Hoisted by their own petards: Philosophical positions that self-destruct

Philosophers have not resisted temptation to transgress against the logic of their own conceptual structures. Self-undermining position-taking is an occupational hazard. Philosophy stands in need of conceptual therapy.The author describes three conceptions of philosophy: the narcissistic, disputatious, and therapeutic. (i) Narcissistic philosophy is hermetic, believing itself to contain all evidence that can possibly be relevant to it. Philosophy undertaken in this spirit has led to defensive, monadically isolated positions. (ii) Disputatious philosophies are fundamentally question-begging, animated by assumptions that philosophical adversaries reject. (iii) The intention of therapeutic philosophy is to study philosophical positions from the standpoint of their internal consistency, or lack of it. In particular, its interest is in positions that either compel assent, because they cannot be rejected without self-referential inconsistency, or self-destruct because self-referential inconsistency cannot be avoided. The article's focus is on the latter. Several examples of self-undermining positions are drawn from the history of philosophy, exemplifying two main varieties of self-referential inconsistency: pragmatical and projective.     

REALISM AND OPENNESS IN SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Abstract. Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field-theories of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis-temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust.     

Thinking “Outside the Box”: Unconstrained Creative Generation in Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Creative generation is structured around existing knowledge and task examples, yet overreliance on specific examples may limit imagination (Ward, T. B., Finke, R. A., & Smith, S. M., 1995). The constraining influence of knowledge during creative generation may be offset by conceptual expansion, a process of thinking outside traditional conceptual boundaries, which may be heightened by distractibility and mild executive dysfunction (Abraham, A., Windmann, S., Daum, I., & Güntürkün, O., 2005). The present study explored the constraining effects of knowledge in adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a disorder characterized by impaired attention and inhibitory control (Barkley, R. A., 1997). College students with and without ADHD were compared on two creative generation measures: an alien fruit invention task that required participants to imagine fruit that might exist on another planet (Ward, T.B., 1994), and a product label invention task wherein the goal was to invent product names without using elements of task examples (Kray, L.J., Galinski, A.D. & Wong, E.M., 2006). ADHD participants created alien fruit that diverged more from Earth fruit and labels that conformed less to examples, relative to non-ADHD peers. Results suggest that adults with ADHD may be less constrained by knowledge during creative generation. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical import and practical implications for individuals with ADHD.     

Patterns of change in fairness perceptions during the hiring process: A conceptual replication in a controlled context

The present paper tackles a problem in the candidate reactions literature: the replicability of results that emerge when using in vivo and in vitro designs. The current study was designed to provide a conceptual replication of a dynamic model of change in fairness perceptions during the hiring process, using a different research design, different measures, and a different sample than the original paper. A sample of 209 participants in a simulated selection process reported their level of perceived fairness three times: before the testing, after the testing, and after the results were communicated. These results support the results of the original that the construction of fairness perceptions declines in a nonlinear way over time, with high initial levels of fairness perception corresponding to a lower rate of decline, and vice versa. Further analysis revealed no change in the individuals’ conceptualization of perceived fairness nor any shift in the respondents’ use of the measurement scale (i.e., no beta and gamma change were detected).     

Metaphors can give life meaning

Conceptual metaphor theory offers a perspective on how and when people find meaning in life. Whereas life’s meaning can be difficult to grasp, metaphor compares life to a relatively more concrete and structured concept. Supporting this account, American adults (Study 1) and German undergraduates (Study 2) who framed life as a journey reported more meaning in life. The journey metaphor was particularly beneficial for individuals with low levels of perceived coherence in life (Study 2). Study 3 further explored this pattern of moderation: An accessible metaphor, compared to other life framings, benefited participants who lack a strong meaning framework. Study 4 focused on the mechanism behind metaphor’s influence. Participants who imagined events from their life journey perceived stronger interrelatedness among those events as measured with an analog spatial organization task. Perceived interrelatedness in turn predicted meaning in life, particularly for individuals with a strong preference for well-structured knowledge. Finally, participants who applied their own metaphor to life expressed greater meaning (Study 5), especially those high in personal need for structure (Study 6). An internal meta-analysis of these findings provides cumulative evidence for metaphor’s influence on perceived meaning in life and reveals moderating features of the individual.     

维吾尔族三语者的非熟练第三语言的概念表征特征

使用跨语言启动条件下的真假词汇判断任务,以母语为维语,第二语言为汉语,第三语言为英语的维吾尔族大学生为被试。通过两个实验探讨了维吾尔族三语者不熟练的第三语言的语义表征特点,即他们的第三语言的语义是共同存储还是独立存储问题。结果发现,跨语言的启动条件下,在实验一,启动刺激（维语）与目标刺激（英语）之间具有语义联想关系时,产生了显著的启动效应。在实验二,启动刺激（英语）与目标刺激（维语）之间没有产生语义启动效应。这些结果表明,被试的第三语言的语义概念表征是同第一语言的概念表征共同存储的;被试的母语较容易启动第三语言,但非熟练的第三语言不太容易启动母语,这是因为被试的第三语言还没有达到一定程度的熟练水平。     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Naming our concerns about neuroscience: a review of Bennett and Hacker's philosophical foundations of neuroscience

Bennett and Hacker use conceptual analysis to appraise the theoretical language of modern cognitive neuroscientists, and conclude that neuroscientific theory is largely dualistic despite the fact that neuroscientists equate mind with the operations of the brain. The central error of cognitive neuroscientists is to commit the mereological fallacy, the tendency to ascribe to the brain psychological concepts that only make sense when ascribed to whole animals. The authors review how the mereological fallacy is committed in theories of memory, perception, thinking, imagery, belief, consciousness, and other psychological processes studied by neuroscientists, and the consequences that fallacious reasoning have for our understanding of how the brain participates in cognition and behavior. Several behavior-analytic concepts may themselves be nonsense based on thorough conceptual analyses in which the criteria for sense and nonsense are found in the ways the concepts are used in ordinary language. Nevertheless, the authors' nondualistic approach and their consistent focus on behavioral criteria for the application of psychological concepts make Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience an important contribution to cognitive neuroscience.     

Physical and conceptual priming effects on picture and word identification

In the study phase of these experiments, subjects were asked to think of an item suggested by the omission in an incomplete sentence, and then look at a picture or word describing an item and say whether it was the same as theirs. In the test phase, they were asked to identify studied and nonstudied items presented briefly in either picture or word form. Subjects were then required to recall the words or pictures shown in the study phase. Experiment 1, with a within-subjects design, revealed that the studied pictures were identified more readily than studied words and nonstudied pictures. This indicates a physical priming effect. In word identification, studied words were identified more readily than nonstudied words; however, there was no difference between studied words and studied pictures, and the performance for studied pictures and nonstudied items were largely the same. The physical priming effect on picture identification was also shown in Experiment 2, with a between-subjects design. Different processing mechanisms in picture and word identification are discussed.     

Why Do Conceptual Analysts Disagree?

The practice of a priori conceptual analysis requires that the concept being analyzed be available in the analyst's mind. The difficulties of analysis and the existence of disagreements among analysts are explained by distinguishing the implicit knowledge we have of these concepts from the explicit knowledge we seek. This view of disagreement assumes that those who disagree are typically attempting to analyze a single shared concept. In this paper, reasons are developed for replacing this guiding assumption with the alternative assumption that members of a conceptual community often have similar, but not identical, concepts. Adopting this alternative requires that we rethink the nature and aims of conceptual analysis.