: The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe (...) experiments that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

David E. Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the ‘new paradigm’ in the psychology of human reasoning. -/- Over’s signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of (...) researchers, psychologists, and philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over’s ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics—such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems—as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David E. Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. -/- This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over’s thought already. (shrink)

The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe experiments (...) that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

In this collection, leading experts evaluate the status of this controversial field, providing a critical analysis of its main hypotheses These hypotheses have ...

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) begin in the halfway Bayesian house of assuming that minor premises in conditional inferences are certain. We demonstrate that this assumption is a serious limitation. They additionally suggest that appealing to Jeffrey's rule could make their approach more general. We present evidence that this rule is not limited enough to account for actual probability judgements.

David Earl Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the 'new paradigm' in the psychology of human reasoning. Over's signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of researchers, (...) psychologists, and philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over's ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics--such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems--as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over's thought already. (shrink)

Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda argue as much in support of revised mental model theory (RMMT) as they argue against talk of a new paradigm caused by the probabilistic approach in the psychology of reasoning. They claim that RMMT is not essentially different from classical mental model theory (CMMT) and not essentially different from the probabilistic approach. There are many serious questions to ask about RMMT. But RMMT is a massive modalization of aspects of the extensional CMMT, and it follows the (...) probabilistic approach in having an intensional focus that justifies talk of a new paradigm. (shrink)

Barbey & Sloman (B&S) relegate the logical rule of the excluded middle to a footnote. But this logical rule is necessary for natural sampling. Making the rule explicit in a logical tree can make a problem easier to solve. Examples are given of uses of the rule that are non-constructive and not reducible to a domain-specific module.

A study is reported testing two hypotheses about a close parallel relation between indicative conditionals, if A then B , and conditional bets, I bet you that if A then B . The first is that both the indicative conditional and the conditional bet are related to the conditional probability, P(B|A). The second is that de Finetti's three-valued truth table has psychological reality for both types of conditional— true , false , or void for indicative conditionals and win , lose (...) , or void for conditional bets. The participants were presented with an array of chips in two different colours and two different shapes, and an indicative conditional or a conditional bet about a random chip. They had to make judgements in two conditions: either about the chances of making the indicative conditional true or false or about the chances of winning or losing the conditional bet. The observed distributions of responses in the two conditions were generally related to the conditional probability, supporting the first hypothesis. In addition, a majority of participants in further conditions chose the third option, “void”, when the antecedent of the conditional was false, supporting the second hypothesis. (shrink)

The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning adopts a Bayesian, or prob- abilistic, model for studying human reasoning. Contrary to the traditional binary approach based on truth functional logic, with its binary values of truth and falsity, a third value that represents uncertainty can be introduced in the new paradigm. A variety of three-valued truth table systems are available in the formal literature, including one proposed by de Finetti. We examine the descriptive adequacy of these systems for natural language (...) indicative condi- tionals and bets on conditionals. Within our framework the so-called “defective” truth table, in which participants choose a third value when the antecedent of the indicative conditional is false, becomes a coherent response. We show that only de Finetti’s system has a good descriptive fit when uncer- tainty is the third value. (shrink)

We investigate how the perceived uncertainty of a conditional affects a person's choice of conclusion. We use a novel procedure to introduce uncertainty by manipulating the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. In Experiment 1, we show first that subjects reduce their choice of valid conclusions when a conditional is followed by an additional premise that makes the major premise uncertain. In this we replicate Byrne. These subjects choose, instead, a qualified conclusion expressing uncertainty. If subjects are given (...) a third statement that qualifies the likelihood of the additional premise, then the uncertainty of the conclusions they choose is systematically related to the suggested uncertainty. Experiment 2 confirms these observations in problems that omit the additional premise and qualify the first premise directly. Experiment 3 shows that the qualifying statement also affects the perceived probability of the consequent given the antecedent of the conditional. Experiment 4 investigates the effect of suggested uncertainty on the fallacies and shows that increases in uncertainty reduce the number of certain conclusions that are chosen while affirming the consequent but have no effect on denying the antecedent. We discuss our results in terms of rule theories and mental models and conclude that the latter give the most natural account of our results. (shrink)

