A differential paradox: the controversy surrounding the Scottish mental surveys of intelligence and family size

In 1947, the Scottish Council for Research in Education and the Population Investigation Committee conducted a survey of Scottish schoolchildren, exploring the relations between tested intelligence and fertility. The survey was not only significant for its size, measuring the IQ of all 11-year-olds at school on the day of testing, some 80,805 children, but also because it was a repeat survey. Its purpose was to establish whether the intelligence of the population had declined because of the negative correlation between IQ and family size. The paper will explore how the impetus for the 1947 survey came from attempts to revive the fortunes of the eugenics movement, based upon the interdisciplinary study of population. While most expected the study to provide evidence of a decline in intelligence, it revealed an increase. This was in spite of a continuing process of differential fertility. This paper will explore the influence of these results, described as a "paradox," upon the future development of the eugenics movement and the sciences of population. While for many, the results were seen to have completely, and thankfully, undermined eugenic fears of degeneration, the supposed "resolution" of the paradox in 1962 provided the basis of a meritocratic and optimistic "new eugenics" that sought to reunite social and biological scientists concerned with human betterment in Britain and the United States.     

RESTRICTIVE CONSEQUENTIALISM AND REAL FRIENDSHIP

A familiar objection to restrictive consequentialism is that a restrictive consequentialist is incapable of having true friendships. In this paper I distinguish between an instrumentalist and a non‐instrumentalist version of this objection and argue that while the restrictive consequentialist can answer the non‐instrumentalist version, restrictive consequentialism may still seem vulnerable to the instrumentalist version. I then suggest a consequentialist reply that I argue also works against this version of the objection. Central to this reply is the claim that a restrictive consequentialist is capable of true friendship if the value she aims for is not merely seen as a function of her self‐regarding desires, but includes as a central constituent a form of objective value often referred to as ‘flourishing’ or ‘self‐realization’. ¹ 1 Earlier versions of this paper have been presented to the Ethics Reading Group at Columbia University and to the Department Colloquia at the University of Oslo. I thank the audiences on both occasions for helpful comments.
     

The Planned Obsolescence of the Humanities: Is It Unethical?

The humanities have not enjoyed preeminence in academe since the Scientific Revolution marginalized the old trivium. But they long continued to play a subordinate educational role by helping constitute the distinguishing culture of the elite. Now even this subordinate role is becoming expendable as devotees of the profit motive seek to reduce culture to technological delivery of cultural products (Noble, Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003). The result is a deliberate downsizing of the humanities as traditionally understood. Personal preferences aside, is this planned obsolescence morally defensible? Arguably not, if one appeals to traditional ethical norms. But what if its legitimacy is assessed instead according to the quite different norms of capitalism that figure so prominently in university administrators’ rationales as they embrace corporatization? The corporatization of American universities has had multiple effects, and some of these have not been entirely positive. In particular, it has had an adverse effect on the professional status and values of faculty. But how faculty respond to these changes varies according to their institutional situation.     

Four Brief Studies of Relations Between Postformal Thought and Non-Cognitive Factors: Personality, Concepts of God, Political Opinions, and Social Attitudes

This is a report of four studies extending research on Complex Postformal Thought using the Postformal Thought Scale (PTS) (Sinnott 1998a, b). In Study I PTS was studied in relation to personality as conceptualized in the NEO Five Factor Model. Data from 82 participants indicated that PTS is significantly related to the Openness to Experience and the Conscientiousness factors of the NEO. In Study II PTS was examined in relation to the Concept of God Scale to answer the question whether postformal and non-postformal respondents were likely to hold different god concepts. Data from 50 participants indicated no relationship between the two measures. In Study III PTS was examined in relation to political opinions using the newly created Political Opinion Survey. Data from 50 participants demonstrated no relation between the two tests. In Study IV PTS was studied in relation to the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale. Data from 112 participants indicated that PTS was related to positive attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Current conceptualizations of PTS development are used to interpret these findings.     

Are Categorical Deniers Different? Understanding Demographic,Personality, and Psychological Differences between Denying and Admitting Individuals with Sexual Convictions

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to establish whether there were demographic, personality, or psychological differences between a sample of 40 incarcerated sex offenders in categorical denial and 37 sex offenders admitting responsibility in an Australian minimum-security unit. Categorical deniers had lower IQs, were older, and were more likely to be child molesters. Criminogenically, there were no differences between categorical deniers and those who admitted their offences in relation to Static-99 risk scores. Psychologically, offenders denying their offences were significantly more shame-prone, and likely to use externalization as a method of impression-management. They were also more compulsive than those admitting their offences, but less antisocial and sadistic, when compared on personality indices. The study is limited by the small sample size however implications for further research and the treatment of categorical deniers are discussed.     

The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor

The article traces the centrality of the patristic doctrine of theosis in the work of four significant figures in seventeenth century Anglican theology. Particular attention is paid to their understanding of reason as a participation in the incarnate Logos. Attention is drawn to their pedagogical method, which sees theology as 'rather a divine life than a divine knowledge' (Taylor), and to their reticence in defining too precisely the content of doctrine. Finally the Anglican via media is seen not as a political compromise, but as one way of fruitfully expressing the mediating grace between Creator and creation.     

Test-Anxiety,inferential reasoning and working memory load

Abstract

Subjects high and low in test-anxiety were presented with an inferential reasoning task requiring the verification of necessary and unnecessary inferences. The task was performed whilst holding either two or six digits in memory. On the verification task, the performance of high-test-anxious subjects was slower and less accurate than that of the low-test-anxious subjects. In addition, unnecessary inferences took longer to process than necessary inferences for the high-test-anxiety group only. The high-test-anxious subjects studied the memory loads for longer than the low-test-anxious group, but their recognition accuracy did not differ. Findings support Eysenck and Calvo's (Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409–434, 1992) processing efficiency theory. The high-test-anxious group's performance on the sentence verification task was impaired overall, and was particularly impaired when performing the unnecessary inference task. However, we also demonstrated that the high-test-anxious group's performance on a secondary memory task was unimpaired as a result of increased effort.     

Addiction and Responsibility: A Survey of Opinions

ABSTRACT

This article reports the result of a survey about causal beliefs, normative conceptions and moral evaluations of addicts and addiction in the general population. Specifically, we focused on four issues: To what extent are the normative conceptions of addiction current in the philosophical and scientific literature reflected in laypersons' conception of addiction? How do laypersons rate addicts on perceived responsibility? Which factors influence laypersons' responsibility attributions in the context of addiction? What feelings and attitudes (anger/sympathy/help-giving intentions) do laypersons have toward addicts? We found that, although laypersons seem to assume a weakness view of addiction, their patterns of responsibility attributions vary depending on type of drugs combined with perceived severity of outcome, where the latter even overrides the attributional effects of the actor's perceived control over events. Some explanations of the data are suggested, and various consequences with respect to help-giving behavior, are discussed.