Meaningless Statements Research Articles

Paul Feyerabend’s Contribution: The Anarchic Sunset of the Philosophy of Science

Abstract: The author places Feyerabend's contribution within a line of thought on science that ideally opens with the Wienerkreis, and which in some way ends with Feyerabend. This trend has always been based on a series of demarcations, ranging from the opposition between meaningful and meaningless statements (the Vienna Circle), or between scientific and non-scientific statements (Popper), or between normal and extraordinary science (Kuhn), to the demarcation between progressive and regressive research programs (Lakatos) — up until Feyerabend, the former student of Popper, who puts an end to the perspicuity of every demarcation. The conclusion that “anything goes” when it comes to doing rigorous science marks the clearly unsuccessful conclusion of this large-scale historical trend. Philosophical attention thus shifts from descriptions of the scientific method to an analysis of the concrete historical production of scientific ideas and discoveries, in a movement that rehabilitates a Hegelian, historical approach in the empirical sciences.
 The author outlines the contemporary approach that no longer sees the whole of knowledge and scientific practice as a series of methodologies aimed at faithfully mirroring nature, construing it instead as a thought-constituted organism subject to Darwinian criteria of selection and mutation. The biological metaphor of the organism that survives by adapting to external reality replaces the claim to foundational scientific validity on the basis of a priori paradigms.

Disfluency attenuates the reception of pseudoprofound and postmodernist bullshit

Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed.

Fluency trumps working memory capacity in the truth effect

ABSTRACT The truth effect, wherein repeated information gains perceived truthfulness, has been extensively studied in participants’ primary languages, showing robustness. However, individual differences in the truth effect due to working memory capacity (WMC) remain less explored. This study tested the truth effect and its relation to WMC amongst 130 young adults in Malaysia via Zoom. They were first exposed to 45 semantically meaningless statements (exposure phase). Then, participants completed a series of working memory tasks, including Backward Digit Span, Operation Span and Symmetry Span, before being exposed to the same 45 statements and 15 new statements. In the second exposure (rating phase), participants rated each statement on a 6-point Likert scale on its fluency and truth value. Results indicated fluency's significant association with the truth effect, consistent with prior research, while WMC showed no significant relationship. The truth effect persisted even when presented in a non-native language, highlighting its cross-linguistic significance.

Can Meaningless Statements Be Approximately True? On Relaxing the Semantic Component of Scientific Realism

AbstractFirst, I show that the semantic thesis of scientific realism may be relaxed significantly—to allow that some scientific discourse is not truth-valued—without making any concessions concerning the epistemic or methodological theses that lie at realism’s core. Second, I illustrate how relaxing the semantic thesis allows realists to avoid positing abstract entities and to fend off objections to the “no miracles” argument from positions such as cognitive instrumentalism. Third, I argue that the semantic thesis of scientific realism should be relaxed because it is possible for scientific statements to be partially true, and hence approximately true, without being false.

The Half-Truth Effect and Its Implications for Sustainability

Misinformation on sustainability has become a widespread phenomenon in many different contexts. However, relatively little is known about several important determinants of belief in misinformation, and even less is known about how to debias that belief. The present research proposes and investigates a new effect, the half-truth effect, to explain how message structure can influence belief in misinformation. Two survey-based experiments were conducted to show that people exhibit greater belief in a false claim when it is preceded by a true claim, even if the two claims are logically unrelated. Conversely, when a false claim is presented before the true claim, it reduces the belief in the entire statement. Experiment 1 shows the basic half-truth effect. Experiment 2 investigates an individual difference, propensity to believe meaningless statements are profound, which impacts the half-truth effect. Both experiments also investigate debiasing of the false information. The results of the experiments were analyzed using analysis of variance and regression-based mediation analysis. Results show that belief in misinformation is dependent on message structure, and show that the order in which true and false elements are presented has a strong influence on belief in sustainability misinformation. Finally, we present a discussion of how policy makers can use these findings to identify those people who are most likely to be swayed by the misinformation, and then design responses to debias sustainability misinformation.