Four experiments investigated uncertainty about a premise in a deductive argument as a function of the expertise of the speaker and of the conversational context. The procedure mimicked everyday reasoning in that participants were not told that the premises were to be treated as certain. The results showed that the perceived likelihood of a conclusion was greater when the major or the minor premise was uttered by an expert rather than a novice (Experiment 1). The results also showed that uncertainty (...) about the conclusion was higher when the major premise was uttered by a novice and an alternative premise by an expert, compared to when the major premise was uttered by an expert and the alternative by a novice (Experiment 2). Similarly, the believability of a conclusion was considerably lower when the minor premise was uttered by a novice and denied by an expert, as opposed to when an expert uttered the minor premise and a novice denied it (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that the nature of the uncertainty induced by a denial of the minor premise depended on whether or not the context was a conversation. These results pose difficult problems for current theories of reasoning, as current theories are based on the results of experiments in which the premises are treated as certain. Our discussion of the results emphasises the importance of pragmatics in reasoning, namely, the role of general knowledge about the world in assessing the probability of a premise uttered by an expert or a novice and the role of interpretations of the premise based on pragmatic inferences in revising these initial probabilities. (shrink)

The following values have no corresponding Zotero field: PB - Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd Hove,, UK.

Two experiments using a realistic version of the selection task examined the relationship between participants' probability estimates of finding a counter example and their selections. Experiment 1 used everyday categories in the context of a scenario to determine whether or not the number of instances in a category affected the estimated probability of a counter-example. Experiment 2 modified the scenario in order to alter participants' estimates of finding a specific counter-example. Unlike Kirby 1994a, but consistent with his proposals, both studies (...) showed that probability estimates significantly predicted selection. Overall results point to the value of understanding selections in terms of their subjective expected utility. (shrink)

In his commentary, Oaksford makes two main claims: (1) that the externalisation method used by Green, Over, and Pyne (1997) enforces the correlation observed between probability estimates and selection, and (2) that these estimates support the prediction of a downward revision of P(p) when P(p) > P(q). In this reply, we rebut claim 1 by describing the instructions more comprehensively, and claim 2 by reiterating the importance of making certain theoretical distinctions which Oaksford does not make. Our interest is (...) the psychological process of reaching decision: externalisation methods provide a means of exploring this process and of assessing the value of Bayesian approaches. (shrink)

The current literature on indeterminacy centers around two projects. One concerns the logic of indeterminacy; the other concerns its nature or source. The aim of this paper is to introduce, motivate and go some way toward addressing a new, third project: that of providing what I call a minimal characterization of indeterminacy. An MC, to a first approximation, is a relatively pre-theoretical characterization of indeterminacy that is neutral between the various substantive theories of the nature and logic of indeterminacy. An (...) MC thus captures a generic sense of indeterminacy that, at least in principle, is recognized by all parties to the debate over the phenomenon’s underlying nature and logic. I begin by introducing the concept of an MC and outlining some of the main theoretical virtues of providing an MC. I then establish some desiderata on a suitable MC, and use these desiderata to rule out various initially attractive proposals. In the final part of the paper I sketch the beginnings of my own MC and defend it against objections. (shrink)

Psychological research on people’s understanding of natural language connectives has traditionally used truth table tasks, in which participants evaluate the truth or falsity of a compound sentence given the truth or falsity of its components in the framework of propositional logic. One perplexing result concerned the indicative conditional if A then C which was often evaluated as true when A and C are true, false when A is true and C is false but irrelevant“ (devoid of value) when A is (...) false (whatever the value of C). This was called the “psychological defective table of the conditional.” Here we show that far from being anomalous the “defective” table pattern reveals a coherent semantics for the basic connectives of natural language in a trivalent framework. This was done by establishing participants’ truth tables for negation, conjunction, disjunction, conditional, and biconditional, when they were presented with statements that could be certainly true, certainly false, or neither. We review systems of three-valued tables from logic, linguistics, foundations of quantum mechanics, philosophical logic, and artificial intelligence, to see whether one of these systems adequately describes people’s interpretations of natural language connectives. We find that de Finetti’s (1936/1995) three-valued system is the best approximation to participants’ truth tables. (shrink)

We review the major phenomena of skilled typing and propose a model for the control of the hands and fingers during typing. The model is based upon an Activation‐Trigger‐Schema system in which a hierarchical structure of schemata directs the selection of the letters to be typed and, then, controls the hand and finger movements by a cooperative, relaxation algorithm. The interactions of the patterns of activation and inhibition among the schemata determine the temporal ordering for launching the keystrokes. To account (...) for the phenomena of doubling errors, the model has only “type” schemata—no “token” schemata—with only a weak binding between the special schema that signals a doubling, and its argument. The model exists as a working computer simulation and produces an output display of the hands and fingers moving over the keyboard. It reproduces some of the major phenomena of typing, including the interkeystroke interval times, the pattern of transposition errors found in skilled typists, and doubling errors. Although the model is clearly inadequate or wrong in some of its features and assumptions, it serves as a useful first approximation for the understanding of skilled typing. (shrink)

