Comment on Bridges and Kunselman (2005)

A case is made that a clear understanding of premature mortality of Status Indians due to suicide, homicide, and motor vehicle accidents must begin with a clear idea of what the indicator, potential years of life lost before age 75 (PYLL), is, and how it was measured or calculated.     

The applicability of deadline models: Comment on Glickman,Gray, and Morales (2005)

Glickman, Gray, and Morales (this issue) propose a statistical model for measuring the unobserved latency of stimulus-controlled processes. The model accounts for both speed and accuracy and does so by assuming participants set an internal deadline. If a stimulus-controlled response is not produced by the deadline, the participant then guesses. The applicability the model is discussed in this comment. The deadline model yields specific predictions for the case in which stimulus difficulty is manipulated in a within-block manner. In this case, it is reasonable to assume that stimulus difficulty does not affect the deadline. It is shown that in common perceptual and cognitive domains, extant data do not fully meet these predictions. Hence, practitioners need be aware of the possibility and consequences of model misspecification. This research is supported by NSF grant SES - 0095919 to J. Rouder, D. Sun, and P. Speckman.     

Comment on Anderson and Ones (2008)

The ‘erratum and addendum’ by Anderson and Ones ( 2008 ) does not state unambiguously that participants' Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) scale scores were incorrectly matched with their scores on the other inventories' scales, nor does it mention the existence of other errors in the scoring of the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) and Business Personality Indicator (BPI) scales. We demonstrate these errors and we recommend the retraction of the articles by Anderson and Ones ( 2003 ) and Ones and Anderson ( 2002 ). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

爱因斯坦宗教观析评（一）

科学家与宗教的关系如何,一直是全社会尤其是宗教学界十分关注的问题,而20世纪最伟大的科学家之一——爱因斯坦对宗教的态度更是各方关注的焦点,成为各种论点持有者经常拿来论证自己看法的、认为是很有分量的重要论据。     

Non-monotonicity and Informal Reasoning: Comment on Ferguson (2003)

In this paper, it is argued that Ferguson’s (2003, Argumentation 17, 335–346) recent proposal to reconcile monotonic logic with defeasibility has three counterintuitive consequences. First, the conclusions that can be derived from his new rule of inference are vacuous, a point that as already made against default logics when there are conflicting defaults. Second, his proposal requires a procedural “hack” to the break the symmetry between the disjuncts of the tautological conclusions to which his proposal leads. Third, Ferguson’s proposal amounts to arguing that all everyday inferences are sound by definition. It is concluded that the informal logic response to defeasibility, that an account of the context in which inferences are sound or unsound is required, still stands. It is also observed that another possible response is given by Bayesian probability theory (Oaksford and Chater, in press, Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK; Hahn and Oaksford, in press, Synthese).     

Reflections on religious belief and prosociality: Comment on Galen (2012)

Luke Galen (2012) offers a timely analysis of associations between religiosity and prosocial and antisocial attitudes and behaviors. After identifying 10 points of agreement, I raise 8 questions for further reflection and research: (1) Is ingroup giving and volunteerism not prosocial? (2) Are religion-related prosocial norms part of the religious factor? (3) Is social support also appropriately considered part of the religious factor? (4) Are self-report data from more and less religious people invalid? (5) How should we disentangle gender and religiosity? (6) How might we resolve "the religious engagement paradox"? (7) Does religion serve an adaptive, evolutionary function? And (8) Might research further explore religiosity, in its varieties, and prosociality? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

展示我国西方哲学研究水平的一部哲学史

八卷本学术版《西方哲学史》是国内目前规模最大的一部西方哲学史。不过,它的特殊之处首先并不在于它的规模,而在于它贯穿着中国学者的思想视野,这不仅体现在作者们对自身文化传统的理解与把握构成了他们面对西方哲学的背景,而且体现在全书贯穿着他们对诸如混沌(存在)与本质、自由与真理、信仰与理性以及历史之起源等等这些哲学基本问题的思考和回答。因此,这不仅仅是一部“历史学的”作品,同时也是一部“哲学(思想性)的”作品。它的完成是三代学者百年思考的总成。     

Ecological Validity,Representative Design,and Correspondence Between Experimental Task Constraints and Behavioral Setting: Comment on Rogers,Kadar, and Costall (2005)

