Truth and Generalized Quantification*

Kripke [1975] gives a formal theory of truth based on Kleene's strong evaluation scheme. It is probably the most important and influential that has yet been given—at least since Tarski. However, it has been argued that this theory has a problem with generalized quantifiers such as All(?, ψ)—that is, All ?s are ψ—or Most(?, ψ). Specifically, it has been argued that such quantifiers preclude the existence of just the sort of language that Kripke aims to deliver—one that contains its own truth predicate. In this paper I solve the problem by showing how Kleene's strong scheme, and Kripke's theory based on it, can in a natural way be extended to accommodate the full range of generalized quantifiers.     

On-line multidimensional scaling programs with interactive graphical display

The beginnings of a system of interactive multidimensional scaling programs with real-time display of the graphical output have been established on the Honeywell DDP-224 computer. Two programs have been completed: (1) MDPREF—a computer program for multidimensional analysis of preference data—has been converted from the GE-635 to run interactively on the DDP-224 computer. Its solution is printed from a typewriter, and the configuration of stimuli are displayed on a scope in two-dimensional view. (2) ROTATE—an on-line rotation program—enables the user to rotate the configuration in three dimensions within a higher dimensional space.     

The strategic value of essentialism

Social essentialism—the belief that individuals contain an underlying essence determined by the social categories they belong to—has generally been regarded as a harmful cognitive process that results in prejudice and other forms of injustice at the group level. Trait essentialism, also termed a fixed mindset—the belief that people's trait levels are determined and relatively unchangeable—has been construed as a parallel impediment to self‐improvement at the individual level. However, each of these domains contains findings that do not fit this narrative, suggesting that such essentialized thinking is not always detrimental at either the group or individual level and that its effects may instead depend on motivation and context. Incorporating advances in research on moral judgment and identity allow for a reconciliation of the variable effects of social and trait essentialism. In some instances, essentialism can be a strategy for reducing blame over uncontrollable aspects of individuals and groups and for identity formation.     

Underdetermination,realism and empirical equivalence

Are theories ‘underdetermined by the evidence’ in any way that should worry the scientific realist? I argue that no convincing reason has been given for thinking so. A crucial distinction is drawn between data equivalence and empirical equivalence. Duhem showed that it is always possible to produce a data equivalent rival to any accepted scientific theory. But there is no reason to regard such a rival as equally well empirically supported and hence no threat to realism. Two theories are empirically equivalent if they share all consequences expressed in purely observational vocabulary. This is a much stronger requirement than has hitherto been recognised—two such ‘rival’ theories must in fact agree on many claims that are clearly theoretical in nature. Given this, it is unclear how much of an impact on realism a demonstration that there is always an empirically equivalent ‘rival’ to any accepted theory would have—even if such a demonstration could be produced. Certainly in the case of the version of realism that I defend—structural realism—such a demonstration would have precisely no impact: two empirically equivalent theories are, according to structural realism, cognitively indistinguishable.     

It's not you,it's them: Social influences on trust propensity and trust dynamics

Scholars agree that trust primarily has two bases: trustworthiness—the extent to which a trustee is competent, honest, and has goodwill toward the trustor—and trust propensity—a stable trait reflecting the trustor's generalized belief that others can be trusted. Due to this trait characterization, the literature has largely reached a consensus that trust propensity is only an important base of trust in the earliest stage of a relationship—before information on trustworthiness has been gathered. Additionally, the trait conceptualization of trust propensity inhibits it from being modeled as an explanatory mechanism. Drawing on accessibility theory, a theory of trait activation, we argue that trust propensity has state‐like characteristics that are “activated” by the daily treatment an employee receives from coworkers. Our model highlights that the social context—predominantly ignored in prior trust research because of its lack of relevance to dyadic perceptions of trustworthiness—can have a substantial impact on dyadic trust. Across two multisource experience sampling methodology studies, we provide evidence that state trust propensity transmits the effects of citizenship and deviance received to trust in a focal coworker, whether that focal coworker is a source of that treatment or not. We also address how general levels of workplace unfairness—a between‐person construct—influence these dynamics. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these within‐person dynamics for fostering trust within organizations.     