We are reporting on how involved the mentor was in promoting responsible research in cases of research misconduct. We reviewed the USPHS misconduct files of the Office of Research Integrity. These files are created by Institutions who prosecute a case of possible research misconduct; ORI has oversight review of these investigations. We explored the role of the mentor in the cases of trainee research misconduct on three specific behaviors that we believe mentors should perform with their trainee: (1) review source (...) data, (2) teach specific research standards and (3) minimize stressful work situations. We found that almost three quarters of the mentors had not reviewed the source data and two thirds had not set standards. These two behaviors are positively correlated. We did not see convincing evidence in the records that mentors were causing stress, but it was apparent in the convicted trainees’ confessions that over 50% experienced some kind of stress. Secondary data, while not created for this research purpose, allows us to look at concrete research behaviors that are otherwise not very researchable. We believe it is important for mentors and institutions to devote more attention to teaching mentors about the process of education and their responsibilities in educating the next generation of scientists. This becomes a critical issue for large research groups who need to determine who is in charge educating, supervising and assuring data integrity. (shrink)

We analyze selected iterated conditionals in the framework of conditional random quantities. We point out that it is instructive to examine Lewis's triviality result, which shows the conditions a conditional must satisfy for its probability to be the conditional probability. In our approach, however, we avoid triviality because the import-export principle is invalid. We then analyze an example of reasoning under partial knowledge where, given a conditional if A then Cas information, the probability of A should intuitively increase. We explain (...) this intuition by making some implicit background information explicit. We consider several iterated conditionals, which allow us to formalize different kinds of latent information. We verify that for these iterated conditionals the prevision is greater than or equal to the probability of A. We also investigate the lower and upper bounds of the Affirmation of the Consequent inference. We conclude our study with some remarks on the supposed "independence" of two conditionals, and we interpret this property as uncorrelation between two random quantities. 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Iterated conditionals of the form If p, then if q, r are an important topic in philosophical logic. In recent years, psychologists have gained much knowledge about how people understand simple conditionals, but there are virtually no published psychological studies of iterated conditionals. This paper presents experimental evidence from a study comparing the iterated form, If p, then if q, r with the “imported,” noniterated form, If p and q, then r, using a probability evaluation task and a truth-table task, (...) and taking into account qualitative individual differences. This allows us to critically contrast philosophical and psychological approaches that make diverging predictions regarding the interpretation of these forms. The results strongly support the probabilistic Adams conditional and the “new paradigm” that takes this conditional as a starting point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 40-53 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Analysis David E. W. Fenner The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and allother things aesthetic — aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes — (...) are secondary in their importance to aesthetic experiences. 1Considering aesthetic experience as the raw data that philosophical aesthetics seeks to explain is a relatively recent phenomenon. This was certainly not the focus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aesthetic judgment was the focus of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Kant: "How do we make meaningful judgments (hopefully real ones) about the aesthetic quality of (certain) objects and events?" But with George Santayana, John Dewey, and Jerome Stolnitz, the focus changes. Now the interest is in the aesthetic experience: what makes those experiences we label "aesthetic" special? Why do we separate those experiences from others?The movement from the Taste Theories to those focused on aesthetic experience is not a movement that is over and done with — far from it. There is still (and I think there will always be) a tension between these two very basic aspects of philosophical aesthetics. And, although I claim that aesthetic experience is the most basic thing that aesthetics studies, I recognize that this is challengeable and only true from a certain temporal viewpoint.I recently taught the most rewarding undergraduate course in aesthetics. The reason that it was so rewarding was that the students carried the class with deep and insightful discussions, and they were not shy about challenging what was coming out of my mouth. One of the challenges that informed our entire semester focused on the tension between experience and judgment. I lectured comfortably about aesthetic experience as our "raw data," and I lectured equally comfortably about how taking an aesthetic view of an object or event meant focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on [End Page 40] what is available to us through simple sensory acquaintanceship with the object. "Aesthetics," I said, "is about the sensuous aspects of our experiences." And so we could, for instance, take an aesthetic view of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph which precluded our experiences being mired in the themes that the more famous Mapplethorpe photos take as their content. "Mapplethorpe is a great photographer," I argued, "and one can see this if one is willing to focus strictly on what meets your eye when you look at the picture." In short, I held the position that the aesthetic view is the formal one.Without saying more, what I did was conflate two different things. On the one hand, I argued that aesthetic experience is a natural part of life that aesthetics seeks to explore. On the other, I argued that appreciating something aesthetically was to appreciate its formal qualities, those qualities that one could access simply through looking, hearing, touching, for example. But these really are two different things.Aesthetic experiences, if we are to treat them as "raw data," must be explored without pre-conception, prejudice, or limitation. And, truly enough, the vast majority of aesthetic experiences are not focused exclusively, in terms of their contents, on formal or simple-sensory matters. Aesthetic experiences are, first, experiences. They are complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether one is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. Later in this essay, I want to explore some of this complexity.The other side of what was happening in my class, the formal focus on the sensory as the basis for an aesthetic viewing, is not the substance of "aesthetic experience" per se. It is rather the basis of what we might call "aesthetic analysis." Aesthetic analysis has to do with separating out from our... (shrink)

