Jeffrey Meets Kolmogorov

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Jeffrey conditionalization is a rule for updating degrees of belief in light of uncertain evidence. It is usually assumed that the partitions involved in Jeffrey...     

Transpersonalism: Ego Meets Soul

Over the last few decades, the transpersonal approach has emerged from mainstream psychology to address the effects of spirituality and consciousness on personal transformation and health and to explore the optimal levels of human functioning. Despite its increasing popularity, many mental health professionals lack basic knowledge of the transpersonal approach. This article provides an introduction to and overview of the historical development, scientific basis, philosophical stance, theoretical principles, and clinical methods of transpersonal psychology.     

Macro sales force research

The call for more macro sales force research where the sales force as a whole is the unit of analysis, which was raised in “The Strategic Role of the Sales Force,” is revisited in this article. Technology, consolidation, government policies, the evolution of organizational strategy are dramatically changing the role of the sales force and the daily lives of salespeople. Yet, it is estimated that no more than 5%, and probably less, of sales and sales management research examines these developments. To shine a light on this, a case study of a health-care company that has changed its strategic focus from a product to a solutions provider is presented. Changes in the role of the sales force are examined within the five sales force capabilities identified in the “The Strategic Role” article. Research questions are raised about sales force capabilities.     

宏观视域中的全球化--全球化若干重要问题研究评述

毫无疑问,全球化已经成为当今最重要的焦点性话题之一,它在许多学科的争论中,都已成为出现频率最高的核心话语之一.正如,英国社会学家安东尼·吉登斯所说:"仅仅在十年以前,不论是学术著作还是通俗读物都很少使用这个术语.而现在,这一术语已经从无人使用变为无所不在;如果不提到它,任何政治演说都是不完整的,任何商业手册都是不受欢迎的."①然而,当我们真正面对全球化这一问题时,却感到有些茫然.大量有关全球化的论著既缺少清晰的分析方法,又缺乏系统的理论建构和严密的逻辑推导,更没有提供一种前后一致、令人信服的历史解释,所以使人很难准确把握全球化的内在本质之意.出现这种状况一方面说明全球化本身拥有极其复杂的内容,其进程尚未完结;另一方面则与研究者所选择的视域有关,许多学者是从不同的学科、不同的角度来考察全球化的,结果赋予了它不同的、甚至是相互矛盾的意义并由此引起许多争论.看来,对全球化研究的某些重要问题进行宏观性整体审视,这对真正地理解全球化的基本精神或许不是多余的.     

Emotion in Schizophrenia: Where Feeling Meets Thinking

Our understanding of the nature of emotional difficulties in schizophrenia has been greatly enhanced by translational research over the past two decades. By incorporating methods and theories from affective science, researchers have been able to discover that people with schizophrenia exhibit very few outward displays of emotion but report experiencing strong feelings in the presence of emotionally evocative stimuli or events. Recent behavioral, psychophysiological, and brain imaging research has pointed to the importance of considering the time course of emotion in schizophrenia. This work has shown that people with schizophrenia have the ability to experience emotion in the moment; however, they appear to have difficulties when anticipating future pleasurable experiences, and this perhaps affects their motivation to have such experiences. While advancements in our understanding of emotional experience and expression in individuals with schizophrenia have been made, these developments have led to a new collection of research questions directed at understanding the time course of emotion in schizophrenia, including the role of memory and anticipation in motivated behavior, translating laboratory findings to the development of new assessment tools and new treatments targeting emotional impairments in people with this disorder.     

Erasing the Stigma: Where Science Meets Advocacy

One of the greatest barriers to individuals with mental illnesses in achieving their life goals is the stigma of mental illness. A major focus of mental health advocates is tearing down this stigma. Approaching this task from a research-informed perspective is important to ensure that resources are wisely spent, and adopted strategies are effective. This article provides a review of existing research regarding public stigma reduction, looking at approaches within mental health and other stigmatized communities. Recommendations are made for adopting approaches involving Targeted, Local, Credible, and Continuous Contact.     

Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology

The democratic egalitarian ideal requires that everyone should enjoy equal power over the world through voting. If it is improper to vote twice in the same election, why should it be permissible for dual citizens to vote in two different places? Several possible excuses are considered and rejected.     

The Exclusion Problem Meets the Problem of Many Causes

In this paper I develop a novel response to the exclusion problem. I argue that the nature of the events in the causally complete physical domain raises the “problem of many causes”: there will typically be countless simultaneous low-level physical events in that domain that are causally sufficient for any given high-level physical event (like a window breaking or an arm raising). This shows that even reductive physicalists must admit that the version of the exclusion principle used to pose the exclusion problem against non-reductive physicalism is too strong. The burden is on proponents of the exclusion problem to provide a reason to think that any qualifications placed on the exclusion principle will solve the problem of many causes while ruling out causation by irreducible mental events.     

On Being An Ink Blot: Disability Meets Euthanasia

Abstract :  People encountering the disabled often reveal in their reactions a distaste for disability that comes from pity rather than solidarity; when that pity is traced to its roots, such people are capable of urging the disabled toward a "merciful death," rather than offering any solidarity. The result is acceptance of euthanasia for the disabled. At stake is the difference between grace and works: for a disabled person by his or her mere presence reveals one's dependence on grace. But if one can "help" the disabled one, then one gains a sense of control that comes with works.     

When Cognitive Diagnosis Meets Computerized Adaptive Testing: CD-CAT

Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a mode of testing which enables more efficient and accurate recovery of one or more latent traits. Traditionally, CAT is built upon Item Response Theory (IRT) models that assume unidimensionality. However, the problem of how to build CAT upon latent class models (LCM) has not been investigated until recently, when Tatsuoka (J. R. Stat. Soc., Ser. C, Appl. Stat. 51:337–350, 2002) and Tatsuoka and Ferguson (J. R. Stat., Ser. B 65:143–157, 2003) established a general theorem on the asymptotically optimal sequential selection of experiments to classify finite, partially ordered sets. Xu, Chang, and Douglas (Paper presented at the annual meeting of National Council on Measurement in Education, Montreal, Canada, 2003) then tested two heuristics in a simulation study based on Tatsuoka’s theoretical work in the context of computerized adaptive testing. One of the heuristics was developed based on Kullback–Leibler information, and the other based on Shannon entropy. In this paper, we showcase the application of the optimal sequential selection methodology in item selection of CAT that is built upon cognitive diagnostic models. Two new heuristics are proposed, and are compared against the randomized item selection method and the two heuristics investigated in Xu et al. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of National Council on Measurement in Education, Montreal, Canada, 2003). Finally, we show the connection between the Kullback–Leibler-information-based approaches and the Shannon-entropy-based approach, as well as the connection between algorithms built upon LCM and those built upon IRT models.     

Macro and Micro Views of Erotic Tourism

This article examines the deviant phenomenon of erotic tourism from both macro and micro level perspectives. The current study deals exclusively with erotic tourism involving the provision of a sexual experience for male tourists either as voyeurs or participants in sex acts with females. The origins of the industry are discussed as well as its implications for sexual deviance.