More than 20 years ago, Swenson (1988) Swenson, R. 1988. Emergence and the principle of maximum entropy production: Multi-level system theory, evolution, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.. Proceedings of the 32nd annual meeting of the International Society for General Systems Research, 32: 32 [Google Scholar] proposed and elaborated the Law of Maximum Entropy Production (LMEP) as the missing piece of physical or universal law that would account for the ubiquitous and opportunistic transformation from disordered, or less ordered, to more highly ordered states. Given Boltzmann's (1974) Boltzmann, L. 1974. “The second law of thermodynamics”. In Theoretical physics and philosophical problems, Edited by: Bush, S. G. Boston: Reidel. (Original work published 1886) [Google Scholar] interpretation, the Second Law of Thermodynamics has generally been interpreted as a “law of disorder.” Schrödinger (1945) Schrodinger, E. 1945. What is life?, New York: Macmillan.  [Google Scholar] and Bertalanffy (1952) had shown, however, that the Second Law, viewed from the classical perspective of Clausius (1865) Clausius, R. 1865. Ueber verschiedene fur die anwendung bequeme formen der haupt gleichungen der mechanischen warmtheorie.. Annalen der Phys. und Chem., 7: 389–400.  [Google Scholar] and Thomson (1852) Thomson, W. 1852. On the universal tendency in nature to the dissipation of mechanical energy. Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 4: 304–306. [Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], was not anathema to order. Ordered flow, including life, was permissible as long as it produced enough entropy to compensate for its own internal entropy reduction. The central problem remained, however: If the spontaneous production of order was “infinitely improbable,” as Boltzmann had surmised, then why were ordered systems such a fundamental and characteristic property of the visible world? LMEP provided the answer: Order production is inexorable because order produces entropy faster than disorder. In Swenson (1989d) Swenson, R. 1989d. Gauss-in-a-box: Nailing down the first principles of action. Perceiving Acting Workshop Review, 5: 60–63. (Technical Report of the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action) [Google Scholar], LMEP was given expression as a precise law that could be demonstrated in falsifiable, experimental, physical terms. In Swenson and Turvey (1991) Swenson, R. 1991a. “End-directed physics and evolutionary ordering: Obviating the problem of the population of one”. In The cybernetics of complex systems: Self-organization, evolution, and social change, Edited by: Geyer, F. 41–60. Salinas, CA: Intersystems Publications.  [Google Scholar], LMEP was tied explicitly to the progressive emergence of living things with their perception–action capabilities.     

Home runs and humbugs: Comment on Bond and DePaulo (2008)

In 2006, C. F. Bond Jr. and B. M. DePaulo provided a meta-analysis of means and concluded that average lie detection accuracy was significantly greater than chance for most people. Now, they have presented an analysis of standard deviations (C. F. Bond Jr. & B. M. DePaulo, 2008), claiming that there are no reliable individual differences in lie detection accuracy; such differences are due to chance alone. Their conclusions are based principally on studies with college students as lie detectors and lie scenarios of dubious ecological validity. When motivated professional groups have been shown either high stakes lie scenarios or scenarios involving appropriate liars and truth-tellers, average accuracies significantly above chance have been found for 7 different professional groups reported by 12 researchers in 3 countries. The replicated and predicted performance of extremely accurate individual lie detectors ("truth wizards") also undermines the claim of no individual differences in lie detection accuracy. Psychometrically, the stochastic model used is problematic because it does not meet the assumptions of classical test theory.     

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)

Presents an obituary for Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005). Before Urie Bronfenbrenner, child psychologists studied the child, sociologists the family, anthropologists the society, economists the economic framework, and political scientists the structure. As the result of Urie's extension of the concept of the ecology of human development, these environments--from the family to economic and political structures--are viewed as part of the life course, embracing both childhood and adulthood. Bronfenbrenner, widely regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child rearing, and human ecology--the interdisciplinary domain he helped popularize--died at his home in Ithaca, New York, on September 25, 2005, at the age of 88. He was the Jacob Gould Sherman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell University, where he spent most of his professional career. A brief biography of Bronfenbrenner is followed by an overview of his published work, his theories and other influential accomplishments.     

Physical attractiveness and health: comment on Weeden and Sabini (2005)

Evolutionary behavioral biology suggests that certain characteristics of the human face and body are important for mate preferences and are therefore subject to sexual selection. J. Weeden and J. Sabini identify a number of weaknesses in the association between traits' attractiveness and health. In contrast, the authors argue that (a) studies on preferences for physical characteristics that rely on 1 trait permit only limited interpretation, (b) limitations placed on J. Weeden and J. Sabini's review exclude important associations, (c) there are misconceptions in their treatment of some traits, and (d) their selected literature provides an inaccurate picture regarding effect size. The authors suggest that future research in this field should seek conceptual and methodological constancy in trait selection and in the evaluation of attractiveness- and health-related traits.     

Measuring Feeling of Knowing: Comment on Schraw (1995)

Schraw compares two coefficients for the 2×2 contingency tables resulting from many feeling of knowing (FOK) studies: Hamann's coefficient and Goodman and Kruskal's γ. He favours Hamann's coefficient and gives examples where Hamann's coefficient produces what might be considered the more intuitive result. Further scrutiny reveals that these examples are not as convincing as Schraw makes them out to be. Because Hamann's coefficient depends on the row and column marginals, it does not map onto FOK ability as well as Goodman and Kruskal's γ, which is a direct measure of the diagnostic worth of FOK ratings.     

Dissociating Long-term Memory Systems: Comment on Nyberg and Tulving (1996)

Nyberg and Tulving (1996) presented functional, developmental, psychopharmacological and neuropsychological evidence for each possible pairwise dissociation between episodic, semantic, procedural and PRS memory systems and concluded that these systems are therefore independent. I argue that this exercise is questionable on a number of grounds, and consider in detail the evidence that Nyberg and Tulving cite in favour of one particular dissociation, that between episodic and procedural memory. I suggest that a truer interpretation of the evidence is that these types of memory are closely linked, and that the multiple memory systems view fails to account for a variety of findings.