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What determines the meaning of a work of art? This paper considers three theories of art-critical interpretation: moderate actual intentionalism (the artist’s intention partly determines the work’s meaning), hypothetical intentionalism (the work’s meaning is the best hypothesis of what the artist could have meant), and the value-maximizing theory (interpretations which maximize the work’s value are to be preferred). I argue that moderate actual intentionalism is incoherent, collapsing either into the intentional fallacy or into an extreme form of intentionalism. I argue further that hypothetical intentionalism is premised on a distinction between two orders of intention which cannot be maintained, and, trades on a mischaracterization of the force of hypothetical intentions. I argue for the value-maximizing theory, which I claim provides an elegant interpretive framework while being theoretically untroubled vis-à-vis its competitors.

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Yes / The field of mental health tends to treat its literary metaphors as literal realities with the concomitant loss of vague “feelings of tendency” in “unusual experiences”. I develop this argument through the prism of William James’ (1890) “The Principles of Psychology”. In the first part of the paper, I reflect upon the relevance of James’ “The Psychologist’s Fallacy” to a literary account of mental health. In the second part of the paper, I develop the argument that “connotations” and “feelings of tendency” are central to resolving some of the more difficult challenges of this fallacy. I proceed to do this in James’ spirit of generating imaginative metaphors to understand experience. Curiously, however, mental health presents a strange paradox in William James’ (1890) Principles of Psychology. He constructs an elaborate conception of the “empirical self” and “stream of thought” but chooses not to use these to understand unusual experiences – largely relying instead on the concept of a “secondary self.” In this article, I attempt to make more use of James’ central division between the “stream of thought” and the “empirical self” to understand unusual experiences. I suggest that they can be usefully understood using the loose metaphor of a “binary star” where the “secondary self” can be seen as an “accretion disk” around one of the stars. Understood as literary rather the literal, this metaphor is quite different to more unitary models of self-breakdown in mental health, particularly in its separation of “self” from “the stream of thought” and I suggest it has the potential to start a re-imagination of the academic discourse around mental health.

Making good predictions is a critical feature of decision making in situations such as investing and predicting the spread of diseases. Past literature indicates that people use recent and longer-term trends while making predictions. Nonetheless, less is known about how these factors affect how well people make predictions and the timing of their predictions. Further, identifying factors underlying predictive judgments could be an important behavioral factor in manic-depression, anxiety, substance use, age effects, and understanding how income inequality affects decision making. To understand how people make predictive judgments, we conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used an investment task where participants had to predict the future price of a stock based on an exponential trend of information. We found that participants generally had lower earnings with steeper exponential trends (e.g. slower starting) and delayed their decisions to sell bad stocks with steeper trends. We extended these results in Experiment 2 with an updated task with exponential and inverse exponential trends. Overall, our results suggested that people delayed longer to make their prediction with slower starting exponential trends compared to faster starting inverse exponential trends and delayed their predictions longer with more linear trends compared to more trend trends. When deciding how long to explore, participants incorporated both the average trend and recent trend, though they shifted their responses depending on the overall functional form. These choices were ultimately biased to be optimistic or pessimistic based on whether the trend started fast or slow, respectively. Additionally, we found that participants who self-reported taking more gambling risk and depressive symptoms had a greater tendency to stay with faster starting trends and to leave with slower starting trends, suggesting they were even more optimistic given initially fast starting trends. Results pointing to an optimism bias based on the trend in information available to the participant could suggest that an aspect of sunk-cost fallacy is due to errors in predicting the likelihood of future success based on past information. Our findings help understand the dynamics of how people make predictive judgments over time and could inform future research into the mechanisms people use for prospective decision making. Additionally, future research and potential interventions could account for biases in how people perceive past trends to minimize harmful effects of sunk-cost fallacy when making predictions. / Psychology

