Foundationalism about justification has historically enjoyed widespread acceptance among philosophers despite equally widespread disagreement about how foundational justification is possible. It is widely agreed that all knowledge must by justified by a foundation that does not stand in need of justification, but philosophers disagree on what could provide that foundation. Internalists, who look for justification in factors internal to rational agents, tend to agree that foundational justification is provided by seemings, or the way things seem to one to be. This view has most commonly gone by the name 'Phenomenal Dogmatism' although variations of it have been defended. Phenomenal dogmatism has been criticized for being too permissive with regard to the states it counts as able to confer foundational justification. In this paper I will consider one attempt, offered by Berit Brogaard, to revise phenomenal dogmatism in response to these criticisms. I will argue that Brogaard's revised view has significant problems of its own. Specifically, it does not account for problems arising from the possibility of cognitively penetrated perceptions. / Master of Arts / Many people take the way things seem (a ‘seeming’) to be good evidence for belief unless there is a good reason to think otherwise. This view is called ‘phenomenal dogmatism.’ In this paper, I consider a modified phenomenal dogmatist view proposed by Berit Brogaard. Brogaard claims that what she calls ‘evidential insensitivity’ is the mark of seemings that count as good evidence. I argue that her view both treats seemings as good evidence in cases where when it shouldn’t and also treats seemings as bad evidence in cases where it should treat them as good. One problem for Brogaard’s view comes from the possibility of cognitive penetration, which are cases where someone’s current beliefs influence the way things seem to them. Many philosophers have debated whether cognitive penetration can occur. Brogaard argues that many studies purporting to show that cognitive penetration can occur are methodologically flawed or have been misinterpreted. However, I cite studies that Brogaard has not considered and that are relevant to her proposal in particular.

This research sought to determine if a significant relationship existed between various levels of dogmatism of supervising teachers and student teachers and the degree of change in attitude of the student teachers during student teaching.

Studying the effect of fundamental religious belief upon attitudes toward woman's role in society, findings were: (1) persons high in fundamental belief have more traditional attitudes than persons low in fundamental belief; (2) atheists, agnostics, Unitarians, Jews, and 'others' hold more liberal attitudes than Protestants or Catholics; (3) persons who frequently attend religious services hold more conservative attitudes than persons who attend infrequently; and (4) females hold more liberal attitudes than males. Also, marital status did not affect attitudes toward woman's role. Subjects were 63 female and 38 male college students. Findings were discussed in light of effects conservative attitudes toward woman's role could have upon fundamentalists, and of the theory supporting the hypotheses.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationships between personality-centered and issue-centered approaches to a study of attitudes. The relationships will be sought through examination of the essential characteristics of the ideas behind each approach and by exposing the same population to both of the data-gathering methods employed by these researchers, i.e., Rokeach's Dogmatism Scale, and Sherif, et al.'s Method of Ordered Alternatives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of experimenter status and subject dogmatism on anagram solving. The subjects were 90 college students. Only those subjects scoring in the upper or lower thirds on the Dogmatism Scale were utilized. The same experimenter was described as being of either high or low status in each class. In the low status condition, the experimenter was introduced as a student making up an incomplete, while in the high status condition, the experimenter was introduced as a Doctoral student doing research for a Federal Grant Agency. Therefore, four experimental groups were formed in relation to two different levels of dogmatism and two different statuses for the experimenter. A two-way analysis of variance with one covariate {Composite ACT scores to account for intellectual functioning) was computed using subject dogmatism and experimenter status as the independent variables and anagram performance as the dependent variable. It was found that neither the main affects of subject dogmatism and experimenter status, nor the interaction between the two variables were significant. Analysis of a questionnaire designed to evaluate the status manipulation indicated that the manipulation had not been effective. The problem of devising an effective status manipulation for a female experimenter was discussed in relation to future research.

An investigation of factors in the persuasion process was conducted in this thesis. Personalitys factors of dogmatism and Internal-External locus of control were examined to determine whether they would be meaningful predictors of opinion change to a persuasive communication. The researcher also examined whether these two personality factors would interact with varying degrees of source credibility.The researcher had expected both personality factors would be significant predictors of a criterion of attitude change, and that once statistical control for dogmatism and Internal-External locus of control had been provided, there would not be a significant relationship at the .05 level between source credibility and attitude change.To test these assumptions a controlled experiment was conducted with 94 subjects drawn from three Ball State University Journalism classes. The subjects were administered a pretest to determine their initial attitude to an issue of tuition tax credits (i.e., a credit that may be deducted from parents' income tax for children attending college). Subjects were subsequently exposed-to a persuasive communication which argued against the tuition tax credit proposal, and then retested to determine whether there had been a shift in opinion. After subjects had responded to the posttest they were asked to argue for and against the topic. According to Rokeach's theory of the "open and closed mind," the researcher had expected to find argumentation to be related to a person's belief system, whether it was open or closed, and therefore also correlated with attitude change.Findings of the multiple regression analysis failed to substantiate the original assumptions and the research hypotheses predicting a significant relationship between the two personality factors and attitude change at the .05 level were rejected.Argumentation, however did prove to be related to attitude change, significant beyond the .01 level, but was unbound to the two personality factors. The researcher proposed that this relationship could have been the result of cognitive dissonance on the part of subjects when they were forced to choose between two positively valued beliefs: 1) a belief that tuition tax credits could help ease the burden of rising college costs, and 2) a more traditional belief that "each man whould pull his own weight in society."According to this theory, subjects who changed in their initial liking for tuition tax credits from the pretest to posttest felt compelled to offer counterarguments to justify their switch in opinion in the face of information that tuition tax credits could ultimately benefit them.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1959 M32

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of short term empathy training on the faculty of a small, private college faculty. Specific attention is given to examining the effects of empathy training on the variables of authoritarianism and dogmatism. Several studies regarding empathy training were reviewed. It was found that a majority of the designs used in these studies limited their emphasis to the effect of training on increased empathy. Very little had been done to expand our knowledge to other variables.

Thesis (B.A. Hons.))--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1971.