Evaluating Stand-Up Specials

Stand-up specials are not identical to the sets they contain. Nor are they of a kind with either fiction films or documentaries. I argue here that the properties of specials that make them ontologically distinct also demand that we treat them as distinct for the purpose of their evaluation. I then offer some evaluative criteria for specials as well as suggestions for becoming better critics of specials.     

Evaluating Microcomputer Programs

Much interest is being expressed in schools across the nation about the use of microcomputers to improve the delivery of special and regular education services. With this interest has come the need to evaluate educational programs utilizing microcomputers so that decisions about program improvement and expansion can be made. This paper discusses the evaluation of special education programs that incorporate microcomputers as a major instructional tool.     

Evaluating everyday explanations

People frequently rely on explanations provided by others to understand complex phenomena. A fair amount of attention has been devoted to the study of scientific explanation, and less on understanding how people evaluate naturalistic, everyday explanations. Using a corpus of diverse explanations from Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five” and other online sources, we assessed how well a variety of explanatory criteria predict judgments of explanation quality. We find that while some criteria previously identified as explanatory virtues do predict explanation quality in naturalistic settings, other criteria, such as simplicity, do not. Notably, we find that people have a preference for complex explanations that invoke more causal mechanisms to explain an effect. We propose that this preference for complexity is driven by a desire to identify enough causes to make the effect seem inevitable.     

Evaluating distributed cognition

Human beings are promiscuously social creatures, and contemporary epistemologists are increasingly becoming aware that this shapes the ways in which humans process information. This awareness has tended to restrict itself, however, to testimony amongst isolated dyads. As scientific practice ably illustrates, information-processing can be spread over a vast social network. In this essay, a credit theory of knowledge is adapted to account for the normative features of strongly distributed cognition. A typical credit theory analyzes knowledge as an instance of obtaining success because of or through the ability of the individual knower. The extended credit theory developed here broadens this framework so as to accommodate team-like epistemic achievements. The extended credit theory is then contrasted with some similar proposals given from within a process reliabilist framework. Once one isolates pairs of cases of distributed cognition in which there is a difference between sheer reliability and reliability grounded in ability, one can see that the extended credit theory maps the normative terrain better than the alternatives.     

Evaluating Ethical Tools

This article reviews suggestions for how ethical tools are to be evaluated and argues that the concept of ethical soundness as presented by Kaiser et al. (2007) is unhelpful. Instead, it suggests that the quality of an ethical tool is determined by how well it achieves its assigned purpose(s). Those are different for different tools, and the article suggests a categorization of such tools into three groups. For all ethical tools, it identifies comprehensiveness and user‐friendliness as crucial. For tools that have reaching a decision in a democratic context as a main purpose, it identifies transparency, guiding users toward a decision and justification of the decision‐supporting mechanism. For tools that aim to engage the public, it identifies procedural fairness as essential. It also notes that the scope of use for ethical tools is limited to the same moral community, and that this feature is frequently overlooked.     

Evaluating Practical Reasoning

In this paper, the defeasible argumentation scheme for practical reasoning (Walton 1990) is revised. To replace the old scheme, two new schemes are presented, each with a matching set of critical questions. One is a purely instrumental scheme, while the other is a more complex scheme that takes values into account. It is argued that a given instance of practical reasoning can be evaluated, using schemes and sets of critical questions, in three ways: by attacking one or more premises of the argument, by attacking the inferential link between the premises and conclusion, or by mounting a counter-argument. It is argued that such an evaluation can be carried out in many cases using an argument diagram structure in which all components of the practical reasoning in the case are represented as premises, conclusions, and inferential links between them that can be labeled as argumentation schemes. This system works if every critical question can be classified as a assumption of or an exception to the original argument. However, it is also argued that this system does not work in all cases, namely those where epistemic closure is problematic because of intractable disputes about burden of proof.     

