Kant and German idealisms

This paper considers whether Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit should be considered as a refutation of solipsism. It focuses on a recent and detailed attempt to argue for this sort of reading that has been proposed by Frederick Beiser – but it argues that this reading is unconvincing, both in the historical motivations given for it in the work of Jacobi and Fichte, and as an interpretation of the text itself. An alternative reading of the dialectic is proposed, where it is argued that the central problem Hegel is concerned with is not solipsism, but the sociality of freedom.     

Hume's Experimental Method

In this article I attempt to reconstruct David Hume's use of the label ‘experimental’ to characterise his method in the Treatise. Although its meaning may strike the present-day reader as unusual, such a reconstruction is possible from the background of eighteenth-century practices and concepts of natural inquiry. As I argue, Hume's inquiries into human nature are experimental not primarily because of the way the empirical data he uses are produced, but because of the way those data are theoretically processed. He seems to follow a method of analysis and synthesis quite similar to the one advertised in Newton's Opticks, which profoundly influenced eighteenth-century natural and moral philosophy. This method brings him much closer to the methods of qualitative, chemical investigations than to mechanical approaches to both nature and human nature.     

On Behalf of J. S. Mill's ‘Assumption of Infallibility’ Argument

According to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, individual ‘spirits’ – the souls of humans and non-human animals – are extended but cannot be physically divided. His contemporaries and recent commentators have charged that More has never given an explication of the grounds on which the indivisibility of spirits is based. In this article, I suggest that exploring the usage that More makes of the analogy between spirits and light could go some way towards providing such an explication. More compares the relation between spirit and matter to the relation that, according to Aristotelian theories of light, holds between ‘intentional species’ and matter. I will argue that the purpose of his comparison is to highlight that both intentional species and spirits are existentially independent from matter. The existential independence of intentional species from matter expresses itself in the fact that light is not moved through the motion of the illuminated body. The existential independence of spirits from matter expresses itself in the fact that when a body that is coextensive with a spirit is divided, the spirit is not thereby divided but rather contracts into the remaining living organism.     

Louis de La Forge and the ‘Non-Transfer Argument’ for Occasionalism

In this paper, I investigate Louis de La Forge's argument against body–body causation. His general strategy exploits the impossibility of bodies communicating their movement by transfer of motion. I call this the ‘non-transfer’ argument (NT). NT allows La Forge both to reinterpret continuous creation in an occasionalistic fashion and to support his non-occasionalistic view concerning mind–body union. First, I present how NT emerges in Descartes’ own texts. Second, I show how La Forge recasts it to draw an occasionalistic account of body–body interactions, and I discuss how La Forge supports NT with continuous creation. Third, I conclude by suggesting that this further step of his argument does not undermine his non-occasionalistic account of mind–body union.     

Know versus Familiar: Differentiating states of awareness in others’ subjective reports of recognition

In the Remember–Know paradigm whether a Know response is defined as a high-confidence state of certainty or a low-confidence state based on familiarity varies across researchers and can influence participants’ responses. The current experiment was designed to explore differences between the states of Know and Familiar. Participants studied others’ justification statements to “Know” recognition decisions and separated them into two types. Crucially, participants were not provided definitions of Know and Familiar on which to sort the items—their judgements were based solely on the phenomenology described in the justifications. Participants’ sorting decisions were shown to reliably map onto expert classification of Know and Familiar. Post-task questionnaire responses demonstrated that both the level of memory detail and confidence expressed in the justifications were central to how participants categorised the items. In sum, given no instructions to do so, participants classify Familiar and Know according to two dimensions: confidence and amount of information retrieved.     

Saving-enhanced performance: saving items after study boosts performance in subsequent cognitively demanding tasks

ABSTRACT

By saving and storing information, we use digital devices as our external memory stores, being able to offload and temporarily forget saved contents. Storm and Stone [2015. Saving-enhanced memory: The benefits of saving on the learning and remembering of new information. Psychological Science, 26(2), 182–188] showed that such memory offloading can be beneficial for subsequent memory performance. Saving already encoded items enhanced recall of items encoded after saving. In the present study, we did not only replicate saving-enhanced memory but found saving-enhanced performance for unrelated cognitively demanding tasks. Participants solved more modular arithmetic problems when they were able to offload a previously studied word list, compared to trials without the possibility to offload. Thus, saving of recently encoded items entailed a general benefit on subsequent cognitive performance, beyond encoding and retrieving word lists. We assume that offloading frees participants from the need to maintain offloaded items. Gained resources can then be used for subsequent tasks with high cognitive demands. In a nutshell, memory offloading can help to reduce the amount of information that has to be processed at a given time, efficiently delegating our limited cognitive resources to the most relevant tasks at hand while currently irrelevant information are safely stored outside our own memory.     

