Methodological naturalism and epistemic internalism

Epistemic naturalism holds that the results or methodologies from the cognitive sciences are relevant to epistemology, and some have maintained that scientific methods are more compatible with externalist theories of justification than with internalist theories. But practically all discussions about naturalized epistemology are framed exclusively in terms of cognitive psychology, which is only one of the cognitive sciences. The question addressed in this essay is whether a commitment to naturalism really does favor externalism over internalism, and we offer reasons for thinking that naturalism in epistemology is compatible with both internalist and externalist conceptions of justification. We also argue that there are some distinctively internalist aims that are currently being studied scientifically and these notions, and others, should be studied by scientific methods. This essay is dedicated to Deborah Mayo, who has long advocated using error statistical techniques to analyze and resolve epistemological puzzles in the philosophy of science. This essay follows the same spirit by advocating that computational concepts and techniques be applied within the heart of traditional, analytic epistemology.     

Living Being and Speaking Being: Toward a Dialogical Approach to Intentionality

One of the main goals of cognitive science is to shed light on human knowledge. This paper states that, if daily conversations, literature, and private thought, are proper expressions of human behavior, then cognitive sciences ought to elaborate a concept of knowledge suited to this kind of activities. I draw upon the notion of discourse in Bakhtin to specify the attributes of knowing needed to account for human behavior, whose manifestations in everyday life are not reduced to representing objects but essentially oriented toward responding to others. As a central aspect of knowledge, I focus on intentionality and offer a discussion about different aspects of it. Specifically, I examine the difference between intentionality as the faculty of representation (aboutness) and intentionality as the subjective positioning toward contextually relevant ideological perspectives (meaning). ss="Contact">

Three boys and their stories: Atypical eating and primitive relations1

Eating disorders of whatever category, especially the most severe ones such as anorexia or bulimia, are often considered typical of the female sex. While this is correct concerning these two disorders, I suggest that there are other eating disorders that are more frequent among boys, especially the ones concerning atypical relations to food, notwithstanding the evidence that the already very well‐known syndromes of bulimia and anorexia are also gaining ground among males. However, similar, unspecified eating disorders do not seem to occur so often among girls. Clinical data from my private practice should be taken for granted considering these matters, since I do not yet have statistical data to back up my thesis. In examples from three clinical cases involving boys and one female vignette, I shall attempt to establish a relation between eating disorders and primitive relations with men and women. This relation goes well beyond the oft‐cited ‘contemporary’ causes of eating disorders. In addition, I shall situate these differences among symptoms of both sexes and relate them to impasses in different stages of emotional development, as well as to the extent to which girls’ identification with their mother’s sex can influence their acquisition of eating disorders.     

Personality trait similarity between spouses in four cultures

We examined patterns of trait similarity (assortative mating) in married couples in four cultures, using both self-reports and spouse ratings on versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. There was evidence of a subtle but pervasive perceived contrast bias in the spouse-rating data. However, there was strong agreement across methods of assessment and moderate agreement across cultures in the pattern of results. Most assortment effects were small, but correlations exceeding .40 were seen for a subset of traits, chiefly from the Openness and Agreeableness domains. Except in Russia, where more positive assortment was seen for younger couples, comparisons of younger and older cohorts showed little systematic difference. This suggested that mate selection, rather than convergence over time, accounted for similarity. Future research on personality similarity in dyads can utilize different designs but should assess personality at both domain and the facet levels.     

A comparison of the peers method and traditional methodologies, and risk behaviors in studies of the prevalence of drug consumption in a population of female, Chilean students

The present study investigates drug consumption and risk behaviors among female students between 8th and 12th grade in two communities in the city of Santiago, Chile. Based on studies of university populations, we hypothesize that the students' reports of their consumption of licit drugs will tend to be consistent with their actual use of said drugs using two methods to investigate consumption, while their consumption of illicit drugs will be susceptible, and will tend to be under-reported when evaluated through traditional self-report measures. In order to compare the two methods, a cross-sectional study was designed that would compare reported drug consumption, first using the peers method, and then by means of traditional self-report in a group of 350 students. The results show that women's reports of licit drug consumption converge using the two methods, while as earlier suggested, women's illicit drug consumption was found to be under-reported when traditional methodologies were used.     

Cognitive flexibility in preschoolers: the role of representation activation and maintenance

Preschoolers' lack of cognitive flexibility has often been attributed to perseverative processing. This study investigates alternative potential sources of difficulty such as deficits in activating previously ignored information and in maintaining currently relevant information. In Experiment 1, a new task tapping attentional switching was designed to isolate the difficulty of overriding an initial representation, that is, perseverative processing ('Perseveration' version), and the difficulty of activating a previously ignored representation, that is, activation deficit ('Activation-deficit' version). Three-year-olds' performance suggested that inflexibility may primarily stem from an activation deficit. Control experiments confirmed that the difficulty of the 'Activation-deficit' version could not be attributed to the effect of attraction to novelty. In Experiment 2, 'distraction' errors, alleged to reflect a failure to maintain a relevant representation, and 'perseverative' errors were distinguished. The results highlighted the important role of representation maintenance in flexibility. The present study indicates that preschoolers' lack of cognitive flexibility is multi-determined and prompts us to reconsider the role of perseveration.     

Understanding Pamina's recovery: An application of the hermeneutic single‐case efficacy design

This article reports an effectiveness case study of the individual systemic therapy of a 22‐year‐old Portuguese woman with a diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder, conducted in a university‐based clinic in Lisbon, Portugal. Data were analysed using the hermeneutic single‐case efficacy design, a non‐experimental interpretive approach that aims to determine whether change occurred, whether change was due to therapeutic strategies, and what in therapy caused the change. Results indicate that the treatment was effective and that de‐pathologising Pamina's condition and genogram‐based exploration techniques played a crucial role in her recovery.     

Freedom and Authority in the Clinical Diary

The paper discusses some philosophical, ethical and political–philosophical implications of Ferenczi’s ss="EmphasisTypeItalic ">Clinical Diary, with special regard to the concepts of freedom and authority. These topics are already present in Ferenczi’s early writings that explicitly deal with social and political issues, the central concept of which is “individual socialism”. The paper also discusses (and publishes in <span class="InternalRef"> ss="EmphasisTypeItalic ">Appendix span>) two short manuscripts by Ferenczi, written probably in 1920, which attempts to parallel psychoanalysis with Marxism, and with liberal socialism, respectively. It is shown that in 1932, the last year of his life, Ferenczi avoids using political and ideological concepts directly in his ss="EmphasisTypeItalic ">Diary, but, in the spirit of his earlier writings, he proposes a balance between “ruthless capitalism and fanciful egalitarianism”. Finally, the significance of Utopia in Ferenczi’s thinking is discussed.     

Contextual control in teaching numbers to a child with intellectual disability

The aim of this work was to teach the discrimination of "equal" and "different" in numbers. The experiment was carried out a seven-year-old child with intellectual disability. The problem was analysed from the contextual control perspective. The learning procedure consisted of explicitly teaching a second-order conditional discrimination, and transfer to a novel second-order conditional discrimination was tested. In this study, the boy learned that, in presence of X1 (equal), he had to select the comparison B1 (the number one), given the sample A1 (the word one) and B2 (the number two), given A2 (the word two). He also he learned that, in the presence of X2 (different), he had to select the comparison B2 (the number two), given the sample A1 (the word one) and B1 (the number one), given A2 (the word two). We subsequently presented the contextual stimuli with two new numbers: three and four. The results showed the occurrence of learning transfer without explicit training in the new numbers.