Background Beliefs Research Articles

Characteristics and Beliefs Associated with Probable Pathological Gambling: A Pilot Study with Implications for the National Gambling Impact and Policy Commission

Consistent with a specific objective of the National Gambling Impact and Policy Commission Act (Public Law 104–169, 100 Stat., Section 4), this article examines some background, psychological, comorbidity, and personality characteristics and beliefs associated with pathological gambling. The authors develop hypotheses pertaining to differences between probable pathological gamblers and the general population. These hypotheses are tested using two samples: (1) a sample of gamblers, composed of members of Gamblers Anonymous and persons clinically diagnosed and in treatment for pathological gambling (n = 44) and (2) a random sample from the three-state area in which the study was conducted. The results show marked differences between these groups. The authors address implications for consumer welfare and public policy.

Belief and Context Determinacy in Interpreting Fiction

Belief and Context Determinacy in Interpreting Fiction Christine Richards (bio) 1 Context Determinacy and the Interpretation of Fiction The Pragmatics of Reading The basic pragmatic structure of the reading of fiction has been described as a communicative context which has a speaker who performs the speech acts represented by the text and a hearer (addressee) to whom the speech acts are directed [Adams 12]. This model is based on the assumption that the reader and the writer share not only a common language but a common context, which clearly presents problems for readers of fiction, where generic conventions as well as other cultural conventions of writing, such as satire and irony, or the separation of writers and readers by time, have to be contended with. The code model, which assumes that the writer and the reader share a common context, can be represented as shown in figure 1. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. W = writer, S = speaker, H = hearer, R = reader. However, it has also been argued [Eco, Role of the Reader 40; Eco, Semiotics 69; Richards 262] that no theory of a text is possible without a theory of contexts, since texts are processed and given meaning by a synthesis of propositions in them with those which originate in readers’ supplied contexts; and since the contexts of readers consist, first and foremost, of their background knowledge, beliefs, and culture, which are fundamentally interrelated, interpretation is inevitably determined by extralinguistic as well as linguistic factors. The context model might be represented as shown in figure 2. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. W = writer, N = narrator, R = reader. [End Page 81] The Extralinguistic Context A good example of the role played by extralinguistic contexts in the interpretation of a text is to be found in the multiple interpretations of the sentence “The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer,” from Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage [64]. Susan Horton, in her discussion of accounts of this sentence [10–14], shows both how R. W. Stallman interprets Crane’s antiwar fiction as a Christian allegory where the word “wafer” functions as a symbol of the Eucharist [130], and how Marston La France rejects Stallman’s interpretation on the basis that Crane is not a Christian, and certainly not a Catholic [99–100]. La France’s rejection of Stallman’s Christian context for atheism is rooted in his interpretation of the sun as a repeated image in the co-text, which he believes signifies nature’s indifference to death, war and heroism. Here the lexemes “pasted” and “wafer” become images of a seal at the end of a legal document, implying the finality of death in war. Milne Holton interprets the image of the sun as a characteristic of the symbolic imagination of the character Henry Fleming rather than of the writer (Crane) [90–91]. Horton documents but does not theorize the determining features of these contexts, but this problem can be tackled by applying Marcello Pagnini’s theory of “the introjection of the referent” [9] to explain how the contextual semes of readers, determined by different cultural systems, are introjected into texts. Following Jurij M. Lotman’s typology of cultural systems [Lotman and Uspenskij], Pagnini cites as relevant systems ethics, ideology, history, philosophy, myth, the law, anthropology, politics, ethnicity, literature, aesthetics, psychology, rhetoric and symbolism [34], which represent fundamentally interrelated complexes of systems that make up societies. If Pagnini’s model is taken with that of Richards [267], which conceives of interpretation as a synthesis of propositional inferences in texts with those drawn from readers’ contexts, these two models provide a methodological basis for explaining how the contexts of Stallman’s and La France’s conflicting interpretations derive from philosophically opposed belief systems within culture—Christianity and atheism. These models also help to explain Holton’s interpretation as one located within a different philosophical context, that of the convention of character analysis in fiction, which during the last few decades has developed into the more theoretically sophisticated field of narratology. It should be stressed, however, that interpretations themselves always take place within historical and interactive frameworks, which are influenced...

