Why conceptual competence won’t help the non-naturalist epistemologist

Abstract

Non-naturalist normative realists face an epistemological objection: They must explain how their preferred route of justification ensures a non-accidental connection between justified moral beliefs and the normative truths. One strategy for meeting this challenge begins by pointing out that we are semantically or conceptually competent in our use of the normative terms, and then argues that this competence guarantees the non-accidental truth of some of our first-order normative beliefs. In this paper, I argue against this strategy by illustrating that this competence based strategy undermines the non-naturalist’s ability to capture the robustly normative content of our moral beliefs.     

Feedback influences children's reasoning about math equivalence: A meta-analytic review

ABSTRACT

Decades of research have focused on children's reasoning about math equivalence problems for both practical and theoretical insights. Not only are math equivalence problems foundational in arithmetic and algebra, they also represent a class of problems on which children's thinking is resistant to change. Feedback is one instructional tool that can serve as a key trigger of cognitive change. In this paper, we review all experimental studies (N = 8) on the effects of feedback on children's (ages 6–11) understanding of math equivalence. Meta-analytic results indicate that feedback has positive effects for low-knowledge learners and negative effects for high-knowledge learners, and these effects are stronger for procedural outcomes than conceptual outcomes. Findings highlight the variable influences of feedback on math equivalence understanding and suggest that models of thinking and reasoning need to consider learner characteristics, learning outcomes, and learning materials, as well as the dynamic interactions among them.     

Self-knowledge,belief, ability (and agency?)

Matthew Boyle [(2011). “Transparent Self-Knowledge.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 223–241. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2011.00204.x] has defended an account of doxastic self-knowledge which he calls “Reflectivism”. I distinguish two claims within Reflectivism: (A) that believing that p and knowing oneself to believe that p are not two distinct cognitive states, but two aspects of the same cognitive state, and (B) that this is because we are in some sense agents in relation to our beliefs. I find claim (A) compelling, but argue that its tenability depends on how we view the metaphysics of knowledge, something Boyle does not consider. I argue that in the context of the standard account of knowledge as a kind of true belief – what I call the Belief Account of knowledge – the claim faces serious problems, and that these simply disappear if we instead adopt an Ability Account of knowledge, along the lines of that defended by John Hyman [(1999). “How knowledge Works.” The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (197): 433–451; John Hyman (2015). Action, Knowledge, and the Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press]. I find claim (B) less compelling, and a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest that once we reject the Belief Account of knowledge, and move over to an Ability Account, there is no explanatory role for (B) left to play.     

知识经验与顿悟：来自认知神经科学的证据

知识经验对于顿悟问题解决是一把双刃剑,强势知识会阻碍顿悟问题解决,弱势知识才是顿悟问题解决的关键。强势知识引导的组块效应、约束效应和固着效应等心理定势现象,“帮助”问题解决者以惯用方案来理解、思考和解决问题。之所以会这样,可能是因为大脑内存在一套具有优先级差的层级加工系统,赋予惯用方案的优先级最高。不过,惯用方案不仅不能够解决顿悟问题,而且还会通过注意竞争和注意失灵方式来阻碍新异方案的探索和执行,所以,问题解决者往往都会进入思维僵局。僵局的打破和顿悟的实现,需要抑制住强势知识及其相关的惯用方案、激活弱势知识和新异方案,这违反了大脑的认知加工惯性,是很难以自发发生的。但是,可以通过激活扩散来增强弱势知识的激活水平,或者是拓宽注意范围、提高注意灵活性来增加弱势知识激活的可能性,从而促进顿悟问题解决。     

过度自信的跨文化差异

过度自信是指个体过高地估计自身判断的精确度,其经典的研究范式是常识问题及常识问题的变式现实情境问题。使用常识问题的研究一致发现,东方人显著比西方人更过度自信;使用现实情景问题的研究则发现,西方人比东方人更过度自信或两者无显著性差异。对“东方人比西方人过度自信”的解释包括认知习惯和教育系统两种主流观点。最后对出现不同研究结果的原因进行讨论,并进一步探讨解释的有效性和“西方人比东方人过度自信”的原因。     