Empathy,Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding: From Lipps to Schutz

When it comes to understanding the nature of social cognition, we have—according to the standard view—a choice between the simulation theory, the theory-theory or some hybrid between the two. The aim of this paper is to argue that there are, in fact, other options available, and that one such option has been articulated by various thinkers belonging to the phenomenological tradition. More specifically, the paper will contrast Lipps' account of empathy—an account that has recently undergone something of a revival in the hands of contemporary simulationists—with various accounts of empathy found in the phenomenological tradition. I discuss the way Lipps was criticized by Scheler, Stein and Husserl, and outline some of the core features of their, at times divergent, alternatives. I then proceed by considering how their basic take on empathy and social cognition was taken up and modified by Schutz—a thinker whose contribution to the analysis of interpersonal understanding has been unjustly neglected in recent years.     

Heart work after errors: Behavioral adjustment following error commission involves cardiac effort

Posterror slowing (PES) is the observation that people respond slower on trials subsequent to error commissions than on trials subsequent to correct responses. Different accounts have been proposed to explain PES. On the one hand, it has been suggested that PES arises from an adaptive increase in cognitive control following error commission, thereby making people more cautious after making an error. On the other hand, PES has been attributed to an orienting response, indicating that attention is shifted toward the error. In the present study we tested these accounts by investigating the effects of error commission in both flanker and switch tasks on two task-evoked cardiac measures: the interbeat interval—that is, the interval between two consecutive R peaks—and the RZ interval—that is, the interval between the R peak and the Z point—as measured using electro- and impedance cardiography, respectively. These measures allowed us to measure cardiac deceleration (autonomic orienting) and cardiac effort mobilization, respectively. Our results revealed a shorter RZ interval during posterror trials, indicating increased effort mobilization following errors. In addition, we replicated earlier studies that have shown cardiac slowing during error trials. However, multilevel analyses showed that only the posterror decrease in RZ interval predicted posterror reaction times, whereas there was no positive relationship between error-related cardiac deceleration and posterror reaction times. Our results suggest that PES is related to increased cardiac effort, supporting a cognitive-control account of PES.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of counselling in primary care: Taking a fresh look

One criticism voiced by counsellors and psychotherapists is that research does not reflect either the culture or values of therapy. Researchers, on the other hand, accuse practitioners of not attending to their findings, and the implication is made that the latter engage in treatment processes that are ill‐informed. These polarised understandings give rise to the situation where the client — and his or her development — fall into the practice‐research gap. In more recent studies of counselling in primary care, an attempt has been made to offer new perspectives for interpreting and understanding findings, and the relative value — and limitations — of different research questions and methods. They provide just a few examples of how practitioner‐researchers in the future may ask more precise questions, yet reflect on their findings from a broader set of viewpoints.     

Revisionist Responses to the Amoralism Objection: A Reply to Julia Markovits

Some subjectivist views of practical reasons entail that some people, in some cases, lack sufficient reasons to act as morality requires of them. This is often thought to form the basis of an objection to these subjectivist views: ‘the amoralism objection’. This objection has been developed at length by Julia Markovits in her recent book Moral Reason. But Markovits—alongside many other proponents of this objection—does not explicitly consider that her objection is premised on a claim that her opponents deny on first-order grounds, often as part of a socially and politically motivated revisionism about the assessment of agents and their actions. As such, the amoralism objection as she presents it misses its dialectical mark. This has interesting consequences for subjectivism—and the methodology behind it—more generally.     

Dual processes in decision making and developmental neuroscience: A fuzzy-trace model

