In defence of folk psychology

Conclusion Our argument has been that a commonsense functionalist approach to our folk conception of beliefs and desires shows that it is very likely that they exist, where commonsense functionalism is understood as implicitly defined by our folk practice in moving back and forth between behaviour, situations, and beliefs and desires. Completed neuroscience will indeed provide a complete story about when and why we do what we do, but will incorporate rather than eliminate beliefs and desires in this complete story. The irony is that our defence uses an account of folk psychology fully in accord with that provided by eliminativism's sympathizers when they insist that folk psychology is a theory. They see this insistence as opening the way for serious consideration of the possibility that folk psychology is radically mistaken. Any theory can be radically mistaken. But, of course, folk psychology is radically mistaken for a great many objects — the Taj Mahal, for instance. The Taj Mahal does not have beliefs and desires precisely because it does not satisfy the theory. Our point is that because the theory is a purely functional theory, the evidence that we satisfy it (and for that matter that the Taj Mahal does not) is peculiarly strong evidence.     

On the role of word frequency in the detection of component letters

The experiments reported in this study were conducted to explore the issue of race models versus holistic models of word processing. In both types of model, it is assumed that an available word-level encoding for a display will conceal letter information, and thereby inhibit component-letter detection. However, whereas in holistic models it is assumed that encoding always should occur at the word or pattern level first, in the race models it is assumed that encoding occurs at all levels (e.g., feature, letter, and word) simultaneously, with the final level of encoding being at whatever level has been completed first. If the rate of word-level encoding is facilitated by increasing word frequency, the holistic models predict a generally declining latency for letter detection, because the initial step in letter detection (i.e., word-level encoding) will be occurring more rapidly. The race models, on the other hand, predict that with increasing word frequency there will be an increasing chance that the word-level encoding will win the encoding race, resulting in an increase in the latency for letter detection (i.e., the word code will conceal the letter codes). Two experiments are reported, and the obtained pattern of latency data appears to be most consistent with the race models.     

Group psychotherapy as taught by the polsters and the gouldings

Psychotherapy has been viewed by many as a subtle form of interpersonal persuasion. However, persuasion, or the lack of it, in a psychotherapy relationship is not always clearly definable. Most agree that persuasion is influenced by a number of important factors, of which the personal characteristics of the therapist are generally recognized as the most significant. Experience, credibility, training, dedication, values and enthusiasm are attributes usually agreed upon as being important contributors to the therapist's power to persuade. Understandably, psychotherapy conceptualized in this manner raises significant issues of values, ethics and responsibility in treatment. While not all agree or recognize persuasive influences existing in psychotherapy, it is suggested that persuasion is a salient feature of psychotherapy, whether or not it is identified as such. It is important to remember that in all psychotherapy, trouble is apt to follow the ignorant applications of important forces. Further, it is suggested that these persuasive influences cross doctrinal differences and can be augmented by applying them with a group psychotherapy setting. In the hands of a skilled and ethical psychotherapist, these persuasive influences can be enhanced and the group can become a powerful tool in the therapeutic process. These issues are explored in this paper in relation to two different group psychotherapy training experiences with Bob and Mary Goulding and Erv and Miriam Polster.     

Religious diversity and religious toleration

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Elements of a plan-based theory of speech acts

This paper explores the truism hat people think about what hey say. It proposes that, to satisfy heir own goals, people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states. Such language use can be modelled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, thus allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be defined in a plan-based theory are illustrated by defining operators for requesting and informing. Plans containing those operators are presented and comparisons are drawn with Searle's formulation. The operators are show to be inadequate since they cannot be composed to form questions (requests to inform) and multiparty requests (requests to request). By refining the operator definitions and by identifying some of the side effects of requesting, compositional adequacy is achieved. The solution leads to a metatheoretical principle for modelling speech acts as planning operators.