Iterated conditionals of the form If p, then if q, r are an important topic in philosophical logic. In recent years, psychologists have gained much knowledge about how people understand simple conditionals, but there are virtually no published psychological studies of iterated conditionals. This paper presents experimental evidence from a study comparing the iterated form, If p, then if q, r with the “imported,” noniterated form, If p and q, then r, using a probability evaluation task and a truth‐table task, (...) and taking into account qualitative individual differences. This allows us to critically contrast philosophical and psychological approaches that make diverging predictions regarding the interpretation of these forms. The results strongly support the probabilistic Adams conditional and the “new paradigm” that takes this conditional as a starting point. (shrink)

Studies of categorical induction typically examine how belief in a premise (e.g., Falcons have an ulnar artery) projects on to a conclusion (e.g., Robins have an ulnar artery). We study induction in cases in which the premise is uncertain (e.g., There is an 80% chance that falcons have an ulnar artery). Jeffrey's rule is a normative model for updating beliefs in the face of uncertain evidence. In three studies we tested the descriptive validity of Jeffrey's rule and a related probability (...) theorem, the rule of total probability. Although these rules provided good approximations to mean judgments in some cases, the results from regression and correlation analyses suggest that participants focus on the parts of these rules that are associated with the highest overall probability. We relate our findings to rational models of judgment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Was There So Much Ugly Art in the Twentieth Century?David E.W. Fenner (bio)Two of the most common challenges that teachers of aesthetics have to face in their classrooms today are, first, the presumption that since "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "there's no disputing taste," every aesthetic judgment is as good as every other one. The second is that the content from which aesthetics (...) courses commonly draw for examples and for the impetus for contemporary philosophy of art theory — and by this I mean art from Post-Impressionism to the present — is made up of "stuff I could have done when I was four years old." The substance behind these two challenges — that aesthetic judgment is highly or perhaps exclusively subjective and that twentieth-century art does not demonstrate care of technique, or that it is simply ugly1 — are intimately connected. This connection is the focus of this essay. The answer to the question, "why was there so much ugly art in the twentieth century?" may be that the tradition of showing beauty to be a highly or purely subjective phenomenon renders beauty apparently less valuable than if it were objective in character, and so we have, in the twentieth century, a move away from the production in art of beauty to that which is simply "artistic" or "artistically important." I want to come at this thesis not through a discussion about either the location or the reality of aesthetic properties. Instead, I want to focus on the "ugly art."Students in aesthetics courses tend to take one of three positions regarding modern art, and by "modern art," I mean art from Post-Impressionism to the present, including Pop Art, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and the rest: 1. They deny the value of it, together with claims about their artistic abilities during their kindergarten years. 2. Because they know something of the history and progression of twentieth-century art, or because they have an experiential basis for approaching modern art conceptually, they actually appreciate and value it. 3. They think they ought to value it (the way so many of us feel when buying our very first tickets to the [End Page 13] opera), and they do their level best to act in accord with what they see as their aesthetic obligation. Those of the first camp will probably voice their positions early in aesthetics courses, and at that point the challenge for the teacher is raised.Teachers in aesthetics courses, when faced with this challenge, tend, I think, to take one of three positions in response: 1. They use the authority of their office to stifle the discussion, hoping that students of the first camp will over the course of time and exposure at least move to being students of the third camp. 2. They embrace the complaint, discuss it, give it due regard (after all, those teachers probably read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word themselves), but leave the final decision about the merit of modern art open and unsettled. I presume this is the majority position, at least in philosophical courses of aesthetics. 3. They seek to impart to students — through exposure, discussion, and the eloquence they can muster of descriptions of their own positive, valuable experiences with modern art — some sense of its merit. In this essay, I will sketch out yet another way to deal with the challenge, one that focuses on the history of aesthetics itself.The HistoryThe history of aesthetic judgment — that is, with the correctness of particular aesthetic judgments — begins with Aristotle.2 He said that an object is aesthetically good — or, actually, beautiful — if it is ordered, symmetrical, and definite, and if it demonstrates each of these virtues to a high degree.3 This analysis we call "formal," because it focuses on the presence in the object of certain aesthetic properties, ones that have to do with the form (as distinguished from the content) of the object. The more basic the cited aesthetic properties, the better, because the strength of the power of one's judgment, along with the power of evidence that can be cited in support of that judgment... (shrink)

