Poisoning the Well and Epistemic Privilege

In this paper, a challenge is outlined for Walton’s recent analysis of the fallacy of poisoning the well. An example of the fallacy in action during a debate on affirmative action on a South African campus is taken to raise the question of how Walton’s analysis squares with the idea that disadvantaged parties in debates about race may be “epistemically privileged”. It is asked when the background of a participant is relevant to a debate and it is proposed that a proper analysis of the poisoning the well will outline conditions under which making one participant’s background an issue in a debate would be legitimate and illegitimate. Expanding Walton’s analysis to deal with the challenge, it is concluded that calling into question a participant’s suitability to take part in a debate is never legitimate when it is based simply on a broad fact about their background (like their race or gender).     

Practice Effects in Bimanual Force Control: Does Age Matter?

ABSTRACT

The authors examined age-related differences in fine motor control during a bimanual coordination task. The task required the modulation of fingertip forces in the precision grip according to a visually presented sinusoidal antiphase pattern (force range 2–12 N; frequency 0.2 Hz). Thirty-four right-handed participants of three age groups (young, early middle-aged, and late middle-aged) practiced 30 trials of the task. Accuracy and variability of relative timing and relative forces at minima and maxima of the sine wave were analyzed for hand–hand and hand–stimulus couplings and compared between age groups. Analysis showed for relative timing and force weaker hand–hand than hand–stimulus coupling as well as lower accuracy and higher variability for minima as compared to maxima. Further, we analyzed practice effects by comparing the first and last trials and characterized the course of practice by detecting the transition of a steeper to a shallower acquisition slope for the different age groups. Late middle-aged participants demonstrated poorer performance than both other groups for all parameters. All groups improved performance to a similar amount. However, an age-related difference in acquisition strategy is visible. Late middle-aged participants seemed to have focused on improvement of force amplitude, whereas young and early middle-aged focused on timing.     

How Should We Feel About Death?

Abstract

This paper examines the implications of the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals for the correctness of emotions and attitudes towards death. I argue that the correctness of an attitude such as fear must be explained by appeal to its causal relations to certain preferences.     

THE DISPOSITIONALIST DEITY: HOW GOD CREATES LAWS AND WHY THEISTS SHOULD CARE

How does God govern the world? For many theists “laws of nature” play a vital role. But what are these laws, metaphysically speaking? I shall argue that laws of nature are not external to the objects they govern, but instead should be thought of as reducible to internal features of properties. Recent work in metaphysics and philosophy of science has revived a dispositionalist conception of nature, according to which nature is not passive, but active and dynamic. Disposition theorists see particulars as being internally powerful rather than being governed by external laws of nature, making external laws in effect ontologically otiose. I will argue that theists should prefer a dispositionalist ontology, since it leads them toward the theory of concurrentism in divine conservation, rather than occasionalism, and revives the distinction between internal and external teleology. God on this view does not govern the world through external laws of nature, but rather through internal aspects of powerful properties.     

Cognitive Load in Cross‐Modal Dual‐Task Processing

Unitary‐resource models posit a collective attentional resource responsible for sustaining information processing across all modalities. In contrast, multiple‐resource models presume a system of modality‐independent resources. The two models predict similar within‐modal performance, but seemingly contradictory cross‐modal performance. Discordant outcomes in past research are here hypothesized to result from inconsistent levels of cognitive load imposed within experimental tasks. Participants monitored two simultaneously presented alphabetic letter arrays consisting of the serial presentation of a target and multiple distractors. The dual‐task design required the identification of targets in within‐modal and cross‐modal trials. Cognitive load was manipulated by altering the presentation rate of the letters. While cross‐modal performance was generally superior and cognitive load was associated with decreasing performance, the cross‐modal advantage prominent at low levels of cognitive load was absent under high cognitive load. Therefore, neither resource model can alone account for dual‐task processing, suggesting the role of a hierarchical resource model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Radical Cure: Commentary on Paper by Eyal Rozmarin

This commentary on Eyal Rozmarin's paper “To Be Is to Betray” considers the place of history in the psychoanalytic encounter. Examining texts by Adorno and Ferenczi, the author cautions against “radical cures” that conflate political values with analytic ones.     

Integrating Mental Health Services into a General Hospital in Puerto Rico

The prevalence of mental health problems in the general population should be carefully considered. The literature has reported a high co-morbidity of medical and mental illnesses; therefore, collaborative efforts incorporating psychological services into medical settings are imperative. In Puerto Rico, this is not a regular practice in general hospitals. Improving access to mental health services is a challenge and requires the creation of new venues within the healthcare system. This paper describes the theoretical framework, mission, and objectives of the Clinical Psychology Services Program (CPSP) implemented at Damas Hospital in Puerto Rico. From December 2002 to December 2010, a total of 13,580 visits were made to inpatients in diverse clinical units of the hospital; 61 % of all inpatients evaluated met the criteria for at least one mental health disorder based on the DSM-IV-TR. The CPSP’s outcomes highlight the acceptance and relevance of incorporating mental health services and clinical psychologists into general hospitals.     

Greater visual averaging of face identity for own-gender faces

Recent evidence suggests that observers can rapidly form an average representation based on a set of simultaneously presented faces. Here, we replicate this finding and show that the tendency to process sets of faces in terms of an average representation is greater for own-gender faces. Male and female participants viewed sets of four male or female faces before deciding whether or not a subsequently presented single test face had been present in the set. Incorrect endorsement that it was one of the set members was greater when the test face was a morphed average of the four faces than when it was an actual set member, and this effect was strongest when the gender of the faces was the same as the observer’s. The finding that observers were more likely to incorrectly endorse own-gender (vs. other-gender) faces forms an exception to the often reported own-gender advantage in face recognition.     

Explaining Public Attitudes towards the Integration of Muslims in British Society: The ‘Solidarity of the Religious’?

There has been growing concern in recent years about the integration of Muslims and the emergence of ‘Islamophobia’ in Britain. But there has been a lack of research into the sources of public opinion towards Muslims in British society. This article contributes to emerging research in this area by using a nationally representative survey to examine public opinion towards Muslims’ efforts to integrate into British society. It examines the relative impact of social, religious, and attitudinal variables. Religious affiliation has no impact, while greater religious salience and pro-religion attitudes on religious–secular policy issues are related to positive views of Muslims’ efforts to integrate. Women and the university-educated are more positive in their assessments. A traditionalist view of Christianity, socially authoritarian beliefs, and anti-immigrant bias are related to negative views of Muslims’ efforts to integrate. Overall, the findings lend support to the ‘solidarity of the religious’ perspective and should encourage further investigation into attitudes towards religious groups in Britain.