A study is reported that examined the relationship between a measure of schizophrenic-like characteristics (schizotypy) in normal subjects and cognitive inhibition. Both repetitive and semantic measures of priming were used. It was found that low schizotypes showed negative priming (i.e. longer reaction times to the re-presentation of initially ignored stimuli) while high schizotypes did not; high schizotypes exhibited semantic facilitation (i.e. shorter reaction times to previously ignored stimuli) but low schizotypes did not. A model is suggested, including both inhibitory and facilitatory processes, which can account for these findings. Theorizing about these processes is of interest as it may shed some light on the mechanisms involved in the specifically cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia.

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This paper identifies a problem which the project that Heidegger set himself in Being and Time aimed to solve. The problem concerns the unity of the concept of “Being in general,” the integrity of the very notion of “Dasein,” and the possibility of a perspective from which the philosopher can do her work. Heidegger’s own attempt to solve this problem turns on the claim that time is “the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being” ( Sein und Zeit 1), time supposedly thereby ‘ mak[ing] ontology possible” ( Basic Problems of Phenomenology 228). I elucidate the problem by discussing how it emerges also in Russell (in reflecting on types) and Aristotle (in discussing whether Being is ‘said in many ways’), by identifying challenges that attempted solutions to it face, and by juxtaposing the issues it raises with ones faced by McDaniel’s and Turner’s recent attempts to defend what they call “ontological pluralism.”

Paul Boghossian has pointed out a 'circularity problem' for dispositionalist theories of meaning: as a result of the holistic character of belief fixation, one cannot identify someone's meaning such and such with facts of the form S is disposed to utter P under conditions C, without C involving the semantic and intentional notions that such a theory was to explain. Alex Miller has recently suggested an 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism' (modelled on David Lewis's well-known version of functionalism) and has argued that this version of dispositionalism escapes Boghossian's 'circularity problem'. Miller argues, nonetheless, that another of Boghossian's criticisms of dispositionalism, 'the infinity problem', still applies to this 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism': C will still draw upon a potential infinity of mediating background clusters of belief. The present paper argues that the feature that 'the infinity problem' presents as problematic is a feature of a host of familiar explanations. Our fundamental difficulty in this area is not our inability to understand how a more general model can be applied to a particular domain (the intentional understood as dispositional) but our failure to understand that general model itself (dispositional explanation).

This paper offers an interpretation of the role that anxiety plays in Heidegger's discussion of authenticity. I take as my starting point a widely-held view of these Heideggerian reflections, Sec. 1-4 exploring some ways in which one might solve the serious problems that that view raises. Though I conclude that these solutions do not work, I draw on them-as well as on an exploration in Sec. 5-8 of some parallels with ideas in the Wittgensteinian rule-following literature-in developing my own reading in Sec. 9-12. What emerges is-I believe-an interesting and plausible understanding of taking responsibility for oneself and one's actions, and of a meaningfully-lived life.