Purifying impure virtue epistemology

A notorious objection to robust virtue epistemology—the view that an agent knows a proposition if and only if her cognitive success is because of her intellectual virtues—is that it fails to eliminate knowledge-undermining luck. Modest virtue epistemologists agree with robust virtue epistemologists that if someone knows, then her cognitive success must be because of her intellectual virtues, but they think that more is needed for knowledge. More specifically, they introduce independently motivated modal anti-luck principles in their accounts to amend the problem of eliminating luck—this makes their views instances of impure virtue epistemology. The aim of the paper is to argue, firstly, that such a move lacks adequate motivation; secondly, that the resulting impure accounts equally fail to handle knowledge-undermining luck. On a more positive note, these results bolster a more orthodox virtue-theoretic approach to knowledge that assigns a fundamental explanatory role to the notion of ability. In this sense, the paper also sketches an account of ability and a corresponding account of knowledge that explains how success from ability (of the right kind) is incompatible with success from luck.     

Speech Accuracy and Reading in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Psychological Record - Research on relations between hearing through cochlear implants and accurate speech is still scarce. The present study used the stimulus equivalence paradigm to...     

Is Natural Selection in Trouble? When Emotions Run High in a Philosophical Debate

This paper deals in detail with a fairly recent philosophical debate centered around the ability of the theory of natural selection to account for those phenotypical changes which can be argued to make organisms better adapted to their environments. The philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor started the debate by claiming that natural selection cannot do the job. He follows two main lines of argumentation. One is based on an alleged conceptual defect in the theory, the other on alleged empirical problems in it as well as empirical alternatives to it. Four philosophers and two biologists respond in a way that displays what might easily be described as fallacious. The paper relies on the ideal model of critical discussion of pragma-dialectics to offer a step-by-step analysis of the whole debate, which extended for four issues of the London Review of Books, from October 2007 through January 2008. This pragma-dialectical analysis is carried out by constant reference to the various questions (problems, issues) that arise in the debate. The analysis includes as much detail as possible both in Fodor’s original argument and in the critics’ various comments as well as Fodor’s replies along two rounds of debate. Since a simple negative evaluation in terms of fallacies is out of the question in view of the proved argumentative accomplishments of the participants, an alternative explanation is offered: the undeniable derailments in strategic maneuvering are due to the fact that, whilst ostensibly discussing the theory of natural selection, Fodor’s detractors are worried by an underlying issue, namely, the dangers of discussing the merits and demerits of natural selection as a theory of evolution in a venue as exposed to the general public as the London Review of Books, given the religiously inspired movements that threaten the teaching of evolutionary biology in schools.

     

Contingency is used to prepare for outcomes: Implications for a functional analysis of learning

It is generally assumed that the function of contingency learning is to predict the occurrence of important events in order to prepare for them. This assumption, however, has scarcely been tested. Moreover, the little evidence that is available suggests just the opposite result. People do not use contingency to prepare for outcomes, nor to predict their occurrence, although they do use it to infer the causal and predictive value of cues. By using both judgmental and behavioral data, we designed the present experiments as a further test for this assumption. The results show that—at least under certain conditions—people do use contingency to prepare for outcomes, even though they would still not use it to predict their occurrence. The functional and adaptive aspects of these results are discussed in the present article.     

Overlap and correlates of different types of aggression among adults: Results from a cross‐sectional survey in Bogotá, Colombia

Our objective is to establish the prevalence and overlap among different forms of violence and the importance of known correlates of aggression in Bogotá, Colombia. Our method is a cross‐sectional household survey of violence amongst a random sample (n=3007) of the general population between the ages of 15 and 60. In this population the more severe forms of aggression tend to appear concurrently with the less severe forms. Multivariate analyses of the data show that a family history of crime, physical aggression among family members, lack of clarity of parental norms, beliefs justifying the use of violence, and alcohol consumption are the main correlates of verbal and physical aggression independent of age, gender and social class. Although the findings are limited by the cross‐sectional design, exclusion of the institutionalized population, and reliance on retrospective self‐reports, they provide population‐based estimates of different forms of aggression and support for known correlates of aggression in a Latin American context. Aggr. Behav. 29:191–201, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The number 747 is named faster after seeing Boeing than after seeing Levi's: Associative priming in the processing of multidigit Arabic numerals

Two experiments are reported in which naming multidigit Arabic numerals was shown to depend on the context in which the numbers were presented. Number naming and number decisions were faster after an associative prime (e.g., 747 preceded by the word Boeing) than after an unre- lated prime, both in unmasked and masked priming conditions. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that number naming is not always based on a quantity-based semantically mediated pathway.