Emotion and underlying concerns during couples' conflict: An investigation of within‐person change

This study investigated how emotion changes within persons across different episodes of romantic relationship conflict. Presumably, changes in different types of emotion are linked to changes in the types of underlying adaptive concerns people have during conflict, which in turn are linked to changes in the types of emotion that one's partner is perceived to express. Over the span of 8 weeks, 105 college students in romantic relationships completed between 2 and 5 online assessments of a recent relationship conflict. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to distinguish within‐person effects from between‐person effects. Results confirmed expected differences between types of emotion and types of underlying concern, indicated that most effects occur at the within‐person level, and identified mediating pathways.     

Constructivism about Practical Reasons1

Philosophers commonly wonder what a constructivist theory as applied to practical reasons might look like. For the methods or procedures of reasoning familiar from moral constructivism do not clearly apply generally, to all practical reasons. The paper argues that procedural specification is not necessary, so long as our aims are not first‐order but explanatory. We can seek to explain how there could be facts of the matter about reasons for action without saying what reasons we have. Explanatory constructivism must assume constructive “norms of practical reasoning” which yield particular truths without assuming them. But philosophers often mistakenly assume that only “formal” norms of reasoning could fulfill this role. The paper describes a further possibility: norms of reasoning can be “situation‐specific” and yet retain truth‐independent authority. Though we might doubt whether such norms can be independently defended, we should not doubt the possibility or coherence of constructivism about practical reasons.     

Aesthetic Testimony: What Can We Learn from Others about Beauty and Art?1

The thesis that aesthetic testimony cannot provide aesthetic justification or knowledge is widely accepted–even by realists about aesthetic properties and values. This Kantian position is mistaken. Some testimony about beauty and artistic value can provide a degree of aesthetic justification and, perhaps, even knowledge. That is, there are cases in which one can be justified in making an aesthetic judgment purely on the basis of someone else's testimony. But widespread aesthetic unreliability creates a problem for much aesthetic testimony. Hence, most testimony about art does not have much epistemic value. The situation is somewhat different with respect to aesthetic testimony about nature, proofs, and theories. And yet he realizes clearly that other people's approval in no way provides him with a valid proof by which to judge beauty; even though others may perhaps see and observe for him, and even though what many have seen the same way may serve him, who believes he saw it differently, as a sufficient basis of proof for a theoretical and hence logical judgment, yet the fact that others have liked something can never serve him as a basis for an aesthetic judgment. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment     

Damaris Cudworth Masham: A Seventeenth Century Feminist Philosopher

The daughter of Ralph Cudworth, and friend of John Locke, Damaris Masham was also a philosopher in her own right. She published two, philosophical books, A Discourse Concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts In Reference to a Virtuous and Christian Life. Her primary purpose was to refute John Norris’ Malebranchian doctrine that we ought to love only God because only God can give us pleasure, and his criticism of Locke. In addition, she argues for greater educational opportunities for women, and an end to the double standard in sexual morality. Recent feminist literature has suggested that women and men may take different ethical and epistemological stands based on differences between the ‘female experience’, and the ‘male experience’. While leaving aside questions pertaining to the accuracy of these suggestions, this paper discusses some aspects of Mash’ am's thought which might be considered representative of the ‘female experience.’