Coffa’s Kant and the evolution of accounts of mathematical necessity

According to Alberto Coffa in The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, Kant’s account of mathematical judgment is built on a ‘semantic swamp’. Kant’s primitive semantics led him to appeal to pure intuition in an attempt to explain mathematical necessity. The appeal to pure intuition was, on Coffa’s line, a blunder from which philosophy was forced to spend the next 150 years trying to recover. This dismal assessment of Kant’s contributions to the evolution of accounts of mathematical necessity is fundamentally backward-looking. Coffa’s account of how semantic theories of the a priori evolved out of Kant’s doctrine of pure intuition rightly emphasizes those developments, both scientific and philosophical, that collectively served to undermine the plausibility of Kant’s account. What is missing from Coffa’s story, apart from any recognition of Kant’s semantic innovations, is an attempt to appreciate Kant’s philosophical context and the distinctive perspective from which Kant viewed issues in the philosophy of mathematics. When Kant’s perspective and context are brought out, he can not only be seen to have made a genuinely progressive contribution to the development of accounts of mathematical necessity, but also to be relevant to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mathematics in underappreciated ways.     

Grounded Theory in Genetic Counseling Research: An Interpretive Perspective

As qualitative inquiry has gained wider acceptance in genetic counseling research, it has become increasingly important for researchers and those who evaluate their work to recognize the diversity of methods that fall under this broad umbrella. Some of these methods adhere to the traditional conventions of scientific research (e.g., objectivity, reliability, validity, replicability, causality and generalizability). When such studies are evaluated by reviewers who are well versed in scientific methods, the rigor of the study may be readily apparent. However, when researchers are using methods that do not conform to traditional scientific conventions, the distinction between well conducted and poorly conducted studies may become more difficult to discern. This article focuses on grounded theory because it is a widely used qualitative method. We highlight key components of this method in order to contrast conventions that fall within a scientific paradigm to those that fall within an interpretivist paradigm. The intent is to illustrate how the conventions within these two different paradigms yield different types of knowledge claims—both of which can advance genetic counseling theory and practice.     

Is desynchrony tolerance adaptable in the perceptual organization of speech?

Speech signal components that are desynchronized from the veridical temporal pattern lose intelligibility. In contrast, audiovisual presentations with large desynchrony in visible and audible speech streams are perceived without loss of integration. Under such conditions, the limit of desynchrony that permits audiovisual integration is also adaptable. A new project directly investigated the potential for adaptation to consistent desynchrony with unimodal auditory sine-wave speech. Listeners transcribed sentences that are highly intelligible, with veridical temporal properties. Desynchronized variants were created by leading or lagging the tone analog of the second formant relative to the rest of the tones composing the sentences, in 50-msec steps, ranging from 250-msec lead to 250-msec lag. In blocked trials, listeners only tolerated desynchronies <50 msec, and exhibited no gain in intelligibility to consistent desynchrony. Unimodal auditory and bimodal audiovisual forms of perceptual integration evidently exhibit different temporal characteristics, an indication of distinct perceptual functions.     

Stop-Think-Relax: An Adapted Self-Control Training Strategy for Individuals with Mental Retardation and Coexisting Psychiatric Illness

Published self-instructional techniques for stress/anger management for those with mental retardation and developmental disabilities are often impractical due to the demands of complex instructional sequencing and of applying the technique during distressing situations. The development and implementation of an adapted, self-instructional, self-control technique employing a simple, 3-step method, reinforced by iconic visual cues, will be presented. The application of this strategy in individuals with mental retardation and concurrent mental illness will be reviewed in 3 detailed clinical cases. The Stop-Think-Relax strategy is a highly versatile and easily taught method for self-control that can be successfully applied in adults with limited cognitive capacities and with coexisting psychiatric features.     

The effect of mild depression on time discrimination

Depressed mood states affect subjective perceptions of time but it is not clear whether this is due to changes in the underlying timing mechanisms, such as the speed of the internal clock. In order to study depression effects on time perception, two experiments using time discrimination methods with short (<300?ms) and long (>1,000?ms) durations were conducted. Student participants who were categorized as mildly depressed by their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory were less able than controls to discriminate between two longer durations but were equally able to discriminate shorter intervals. The results suggest that mildly depressed or dysphoric moods do not affect pacemaker speed. It is more likely that depression affects the ability to maintain attention to elapsing duration.     

Perceptual training methods compared: the relative efficacy of different approaches to enhancing sport-specific anticipation

The comparative efficacy of different perceptual training approaches for the improvement of anticipation was examined using a goalkeeping task from European handball that required the rapid prediction of shot direction. Novice participants (N = 60) were assigned equally to four different training groups and two different control groups (a placebo group and a group who undertook no training). The training groups received either (i) explicit rules to guide anticipation; (ii) direction as to the location of the key anticipatory cues provided either just verbally (verbal cueing) or supplemented with color highlighting (color cueing); or (iii) undertook a matching judgment task to encourage implicit learning. Performance of the groups was compared on an anticipation test administered before training, after the training intervention, under a condition involving evaluative stress, and after a 5-month retention period. The explicit learning, verbal cueing, and implicit learning conditions provided the greatest sustained improvements in performance whereas the group given color cueing performed no better than the control groups. Only the implicit learning group showed performance superior to the control groups under the stress situation. The verbal cueing, color cueing, and implicit learning groups formulated the lowest number of explicit rules related to the critical shoulder cue although the reported use of general cues and rules based on all cues did not differ between any of the groups. Anticipation can be improved through a variety of different perceptual training approaches with the relative efficacy of the different approaches being contingent upon both the time scale and conditions under which learning is assessed.     

Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect

The concept of self-respect is often invoked in feminist theorizing. But both women's too-common experiences of struggling to have self-respect and the results of feminist critiques of related moral concepts suggest the need for feminist critique and reconceptualization of self-respect. I argue that a familiar conception of self-respect is masculinist, thus less accessible to women and less than conducive to liberation. Emancipatory theory and practice require a suitably feminist conception of self-respect; I propose one such conception.     

Using a Family History Intervention to Improve Cancer Risk Perception in a Black Community

Few studies examine the use of family history to influence risk perceptions in the African American population. This study examined the influence of a family health history (FHH) intervention on risk perceptions for breast (BRCA), colon (CRC), and prostate cancers (PRCA) among African Americans in Pittsburgh, PA. Participants (n = 665) completed pre- and post-surveys and FHHs. We compared their objective and perceived risks, classified as average, moderate, or high, and examined the accuracy of risk perceptions before and after the FHH intervention. The majority of participants had accurate risk perceptions post-FHH. Of those participants who were inaccurate pre-FHH, 43.3%, 43.8%, and 34.5% for BRCA, CRC, and PRCA, respectively, adopted accurate risk perceptions post-FHH intervention. The intervention was successful in a community setting. It has the potential to lead to healthy behavior modifications because participants adopted accurate risk perceptions. We identified a substantial number of at-risk individuals who could benefit from targeted prevention strategies, thus decreasing racial/ethnic cancer disparities.