ON THE "USE" OF NEOPRAGMATISM

Abstract. The present article continues an earlier critique of Robbins's and Rorty's neopragmatism. Their skepticism about the traditional concept of correspondence and about the criteria for truth are both unjustified, and their own assertion of meaning as usefulness either presupposes a prior notion of linguistic reference or fails to qualify as a sufficient criterion for knowledge. The difficulties with neopragmatism have implications for two other areas of the religion/science discussion, postmodernism and empirical Theology. Postmodernism shares neopragmatism's mistakes regarding the philosophy of language and can be rejected without endangering one's empiricism, humanism, or naturalism. By contrast, the strengths of empirical Theology, and of religious empiricism in general, can be preserved without Robbins's proposed ban on metaphysics.     

On the processing of arguments

This paper is concerned with the processing of informal arguments, that is, arguments involving probable truth. A model of informal argument processing is presented that is based upon Hample's (1977) expansion of Toulmin's (1958) model of argument structure. The model postulates that a claim activates an attitude, the two components forming a complex that in turn activates reasons. Furthermore, the model holds occurrence of the reason, or possibly the claim and the reason, activates values. Three experiments are described that provide support for the model.This research was supported by the Mellon Foundation and by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the Department of Education via an award for the Center for the Study of Learning to the Learning Research and Development Center. The contents of the paper are not necessarily the position of any of these organizations.     

Being unreasonable: Perelman and the problem of fallacies

Most work on fallacies continues to conceptualize fallacious reasoning as involving a breach of a formal or quasi-formal rule. Chaim Perelman's theory of argumentation provides a way to conceptualize fallacies in a completely different way. His approach depends on an understanding of standards of rationality as essentially connected with conceptions of universality. Such an approach allows one to get beyond some of the basic problems of fallacy theory, and turns informal logic toward substantive philosophical questions. I show this by reinterpreting three so-called fallacies - theargumentum ad baculum, equivocation and composition/division - in the light of Perelman's account.     

Utility maximization and melioration: Internalities in individual choice

How do people go about choosing between alternatives in relatively simple settings? This study explores some of the variables that past work suggests may be relevant. Volunteer subjects worked for money in six procedures in which the probability of a payment from either of two alternatives was 1.0, but the rate of pay (i.e. the speed with which a payment was delivered or the size of the payment) interacted with the subjects recent allocation of choices, which we define as the ‘internalities’. Because of the internalities, choosing the currently more profitable alternative did not maximize total earnings. Subjects were more likely to fail to maximize when the interaction between present pay and past choices was spread over longer sequences of choices, or when the reward variable was the speed, rather than the value, of each payment. Subjects often disregarded the internalities and were instead guided by the current yields of the two alternatives, which is a frequently observed tendency, called ‘melioration’, in experiments on choices by animals. The tendency toward melioration was only partially counteracted by explicit instructions on how to maximize earnings. We discuss a theoretical framework for melioration that postulates both motivational and cognitive sources.     

Taking visual disability into account: Explaining failure to experts and non-experts

The present study was designed to investigate visually handicapped students' explanations for failure when the motive to maintain or enhance self-esteem was in conflict with the motive to present a favorable social image. Subjects experienced manipulated failure in a text comprehension task and were subsequently asked to give causal and responsibility attributions in the presence of either a visually handicapped or a non-handicapped experimenter. It was expected that visually disabled participants would claim a handicap-bonus from the non-handicapped experimenter by explicitly presenting non-defensive attributions and accounts as well as handicap-related responses, while defensive explanations should be more pronounced when faced with a blind experimenter. The data provide support for the existence of presumed social expectations as determinants of individuals' verbal self-presentations.     

Delay reduction: current status.

Delay-reduction theory states that the effectiveness of a stimulus as a conditioned reinforcer may be predicted most accurately by the reduction in time to primary reinforcement correlated with its onset. We review support for the theory and then discuss two new types of experiments that assess it. One compares models of choice in situations wherein the less preferred outcome is made more accessible; the other investigates whether frequency of conditioned reinforcement affects choice beyond the effect exerted by frequency of primary reinforcement.     

Momentary maximizing in concurrent schedules with a minimum interchangeover interval

Eight pigeons were trained on concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules with a minimum interchangeover time programmed as a consequence of changeovers. In Experiment 1 the reinforcement schedules remained constant while the minimum interchangeover time varied from 0 to 200 s. Relative response rates and relative time deviated from relative reinforcement rates toward indifference with long minimum interchangeover times. In Experiment 2 different reinforcement ratios were scheduled in successive experimental conditions with the minimum interchangeover time constant at 0, 2, 10, or 120 s. The exponent of the generalized matching equation was close to 1.0 when the minimum interchangeover time was 0 s (the typical procedure for concurrent schedules without a changeover delay) and decreased as that duration was increased. The data support the momentary maximizing theory and contradict molar maximizing theories and the melioration theory.     

The asymptotic posterior normality of the latent trait in an IRT model

It has long been part of the item response theory (IRT) folklore that under the usual empirical Bayes unidimensional IRT modeling approach, the posterior distribution of examinee ability given test response is approximately normal for a long test. Under very general and nonrestrictive nonparametric assumptions, we make this claim rigorous for a broad class of latent models.This research was partially supported by Office of Naval Research Cognitive and Neural Sciences Grant N0014-J-90-1940, 442-1548, National Science Foundation Mathematics Grant NSF-DMS-91-01436, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. We wish to thank Kumar Joag-dev and Zhiliang Ying for enlightening suggestions concerning the proof of the basic result.The authors wish to thank Kumar Joag-Dev, Brian Junker, Bert Green, Paul Holland, Robert Mislevy, and especially Zhiliang Ying for their useful comments and discussions.     

Some relationships between the information function of IRT and the signal/noise ratio and reliability coefficient of classical test theory

It is shown that IRTs information function for an item is functionally related to local versions of classical test theories' signal/noise ratio and reliability coefficient.     

Linking qualitative and quantitative methods in cross-cultural survey research: Techniques from cognitive science

Survey research with diverse cultural and ethnic minority groups is a complex and challenging endeavor that confronts the researcher with problems related to linguistic and conceptual equivalence and measurement as well as problems related to difficulties that respondents have with the sociocultural dimensions of the survey/interview process. One way to improve the quality of cross-cultural surveys and to insure that the findings are culturally relevant and accurate is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper proposes that certain qualitative techniques from cognitive science, specifically cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, are particularly well suited to being combined with survey research. These techniques provide information corresponding to the underlying thought processes of respondents and enable researchers to better understand how different cultural and ethnic groups construe the world. The information obtained can be used improve the formulation of survey questions, design and structure questionnaire formats to coincide with the way particular groups organize concepts, and help researchers understand difficulties respondents may have with the survey/interview process. In addition, the techniques produce data that are easily codifiable and more manageable than traditional qualitative techniques including participant observation and in-depth interviews.