An Anscombean Reference for ‘I’?

A standard reading of Anscombe’s “The First Person” takes her to argue, via reductio, that ‘I’ must be radically non-referring. Allegedly, she analogizes ‘I’ to the expletive ‘it’ in ‘It is raining’. Hence nothing need be said about Anscombe’s understanding of “the referential functioning of ‘I’”, there being no such thing. We think that this radical reading is incorrect. Given this, a pressing question arises: How does ‘I’ refer for Anscombe, and what sort of thing do users of ‘I’ refer to? We present a tentative answer which is both consistent with much of what Anscombe says, and is also empirically/philosophically defensible

Q methodology and a Delphi poll: a useful approach to researching a narrative approach to therapy

Q methodology and a Delphi poll combined qualitative and quantitative methods to explore definitions of White and Epston's (1990) narrative approach to therapy among a group of UK practitioners. A Delphi poll was used to generate statements about narrative therapy. The piloting of statements by the Delphi panel identified agreement about theoretical ideas underpinning narrative therapy and certain key practices. A wider group of practitioners ranked the statements in a Q sort and made qualitative comments about their sorting. Quantitative methods (principal components analysis) were used to extract eight accounts of narrative therapy, five of which are qualitatively analysed in this paper. Agreement and differences were identified across a range of issues, including the social construction of narratives, privileging a political stance or narrative techniques and the relationship with other therapies, specifically systemic psychotherapy. Q methodology, combined with the Delphi poll, was a unique and innovative feature of this study

Slurs and register: A case study in meaning pluralism

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor emotional content, but rather the fact that ‘chink’ is lexically marked as belonging to different registers than ‘Chinese’. It is, moreover, partly such facts which makes slurring ethically unacceptable

Exploring the psychological rewards of a familiar semirural landscape: connecting to local nature through a mindful approach

This study analyses a 53,000 word diary of a year engaging with nature through over 200 trips to a semi-rural landscape. Thematic analysis revealed two themes; the transition from observer to nature connectedness and the ways in which the natural environment was experienced once a connection was made. These themes are discussed in relation to theories that seek to explain the positive effect of nature and nature connectedness. The findings are important as they suggest that repeated engagement with local semi-rural countryside can lead to a mindful approach and psychological rewards that do not require travel into the wilderness. The work informs further research into outcomes and processes of nature based interventions such as: trip frequency, duration and diary keeping

A Pluralistic Theory of Wordhood

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in

Is procrastination related to sleep quality? Testing an application of the procrastination-health model

Despite a growing body of research on the consequences of procrastination for health and well-being, there is little research focused on testing or explaining the potential links between procrastination and sleep quality. Using the procrastination-health model as our guiding conceptual lens, we addressed this gap by examining how and why trait procrastination may be linked to various dimensions of sleep quality across two student samples. In Study 1, procrastination was associated with feeling unrested, but not sleep disturbance frequency, in a sample of Greek undergraduate students (N = 141). In Study 2, bootstrapping analysis of the indirect effects of procrastination on an index of sleep quality through perceived stress in a sample of Canadian students (N = 339) was significant supporting an extended procrastination-health model view of how chronic self-regulation failure may compromise sleep quality. Given the potential for dynamic and reciprocal relations among procrastination, stress, and sleep quality suggested by the current and other research, the ways in which procrastination may contribute to and be influenced by poor sleep quality warrants further investigation

The Social Construction of Conspiracy Beliefs: A Q-Methodology Study of How Ordinary People DefineThem and Judge Their Plausibility

Little is known about ordinary people’s understandings of conspiracy beliefs and how these understandings relate to the perspectives of researchers and scholars. Working within a social constructionist epistemological framework, we conducted a Q-methodology study aiming to identify a range of lay perspectives on two key topics: the defining features of conspiracy beliefs; and aspects considered important in judging their plausibility. Fifty-six people (32 men and 24 women), recruited via regional UK Facebook groups, sorted their agreement with a set of statements on each of the two topics. A principal component analysis, followed by varimax rotation, was performed on each data set. Five accounts about the defining features of conspiracy beliefs were identified: that they are false, illogical and harmful; that they are forms of political critique; that there are varied types; that they are entertaining but ineffectual; and that they are held by a self-reinforcing minority. Four accounts about their evaluation were identified: conventional realist criteria; the importance of personal judgement; skeptical realism; and the assessment of critical thinking. The findings are discussed in the context of the literature and limitations of the study are considered. Implications for research and educational and policy interventions are outlined

Less Adaptive or More Maladaptive? A Meta-analytic Investigation of Procrastination and Coping

Despite the theoretical and empirical accounts of trait procrastination as reflecting avoidance of aversive tasks as a means of mood repair, research documenting its links to coping is scarce and inconsistent. There is also little if any research to date examining whether coping strategies might explain the procrastination-stress relationship. The current research aimed to address these issues by integrating current research on procrastination and coping with our own data into a first meta-analysis of the associations of procrastination with adaptive and maladaptive coping and then testing the potential role of coping for understanding the procrastination-stress relationship. In Study 1, a literature search yielded five published papers and three theses, which were supplemented by seven unpublished data sets comprising 15 samples (N=4357). Meta-analyses revealed that procrastination was positively associated with maladaptive coping (average r=.31) and negatively associated with adaptive coping (average r=-.24). In Study 2, a meta-analysis of the indirect effects through coping across four samples revealed that the average indirect effects for maladaptive but not adaptive coping explained the link between procrastination and stress. These findings expand the nomological network of procrastination and highlight the role of maladaptive coping for understanding procrastinators' stress