Parental guilt: The part played by the clinical geneticist

Parents of children born with a disability often suffer feelings of inappropriate guilt and shame. Although some genetic counselors see their main task to be that of diagnosis and education, they also aim to relieve these feelings of guilt and shame. Little is known about the process of genetic counseling, and whether or not counselors achieve this aim. An exploratory study of one clinic, and one geneticist working with 30 families, using video recordings and taped interviews, indicated that this particular doctor sometimes succeeded in reducing guilt, either intentionally or unintentionally, but on one occasion guilt was iatrogenic, and increased rather than decreased. Further research is needed to examine other types and other styles of genetic counseling so that in future iatrogenic guilt can be avoided, and the distressing aspects of inappropriate guilt and shame reduced as much as possible.     

The irreversibility of death: reply to Cole

Professor Cole is correct in his conclusion that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) protocol does not violate requirements of "irreversibility" in criteria of death, but wrong about the reasons. "Irreversible" in this context is best understood not as an ontological or epistemic term, but as an ethical one. Understood that way, the patient declared dead under the protocol is "irreversibly" so, even though resuscitation by medical means is still possible. Nonetheless, the protocol revives difficult questions about our concept of death.     

焦虑情绪对奖赏学习的影响

焦虑是在我们日常生活中占据重要地位的一种情绪, 对人类的决策行为能够产生显著影响。探讨决策研究的重要领域--奖赏学习, 可以帮助我们更深入地认识焦虑情绪在决策过程中扮演的角色。过往研究者较少关注焦虑对奖赏学习的潜在影响, 而且已有研究在实验技术和任务范式方面存在一定的局限性。考虑到奖赏学习概念的复杂性, 为了全面地考察个体焦虑水平与奖赏学习的关系, 本文作者建议设置不同类型的奖赏学习情境, 例如概率学习、联结学习、逆向学习和社会学习等。在上述各类不同任务中, 个体焦虑水平对奖赏学习能力的影响模式可能并不一致, 有待研究者们进行深入探讨。     

The death of Philosophy: a response to Stephen Hawking

Abstract

In his 2010 work, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking, argues that ‘… philosophy is dead’ (2010: 5). While not a Philosopher, Hawking provides strong argument for his thesis, principally that philosophers have not taken science sufficiently seriously and so Philosophy is no longer relevant to knowledge claims. In this paper, Hawking’s claim is appraised and critiqued, becoming a meta-philosophical discussion. It is argued that Philosophy is dead, in some sense, due to particular philosophers having embarked on an intellectual path no longer in keeping with the ancient definition of Philosophy. Philosophy as the seeking of wisdom necessarily includes the consideration of findings of other intellectual pursuits, including physical and natural science. While Philosophy has justifiably evolved through its long history, is it unrecognisable in the terms by which it historically defined itself? Seeking consistency, Hawking is critiqued for appearing to practise ‘dead’ Philosophy. Indeed, Hawking’s appeal to multiverse theory and his core discussion of the metaphysical problem of being are philosophical. The question of the death of Philosophy has contemporary relevance for the discipline which is particularly under threat for its survival in the academy, oftentimes assumed to be irrelevant.     

新闻宣传对旅游促销的重要作用

随着现代经济、技术、信息的不断进步和现代旅游事业的高速发展，旅游市场的竞争已从单一的旅游产品竞争变为多元化的手段竞争、方式竞争、智力竞争。而宣传就是一个旅游区向外推销自己，让游客了解认识自己的重要途径，通过这条途径，不仅可以稳定老客户，还可以说服既定开发目标市场中原先不了解甚至不认识本旅游区的新客人，取得他们的信赖，创造需求，引导消费，从而达到拓宽客源市场，塑造良好的品牌形象，创造旅游市场中竞争优势的目的。近年来，我们五台山风景名胜区就十分注重选用各种媒体，扩展旅游宣传促销立     

Restricting the scope of justice to justify discrimination: The role played by justice perceptions in discrimination against immigrants

In this research, we have analysed the role played by the scope of justice and belief in a just world (BJW) in discrimination against immigrants. In Study 1 (n = 185), we found that the relationship between prejudice and discrimination is mediated by a restricted view of the scope of justice. In addition, the results also showed that this mediation is moderated by BJW insofar as the mediation occurred in participants with a high level of BJW but not in participants with a low level of BJW. Studies 2 and 3 experimentally tested our prediction that the legitimising role played by the scope of justice is guided by a justice motive such as BJW. In both studies, the results showed a greater degree of discrimination against immigrants when a restricted scope of justice was considered but only when the BJW was made salient. In sum, these results introduced an innovation into the literature on the legitimation of social inequalities by demonstrating the relevant role played by the justice perceptions in discrimination against immigrants. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The part played by intellectual processes in a sensori-motor performance

An experimental method is described for investigating the relation between intellectual processes and hand movements as both develop during the learning of a skilled task. Subjects were required to make predictive movements to join a series of circles; these appeared one at a time and were arranged in a pattern which was repeated thirty-two times. Comparison between the record of predictive movements and the subject's drawing of the pattern, made at the end of the experiment, showed that errors in the drawing corresponded to the type of response first made when the whole pattern was unfamiliar. For this reason it is suggested that the making of the responses played a part in the development of the idea of the pattern of circles, but the relation between the two is not a simple one.     

