Comments on a standardized version of Luria's tests

Appreciation is expressed for the work of Golden's group in the selection of Luria's tests, the standardization of their administration, the collection of norms, and the evaluation of the reliability and validity of the Luria-Nebraska test battery. However, questions are raised concerning the ability of the test to efficiently handle topical diagnosis and to construct rehabilitation programs. Concern is expressed over the possible vulgarization of Luria's doctrine of functional systems and the loss of predictive power in Luria's tests through neglect of qualitative information and methodology. Suggestions are made as to how Luria's qualitative methodology might be incorporated in a standardized version of a neuropsychological examination.     

HOW DID FREGE FALL INTO THE CONTRADICTION?

Quine made it conventional to portray the contradiction that destroyed Frege's logicism as some kind of act of God, a thunderbolt that descended from a clear blue sky. This portrayal suited the moral Quine was antecedently inclined to draw, that intuition is bankrupt, and that reliance on it must therefore be replaced by a pragmatic methodology. But the portrayal is grossly misleading, and Quine's moral simply false. In the person of others – Cantor, Dedekind, and Zermelo – intuition was working pretty well. It was in Frege that it suffered a local and temporary blindness. The question to ask, then, is not how Frege was overtaken by the contradiction, but how it is that he didn't see it coming. The paper offers one kind of answer to that question. Starting from the very close similarity between Frege's proof of infinity and the reasoning that leads to the contradiction, it asks: given his understanding of the first, why did Frege did not notice the second? The reason is traced, first, to a faulty generalization Frege made from the case of directions and parallel lines; and, through that, to Frege's having retained, and attempted incoherently to combine with his own, aspects of a pre‐Fregean understanding of the generality of logical principles.     

Of mice and men: The comparative assumption in psychology

Surprisingly, little theoretical attention has so far been paid to the ‘Comparative Assumption’: the attempt to extrapolate from species to species in psychology (and particularly to the human species). This paper examines the problems and the possibilities inherent in the Comparative Assumption. Perhaps the most important conclusion of the paper is that much more work is needed on this intriguing question.