From Piaget to the present, traditional and dual-process theories have predicted improvement in reasoning from childhood to adulthood, and improvement has been observed. However, developmental reversals—that reasoning biases emerge with development—have also been observed in a growing list of paradigms. We explain how fuzzy-trace theory predicts both improvement and developmental reversals in reasoning and decision making. Drawing on research on logical and quantitative reasoning, as well as on risky decision making in the laboratory and in life, we illustrate how the same small set of theoretical principles apply to typical neurodevelopment, encompassing childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and to neurological conditions such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease. For example, framing effects—that risk preferences shift when the same decisions are phrased in terms of gains vs. losses—emerge in early adolescence as gist-based intuition develops. In autistic individuals, who rely less on gist-based intuition and more on verbatim-based analysis, framing biases are attenuated (i.e., they outperform typically developing control subjects). In adults, simple manipulations based on fuzzy-trace theory can make framing effects appear and disappear depending on whether gist-based intuition or verbatim-based analysis is induced. These theoretical principles are summarized and integrated in a new mathematical model that specifies how dual modes of reasoning combine to produce predictable variability in performance. In particular, we show how the most popular and extensively studied model of decision making—prospect theory—can be derived from fuzzy-trace theory by combining analytical (verbatim-based) and intuitive (gist-based) processes.     

A dimensional approach to analyzing lone offender terrorism

The challenge of “lone offender” terrorism is a serious one for law enforcement and security services around the world. Though the tactic has been used for hundreds of years, the rising number—in some countries—and diversity of “lone” attacks are increasingly troublesome. Attempts to clearly define the phenomenon, however, have been rather elusive. In this review, we suggest that viewing the dimensions of lone offender terrorism along a continuum, rather than forcing categorical distinctions, may provide a useful approach for classifying or analyzing lone offender attacks. We introduce three dimensions as a starting point for discussion—Loneness, Direction, and Motivation—and attempt to illustrate how these dimensions are linked to key investigative questions as a potential attacker proceeds on a pathway from idea to action.     

Settler-State Borders and the Question of Indigenous Immigrant Identity

Indigenous migration from Latin America to the United States has been on the rise over the past decades. There has also been an increase in Indigenous self-identification amongst people in the United States who previously self-identified as Hispanic or Latina/o on census forms. Though Latin American Indigenous migration to the United States has been steadily on the rise since the 1990s, there remains a lack of resources—philosophical, political, and bureaucratic—to account for this migrant group. My goal in this article is to explore in greater depth why Latin American Indigenous migration is hermeneutically marginalised. First, I argue that we problematically fail to understand settler-state borders—particularly the Mexico-US border—as, in part, Indigenous spaces. Second, and relatedly, I argue that our failure to understand borders as Indigenous spaces is connected to the widespread, inaccurate presumption that Indigenous peoples ‘lose their authenticity’ (and, in turn, their very Indigenous identities) upon crossing settler-state borders. Contrary to what I describe as the dominant view of borders as de-Indigenised or non-Indigenous spaces, I argue in that many settler-state borders are spaces where Indigenous peoples, including Indigenous migrants, may experience their Indigenous identities intimately, and even publicly articulate and defend them. Importantly, this does not mean that settler-state borders do not also harm Indigenous peoples by threating Indigenous sovereignty. I end by arguing that addressing the hermeneutical marginalisation of Latin American Indigenous migration requires a rigorous reconceptualisation of borders themselves as Indigenous spaces.     

Modeling the Covariance Structure of Complex Datasets Using Cognitive Models: An Application to Individual Differences and the Heritability of Cognitive Ability

Understanding individual differences in cognitive performance is an important part of understanding how variations in underlying cognitive processes can result in variations in task performance. However, the exploration of individual differences in the components of the decision process—such as cognitive processing speed, response caution, and motor execution speed—in previous research has been limited. Here, we assess the heritability of the components of the decision process, with heritability having been a common aspect of individual differences research within other areas of cognition. Importantly, a limitation of previous work on cognitive heritability is the underlying assumption that variability in response times solely reflects variability in the speed of cognitive processing. This assumption has been problematic in other domains, due to the confounding effects of caution and motor execution speed on observed response times. We extend a cognitive model of decision‐making to account for relatedness structure in a twin study paradigm. This approach can separately quantify different contributions to the heritability of response time. Using data from the Human Connectome Project, we find strong evidence for the heritability of response caution, and more ambiguous evidence for the heritability of cognitive processing speed and motor execution speed. Our study suggests that the assumption made in previous studies—that the heritability of cognitive ability is based on cognitive processing speed—may be incorrect. More generally, our methodology provides a useful avenue for future research in complex data that aims to analyze cognitive traits across different sources of related data, whether the relation is between people, tasks, experimental phases, or methods of measurement.     

