Analytical Buddhism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of Self

In the contemporary debate on the nature of autonomy, it is generally taken for granted that autonomy is to be understood as rule by the self, with the debate centring on how that self is to be identified. Garnett [2013b Garnett, Michael 2013b. The Autonomous Life: A Pure Social View, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91/4. [Google Scholar]] has recently proposed a theory that rejects the dominant understanding of autonomy as rule by the self and views it instead as resistance to rule by others. According to that theory, an autonomous agent is one whose various ‘autonomy traits’ render her sufficiently resistant to subjection to foreign wills. I argue that Garnett has not given us good reason to abandon the understanding of autonomy as rule by the self. His account is plausible only if it is understood to require for autonomy the possession of at least one trait with which the agent can be identified. And the best explanation of the necessity of some such trait(s) is offered, not by Garnett's, but by the dominant understanding of autonomy he rejects.     

The experiential foundations of mathematical knowledge

A view of the sources of mathematical knowledge is sketched which emphasizes the close connections between mathematical and empirical knowledge. A platonistic interpretation of mathematical discourse is adopted throughout. Two skeptical views are discussed and rejected. One of these, due to Maturana, is supposed to be based on biological considerations. The other, due to Dummett, is derived from a Wittgensteinian position in the philosophy of language. The paper ends with an elaboration of Gödel's analogy between the mathematician and the physicist.     

Asymmetries in the Regulation of Visually Guided Aiming

An experiment was conducted to examine the contribution of sensory information to asymmetries in manual aiming. Movements were performed in four vision conditions. In the full-vision condition (FV), subjects were afforded vision of both the hand and the target throughout the course of the movement. In the ambient-illumination-off condition (AO), the room lights were extinguished at movement initiation, preventing vision of the moving limb. In the target-off (TO) condition, the target was extinguished upon initiation of the movement. In a no-vision (NV) condition, ambient illumination was removed and the target was extinguished upon initiation of the response movement. Results indicated that accuracy was superior in the full-vision and target-off conditions and when movements were made by the right hand. Movements made by the right hand were also of shorter mean duration. The magnitudes of performance asymmetries were uninfluenced by vision condition. Analyses of movement kinematics revealed that movements made in conditions in which there was vision of the limb exhibited a greater number of discrete modifications of the movement trajectory. On an individual-trial basis, no relationship existed between accuracy and the occurrence of discrete modifications. These data suggest that although vision greatly enhances accuracy, discrete modifications subserved by vision reflect the imposition of nonfunctional zero-order control processes upon continuous higher-order control regimes.     

Science and Man's Behavior: The Contribution of Phylobiology by Trigant Burrow

Abstract

This cross-sectional study examined anticipated reactions to group participation among Asian international students (ISs). Structural equation modeling confirmed that Asian ISs’ (n = 180) level of acculturation was associated with their attitude toward joining group counseling, which is partially mediated by their stigma toward help-seeking. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that ISs who reported higher place dependence, stigma toward help-seeking, and fear of negative evaluation reported more fear about disclosing emotional parts of themselves to other group members in the presence of a group member from the same country of origin. The results showed that ISs’ perceived difficulties in providing feedback to a group member in the presence of an IS from the same country of origin were predicted by low place identity, high place dependence, and more stigma. International students’ willingness to disclose and provide feedback in a group counseling setting was compared in three different hypothetical situations based on other group members’ demographics, and the results showed that ISs are more afraid of self-disclosure in the presence of an international student from the same country.     

Coercion in Intimate Partner Violence: Toward a New Conceptualization

For decades, battered women’s advocates have placed coercive control squarely at the center of their analysis of intimate partner violence. Yet, little work has been done to conceptualize and measure the key construct of coercive control. In this article, we apply French and Raven’s social power model to a conceptualization of coercive control in intimate partner violence relationships. Central elements of the model include: social ecology; setting the stage; coercion involving a demand and a credible threat for noncompliance; surveillance; delivery of threatened consequences; and the victim’s behavioral and emotional response to coercion. These elements occur in spiraling and overlapping sequences to establish an overall situation of coercive control. The implications of this model for theory and practice are discussed.     

The Impact of a Derogatory Remark on Prejudice Toward a Gay Male Leader1

A laboratory experiment examined the impact of a derogatory remark on expressions of prejudice toward a gay male leader. Students participated in same‐sex groups with a male confederate who was obviously gay or presumably straight. Half of the participants in the gay condition heard a derogatory remark about the confederate. This resulted in 3 experimental conditions: gay/remark, gay/no remark, and straight/no remark. Participants evaluated the leader's abilities less favorably and evidenced more negative nonverbal behaviors toward him in the gay/remark condition than in the gay/no remark or straight/no remark conditions. These findings extend research on derogatory remarks to a nonracial minority and highlight the powerful effect of immediate social context on expressions of prejudice.     

Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother-infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other's faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other's gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.     

Technical clarification to Silbert and Thomas (2013): “Decisional separability,model identification,and statistical inference in the general recognition theory framework”

We offer a minor technical correction to the published proof of part (ii) of the main theorem in Silbert and Thomas (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 1–20, 2013) that somewhat limits the scope of the equivalence observed in that work. Specifically, in order for a mean shift integrality with decisional separability to be mimicked by a perceptually separable but nondecisionally separable configuration, one needs to assume stimulus invariance. This holds when all of the covariance matrices in the stimulus configuration are equal to each other. We note that part (i) of the theorem is unaffected by this modification; an empirical finding of perceptual separability and the failure of decisional separability can be mimicked by a perceptually nonseparable, decisionally separable configuration without restricting the covariance matrices to be equal. We also note that stimulus invariance is often assumed in simple designs (e.g., Macmillan & Ornstein in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1261–1285, 1998), due to the implausibility of different perceptual correlations being present within stimuli perched very closely in perceptual space.     

The Effects of Estradiol on Avoidance Learning in Ovariectomized Adult Rats

The present study examined the effects of ovariectomy and subsequent estradiol replacement on learning in young adult rats using a set of instrumental avoidance paradigms differing in the nature and extent of prior experience in the learning context. Thus, one group of animals was placed directly into avoidance learning (AV). A second group was trained on an appetitive task first, and then transferred into the aversive context (AP-AV). The third group was exposed to the training context without any specific appetitive response requirement, and then required to learn an active avoidance response (Context-AV). We found that estradiol (OVX+E) impaired avoidance acquisition in all cases relative ovariectomized controls (OVX). In contrast, while avoidance learning is improved following appetitive training or context exposure in both OVX+E and OVX animals, the OVX+E animals profit to a greater extent from the appetitive or context experience than do the OVX controls. We suggest that this difference may be due to enhanced attentional processes or improved hippocampal processing of contextual factors. Thus, estradiol negatively influences simple associative avoidance learning in ovariectomized rats, but appears to promote positive transfer.