One of the most popular and enduring approaches to indeterminacy phenomena (e.g., vagueness) over the past several decades has been some form or another of supervaluationism. I argue that supervaluationism is inadequate as a model of indeterminacy: There is an entire class of examples of indeterminacy, characterized by a common “branching” structure, that cannot be modeled in the way supervaluationism proposes. I demonstrate my conclusion explicitly with respect to two specific examples—indeterminate personal identity and indeterminate reference—showing how supervaluationism can (...) model neither. Importantly, my arguments apply to both traditional “semantic” and more recent “metaphysical” versions of supervaluationism. (shrink)

M. Oaksford and N. Chater presented a Bayesian analysis of the Wason selection task in which they proposed that people choose cards in order to maximize expected information gain as measured by reduction in uncertainty in the Shannon-Weaver information theory sense. It is argued that the EIG measure is both psychologically implausible and normatively inadequate as a measure of epistemic utility. The article is also concerned with the descriptive account of findings in the selection task literature offered by Oaksford and (...) Chater. First, it is shown that their analysis data reported in the recent article of K. N. Kirby is unsound; second, an EIG analysis is presented of the experiments of P. Pollard and J. St. B. T. Evans that provides a strong empirical disconfirmation of the theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 40-53 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Analysis David E. W. Fenner The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and allother things aesthetic — aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes — (...) are secondary in their importance to aesthetic experiences. 1Considering aesthetic experience as the raw data that philosophical aesthetics seeks to explain is a relatively recent phenomenon. This was certainly not the focus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aesthetic judgment was the focus of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Kant: "How do we make meaningful judgments (hopefully real ones) about the aesthetic quality of (certain) objects and events?" But with George Santayana, John Dewey, and Jerome Stolnitz, the focus changes. Now the interest is in the aesthetic experience: what makes those experiences we label "aesthetic" special? Why do we separate those experiences from others?The movement from the Taste Theories to those focused on aesthetic experience is not a movement that is over and done with — far from it. There is still (and I think there will always be) a tension between these two very basic aspects of philosophical aesthetics. And, although I claim that aesthetic experience is the most basic thing that aesthetics studies, I recognize that this is challengeable and only true from a certain temporal viewpoint.I recently taught the most rewarding undergraduate course in aesthetics. The reason that it was so rewarding was that the students carried the class with deep and insightful discussions, and they were not shy about challenging what was coming out of my mouth. One of the challenges that informed our entire semester focused on the tension between experience and judgment. I lectured comfortably about aesthetic experience as our "raw data," and I lectured equally comfortably about how taking an aesthetic view of an object or event meant focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on [End Page 40] what is available to us through simple sensory acquaintanceship with the object. "Aesthetics," I said, "is about the sensuous aspects of our experiences." And so we could, for instance, take an aesthetic view of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph which precluded our experiences being mired in the themes that the more famous Mapplethorpe photos take as their content. "Mapplethorpe is a great photographer," I argued, "and one can see this if one is willing to focus strictly on what meets your eye when you look at the picture." In short, I held the position that the aesthetic view is the formal one.Without saying more, what I did was conflate two different things. On the one hand, I argued that aesthetic experience is a natural part of life that aesthetics seeks to explore. On the other, I argued that appreciating something aesthetically was to appreciate its formal qualities, those qualities that one could access simply through looking, hearing, touching, for example. But these really are two different things.Aesthetic experiences, if we are to treat them as "raw data," must be explored without pre-conception, prejudice, or limitation. And, truly enough, the vast majority of aesthetic experiences are not focused exclusively, in terms of their contents, on formal or simple-sensory matters. Aesthetic experiences are, first, experiences. They are complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether one is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. Later in this essay, I want to explore some of this complexity.The other side of what was happening in my class, the formal focus on the sensory as the basis for an aesthetic viewing, is not the substance of "aesthetic experience" per se. It is rather the basis of what we might call "aesthetic analysis." Aesthetic analysis has to do with separating out from our... (shrink)

This study examines the way ethical decisions are made in controversial cases at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, to see if codes of ethics can be efective at a newspaper known for its commitment to ethics. The study concludes that a code is efective in that environment especially on conflict-of-interest questions. A critical factor in the code's efectiveness is an ethical culture in which editors support ethical standards vigorously and foster a process that encourages newsroom debate over controversial cases.