Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 1988. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Australian National University, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1985. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Note:

The present study sought to investigate the relationship between psychological reactance, as a component of paradoxical intention and locus of control.The Rotter I-E Scale, which measures individuals locus of control on a scale ranging from zero to 23, was utilized to determine subjects' external or internal ranking. A research design was developed which included a pilot study and an experiment which contained pretest and posttest conditions for examining subjects' choice change, From the pilot study two pictures were selected which were not biased towards internals or externals in the experimental conditions. Choice change was measured by subject's pretest choice against subject's posttest choice of the two pictures.The study was designed to answer the following research questions:1) Would there be a significant difference in the choices made by the experimental subjects from those made by the control subjects, thereby indicating that psychological reactance had occurred with the experimental group? 2) Would the findings of psychological the experimental reactance indicated in question one above, be significant if differences were compared by quartile scores on the I-E Scale?In the experiment, 122 experimental subjects were compared against 31 control subjects for choice change between pretest and posttest conditions, The experimental subjects were placed into four groups, which represented approximate quartile divisions of the I-E Scale and a comparison of the frequency of psychological reactance in the four quartiles was made.Previous studies in this area had used a mean or a median split on the I-E Scale or had used the extremes of the scale.Two null hypotheses were tested by using the Standard Normal Test and by using Chi-Square, The .05 level of significance was established as the critical probability level for the non-acceptance of hypotheses.Findings1) Reactance was exhibited by the experimental subjects. 2) Differences in reactance were not significant when compared by quartiles.ConclusionsBrehm's (1966) theory of psychological reactance was supported. Me findings do not support the conclusions of Cherulink and Citrin (1974).On the basis of the findings, conclusions were drawn and speculations were made concerning the utilization of paradoxical psychotherapy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1986. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-236).

Many attempts at solving the liar paradox involve either rejecting some principles in classical logic so as to block the argument that leads to the contradiction or modifying the notion of truth so that the liar sentence can be classified as true in one aspect while false in another. However, the prominent approaches based the above strategies may suffer from the revenge problem. That is, while they solve the pristine liar paradox, the introduction of the solution triggers another one with the same structure. In this dissertation, three prominent approaches to the liar paradox are first introduced and examined. In particular, they are, first, the Tarskian hierarchical approach, whose main idea can be roughly characterized as that a natural language is a hierarchy of a series of languages and the liar sentence is true at one level of the hierarchy and is false at another; second, Saul Kripke's paracomplete approach, whose main idea can be roughly characterized as that the liar sentence is ungrounded and has no classical truth value at all; finally, Gupta and Belnep's revision theory of truth, the main idea of which is that truth is a circular concept and that the truth predicate is circularly defined. With a new semantics and logic for circular concept and definition, one can classify the liar sentence as not categorical. Based on two general patterns that give rise to the revenge paradox by Graham Priest, it is shown that none of the above approaches can escape the revenge paradox, at least, not satisfactorily. After the examination of three prominent approaches, I provide an initial characterization of a kind of approach which I call the silence approach. The main idea of the silence approach is that, perhaps what the liar paradox teaches us is that the semantic status of the liar sentence is eventually not classifiable, in the sense that the accepted or correct semantic theory for natural language simply does not apply to the liar sentence. There are two theoretical possibilities that can evoke the failure of classification. Either there is just no semantic category that fits the liar sentence or the necessary principles for the classification do not apply to the sentence. In either case, the silence approach suggests that although the liar sentence could have a semantic status according to the accepted or correct semantic theory, but given that we cannot classify it, we cannot know it. In this dissertation, I do not provide a detailed and well-developed theory of the silence approach. Instead, after the initial characterization of this approach, I go on to introduce and examine two current theories on the liar paradox which I think satisfy at least part of my characterization of the silence approach. The first theory is the semantic epistemicism by Paul Horwich. The second one is what I call exceptional theory, which is given by Thomas Hofweber. The result of the examination is that, both theories can indeed be interpreted as a silence approach. However, although they can block both the pristine liar paradox and the revenge paradox, they suffer severely from the problem of being ad hoc. The current conclusion of this dissertation about the silence approach thus is that, it is possible to construct a silence approach which can block the pristine liar paradox and the revenge, but it is hard to find a rationale for the solution. That is, it is hard to answer the question as to why the liar sentence is not classifiable. Finally, as an overlook to the future development of the silence approach, I suggest that even if we can solve the problem of ad hocness, there remains a question as to whether the incompleteness of classification is a symptom revealing that the accepted semantic theory is defective, or it is a symptom showing that there is just no possible semantic theory that can eventually do the job. Without answering this question, the silence approach still lacks a plausible theoretical ground

No description available.

The Liar Paradox and related semantic antinomies seem to challenge our deepest intuitions about language, truth and logic. Many philosophers believe that to solve them, we must give up either classical logic, or the expressive resources of natural language, or even the “naïve theory of truth” (according to which "P" and “it is true that 'P'” always entail each other). A particularly extreme form of radical surgery is proposed by figures like Graham Priest, who argues for “dialetheism”—the position that some contradictions are actually true—on the basis of the paradoxes. While Priest’s willingness to dispense with the Law of Non-Contradiction may be unpopular in contemporary analytic philosophy, figures as significant as Saul Kripke and Hartry Field have argued that, in light of the paradoxes, we can only save Non-Contradiction at the expense of the Law of the Excluded Middle, abandoning classical logic in favor of a “paracomplete” alternative in which P and ~P can simultaneously fail to hold. I believe that we can do better than that, and I argue for a more conservative approach, which retains not only “monaletheism” (the orthodox position that no sentence, either in natural languages or other language, can have more than one truth-value at a time), but the full inferential resources of classical logic.

<p>This sentence is whatever truth is <em>not</em>. The subject of this master’s thesis is the power, influence, and solvability of the liar paradox. This paradox can be constructed through the application of a standard conception of truth and rules of inference are applied to sentences such as the first sentence of this abstract. The liar has been a powerful problem of philosophy for thousands of years, from its ancient origin (examined in Chapter One) to a particularly intensive period in the twentieth century featuring many ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful solutions from brilliant logicians, mathematicians and philosophers (examined in Chapter Two, Chapter Three, and Chapter Four). Most of these solutions were unsuccessful because of a recurring problem known as the liar’s revenge; whatever truth is <em>not</em> includes, as it turns out, not <em>just</em> falsity, but also meaninglessness, ungroundedness, gappyness, and so on. The aim of this master’s thesis is to prove that we should not consign ourselves to the admission that the liar is and always will just be a paradox, and thus unsolvable. Rather, I argue that the liar <em>is</em> solvable; I propose and defend a novel solution which is examined in detail in the latter half of Chapter Two, and throughout Chapter Three. The alternative solution I examine and endorse (in Chapter Four) is not my own, owing its origin and energetic support to Graham Priest. I argue, however, for a more qualified version of Priest’s solution. I show that, even if we accept a very select few true contradictions, it should <em>not</em> be assumed that inconsistency inevitably spreads throughout other sets of sentences used to describe everyday phenomena such as motion, change, and vague predicates in the empirical world.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)