Games,Rules, and Practices

We present and defend a view labeled “practiceism” which provides a solution to the incompatibility problems. The classic incompatibility problem is inconsistency of: 1. Someone who intentionally violates the rules of a game is not playing the game.

2. In many cases, players intentionally violate the rules as part of playing the game (e.g. fouling to stop the clock in basketball).

The problem has a normative counterpart: 1’. In normal cases, it is wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.

2’. In many normal cases, it is not wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game (e.g. fouling to stop the clock in basketball).

According to both formalism and informalism, the rules of the game include the formal rules of the game. Both traditional positions avoid the incompatibility problems by rejecting 1 and 1'. Practiceism rejects 2 and 2’: it maintains that the rules are the rules manifested in playing the game, not the formal rules.

Practiceism presents two theses: (a) the real rules of the game are the rules players follow: the practice determines the rules, and not vice versa. (b) the (first order) rules of a game determine what is legitimate within the game.     

They saw a movie: long-term memory for an extended audiovisual narrative

We measured long-term memory for a narrative film. During the study session, participants watched a 27-min movie episode, without instructions to remember it. During the test session, administered at a delay ranging from 3 h to 9 mo after the study session, long-term memory for the movie was probed using a computerized questionnaire that assessed cued recall, recognition, and metamemory of movie events sampled ~20 sec apart. The performance of each group of participants was measured at a single time point only. The participants remembered many events in the movie even months after watching it. Analysis of performance, using multiple measures, indicates differences between recent (weeks) and remote (months) memory. While high-confidence recognition performance was a reliable index of memory throughout the measured time span, cued recall accuracy was higher for relatively recent information. Analysis of different content elements in the movie revealed differential memory performance profiles according to time since encoding. We also used the data to propose lower limits on the capacity of long-term memory. This experimental paradigm is useful not only for the analysis of behavioral performance that results from encoding episodes in a continuous real-life-like situation, but is also suitable for studying brain substrates and processes of real-life memory using functional brain imaging.     

Are ongoing cumulative chronic stressors associated with optimism and pessimism in the second half of life?

This study examined the relationship between ongoing cumulative chronic stressors (OCCSs) and optimism and pessimism during the second half of life. The sample comprised of 7166 participants who completed the 2006 Health and Retirement Study's (HRS) psychosocial questionnaire. The association between OCCSs and optimism and pessimism was evaluated among the individuals in the second half of life. The number of OCCSs was associated with both optimism and pessimism. However, the interaction between OCCSs and age was associated with pessimism alone. The relationship between “very upsetting” OCCSs and pessimism was significant among midlife and young old, but not among old–old participants. A larger number of OCCSs in the second half of life has a deleterious association with optimism and pessimism; however, it may be that the large sample allowed small effects to become significant. Nevertheless, the association between OCCSs and pessimism is regulated by age. Old–old participants maintain a stable level of pessimism, which is not related to the number of “very upsetting” OCCSs that they reported. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Semantic Externalism and Presentism

Abstract

In this paper I discuss an unconventional form of presentism which, I claim, captures better than all other versions of the doctrine the fundamental notion underpinning it, namely, the notion that ‘only what is present is real’. My proposal is to take this maxim as stating, not the rather uncontroversial view that past things are not real now, but the more radical idea that they never were. This rendition of presentism is, I argue, the only one that is neither trivial nor absurd. I examine this proposal by considering it against a sceptical hypothesis that bears similarities to it, viz., the hypothesis that the world was created five minutes ago. On this hypothesis, the past, all but five minutes of it, is unreal, in precisely the sense in which the presentism I discuss claims it is. I show that, assuming semantic externalism, this sceptical hypothesis cannot be sustained, but that a somewhat weaker hypothesis, the Creationist hypothesis that the world is 5,768 years old, cannot be refuted. Together, these conclusions enable a demarcation of those presentist intuitions that language and thought tolerate and those they do not.     

Music, pandas, and muggers: on the affective psychology of value

This research investigated the relationship between the magnitude or scope of a stimulus and its subjective value by contrasting 2 psychological processes that may be used to construct preferences: valuation by feeling and valuation by calculation. The results show that when people rely on feeling, they are sensitive to the presence or absence of a stimulus (i.e., the difference between 0 and some scope) but are largely insensitive to further variations of scope. In contrast, when people rely on calculation, they reveal relatively more constant sensitivity to scope. Thus, value is nearly a step function of scope when feeling predominates and is closer to a linear function when calculation predominates. These findings may allow for a novel interpretation of why most real-world value functions are concave and how the processes responsible for nonlinearity of value may also contribute to nonlinear probability weighting.     

The Loneliness of the Therapist in the Public Outpatient Clinic

The therapist's work in a public outpatient clinic is a unique combination as an individual and as a team member. Although the therapist may enjoy working within a team framework, sharing common goals and providing support and supervision, when he feels this environment failing to help or becoming critical, he may begin to experience loneliness. Individual psychotherapy occasionally evinces feelings of loneliness. The therapist has to contend with his patient's powerful feelings and try to contain them. We examined issues of loneliness, teamwork, and burnout during open meetings with the staff of three outpatient clinics. In addition, 50 questionnaires were sent to the therapists. Thirty-one were answered anonymously. Most of the therapists (80%) reported interest and enjoyment in their work with only 15% reporting tension and feelings of burnout. In the Pearson statistic correlation, there was a significant relationship between satisfaction at work and the lack of loneliness (p < 0.01). There was an inverse statistical correlation between satisfaction and burnout (p < 0.01) and a connection between staff meetings and not feeling lonely (p < 0.05). We found that the therapist in the outpatient clinic does not feel lonely. The staff meetings and consultations support him as a team member. A disparity was found between feelings felt at the open meetings and those in the questionnaires. Although the therapist is satisfied with his work, problems of overload and the danger of burnout are always present. It should be noted that clinic administrators should pay close attention to the entire picture.     

Counterexamples in sentential reasoning

How do logically naive individuals determine that an inference is invalid? In logic, there are two ways to proceed: (1) make an exhaustive search but fail to find a proof of the conclusion and (2) use the interpretation of the relevant sentences to construct a counterexample—that is, a possibility consistent with the premises but inconsistent with the conclusion. We report three experiments in which the strategies that individuals use to refute invalid inferences based on sentential connectives were examined. In Experiment 1, the participants’ task was to justify their evaluations, and it showed that they used counterexamples more often than any other strategy. Experiment 2 showed that they were more likely to use counterexamples to refute invalid conclusions consistent with the premises than to refute invalid conclusions inconsistent with the premises. In Experiment 3, no reliable difference was detected in the results between participants who wrote justifications and participants who did not.     

Coping with war captivity: The role of sensation seeking

This study examines the implication of both sensation seeking and the subjective appraisal of captivity in the long-term adjustment of ex-prisoners of war (ex-POWs). 164 Israeli ex-POWs and 184 comparable controls were studied, 18 years after their participation in the Yom Kippur War. The findings indicate that high-sensation seekers adjusted better than low-sensation seekers to the stresses of captivity. Low-sensation-seeking ex-POWs reported more PTSD symptoms, more severe psychiatric symptomatology, and more intense intrusive and avoidance tendencies. High- and low-sensation-seeking POWs differed also in feelings when taken prisoner, subjective assessment of suffering in prison, ways of coping with prison, and emotional states during captivity. The present study supports the postulation that sensation seeking is an important stress-buffering personal resource. The role of coping styles in long-term adjustment following war captivity is discussed.