Mentalist evidentialism vindicated (and a super-blooper epistemic design problem for proper function justification)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude (belief, or disbelief, or suspension of judgment) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections.     

Decreased aggressive and locomotor behaviors in Betta splendens after exposure to fluoxetine

The failure of sewage treatment plants to remove pharmaceuticals such as fluoxetine from waste water has become a concern given that these products are being detected in the surface waters of many countries of the world. The effects of fluoxetine in sub-lethal doses on the neural systems and behaviors of aquatic life are worthy of investigation. This study investigated the effects of sub-lethal amounts fluoxetine dissolved in water on the aggressive and locomotor behaviors of 44 male Betta splendens. Fish treated with 705 microg/l of fluoxetine and 350 microg/l of fluoxetine generally demonstrated significant decreases in locomotion and number of aggressive attacks compared to 0 microg/l of fluoxetine (controls) on Days 11 and 19 of drug exposure and persisted for at least 13 days after removal of fluoxetine. Consistent with decreases in the number of aggressive attacks, there was a significant increase in aggression-response time to a perceived intruder for treated males on Days 11 and 19 and persisted for 6 days following removal of fluoxetine. However, the differences in aggressive and locomotor behaviors seen in the fluoxetine-treated groups were indistinguishable from controls three weeks following drug removal.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

Entrepreneurship,professionalism, leadership: A framework and measure for understanding boundaryless careers

We propose a person-centered framework for conceptualizing subjective careers in an increasingly boundaryless work context. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership (EPL) can serve as three key dimensions of subjective career space. We relate this framework to earlier macro-level national and organizational career models proposed by Kanter (1989) and Schein (1978). Our empirical study involving 10,326 Singaporean university students demonstrated that entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career aspirations (including motivations, efficacies, and intentions) can be measured independently, that these career dimensions are independent of vocational interests, and that they are to some degree viewed as competing career alternatives. We also show that EPL motivation profiles can operationalize the boundaryless and protean career concepts. Individuals concurrently high in entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivations, and those high in entrepreneurial and leadership motivations are highest in boundaryless and self-directed career attitudes, while those primarily motivated for professional careers hold the most traditional career attitudes. We conclude by discussing the potential of the framework for understanding human resource issues at organizational and national levels and for enhancing the study of entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership.     

Stress Mediates the Within-Person Longitudinal Associations Between Depression and Different Anxiety Syndromes in Youth

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Depressive symptoms predict within-person change in physical symptoms of anxiety and social anxiety symptoms; however, potential mediators of...     

Personality,Perceived Occupational Stressor,and Health-Related Quality of Life Among Chinese Judges

Personality is hypothesized to have direct and indirect effects on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) through the mediating role of perceived occupational stressors. This hypothesized model was tested with Chinese judges, individuals characterized by high occupational stress. In this cross-sectional study, 330 judges undergoing professional training at the Shandong Judge Training Institute completed questionnaires assessing their personality (Big Five Inventory, BFI), perceived occupational stressors (Occupational Role Questionnaire, ORQ), and HRQoL (Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form Health Survey, SF-36). The proposed model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) approaches. The SEM analysis showed a good fit of the data to the hypothesized model(x ²/df = 1.52, P?P?Neuroticism also had a negative indirect effect (?0.18, P?P?P?相似文献   

Effects of psychological interventions for patients with osteoarthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of psychological interventions (e.g. cognitive restructuring, relaxation) on physiological and psychological health in osteoarthritis patients. A systematic literature search was done using PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Database through November 2016. Studies were included if they used a randomized controlled trial designed to explore the effects of psychological interventions in osteoarthritis patients. Two independent authors assessed the methodological quality of the trials using criteria outlined by Jadad et al. Meta-analysis was done with the Revman5.0. Twelve randomized controlled trials, including 1307 osteoarthritis patients, met the study inclusion criteria. Meta-analysis showed that psychological interventions could reduce the levels of pain [standard mean difference (SMD) ?0.28, 95% CI ?0.48, ?0.08, P-value 0.005)] and fatigue (SMD ?0.18, 95% CI ?0.34, ?0.01, P-value 0.04). In addition, psychological interventions significantly improved osteoarthritis patients’ self-efficacy (SMD 0.58, 95% CI 0.40, 0.75, P-value 0.00) and pain coping (MD 1.64, 95% CI 0.03, 3.25, P-value 0.05). Although the effects on physical function, anxiety, depression, psychological disability were in the expected direction, they were not statistically significant. In conclusion, the role of psychological interventions in the management of osteoarthritis remains equivocal. Some encouraging results were seen with regard to pain, pain coping, self-efficacy, and fatigue. We believe that more methodologically rigorous large-scale randomized controlled trials are necessary to answer this study question.