Bullshit receptivity, problem solving, and metacognition: simply the BS, not better than all the rest

People are often inaccurate in their predictions of performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. We tested whether receptivity to bullshit – the tendency to perceive meaningless statements as profound – would relate to the accuracy of metacognitive judgments on several problem-solving tasks. Individuals who were highly receptive to bullshit were less accurate in their predictions of performance on creative problem-solving tasks, but not on verbal analogy or recall tasks. Further, individuals with high BS receptivity were less able to discriminate between solvable and unsolvable problems when making metacognitive judgments. These findings support the possibility that the tendency to perceive semantic connections where none exist, as indicated by high bullshit receptivity, may lead to inaccurate predictions of performance on tasks that require noticing and utilizing distant semantic connections.

The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity.

People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub 'the Einstein effect': across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, scientists held greater authority than spiritual gurus. In addition, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist compared with the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgements for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored our experimental findings. These findings suggest that irrespective of one's religious worldview, across cultures science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

The C-word, the P-word, and realism in epidemiology

This paper considers an important recent (May 2018) contribution by Miguel Hernán to the ongoing debate about causal inference in epidemiology. Hernán rejects the idea that there is an in-principle epistemic distinction between the results of randomized controlled trials and observational studies: both produce associations which we may be more or less confident interpreting as causal. However, Hernán maintains that trials have a semantic advantage. Observational studies that seek to estimate causal effect risk issuing meaningless statements instead. The POA proposes a solution to this problem: improved restrictions on the meaningful use of causal language, in particular “causal effect”. This paper argues that new restrictions in fact fail their own standards of meaningfulness. The paper portrays the desire for a restrictive definition of causal language as positivistic, and argues that contemporary epidemiology should be more realistic in its approach to causation. In a realist context, restrictions on meaningfulness based on precision of definition are neither helpful nor necessary. Hernán’s favoured approach to causal language is saved from meaninglessness, along with the approaches he rejects.

Openness/Intellect and Susceptibility to Pseudo–Profound Bullshit: A Replication and Extension

‘Pseudo–profound bullshit’ (PPBS) is a class of meaningless statements designed to appear profound. Profundity ratings for PPBS have been found to be negatively related to analytical thinking and positively related to epistemically suspect beliefs (e.g. belief in the paranormal). Conceptually similar traits within the Openness/Intellect (O/I) domain form a simplex, whereby traits are arranged along a single dimension from intelligence to apophenia (i.e. observing patterns or causal connections were none exist). Across two studies (total N = 297), we attempted to replicate the O/I simplex and determine how it relates to perceiving PPBS as profound. Participants completed questionnaires measuring traits from the O/I simplex and provided profundity ratings for PPBS. Profundity ratings of PPBS tended to correlate negatively with intelligence and positively with apophenia. The association with intelligence generally reflected a greater ability to discriminate the profound from the pseudo–profound, whereas the association with apophenia reflected poorer discrimination in Study 1, with less conclusive results in Study 2. In both studies, the O/I simplex was closely replicated. The results suggest a link between the O/I domain and perceiving PPBS as profound and tentatively support the theory that intelligence may protect against apophenia. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology

Statistical Probability in the Social Sciences. An Analysis on Methodical-Constructive Basis

The article analyzes the probability concept of the empirical social sciences. Basis of the study is the Methodical Constructivism. In particular the author asks whether the calculation of the statistical probability can be justified. The answer is: If references the objects of science – colloquially to reality – are be produced in the empirical social sciences, then it cannot be justified calculate the statistical probability on the model of the natural sciences. According the model, the use of the probability concept is based on mathematisation. “Mathematisation” means: The calculation of the statistical probability is favored at the expense of its empirical relevance. The article recommends investigating in the future what consequences it has when empirical educational research sets the course for individual CVs and social designs based on meaningless statements.

