Frankfurt versus Frankfurt: a new anti-causalist dawn

There is an important anomaly to the causalist/compatibilist paradigm in the philosophy of action and free will. This anomaly, which to my knowledge has gone unnoticed so far, can be found in the philosophy of Harry Frankfurt. Two of his most important contributions to the field – his influential counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities and his ‘guidance’ view of action – are incompatible. Frankfurt's counterexample to the Principle works only if we do not understand action as Frankfurt does in his guidance account. If, on the other hand, we understand agency in terms of the agent's guidance, then his counterexample to the Principle fails because, then, counterfactual scenarios of Frankfurt-type counterexamples are such that what happens does not count as the relevant agent's action. So Frankfurt-type counterexamples do not show that the agent could not have avoided acting as she did: so they fail to offer a scenario in which the agent is intuitively responsible even though she could not have avoided acting as she did. Therefore, Frankfurt-type counterexamples do not challenge the Principle, according to which ‘a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise’. The importance of this inconsistency goes far beyond the issue of coherence within Frankfurt's philosophy. I shall argue that this inconsistency represents an important anomaly within the causalist/compatibilist framework; so that we should start to seriously consider having to move on from the established paradigm.     

Beyond the Score: Clinical Evaluation Through Formal Psychological Assessment

Questionnaires generate numerical scores, but endorsing different sets of items could produce the same score despite reflecting qualitatively different configurations of clinical features. Formal psychological assessment (FPA) attempts to overcome this by identifying the clinical features entailed by observed response patterns. This study illustrates an application of FPA to the cleaning subscale of a questionnaire assessing obsessive–compulsive symptoms and DSM–IV–TR diagnostic criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorder. A deterministic model of the items–criteria relationships was constructed by mapping each item to each diagnostic criterion. The resulting model was tested on a large community sample (N = 4,412). Results indicate that the theoretical model has adequate fit; item error rates and probabilities for each of the criteria are examined. Clinically relevant examples of the items–criteria relationships are discussed. Possible applications of FPA to personality assessment are also discussed, including long multidimensional questionnaires and questionnaires that use subtle item content.     

Pre-sleep cognitive intrusions and treatment of onset-insomnia

The importance of differences in pre-sleep cognitive intrusions in the treatment of sleep-onset insomnia were investigated. Twenty-four patients suffering from persistent psychophysiological insomnia were assessed on a pre-sleep cognitive intrusion inventory and divided into high and low scorers. Within these groups Ss were randomly assigned to either a cognitively focused program (cognitive restructuring. paradoxical instructions and thought stopping) or a psychophysiologically focused method, EMG-biofeedback training. Patients were treated individually for 6 sessions. Within-group comparisons showed that both treatments yielded significant improvement in latency to falling asleep, pre-sleep tension, hours of sleep and sleep quality. Between-group comparisons showed a greater reduction of pre-sleep intrusions in patients treated by the cognitive method and of pre-sleep tension in patients trained in biofeedback, but no differential results were found in outcome variables either after treatments or at 3- and 12-month follow-ups. The results indicate that the use of differential treatments added little to the outcome of therapy, and do not support the hypothesis that greater benefits are gained when the treatment matches the patient's claims of cognitive hyperarousal.     

The components of the Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Questionnaire

The Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Questionnaire was given to 868 Italian students. Response analysis revealed three factors: checking behavior and worries, problems of contamination and cleaning, and doubts and intrusive thoughts. In males a fourth component was also recognized—the ‘obesssional slowness’ which Hodgson and Rachman (1977) found in obsessive patients, but not in normal and neurotic English patients.     

Avoiding and Alternate Possibilities

Greg Janzen has recently criticised my defence of Frankfurt’s counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities by arguing that Jones avoids killing Smith in the counterfactual scenario. Janzen’s argument consists in introducing a new thought-experiment which is supposed to be analogous to Frankfurt’s and where the agent is supposed to avoid A-ing. Here I argue that Janzen’s argument fails on two counts, because his new scenario is not analogous to Frankfurt’s and because the agent in his new scenario does not avoid A-ing.     

Priming Effects and Free Will

Abstract

I argue that the empirical literature on priming effects does not warrant nor suggest the conclusion, drawn by prominent psychologists such as J. A. Bargh, that we have no free will or less free will than we might think. I focus on a particular experiment by Bargh – the ‘elderly’ stereotype case in which subjects that have been primed with words that remind them of the stereotype of the elderly walk on average slower out of the experiment’s room than control subjects – and I show that we cannot say that subjects cannot help walking slower or that they are not free in doing do. I then illustrate how these cases can be reconciled and normalized within a Davidsonian theory of action to show that, in walking slower, subjects are acting intentionally. My argument applies across various experiments, including those of goal priming. In the final section I argue that the only cases in which priming effects are efficacious are so-called Buridan cases.     

Religiousness and obsessive-compulsive cognitions and symptoms in an Italian population

Fifty-four individuals with a high degree of religiosity, 47 with a medium degree of religiosity and 64 with low religiosity completed anonymously the Italian versions of well-established measures of obsessive-compulsive (OC) cognitions and symptoms, depression and anxiety. After controlling for anxiety and depression, religious groups scored higher than individuals with a low degree of religiosity on measures of obsessionality, overimportance of thoughts, control of thoughts, perfectionism and responsibility. Moreover, measures of control of thoughts and overimportance of thoughts were associated with OC symptoms only in religious subjects. It is concluded that religion might play a role in obsessive-compulsive disorder phenomenology. Additional research is warranted because it is plausible that only a few aspects of religious teachings (e.g., inflexibility and prohibition) are linked to OC phenomena.     

Masculinity-femininity as a national characteristic and its relationship with national agoraphobic fear levels: Fodor's sex role hypothesis revitalized

Hofstede's dimension of national culture termed Masculinity-Femininity [. Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill] is proposed to be of relevance for understanding national-level differences in self-assessed agoraphobic fears. This prediction is based on the classical work of Fodor [. In: V. Franks & V. Burtle (Eds.), Women in therapy: new psychotherapies for a changing society. New York: Brunner/Mazel]. A unique data set comprising 11 countries (total N=5491 students) provided the opportunity of scrutinizing this issue. It was hypothesized and found that national Masculinity (the degree to which cultures delineate sex roles, with masculine or tough societies making clearer differentiations between the sexes than feminine or modest societies do) would correlate positively with national agoraphobic fear levels (as assessed with the Fear Survey Schedule-III). Following the correction for sex and age differences across national samples, a significant and large effect-sized national-level (ecological) r=+0.67 (P=0.01) was found. A highly feminine society such as Sweden had the lowest, whereas the champion among the masculine societies, Japan, had the highest national Agoraphobic fear score.     

Anti-racism and inclusive racism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -