New Philosophies of Science in North America – Twenty Years Later

This survey of major developments in North American philosophy of science begins with the mid-1960s consolidation of the disciplinary synthesis of internalist history and philosophy of science (HPS) as a response to criticisms of logical empiricism. These developments are grouped for discussion under the following headings: historical metamethodologies, scientific realisms, philosophies of the special sciences, revivals of empiricism, cognitivist naturalisms, social epistemologies, feminist theories of science, studies of experiment and the disunity of science, and studies of science as practice and culture. A unifying theme of the survey is the relation between historical metamethodologists and scientific realists, which dominated philosophical work in the late 1970s. I argue that many of the alternative cognitive naturalisms, social epistemologies, and feminist theories that have been proposed can be understood as analogues to the differences between metamethodological theories of scientific rationality and realist accounts of successful reference to real causal processes. Recent work on experiment, scientific practice, and the culture of science may, however, challenge the underlying conception of the field according to which realism and historical rationalism (or their descendants) are the important alternatives available, and thus may take philosophy of science in new directions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

How has Philosophical Applied Ethics Progressed in the Past Fifty Years?

Applied ethics is relatively new on the philosophical scene, having grown out of the various civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the student demand that college courses be relevant. Even today, there are those who think that there are no philosophically interesting practical ethical questions, and that applied ethics is not a branch of philosophy at all. This article rejects that view, both because some of the most interesting and respectable philosophers in the world have worked in applied ethics and because applied ethics has been the source of many difficult conceptual questions in theoretical ethics and even metaphysics. These include the grounds for moral status, human identity, how to conceive rights in general and the right to life in particular, the question whether existence itself can be a harm (the nonidentity problem), and the nature of moral principles.     

Pre-Conception War Exposure and Mother and Child Adjustment 4 Years Later

Evidence is accumulating for the transgenerational effects of maternal stress on offspring. A particular increasing concern is the possible transgenerational effects of community exposure to war and terror. Here, 107 mothers that had been exposed to war, were assessed with their 3 year old children (52 % girls) who had been conceived after the end of the war, and thus never directly exposed to war. The circumscribed nature (missile bombardment) and temporal limits (34 days) of the tragic 2006 Lebanon war in the north of Israel, affords a unique methodological opportunity to isolate an epoch of stress from preceding and subsequent normal life. We find that war experience engenders higher levels of mothers’ separation anxiety, lower emotional availability in mother-child interaction, and lower levels of children’s adaptive behavior. The novelty of these findings lies in documenting the nature and strength of transgenerational effects of war-related stress on offspring that were never exposed. In addition, because these effects were obtained after 4 years of a continuing period of normality, in which the children were born and raised, it suggests that an extended period of normality does not obliterate the effects of the war on mother and child behavior as assessed herein. Despite the study limitations, the results are indicative of persisting transgenerational effects of stress.     

Fifty Years of Prison Suicide in Austria: Does Legislation Have an Impact?

The absolute and relative frequency of suicides in jails and prisons in Austria over the 50 years from 1947 to 1996 is described. Important legislational changes regarding the criminal justice system are discussed with regard to possible consequences for the incidence of prisoners' suicides. Within the five decades a significant increase in the absolute numbers of jail and prison suicides was evident in spite of the considerable decrease in the total inmate population. Therefore, the suicide rate of inmates of correctional facilities increased significantly. Possible reasons for this phenomenon are discussed in relation to changes of the criminal law.     

Has the Wheel Turned Full Circle? Fifty Years of Learning Theory, 1946-1996

Fifty years ago, learning theory, whose principles were derived from experiments on conditioning in animals, was a central focus of much of experimental psychology. But the cognitive revolution that swept through human experimental psychology in the 1960s, especially when it was taken up by many animal psychologists themselves, seemed to consign traditional learning theory to the scrap heap. Liberation from the shackles of old-fashioned behaviourism, however, should not be bought at the price of dismissing associative learning theory. Suitably modified and extended, associative theory is capable of explaining much of the behavior of animals and of pointing precisely to the ways in which that behaviour is complex. And under some circumstances, at least, the behaviour of people mirrors that of other animals and is equally amenable to an associative analysis.     

The Authoritarian Personality, 50 Years Later: What Questions Are There for Political Psychology?

Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's The Authoritarian Personality is probably the most deeply flawed work of prominence in political psychology. The methodological, procedural, and substantive errors of this study are well known, but they are frequently simply attributed to poor methodological judgments, issues of scaling (such as response set), or Freudian theories that legitimated circular interpretations. But a more fundamental bias arose from the attempt to empirically verify the existence of a "type" of person whom the researchers thought dangerous and with whom they did not empathize. This attempt involved two dangerous procedures: (1) the fusion of nominalist research procedures (in which empirical results were used to type respondents) with a realist interpretation of types (in which some people "just were" authoritarians and others not), and (2) a theoretically rich critique of the authoritarians and a lack of interest in the psychodynamics of liberals. This combination led to an intrinsically biased interpretive project that could not help but accumulate damning evidence about authoritarians. These subtler problems have haunted contemporary work in political psychology that avoids the methodological problems of Adorno et al.; Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism, which not only is free from the defects of the Adorno et al. study but also involves some methodologically exemplary experiments, is similarly distorted by asymmetries. The same fundamental problems seem to be at the heart of the weaknesses of the theory of symbolic racism to which critics have pointed. Political psychologists should regard The Authoritarian Personality as a cautionary example of bias arising from the choice of methodological assumptions.     

