Vollkommene Syllogismen und reine Vernunftschlüsse: Aristoteles und Kant. Eine Stellungnahme zu Theodor Eberts Gegeneinwänden. Teil 2

In an earlier article (see J Gen Philos Sci (2010) 41: 341–355) I have compared Aristotle’s syllogistic with Kant’s theory of “pure ratiocination”. “Ratiocinia pura” („reine Vernunftschlüsse“) is Kant’s designation for assertoric syllogisms Aristotle has called ‘perfect’. In Kant’s view they differ from non-pure ratiocinia precisely in that their validity rests only on the validity of the Dictum de omni et nullo (which, however, in Kant’s view can be further reduced to more fundamental principles) whereas the validity of non-pure ratiocinia additionally presupposes the validity of inferences which Kant calls consequentiae immediatae. I have argued that Kant’s view is in some (not in all) essential features in accordance with Aristotle’s view concerning perfect syllogisms and certainly leading to a tenable and interesting logical theory. As a result I have rejected not only the interpretation of Aristotle adopted by Theodor Ebert, but also the objections he has raised against Kant’s logical theory. As far as Aristotle is concerned, Ebert has attempted to defend his position in the first part of his reply to my article published in J Gen Philos Sci (2009) 40: 357–365, and I have argued against this defence in issue 1 of the J Gen Philos Sci (2010) 41: 199–213 (cf. Ebert’s answer in the same issue pp. 215–231). In the following discussion I deal with Eberts defence of his criticism of Kant published in the second part of his reply to my article (see J Gen Philos Sci (2009) 40: 365–372). I shall argue, that Kant’s principle ‘nota notae est nota rei ipsius’ and his use of technical vocabulary stand up to the objections raised by Ebert. His attempts to prove that Kant’s logical theory is defective are based on several misinterpretations.     

Grief Therapy and the Reconstruction of Meaning: From Principles to Practice

Viewed from a constructivist perspective, grieving is a process of reconstructing a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss. Although most people successfully navigate bereavement and retain or return to pre-loss levels of functioning, a significant proportion struggle with protracted grief, and are unable to find meaning in the wake of an unsought transition. For these individuals, constructivist therapists have a number of strategies at their disposal that foster meaning making and help clients reestablish a coherent self-narrative that integrates the loss, while also permitting their life story to move forward along new lines. After reviewing theory and evidence that scaffolds this constructivist conceptualization, this article draws on excerpts of therapy with two bereaved clients to illustrate how narrative retelling, therapeutic writing, a focus on metaphorical language, and the use of visualization can all be viable strategies in helping individuals reconstruct meaning in the wake of bereavement.     

What Punishment for the Murder of 10,000?

Those who commit crime on a grand scale, numbering their victims in the thousands, seem to pose a special problem both for consequentialist and for non-consequentialist theories of punishment, a problem the International Criminal Court makes practical. This paper argues that at least one non-consequentialist theory of punishment, the fairness theory, can provide a justification of punishment for great crimes. It does so by dividing the question into two parts, the one of proportion which it answers directly, and the other of ‘anchoring points’ which it assigns to a broader theory of enforcement (which may have a non-consequentialist or consequentialist version).     

Responsibility,Reaction, and Value

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is fitting that it be the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility.     

Resource depletion does not influence prospective memory in college students

This paper reports an experiment designed to investigate the potential influence of prior acts of self-control on subsequent prospective memory performance. College undergraduates (n = 146) performed either a cognitively depleting initial task (e.g., mostly incongruent Stroop task) or a less resource-consuming version of that task (e.g., all congruent Stroop task). Subsequently, participants completed a prospective memory task that required attentionally demanding monitoring processes. The results demonstrated that prior acts of self-control do not impair the ability to execute a future intention in college-aged adults. We conceptually replicated these results in three additional depletion and prospective memory experiments. This research extends a growing number of studies demonstrating the boundary conditions of the resource depletion effect in cognitive tasks.     

Psychometric properties of a revised Spanish 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale adaptation in multiple sclerosis patients

There have been a small number of investigations of alexithymia in multiple sclerosis (MS) using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). However, the TAS-20 factor structure has not yet been evaluated in a MS patient sample, and earlier Spanish translations of this instrument require some improvement. We aimed to evaluate the factorial validity and reliability of an improved Spanish translation of the TAS-20 (the TAS-20-S). The TAS-20-S was completed by 221 MS patients. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare the fit of six different factor models. Internal consistency and retest reliability coefficients were also computed. The correlated three-factor model and the higher-order factor model made up of Difficulty Identifying Feelings, Difficulty Describing Feelings, and Externally Oriented Thinking achieved the best fit. Alpha coefficients ranged between .87 and .67; mean inter-item correlations ranged between .48 and .20; and retest correlations after 6 months ranged between .61 and .52. A high degree of alexithymia was present in 18.1% of the sample. Reliability and the traditional three-factor structure were demonstrated for the TAS-20-S, which can now be recommended for assessing an aspect of emotional processing in MS patients.     

Presentism,eternalism, and phenomenal change

Normally, when we notice a change taking place, our conscious experience has a corresponding quality of phenomenal change. Here it is argued that one’s experience can have this quality at or during a time when there is no change in which phenomenal properties one instantiates. This undermines a number of otherwise forceful arguments against leading metaphysical theories of change, but also requires these theories to construe change as a secondary quality, akin to color.     

36‐month‐olds conceal visual and auditory information from others

By three years of age, children are skilled at assessing under which circumstances others can see things. However, nothing is known about whether they can use this knowledge to guide their own deceptive behaviour. Here we investigated 3‐year‐olds’ ability to strategically inhibit or conceal forbidden actions that a nearby adult experimenter could see or hear. In the first experiment, children were more likely to disobey the adult when she did not have visual access to their activities than they were when she was looking at them. In the second experiment, in which the adult could never see the child, children refrained from making noise when engaging in a prohibited action that the adult might hear. These results suggest that by three years of age children use their knowledge of others’ perceptual states to decide whether it is safe to commit a transgression and, moreover, actively conceal perceptual cues that could reveal to others their ongoing transgression.     

The role of the dorsal CA1 and ventral CA1 in memory for the temporal order of a sequence of odors

Memory for the temporal order of a sequence of odors was assessed in male rats. A sequence of five odors mixed in sand was presented in digging cups one at a time to each rat in a sequence that varied on each trial. A reward was buried in each cup. Following the fifth odor, two of the previous five odors were presented simultaneously and the rat needed to choose the odor that occurred earliest in the sequence to receive a reward. Temporal separations of 1, 2, or 3 were used which represented the number of odors that occurred between the two odors in the sequence. Once pre-operative criterion was reached, rats received a control, dorsal CA1 (dCA1), or ventral CA1 (vCA1) lesion and were retested on the task. On post-operative trials, only the vCA1 group was impaired relative to both control and dCA1 groups. All groups of rats could discriminate between the odors. The data suggest that the vCA1, but not dorsal CA1, is involved in separating sensory events (odors) in time so that one odor can be remembered separate from another odor.     

We remember the good things: Age differences in learning and memory

We combined a feedback-based learning task with a recognition memory paradigm to investigate how reward-based learning affects the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of recognition memory in younger and older adults. We found that positive, but not negative learning improves memory and results in an increased early ERP old–new effect, which is typically associated with familiarity-based memory. This indicates that reward-based learning supports a fast and relatively automatic memory retrieval process. Furthermore, we found age-related impairments in reward-based learning, whereas memory for the learned information was intact in the elderly, suggesting that declarative memory might be less affected by aging.