In Part I, I offer a "constructivist" interpretation of Xunzi's philosophy. On the constructivist view, there is no privileged description of the world. Concepts, categories, and norms as social constructs help us effectively manage our way through the world, rather than reveal or express univocal knowledge of it. ;In the opening chapter, I argue that dao should be understood as open ended and that Xunzi's worldview allows for a plurality of legitimate daos---at least at the theoretical level. Chapter Two discusses (...) the concepts of li and lei and rejects the idea that true categories follow from a "god-like" understanding of rational patterns. Rather, patterns and categories are mutually entailing. That is, categories are not simply based on patterns, but are at the same time a precondition for patterning. Chapter Three addresses the related concept of ming , and the idea of zhengming . Attuning names is not matching them to any transcendent standard, but making them fitting given our nature and circumstances. It is constructing and maintaining a socially responsible language. I also discuss here the complex manner in which early Confucians understood names to be developed and sanctioned. In Chapter Four I discuss ritual theory and argue that Xunzi offers a this-world centered religious sensibility. Far from a matter of slavishly following a code of behaviors set down perfectly by ancient sages, the performance of li requires interpretation in every application. Further, norms associated with li may evolve in response to changing needs and conditions. In the final chapter of Part I, I turn to the issue of virtue and moral development, arguing that there is no fixed set of virtues. ;Part II shifts focus to the contemporary relevance of a constructivist way of thinking by using it to understand the cross-cultural dynamics taking place in international discourse on human rights. In short, interpreting the arguments of contemporary representatives of East-Asian countries through a constructivist lens reveals them to be more compelling than they might otherwise have seemed. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce a class of distance-based iterated revision operators generated by minimizing the geodesic distance on a graph. Such operators correspond bijectively to metrics and have a simple finite presentation. As distance is generated by distinguishability, our framework is appropriate for modelling contexts where distance is generated by threshold, and therefore, when measurement is erroneous.

This is a defense of the doctrine of scientific realism. SR is defined through the following two claims: Most essential unobservables posited by the well-established current scientific theories exist independently of our minds. We know our well-established scientific theories to be approximately true. I first offer positive argumentation for SR. I begin with the so-called 'success arguments' for SR: 1) scientific theories most of the times entail successful predictions; 2) science is methodologically successful in generating empirically successful theories. SR explains (...) these facts via inference to the best explanation. I combine Hacking's experimental argument for entity realism with Salmon's common-cause principle. I take entity realism to be foundational to SR: one may believe in the existence of some theoretical entities without believing in any particular theory in which these are embedded. Its motivation comes from experimental practice, where the manipulation of these entities often relies on incompatible theoretical accounts. The underdetermination topic is thereafter discussed. Several attempts to distinguish between an observable and an unobservable realm are critically discussed, as well as the possibility that for any given theory, there are empirically equivalents generated by means of algorithms. I present extensive argumentation to the effect that such algorithmic rivals are not to be taken seriously. Social constructivism is being critically treated. I proceed by distinguishing between a metaphysical, a semantic, and an epistemic variant of SC. I conclude that only a moderate metaphysical constructivism can stand on its own feet. Its claim is merely that some facts about the world are socially constructed. I finish with a plea for a selective SR, able to do justice to the presence of both instrumentalism and modest constructivism in scientific practice. (shrink)

Recently, Casasanto and Lupyan have asserted that there are no context-independent concepts: all concepts are constructed ad hoc when they are instantiated. My aim is to show that the ad hoc cognition framework can be characterized by a similarity-based theory of concepts, and that two different notions of concept should be distinguished —which may be identified with two distinct stages of their life cycle. This approach brings together virtues from opposing views: invariantist: stored concepts are stable enough to collect new (...) information; contextualist: instantiated concepts are context-dependent, what explains our adaptive ability to changing environments. (shrink)

has to do with the acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge.

“In reality, all arguments from experience are founded on the similarity which we discover among natural objects, and by which we are induced to expect effects similar to those which we have found to follow from such objects. ... From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects.”.

The evaluative priming paradigm aims to uncover the processes underlying evaluations. For this purpose, this paradigm presents a sequence of two or more stimuli varying on the valence dimension to which participants must provide a response. The “standard” evaluative priming effect is a relative facilitation of the required responses in congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. The following thesis argues that this evaluative priming effect depends on prime-target similarity, with higher similarity between prime and target leading to larger priming effects. (...) Part one of this thesis presents a meta-analysis of existing data, which tests evidence for the impact of similarity on evaluative priming effects. This reanalysis is based on the assumption that positive information is overall more similar to other positive information than negative information is to other negative information. Thus, this analysis compares effects of positive and negative prime-target pairs. The results confirm that positive prime-target pairs elicit stronger priming effects than negative prime-target pairs. This analysis involves a broad sample of stimuli and designs which supports the generalizability of this finding. However, the results are also in line with alternative interpretations attributing the valence asymmetries to other effects caused by valence. The following four experiments manipulate similarity either by selecting prime-target pairs based on pre-ratings or by presenting identical and non-identical prime-target pairs. All four experiments show that similar prime-target pairs create larger priming effects than dissimilar prime-target pairs. These findings have implications for our understanding of the evaluative priming paradigm, the use of evaluative priming as a measure of attitudes, and the conceptualization of the evaluative system. These implications will be discussed. (shrink)

In the present dissertation, I propose a general, robust, and objective characteristic of the information environment, according to which negative information is more diverse than positive information. I present an explanatory framework for this phenomenon based on the non-extremity of positive qualities. Specifically, most attribute dimensions host one “positive” range which is surrounded by two distinct “negative” ranges, resulting in a greater diversity of negative compared to positive attributes, stimuli, and information in general. Chapter 1 of my dissertation reviews evidence (...) for the proposed greater diversity of negative information, showing that positive stimuli are consistently perceived as more similar than negative stimuli. Chapter 2 presents a line of research that demonstrates the same phenomenon in the domain of person perception. People perceive other people they like as more similar to one another than other people they dislike. I further suggest that the greater diversity of negative information as an “extrapsychic” phenomenon can account for a number of valence asymmetries in information processing that have previously been explained based on “intrapsychic” affective reactions. In line with this idea, Chapter 3 presents research showing that negative words enjoy a recognition advantage over positive words because they are more diverse. Chapter 4 discusses limitations, open questions and further implications of the current empirical findings and of the explanatory framework provided. (shrink)