Counterfactual and prefactual conditionals.

We consider reasoning about prefactual possibilities in the future, for example, "if I were to win the lottery next year I would buy a yacht" and counterfactual possibilities, for example, "if I had won the lottery last year, I would have bought a yacht." People may reason about indicative conditionals, for example, "if I won the lottery I bought a yacht" by keeping in mind a few true possibilities, for example, "I won the lottery and I bought a yacht." They understand counterfactuals by keeping in mind two possibilities, the conjecture, "I won the lottery and I bought a yacht" and the presupposed facts, "I did not win the lottery and I did not buy a yacht." We report the results of three experiments on prefactuals that examine what people judge them to imply, the possibilities they judge to be consistent with them, and the inferences they judge to follow from them. The results show that reasoners keep a single possibility in mind to understand a prefactual.     

孔颖达的易学诠释学

孔颖达编撰的《周易正义》是唐代易学诠释学的代表作。孔疏从王弼易学基本原则出发 ,吸纳了汉易象数学方法 ,以其取象与取义相结合的鲜明特色 ,对《周易》的体例、八卦和六十四卦的形成 ,对《周易》所蕴涵的原理 ,作出了自己独特的理解与解释。孔颖达的易学诠释学深刻影响了唐宋时期易学和哲学的发展 ,成为汉易向宋易过渡的桥梁。     

Porn Revisited

In this paper I will revisit the debate over pornography by doing three things: (a) I will suggest a more sophisticated, two-dimensional set of distinctions between positons in the debate; (b) I will then go on to attack both libertarians and the group I call "repressive feminists"; and (c) I will conclude by suggesting that by means of Hume's theory of sympathy we could support a limited form of censorship to bring women more fully into our moral and political community. I turn first to the labors of definition.     

Children's Resilience as Assets for Safe Schools

In this article I argue that employing positive psychology conceptions in research allows for a continuum of findings for educational psychology. I illustrate my contention by means of a participatory action research (PAR) survey-based case study in which methodological decisions were informed by an asset-focused resilience conceptual framework. First I provide a rationale, as well as contextual information for the article. Then I explicate asset-focused resilience as a conceptual framework. Subsequently, I present the methodological background of the PAR survey-based case study, after which I align the scope of the findings to the contention of my article. I conclude that the choice of a positive psychology theoretical stance enriched the scope of the findings.     

Ryle on knowing how: Some clarifications and corrections

I argue for an account of know‐how as a capacity for practical judgment—a view I derive from Gilbert Ryle. I begin by offering an interpretation of Ryle and by correcting a number of widespread misconceptions about his views in the current debate. I then identify some problems with Ryle's account and finally present my own view which, I argue, retains Ryle's insights while avoiding his mistakes.     

My Perspective on Psychotherapy Integration: An Outsider Who's Out of It

My rejoinder is a response to two commentaries on my SEPI keynote in 1997: commentaries written by Goldfried and Cullari. Instead of grappling with the ideas I presented, both respondents were distracted by my satirical beginning. In my talk I proposed a method for studying psychotherapy integration. I am not pessimistic about the potential for integration, nor am I pessimistic about psychotherapy. But I am a skeptic, and science is driven—and indeed advance—by skepticism. In fact, psychotherapy integration requires that its advocates be skeptics. I still do not know what psychotherapy integration is, and remain confused. I can only conclude that I am not only an outsider, but out of it.     

General-purpose content

In this paper, I consider the objection, raised by Radu Bogdan, that a teleological theory of content is unable to ascribe content to a general-purpose, doxastic system. I begin by giving some attention to the notion of general-purpose representation, and suggest that this notion can best be understood as what I term "interest-independent" representation. I then outline Bogdan's objection in what I take to be its simplest form. I attempt to counter the objection by explaining how a teleologist might ascribe content in a particular case - the case of a perceptual judgement whose content is learned. I reject the idea that the teleologist can appeal to the way in which the subject has used the judgement, or its constituent concepts, in the past, on the grounds that it is possible for the subject to produce judgements and concepts that never help her to satisfy any of her interests. Instead, my account depends on the idea that the process of learning is regulated by a mechanism whose function is to produce a harmony between the information carried by perceptual judgements and the way in which they are used in inference.     

FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATIONS AND NATURAL NORMS

In this paper, I try to develop an account of functions which might be of use to a biologist engaged in classifying and explaining natural phenomena. The most pressing difficulty facing such an account is the need to reconcile the normativity of function statements with their explanatory force. I consider two familiar accounts of function statements, offered by Andrew Woodfield (an ‘Actual Capacity Theorist’) and Larry Wright (a ‘Historical Theorist’). I examine both accounts in search of the strongest possible formulation of each type of theory. I fail to find a formulation of the ACT which is completely immune from counterexamples, but I do find a satisfactory formulation of the HT. In particular, I argue that the HT should incorporate a point central to the ACT that functions involve a means/end relationship between two devices. I then consider functional explanations: I argue that an ACT which holds that function statements are intrinsically explanatory cannot offer a satisfactory account. The account offered by Woodfield, who rejects this assumption, is adequate, though less attractive than the account suggested by the HT. I conclude by considering how the HT can account for functional norms.     

Child Impulsiveness—Inattention, Early Peer Experiences, and the Development of Early Onset Conduct Problems

The conjoint influence of child impulsiveness-inattention (I/I) and peer relationships on growth trajectories of conduct problems was assessed in a community sample of 267 boys and girls. I/I reliably predicted teacher- and parent-reported conduct problems at kindergarten entry and growth in those problems over the next 2 years for boys and girls. The relation of boys' I/I to conduct problems was mediated, in part, by peer rejection and involvement in coercive exchanges with peers. The relation of girls' I/I to conduct problems was less clearly mediated by peer processes, but peer difficulties had additive effects. The impact of peer relationships on trajectories of conduct problems was apparent to parents as well as to teachers. Although I/I increments risk for early and persisting conduct problems in concert with poor peer relationships, it does so in complex and gender-specific ways.     

A personal reaction to freud's paper ‘on beginning the treatment’

Abstract

Sometimes, when reading Freud, I imagine I hear the sound of far-off warning bells tolling their alarm somewhere deep in my mind. I feel as if I am experiencing a great sense of danger, as if I am a child being led by the hand into a confusing, directionless, murky wood by an adult who appears to know the way, yet whom I do not quite trust to keep hold of my hand. It is as if, although I read the decrepit, over-grown sign at the edge as we advanced under the eaves: proceed with caution: at risk of losing touch with reality, I was hurried quickly past by the firm grip of the Omnipotent Adult who plunged straight in, and whose knowledge I do not altogether credit. So, for me, reading some of Freud's papers has a distinctly nightmarish quality, an atmosphere of being slightly out-of-control, an unnerving feeling of being in severe danger of being sucked in.     

Religion without Metaphysics1

In this paper I will argue for a conception of religion that does not presuppose metaphysics in the traditional sense of the word. In a trivial sense we always have ideas of what is given and are all realists, living by our realist intuitions. But the philosophically crucial question is what conclusions can be reasonably drawn from this. In Part I, I will argue against metaphysical realism in general. In Part II, I will argue against its materialist challenge by showing in what sense it too can be conceived of as an example of metaphysical realism. In Part III, I will show why there is no point in defending or in arguing against religion en bloc. Finally in Part IV, I will argue for a conception of religion without metaphysics in the traditional sense by taking account of the existential function religion actually has in human life.     

What Could It Mean to Say That Today's Stand-Up Audiences Are Too Sensitive?

Contemporary comedy audiences are accused by some comedians of being too morally sensitive to appreciate humor. To get closer to an answer, I will first briefly present the argument over audience sensitivity as found in the nonphilosophical literature. Second, I then turn to the philosophical literature and begin from the idea that “funny” is a response-dependent property. I present a criticism of this response-dependence account of “funny” based in the claim that funniness is not determined by what normal audiences actually laugh at, but by what merits laughter. Third, I argue that excessive or deficient moral sensitivity distorts audience receptivity to humor. Fourth, I turn to candidates for ideally sensitive audiences. I conclude by returning to the particular cases of supposed oversensitivity or undersensitivity to jokes to see how we might judge them.     

Displaced Feeling: A (Partial) Phenomenological Study

This is a partial phenomenological study of a phenomenon that I call “displaced feeling”, which is best illustrated through a concrete example. I am overcome by a strong desire to stop writing. For one reason or another, I reject the possibility of pursuing this desire. Instead of giving up the desire altogether, however, I may “speak to myself” as follows: “I feel like having a coffee” and, the chatter goes on in the background “of course to make coffee means to stop writing”. I endorse the desire to get a cup of coffee. But the action through which I pursue this desire is coloured not by the feeling that anticipates the value associated with drinking coffee but by a feeling that anticipates the value associated with stopping writing. The latter feeling has displaced the former: I am in a state of displaced feeling. Here, I will elucidate two invariant structures of displaced feeling. First, I will show that displaced feeling involves the realisation of an endorsed state of affairs, the bringing about of a rejected state of affairs, and the belief that the former will determine the latter. Next, I will show that the endorsed state of affairs appears prominently as the end of an intention (or projection), that the rejected state of affairs appears inconspicuously in the horizon of the same intention, and that the belief appears twice: (1) as a motive for this intention and (2) as the “glue” that keeps its prominent and inconspicuous zones together.     

