“Are psychological attributes quantitative?” is not an empirical question: Conceptual confusions in the measurement debate

Critics of psychological measurement have accused quantitative psychologists of ignoring the empirical hypothesis that psychological phenomena are quantitative (Michell), or have claimed that it is impossible in principle to find out whether psychological phenomena are actually quantitative (Trendler). By drawing on Bennett and Hacker (2003), I argue that both criticisms do not go far enough because they sidestep the fundamental conceptual problem of the measurement debate: It is impossible to give concrete formulations of the question “Are psychological attributes quantitative?” without transgressing the boundaries of meaningful language. Conceptual confusions and questionable philosophical assumptions have contributed to the misguided idea that the quantity of psychological phenomena must or can be demonstrated empirically. First, the measurement debate is characterized by misleading examples and ambiguous terminology. Second, the idea of psychological measurement is inherently Cartesian. In summary, psychological measurement is even more problematic than Michell and Trendler have argued.

Influence of Gender on the Advertising Responses of Young People for Products of Mobile Operators in Bulgaria

The use of gender as a marketing strategy for market segmentation requires consideration of gender differences in information processing. This would increase the effect of advertising campaigns by adapting them to the dynamically changing market. he presented empirical study was conducted after 300 men and women aged 18 to 25 years, users of functional mobile products. The aim of the study is to determine the extent to which gender determines positive and negative advertising responses, identifying subjective judgments. The results of the research are empirical confirmation of some basic hypotheses of the Selective model of information processing in advertising messages: objectivity in the processing of information by men and subjectivity in the processing of information by women; selectivity in the perception of the attributes of the product by men and integrity - by women and a stronger willingness to use new products by women than by men. The present study offers an empirical hypothesis that women form positive responses to a larger number of signals in advertising, while men form negative responses to a larger number of signals in advertising messages. Satisfaction is proving to be a very important factor in advertising responses for both sexes, as it is a stronger factor for women, and men’s frustration with a mobile product is stronger than for women.

LIQUIDITY TRAP IN THE UNITED STATES, THE EURO AREA AND JAPAN

When a country falls into a liquidity trap it means that its central bank lacks an effective expansionary monetary policy aimed at increasing consumption and investment demand. Market participants (households and enterprises), instead of increasing demand, accumulate a growing money supply in the form of cash. Keynes argued that for an economy in a liquidity trap, the only way to increase demand in the country and to stimulate the economy is to conduct expansionary fiscal policy by increasing government spending or reducing taxes. The aim of the research is to verify the empirical hypothesis of the liquidity trap in three of the largest economies in the world, formerly known as the Global Triad (i.e. the USA, the euro zone and Japan), after the 2008 financial crisis. Research methods based on literature studies in macroeconomics and finance, as well as statistical methods, were used in the study. All statistical data came from the statistical office of the European Union – EUROSTAT, and from the statistical database of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development - UNCTADstat.

Varieties of Logical Form

The paper reviews some conceptions of logical form in the light of Andrea Iacona’s book Logical Form. I distinguish the following: logical form as schematization of natural language, provided by, for example, Aristotle’s syllogistic; the relevance to logical form of formal languages like those used by Frege and Russell to express and prove mathematical theorems; Russell’s mid-period conception of logical form as the structural cement binding propositions; the conceptions of logical form discussed by Iacona; and logical form regarded as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of language processing, as in the Discourse Representation Theory tradition. Whereas neither schematization, nor the use of special languages for mathematics, raise general methodological or empirical difficulties, other conceptions of logical form raise at least apparent problems.

The Church–Turing Fallacy

The Church–Turing thesis (CT) says that, if a function is computable in the intuitive sense, then it is computable by Turing machines. CT has been employed in arguments for the Computational Theory of Cognition (CTC). One argument is that cognitive functions are Turing-computable because all physical processes are Turing-computable. A second argument is that cognitive functions are Turing-computable because cognitive processes are effective in the sense analyzed by Alan Turing. A third argument is that cognitive functions are Turing-computable because Turing-computable functions are the only type of function permitted by a mechanistic psychology. This chapter scrutinizes these arguments and argues that they are unsound. Although CT does not support CTC, it is not irrelevant to it. By eliminating misunderstandings about the relationship between CT and CTC, we deepen our appreciation of CTC as an empirical hypothesis.