我和相面人玩游戏

有一天我去西湖游玩,在玉泉出来的路口等人,忽见一人前来搭话:“先生,你好福相哪!”看那人装扮和语气,知道面前之人是看相测字者无疑,原想不予理睬。可这人很有沾劲,继续朝向我说:“我眼睛从来不会看错人,先生耳朵大又均称,显示福路通达,额角那里有官场纹路,还有手掌纹路可看财……”我是个已经退休之人,谈福路还有音头,谈官路财路已经毫无意义。看面前之人叽叽不休,不由“哈”地一声笑起来,“我这个年纪,看官路财路还有意义吗?”那人连连说:“有意义,有意义,不说古时朱买臣老年运转做官,就说现代人,老年升官和发财的例子有的是。”我摇着头…     

Institutional games played by confined juveniles

This study examined the games played by 561 juvenile offenders confined in six coeducational correctional facilities in one state. The types of games these residents used against staff and peers within the confines of the institution varied considerably. The study documented nineteen games used by males and females, twelve to deal with staff and seven to deal with peers. The games were defined as therapeutic games, material games, psychological games, and physical games. Peer-oriented games included attention-seeking activities and a variety of dominance games. Additionally, these games were described and tabulated according to the sex and race of the residents. The conclusion was that game-playing behavior was no less frequent in coeducational institutions than it was in single-sex institutions.     

The evil of death and the Lucretian symmetry: a reply to Feldman

In previous work we have defended the deprivation account of death’s badness against worries stemming from the Lucretian point that prenatal and posthumous nonexistence are deprivations of the same sort. In a recent article in this journal, Fred Feldman has offered an insightful critique of our Parfitian strategy for defending the deprivation account of death’s badness. Here we adjust, clarify, and defend our strategy for reply to Lucretian worries on behalf of the deprivation account.     

What you don’t know: The role played by errors of omission in imperfect self-assessments

Perceptions of ability often bear little relationship to objective performance. We suggest that people fail to judge their ability more accurately because they have little or no insight into their errors of omission (i.e., solutions they could have generated to problems but missed), although they can be perfectly aware of solutions found. Across five studies with tasks involving, for example, word games and research methodology, we found that participants gave weight to the number of solutions found when making self-evaluations, but not to solutions missed. When given explicit information about these errors of omission, participants gave them just as much weight as they did solutions found, and thus provided more accurate self-evaluations.     

Surviving death: how to refute termination theses

When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals (the view that when human animals die they cease to exist), I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they die. The line of reasoning developed here can be extended to show that other organisms survive death in many actual cases. This line of reasoning improves on other arguments that have been offered against termination theses. And if my argument regarding human animals surviving death is successful, then assuming that human persons are animals, we can also conclude that human persons in many actual cases continue to exist after death.     

The death instinct

The death instinct has always been a controversial concept, insufficient to account for actual dying, and usually taken to be fused with aggression. After dislodging it from the shadow of aggression in order to evaluate its function, the instinct turns out to be one of the components that form the death motivation. Human beings develop a complex motivation for death, one that is more than biology (instincts) or physics (entropy). It includes (a) the death instinct, the primary analogue; (b) sequellae of the universal experience of object-loss, with identification and fantasies of a restorative reunion; (c) guilt over hostile attitudes toward the lost object, with depression, longings for atonement , and self-punishment; (d) compliance with reality, like that of old age or grave sickness. Examined in light of the complementary series of Freud's aetiological equation, the death instinct turns into a precondition of the composition motivation. Death motivation is a comprehensive concept, since patients express various of its aspects during their psychoanalyses , and it facilitates a metapsychological understanding and refines the accuracy of interpretation.     

The titration of death: a new sin

..."Titration of death" is the phrase I have used, in private musings and discussions, to express the undertaking of causing or permitting death to occur within carefully delimited parameters. It is, I think, a new form of sin. I distinguish it from a similar enterprise, in principle benign, that we might call "titration of dying," which attempts to manage the dying process. The focus of attention of titration of dying is the experience of the patient prior to death, with little or no concern given to the condition of the cadaver following death. Titration of death, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with producing, at the close of the process, a cadaver that is usable in some manner; and titration of death, per se, has only incidental concern with the dying process.