An agentive non-intentionalist theory of self-deception

The self-deception debate often appears polarized between those who think that self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves (‘intentionalists’), and those who think that intentional actions are not significantly involved in the production of self-deceptive beliefs at all. In this paper I develop a middle position between these views, according to which self-deceivers do end up self-deceived as a result of their own intentional actions, but where the intention these actions are done with is not an intention to deceive oneself. This account thus keeps agency at the heart of self-deception, while also avoiding the paradox associated with other agency-centered views.     

Comprehension of Idioms by Children with Learning Disabilities: Metaphoric Transparency and Syntactic Frozenness

Third and fifth grade children with and without learning disabilities participated in this study. Syntactically frozen and flexible idioms and transparent and opaque idioms were used as stimuli to examine the ability to identify the correct idiom and to explain idiom meanings. Grade and diagnostic category affected performance on the explanation task but not on the forced choice task. Idiom type was also a factor affecting comprehension and explanation. Literal responses occurred rarely and were more likely to occur on the forced choice task.     

靶子的潜在位置数对辨别任务中返回抑制的影响

摘要在严格控制的条件下,以大学生为被试．采用线索一靶子模式的返回抑制范式．考察了靶子在注视点周边可能出现的位置数与辨别任务中返回抑制的关系。实验结果表明．在辨别任务中靶子的潜在位置数对返回抑制量有影响,随着位置数的增加,返回抑制量减小。该结论为返回抑制的注意性观点提供了新的证据。     

The Metaphorical Conception of Scientific Explanation: Rereading Mary Hesse

Summary  In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse’s approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse’s approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse’s account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen’s. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine.     

Process,mechanism, and explanation related to externalizing behavior in developmental psychopathology

Advances in conceptualization and statistical modeling, on the one hand, and enhanced appreciation of transactional pathways, gene–environment correlations and interactions, and moderator and mediator variables, on the other, have heightened awareness of the need to consider factors and processes that explain the development and maintenance of psychopathology. With a focus on attentional problems, impulsivity, and disruptive behavior patterns, I address the kinds of conceptual approaches most likely to lead to advances regarding explanatory models in the field. Findings from my own research program on processes and mechanisms reveal both promise and limitations. Progress will emanate from use of genetically informative designs, blends of variable and person-centered research, explicit testing of developmental processes, systematic approaches to moderation and mediation, exploitation of natural experiments, and the conduct of prevention and intervention trials designed to accentuate explanation as well as outcome. In all, breakthroughs will occur only with advances in translational research—linking basic and applied science—and with the further development of transactional, systemic approaches to explanation.     

On classifying abduction

We can witness the recent surge of interest in classifying different patterns or types of abduction. Many philosophers have suggested their own classifications emphasizing different aspects of abduction. Such a development is remarkable, in view of the fact that until quite recently the focus of the research on Peircean abduction was to identify its logical form. Another agenda in the recent attempts to classify abduction is whether to allow non-explanatory abductions. In order to resolve these two closely related issues, I propose to examine how Peirce would have responded to them. In particular, I suggest to do this in connection with Peirce's another life-long project, the classification of sciences. In this examination, it will be shown that Peirce struggled with the problem of conflating induction and abduction. I shall discuss how this problem influenced both Peirce's views on the interrelationship between abduction, deduction, and induction on the one hand, and his many classifications of sciences on the other. Also, the implication of the fundamental change in Peirce's views of abduction, deduction, and induction to the problem of the classification of sciences will be uncovered. Finally, I shall discuss whether inference to the best explanation is abduction. Insofar as this problem has bearing on the two controversial issues in classifying abduction, my negative answer will demonstrate that classifying abduction is yet to get off the ground.     

Propositions: Individuation and Invirtuation

The pressure to individuate propositions more finely than intensionally—that is, hyper-intensionally—has two distinct sources. One source is the philosophy of mind: one can believe a proposition without believing an intensionally equivalent proposition. The second source is metaphysics: there are intensionally equivalent propositions, such that one proposition is true in virtue of the other but not vice versa. I focus on what our theory of propositions should look like when it's guided by metaphysical concerns about what is true in virtue of what. In this paper I articulate and defend a metaphysical theory of the individuation of propositions, according to which two propositions are identical just in case they occupy the same nodes in a network of invirtuation relations. Invirtuation is here taken to be a primitive relation of metaphysical explanation exemplified by propositions that, in conjunction with truth, defines the notion of true in virtue of. After formulating the theory, I compare it with a view that individuates propositions by cognitive equivalence, and then defend the theory from objections.     

Absence Causation and a Liberal Theory of Causal Explanation

For the framework of event causation—i.e. the framework according to which causation is a relation between events—absences or omissions pose a problem. Absences, it is generally agreed, are not events; so, under the framework of event causation, they cannot be causally related. But, as a matter of fact, absences are often taken to be causes or effects. The problem of absence causation is thus how to make sense of causation that apparently involves absences as causes or effects. In an influential paper, Helen Beebee offers a partial solution to the problem by giving an account of causation by absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be causes). I argue that Beebee's account can be extended to cover causation of absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be effects) as well. More importantly, I argue that the extended Beebeeian account calls for a major modification to David Lewis's theory of causal explanation, usually taken as standard. Compared to the standard theory, the result of this modification, which I shall call ‘the liberal theory of causal explanation’, has, among other things, the advantage of being able to accommodate causal explanations in which the explananda are not given in terms of events.