Seeing as We Cannot

The belief that Jastrow’s duck-rabbit (J) is both a duck-head and a rabbit-head drawing violates the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), as does the belief that J seems to be something independent of all the ways J can seem. Call the former belief B1 and the latter B2. I argue that B1 and B2 are rational, though contradictory beliefs, and conclude that we must reassess the LNC’s status of being a fundamental requirement for rationality. In contrast with B1 and B2, our experiences that correspond to said beliefs do comply with the LNC. That is: we cannot see J as both duck and rabbit at the same time (E1), nor does J seem something independent of the ways J can seem (E2). Since there is no satisfactory explanation for why we are not able to see J as the contradictions E1 or E2―even though our corresponding beliefs about J are the contradictions B1 and B2―I propose that the LNC is merely an empirical hypothesis concerning the limits of our perception.

Constituency and coincidence in Chácobo (Pano)

This paper provides a detailed description of the results of 24 constituency diagnostics, both morphosyntactic and phonological, to Chácobo, a southern Pano language of the northern Bolivian Amazon. While it is often assumed that misalignments across the domains that emerge from constituency diagnostics can be resolved by reference to a distinction between phonological and morphosyntactic words, I argue that this is not true of Chácobo. Divergence is at least as high within phonological domains and morphosyntactic domains as it is across them. While it is often assumed that domains tend to converge overall on a single wordhood candidate or that domain divergence is marginal, I argue that this is not true of Chácobo. I present a cluster of methodologies that assess the motivation for a word constituent as an empirical hypothesis, rather than treating it as an a priori assumption. No strong evidence for a word constituent emerges from the Chácobo data. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Minimal phenomenal experience

This is the first in a series of instalments aiming at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, taking the phenomenal character of “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” in meditation as its entry point. It develops the concept of “minimal phenomenal experience” (MPE) as a candidate for the simplest form of consciousness, substantiating it by extracting six semantic constraints from the existing literature and using sixteen phenomenological case-studies to incrementally flesh out the new working concept. One empirical hypothesis is that the phenomenological prototype of “pure awareness”, to which all such reports refer, really is the content of a predictive model, namely, a Bayesian representation of tonic alertness. On a more abstract conceptual level, it can be described as a model of an unpartitioned epistemic space.

ON THE USE OF THE CAPITAL LETTER BY PORTUGUESE HERITAGE LANGAUGE STUDENTS IN SWITZERLAND

This article focuses on a case study developed in 2017 with a sample of portuguese Heritage Language students, living in Zürich (Switzerland), and intends to be a reflection on the deviations in the graphic representation of the capital letter by some bilingual Portuguese descent students. Starting from the empirical hypothesis that the cause of these deviations consists in the transfer from German to Portuguese, the intervention procedure implemented in the group of informants under study was based on a sequence of two exercises atdifferent evaluative moments, allowing, in this way, to collect and analyze data, in order to assess the class and subclass of words that register the highest percentage ofdeviant occurrences and to understand if the metalinguistic reflection contributes (or not) to the use of capital letters in accordance with the European Portuguese orthographic standard.

FAKTOR-FAKTOR PENDORONG INDIVIDU MELAKUKAN BELANJA ONLINE

This research used Theory of Planned Behavior’s model to explain factors that caused people to do online shopping by adopting Limayem et al. (2000) research. Limayem’s study explain about factors that caused online shopping behavior especially intention to do online shopping which determined by perception of the consequences of behavior, attitude towards online shopping, personal innovation, subjective norms and control behavior.The main construct of this research also adopted Limayem’s study, namely : intention and behavior to do online shopping. Intention to do online shopping consist of five constructs which are attitude towards online shopping, subjective norms, personal innovation, perception of the consequences of behavior, and control behavior.The main purpose of this research is to examine whether attitude towards online shopping, subjective norms, personal innovation, perception of the consequences of behavior, and control behavior have a positive effect to intention to do online shopping and whether intention to do online shopping have a positive effect to online shopping behavior. Empirical hypothesis are used to proof the main purpose, by using correlation as the data testing tool.The result shows that the 1st hypothesis is proven, which means there is a positive effect of attitude towards online shopping, subjective norms, personal innovation, perception of the consequences of behavior, and control behavior to intention to do online shopping. It is show by signification number 0.000. The result from 2nd hypothesis is also proven, which confirm the positive effect intention to do online shopping with online shopping behavior. But one of the construct was dropped from the early data processing caused by unsatisfactorily validity.