Behaviour of ‘impulsive’ and ‘non-impulsive’ humans in a temporal differentiation schedule of reinforcement

The operant behaviour of psychometrically defined ‘impulsive’ and ‘non-impulsive’ subjects, under a temporal differentiation schedule of reinforcement, was examined. Four impulsive and four non-impulsive females were selected on the basis of their scores on the Matching Familiar Figures Test. The subjects participated in fifteen 45-min sessions in which they were exposed to an inter-response-time-greater-than-10-sec schedule of monetary reinforcement. During Phase I (sessions 1–5) no information was provided about the reinforcement contingency. During Phase II (sessions 6–10) a light on the response panel was illuminated whenever a reinforcer became available. At the start of Phase III (session 11) the subjects were given explicit information about the reinforcement contingency. At the start of Phase IV (sessions 12–15) the subjects were told that the light would no longer be operative although the contingency would remain unaltered. During Phase I the impulsive subjects earned fewer reinforcers, and emitted a greater proportion of non-reinforced responses (inter-response times less than 10 sec) than the non-impulsive subjects. During Phase II both groups increased their earnings, although the performance of the non-impulsive group remained superior to that of the impulsive group. In Phase III both groups performed equally well. In Phase IV the performance of both groups deteriorated, the impulsive group performing more poorly than the non-impulsive group. The results demonstrate the sensitivity of operant performance maintained under temporal differentiation schedules to personality dimensions such as ‘impulsiveness/non-impulsiveness’.     

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a ‘Ritual’

‘Ritual’ has long been a key concept in anthropology and many ‘rituals’ have been identified, described, and interpreted. In most cases, those interpretations have been generated and presented by anthropologists. Occasionally, however, the interpretations of participants themselves are presented and can be equally multifarious. These sets of ways of looking at ‘ritual’ may or may not overlap. In this paper, I present thirteen ways of looking at one particular ‘ritual’—the (British) Quaker meeting for worship—and suggest that ways of looking are sometimes shared by academics and adepts. I conclude from this, firstly, that we are likely to produce an impoverished understanding of social phenomena when we ignore the interpretations of protagonists and, secondly, that to eschew a multivocal appreciation of ‘ritual’ will result in an unnecessarily crude representation of social life.     

‘Interfaith dialogue’ as a form of opposition of ‘minority religions’ to governmental pressure in Russia

Russian governmental policy toward non-traditional religious groups, especially so-called New Religious Movements (NRMs), is discriminatory. Despite Russia’s formal secularity, the government strongly supports the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), a position which results in various limitations on many other religious groups. As a result, legal actions have been initiated against new religious groups, for example the Bhagavad Gita trial in Tomsk, Siberia, and the designation of the literature of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as ‘extremist’. However, pressure by the government can sometimes lead to the development of spontaneous interreligious oppositional associations. One important example is the ‘interfaith dialogue’ in Tomsk, where local leaders or representatives of religious groups, such as the Episcopal, Jewish, and Latter-day Saints (Mormon) churches as well as the Hare Krishna movement, unorthodox Buddhist groups, and local pagan movements, united to oppose governmental and ROC efforts to disband a Hare Krishna group in the Tomsk area. This research note presents results of a case study, which involved participant observation, of the phenomenon of oppositional interfaith dialogue in Tomsk in the period 2011–2014. I discuss factors that influenced its appearance, its relationship with the local government, and the methods of cooperation between the different religious groups within this association and offer some theoretical interpretations of these developments. The results of this case study illustrate new and important modern relationships between minority religions and the government in Russia.     

Mathematical modeling of the effects of ‘capability’ and ‘intent’ on the stability of a competitive international system

In international relations theory, there is a long history of Richardson-like modeling of the evolution of military capability. Usually, such models are deterministic and predictive and do not allow for the representation of the transition from competitive peace to shooting war. More recently, models have been developed which attempt to represent the evolution of relationship between nations. The relationship between nations, varying from friendship to hostility, is taken to be synonymous with the intent of nations towards each other, varying from good will to malice. Generally, these relationship models do not include capability though common sense would indicate that capability and mutual intent should profoundly influence each other. A model is presented here which combines these two fundamental attributes of international relations and attempts to represent the outbreak of war in the world system by the onset of deterministic chaos in the extended model.On leave 1994–95 at U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Washington, D.C. 20451, U.S.A.     

