Religion and hermeneutic philosophy

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults' graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors

Participants (aged 5-6 yrs, 9-10 yrs and adults) rated (using a five-point scale) grammatical (intransitive) and overgeneralized (transitive causative)(1) uses of a high frequency, low frequency and novel intransitive verb from each of three semantic classes [Pinker, S. (1989a). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]: "directed motion" (fall, tumble), "going out of existence" (disappear, vanish) and "semivoluntary expression of emotion" (laugh, giggle). In support of Pinker's semantic verb class hypothesis, participants' preference for grammatical over overgeneralized uses of novel (and English) verbs increased between 5-6 yrs and 9-10 yrs, and was greatest for the latter class, which is associated with the lowest degree of direct external causation (the prototypical meaning of the transitive causative construction). In support of Braine and Brooks's [Braine, M.D.S., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument strucure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 352-376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum] entrenchment hypothesis, all participants showed the greatest preference for grammatical over ungrammatical uses of high frequency verbs, with this preference smaller for low frequency verbs, and smaller again for novel verbs. We conclude that both the formation of semantic verb classes and entrenchment play a role in children's retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors.     

Discussions of Diversity in a Classroom: A Phenomenological Study of Students in an MFT Training Program

Discussions about diversity, particularly race, gender, religion and spirituality, and sexual orientation, in marriage and family therapy courses can generate emotional responses in students and professors that vary from shame to anger. These discussions are necessary to help students understand diverse families as well as how one’s biases can affect his/her clinical work. Our qualitative study consisted of phenomenological interviews, which focused on discussions of diversity by six students from a marriage and family therapy program. Findings revealed that the ability of students to be aware of and discuss their reactions to these discussions is complex and influenced by their families of origin, their perceptions of other students, their views of the professor, and their race. Teaching implications are discussed in light of these findings.     

Qualitative Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Who is in the Interview?

Qualitative interviews are a rich means of gathering information from families. The qualitative interviewer has a choice of interviewing individual family members, multiple family members at the same time, or a combination. The configuration of interviewees is a choice guided by the epistemology of the researcher, research aims, and questions. This article reviews the literature on interviewing different configurations of family members. A content analysis was conducted on articles in the marriage and family therapy literature from 1990 to 2005. Over half of the articles were conducted with individual family members separate from their families. This finding is discussed in the context of the decision regarding whom to interview.     

Social network members' responses to friends' breakup false alarms

Social networks influence romantic relationships through friends' support or lack of support of the union. However, the consequences of friends repeatedly telling other friends their relationship was going to end but failing to actually terminate the relationship are unclear. Guided by the false alarm effect (FAE), and data from both student (N = 273) and noncollege (N = 226) samples, it was found that breakup false alarms were associated with increases in both positive and negative responses. In addition, when participants were friends with both partners, breakup false alarms were associated with “feeling caught” between the friends. Findings generally support the FAE and paint a complex picture of how social network members react to their close friends' tumultuous relationships.     

Dissociable learning processes,associative theory,and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565–1584 2018) present a “testimonial” review of dissociable learning processes...     

Wherein lies the debate? Concerning whether God is a person

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - Within contemporary philosophy of religion there are three main ways in which God is conceptualised in relation to personhood: The first two of...     

Mitigation system threat partially mediates the effects of right‐wing ideologies on climate change beliefs

Research consistently shows that right‐wing ideological adherents are more likely to deny climate change. However, less is known about how right‐wing ideological subtypes are uniquely related to climate change denial, as well as what explains these relationships. This study examines whether threat to the socioeconomic system in the form of climate change mitigation policies, referred to as Climate Change Mitigation Threat (CCMT), mediates the relationships between Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) subtypes and four forms of climate change denial (existence denial, human cause denial, impact denial and climate science denial). U.S. participants (N = 334; M_age = 34.70, SD = 5.98) were recruited via Amazon MTurk. When shared variance in the predictors was accounted for, we found that: (a) Conventionalism (RWA‐C) positively predicted all forms of climate change denial; (b) Dominance (SDO‐D) positively predicted existence denial; (c) Anti‐Egalitarianism (SDO‐E) positively predicted both human cause and impact denial; and (d) Aggression (RWA‐A) negatively predicted existence denial. All significant direct relationships were partially mediated by CCMT, except for the direct paths between SDO‐D and existence denial, and RWA‐A and existence denial. These findings suggest that right‐wing adherents who conform to societal norms and prefer unequal social systems may deny climate change partly due to a perception that mitigation strategies proposed to combat climate change threaten the existing socioeconomic system.     

A paradox for some theories of welfare

Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly, take pleasure in their lives going badly, or believe that their lives are going badly. As a result, some popular theories of welfare are paradoxical. I show that no attempt to defend those theories from the paradox fully succeeds.