L. Stewin, 1988) that suggested that sleep length was positively related to worry, the author also asked the students a question about habitual sleep length. The results indicated that worry and sleep disturbance attributed to worry were negatively related to sleep length. A regression analysis revealed that worry was significantly negatively related to habitual sleep length irrespective of sleep disturbance ascribed to worry.     

Three Arguments from Temporary Intrinsics

The Argument from Temporary Intrinsics is one of the canonical arguments against endurantism. I show that the two standard ways of presenting the argument have limited force. I then present a new version of the argument, which provides a more promising articulation of the underlying objection to endurantism. However, the premises of this argument conflict with the gauge theories of particle physics, and so this version of the argument is no more successful than its predecessors. I conclude that no version of the Argument from Temporary Intrinsics gives us a compelling reason to favor one theory of persistence over another.     

Arguments from Expert Opinion and Persistent Bias

Accounts of arguments from expert opinion take it for granted that expert judgments count as (defeasible) evidence for propositions, and so an argument that proceeds from premises about what an expert judges to a conclusion that the expert is probably right is a strong argument. In Mizrahi (Informal Log 33:57–79, 2013), I consider a potential justification for this assumption, namely, that expert judgments are significantly more likely to be true than novice judgments, and find it wanting because of empirical evidence suggesting that expert judgments under uncertainty are not significantly more likely to be true than novice judgments or even chance. In this paper, I consider another potential justification for this assumption, namely, that expert judgments are not influenced by the cognitive biases novice judgments are influenced by, and find it wanting, too, because of empirical evidence suggesting that experts are vulnerable to pretty much the same cognitive biases that novices are vulnerable to. If this is correct, then the basic assumption at the core of accounts of arguments from expert opinion, namely, that expert judgments count as (defeasible) evidence for propositions, remains unjustified.     

Accounting for Dependence: Relative Consilience as a Correction Factor in Cumulative Case Arguments

I propose a measure of dependence that relates a set of items of evidence to an hypothesis H and to H's negation. I dub this measure relative consilience (RC) and propose a method for using it as a correction factor for dependence among items of evidence. Using RC, I examine collusion and testimonial independence, the value of diverse evidence, and the strengthening of otherwise weak or non-existent cases. RC provides a valuable tool for formal epistemologists interested in analyzing cumulative case arguments.     

On the Rationale for Distinguishing Arguments from Explanations

Even with the lack of consensus on the nature of an argument, the thesis that explanations and arguments are distinct is near orthodoxy in well-known critical thinking texts and in the more advanced argumentation literature. In this paper, I reconstruct two rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations. According to one, arguments and explanations are essentially different things because they have different structures. According to the other, while some explanations and arguments may have the same structure, they are different things because explanations are used for different purposes than arguments. I argue that both rationales fail to motivate a distinction between arguments and explanations. Since these are the only rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations that I am prepared to take seriously, I don’t see why we should exclude explanations from being arguments.     

Worry and the suppression of imagery

This experiment investigates Borkovec's theory that the function of worry is to protect people from potentially distressing emotional imagery. The experiment builds on a previous one of Borkovec and Inz (Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 153–158, 1990) comparing the frequency of thoughts and images in imagery and relaxation. The present experiment confirms the previous finding that worry is associated with less imagery than relaxation, but shows that this is not distinctive to worry. Indeed, an additional control condition, ‘present-oriented mentation’, was associated with even less imagery than worry. The fact that other kinds of thinking are at least as effective as worry in suppressing emotional imagery indicates that this property of worry is not sufficient to explain its occurrence.     

Male Reference Group Identity Dependence: Support for Construct Validity

This research study examined correlates of male identity statuses as postulated in Wade's (1998) theory of male reference group identity dependence. The Reference Group Identity Dependence Scale (RGIDS; Wade & Gelso, 1998) was correlated with measures of identity aspects (personal, social, and collective), belongingness, and a universal-diverse orientation. Based on the responses of 172 predominantly middle-class undergraduate college men (59% White, 15% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 13% African American, 4% Hispanic, and 9% other race/ethnicity, e.g., biracial, Arab American, Egyptian American), as predicted, the No Reference Group status negatively related to collective identity and social connectedness; the Reference Group Dependent status positively related to social identity and social connectedness; and the Reference Group Nondependent status positively related to personal identity, collective identity, social connectedness, and a universal-diverse orientation toward others.     

Worry propensity and the perception of risk

This paper examines how the tendency to worry impacts risk estimation for an upcoming, stressful event. Students in a statistics class completed worry, anxiety, and subjective risk questionnaires on the first day of class. State-anxiety and subjective risk questionnaires were again administered immediately before their first examination. Subjects showed significant increases in anxiety and the perceived risk of poor academic performance in the class. Risk domains unrelated to the examination (e.g., physical threats) remained stable across measurement periods. Regression analysis was used to determine the independent contribution of worry propensity in predicting elevations in the perceived risk of poor academic performance. The analysis showed that worry propensity predicted subjective risk bias, even after variance attributable to current mood and trait anxiety had been removed. Results from a second series of regression equations suggested subjective risk biases partially mediated the relationship between worry propensity and current mood. These results are used to argue that the elevations in state anxiety observed when worriers are confronted with a stressful event are largely a function of risk inflation.