CONTEXTUAL AGE AND TELEVISION USE

The aims of the investigation were to initiate the development of “contextual age” as an alternative life-position concept to chronological age in communication and aging research, and to examine the relationships between contextual age and socio-demographic characteristics, television viewing patterns, and viewing motivations. The sample consisted of 340 non-confined respondents, aged 55 to 92. Factor analysis located four contextual age dimensions: interaction, life satisfaction, economic security, and self-reliance. The results of the Pearson and canonical correlation analyses suggest: the importance of an individual's degree of interpersonal interaction, social activity, life satisfaction, economic security, mobility, and physical health for indicating television usage; a series of interactant associations among contextual age, socio-demographic, viewing pattern, and viewing motivation variables; and the heuristic potential of the contextual age concept for assessing life-position and communication behavior.     

NATURALISM AND THE PARADOX OF REVISABILITY

Abstract:  This paper examines the paradox of revisability. This paradox was proposed by Jerrold Katz as a problem for Quinean naturalised epistemology. Katz employs diagonalisation to demonstrate what he takes to be an inconsistency in the constitutive principles of Quine's epistemology. Specifically, the problem seems to rest with the principle of universal revisability which states that no statement is immune to revision. In this paper it is argued that although there is something odd about employing universal revisability to revise itself, there is nothing paradoxical about this. At least, there is no paradox along the lines suggested by Katz.