Wright's Argument from Neutrality

In the first chapter of his book Truth and Objectivity (1992), Crispin Wright puts forward what he regards as 'a fundamental and decisive objection' to deflationism about truth (p. 21). His objection proceeds by an argument to the conclusion that truth and warranted assertibility coincide in normative force and potentially diverge in extension ( I call this the 'argument from neutrality'). This argument has already received some attention. However, I do not believe that it has been fully understood yet. In this short paper, I shall assess the cogency of Wright's objection in some detail. My agenda is as follows. First, I give what I believe to be an adequate rendering of the objection. Secondly, I reveal the real force of the neutrality argument and say thirdly why it does not, as Wright thinks, refute deflationism. Finally, I argue that Wright's insistence that truth is a 'substantial property' is uncongenial to the overall project of his book.     

Culture and collective argumentation

What are the mechanisms underlying the reproduction and change of collective beliefs? The paper suggests that a productive and promising approach for dealing with this question can be found in ontogenetic and cross-cultural studies on ‘collective argumentations and belief systems’; this is illustrated with regard to moral beliefs: After a short discussion of the rationality/relativity issue in cultural anthropology some basic elements of a conceptual framework for the empirical study of collective argumentations are outlined. A few empirical case studies are summarized; the results deliver some empirical evidence to the assumption that as the ‘logic of collective argumentations’ develops in children and adolescent there will be different and increasingly more complex constraints on the kinds of basic moral beliefs that can be collectively accepted. Most importantly, as children approach adolescence they may have acquired a ‘logic of argumentation’ which makes possible a collectively valid distinction between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ of some disputed particular moral issue. A comparison with a land litigation among Trobriands (Papua New Guinea) shows that the ‘logic of argumentation’ and the corresponding basic moral beliefs of Trobriands very much resemble the ‘logic of argumentation’ and moral rationality standards of (German) adolescents.     

Self‐Fulfilling Prophecies: Mechanisms,Power, and Links to Social Problems

A core theme of social psychology is that perceivers can shape targets’ future behaviors through self‐fulfilling prophecies. Self‐fulfilling prophecies occur when perceivers’ false beliefs about targets initiate a sequence of events that ultimately cause targets to exhibit expectancy‐consistent behaviors, thereby causing perceivers’ initially false beliefs to become true. This article reviews theory and research relevant to self‐fulfilling prophecies with particular foci on the underlying mechanisms that produce self‐fulfilling prophecies, the power of self‐fulfilling prophecies to alter behavior, and the extent to which self‐fulfilling prophecies contribute to social problems.     

Dishonest deed, clear conscience: when cheating leads to moral disengagement and motivated forgetting

People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one's own dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the dishonest behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency by having participants read or sign an honor code significantly reduced unethical behavior and prevented subsequent moral disengagement. Although dishonest behavior motivated moral leniency and led to forgetting of moral rules, honest behavior motivated moral stringency and diligent recollection of moral rules.     

Nonword reading: Comparing dual-route cascaded and connectionist dual-process models with human data

Two prominent dual-route computational models of reading aloud are the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model, and the connectionist dual-process plus (CDP+) model. While sharing similarly designed lexical routes, the two models differ greatly in their respective nonlexical route architecture, such that they often differ on nonword pronunciation. Neither model has been appropriately tested for nonword reading pronunciation accuracy to date. We argue that empirical data on the nonword reading pronunciation of people is the ideal benchmark for testing. Data were gathered from 45 Australian-English-speaking psychology undergraduates reading aloud 412 nonwords. To provide contrast between the models, the nonwords were chosen specifically because DRC and CDP+ disagree on their pronunciation. Both models failed to accurately match the experiment data, and both have deficiencies in nonword reading performance. However, the CDP+ model performed significantly worse than the DRC model. CDP++, the recent successor to CDP+, had improved performance over CDP+, but was also significantly worse than DRC. In addition to highlighting performance shortcomings in each model, the variety of nonword responses given by participants points to a need for models that can account for this variety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

A Closer Look at Manifest Consequence

Fine (2007) argues that Frege’s puzzle and its relatives demonstrate a need for a basic reorientation of the field of semantics. According to this reorientation, the domain of semantic facts would be closed not under the classical consequence relation but only under a stronger relation Fine calls “manifest consequence.” I examine Fine’s informally sketched analyses of manifest consequence, showing that each can be amended to determine a class of strong consequence relations. A best candidate relation emerges from each of the two classes, and I prove that the two candidates extensionally coincide. The resulting consequence relation is of independent interest, for it might be held to constitute a cogent standard of reasoning that proceeds under a deficient grasp on the identity of objects.     

Confidence Analyses of Self-Interpretation and Self-Description in Depressive Behaviour

The present paper represents an investigation in the procedure to validate a new questionnaire (Salzburg Subjective Behavioural Analysis, SSBA). This questionnaire is based on a new approach to the diagnosis of depressive behaviour. It is hypothesized that a patient suffering from a depressive disorder loses the ability to produce one or more modes of behaviour at a given time and simultaneously has the urge to produce one or more modes of behaviour constantly. Although the patient is capable of describing this behavioural disorder, he/she is unable to interpret it confidently. This inability of interpretation of depressive behaviour assessed with the SSBA may represent a special kind of cognitive impairment in depression that is tested in conducting an analysis of confidence. The analysis of confidence shows that the capability of interpretation in the patient group is significantly impaired. Finally, a discriminant analysis allows to differentiate between depressive behaviour and normal behaviour based on the questionnaire.