The research undertakes a critical study of informal fallacies in some socio-political and religious discourses in Ghana. It clearly and aptly demonstrates that the aforementioned discourses are mostly, if not, always laced with fallacies which obscure and distort clear and critical thinking. The study shows that language, which is the fundamental means by which to engage in socio-political discourse, can be viewed as a complicated tool which is open to misuse and abuse. It shows that language used in socio-political discourses is more often than not utilized poorly, and as such assertions and appeals can be confused with factual/logical inaccuracies. Statements can be formulated in ways that make their content dangerously vague, ambiguous or generally misleading. The research shows that although fallacies can be committed intentionally or unintentionally, in discourses in general, they are mostly, if not always, committed intentionally in socio-political discourse so as to achieve political gains and agenda. Another area of discourse that is tackled in this work where fallacies frequently occur is the religious sector. The study notes that matters of religion are mostly matters that are delicate to handle as these matters are mostly, again if not always, based on faith. It is shown herein that many a time, religious personalities use fallacious as means to drive their religious agenda across. The research then looks at what these aforementioned fallacies imply in relation to socio-political and religious discourses. It proceeds to discuss the positive implications of fallacies before it progresses to the negative implications of same. It then asks how a fallacy will be beneficial to a person and or how it will disadvantage the same person. If fallacies often occur in socio-political and religious discourses, then one must have the ability to detect these fallacies and try to avoid them. The work discusses how to detect fallacies and how to avoid them. It makes bold claims that if one has knowledge about fallacies then one will be able to avoid them. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Ph. D. (Philosophy)

Denna studie ämnar att undersöka vad som skiljer sig mellan unga kvinnors och mäns finansiella tankesätt i form av mottagligheten för kognitiva snedvridningar, samt huruvida dessa snedvridningar är relaterade till sparbeteende. Som följd av en mansdominerad finansmarknad tillsammans med andra faktorer har kvinnors och mäns ägande genom åren, och fram tills idag skiljt sig åt. Att kvinnor sparar mindre än män, vilket visar sig redan vid ung ålder, ger avtryck i deras framtida ekonomi. Det förstärker även fördomar om kvinnors finansiella beteenden vilket kan bli en bromskloss för kvinnors avancemang på finansmarknaden. “Girl math” är ett fenomen som trendar på sociala medier och handlar om kvinnors finansiella kognitiva snedvridningar och förstärker befintliga fördomar. Frågan som vi ställer oss är hur väl dessa girl math-påståenden om kvinnors finansiella beteende stämmer överens med verkligheten, är girl math sanning eller konsekvens? De kognitiva snedvridningar som undersöks i studien är mental accounting, sunk cost fallacy och opportunity cost neglect. För att studera detta utformade vi en onlinestudie riktad till individer inom åldersspannet 18-30 år. Deltagarna fick svara på frågor kopplade till tre kognitiva snedvridningarna som är framträdande inom girl math samt deras sparbeteende. Tillvägagångssättet för analysen var genom en OLS-regression med flera förklaringsvariabler mot de beroende variablerna. Resultaten indikerar att unga kvinnor är mer mottagliga för mental accounting jämfört med unga män, något som går i linje med tidigare forskning. Däremot kan variabeln kön inte förklara mottagligheten för sunk cost fallacy eller opportunity cost neglect. Det finns inte heller något signifikant samband mellan mottagligheten för våra tre kognitiva snedvridningar och könsskillnader i sparande. Våra resultat mynnar ut i att fenomenet girl math delvis är sanning som troligen uppstått som konsekvens av samhällets finansiella normer och stereotyper. / This study aims to investigate the differences between young women's and men's financial mindsets in terms of susceptibility to behavioral biases, and whether these biases are related to savings behavior. As a result of a male-dominated financial market, along with other factors, women's and men's ownership has diverged over the years, and until today. The fact that women save less than men, which is already evident at a young age, has an impact on their future finances. It also reinforces prejudices about women's financial behavior, which can become a barrier to women's advancement in the financial market. “Girl math” is a phenomenon trending on social media that addresses women's financial behavioral biases and reinforces existing prejudices. The question we ask is how well do these girl math claims about women's financial behavior match reality, is girl math truth or consequence? The behavioral biases examined in the study are mental accounting, sunk cost fallacy and opportunity cost neglect. To study this, we designed an online study aimed at individuals in the age range 18-30 years. Participants were asked to answer questions related to three behavioral biases prominent in girl math and questions about their savings behavior. The approach to the analysis is through an OLS regression with several explanatory variables against the dependent variables. The results indicate that young women are more susceptible to mental accounting compared to young men, which is in line with previous research. However, the variable gender cannot explain the susceptibility to sunk cost fallacy or opportunity cost neglect . There is also no significant relationship between susceptibility to the three behavioral biases and gender differences in savings. Our results conclude that the phenomenon of girl math is partly true and has probably arisen as a consequence of societal financial norms and stereotypes.

