Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuāngzǐ

Three views of psychological emptiness, or xū, can be found in the Zhuāngz?. The instrumental view values xū primarily as a means of efficacious action. The moderate view assigns it intrinsic value as an element of one Zhuangist vision of the good life. The radical view also takes it to be an element of the ideal life, but in this case the form of life advocated is that of the Daoist sage, who transcends mundane human concerns to merge with nature or the Dào. The instrumental and moderate views articulate a relatively commonsensical position, on which the agent continues to pursue at least some characteristically human projects. On the radical view, by contrast, the agent ceases to exercise agency and lives a life hardly recognizable as human. The three views thus signal a tension in Zhuangist ethics, and the unattractiveness of the radical view poses a potential obstacle to the application of Daoist ideas in contemporary ethical discourse. The paper argues that there are principled grounds within Zhuangist thought for detaching the instrumental and moderate views from the radical view and rejecting the latter.     

Invariance and convergent and discriminant validity between mothers' and fathers' ratings of oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, ADHD-HI, ADHD-IN, and academic competence factors within Brazilian, Thai, and American children

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the invariance of an oppositional defiant disorder toward adults, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-hyperactivity/impulsivity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattention, and an Academic Competence factor model between mothers' and fathers' ratings within Brazilian (n = 894), Thai (n = 2,075), and American (n = 817) children with the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory (G. L. Burns, T. Taylor, & J. Rusby, 2001a, 2001b). The results showed invariance of item loadings, intercepts, and residuals, as well as factor variances, covariances, and means between mothers' and fathers' ratings within each sample. Convergent and discriminant validity was also observed for the between-parent factor correlations, thus providing additional support for the construct validity of the Child and Adolescent Disruptive Behavior Inventory. The confirmatory factor analysis invariance procedure provides a much better way to examine between-source ratings of behavior problems in children than do the simple correlation and raw discrepancy score procedures.     

Judgments about judgments: the dissociation of consideration price and transaction commitment judgments

There are many contexts in which people make judgments about prior judgments. For example, Internet shopping bots (e.g., NexTag.com) allow consumers to search for products and, if the price is too high, list a price at which they would consider making the purchase (i.e., base judgment). If the price drops to this level, the vendor generates an e-mail inviting the consumer to execute the transaction at the reduced price (i.e., contingent judgment). The authors show that the consideration price depends on the content of retrieved information, whereas the willingness to execute the transaction at the consideration price depends on the ease-of-retrieving the information. The authors use different offer prices to encourage the consumer to retrieve information consistent with different product quality levels. The authors also select offer prices so that information retrieval is more difficult at moderate offer prices than at high or low offer prices. Accordingly, the authors show that the consideration price increases as the offer price increases, but the willingness to execute the transaction at the consideration price is greater when there are high and low, as opposed to moderate, offer prices.     

Research Note: Rejecting Monotheism? Polytheism,Pluralism, and Battlestar Galactica

In an interview on BeliefNet.com, Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald Moore claimed that his portrayal of the human colonials as polytheistic in contrast to the monotheistic Cylons was a deliberate statement about tolerance and the lack of tolerance in modern monotheistic religions. The underlying assumption about the tolerance of polytheism is also percolating through wider Western society. The idea of multiple deities seems to strike a chord with some proponents of religious pluralism and thus seems a suitable contrast to monotheistic constructs of one God, one Truth. This research note is concerned with the discourse of polytheism versus monotheism. I argue that the sci-fi TV show Battlestar Galactica provides an opportunity to complicate a definition of polytheism as inherently more tolerant of religious diversity than monotheism.     

Are they bothered? How the opportunity to damage a partner's reputation influences giving behavior in a trust game

Studies of reputation use in social interactions have indicated that when individuals can acquire a positive or negative reputation, they are motivated to act in a cooperative fashion. However, few researchers have examined how the opportunity to confer this reputation on a partner may influence an individual's behavior in a mixed-motive situation. In the present study, an experiment using a trust-game paradigm indicated that participants felt that they had more control over their partner's reputation when they could leave feedback regarding the outcome of their interaction with their partner. However, the participants would only donate a substantial portion of their initial endowment (i.e., over 50%) when they could leave feedback for a partner and when they felt that their partner was concerned about his or her own reputation. The author discusses these findings in regard to how they might apply to real-world reputation use and how possible future studies may further expand knowledge in this area.     

Conflict of Interest Policies at Canadian Universities: Clarity and Content

Discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in the university have tended to focus on financial interests in the context of medical research; much less attention has been given to COI in general or to the policies that seek to manage COI. Are university COI policies accessible and understandable? To whom are these policies addressed (faculty, staff, students)? Is COI clearly defined in these policies and are procedures laid out for avoiding or remedying such situations? To begin tackling these important ethical and governance questions, our study examines the COI policies at the Group of Thirteen (G13) leading Canadian research universities. Using automated readability analysis tools and an ethical content analysis, we begin the task of comparing the strengths and weaknesses of these documents, paying particular attention to their clarity, readability, and utility in explaining and managing COI.     

Understanding the directedness of gaze: three ways of doing it

It is argued that alongside the mentalistic and the behaviouristic forms, there is a third kind of gaze understanding. Gaze may be understood to be subjective in the sense that there can be diversity across self and other in terms of what is seen, without it being understood to be representational. This form of gaze understanding is more consistent with the evidence on toddlers' understanding of gaze and may well represent a developmentally intermediate form between the behaviouristic and mentalistic forms discussed in the target article. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Too far beyond the call of duty: moral rationalism and weighing reasons

Philosophical Studies - The standard account of supererogation holds that Liv is not morally required to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing her life, to save the lives of five soldiers. Many...