The heart of consequentialism

Conclusion My goal in this paper was to argue that consequentialism should be construed as the view that the better a state of affairs the better the action that produces it and the more moral reason there is to perform that action. I call this view BETTER. I tried to show that treating this rather than a claim about the right as crucial to consequentialism had significant advantages. Finally, I demonstrated the relevance of my account to the issue of whether consequentialism is correct. It doesn't provide a conclusive answer to that question (we should be suspicious if it did) but allows us to see it in a new light and hopefully, suggests new and fruitful ways to tackle it.I am grateful to Daniel Howard-Snyder for help with this paper and to David McNaughton and Piers Rawling for correspondence regarding some of their views. Thanks also to an anonymous referee atPhilosophical Studies for comments.     

Capacity demands of automatic processes in semantic priming

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel In three experiments, we examined the effects of prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and the proportion of related primes and targets (relatedness proportion, or RP) on semantic priming when the prime was either named or was searched for a specific letter. In Experiment 1, with an RP of. 50, priming occurred at SOAs of 240 and 840 msec when the prime was named, but no priming was found at either SOA when the prime was searched for a letter. In Experiment 2 the RP was either. 20 or. 80, and the SOA was set at 1, 700 msec; priming again was found in both conditions when the prime was named, but only in the RP.80 condition when a letter search task was performed on the prime. In Experiment 3, both the proportion of related trials and SOA were varied; as in the previous experiments, no priming effects were found with the letter search task for either SOA in the RP.20 condition, but the priming effect was reinstated in the RP.80 condition. These results are discussed with respect to how limited capacity resources are allocated and how they influence semantic priming effects.     

The influence of chemical cues on the territorial prior residence effect in convict cichlids (cichlasoma nigrofasciatum Günther)

The importance of accumulated chemical cues on the occurrence of the territorial prior residence effect was investigated in two experiments using adult convict cichlids (Cichlasonul nigrofasciatum). In the first experiment, pairs of fish, matched on a number of criteria, were randomly assigned to three independent treatment conditions in which (1) the territorial marker (pot or clump of plants) was removed just prior to a direct encounter in the aquarium of the resident (pair member in whose aquarium the encounter took place) with accumulated chemical cues remaining intact; (2) the marker was removed, as well as the chemical cues; or (3) the marker was present, but the chemical cues were removed. Results showed that a significant prior residence effect occurred when the marker was present, but did not occur in either condition in which the marker was removed. A second experiment, in which the marker was removed and the gravel substrate altered, also did not reveal a signficant prior residence effect. Apparently, the territorial resident recognizes his territory by using certain visual cues, with accumulated chemical cues being neither necessary nor sufficient in this process.     

A psychometric evaluation of the Rorschach comprehensive system's perceptual thinking index

In this study, we investigated evidence for reliability and validity of the Perceptual Thinking Index (PTI; Exner, 2000a, 2000b) among an adult inpatient population. We conducted reliability and validity analyses on 107 patients who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder (SSD) or mood disorder with no psychotic features (MD). Results provided support for interrater reliability as well as internal consistency of the PTI. Furthermore, the PTI was an effective index in differentiating SSD patients from patients diagnosed with an MD. Finally, the PTI demonstrated adequate diagnostic statistics that can be useful in the classification of patients diagnosed with SSD and MD. We discuss methodological issues, implications for assessment practice, and directions for future research.     

Association of pathological gambling with depression in Scotland

Is most research concerning gambling and depression has been conducted on clinical populations, the present study examined the relationship between gambling and depression across a large sample in Scotland in higher education and the community. A questionnaire-based cluster design involved the distribution of the South Oaks Gambling Screen and the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale mainly to students and staff of higher educational establishments, with small community and gambling samples also included. Thirty-seven colleges and universities across Scotland participated in the research, with a sample of 2259 people aged sixteen years of age or over (M = 28.9 yr., SD = 13.4) being obtained. It was found that past-year probable pathological gamblers had significantly higher depression than problem gamblers, nonproblem gamblers, and nongamblers. However, when probable pathological gamblers who had sought treatment were omitted from the analysis, the nontreatment-seeking probable pathological gambling group no longer had significantly higher depression than the problem gambling group. Female problem and probable pathological gamblers had particularly high depressive symptomatology, suggesting co-morbid depression may be a prominent feature of problematic female gambling.     

Object recognition is mediated by extraretinal information

Many previous studies of object recognition have found view-dependent recognition performance when view changes are produced by rotating objects relative to a stationary viewing position. However, the assumption that an object rotation is equivalent to an observer viewpoint change ignores the potential contribution of extraretinal information that accompanies observer movement. In four experiments, we investigated the role of extraretinal information on real-world object recognition. As in previous studies focusing on the recognition of spatial layouts across view changes, observers performed better in an old/new object recognition task when view changes were caused by viewer movement than when they were caused by object rotation. This difference between viewpoint and orientation changes was due not to the visual background, but to the extraretinal information available during real observer movements. Models of object recognition need to consider other information available to an observer in addition to the retinal projection in order to fully understand object recognition in the real world.     

Is there a problem with enhancement?

This article examines arguments concerning enhancement of human persons recently presented by Michael Sandel (2004). In the first section, I briefly describe some of his arguments. In section two, I consider whether, as Sandel claims, the desire for mastery motivates enhancement and whether such a desire could be grounds for its impermissibility. Section three considers how Sandel draws the distinction between treatment and enhancement, and the relation to nature that he thinks each expresses. The fourth section examines Sandel's views about parent/child relations and also how enhancement would affect distributive justice and the duty to aid. In conclusion, I briefly offer an alternative suggestion as to why enhancement may be troubling and consider what we could safely enhance.     

An integrated model of group psychotherapy for patients with fibromyalgia

This study examined the effectiveness of an integrated model of brief group psychotherapy for treatment of fibromyalgia syndrome, using cognitive behavioral and supportive expressive techniques. In the context of an outpatient, multidisciplinary fibromyalgia treatment program, group psychotherapy was provided to 35 patients with 21 control patients. Pre-post treatment measures of depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia impact, pain, fatigue, and morning tiredness were obtained. Using a quasi-experimental design with validated psychometric instruments, the results showed a significant decrease in pre-versus post treatment measures of depression, fibromyalgia impact, fatigue, and pain for the treatment patients, suggesting that an integrated model of group psychotherapy may have beneficial psychological and functional effects for some patients with fibromyalgia.     

Recognizing the infant as subject in infant-parent psychotherapy

Drawing on Winnicott's view of infants as subjects entitled to an intervention in their own right, infants as the referred patient have been seen in infant-parent psychotherapy for 20 years at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. This is a radically different view of infant symptomatology than viewing it as only expressing an aspect of the mother's unconscious. The clinical pathway differentiates the therapy from much parent-infant psychotherapy. The author describes the theoretical model of a twofold approach to understanding the infant's experience through interactive dialogue between therapist and infant, and sharing this understanding with the parents, and illustrates it with cases of failure-to-thrive infants. She discusses two criticisms: first, that infant-parent psychotherapy may undermine the parents and, second, that brief parent-infant psychotherapy does not alter parents' insecure attachment status. Videotaped sessions often show rapid improvement; parents generally feel relieved. This approach potentially shapes not only parents' and infants' representations, but also their implicit knowledge of relationships-partly, it is suggested, through activating the mirror neuron system to bring about implicit memory change. Change may therefore be longer lasting than psychoanalytic theory presently conceives. The approach is relevant in an outpatient setting: gains were maintained long term in 90% of out-patient cases.