On the Concept of a Sense

Keeley has recently argued that the philosophical issue of how to analyse the concept of a sense can usefully be addressed by considering how scientists, and more specifically neuroethologists, classify the senses. After briefly outlining his proposal, which is based on the application of an ordered set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for modality differentiation, I argue, by way of two complementary counterexamples, that it fails to account fully for the way the senses are in fact individuated in neuroethology and other relevant sciences. I suggest substantial modifications to Keeley’s account which would both solve the problem cases and make better sense of the actual classifications made by scientists. I conclude by noting some limits to the way of classifying the senses that I suggest. I conclude by suggesting that the problem I identify in Keeley’s account has arisen from a confusion that sometimes arises in the philosophical literature between how we individuate the senses and what constitutes a sense.     

Christian Ethics,Religious Ethics,and Secular Ethics: A Contemporary Reappraisal

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular-religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise.     

THE PERSONAL IS PHILOSOPHICAL IS POLITICAL: A PHILOSOPHER AND MOTHER OF A COGNITIVELY DISABLED PERSON SENDS NOTES FROM THE BATTLEFIELD

Abstract: Having encountered landmines in offering a critique of philosophy based on my experience as the mother of a cognitively disabled daughter, I ask, "Should I continue?" I defend the idea that pursuing this project is of a piece with the invisible care labor that is done by people with disabilities and their families. The value of attempting to influence philosophical conceptions of cognitive disability by virtue of this experience is justified by an inextricable relationship between the personal, the political, and the philosophical. If one grants that the "special relationship" between mother and child requires moral recognition, then I need first to make vivid the case that this relationship in the case of a child who lacks some "normal capacities" is indistinguishable from any mother-child relationship. If this is so, then I believe I can make a case that has as its conclusion that the moral personhood of even the severely cognitively disabled must be granted. Moreover, such recognition, I argue, necessitates the recognition of others who bear no special relationships to the child.     

Pictorial experience: not so special after all

The central thesis (CT) that this paper upholds is that a picture depicts an object by generating in those who view the picture a visual experience of that object. I begin by presenting a brief sketch of intentionalism, the theory of perception in terms of which I propose to account for pictorial experience. I then discuss Richard Wollheim’s twofoldness thesis and explain why it should be rejected. Next, I show that the socalled unique phenomenology of pictorial experience is simply an instance of perceptual indeterminacy. Lastly, I discuss a phenomenon associated with pictures that could be considered a problem for CT, and account for it by invoking the thesis that visual experience is cognitively penetrable.     

Faint-hearted Anti-realism and Knowability

It is often claimed that anti-realists are compelled to reject the inference of the knowability paradox, that there are no unknown truths. I call those anti-realists who feel so compelled ‘faint-hearted’, and argue in turn that anti-realists should affirm this inference, if it is to be consistent. A major part of my strategy in defending anti-realism is to formulate an anti-realist definition of truth according to which a statement is true only if it is verified by someone, at some time. I also liberalize what is meant by a verification to allow for indirect forms of verification. From this vantage point, I examine a key objection to anti-realism, that it is committed to the necessary existence of minds, and reject a response to this problem set forth by Michael Hand. In turn I provide a more successful anti-realist response to the necessary minds problem that incorporates what I call an ‘agential’ view of verification. I conclude by considering what intellectual cost there is to being an anti-realist in the sense I am advocating.     

Gender,Risk, and Religiousness: Can Power Control Provide the Theory?

Collett and Lizardo (2009) offer a model of gender differences that revisits and expands earlier research, in particular nascent ideas used by Miller and Hoffmann (1995) that were borrowed, in part, from a power-control theory of delinquency and crime. However, I am skeptical of their attempt to apply power-control theory as a general explanation of gender differences in religiousness. In this response piece, I first set the context by describing how Alan Miller and I initially approached our risk and religion work. I then point out where I think the research stream went awry and why recent studies of risk preferences and religion have failed to provide convincing evidence one way or the other. Finally, I offer an appraisal of Collett and Lizardo's work, with particular attention to why adopting power-control theory should be viewed with caution. I conclude with suggestions for future research on gender and religiousness.