What Peeping Tom Did Wrong

Voyeurism seems creepy. This paper considers whether these feelings are well-founded. It identifies a variety of ethically troubling features, including harmful consequences, deceit, and the violation of various religious, legal, and conventional norms. Voyeurism is something of a moral misdemeanor that seems worrisome when associated with these other failings. However, because voyeurism remains troubling even in the absence of harm or deceit, we must pay special attention to the ways complex social conventions can be used to show disrespect for others. The discussion centers on the famous case of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, but much of the analysis applies to voyeurism more generally.     

Contextual connections to puns in Tom Swifties

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness. The authors suggest that this outcome could be generalized to other forms of word play.     

论汤姆·雷根的固有价值假定

汤姆·雷根(Tom Regan)的<动物权利辩护>(The Case for Animal Rights)是探讨动物权利问题的当代经典.汤姆·雷根为动物道德权利所作的辩护高度依赖于他的固有价值假定,即动物和人类一样具有平等的、不可通约的固有价值假定,这个假定尽管并不像一些批评者所认为的那样空洞无力,因此无法为动物的权利提供支持,但是汤姆·雷根应对其他批评的方式为这个假定带来了困难,导致他的立场根基不稳.     

Contextual Connections to Puns in Tom Swifties

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness. The authors suggest that this outcome could be generalized to other forms of word play.     

Introduction to Diving Beneath the Waves: In Memory of Tom Ravenette

Recent explorations of the relationship between narrative and self, particularly those tied to social constructionism, have served as a valuable corrective to the still prevalent tendency in psychology to divorce the self from its social surround. Yet certain of these explorations, by privileging the social over the individual, have led to a vision of selfhood that is problematic in its own right. Specifically, it is argued that, even though the "tools" employed in the construction of selfhood are social in nature, the configurational acts through which this construction occurs are better conceived in poetic terms, as imaginative labor seeking to give form and meaning to experience. In considering the poetic construction of selfhood, this article attempts to articulate further the relationship between narrative and self, the cultural dimension of personal experience, and the importance of the idea of narrative for expanding the scope of psychological knowledge.     

The Inaugural Address: Kantian Modality: Tom Baldwin

Kant's claim that modality is a 'category' provides an approach to modality to be contrasted with Lewis's reductive analysis. Lewis's position is unsatisfactory, since it depends on an inherently modal conception of a world. This suggests that modality is 'primitive'; and the Kantian position is a prima facie plausible position of this kind, which is filled out by considering the relationship between modality and inference. This provides a context for comparing the Kantian position with Wright's non-cognitivist 'conventionalism'. Wright's position is vulnerable to the type of argument used against ethical non-cognitivism, and the Kantian position is further confirmed by Blackburn's acknowledgment that modality is 'antinaturalistic to its core'. The position is further elaborated to show that it can accommodate the famous Kripkean categories of the empirically necessary and the contingent a priori , and finally defended against the criticisms used by Quine against Carnap.