The Protestant and the Catholic: Dimensions to Asian American History

The Protestant and the Catholic: Dimensions to Asian American History Lon Yuki Kurashige (bio) Brian Masaru Hayashi. “For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren”: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995. xvi + 217 pp. Tables, photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. Gary Y. Okihiro. Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. xvii + 203 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $25.00 (cloth); $13.95 (paper). We all know about them, the hard working, high achieving Asian American students who have gained a reputation in American education reminiscent of the Jews of an earlier generation. The American media has dubbed them “whiz kids”; their peers know them as “curve wreckers” or “grinds”; but no representation of them has been more celebrated or debated than the accolade “model minority.” Many scholars have questioned the ideological assumptions and statistical data that inform the notion that Asian Americans are ideal citizens for blacks and other racial minorities to emulate. Indeed, if specialists in Asian American Studies agree on anything, it is that this argument both exaggerates and romanticizes Asian American achievement. Yet what we learn in two recent books by historians Brian Masaru Hayashi and Gary Y. Okihiro might surprise even the most ardent critic of the model minority myth. Brian Hayashi, assistant professor of history and American studies at Yale University, introduces us to Asian Americans whose civic virtues were anything but exemplary. In the first chapter of “For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren” we meet two Japanese Protestants who disavowed ties to the United States to serve in the Japanese military during World War II. We also learn about the violent rebellions that erupted in the concentration camps that housed Japanese Americans. These stories, and the broader narrative of which they are a part, round out the complexities and contradictions of Japanese American identity before and during World War II. In doing so, they question the prevailing image of Japanese Americans as model American [End Page 663] patriots, willing to die for their country and accept the injustice of internment. Further, they challenge generations of research pronouncing that Christians, better than any other group in Japanese America, conformed to Anglo-American values and culture. “[I]f Christianity was such a powerful conveyor of American values to Japanese American converts,” Hayashi asks, “then why did some Christians support Japan during the war years?” (p. 20). His goal is to explain the ethnic retention and Japanese nationalism of persons, who by all accounts, were thought to have been unequivocally American. The analysis of Protestants tests the hypothesis of assimilation that, in the end, the author finds lacking. His thesis contends that the Protestants “were clearly not at the forefront of Japanese American cultural assimilation in the prewar period” and that they “were often highly nationalistic in their sentiments toward Japan and far less positive about American culture than had been assumed” (p. 6). Hayashi focuses on the period between the world wars (1918–1942) to understand the nationalist sentiments of a significant number of Japanese immigrants. His findings are drawn largely from two types of sources: (1) archival collections pertaining to Japanese immigrants and American Protestants, and (2) the private records of three Protestant Churches in the Los Angeles Japanese American community. Hayashi’s book has a minimalist appeal: clear storyline, concise argument, and economical prose. The thesis is presented as a puzzle in six parts, each of which highlights a different reason why Japanese American Protestants in Los Angeles retained ethnicity. In so doing, Hayashi analyzes the Japanese Protestants’ class background, material interests, ideological and theological beliefs, gender, generation, and social context. He reveals that they blamed their white brethren for the 1924 exclusion of Japanese immigration, and thus began to refuse their financial support. So it was that the Japanese Protestants embraced more firmly the ethnic community that in the 1930s, encouraged by the expansion of the Japanese empire, became increasingly anti-assimilationist. The Protestants even adapted Christian theology to suit the precepts of Japanese nationalism. Christ’s rejection of worldly possessions, for example, became transformed into an appreciation of the selfless...

Analytical Framework for Waste-Facility Siting

Waste-facility siting processes are complex because they involve four sets of causal elements and relationships: (1) Facility need, design, and operation cause facility effects by interacting with site, environmental, and community characteristics; (2) facility effects and stakeholders’ background beliefs and values determine stakeholders’ beliefs, attitudes, and actions; (3) proponents siting interventions can tangibly change the facility effects and the siting process; and (4) stakeholders’ actions interact and result in an outcome. This study structures the main elements and connections into a framework to explain stakeholder attitudes and siting outcome. Propositions about the four sets of causal factors were developed to test the framework as a theoretical construct. The propositions are investigated by content analyses of siting documents, stakeholder interviews, and siting chronologies for a municipal landfill and a hazardous-waste treatment facility. The case-study analysis uses pattern matching, explanation building, and time-sequence analysis to test the framework. The framework contains over 85% of the pertinent elements and connections. The revised framework provides a tool to compare siting cases with a complete, consistent set of variables; screen facilities in prospective host communities; and design siting interventions to negotiate siting agreements.

Appendix: Cross-Cultural Customs and Beliefs Related to Health Crises, Death, and Organ Donation/Transplantation: A Guide to Assist Health Care Professionals Understand Different Responses and Provide Cross-Cultural Assistance

All individuals can expect to encounter some form of crisis and loss. Responses to these experiences are not universal and will be influenced by a person's cultural background and religious beliefs. This appendix provides information about the different responses to health crises, death, and organ donation and transplantation as practiced by various religious and cultural groups.

