Special Sciences: still a flawed argument after all these years

Jerry Fodor has argued that the multiple realizability argument, as discussed in his original “Special Sciences” article, “refutes psychophysical reductionism once and for all.” I argue that his argument in “Special Sciences” does no such thing. Furthermore, if one endorses the physicalism that most supporters of the “Special Sciences” view endorse, special science laws must be reducible, in principle. The compatibility of MR with reduction, however, need not threaten the autonomy of the special sciences.     

Still Mythic After All Those Years: On Alston's Latest Defense of the Given

Wilfrid Sellars' conclusion in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" that "the Given" is a "Myth" quickly elicited philosophical opposition and remains contentious fifty years later. William Alston has challenged that conclusion on several occasions by attempting to devise an acceptable account of perception committed to the givenness of perceived objects. His most recent challenge advances a "Theory of Appearing" which posits irreducible non-conceptual relations, ostensibly overlooked by Sellars, e.g., of "looking red", between the subject and the object perceived, that can play a justificatory role vis-à-vis the corresponding beliefs, e.g., that the object is red. I argue that Alston undermines his positive plausibility arguments by first blurring and then ignoring crucial differences among various looks-concepts, and that his own putative "phenomenal" looks-concept demonstrably cannot play the justificatory role that he envisions for it. Both his critique of Sellars' arguments and his own alternative proposal thus fail on all fronts.     

Still Stable After All These Years: Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in Academic Contexts

Abstract

When 2 persons—an acquaintance who could not have avoided a problem and a close relative who is responsible for her own plight—ask for help, attribution theory and sociobiology conflict about who will receive help. Attribution theorists assume that the nonresponsible acquaintance will be supported, but sociobiologists argue that the responsible sibling will receive help. The authors tested the hypothesis that characteristics of the situation affect which theory better predicts help giving. The results confirmed that in situations that do not affect life and death, a nonresponsible acquaintance would receive more help than a responsible sibling. But in life-or-death situations, inasmuch as the reproductive fitness of the person in need is in danger, a responsible sibling would be supported more than a nonresponsible acquaintance.     

Reevaluating the Identity Status Paradigm: Still Useful after 35 Years

In this article we respond to van Hoof's (1999) critique of the identity status paradigm. Our review and evaluation of the existing data on identity statuses lead us to be more optimistic than van Hoof about the convergent and discriminant validity of identity status measures, especially objective measures that provide continuous status scores as well as nominal status classifications. Our review of longitudinal studies revealed that among university students tested annually 3 or more times, change in status classifications is significantly more likely to be observed than stability. Moreover, virtually all longitudinal studies with university students indicate that status changes are more likely to be progressive rather than regressive in terms of the hypothesized identity status developmental sequence. However, considerable status regression and fluctuation is observed and we agree with van Hoof that it may no longer be useful to postulate an invariant sequence of identity status stages. Nonetheless, the data do indicate reliable status differences in self-regulatory control processes including ego development, social-cognitive processing orientations, cognitive complexity, self-integration, moral development, and so on. Consequently, we conclude that a useful strategy, at least with university students, may be to focus on the social-cognitive processes that underpin identity statuses and to conceptualize these identity orientations as different styles of dealing with the demands, challenges, and opportunities afforded by institutionalized moratoria, such as a university context. Two lines of recent research inspired by this conceptualization are discussed.     

Still stable after all these years: perceptions of sexual harassment in academic contexts

This research examined perceptions of sexual harassment in academic contexts using data sets collected in 1990 (Time 1) and 2000 (Time 2). We assessed the influence of two individual variables--gender and gender role--and one contextual variable--power of the harasser--on perceptions of harassment. When the harasser was a higher-power individual, participants perceived more vignettes as examples of sexual harassment, viewed female targets more positively, and evaluated male harassers more negatively. Contrary to prediction, participants viewed male harassers less negatively at Time 2 than at Time 1. Despite increased media attention and educational interventions, comparisons to the earlier findings highlight remarkable stability in perceptions of harassment over time.     

Meta‐Analysis of Clerical Performance Predictors: Still stable after all these years

Pearlman, Schmidt, and Hunter (1980) published a seminal paper on the validity of various measures for predicting performance in clerical jobs. They concluded that for both job and training performance criteria, 10 types of tests (e.g., perceptual speed, clerical aptitude, verbal ability) predicted performance across 5 clerical job families. This paper describes a psychometric meta‐analysis of validity studies using similar measures for clerical jobs conducted since 1980 to examine the stability of Pearlman and colleagues' validity estimates. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the long‐term stability of validity generalization estimates over a period of several decades. Clerical jobs provide a compelling case study because these jobs have changed considerably due to the increased use of computers and technology in the office environment. Results showed that the mean population estimates in the present study were consistent with, or higher than, those obtained by Pearlman and colleagues, thus demonstrating the long‐term stability of meta‐analytic estimates of validity. The relative stability of the validity estimates also supports the robustness of g as a predictor, even as jobs change over time.     