Avner Baz on the ‘Point’ of a Question

Abstract

Avner Baz claims that questions philosophers ask about hypothetical cases lack the kind of ‘point’ possessed by ‘everyday’ questions. He concludes from this that there is something wrong with the philosophical practice of asking questions about hypothetical cases. This paper defends the practice from Baz’s criticism.     

In defence of a perspectival semantics for ‘know’

Relativism offers an ingenious way of accommodating most of our intuitions about ‘know’: the truth-value of sentences containing ‘know’ is a function of parameters determined by a context of use and a context of assessment. This sort of double-indexing provides a more adequate account of the linguistic data involving ‘know’ than does standard contextualism. However, relativism has come under recent attack: it supposedly cannot account for the factivity of ‘know’, and it entails, counterintuitively, that circumstances of evaluation have features that cannot be shifted by any intensional operator. I offer replies to these objections on behalf of the relativist. I then argue that a version of contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds.     

Acquisition of a non-vocal ‘language’ by aphasic children

Alphasic children with serious language deficits were taught to communicate via a system of visual symbols originally devised by David Premack (1969) for use with chimpanzees. The subjects, lacking normal language, readily learned to express several language functions in this way (word, sentence, class-concept, question, negation). The linguistic status of ‘Premackese’ is questioned, and it is suggested that it is better viewed as a communication system. It may, therefore, be that the aphasic children lack some specifically linguistic ability.     

Defining ‘Dead’ in Terms of ‘Lives’ and ‘Dies’

What is it for a thing to be dead? Fred Feldman holds, correctly in my view, that a definition of ‘dead’ should leave open both (1) the possibility of things that go directly from being dead to being alive, and (2) the possibility of things that go directly from being alive to being neither alive nor dead, but merely in suspended animation. But if this is right, then surely such a definition should also leave open the possibility of things that go directly from being dead to being neither alive nor dead, but merely in suspended animation. I show that Feldman’s own definition of ‘dead’ (in terms of ‘lives’ and ‘dies’) does not leave this possibility open. I propose a new definition that does.     

‘More than a swineherd’

Abstract

This article suggests that alongside the strongly biblical defence of the royal supremacy, which was common in Elizabethan England, there can be found a distinctive line of argument; it stresses the roots of the magistrate’s ‘cura religionis’ in natural and human law, rather than simply divine law. This argument is often identified with Richard Hooker, who is taken to be innovative at this point. This study argues, however, that many of the same philosophical and theological points can be found in Peter Martyr Vermigli, who may have influenced Hooker. Elements of Vermigli’s Aristotelian political theory are traceable on a reading of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the application of these concepts in his biblical commentaries is noticeable.     

‘The experiencing of experience’: a Pragmatic reassessment of Rogerian Phenomenology

This paper draws on a study that asked twenty family users about their first session of family therapy. Analyses of the interviews indicated that families entered therapy with a pre-existent knowledge about therapy, which did not always chime with those of professionals and which positioned speakers in ways which governed their expectations and perceptions of therapy. This paper, therefore, is concerned with the acquisition and deployment of knowledge: specifically, the knowledge involved in being a user of family therapy. Three key discourses were identified through this analysis: medical, counselling and consumerist. We aim to illustrate how these discourses served as a resource for members of the family in constructing therapists, therapy and themselves in relation to their experience. The examination of the rhetorical, ideological and practical effects of the positions chosen and the objects constructed, in terms of how speakers wanted to present themselves, with what enhanced or diminished status as patients, shows users actively engaging with the power of therapeutic institutions. Users’ accounts suggest that while most speakers felt anxious about the prospect of therapy, there were clear differences in overall satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the experience according to the synchrony between speakers’ construction of the therapist, and themselves as client/patients. Those who seemed to take a traditional view of therapy within a medical discourse valued therapists who offered diagnosis and a cure; those who sought and experienced a counselling relationship with the therapist found their experience to be constructive in terms of enhanced self-knowledge. We believe that the research findings discussed in this paper have implications for family therapists in accommodating to parental and child positions to maximise the effectiveness of therapy and so minimise drop-out.     

