Herder's ‘Expressivist’ Metaphysics and the Origins of German Idealism

Charles Taylor's influential exposition of Hegel made the doctrine of expressivism of central importance and identified Herder as its exemplary historical advocate. The breadth and generality of Taylor's use of ‘expressivism’ have led the concept into some disrepute, but a more precise formulation of the doctrine as a theory of meaning can both demonstrate what is worthwhile and accurate in Taylor's account, and allow us a useful point of entry into Herder's multifaceted philosophy. A reconstruction of Herder's overall philosophical position, centred around a refined theory of what this paper labels ‘Herderean expressivism’, reveals a naturalistic, teleological metaphysics. This metaphysics fulfils the Hegelian aim of providing what Dieter Henrich has called a ‘feedback loop’ between ontology and epistemology. Exploring Herder's expressivism, therefore, helps further the case for his decisive impact on Hegel's philosophy. Herder's methodological naturalism, however, represents an obstacle to Hegel's absolute idealism.     

Science and Human Behavior at fifty

The golden anniversary of Science and Human Behavior is cause for celebration. Toward that end, the present paper is largely an historical consideration of the book, its inception and reception, both at the time of its publication and in subsequent years. The range and intensity of reactions to S&HB mark its impact and show it to be among Skinner's most important works, if not the most important. S&HB was written as an introductory psychology text--a vigorous use of the book in our teaching could do much to benefit the dissemination of behavior analysis.     

Pauses and syntax in American sign language

Research on spoken languages has shown that the durations of silent pauses in a sentence are strongly related to the syntactic structure of the sentence. A similar analysis of the pauses (holds) in a passage in American Sign Language reveals that sequences of signs are also interspersed with holds of different lengths: long holds appear to indicate the ends of sentences; shorter holds, the break between two conjoined sentences; and the shortest holds, breaks between internal constituents. Thus, pausal analysis is a guide to parsing sentences in ASL.     

Crossed aphasia in an illiterate dextral

An 83 year old illiterate, right-handed woman developed a persistent nonfluent aphasia following a right cerebral infarction (crossed aphasia). Computerized axial tomography localized the lesion to the right posterior frontal lobe.It is suggested that the neural mechanisms involved in learning to read and write may be critical for the complete establishment and maintenance of language dominance in the left hemisphere, and that, in this case, the patient's failure to acquire reading and writing skills altered the normal evolution of language lateralization and resulted in the right hemisphere assuming the dominant role.     

Measuring the importance of information in judgment: Individual differences in weighting ability and effort

Measuring the importance of cues in social judgment has been a longstanding problem. Past research has shown individual differences in the impact of ability and study effort on judgments of student performance. This research examined the hypothesis that the individual differences are due to the weight given to the information as opposed to the perceived extremity of the values of the information. Subjects judged the performance of hypothetical students described by ability, study effort, and effort during an exam. Individual differences in the impact of the three types of information were obtained and were predictable from self-reports of the relative importance of information. Different values of weights were necessary to account for the differences in the impact of information, although there were also differences in the perceived extremity of the information. The theoretical and applied significance of distinguishing the weight given to information in judgment from its subjective value are discussed. On the basis of a new review of the literature, as well as the present results, it is concluded that self-reports of the relative importance of information are predictive of individual differences in information use in judgment, but that they may reflect the total impact of information rather than only the weight.     

The miscommunication of deception: An adaptive perspective

Undergraduates were videotaped as they told lies and truths about their last job. Later, these undergraduates viewed the videotape and tried to guess which of their fellow subject were lying. Monetary incentives had been offered for successful lying and lie detection. Our subjects showed a “demeanor bias”—some looked honest even when they were lying; others looked dishonest even when they were telling the truth. These differences in apparent honesty were the primary determinant of deception judgments; perceivers' detection skills played a lesser role. Honest-looking subjects were predisposed to perceive others as dishonest. In general, our liars used hand gestures, maintained eye contact, and refrained from smiling. Perceivers misconstrued these behaviors as signs of honesty and could not often detect deceit—unless the lie was being told by a subject who had earlier told the truth. We draw on sociobiological concepts and offer an adaptive perspective on human deceit.     