The Comprehension of Familiar and Novel Metaphoric Meanings in Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study.

Miscomprehension of nonliteral (“figurative”) language like metaphors, proverbs, idioms, and ironic expressions by patients with schizophrenia is a phenomenon mentioned already in historical psychiatric descriptions. However, it was only recently that studies did differentiate between novel and conventional metaphors, a factor that is known to influence the difficulty of comprehension in healthy subjects. Further, familiarity with stimuli is an important factor for comprehension, which was not recommended in utmost previous studies. In this study, 23 patients with DSM IV schizophrenia and 19 healthy control subjects performed a newly-developed German metaphor comprehension test with three types of stimuli: novel metaphors, conventional German metaphors, and meaningless statements. During the test procedure, participants indicated familiarity with the stimulus and then matched the meaning with one out of four given alternatives. Familiarity rankings did not significantly differ between patients and control subjects. However, on descriptive level, there was a tendency for healthy controls to be more familiar with conventional metaphors than schizophrenic patients. Further, comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors differed significantly between the groups, with higher performance in healthy controls. Considering only those metaphors that had been ranked as familiar, patients only revealed significant lower performance opposed to controls regarding novel metaphors, while they did not differ in conventional metaphors. Taken together, the results indicate that patients with schizophrenia might show an altered way of comprehension in novel metaphors, leading to more misunderstandings. However, their previously reported impairments in conventional metaphors might rather be due to a lack of familiarity with the stimuli—making conventional metaphors to novel metaphors in the individual case.

The Clinical Practice Experience of Nursing Students

The purpose of this study is to understand the significance of clinical practice of nursing students by using a phenomenological method, and to provide a basic set of data for clinical practice and training programs for nursing students. The analysis method presented by Van Kaam for phenomenological studies were used as the basis. The number of research participants is reached when no further content comes out in interviewing, namely, repetitive statements on a phenomenon. The result was that of the total of 260 meaningful statements, 32 sub-themes and 5 themes, as well as 2 categories were determined. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: First, it is expected that nursing students will be able to use the experiences of the nursing practitioners and the experiences of patients who have been given medication practice. While reading repeatedly the original data that describes the nursing students’ experience of clinical practice, meaningless statements were abandoned.

On Meaning and Measuring: A philosophical and historical View

This paper just tries to revisit the view on meaning, and particularly in meaningless statements, hold by the thinkers inscribed in the famous "Vienna Circle". It is done under the typically scientific form of measuring empirically adquired concepts that can be considered in the same tradition of the Circle. In addition, it also contains some historical notes, as well as some related reflexions on Karl Menger's thought on the lack of a suitable geometry for the microworld.DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.15304/ag.34.2.2096

Social-Media-Assisted Learning: A Case Study ofTeaching Computer Science on Facebook

The rapid development of social media brings a new change to education: students can share information and discussion with colleagues to learn new knowledge. Since social learning theory claims that people construct their cognition from continuous reciprocal interaction in the social environment, it is interesting to investigate whether and how social media foster computer science learning. In this study, we discuss the influence of students' interaction on social media upon computer science learning by a case study of teaching computer science on Facebook. An experiment was conducted in the computer science class in a senior high school. Students were asked to discuss lecture topics with each other on Facebook in each class. The discussion issues need exploration and higher-level thinking. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were applied to understand how social interaction affected computer science learning. We also applied techniques of social network analyses to mine more information of learners' behaviors. The experiment results show that students' learning attitude toward computer science was improved in a social-media-based environment. However, there was no significant difference in learning achievements between high-interaction and low-interaction groups. The major reason is that students need a clearer guide for discussion. Therefore, discussion guide strategies should be developed to prevent meaningless statements so that the discussion can be converged and then students can benefit more from social interaction on the social media.