Aristotelian Character Friendship as a ‘Method’ of Moral Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - The aim of this article is to make a case for Aristotelian friendship as a ‘method’ of moral education qua mutual character development. After...     

Experimental test of a planning intervention for forming a ‘higher order’ health-habit

Abstract

Objective: Habit-formation interventions may help individuals initiate and maintain behaviour change. This paper proposes and empirically tests the idea that it is possible for individuals to form ‘higher-order habits’, or behaviours that can be executed in more than one way, and still be habitual.

Design: Participants (N?=?82) were healthy adults randomly assigned to an action-and-coping-planning intervention for forming a ‘higher-order habit’ of filling half of their dinner plates with fruits and vegetables or a control condition. Key measures were collected at baseline and 1, 2 and 3 weeks post-baseline. Participants submitted 3 pictures per week of their dinner plates via snapchat/email.

Main Outcome Measures: Intrinsic motivation, habit strength and behavioural frequency for filling half their dinner plates with fruits and vegetables.

Results: Intervention participants reported significantly greater habit strength at each follow-up time point. Controls did show some degree of habit formation, despite not fully forming a habit. Behavioural automaticity increased despite consuming a variety of fruits/vegetables; results did not depend on participants’ intrinsic motivation to consume fruits/vegetables.

Conclusion: It may be possible for individuals to form ‘higher-order’ habits, which may be particularly important in health contexts, in which many target behaviours are complex and can be seen as higher-order.     

The Ways of ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ Human

We argue that developing integrative models of psychological phenomenon require dealing simultaneously with information-theoretic and meaning making processes at the individual and group levels. Attempts to fuse these across levels based on intentionality become difficult because phenomena at the lower level organisms are conceptualized employing concrete systems language, while in case of human and social systems both concrete and abstracted systems concepts are used. Intentionality also needs to be looked at as arising out of the processes of both being and becoming. Fusing of psycho-and socio-logics necessarily requires taking into consideration psychological processes and notions of intentionality and future within cultural contexts in a more holistic manner. It is also argued that both at personal and collective levels, human intentionality operate as bounded intentionality alternating between states of being and becoming.     

Weltanschauung as a priori: sociology of knowledge from a ‘romantic’ stance

In this paper I reconstruct the central concept of the young Lukács??s and Mannheim??s sociology of knowledge, as they present it in their writings in the early decades of the twentieth century. I argue that this concept, namely Weltanschauung, is used to refer to some conceptually unstructured totality of feelings, which they take to be a condition of possibility of intellectual production, and this understanding is contrasted to an alternative construal of the term that presents it as logically structured, quasi-theoretical background knowledge. This concept has Kantian reminiscences: it is a condition of possibility of intellectual production in general. The young Mannheim and Lukács rely on ??Weltanschauung?? so understood as a phenomenon mediating between the facts of society and individual intellectual production and reception: it is seen as being conditioned by sociological facts and therefore as a historical and sociological category through which, and therefore indirectly, society enters into intellectual production.     

Repetition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ responses with a different number of response alternatives in study and test trial

The reinforcement values of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ upon subsequent repetition of the response have been explained by the subject's independent memory for his previous response and its outcome ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Detailed analyses on the data of recent experiments suggest that an increasing number of response alternatives for each stimulus makes the recall of the response and the outcome ‘right’ no longer independent. Therefore it was predicted that for a given number of response alternatives at the Test Trial, the likelihood that a subject will repeat a response called ‘right’ at the study Trial will be a function of the number of response alternatives at the Study Trial. The results were confirmatory. The explanation of these results was based on there being a larger informational value in the outcome ‘right’ with an increasing number of response alternatives.