Questions,Presuppositions and Fallacies

In this paper I focus on the fallacy known as Complex Question or Many Questions. After a brief introduction, in Sect. 2 I highlight its pragmatic dimension, and in Sect. 3 its dialectical dimension. In Sect. 4 I present two accounts of this fallacy developed in argumentation theory, Douglas Walton’s and the Pragma-Dialectics’, which have resources to capture both its pragmatic and its dialectical nature. However, these accounts are unsatisfactory for various reasons. In Sect. 5 I focus on the pragmatic dimension of the fallacy and I suggest amendments to the accounts mentioned drawing on the study of the phenomenon of presupposition in theoretical pragmatics. I argue that the central notion in the definition of the fallacy is that of an informative presupposition. In Sect. 6 I focus on the dialectical dimension of the fallacy. This dimension needs to be explicitly acknowledged in the definition of the fallacy in order to distinguish it from a different, non-dialectical, fallacious argumentative move involving presuppositions.

     

Tailoring Gratitude Interventions. How and for Whom Do They Work? The Potential Mediating Role of Reward Processing and the Moderating Role of Childhood Adversity and Trait Gratitude

Outcomes of gratitude interventions are encouraging, but inconsistent across studies. In addition, both mechanisms of change and effect modifiers for these interventions are largely unknown. Recent data point toward potential candidates and suggest reward processing may be a promising mechanism underlying these interventions, while childhood adversity (CA) and trait gratitude may impact on them. However, existing research aimed at investigating these hypotheses is scarce. Building on these, we examined the effectiveness of a gratitude intervention for decreasing depressive symptoms and negative affect and increasing positive affect. We also investigated changes in reward processing following intervention and explored differences in adherence and drop-out between groups. Finally, we investigated the moderating role of CA and trait gratitude.

Participants (N=237, ages between 18–56) were randomly allocated to a gratitude or active control condition (14 days). Following intervention, findings indicated a significant decrease in depressive symptoms and negative affect in both conditions. While positive affect remained stable, a significant time effect emerged for reward processing. CA severity, but not multiplicity, moderated the effectiveness of the intervention, adherence and drop-out. Trait gratitude moderated the effectiveness of the gratitude intervention only on depressive symptoms.

Gratitude interventions may not be the best fit for everyone. Thus, we recommend tailoring interventions, especially in individuals reporting a history of severe CA.

     

How Mathematical Concepts Get Their Bodies

When the traditional distinction between a mathematical concept and a mathematical intuition is tested against examples taken from the real history of mathematics one can observe the following interesting phenomena. First, there are multiple examples where concepts and intuitions do not well fit together; some of these examples can be described as “poorly conceptualised intuitions” while some others can be described as “poorly intuited concepts”. Second, the historical development of mathematics involves two kinds of corresponding processes: poorly conceptualised intuitions are further conceptualised while poorly intuited concepts are further intuited. In this paper I study this latter process in mathematics during the twentieth century and, more specifically, show the role of set theory and category theory in this process. I use this material for defending the following claims: (1) mathematical intuitions are subject to historical development just like mathematical concepts; (2) mathematical intuitions continue to play their traditional role in today's mathematics and will plausibly do so in the foreseeable future. This second claim implies that the popular view, according to which modern mathematical concepts, unlike their more traditional predecessors, cannot be directly intuited, is not justified.     

Generic statements require little evidence for acceptance but have powerful implications

Generic statements (e.g., "Birds lay eggs") express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as "Lorches have purple feathers" as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics' meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse.     

Unity,ontology, and the divine mind

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - In his landmark book on philosophical theology, Saving God: Religion After Idolatry, Mark Johnston develops a panentheistic metaphysic of the...     

Reasons Explanations and Pure Agency

We focus on the recent non-causal theory of reasons explanationsof free action proffered by a proponent of the agency theory, Timothy O'Connor. We argue that the conditions O'Connor offersare neither necessary nor sufficient for a person to act for a reason. Finally, we note that the role O'Connor assigns toreasons in the etiology of actions results in further conceptual difficulties for agent-causalism.     

On Extracting Variable Herbrand Disjunctions

Studia Logica - Some quantitative results obtained by proof mining take the form of Herbrand disjunctions that may depend on additional parameters. We attempt to elucidate this fact through an...