Still clever after all these years: searching for the homunculus in explicitly cued task switching

Many researchers interpret switch costs in the explicit task-cuing procedure as reflecting endogenous task-set reconfiguration. G. D. Logan and C. Bundesen (2003) challenged this interpretation empirically and theoretically. They argued that many experiments confounded cue encoding benefits with switch costs and they showed that unconfounded switch costs could be vanishingly small. They proposed a theory in which subjects use a single task set in the explicit task-cuing procedure and switch costs reflect cue encoding benefits, not reconfiguration. S. Monsell and G. A. Mizon (2006) responded to these challenges, describing conditions under which substantial switch costs could be observed in the explicit task-cuing procedure and providing a theoretical account of performance in which reconfiguration occurred in G. D. Logan and C. Bundesen's experiments. This article is a response to S. Monsell and G. A. Mizon's challenge that highlights empirical problems with their evidence and reports an experiment that challenges critical assumptions of their theoretical account.     

REBT 45 Years On: Still on the Sidelines

In this article, I explore and respond to some of the criticisms of REBT which have contributed to its continuing marginalisation in Britain, both within counselling in general and cognitive-behaviour therapy in particular. These criticisms include: REBT's highly active-directive and apparently aggressive manner, its reputation for being foul-mouthed, defending Hitler as an example (albeit an extreme one) of human fallibility, REBT's lack of empirical support for its theoretical tenets, and endlessly advocating profound philosophical change when it is probably outside of the reach or interest of most clients. Finally, I suggest some ways of tackling these criticisms in order to help REBT become more attractive to the wider counselling community.     

Moral Explanation and the Special Sciences

Discussion of moral explanation has reached animpasse, with proponents of contemporaryethical naturalism upholding the explanatoryintegrity of moral facts and properties, andopponents – including both anti-realists andnon-naturalistic realists – insisting thatsuch robustly explanatory pretensions as moraltheory has be explained away. I propose thatthe key to solving the problem lies in thequestion whether instances of moral propertiesare causally efficacious. It is argued that,given the truth of contemporary ethicalnaturalism, moral properties are causallyefficacious if the properties of the specialsciences are. Certain objections are rebuttedinvolving the nature of causation, on the onehand, and putative special features of themoral realm, on the other.     

Job Insecurity Research is Still Alive and Kicking Twenty Years Later: A Commentary

This paper comments on the review of longitudinal job insecurity studies in this special issue. The main conclusion of that review, namely that job insecurity leads to poor health and well‐being, remains undisputed. It is argued, however, that future job insecurity research should focus more on: (a) uncovering the underlying psychological mechanisms of job insecurity; (b) the effects of new forms of labor contracts; (c) differences across nations as a function of different social security systems; and (d) the effects of organisations. It is concluded that job insecurity is a problem of our time and that 20 years after the publication of Dekker and Schaufeli's study on job insecurity among workers in Australian public transport corporation, psychological job insecurity research is still alive and kicking.     

Physicalism and Downward Causation in Psychology and the Special Sciences

Wilderness valued as mere resource for human‐interest satisfaction is challenged in favor of wilderness as a productive source, in which humans have roots, but which also yields wild neighbors and aliens with intrinsic value. Wild value is storied achievement in an evolutionary ecosystem, with instrumental and intrinsic, organismic and systemic values intermeshed. Survival value is reconsidered in this light. Changing cultural appreciations of values in wilderness can transform and relativize our judgments about appropriate conduct there. A final valued element in wildness is its idiographic historical particularity, and most surprising is the emergence of a novel morality when humans learn to let values go wild.     

Special Issues of the Journal: Topics of Interest over the Years

Throughout its history, the Personnel and Guidance Journal and its successor, the Journal of Counseling and Development, have published a number of special issues. A listing of these special issues is offered as a bibliographic aid. The topics of the special issues are analyzed by category as evidence of trends in the history of scholarly interests in our field.     

Special Sciences, Conspiracy and the Better Best System Account of Lawhood

An important obstacle to lawhood in the special sciences is the worry that such laws would require metaphysically extravagant conspiracies among fundamental particles. How, short of conspiracy, is this possible? In this paper we’ll review a number of strategies that allow for the projectibility of special science generalizations without positing outlandish conspiracies: non-Humean pluralism, classical MRL theories of laws, and Albert and Loewer’s theory. After arguing that none of the above fully succeed, we consider the conspiracy problem through the lens of our preferred view of laws, an elaboration of the MRL view that we call the Better Best System (BBS) theory. BBS offers a picture on which, although all events supervene on a fundamental level, there is no one unique locus of projectibility; rather there are a large number of loci corresponding to the different areas (ecology, economics, solid-state chemistry, etc.) in which there are simple and strong generalizations to be made. While we expect that some amount of conspiracy-fear-inducing special science projectibility is inevitable given BBS, we’ll argue that this is unobjectionable. It follows from BBS that the laws of any particular special or fundamental science amount to a proper subset of the laws. From this vantage point, the existence of projectible special science generalizations not guaranteed by the fundamental laws is not an occasion for conspiracy fantasies, but a predictable fact of life in a complex world.