Evaluating Cross-Lingual Equating

Adapting educational tests from 1 language to others requires equating across the different language versions to be able to compare examinees from different language groups. Such equating is usually based on translated items considered to have similar content and psychometric characteristics in both source and target languages. However, because it is not possible to ascertain that these items are really similar in different languages, it is difficult to control and validate the equating outcome. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for evaluating cross-lingual equating and apply it to the Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) used for admission to Israeli universities. This test is written in Hebrew (the source-language, SL) and translated into 5 languages. A cross-lingual equating in a double-linking plan was performed in each of 12 forms translated to 1 target language (TL1), and each of 9 forms translated to another target language (TL2). The average difference between the equating results in the 2 links, indicating the overall instability incorporated in the equating process, was more than 10 times the standard error of equating in the TL1-SL process and about half this size in the TL2-SL process. The significance of the results and the differences found between the 2 TLs are discussed, as well as the potential displayed by the method for use as a general evaluative tool for cross-lingual equating.     

Evaluating Dialectical Structures

This paper develops concepts and procedures for the evaluation of complex debates. They provide means for answering such questions as whether a thesis has to be considered as proven or disproven in a debate or who carries a burden of proof. While being based on classical logic, this framework represents an (argument-based) approach to non-monotonic, or defeasible reasoning. Debates are analysed as dialectical structures, i.e. argumentation systems with an attack- as well as a support-relationship. The recursive status assignment over the arguments is conditionalised on proponents in a debate. The problem of multiple status assignments arising on circular structures is solved by showing that uniqueness can be guaranteed qua reconstruction of a debate. The notion of burden of proof as well as other discursive aims rational proponents pursue in a debate is defined within the framework.     

Evaluating Corroborative Evidence

How should we evaluate an argument in which two witnesses independently testify to some claim? In fact what would happen is that the testimony of the second witness would be taken to corroborate that of the first to some extent, thereby boosting up the plausibility of the first argument from testimony. But does that commit the fallacy of double counting, because the second testimony is already taken as independent evidence supporting the claim? Perhaps the corroboration effect should be considered illogical, since each premise should be seen as representing a separate reason in a convergent argument for accepting the claim as plausible. In this paper, we tackle the problem using argumentation schemes and argument diagramming. We examine a number of examples, and come up with two hypotheses that offer methods of analyzing and evaluating this kind of evidence.     

Evaluating Microcomputer Courseware:

To assist special eductors in making purchase decision, this paper presents 13 questions that should be asked when considering the acquisition of educational courseware. The questions presented relate to educational goals, learning principles, factual accuracy, values, attractiveness, use of the computer's unique capabilities, cognitive and physical demands, user friendliness, documentation, technical support, licensure arrangements, and hardware compatibility.     

Evaluating the therapeutic misconception

The "therapeutic misconception", described by Paul Appelbaum and colleagues more than 20 years ago, refers to the tendency of participants in clinical trials to confuse the design and conduct of research with personalized medical care. Although the "therapeutic misconception" has become a term of art in research ethics, little systematic attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of this phenomenon. This article examines critically the way in which Appelbaum and colleagues formulate what is at stake in the therapeutic misconception, paying particular attention to assumptions and implications that clinical trial participation disadvantages research participants as compared with receiving standard medical care. After clarifying the ethical significance of the therapeutic misconception with respect to the decision making of patients, we offer policy recommendations for obtaining informed consent to participation in clinical trials.     

Evaluating architectural design review

Architectural design review is a method of environmental management which is widely used by governmental agencies in both the United States and in Great Britain. Because design review is a governmental function, there is a major need to assess how well it works. Research covering over 29,000 respondents and 5,600 environmental scenes suggests that scientific protocols can be adapted to provide an accurate and efficient design review protocol. The protocol uses preference experiments to find the standardized mean difference [formula: see text] between a proposed project and a random sample of existing projects. Values of d will indicate whether the project will increase, maintain, or diminish the aesthetic merit of the sampled area. The protocol is illustrated by applying it to the case of design review for a single residence. Implications for further implementations are discussed.