Normative Reasons Contextualism

This article argues for the view that statements about normative reasons are context‐sensitive. Specifically, they are sensitive to a contextual parameter specifying a relevant person's or group's body of information. The argument for normative reasons contextualism starts from the context‐sensitivity of the normative “ought” and the further premise that reasons must be aligned with oughts. It is incoherent, I maintain, to suppose that someone normatively ought to φ but has most reason not to φ. So given that oughts depend on context, a parallel view about normative reasons is needed. It is shown that the resulting view solves notorious puzzles involving apparently conflicting but equally plausible claims about reasons. These puzzles arise especially in cases where agents have limited information or false beliefs. In these cases, we feel torn between reasons claims that take into account the limitations of the agent's perspective and apparently conflicting claims that are made from a more objective point of view. The contextualist account developed here accommodates both objectivist and subjectivist intuitions. It shows that all of the claims in question can be true, provided that they are relativized to different values of the relevant information parameter. Also, contextualism yields a fruitful approach to the debate about having reasons and the alleged failure of the so‐called “factoring account”.     

Transmission arguments against knowledge closure are still fallacious

Transmission arguments against closure of knowledge base the case against closure on the premise that a necessary condition for knowledge is not closed. Warfield argues that this kind of argument is fallacious whereas Brueckner, Murphy and Yan try to rescue it. According to them, the transmission argument is no longer fallacious once an implicit assumption is made explicit. I defend Warfield’s objection by arguing that the various proposals for the unstated assumption either do not avoid the fallacy or turn the central premise of the transmission argument, namely that a necessary condition is not closed, into a redundant and superfluous premise. I conclude that Warfield’s advice is still to be heeded: Arguments against closure must not rely essentially on the premise that a necessary condition for knowledge is not closed.     

A Call for an Unbiased Search for Moderators in Disfluency Research: Reply to Oppenheimer and Alter (2014)

In a commentary to our article, Oppenheimer and Alter stressed the importance of searching for moderators in disfluency research. We agree, but we would like to clarify two issues. First, unlike Oppenheimer and Alter, we assume that learner characteristics might indeed moderate the effects of disfluency. Second, conclusions concerning the impact of disfluency in educational settings might be biased because of the file‐drawer problem. To counteract this possibility, we want to encourage other researchers to publish their studies––regardless of whether they found (positive) effects of disfluency or not. Until then, any recommendation concerning the use of disfluency as an educational intervention seems premature.     

A Single-Subject Evaluation of the Treatment of Morphing Fear

We present a single-subject prospective outcome study of a man with severe morphing fear and long history of OCD who was not helped by previous interventions, and who received an adapted form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) as part of this study. Treatment consisted of a cognitively focused approach tailored to address his fear of morphing and included developing a stronger sense of self-stability. We describe the details of the case, the treatment protocol, and the therapeutic outcomes as assessed over 36 weeks by questionnaires, rating scales, and semistructured interviews. The intervention was effective in eradicating the patient’s morphing fears and reducing other symptoms of OCD, anxiety, and depression. The presented case illustrates the need to appropriately conceptualize, assess, and address the specific nature of morphing fear symptoms in treatment.     

Comparing What to What,on What Scale? The Impact of Item Comparisons and Reference Points in Communicating Risk and Uncertainty

The mandated public availability of individual hospital's audit data for children's heart surgery in the UK creates a challenging scenario for communicating these complex and sensitive data to diverse audiences. On the basis of this scenario, we conducted three experiments with the aim of understanding how best to help lay people understand these data and the practical goal of improving the public presentation of these data. The experiments compared different outcome measures for displaying the survival rate (percentage scale versus the ratio of the predicted/observed rates) and presentation formats (individual hospital versus all hospitals shown) for outcomes data presented relative to prediction intervals generated by a risk model that adjusts for case mix. Our data highlight how easily inappropriate comparisons can influence evaluations of complex data: for instance, both a survival ratio of 1 and the presence of other hospitals seemingly provided reference points that resulted in inappropriately harsh evaluations of some hospitals. By drawing on evaluability theory, we demonstrate how to enhance people's understanding of these complex data while also discouraging inappropriate comparisons, which has implications for communicating risk and uncertainty and for choice architecture design in a range of contexts. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship Between Automatic Thoughts and Irrational Beliefs Predicting Anxiety and Depression

Cognitive behavioral approaches differ in their views on core cognitions and their hypothesized role in the etiology of depression and anxiety. The present study provides empirical evidence regarding the relationship between irrational beliefs and components of automatic thoughts and their role in the etiology of depression and anxiety. The present study utilized newer and improved questionnaires to assess components of irrational belief. Based on prior research by Safren et al. (Cogn Ther Res 24(3):327–344, 2000), a three-factor structure of the combined automatic thought questionnaires were utilized to measure components of automatic thoughts as they relate to depression and anxiety. Factor analytical methods were utilized to confirm the factor structure of the irrational beliefs and automatic thoughts components. Advanced path modeling was utilized to model the relationship between irrational beliefs and automatic thoughts in predicting anxiety and depression. The study used a sample of N = 542 undergraduate psychology students during stressful exam times. Results indicated that the irrational belief Demandingness represents a primary factor, followed by the secondary irrational beliefs as proposed by Rational Emotive Behavioral Theory. Selfdowning beliefs were fully mediated by depressive automatic thoughts in the case of depressive affect. Low frustration tolerance contributed unique variance to anxious and depressive affect that was not fully mediated by automatic thoughts. Results from the present study add empirical evidence that irrational beliefs indeed represent core and intermediary beliefs that lead to specific automatic thoughts, which is congruent with cognitive behavioral theory as proposed by Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy.     

J. S. Mill’s hedonism: activism,experientialism and eudaimonism

Many contemporary scholars defend the position that J. S. Mill was a ‘eudaimonist’, in a sense implying that he was not an ‘experiential’ hedonist. One ‘activist’ argument for this interpretation rests on the claim that Mill’s core axiological uses of ‘pleasure’ in Utilitarianism should be understood to refer to worthy or pleasurable activities rather than mental states. This paper offers a three-stage rebuttal of the activist interpretation. Firstly, in the Analysis, the Examination and the Logic, Mill explicitly identifies pleasures and pains as mental states. Secondly, if we read Mill’s core axiological uses of ‘pleasure’ in Utilitarianism along activist lines, the text’s overall coherence and intelligibility becomes even more questionable than on the traditional experientialist reading. Finally, in his discussions of Plato, Mill seems to distance himself from the axiological view that non-hedonic features of mind or character have intrinsic value in their own right. In consequence, in the small number of cases in Utilitarianism in which Mill clearly speaks of ‘pleasures’ as activities, this is best construed as a derivative usage.     

Counterpossibles in Science: The Case of Relative Computability

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as

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