Withdrawal of life-support: Four problems in medical ethics

... In this paper I shall consider the following four beliefs which often cluster together: A) Passive euthanasia is justifiable, but "pulling the plug" and active euthanasia are wrong; B) There is no right to health care. We have no duty to provide free riders with health care; C) Abortion is immoral because it violates the right to life of the fetus; D) Justice sometimes requires us to increase a patient's risk of death by shifting a scarce resource to someone who needs it more. For the sake of concreteness I shall attribute these beliefs along with certain, often invoked rationales to a purely imaginary person named Ron. I shall not show that the individual beliefs are right or wrong or that the individual rationales are strong or weak. Instead, I shall show that Ron cannot consistently use these four rationales to justify these four beliefs. More precisely, I shall show that beliefs (A) through (D) together with certain common, general background beliefs involve incompatible views about the withdrawal of life-support. My objective is to make the incompatibility explicit and thus to persuade people like Ron to abandon some of their beliefs.

Earman on the Projectibility of Grue

In Bayes or Bust?, John Earman (1992, 104-113) attempts to express in Bayesian terms a sense of “projectibility” in which it is logically impossible for “All emeralds are green” and “All emeralds are grue” simultaneously to be projectible. I argue that Earman overlooks an important sense in which these two hypotheses cannot both be projectible. This sense is important because it connects projectibility to lawlikeness, as Goodman intended. Whether this suggests a solution to Goodman's riddle remains unsettled, awaiting an account of lawlikeness. I explore one avenue that might prove illuminating. Suppose we discover that object a is G, where our background beliefs K include that Ea. Earman notes that by Bayes's theorem, hypothesis H (“All E's are G”) is confirmed—i.e., .

Premarital contraceptive use: A review of the psychological literature

Abstract Abstract A review of psychological literature on predictors of premarital contraceptive use is presented. A number of methodological difficulties and problems with the wide variety of definitions and measurements of contraceptive use are noted. Nine theoretical accounts of contraceptive behaviour which differ in terms of their decision-making vs developmental emphasis are outlined and empirical support for these models is assessed. A synthesis of research findings is then presented. Five groups of variables are considered — background factors, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, interpersonal factors, personality influences and situational factors. Results show that extant theoretical models of contraceptive use receive some support although these accounts do not specify several variables which are reliably associated with contraceptive behaviour. The need for a more unified theoretical framework which will help to integrate empirical findings is highlighted.

The Adoption of Integrated Pest Management Practices Among Texas Cotton Growers1

Abstract Agricultural technologies are becoming increasingly complex requiring farmers to bundle selected technologies. Technology bundling results in a variety of different farming systems. Features of diffusion and farming systems theories are combined to define an analytical model, which assesses background, diffusion, and technology belief factors' influence on growers' adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) practices and cotton yields.We selected a proportionate random sample of growers (n = 722) from 14 cotton‐producing counties in Texas. A telephone survey was conducted in 1985 resulting in a response rate of 76 percent. Findings demonstrated the importance of different sources of IPM information to particular status groups of growers. Information sources produced positive effects on growers' beliefs about IPM benefits and growers' adoption of three IPM practices. IPM adoption resulted in higher yields of upland and pima cotton per acre.

Teachers' Backgrounds and Beliefs: Influences on Learning to Teach in the Social Studies

Abstract This paper reports an interpretive case study of two certification students involved in a one-year, elementary school post-baccalaureate teacher education program. It describes how students' background knowledge, beliefs, experience, and personalities influenced what they learned in a social studies methods course and their consequent learning to teach. The paper describes the partial and differential ways in which the methods course and certification program influenced the students' beliefs and teaching practices.

The Compleat Falsifier

The Compleat Falsifier

Comparison of Beliefs and Practices of Ethnic Viet and Lao Hmong concerning Illness, Healing, Death and Mourning: Implications for Hospice Care with Refugees in Canada.

This research paper examines the background, cosmology, and health, illness, healing, death, and mourning-related beliefs and practices of two groups of refugees in Canada, the ethnic Viet and the Lao Hmong. Emphasis is placed on the syndrome of uprootedness among refugees which exacerbates the patient's sense of loss in the palliative care setting. Practical recommendations to improve care of these patients and their families are made.

We have no problem: The experience of racism in prison

Abstract In 1983 the Home Office issued a clear statement of a commitment to a policy on ‘race relations’ intended to eliminate discrimination towards prisoners and staff due to ethnic background or religious beliefs. This article, based on a three year study of five male prisons in the Midland region, examines the perceptions and experiences of racism amongst prisoners and staff and questions the very basis of defining this experience as a ‘race relations’ problem.