Still Cognitive After All These Years? Perspectives for a Cognitive Behavioural Theory of Obsessions and Where We Are 30 Years Later: A Commentary

Salkovskis and Millar (this issue) observe a number of shortcomings in our paper entitled “New Perspectives for a Cognitive Theory of Obsessions” (Clark & Purdon, 1993), which include: (a) an under‐emphasis on the role of responsibility, (b) an under‐emphasis on the influence of neutralisation; and (c) an over‐emphasis on the relative importance of mental control in the pathogenesis of obsessions. They also contend that our emphasis on ego‐dystonicity as a defining feature of obsessions has been discredited. We agree that certain aspects of our original cognitive model of obsessions may have been overstated in light of the past 22 years of research but several key points have been upheld, especially the importance of failed mental control in the persistence of obsessional problems. This paper addresses each of these criticisms in turn.     

Training and Education in Religion/Spirituality Within APA-Accredited Clinical Psychology Programs: 8 Years Later

This study was a follow up investigation of Brawer et al.’s (Prof Psychol Res Pr 33(2):203–206, 2002) survey of education and training of clinical psychologists in religion/spirituality. Directors of clinical training were surveyed to determine whether changes had occurred in the coverage of religion and spirituality through course work, research, supervision, and in the systematic coverage of the content area. Results indicated an increased coverage in the areas of supervision, dedicated courses, inclusion as part of another course, and research. There was no increase in systematic coverage, but significantly more programs provided at least some coverage. The current study also assesses other areas of incorporation as well as directors’ opinions regarding the importance of religion/spirituality in the field of psychology.     

Maternal Psychopathology and Early Child Temperament Predict Young Children’s Salivary Cortisol 3 Years Later

Neuroendocrine dysfunction is hypothesized to be an early emerging vulnerability marker for depression. We tested whether the main and interactive effects of maternal psychopathology and early child temperamental vulnerability for depression assessed at age three predicted offspring’s basal cortisol function at age 6 years. 228 (122 males) children participated in the baseline and follow-up assessments. At age three, maternal lifetime psychopathology was assessed with a diagnostic clinical interview, and child temperamental positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) were assessed using laboratory observations. At age six, children’s waking and evening cortisol were assessed on 2 days. Maternal lifetime anxiety predicted offspring’s higher morning cortisol at age six. Child temperamental NA at age three predicted higher evening cortisol at age six. There was a significant interaction between maternal lifetime depression and child temperamental PA at age three in predicting offspring’s morning cortisol at age six. For the offspring of mothers with lifetime depression, higher PA at age 3 predicted lower morning cortisol at age 6. These findings highlight the importance of examining the main and interactive effects of maternal psychopathology and early child temperamental vulnerability in predicting the development of offspring’s stress physiology. Findings hold significance in identifying etiological mechanisms of risk and delineating the complex developmental pathways to psychopathology.     

The Ecological Revolution: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, 50 Years Later - Part 2

ABSTRACT

This editorial presents the second of a 2-part special issue honoring the publication of James J. Gibson's 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. As was pointed out by several reviews of this book written just after its publication (i.e., between 1967 and 1969), Gibson's 1966 book represents a revolution not only for the psychological science but also for domains beyond that of psychology. This second part of the special issue is composed of 5 theoretical contributions that represent, in addition to the 4 pieces previously published in the first part, the far-reaching influence of Gibson's ecological revolution.     

‘The Process Concept of God and Pacifism’

In this article I argue for the superiority of the neoclassical (or process) concept of God to the classical concept of God as static, especially as the former relates to the moral superiority of pacifism to just war theory. However, the two main proponents of neoclassical or process theism—Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne—failed to see the full ramifications of their improved concept of God in that they tended to stop short of pacifism by maintaining an uneasy alliance with the violence often associated with classical theism.     

Pacifism: Equipment or Accessory of War?

It is my intention to attempt to define pacifism, in its engagement and concept, as a necessary requisite of war and military action, following a phrase used over a hundred years ago by Franz Rosenzweig when speaking of pacifism as “necessary equipment of war.” I will try to defend the importance of pacifism as an integral part of war (as such, pacifism as a requisite of war ought to shorten the period of war and mitigate destruction) and oppose this concept of pacifism to Jan Narveson’s old attempt at constructing pacifism as a position and then designating it as “untenable and unreasonable,” and then further oppose this to his later attempt to find in pacifism the cause of further (and more) violence for ever more vicious wars.