Challenges for Christianity and Barriers to Dialogue in World Religions

Abstract

Mutual respect and understanding between the world's religions has become increasingly necessary in a global society where peace can be tenuous. This article will concentrate on challenges for Christianity in relationship with other world religions. Can interreligious dialogue benefit from what we learn from the dialogue 1 ?1?Ian G. Barbour in his work, Religion in an Age of Science, Gifford lectures, vol. 1 (San Francisco: HarperSanFranscisco, 1990), ch. 1 proposed a fourfold “typology” for relating science and theology, each containing subtypes. One of those types, Barbour called “dialogue”—which is of interest here as the model for shaping the dialogue between world religions. In his revised edition in 1997, he made minor modifications; however, in his When Science Meets Religion, Enemies, Stranger or Partners, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000), Barbour uses the typology as the organizing structure for all his book's chapters, which is instructive for those wanting to do more reading and understand dialogue beyond what is given here. between science and theology? Yes. 2 ?2?Email from Ted Peters, Professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), Program Director of the Science and Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS); Prof, Peters proposed using a relational statement of this type. The science–theology dialogue is part of the ongoing effort to bridge 3 ?3?Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, eds., Bridging Science and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), Foreword (Robert John Russell), ix–xii; Introduction (Gaymon Bennett), 14. the intellectual divide between the discoveries of natural science that have made our lives in the material world better, and interpretations and understandings in the various faith traditions that have given meaning and value to our living in the material world.     

Linguistic Analysis of Communication in Therapist-Assisted Internet-Delivered Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Generalized Anxiety Disorder

In spite of a growth in cognitive conceptualizations of obsessive‐compulsive symptoms, relatively little has been done to extend such concepts to childhood. This study investigated the relationship between responsibility attitudes and obsessive‐compulsive symptoms in normal children. A measure of responsibility attitudes in children was constructed on the basis of Salkovskis' Responsibility Attitudes Scale. This measure (Responsibility Attitudes Scale for Children) was administered together with the Leyton Obsessive Inventory Child Version and the Children's Depression Inventory to a sample of two hundred and two 10–14‐year‐old schoolchildren in Iceland. The responsibility measure correlated moderately and similarly with the Leyton Obsessive Inventory Child Version and the Children's Depression Inventory. In a hierarchical regression analysis predicting Leyton Obsessive Inventory Child Version scores, age and gender were entered in the equation first, followed by Children's Depression Inventory scores and, finally, Responsibility Attitudes Scale for Children scores. It was shown that Responsibility Attitudes Scale for Children scores added significantly to the prediction of Leyton Obsessive Inventory Child Version over and above the other variables. It is concluded that the study of the role of responsibility attitudes in children's obsessive‐compulsive symptoms is at least promising.     

MMPI-2 configurations among victims of bullying at work

Bullying at work, the systematic exposure to psychological violence and harassment in the workplace, places a serious strain on many employees. The aim of this study was to investigate psychological correlates of bullying among former and current victims using the MMPI-2. A total of 85 individuals, recruited among members of two Norwegian associations of bullying victims, participated in the study. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) Bullied victims have an elevated personality profile on the MMPI-2, although different kinds of personality profiles may be distinguished; (2) the personality profiles of the victims are related to the type of behaviour and the intensity of the behaviours experienced by the victim. Both hypotheses were confirmed. The study demonstrated, using cluster analysis, that the sample of bullied victims can be divided into three personality groups (“The seriously affected”, “The disappointed and depressed”, and “The common”.) The elevated 3-2-1 personality profile was most typical. Surprisingly, the victims of the common cluster reported the highest level of exposure to bullying, suggesting a vulnerability factor among the other victims. The scores on the new MMPI-2 Content scales were also analysed. The seriously affected group reported a high level of generalized anxiety, fear of specific incidences, and many health concern worries.