Colloquium: An introduction to consistent quantum theory

This paper presents an elementary introduction to Consistent Quantum Theory (CQT), as developed by Griffiths and others over the past 25 years. The theory is a version of orthodox(Copenhagen) quantum mechanics, based on the notion that the unique and mysterious feature of quantum, as opposed to classical, systems is the simultaneous existence of multiple incompatible representations of reality, referred to as "frameworks". A framework is a maximal set of properties of a system for which probabilities can be consistently defined. This notion is expressed by saying that a framework provides an exhaustive set of exclusive alternatives (ESEA), but no single framework suffices to fully characterize a quantum system. Indeed, the existence of multiple incompatible frameworks is the hallmark of quantum mechanical behavior. Any prediction of the theory must be confined to a single framework and combining elements from different frameworks leads to quantum mechanically meaningless statements. This "single framework rule" is the precise mathematical statement of Bohr's complementarity. It is shown that if the microscopic description is assumed to incorporate these elements in a local setting, then distant entanglements, macroscopic measurements, wave function collapse and other mysterious features of quantum behavior follow in a logical manner. The essential elements of the theory are first explained using the simplest quantum system, a single spin-1/2 degree of freedom at one time.

AnaesthesiaJournal of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland

AnaesthesiaJournal of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland

Comments, on "Comparison of the FFT conjugate gradient method and the finite-difference time domain method for the 2-D absorption problem" [with reply

For the original article see ibid., vol.MTT-35, no.4, p.383-95 (1987). In commenting on the above named work by D.T. Borup et al. it is asserted that certain wrong assumptions about the FFT (fast Fourier transform) conjugate gradient method lead to meaningless statements in the original work. In a reply from two of the three original authors is it made clear that (1) several conclusions attributed to the original work do not appear in the work; and (2) an algorithm claimed in the comment to be the solution of an operator equation, as opposed to a matrix equation, is actually equivalent to a matrix moment solution.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice: The Early Writings, 1910-1927 , and: Waugh on Women (review)

Reviewed by: Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice: The Early Writings, 1910-1927, and: Waugh on Women A. A. DeVitis Robert Murray Davis , ed. Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice: The Early Writings, 1910-1927. Norman: Pilgrim, 1985. 214 pp. $34.95. Jacqueline McDonnell . Waugh on Women. New York: St. Martin's, 1986. 239 pp. $25.00. Evelyn Waugh, Apprentice, nicely edited by Robert Murray Davis, will not appeal to the general reader. For reading Waugh's earliest efforts at prose, poetry, and dialogue has much the same sort of charm that looking at faded childhood photographs of friends and acquaintances has—a very little goes a long way. But the reader who is interested in the youngster who became one of our century's most elegant stylists and stylish wits will relish the emergent voice that ultimately distinguished the mature artist. And in this collection it is possible both to hear and to enjoy that voice: "a great work of art can only be appreciated by a small portion of the world"; "It was said of him that he had once cut the headmaster in London because he met him wearing a brown overcoat with evening dress"; "The time has come to find something outrageous and original to say if you want a hearing." The piece titled "Conversion" gives the reader an appreciation of Waugh's ear for spoken language, and the poem titled "The World to Come" makes the reader grateful Waugh gave up poetry for prose. "The National Game," a story about biotherly influence, perhaps the most finished of the early pieces, concludes with the observation that money is better spent on "dining well and going to the theatre" than on cricket—everyone to one's own tastes, older brothers included. Jacqueline McDonnell's Waugh on Women exerts a peculiar fascination on the reader, for despite the fact that many of the observations are irrelevant to an appreciation or understanding of Waugh's artistry, they do suggest the creative processes and the relationship between the observed world and the world of the imagination. McDonnell's study, furthermore, indicates both the advantages and limitations of feminist criticism. [End Page 733] Attempting to identify from life the individuals who were transformed into characters in Waugh's fiction, McDonnell goes so far as to ascribe eye and hair color derived from various women of his acquaintance. This leads her to make meaningless statements: "There is much about Cordelia and Helena that is Lady Betejeman, and there is a lot that is not. Waugh's imagination obviously seized on various characteristics of his female friends, and he used some of the characteristics as seeds from which to grow his fictional characters. Evelyn Waugh enjoyed socializing with women, and from their company he gained an immediate ear for their language." McDonnell's attributions for such characters as Julia Stitch depend largely on her reading A Little Learning, the diaries, Christopher Sykes's biography, as well as statements by Auberon Waugh and others, and one cannot be certain that they are always correct. To determine exactly who inspired whom and in what degree would involve a great deal of reading and checking that ultimately suggests much ado about nothing. It appears likely, however, that someone will eventually deal with this matter, for gossip has its own charms. McDonnell's observations about the limited intelligence of Waugh's female characters are both provoking and provocative. She sees, for example, Waugh's most attractive women as largely "bitches"—here she quotes Sykes—but she fails to follow through. Does the satirical purpose or the comic form of the particular work permit a characterization of depth? To characterize Nina Blount of Vile Bodies as a woman who uses sex appeal for security and who wants only marriage obscures a mind-set occasioned by the economic depression of which she is a victim. The great need of Waugh's Bright Young People is for permanence, an observation made in that novel by Father Rothschild, S.J. in properly pompous rhetoric, the theme that emerges overtly in A Handful of Dust, again in Brideshead. As for Lady Marchmain, perhaps Waugh's most challenging female character, McDonnell observes that her "eyes are obviously so blue...