Heuristic estimates of probabilities may be an obstacle to decision making within High Reliability Organizations. Accident reports have found that two from each other separate phenomenon, Blame Culture and Type 1 processing constitutes a particularily serious threat to decision making. The present study (N = 70) investigated if a perceived risk of negative feedback and cognitive load would lead to more heuristic estimates on the Conjunction Fallacy. Three experiment conditions were included in the study: Negative feedback, cognitive load and control. The results were non-significant for both negative feedback and cognitive load. Furthermore, the estimated negative affect was higher when violations to the Conjunction Rule was made. Previous studies showing that high scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) indicate less sensitivity to conjunction fallacies, were replicated. The present study concluded that the CRT may be a strong predictor of the Conjunction Fallacy.

Cette étude examine comment l’argument de la pente glissante est employé dans les débats sur l’avortement et sur l’euthanasie. L’hypothèse est la suivante : l’argument de la pente glissante peut être utilisé de manière fallacieuse dans certains cas, mais il peut également s’avérer raisonnable dans d’autres. L’objectif de cette étude est d’étudier certains arguments récurrents du discours bioéthique afin de tester leur pertinence, leur validité et leurs conséquences sur le plan philosophique. Cette étude se divise en deux parties. La première partie s’intéresse à l’usage de la pente glissante de type « sorite » dans le débat sur l’avortement. La deuxième partie se penche sur l’argument de la pente glissante complète telle qu’il est employé dans le débat sur l’euthanasie. / This study examines how the slippery slope argument is used in debates on abortion and euthanasia. The hypothesis is that the slippery slope argument can be used wrongfully in some cases, but it may also be reasonable in others. The objective of this study is to investigate some of the recurring arguments in bioethics in order to test their relevance, validity and their impact on the philosophical level. This study is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the use of the “sorites” slippery slope argument in the abortion debate. The second part focuses on the “full slippery slope argument” as used in the debate on euthanasia.

The sunk-cost fallacy (SCF) occurs when an individual makes an investment with a low probability of a payoff because an earlier investment has already been made. It is considered an error because a rational decision should not factor in now-irretrievable investments, as they do not affect current outcome likelihoods. Previous research has measured the tendency to commit the SCF by using hypothetical scenarios in which participants must choose to make a future investment or not after making an initial investment. There are many theories as to why people commit the SCF. Loss aversion, which is the preference for uncertain over certain losses, may be related to the SCF. Dual-process theory, which views decision-making in terms of a fast, automatic process called system 1 and a slow, deliberate process called system 2, may also help to explain the SCF. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to complete a sunk-cost questionnaire in which the initial-investment types and amounts varied. They also completed an endowment-effect task as a measure of loss aversion. The SCF was committed most often when the initial investment was large compared to small and most often with money, less with time, and least with effort. There was an interaction effect in which small differences were seen in the SCF between time, effort, and money when the initial investment was small, and differences grew larger as the initial investment increased. Loss aversion displayed a non-significant negative relation with the SCF. In Experiment 2, participants completed a sunk-cost questionnaire in which they were asked to respond as they normally would and then from the perspective of a fictional person described as a logical decision maker. In cases in which they committed the SCF, they were asked to indicate why they continued to invest. They also completed a risky-lottery loss-aversion task. As seen in Experiment 1, the SCF was more likely when initial investments were greater and occurred most when the initial investment was money, less when it was time, and least when it was effort. Loss aversion had a significant but small negative relation with SCF scores. There was no effect of perspective taking. It may be that the SCF is simply due to the over-application of the personal rule “don't waste”, as not wanting to be wasteful was the most-common reason participants gave for why they committed the SCF.