Logicism, Pragmatism, and Metascience: Towards a Pancritical Pragmatic Theory of Meta-level Discourse

Both inside and outside philosophy of science, the past 25 years has seen a remarkable increase in the epistemic importance attached to the role of background beliefs and values of agents engaged in cognitive inquiry. Emphasis on the role of background commitments has been beneficial in bringing philosophy of science back into closer relation with the varied forms of science. But at present there cannot be said to be any clear consensus among philosophers on issues of the theoretical status of such commitments, or of their import upon conceptions of scientific meta-methodology.The situation worsens when one considers widespread suspicion today among many historicists and sociologists of science of the viability of philosophy of science as a normative enterprise. This marks the ground between normative epistemology and its critics. But to understand the skeptical attitude towards normative theory, one must attend to the background assumptions about normative discourse imbedded in logical empiricism, and in particular to the state of logical empiricist metascience just prior to the revolution of sorts that occurred in the 1960’s.

Stich againstde dicto‐de reambiguity

Abstract Stephen P. Stich rejects the de dicto‐de re belief state and ascription distinction. He proposes an analysis by which belief sentences imply univocal doxastic predicates expressing functionally similar states of belief subjects and counterfactual third person belief ascribers, concluding that the apparent opacity of de dicto belief sentences is better explained by the unsystematic contextually‐sensitive similarity vaguenesses of belief ascriptions. But Stick's reduction appeals to contexts of background beliefs which themselves unavoidably exhibit ramified de dicto‐de re ambiguity. The distinction is presupposed rather than eliminated by Stick's method, which effectively blocks the extensional reduction of belief state opacity.

Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise by Ronald F. Thiemann

Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise by Ronald F. Thiemann

The Relativity of Interpretation

What makes an interpretation good? This question defines an area where the concerns of philosophers and literary theorists coincide. One sort of response, which stresses the relativity of interpretation to the interests, purposes, and background beliefs of interpreters, increasingly commands the attention of both groups, though it is hard to get past one's initial reac tion, favorable or not, to the accompanying displays of rhetorical plumage. In this essay I shall try to do just that, in the hope of seeing what the relativi ty of interpretation consists in and whether it need lead to the consequences that make some people pine for universal constraints and determinate meanings.

Obedience to Authority in a Laboratory Setting: Generalizability and Context Dependency

Social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an empirical, laboratory study of obedience to authority. Milgram suggested that his study and findings have applications and implications for the diverse forms of obedience to authority in political and social life, since he had captured in the laboratory experiment the essence of obedience to authority. This article finds serious reasons for rejecting any facile generalizing from the laboratory setting to the larger world of authority relations. Among such factors are the face-to-face character of Milgram's ‘authority’, the role of manipulative techniques and etiquette, the impoverished notion of legitimacy with which Milgram operates, and the likely influence of background beliefs on the part of subjects in the value of science and scientists. The examination of the generalizability problem then moves to a comparison of the American findings on obedience with similar studies in Australia and West Germany. Finally, the article suggests an alternative theory of obedience in the American setting, and speculates on why Milgram and his associates ‘obeyed’ the ‘dictates' of a laboratory experiment.

Skolem and the löwenheim-skolem theorem: a case study of the philosophical significance of mathematical results

The dream of a community of philosophers engaged in inquiry with shared standards of evidence and justification has long been with us. It has led some thinkers puzzled by our mathematical experience to look to mathematics for adjudication between competing views. I am skeptical of this approach and consider Skolem's philosophical uses of the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem to exemplify it. I argue that these uses invariably beg the questions at issue. I say ‘uses’, because I claim further that Skolem shifted his position on the philosophical significance of the theorem as a result of a shift in his background beliefs. The nature of this shift and possible explanations for it are investigated. Ironically, Skolem's own case provides a historical example of the philosophical flexibility of his theorem. Our suspicion ought always to be aroused when a proof proves more than its means allow it. Something of this sort might be called ‘a puffed-up proof’. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the foundations of mathematics (revised edition), vol. 2, 21.

Social background, emotionality, and belief as predictors of punitiveness toward deviants

This research addresses the general question of which factors other than evidence determine the outcomes of criminal justice processing. Specifically, it investigates the relationships between social background factors, beliefs and emotions, and punitiveness toward deviants. The results offer support for the proposition that differing backgrounds are systematically linked with different views about human nature and society. The results also support the proposition that these variations in belief are linked to punitiveness toward deviants.