Informed consent and patient's rights documents: a right, a rite, or a rewrite?

Both research participants and patients are presumably offered protection from harm through the processes of informed consent and patient's rights. However, both documents are often written at unacceptably high "college" reading levels, making them incomprehensible to the "average" reader who may be reading at a junior-high reading level. Readability researchers are often unfamiliar with important details of readability software, leading to consistent underestimates of document readability. Most informed consent and patient's rights documents are writtin in a one-size-fits-all style and fail to take into account important differences based on cognitive development. Several strategies are described to improve the quality and effectiveness of these materials.     

Religion,Prejudice, and Authoritarianism: Is RWA a Boon or Bane to the Psychology of Religion?

In research on religiosity and prejudice, right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) has been studied alongside variables such as fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Four concerns regarding research on the relationship between RWA and religiosity are identified: (1) the overlap of religiosity and prejudice within the RWA scale; (2) the inflation of relationships by correlating part‐whole measures; (3) covariation in the extremes of the construct hiding the possible independence of components within RWA; and (4) statistical artifacts arising in multiple regression from the combination of these factors. We elaborate these four issues and then demonstrate how they can lead to different interpretations of some previously published data. The article concludes with suggestions for the management and resolution of these issues that may allow RWA to continue to be used in religiosity and prejudice research and how it might evolve to become the boon to researchers that they seek.     

The one,the true,the good… or not: Badiou,Agamben, and atheistic transcendentality

Continental Philosophy Review - This article offers a reading of the “transcendental” character of Alain Badiou’s and Giorgio Agamben’s ontologies. While neither Badiou nor...     

What makes a girl (or a boy) popular (or unpopular)? African American children's perceptions and developmental differences

Open-ended questions were used to obtain narrative accounts of what makes a girl (or a boy) popular (or unpopular) at school. The participants were 489 African American students in Grades 1, 4, and 7 recruited from high-risk inner-city neighborhoods. Appearance and self-presentation were mentioned the most in Grades 4 and 7. Prosocial characteristics were especially relevant for popularity in Grade 1, as were studentship in Grade 4 and peer affiliations in Grade 7. Deviant behaviors were nominated for popularity more frequently in Grade 7 than in the younger grades and more for boys' popularity than for girls'. The mean deviance scores were negative in all grade levels, suggesting a normative peer culture. Male groups in Grade 7 showed significant homophily in reports of deviant behaviors.     

Atheism and Dialetheism; or, ‘Why I Am Not a (Paraconsistent) Christian’

In ‘Theism and Dialetheism’, Cotnoir explores the idea that dialetheism (true contradictions) can help with some puzzles about omnipotence in theology. In this note, I delineate another aspect of this project. Dialetheism cannot help with one big puzzle about another classic ‘omni’ property, omnibenevolence—the famous problem of evil. For someone (including a dialetheist) who thinks that the existence of evil is a knock-down argument against traditional theism, it is a knock-down argument against dialetheic theism, too.     

Goldfish (Carassius auratus) matching geometric and featural cues: a reinterpretation of some of the data of Vargas, López, Salas, and Thinus-Blanc (2004)

Vargas, López, Salas, and Thinus-Blanc showed that goldfish (Carassius auratus) can use both geometric and featural cues in relocating a target corner in a rectangular enclosure. When featural cues (arrangement of striped walls) were put in conflict with geometric cues, results differed according to target location during training. Vargas, López, et al. explained the results of their cue conflict in terms of 2 different strategies: mapping and cue guidance. I provide an alternative, more parsimonious interpretation in which the same strategy of attempting to match as many cues as possible applies to both cases.     

