Bounding the Concept of Test Banding: Reaffirming the Traditional Approach

Recently, Aguinis, Cortina, and Goldberg (1998) questioned the logic underlying the traditional Cascio, Outtz, Zedeck, and Goldstein (1991) method of developing test bands. In this article, we examine their criticisms and argue that the traditional banding approach is not flawed. We discuss the logic underlying the traditional test band methodology and show that it is consistent with conceptual models of the validation process as used by personnel psychologists. We also examine the alternative banding procedure suggested by Aguinis et al. and identify several problems with this procedure.     

The Psychological Record: Reaffirming the Past and Embracing the Future

The Psychological Record -     

Reaffirming the poverty of the stimulus argument: a reply to the replies

Lidz, Waxman, and Freedman [Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn’t have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18-months. Cognition, 89, B65-B73.] argue that acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of anaphoric one in English relies on innate knowledge within the learner. Several commentaries have now been published questioning this finding. We defend the original finding by identifying both empirical and logical flaws in the critiques.     

The wastefulness principle. A burden-sharing principle for climate change

The prominent burden-sharing principles in the emerging literature of the political theory of climate change fail to sufficiently tackle the task they set out to solve. This paper sets out properties that an alternative principle should aim to meet. Based on these properties, it develops a consequentialist moral principle – the wastefulness principle. This principle holds that it is wrong to waste a shared, scarce resource. The paper argues that this principle can be used to solve the question of who should bear the burdens of anthropogenic climate change in a more suitable way than existing principles. After developing the wastefulness principle, this paper discusses in a non-exhaustive manner how it can be employed in the real world, which challenges it might meet, and how additional principles might solve them.     

Theories with the Independence Property

A first-order theory T{{\mathcal T}} has the Independence Property provided T   \vdash (Q)(FT F₁ ú. . .úF_n){{{\mathcal T} \, \, \vdash (Q)(\Phi \Rightarrow {\Phi_1} \vee.\,.\,.\vee {\Phi_n})}} implies T   \vdash (Q)(FT F_i){{{\mathcal T} \, \, \vdash (Q)(\Phi \Rightarrow {\Phi_i})}} for some i whenever F,F₁, . . . ,F_n{{\Phi,\Phi_1,\,.\,.\,.\,,\Phi_n}} are formulae of a suitable type and (Q) is any quantifier sequence. Variants of this property have been noticed for some time in logic programming and in linear programming.     

Tools for Many Trades: Reaffirming the Use of Grief Counselling by Health, Welfare and Pastoral Workers

The use of counselling is increasingly questioned as an appropriate and viable activity for professionals in statutory and general settings whose work roles and tasks are varied. This paper looks specifically at grief counselling and examines some of the reasons why applications of grief theories and grief counselling by such workers have been narrow and limited. It then suggests a framework for teaching the subject, offering relevant applications. Finally, it points to developing areas of grief counselling in multi-disciplinary contexts and argues that working with grief and loss must be recognised and fostered as core, generic skills for the non-specialist.     

J. S. Mill's concept of liberty and the principle of utility

Conclusion Looked at on these three levels — the definitional, the justificatory, the dimensional — Mill's concept of liberty does not appear to be rooted in the principle of utility in any meaningful sense of this principle. It appears rather to be based on a consideration of the social benefits liberty would conduce to combined with an implicit and at times explicit theory of natural rights. Liberty is neither defined nor justified relative to any felicific, sensory pleasure-pain calculus or Greatest Happiness estimate. The limits of individual or collective interference in individual action are not prescribed with the utility principle as the guide.If strict adherence to the utility principle is the criterion for membership in the school of political philosophers known as the Utilitarians, then John Stuart Mill's name must be struck from the roster. Those who want to insist that Mill remain a member must either ignore the textual evidence to the contrary in his essays or abandon or drastically revise the principle of utility to allow for J. S. Mill's substantial deviations. Ignoring the contrary textual evidence is not intellectually respectable. Broadening the definition of utility and/or pleasure ruins the theoretical coherence of the original Utilitarian doctrine. Either of these two ways of keeping Mill in the fold do not do justice to the richness of Mill's theory.     

Separation of conjoined twins and the principle of double effect.

This article examines the relationship between the principle of double effect and justification for separation surgeries for conjoined twins. First, the principle of double effect is examined in light of its historical context. It is argued that it can only operate under an absolutist view of good and evil that is compatible with the Bible. Given this foundation for application, scenarios for separating conjoined twins are considered against the criteria for the principle of double effect. It is concluded that the principle of double effect cannot be applied to cases wherein one of the twins must be killed. However, it is noted that this does not leave decision makers without options.     

Re-Reading the Declaration of Independence as Perlocutionary Performative

This paper addresses the question of the constitution of ‘the people’. It argues that J.L. Austin’s concept of the ‘perlocutionary’ speech act gives us a framework for understanding the constitutive force of a specific constitutional document: the American Declaration of Independence. It does so through responding to Derrida’s analysis of the Declaration, which itself draws on Austin’s work. Derrida argues that the Declaration’s constitutive force lies in the fact that it cannot be simply understood as either ‘performative’ or ‘constative’, in Austin’s terminology. According to Derrida, ‘the people’ do not pre-exist the Declaration, but are constituted in the act of declaration itself. In response, I argue that while Derrida’s insight regarding the constitution of ‘the people’ is sound, his analysis misses two key aspects of the Declaration. These two lacunae point the way to an understanding of the constitutive force of the Declaration in terms of Austin’s ‘perlocutionary’ speech act.     

Feature Independence and the Recovery of Feature Conjunctions

Recent neurophysiological and behavioral evidence suggests that in both perception and memory the differing attributes of multidimensional stimuli are retained independently of one another in the visual system. The phenomenal unity of visual cognition seems to be dependent on the recovery of feature conjunctions. A major objective for research in this area is to identify the mechanism(s) responsible for re-establishing appropriate feature combinations. Recent findings indicate that spatial location may play a mediative role in the feature integration associated with perceptual processing; however, whether location continues to provide the basis for the recovery of feature conjunctions from memory is unknown. This article provides an overview and critique of current research and offers a theoretical model of memorial feature processing.     

The Independence of Practical Ethics

After criticizing three common conceptions of therelationship between practical ethics and ethical theory, analternative modeled on Aristotle's conception of the relationshipbetween rhetoric and philosophical ethics is explored. Thisaccount is unique in that it neither denigrates the project ofsearching for an adequate comprehensive ethical theory norsubordinates practical ethics to that project. Because the purpose of practical ethics, on this view, is tosecure the cooperation of other persons in a way that respectstheir status as free and equal, it seeks to influence thejudgments of others by providing them with reasons that areaccessible to their own understanding. On this account, theindependence of practical ethics is rooted in an appreciation ofthe constraints that non-ideal circumstances place on the rolethat the philosophically refined premises of moral theory canplay in such public deliberations. Practical and philosophicalethics are united, not by shared theoretical frameworks orprinciples, but by the need to exercise intelligently the sameintellectual and affective capacities. They are separated, notby the particularity or generality of their starting points, butby their responsiveness to the practical problem of facilitatingsound normative deliberations among persons as we find them,under non-ideal circumstances.