McDowell’s new conceptualism and the difference between chickens,colours and cardinals

McDowell recently renounced the assumption that the content of any knowledgeable, perceptual judgement must be included in the content of the knowledge grounding experience. We argue that McDowell’s introduction of a new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge is incompatible with the main line of argument in favour of conceptualism as presented in Mind and World [McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. We reconstruct the original line of argument and show that it rests on the assumption that a specific model of justification, the Comparison Model, must apply to all cases of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. We then show that the Comparison Model cannot be applied to McDowell’s new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. As a consequence, McDowell is in need of an alternative model of justification and an alternative argument for conceptualism. We propose such an alternative model of justification based on McDowell’s reading of Sellars, but argue that the model only serves to make the need for an alternative motivation for conceptualism more urgent.     

心理咨询中好坏效果案例咨询互动的内容分析

目的:了解好坏效果案例咨访互动的特点及差异。方法:运用内容分析法对5个好效果案例和3个坏效果案例的会谈谈话轮进行评定。结果:在治疗师介入上,好坏效果案例存在显著差异;在当事人回应上,二者差异不显著;在治疗性最近发展区上,二者在"确认-安全"和"确认-可忍受冒险"两个区段存在显著差异,其他区段差异不显著。结论:临床工作中可多使用支持性技术,适当结合挑战性技术,并增多落入"确认-可忍受冒险"区段的比例。     

The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons

Prior work has found that when people compare themselves with others they egocentrically focus on their own strengths and achievements more than on the (equally relevant) strengths and achievements of the comparison group. As a consequence, people tend to overestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is high and underestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is low. The present research investigated a rational discounting explanation of this bias—namely, that people weight the target of the comparison (the self) more than the referent of the comparison (others) because they typically have more knowledge about the former than the latter. In three studies, we found that the tendency to focus on the target in social comparisons—and the over and underestimation of relative standing that tendency engenders—was reduced (but not eliminated) as people’s knowledge about the comparison group increased. These results suggest that there may be a rational side to egocentrism in social comparisons.     

The pragmatic circle

Classical Gricean pragmatics is usually conceived as dealing with far-side pragmatics, aimed at computing implicatures. It involves reasoning about why what was said, was said. Near-side pragmatics, on the other hand, is pragmatics in the service of determining, together with the semantical properties of the words used, what was said. But this raises the specter of ‘the pragmatic circle.’ If Gricean pragmatics seeks explanations for why someone said what they did, how can there be Gricean pragmatics on the near-side? Gricean reasoning seems to require what is said to get started. But then if Gricean reasoning is needed to get to what is said, we have a circle.     

Holism and Horizon: Husserl and McDowell on Non-conceptual Content

John McDowell rejects the idea that non-conceptual content can rationally justify empirical claims—a task for which it is ill-fitted by its non-conceptual nature. This paper considers three possible objections to his views: he cannot distinguish empty conception from the perceptual experience of an object; perceptual discrimination outstrips the capacity of concepts to keep pace; and experience of the empirical world is more extensive than the conceptual focusing within it. While endorsing McDowell’s rejection of what he means by non-conceptual content, and appreciating his insight into the experiential synthesis of intuition and conception (in particular, its role in grasping objects), I will argue that Edmund Husserl presents an even more comprehensive account of perceptual experience that explains how we experience the contribution of receptivity and sensibility and how they cooperate in perceptual discrimination. Further, it reveals “horizons”—a unique kind of contents, surplus content (rather than independent non-conceptual content)—beyond the synthesis of intuitive and conceptual contents through which objects are grasped. Such horizons play a constitutive role, making experience with its conceptual dimensions and justificatory potential possible; they in no way function like a bare given that is to fulfill some independent justificatory role. Whereas McDowell focuses on how experience does not take place in isolation from the exercise of conceptual capacities, Husserl complements his view by situating experience in a more encompassing whole and by elucidating the surplus-horizons that exceed the conceptual content of experience; play an inseparable, constitutive role within it; and indicate the limits of conceptual comprehension.

How to test the threat-simulation theory

Malcolm-Smith, Solms, Turnbull and Tredoux [Malcolm-Smith, S., Solms, M.,Turnbull, O., & Tredoux, C. (2008). Threat in dreams: An adaptation? Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1281-1291.] have made an attempt to test the Threat-Simulation Theory (TST), a theory offering an evolutionary psychological explanation for the function of dreaming [Revonsuo, A. (2000a). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 877-901]. Malcolm-Smith et al. argue that empirical evidence from their own study as well as from some other studies in the literature does not support the main predictions of the TST: that threatening events are frequent and overrepresented in dreams, that exposure to real threats activates the threat-simulation system, and that dream threats contain realistic rehearsals of threat avoidance responses. Other studies, including our own, have come up with results and conclusions that are in conflict with those of Malcolm-Smith et al. In this commentary, we provide an analysis of the sources of these disagreements, and their implications to the TST. Much of the disagreement seems to stem from differing interpretations of the theory and, consequently, of differing methods to test it.     

Studying dream content using the archive and search engine on DreamBank.net

This paper shows how the dream archive and search engine on DreamBank.net, a Web site containing over 22,000 dream reports, can be used to generate new findings on dream content, some of which raise interesting questions about the relationship between dreaming and various forms of waking thought. It begins with studies that draw dream reports from DreamBank.net for studies of social networks in dreams, and then demonstrates the usefulness of the search engine by employing word strings relating to religious and sexual elements. Examples from two lengthy individual dream series are used to show how the dreams of one person can be studied for characters, activities, and emotions. A final example shows that accurate inferences about a person’s religious beliefs can be made on the basis of reading through dreams retrieved with a few keywords. The overall findings are similar to those in studies using traditional forms of content analysis.