Knowing Versus Caring: The Role of Affect and Cognition in Political Perceptions

This paper examines the importance of political knowledge in shaping accurate perceptions of the political world—specifically, how levels of general political knowledge influence the accuracy of specific political judgments, how those judgments might also be shaped by "wishful thinking," and how political knowledge attenuates the impact of wishful thinking on political judgments. Predictions of who would win the U.S. presidential election in 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996, as surveyed in the National Election Studies conducted in those years, were used as a measure of the accuracy of political perceptions. Analysis of these data reveals that both political knowledge and wishful thinking are important determinants of the accuracy of people's perceptions; in addition, the impact of wishful thinking on perceptions is attenuated by political knowledge.     

“Intrinsically” or just “Instrumentally” Valuable? On Structural Types of Values of Scientific Knowledge

Debates about scientific (though rarely about otherforms of) knowledge, research policies or academic trainingoften involve a controversy about whether scientificknowledge possesses just “instrumental” value or also “intrinsic” value. Questioning this common simpleopposition, I scrutinize the issues involved in terms of agreater variety of structural types of values attributableto (scientific) knowledge. (Intermittently, I address thepuzzling habit of attributing “intrinsic” value to quitedifferent things, e.g. also to nature, in environmentalethics.) After some remarks on relevant broader philosophicaldebates about scientific knowledge, I pave a path throughthe (terminological) thicket of structural types of values. Our initial simple opposition is shown to conflate thedistinctions intrinsic/extrinsic and instrumental (or justuseful)/final. Next, I consider the value(s) of knowledgeand knowing in general and their possible value components(like the values of truth and justifiedness). After havingdiscussed the types of value of everyday knowledge,especially its functional and constitutive value (notionsintroduced earlier), I argue that these can or should alsobe attributed to scientific knowledge, thus departing fromboth objectivist and sociological views of science. One could say that I offer a certain defense of theintrinsic value of scientific knowing (and the inherentvalue of scientific knowledge) and some importantdifferentiations of its “instrumental values”. I alsocaution (in relation with my puzzle) against drawing hastymoral conclusions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Near-Death Experience: Knowledge and Attitudes of College Students

There is a considerable literature documenting the effects of a near-death experience (NDE) on persons who actually undergo the experience, in terms of their attitudes and opinions about NDEs. However, investigations of how much nonexperiencers know about NDEs and their attitudes towards them are in short supply. This study examined the relationship in people who have not had an NDE between attitudes toward and knowledge of near-death experiences. Subjects were undergraduate students, with a mean age of 32 years. The Near-Death Phenomena Knowledge and Attitudes Questionnaire was employed to assess attitudes toward and knowledge of NDEs. Results indicated that both knowledge and attitudes were relatively normally distributed, and that level of knowledge significantly predicted attitudes towards NDEs, accounting for 34 percent of the common variance.     

Early orthographic influences on phonemic awareness tasks: Evidence from a preschool training study

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but not others. A selective effect of this training was found on their phonemic awareness task performance for the trained items. These findings point to the multidetermined nature of performance on tasks normally considered as measuring phonemic awareness and have implications for theories of the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition.     

Attributions for spousal behavior in relation to criticism and perceived criticism

This study examined relations between spousal attributions and criticism in a sample of 118 married couples. Spouses rated general perceived criticism (PC) and their own expressed criticism as well as interaction-specific PC from a videotaped discussion. Independent judges also coded criticism from the discussion. Spouses’ self-reported causal and responsibility attributions for hypothetical spousal negative behavior were related to all types of criticism. Attributions were also associated with unique variance in spouses’ reports of general PC and criticism, even after controlling either for judges’ or partners’ ratings of criticism and marital adjustment. General PC and expressed criticism appear to reflect more than either the amount of criticism present or feelings about the marriage; rather, general PC and expressed criticism are uniquely associated with the cause and responsibility ascribed to partners’ behavior.