Associative and categorical processes in children's memory: The role of automaticity in the development of organization in free recall

Free recall performance was assessed in children in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) on a list of categorically related words constructed so that some items within a category were highly associated with one another and interitem associations were low among other items (e.g., dog, cat, cow, lion, tiger). Associative relations were used frequently in recall by subjects of all ages, with analyses of interitem latencies and correlations between recall and clustering indicating that organization in recall was based only on associative relations for the third and fifth graders but based on both associative and nonassociative categorical relations for older subjects. Examination of the placement of high associates in recall indicated that seventh- and ninth-grade children were more apt to use associative relations to begin category clusters than were younger children or adults. These children were hypothesized to use the relatively automatic activation of associative relations to instigate categorical organization and to represent a stage in development between nonstrategic younger children and strategic adults. The results were discussed in terms of the role that the automatic activation of semantic memory relations may play in the development of strategic memory organization.     

Therapy for helpless monkeys

During the course of pilot studies and two formal experiments examining the learned-helplessness phenomenon in rhesus monkeys, 5 subjects failed to escape in a shuttlebox following earlier experience with aversive stimulation in primate-restraining chairs. The present report details a therapeutic manipulation designed to reverse these subjects' maladaptive behavior in the shuttlebox. Introduction of a different fear stimulus (a net previously used to restrain the animals) was found to be effective in inducing shuttlebox escape and avoidance learning. The implications of the present findings for an understanding of the learned-helplessness phenomenon and their relevance to therapy for human depression are discussed.     

Category typicality effects in children's memory performance: Qualitative and quantitative differences in the processing of category information

Kindergarten, third, and sixth graders (6, 9, and 12 years of age, respectively) received a cue-at-input/cue-at-output recall task, using category typical and atypical items that were based on either (1) children's conceptions of item typicality, or (2) adults' conceptions of item typicality. At each grade level, recall was greater with the child-defined lists than with the adult-defined lists, and typical items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses revealed that the recall of typical items varied as a function of children's typicality ratings of items, and that the “typicality effect” in the adult-norm condition was due primarily to the childrennot realizing that many of the atypical items were appropriate category exemplars. In contrast, typicality effects in the child-norm condition were attributed to qualitative differences in the judged “goodness of example” of the typical and atypical items. The results were discussed in terms of the appropriateness of typicality as a dimension of children's natural language concepts, the role of age differences in knowledge base in affecting performance on a cognitive task, and of the importance of using child-generated norms in studies of children's processing of category information.     

Behavioral variability as a function of noncontingent adult attention,peer availability,and situational demands in three hyperactive boys

Recommendations about placements for children in need of special education are routinely made and carried out without empirical validation for the efficacy of particular approaches nor the appropriateness of an approach for a particular child. A study was designed to examine a methodological model which focuses on empirically deriving recommendations for the most appropriate teaching situation for any given child requiring special education. Prosocial, problem, and task-related behaviors in three hyperactive boys were assessed in eight prearranged situations: (1) group play with one adult supervising; (2) group play with three adults; (3) group teaching with one adult; (4) group teaching with three adults; (5) individual play with low density noncontingent adult attention; (6) individual play with high density noncontingent adult attention; (7) individual teaching with low density noncontingent adult attention; and (8) individual teaching with high density noncontingent adult attention. Behaviors assessed included adult, peer, and target child attention given and received; compliance; aggression; disruption; task involvement; and percent tasks correctly completed of tasks attempted. Data revealed that the most disruptions and least efficient task performance occurred in the group teaching situation with one adult. The most efficient task performance and fewest disruptions in a teaching situation occurred in the individual teaching setting with high density noncontingent adult attention. In addition. overall mean rates of disruptive behavior were higher in group situations than in individual situations. The data strongly validate the need for carefully selecting educational environments for problem children, and that the behavior of such children is, at least, partially influenced by environmental factors.