AGENCY AND AWARENESS

I focus on the idea that if, as a result of lacking any conscious goal related to X‐ing and any conscious anticipation or awareness of X‐ing, one could sincerely reply to the question ‘Why are you X‐ing?’ with ‘I didn't realize I was doing that,’ then one's X‐ing is not intentional. My interest is in the idea interpreted as philosophically substantial (rather than merely stipulative) and as linked to the familiar view that there is a major difference, relative to the exercise of agential control, between acting on a conscious goal (even one the agent is not actively thinking about) and acting on a non‐conscious goal (about which the sincerely ‘clueless’ response ‘I didn't realize I was doing that’ could be provided). After raising some doubts about the target idea, I consider the two most promising lines of defence. I argue that neither is convincing, and that we should reject the suggestion that the idea is properly accepted as a matter of common sense. Even absent any conscious goal related to X‐ing and any conscious anticipation or awareness of X‐ing, there is room for counting X‐ing as intentional if X‐ing is, or is appropriately related to, a non‐conscious goal.     

Might Intentions be the Only Source of Practical Imperatives?

I focus on the broadly instrumentalist view that all genuine practical imperatives are hypothetical imperatives and all genuine practical deliberation is deliberation from existing motivations. After indicating why I see instrumentalism as highly plausible, I argue that the most popular version of instrumentalism, according to which genuine practical imperatives can take desires as their starting point, is problematic. I then provide a limited defense of what I see as a more radical but also more compelling version of instrumentalism. According to the position I defend, genuine practical deliberation and genuine practical imperatives take as their starting point the agent's intentions and only the agent's intentions.Given my loose usage, the Humean position Bernard Williams defends in his seminal article “Internal and External Reasons” (1981) counts as a version of instrumentalism about practical reason, since it incorporates the idea that every genuine practical imperative takes as its starting point some existing motivation(s) of the agent. It deviates from strict instrumentalism in that it leaves room for specificationist reasoning (reasoning aimed at moving from general ends to specific ends) in addition to means-end reasoning. For example, it leaves room for practical reasoning that is focused on “finding constitutive solutions, such as deciding what would make for an entertaining evening, granted that one wants entertainment” or on “thinking how the satisfaction of elements in [one's subjective motivational set] can be combined, e.g. by time-ordering” (Williams, 1981, p. 104).     

The Newxin puzzle

A variety of thought experiments suggest that, if the standard picture of practical rationality is correct, then practical rationality is sometimes an obstacle to practical success. For some, this in turn suggests that there is something wrong with the standard picture. In particular, it has been argued that we should revise the standard picture so that practical rationality and practical success emerge as more closely connected than the current picture allows. In this paper, I construct a choice situation—which I refer to as the Newxin puzzle—and discuss its implications in relation to the revisionist approach just described. Using the Newxin puzzle, I argue that the approach leads to a more radically revisionist picture of practical rationality than current debate suggests.

Book Reviews

The Economics of Science: Methodology and Epistemology as if Economics Really Mattered. James R. Wible, 1998. London and New York, Routledge. xviii + 266 pp., US$75.00, £45.00. ISBN 0–415–17257–8

The Dawning of Gauge Theory. Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh, 1997. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. ix + 249 pp., $US 69.50 (hardback), $US 29.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–691–02978–4 (hardback), 0–691–02977–6 (paperback)

Mathematics as a Science of Patterns. Michael D. Resnik, 1997. Oxford, Clarendon Press. ISBN 0–19–823608–5

Proof Theory and Automated Deduction. Jean Goubault‐Larrecq & Ian Mackie, 1997. Dordrecht, Kluwer. xv+ 425 pp., $US 155, £96. ISBN 0–7923–4593–2 (hardback)     

INCOMMENSURABLE ALTERNATIVES AND RATIONAL CHOICE

I consider the implications of incommensurability for the assumption, in rational choice theory, that a rational agent's preferences are complete. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the completeness assumption and the existence of incommensurability are compatible. Indeed, reflection on incommensurability suggests that one's preferences should be complete over even the incommensurable alternatives one faces.     