Open‐endedness,Schemas and Ontological Commitment

Second‐order axiomatizations of certain important mathematical theories—such as arithmetic and real analysis—can be shown to be categorical. Categoricity implies semantic completeness, and semantic completeness in turn implies determinacy of truth‐value. Second‐order axiomatizations are thus appealing to realists as they sometimes seem to offer support for the realist thesis that mathematical statements have determinate truth‐values. The status of second‐order logic is a controversial issue, however. Worries about ontological commitment have been influential in the debate. Recently, Vann McGee has argued that one can get some of the technical advantages of second‐order axiomatizations—categoricity, in particular—while walking free of worries about ontological commitment. In so arguing he appeals to the notion of an open‐ended schema—a schema that holds no matter how the language of the relevant theory is extended. Contra McGee, we argue that second‐order quantification and open‐ended schemas are on a par when it comes to ontological commitment.     

Narrative as a hermeneutical relationship to the unconscious

In this article, what seems to have been two central tenets in contemporary psychoanalytic narrative theory are challenged. The one—propounded by Roy Schafer—is that the goal of psychoanalytic work is to furnish the analysand with an alternative narrative. The other—propounded by Donald Spence—is that any story will do, if only it is coherent, consistent, persuasive and encompasses the known “facts”. Basing his critique of the mentioned standpoints on an intersubjective understanding of psychoanalytic work and a concept of interpreting inspired by the existential hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, the author discusses the nature of the analytic dialogue and the role of transference together with the ethical basis of truth in the analytic project. Finally, it is indicated that there is a limit to analytic working-through, where the analysand's narrative activity must come to a halt and room be left for a resolve, where the analysand may undergo a fundamental transformation.     

Narrative theory and the dynamics of popular movies

Popular movies grab and hold our attention. One reason for this is that storytelling is culturally important to us, but another is that general narrative formulae have been honed over millennia and that a derived but specific filmic form has developed and has been perfected over the last century. The result is a highly effective format that allows rapid processing of complex narratives. Using a corpus analysis I explore a physical narratology of popular movies—narrational structure and how it impacts us—to promote a theory of popular movie form. I show that movies can be divided into 4 acts—setup, complication, development, and climax—with two optional subunits of prolog and epilog, and a few turning points and plot points. In 12 studies I show that normative aspects in patterns of shot durations, shot transitions, shot scale, shot motion, shot luminance, character introduction, and distributions of conversations, music, action shots, and scene transitions reduce to 5 correlated stylistic dimensions of movies and can litigate among theories of movie structure. In general, movie narratives have roughly the same structure as narratives in any other domain—plays, novels, manga, folktales, even oral histories—but with particular runtime constraints, cadences, and constructions that are unique to the medium.     

Body as Site of Ethic

Traditional ethical discourses give little significance to the role of body, and highlight has been largely on human mind and consciousness. The idea of good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable—as binaries—is seen as articulated through the latter. Philosophical theories that articulate the significance of body and movement are very few—phenomenology as one among these few. Body, as site for ethic, calls for some significant philosophical considerations. The paper attempts to join phenomenological theorizing on lived-body and engages with the issues of moral desirability. It also argues that moral discourse as structurally built on the idea of reciprocity is inadvertently about first-person lived-bodies interacting with one another.

     

Modal Personhood and Moral Status: A Reply to Kagan's Proposal

Kagan argues that human beings who are neither persons nor even potential persons — if their impairment is independent of genetic constitution — are modal persons: individuals who might have been persons. Moreover, he proposes a view according to which both (actual) personhood and modal personhood are sufficient for counting more, morally, than nonhuman animals. In response to this proposal, I raise one relatively minor concern about Kagan's reasoning — that he judges too quickly that insentient beings can have interests — before engaging the appeal to modal personhood. I challenge the thesis that modal personhood is relevant to one's moral status, first, by way of analogy to a kicker who misses a field goal though he might have made it; second, by casting doubt on implications for two impaired infants (only one of whom might have been a person); and, finally, by examining implications for dogs who would count as modal persons when genetic enhancements are capable of transforming them into persons.