Dummett and Frege on sense and Selbständigkeit

As part of his attack on Frege’s ‘myth’ that senses reside in the third realm, Dummett alleges that Frege’s view that all objects are selbständig (‘self-subsistent’, ‘independent’) is an underlying mistake, since some objects depend upon others. Whatever the merits of Dummett’s other arguments against Frege’s conception of sense, this objection fails. First, Frege’s view that senses are third-realm entities is not traceable to his view that all objects are selbständig. Second, while Frege recognizes that there are objects that are dependent upon other objects, he does not take this to compromise the Selbständigkeit of any objects. Thus, Frege’s doctrine that objects are selbständig does not make the claim of absolute independence that Dummett appears to have taken it to make. Nevertheless, in order to make a good case against Frege based on the dependency of senses, Dummett need only establish his claim that senses depend upon expressions: appeal to an absolute conception of independence is unnecessary. However, Dummett’s arguments for the dependency of senses upon expressions are unsuccessful and they show that Dummett’s conception of what it is to be an expression also differs significantly from Frege’s.     

How Reliably Do Eye Parameters Indicate Internal Versus External Attentional Focus?

Eye behavior is increasingly used as an indicator of internal versus external focus of attention both in research and application. However, available findings are partly inconsistent, which might be attributed to the different nature of the employed types of internal and external cognition tasks. The present study, therefore, investigated how consistently different eye parameters respond to internal versus external attentional focus across three task modalities: numerical, verbal, and visuo-spatial. Three eye parameters robustly differentiated between internal and external attentional focus across all tasks. Blinks, pupil diameter variance, and fixation disparity variance were consistently increased during internally directed attention. We also observed substantial attentional focus effects on other parameters (pupil diameter, fixation disparity, saccades, and microsaccades), but they were moderated by task type. Single-trial analysis of our data using machine learning techniques further confirmed our results: Classifying the focus of attention by means of eye tracking works well across participants, but generalizing across tasks proves to be challenging. Based on the effects of task type on eye parameters, we discuss what eye parameters are best suited as indicators of internal versus external attentional focus in different settings.     

An exploratory investigation into the self-regulatory processes influencing drug driving: Are young drivers more externally regulated?

An upward trend in drug driving has been observed in several countries around the world. Research suggests that younger drivers are more likely to engage in drug driving compared to older drivers. There is also evidence to suggest young drivers differ from older drivers in their capacity for self-regulation. Despite this, research has yet to explore the impact of age on the self-regulatory processes with regard to decisions to drug drive among drug users. A total of 507 Queensland drivers (72.8% female), who reported ever taking an illegal drug, were involved in the research. Participants completed an online questionnaire, which collected demographic and drug consumption information, as well as items assessing the self-regulatory processes influencing drug driving, and drug driving behaviour. Regardless of age, participants reported a tendency towards internalised regulation. However, results suggest that young drivers (aged 18–24 years) feel greater belongingness to people who promote safe transport decisions after taking drugs, compared to drivers aged 25 years and over. Interaction effects revealed that for young drug takers, feeling greater relatedness, along with perceiving competence and importance in planning alternative transport after taking drugs, can be protective against drug driving behaviours. Significant predictors of drug driving were lower relatedness, greater perceived pressure to drug drive, lower effort/importance to plan safe alternatives after taking drugs, being of older age, and greater drug abuse. Counterintuitively, perceiving more options (choice) to take alternative transport after taking drugs also predicted the offending behaviour. The results of this study suggest that enhancing drivers’ competency to make (and value) safe driving decisions is a critical step for road safety.     

Do we need visual subjects?

It is widely accepted within contemporary philosophy of perception that the content of visual states cannot be characterized simply as a list of represented features. This is because such characterization leads to the so-called ‘Many Properties’ problem, that is, it does not allow us to explain how the visual system is able to distinguish between scenes containing different arrangements of the same features. The usual solution to the Many Properties problem is to characterize some basic elements of content as subjects, to which features are attributed by a predication-like relation. In this paper, I reconsider this solution and claim that the Many Properties problem can be solved without postulating such subjects. What is more, I argue that an alternative approach has stronger justification given the empirical data concerning human vision.