Better than

It is commonly held that rational preferences must be acyclic. There have, however, been cases that have been put forward as counterexamples to this view. This paper focuses on the following question: If the counterexamples are compelling and rational preferences can be cyclic, what should we conclude about the presumed acyclicity of the “better than” relation? Building on some revisionary suggestions concerning acyclicity and betterness, I make a case for hanging on to the presumption that “better than” is acyclic even if “is rationally preferred to” is not. As I explain, the divergence my view makes room for does not threaten to make “better than” judgments less relevant to choice than judgments about rational preference. To the contrary, it makes them more relevant. Toward the end of the paper, I extend my results to the relation “is morally better than” in light of the possibility that there might be moral preferability cycles.

     

Affecting Factors in Second Language Learning

The present study investigated the influence of sex, handedness, level in second langua ge (L2) and Faculty choice on the performance of phonological, syntactical and semantic tasks in L2. Level in L2 and sex were the most affecting factors. Subjects who achieved higher scores on L2 tasks had strong second language aptitude skills since they were those who had obtained a professional degree in the second language. Females performed better than males in syntax and semantics which is explained by the general female superiority on verbal tasks based on differences in hemispheric specialization for language functions between the sexes. Handedness and Faculty choice on the part of the participants had an impact on our results but only when combined with other factors.     

The good,the bad,and the trivial

Dreadful and dreaded outcomes are sometimes brought about via the accumulation of individually trivial effects. Think about inching toward terrible health or toward an environmental disaster. In some such cases, the outcome is seen as unacceptable but is still gradually realized via an extended sequence of moves each of which is trivial in terms of its impact on the health or environment of those involved. Cases of this sort are not only practically challenging, they are theoretically challenging as well. For, they raise puzzling complications concerning the assessment of conduct. In particular, given cases of this sort, we seem forced to conclude that, sometimes, each current doing in an extended sequence of moves can be correctly assessed as permissible (relative to a certain set of concerns) even though the sequence foreseeably leads to an outcome that is unacceptable (relative to that same set of concerns) and even though acceptable outcomes are available. And this seems paradoxical. I argue that this (apparent) puzzle glosses over complications associated with action individuation and units of agency. Reflection on these complications makes it clear that in cases of the sort that have given rise to the puzzle, there is an accurate way of seeing what is being done at various particular moments that clearly brings out the tight connection between a current doing and non-trivial damage that is to be expected (and is indeed bound to occur if the doing is completed without a hitch).     

Mothers and Children as Informants of Bullying Victimization: Results from an Epidemiological Cohort of Children

Stressful events early in life can affect children’s mental health problems. Collecting valid and reliable information about children’s bad experiences is important for research and clinical purposes. This study aimed to (1) investigate whether mothers and children provide valid reports of bullying victimization, (2) examine the inter-rater reliability between the two informants, (3) test the predictive validity of their reports with children’s emotional and behavioral problems and (4) compare the genetic and environmental etiology of bullying victimization as reported by mothers and children. We assessed bullying victimization in the Environmental-Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally-representative sample of 1,116 families with twins. We collected reports from mothers and children during private interviews, including detailed narratives. Findings showed that we can rely on mothers and children as informants of bullying victimization: both informants provided information which adhered to the definition of bullying as involving repeated hurtful actions between peers in the presence of a power imbalance. Although mothers and children modestly agreed with each other about who was bullied during primary and secondary school, reports of bullying victimization from both informants were similarly associated with children’s emotional and behavioral problems and provided similar estimates of genetic and environmental influences. Findings from this study suggest that collecting information from multiple informants is ideal to capture all instances of bullying victimization. However, in the absence of child self-reports, mothers can be considered as a viable alternative, and vice versa.