Reading the Halakhah as a religious statement: Part One

The letter forms the medium for the spirit, so the letter of the law of the Torah here stands forth as the embodiment of the religion of the law of the Torah. The Halakhah, or law, focuses on the interiority of holy Israel's life; the Aggadah, or lore, on the exteriority of Israel's relationships. How exactly the Halakhah is to be read as a religious statement is spelled out in this article. But what about Israel within? I maintain that the Halakhah embodies the extension of God's design for world order into the inner-facing relationships of [1] God and Israel, [2] Israel's inner order in its own terms, and [3] the Israelite's household viewed on its own in time and space and social circumstance. If we wish to explore the interiority of Israel in relationship with God, as a shared order, and of Israel's autonomous building block, the household, we are required to take up the norms of everyday conduct that define Israel and signify its sanctification. We commence by examining the data that reveal the governing category-formation: how precisely the Halakhah organises and systematises the Torah's facts and rules of ordinary life.     

No One Likes a Snitch

Whistleblowers remain essential as complainants in allegations of research misconduct. Frequently internal to the research team, they are poorly protected from acts of retribution, which may deter the reporting of misconduct. In order to perform their important role, whistleblowers must be treated fairly. Draft regulations for whistleblower protection were published for public comment almost a decade ago but never issued (Dahlberg 2013). In the face of the growing challenge of research fraud, we suggest vigorous steps, to include: organizational responsibility to certify the accuracy of research including audit, required whistleblower action in the face of imminent or grave harm to subjects, strengthened legal protections against retaliation including prompt enactment of Federal whistleblower protections and consideration of criminalizing the most egregious cases of research misconduct.     

One percent ability and ninety-nine percent perspiration: a study of a Japanese memorist

In 1987, Hideaki Tomoyori, a Japanese memorist, set a world record for reciting the first 40,000 digits of pi. The authors report results from a series of tests that give a view of Tomoyori's memory performance compared with that of a control group, matched for age and educational level. He showed very good scores on tasks with digits, such as digit memory span tasks and 5 x 5 number matrix learning, although some of the control participants were nearly as good. In contrast, his performance was not particularly good for learning word lists and story recall. Overall, his performance on the tasks does not suggest that he has superior cognitive abilities. We believe that his extraordinary memory performance in reciting the digits of pi results from his effective use of a combination of digit-syllable transformations and imagery mnemonics developed from extensive practice. These results are consistent with the skilled memory framework.     

One or two dimensions in spontaneous classification: a simplicity approach

When participants are asked to spontaneously categorize a set of items, they typically produce unidimensional classifications, i.e., categorize the items on the basis of only one of their dimensions of variation. We examine whether it is possible to predict unidimensional vs. two-dimensional classification on the basis of the abstract stimulus structure, by employing Pothos and Chater's simplicity model of spontaneous categorization [Pothos, E. M., & Chater, N. (2002). A simplicity principle in unsupervised human categorization. Cognitive Science, 26, 303-343]. The simplicity model provides a quantitative measure of how intuitive a particular classification is. With objects represented in two dimensions, we propose that a unidimensional classification will be preferred if it is more intuitive than all possible two-dimensional ones, and vice versa. Empirical results supporting this proposal are reported. Implications for Goodman's paradox are discussed.     

错觉研究:从狭义到广义的演进

心理学家对错觉现象的关注由来已久,以往的错觉研究大部分关注与知觉过程相联系的错觉。近十几年来,当代错觉研究呈现出新的热点,并从狭义向广义演进。这一研究对象扩展的基础,是错觉现象的本质特征,即认知过程的一致性偏差。广义错觉研究的对象涉及知觉、记忆、思维、推理等各种心理过程。     

团队中的“我为人人, 人人为我”—— 团队-成员交换研究述评

团队-成员交换考察了团队中个体成员和其他成员之间的关系质量对团队整体绩效以及个人绩效的影响。从团队-成员交换的概念、理论来源、测量方式、测量工具等方面系统地介绍了团队-成员交换。此外, 将团队-成员交换的实证研究结果进行了汇总, 包含团队-成员交换的前因变量、结果变量及其所扮演的中介变量和调节变量的研究。在汇总的过程中对变量进行了群体层面和个体层面的划分。最后提出未来应该广泛开展在中国情境下的团队-成员交换实证研究, 并开发适合中国情境的团队-成员交换量表。     

One for all: What representing a group may do to us

Collective bargaining, business alliances, diplomacy between nations — interactions between group representatives include topics that may have some of the greatest impact on our lives. Nevertheless, the nature of such interactions is poorly understood. How do representatives approach such interactions? What goals do they pursue, and what expectations do they have of their counterpart? In the present research, we advance a theoretical framework with which to understand the mindset that is activated by the role of representative. In two studies, we measure what goals (Study 1) and expectations (Study 2) become salient in this role, compared with the related roles of individual or group member. Our findings reveal that representatives may display a more competitive mindset, consisting of more competitive goals and expectations of others. As competition can be harmful, rather than beneficial to the group, care should be taken when relying on representatives, so that we may exploit their strengths while curtailing their weaknesses.     

Self-doubt: One Moral of the Story

This essay focuses on the value of self-doubt in moral inquiry and in moral education. Using John Patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt: A parable, as illustration, it shows how self-doubt initiates and extends moral inquiry, highlights one’s epistemic fallibility and connects the inquirer to the virtue of humility. The essay draws on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, Hullett, Nussbaum, Thayer-Bacon and Elbow to support the idea that the question ‘Am I wrong?’ is important for moral inquiry and for moral education.     

The Fragility of Evolution: Part One

This article argues for a shift in evolutionary metaphor-from fitness and the elimination of the less fit to fragility and passage through fragile periods of change. Childhood, for example, can be viewed as state of protected weakness, allowing time for more neural development, learning, and play. Similarly, evolutionary change can be released precisely when competitive pressure is relaxed. The fragility of evolution in time extends to several biological domains. The genetic system exhibits a surprising fluidity, whether from mobile genetic elements or hypermutation due to stress. Through gene duplication, organisms build up redundancy, which can more readily diverge into novelty. With endo-symbiosis one organism becomes incorporated into another, merging genomes, membranes, and metabolisms. As a result novel structures and genetic restructuring occur, making for profound evolutionary change. In a sexual life cycle, gametes within a species group fuse and amplify subtle variation. Hybridization, or unions between atypical sexual partners, can cause instant speciation and an instability that leads to more evolution. With development organisms go through rapid morphological change and sensitive transition phases. Importantly, dissociation of developmental modules in both temporal and spatial ways allow for evolutionary novelty to emerge. Several lines of evidence lead to the hypothesis that the organism's inner matrix can respond to stresses and help shape a fluid genome. In a second article, three more biological domains will be examined, in which organisms and environment more obviously interpenetrate: the remarkably plastic neural/behavioral system, novel synergisms between organisms, and the multiple, complex dynamics of ecosystems-all of which help to generate life's outstanding diversity. Last, the protection of fragile human populations will be discussed.     

Learning symbolic-experiential therapy: One approach

This paper is intended to serve as a stimulus to the thinking of students regarding ways in which they might better organize their symbolic training experiences. It illustrates how one supervisee derived a conceptual framework from the literature that made it easier to track process events and organize her training experiences. The authors believe it is important to discover ways to facilitate the learning process without operationalizing the approach.director of training and research and professor of family therapy in the same department.