Event Semantics: A Husserlian Critique

Event semantics is concerned with the formal structure of sentences which appear to describe an event of some kind, e.g. ‘Brutus kills Caesar,’ or ‘My tooth fell out.’ Phenomenologists should be interested in work in this field, if they hope to rescue Husserl’s phenomenology of judgment from its narrow focus on copular judgments of the form ‘S is p.’ An adequate phenomenology of judgment must ultimately develop an account of judgments whose intentional correlates seem to be events, rather than states of affairs, since such judgments are ubiquitous. For this endeavor, existing work on the formal structure of event sentences provides a crucial foothold. However, phenomenologists cannot simply import semantic theories for their own use, without first evaluating them for phenomenological plausibility. This concern is particularly acute in the case of the widely-adopted “Davidsonian” approach, according to which the logical structure of event sentences diverges radically from natural language syntax. The Davidsonian form introduces a “covert” variable, which stands in for an event. Thus, the sentence ‘Brutus kills Caesar’ becomes, ‘There is an event ss="EmphasisTypeItalic ">e that is a killing of Caesar by Brutus.’ Such a theory, if correct, would have decisive consequences for the phenomenology of event sentences, and even of events themselves. Yet the introduction of covert variables in turn introduces—I argue—a covert intentional object, without assessing this idea for phenomenological plausibility. Building on Husserl’s phenomenology of predication, I develop a criterion for evaluating this hypothesis, and argue that the Davidsonian approach, as it stands, is phenomenologically untenable.     

The future is now: the impact of present fluency in judgments about the future

Recent research has emphasised the role of episodic memory in both remembering past events and in envisaging future events. On the other hand, it has been repeatedly shown that judgments about past events are affected by the fluency with which retrieval cues are processed. In this paper we investigate whether perceptual fluency also plays a role in judgments about future events. For this purpose we conducted four experiments. The first experiment replicated recent findings showing that stimuli that are processed fluently tend to be wrongly recognised as having been encountered in the past outside the laboratory walls [Brown, A. S., & Marsh, E. J. (2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534–538. doi:ss="ext-link" href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337.x" target="_blank">10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337.x]. Two follow-up experiments using Brown and Marsh’s [(2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534–538. doi:ss="ext-link" href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337" target="_blank">10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337] task tested the influence of perceptual fluency on future judgments. The fourth and last experiment was designed to rule out a potential confounding factor in the two previous experiments. Across experiments, we found that people rely on fluency when making judgments about events that are yet to come. These results suggest that fluency is an equally valid cue for past and future judgments.     

THE INTERACTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN CATHOLIC SOUTHERN EUROPE (ITALY,SPAIN, PORTUGAL)

Reviewing the last fifty years of interaction between religion and science in Catholicism in Southern Europe, common traits are clearly evident: a late awareness of the importance of this interaction and a theological reluctance to address science or to account for its progress. Early signs of the engagement between religion and science appear as a consequence of the work of the French anthropologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin. In Italy and Spain in the last fifteen years, we see a substantive growth in the rise of research centers and academic activities devoted to exploring the common ground between science, philosophy, and theology. However, despite all these efforts and the many positive signs, there remains a long way to go for theology to consider science as a true challenge and an inspiration and to integrate it into the theological curriculum.     

Individual Differences in Diving: Intelligence,Personality, and Underwater Adaptation

Diving is an activity that is carried out in an extreme environment with extraordinary psychophysical demands. It requires the divers to undergo an adaptive process in order to survive, to be able to take advantage of their capabilities, and to achieve an efficient performance. In this ex post facto study, data from a sample of military personnel participating in scuba diving courses (N = 649) were analyzed. Our aim was to verify the role of individual differences in the adaptation to an extreme and hostile environment. The results indicate the existence of psychological variables that differentiate between divers and the general population, those who pass or fail the diving course, and between groups of divers who obtain differential levels of performance in underwater tasks. These findings support that dispositional characteristics have utility for the identification of suitable personnel for professional diving.     

Configurations of unemployment,reemployment, and psychological well-being: A longitudinal study of unemployed individuals in Portugal

This study examined how four different configurations of unemployment and reemployment (defined by history of past unemployment and unemployment/reemployment 3 years later) related to changes in psychological well-being. The longitudinal sample consisted of 566 Portuguese men and women who were unemployed at the beginning of the study. Using true change score models, we found that individuals who reported a long period of unemployment at T1 but were reemployed at T2 showed meaningful gains in positive affect and life satisfaction compared to those who had a shorter history of unemployment and were reemployed. An examination of gender differences revealed that the women who were reemployed after a long history of unemployment showed the greatest relative gains in positive affect. We conclude by noting limitations of this research and suggesting future research to address these limitations.     

The development of a Spanish language version of the Worn Out scale of the General Well-Being Questionnaire (GWBQ)

The paper describes the development of a short Spanish-language version of the General Well-Being Questionnaire (GWBQ; Cox and Gotts, 1987), based on the 12 items of its Worn Out scale. Research has shown the English-version Worn Out scale to be sensitive to aspects of the design and management of work. This study aimed to test its cross-cultural consistency in a Spanish-language workplace context. The data were collected from a sample of 229 workers in Valencia (Spain). Confirmatory Factor Analyses showed the factorial validity, reliability, and concurrent validity of the new Spanish version to be adequate. The sensitivity of the new measure to safety behavior and the reporting of accidents was also assessed and shown to be good. The new questionnaire extends the usefulness of the parent questionnaire to occupational health psychology research in the Spanish language by offering a short assessment tool appropriate for workplace studies.