Reply to Downing,Jacobs, and Schneider

We thank our reviewers for their discussions and we appreciate the opportunity to dialogue about our work with Sandra. Some responses express our shared point of view, others our individual reflections. For clarity, we indicate the point of view at the beginning of each section.     

Carl E. Schneider,The Practice of Autonomy: Patients,Doctors, and Medical Decisions

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Motor intentionality and the case of Schneider

I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s use of the case of Schneider in his arguments for the existence of non-conconceptual and non-representational motor intentionality contains a problematic methodological ambiguity. Motor intentionality is both to be revealed by its perspicuous preservation and by its contrastive impairment in one and the same case. To resolve the resulting contradiction I suggest we emphasize the second of Merleau-Ponty’s two lines of argument. I argue that this interpretation is the one in best accordance both with Merleau-Ponty’s general methodology and with the empirical case of Schneider as it was described by Gelb and Goldstein.

The Elusive Homosexual: A Reply to Stone and Schneider

Summary: In a rebuttal of the Stone and Schneider validation study of the Wheeler signs of homosexuality in the Rorschach, it was argued that (a) homosexuality is not a proper clinical diagnosis, (b) homosexuals do not differ in psychological functioning from hetereosexuals, and (c) the Wheeler signs represent an atomistic approach of use only to those defensive clinicians unwilling to encounter the unique character of their clients.     

The elusive homosexual: a reply to Stone and Schneider

Summary: In a rebuttal of the Stone and Schneider validation study of the Wheeler signs of homosexuality in the Rorschach, it was argued that (a) homosexuality is not a proper clinical diagnosis, (b) homosexuals do not differ in psychological functioning from hetereosexuals, and (c) the Wheeler signs represent an atomistic approach of use only to those defensive clinicians unwilling to encounter the unique character of their clients.     

Transient covert attention does alter appearance: a reply to Schneider (2006)

We recently demonstrated that transient covert attention increases the apparent contrast of a stimulus (Carrasco, Ling, & Read, 2004). Schneider (2006) proposes that the observed increase in apparent contrast is largely due to sensory interactions occurring between the precue a nd stimulus,rather than to attention. Specifically, hereports that cuing effects only occur at contrasts ne ar detection threshold, and that there a re confounding sensoryinteractions between the cue and stimulus at suprathreshold detection contrasts. Our response is twofold. First, we outline the key methodological differences between our original study and Schneider's that are likely to account for the different results, and explain how we had ruled out the sensory interaction explanation of the cue. Second, we directly test the prediction put forth by Schneider. If the effects were due to sensory interactions, reversing the luminance polarity of the precue in our paradigm should lead to differential cuing effects. We replicate one of the experiments of our original study and add a condition in which the cue luminance is either black or white. Our results replicated our previous findings-they showed an increase in apparent contrast to a high-contrast stimulus when it was precued. Moreover, we found that the black cue and the white cue had the same effect, thus ruling out the alternative explanation proposed by Schneider. Transient attention does alter contrast appearance.