The purpose of this paper is to show that, pace (Field, 2009), MacFarlane's assessment relativism and expressivism should be sharply distinguished. We do so by arguing that relativism and expressivism exemplify two very different approaches to context-dependence. Relativism, on the one hand, shares with other contemporary approaches a bottom-up, building block, model, while expressivism is part...

Loneliness is typically defined in terms of feeling states. In this review, we take a somewhat different approach, describing loneliness in terms of perceived social isolation. Vulnerabilities to perceived social isolation differ across the lifespan. Unique properties of adolescence are identified that carry special risk for perceived social isolation. These include (but are not limited to) dev...

The need for separation or individuation is held to be a prime motive in Western psychology. Varied accounts of the meaning of selfhood in Japan indicate that separation may be much less important-or as important-for understanding the construction of self-identity in that culture. We focus here on personal distinctiveness, one vehicle for separation from others. We propose that the desire for d...

One line of objection to Externalism or Anti-Individualism is that, if it were true, causal explanations citing the content of mental states or events would be redundant. Another is that individuation by intentional properties would fail to be individuation by causal powers. My aim in the present paper is to answer these charges. But first a few terminological matters to get the charges into fo...

In this study the effects of life course transitions in adolescence and young adulthood (leaving the parental home, living together with a partner,entering parenthood, and becoming financially independent) on the parent-child bond are investigated. Data are presented from a three-wave study of 1,064 adolescents and young adults (aged 12-24 years at Wave 1) over a six-year period. As the youth i...

Wilcox (Cognition 72 (1999) 125) reported that infants are more sensitive to form than surface features when individuating objects in occlusion events: it is not until 7.5 months that infants spontaneously use pattern information, and 11.5 months that they spontaneously use color information, as the basis for object individuation. The present research assessed the extent to which infants' sensi...