On the theory of uniqueness in measurement

This paper describes problems in the theory of uniqueness which occur when there are two different measurement homomorphisms f and g with g not attainable from f by a transformation on the range of f. In this case, the theories of scale type and of meaningfulness of statements using scales are in trouble. It is shown that unless extreme care is taken in the definitions, it is possible for two measurement homomorphisms of the same fixed relational system to have different scale type and it is possible for seemingly meaningless statements to be judged meaningful.

The Progress of Integration in the Phoenix Schools

Those who understand the district system of school support will understand the explanation that in Phoenix there is the Phoenix Elementary District Number one which is one of the twelve elementary districts that compose the Phoenix Union High School and Phoenix College District. Each of these twelve elementary school districts, and the Phoenix Union High School and Phoenix College District, is a separate and autonomous governmental unit with the power to tax and with its own separate board of education and superintendent. The Phoenix Elementary District Number one is the largest of the twelve elementary districts. It has a total of 23 school plants and in the spring of 1955 graduated 1199 from the eighth grades or almost twice as many as the next largest of the elementary districts making up the Union High School district. Phoenix Elementary Number one, before desegregation, had three large Negro schools. Two of the other elementary districts had Negro schools, but few Negro students are living in the other nine elementary districts. In the last few years since the outlawing of restrictive covenants, some Negroes have bought homes outside of the traditionally Negro areas and little colonies of Negroes are developing outside of the former Negro residential districts. In a few places individual Negroes have bought homes in areas. Children from these homes did attend the segregated Negro schools, however. Thirty-Aive years ago the Phoenix Union High School district had no Negro high school and Negro and white attended the one Phoenix Union High School. The state law from the time of statehood has required children of African descent to attend separate elementary schools, though in very small schools a screen around the desk of a Negro child was ruled to be separation in terms of the law. Such a separation has not occurred for many years. State laws always permitted Negro and white to attend the same high school but provided that, when there were twentyfive Negro in a high school, the district could vote to establish a separate Negro high school. The law required, however, that provisions in the Negro school should always be the same as those in the white school. It is amusing to contemplate that any one could ever believe that conditions can be provided for twenty-five that are equal to the facilities provided for several hundred in another plant. But the people who made such laws in Arizona had come from states with experience in piously making such meaningless statements into laws affecting Negroes.