Relations and Dissociations between Appraisal and Emotion Ratings of Reasonable and Unreasonable Anger and Guilt

Recent studies have used self-report methods to defend a close associative or causal connection between appraisal and emotion. The present experiments used similar procedures to investigate remembered experiences of reasonable and unreasonable anger and guilt, and of nonemotional other-blame and selfblame. Results suggest that the patterns of appraisal reported for reasonable examples of emotions and for situations where there is a near absence of emotion may be highly similar, but that both may differ significantly from the appraisal profiles reported for unreasonable examples of the same emotions. Further, relevant appraisals were not always identified by participants as the most influential determinants of guilt and anger. These findings demonstrate either that the relationship between certain appraisals and emotions is less consistent than implied in some contemporary versions of appraisal theory, or that there are problems with the validity of existing questionnaire-based measures of the variables in question.     

On Robert Jenson's Trinitarian Thought

This paper addresses Robert Jenson's critique of impassibility along with his Trinitarian formulations. Jenson's decision to eschew a doctrine of divine impassibility leads him to adopt a Kantian conception of subjectivity in order to explicate the traditional concept of hypostasis. In turn, Jenson advocates a Hegelian notion of determinate negation to relate to a concept of being dependent upon a German Idealist figuration of temporality. The final section of the paper contrasts Jenson's modernist immanentism with the positive perichoretic movement of Jonathan Edwards' trinitarian thought. For Edwards, the Trinity cannot be known as a repeatable object of knowledge reflected within human consciousness, but as a non-identical repletion of eternal love to which univocal categories do not apply.     

Illuminating the dark figure of sexual recidivism

Detected or reported (“observed”) rates of sexual reoffending have long been recognized as underestimating the occurrence of actual sexual recidivism. Past attempts to bridge the gap between the two rates have been unsuccessful. Scurich and John try to reverse this course by presenting a simulation model to estimate the predicted actual sexual recidivism rates among individuals convicted of sexual offenses based on three parameters; they also apply these data to calibrate the sexual recidivism rates from four sexual recidivism studies. The accuracy of the predicted actual sexual recidivism rates is wholly dependent upon the reliability of the inputs to the model. This analysis relies upon scientific studies and literature to delve into the precision of the parameters of Scurich and John in relation to the accuracy of their predicted actual sexual recidivism rates and the validity of the calibration process. The results reveal that some of the assumptions by Scurich and John about the parameters are supported empirically, while others are not. Overall, the simulation model parameters suffer from significant deficiencies that likely produce inaccurate predicted actual sexual recidivism rates. Moreover, the methodologies of the comparison studies used in the calibration process do not actually meet the requirements of the analytic strategy of Scurich and John, which effectively invalidates their findings. Until computational strategies are employed that account for linear and nonlinear effects of model parameters, closing the gap between observed and actual sexual recidivism rates will remain elusive.     

Inter-limb coordination and control in boys with and without DCD in ball catching

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of inter-limb coordination and control, exhibited by ten boys with (M = 10.5 years, SD = 1.0) and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), in a ball catching task across different ball speeds. In line with the predictions of coordinated structure theory boys who were typically developing preserved strong and effective temporal relations when catching balls in baseline and fast conditions. Boys with DCD exhibited temporal symmetry in baseline but not in fast attempts, where the decoupling was uniformed across the group, coinciding with failures on ≥ 50% of the attempts. In terms of stability, no differences in intra-individual variability were observed between the groups. The analysis of spatial and temporal adaptations showed that boys who were typically developing, in essence, covered the same “ground” by decreasing their movement time. The opposite was true for boys with DCD who contacted the ball closer to the body, while failing to adapt the velocity of their hands. Taken together, both groups exhibited strong and stable coordinative relations, in a steady-state but not in a fast condition, where all boys with DCD failed to preserve the desired symmetry. This decoupling also coincided with different and less effective spatio-temporal adaptations at the effector level. Thus, it appears that movement control, hence flexibility of their synergistic relations, represents a movement limiter for boys with DCD who exhibit specific balls skills issues, at inter-limb level of organization. It should be noted, however, that large intra-group variance observed across some variables warrants caution when interpreting the aggregate data.     

Moral intuitionism and disagreement

According to moral intuitionism, at least some moral seeming states are justification-conferring. The primary defense of this view currently comes from advocates of the standard account, who take the justification-conferring power of a moral seeming to be determined by its phenomenological credentials alone. However, the standard account is vulnerable to a problem. In brief, the standard account implies that moral knowledge is seriously undermined by those commonplace moral disagreements in which both agents have equally good phenomenological credentials supporting their disputed moral beliefs. However, it is implausible to think that commonplace disagreement seriously undermines moral knowledge, and thus it is implausible to think that the standard account of moral intuitionism is true.