The sacred,the holy,the numinous – and religion: on the emergence and early history of a terminological constellation

ABSTRACT

At the turn of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, the sacred (Durkheim, Mauss, Callois), holiness/the holy (Söderblom, Otto) and the numinous (Otto) emerged as key terms in the nascent field of religious studies. These terms set up a discursive space for the study of religion that acknowledged its reality and relevance for modern societies and individuals, but that proceeded independent of confessional theologies and sought to transcend Western-Christian ethnocentrism. By providing a close reading of the works of the above-mentioned scholars, in particular Durkheim, this article revisits the emergence of these terms. In particular, it looks at the different ways in which the sacred, the holy and the numinous were related to religion. The article discusses some differences between the scholars of the sacred and the scholars of the holy in terms of their agendas, aims, and preconditions.     

On blowing trumpets to the tulips: to prove or not to prove the null hypothesis--comment on Bösch, Steinkamp, and Boller (2006)

The H. B?sch, F. Steinkamp, and E. Boller meta-analysis reaches mixed and cautious conclusions about the possibility of psychokinesis. The authors argue that, for both methodological and philosophical reasons, it is nearly impossible to draw any conclusions from this body of research. The authors do not agree that any significant effect at all, no matter how small, is fundamentally important (B?sch et al., 2006, p. 517), and they suggest that psychokinesis researchers focus either on producing larger effects or on specifying the conditions under which they would be willing to accept the null hypothesis.     

Ferenczi and Winnicott: Searching for a “Missing Link” (of the Soul)

The aim of this paper is to present the close link between Ferenczi's and Winnicott's theoretical, clinical and therapeutic thought, indicating how this link has become something of a “missing link” in the history of psychoanalytic ideas, an implication which we retain, in part, to this day. In the first part entitled “Who's speaking to whom?”, I aim to explore the contents of the most essential parts of their messages, stressing the similarities and differences between them, and citing the most important authors whom they address (Freud for Ferenczi, Klein for Winnicott). In the second part, I aim to tackle the general direction underlying both their work and their lives, concentrating specifically on “the maternal”, and examining the repercussions of this aspect on psychoanalytic technique and practice. In the third part, as a kind of “Parting”, I will present further brief conclusions on the relevance and significance of their thoughts in modern day psychoanalysis, defining Ferenczi and Winnicott as “founders of future discursiveness”.     

The curve is still out there: a reply to Bushman, Wang, and Anderson's (2005) "Is the curve relating temperature to aggression linear or curvilinear?"

This article replies to research conducted by B. J. Bushman, M. C. Wang, and C. A. Anderson and demonstrates that the results of prior research by E. G. Cohn and J. Rotton do support the existence of a curvilinear relationship between temperature and aggression when time of day is taken into consideration. The shape of the relationship between temperature and aggression also depends on a number of other factors, including season, amount of social interaction, type of violence, and type of setting. It appears that linear relationships between temperature and aggression identified by B. J. Bushman et al. are less ubiquitous than might be believed and that the curve is still out there.     

Neurolinguistics and neuroimaging: forward to the future,or is it back?

Books reviewed in this article:
Michael Gazzaniga (ed.), Cognitive Neuroscience: A Reader
Alec Marantz, Yasushi Miyashita, and Wayne O'Neil (ed.), Image, Language, Brain: Papers From the First Mind Articulation Project Symposium
Colin Brown and Peter Hagoort, The Neurocognition of Language     

Political Inequality and the ‘Super-Rich’: Their Money or (some of) Their Political Rights

The ability of very wealthy individuals (or, as I will call them, the ‘super-rich’) to turn their economic power into political power has been—and remains—an important cause of political inequality. In response, this paper advocates an original solution. Rather than solving the problem through implementing a comprehensive conception of political equality, or through enforcing complex rules about financial disclosure etc., I argue that we should impose a choice on the super-rich. The super-rich must choose between (i) forfeiting the things that make them super-rich, i.e., pay a 100 % tax on their wealth above a certain level, or, (ii) they must forfeit some of their political rights. These rights include entitlements to fund political parties; to stand for office; and to work or volunteer for political parties. The right to vote, though, is not limited. I defend my proposal against non-consequentialist and consequentialist objections. I also argue that it avoids two problems that many attempts to reduce political inequality face; these are the political egalitarian’s dilemma and the problem of political equality’s relative moral importance.