Normative naturalism and the challenge of relativism: Laudan versus Worrall on the justification of methodological principles

In Science and Values, Larry Laudan argues that rational scientific change is not restricted to scientific theory, but may also affect the methodology and axiology of science. In subsequent debate, John Worrall has raised the question of whether invariant principles of methodology are necessary in order to avoid epistemological relativism. Worrall argues that Laudan's denial of such principles leads straight to relativism. By contrast, Laudan claims that, rather than methodological invariance, what is required to escape relativism is a rational justification of such principles. In this paper, it will be argued that the normative naturalist meta‐methodology, which Laudan has developed in work subsequent to Science and Values, contains the resources needed to mount a satisfactory response to Worrall's charge of relativism.     

Starting out: The early phases of four creative careers—darwin,van Gogh,Freud, and Shaw

This paper introduces the four that follow it. The others deal with the phase of the creative career we call starting out. Of the four individuals discussed in those papers, Darwin moved rather smoothly from an early phase of field work in natural history to a later phase of theoretical biology. His work in natural history became incorporated within the theoretical enterprise, the whole move being accomplished by about the age of 30. van Gogh had a protracted early phase as a mediocre art dealer and then as a failed Christian minister to the poor, rejected and scorned by his co-religionists. At about the age of 30 he made a clear commitment to a career in art and began a long period of training, seeking help from other artists but mainly directing his own development. As with Darwin there was a certain degree of overlap of earlier and later phases, in the sense that his art displayed religious overtones for some time. Freud had brilliant early careers—as a neurologist and as a medical practitioner. He did not move decisively toward psychoanalysis until his early forties. Shaw, too, had brilliant early careers—as a radical orator, as a journalist, and as a music critic. His career as a dramatist did not begin in earnest until his forties. Three of the four produced initial sketches that were significant in prefiguring their later careers: Darwin'sJournal of the voyage of theBeagle, Freud'sThe Project, and Shaw's letter,Dear Dorothea. Other topics are taken up as appropriate in one or other of the four cases: the network of enterprise, the ensemble of metaphors, the belief system, and the social web. Taken together with a discussion of the uniqueness of each creative person, they give a sense of the evolving systems approach to creative work.     

How foreign exchange dealers in the City of London cope with occupational stress

Two hundred and twenty-five foreign exchange dealers working in the City of London completed the Coping Inventory of the Occupational Stress Indicator as part of an investigation of the mental health, job satisfaction, alcohol intake, and occupational stress of this employment group. Results indicate that dealers make less use of the coping strategies examined than the normative population, and that dealers appear to be a very homogeneous group in their use of coping techniques. The coping strategies adopted by various subgroups of dealers were also examined. Problems with the reliability of the Coping Inventory are highlighted.     

The NCATE Process and behaviorally-based special education

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has long sought to identify effective programs for teacher preparation in this country. Recently, the Council has revised its standards to be more rigorous and demanding. This revision presents new and challenging standards for the accreditation of programs preparing educators. The most problematic but most important of these new standards is the requirement of a well-articulated knowledge base supporting a program's content and processes. Development of the knowledge base statement involves the articulation of the program's philosophy, theme, model, goals, objectives, primary research base, wisdom of practice, and evaluation procedures. A behavioral model serves well in meeting these requirements, particularly since behavioral applications in education are well researched and the approach is compatible with the emphasis on specific goals and objectives and evaluation of effectiveness. Effective educational methods are available and are mostly behavioral. The articulation of the NCATE knowledge base encourages education faculty, traditionally nonbehavioral, to examine the effectiveness of their programs and to demonstrate research and professional support for content and instructional methods. A behavioral knowledge base statement appropriate for NCATE is demonstrated through examples drawn from Gonzaga University's knowledge base for special education.     

Enhanced recency effects with changing-state and primary-linguistic stimuli

A number of explanations for the modality effect in immediate serial recall have been proposed. The auditory advantage for recall of recency items has been explained in terms of (1) the contributions of precategorical acoustic storage (PAS), (2) an advantage of changing-state over static stimuli, and (3) an advantage of primary-linguistic coding. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate these hypotheses. In the first, subjects viewed seven consecutive rectangles of different colors on a computer monitor. A small recency effect was obtained when the task was to recall the colors of the rectangles in order, with the size of the effect being independent of whether the rectangles remained stationary on the screen or moved in one of four directions. However, when the task was to recall the direction of movement of the rectangles, a larger recency effect was found. This pattern of results was interpreted as suggesting that recency effects are enhanced by changing-state stimulus information, but only when the changing-state information serves to identify the stimulus. Experiments 2 and 3 provided converging evidence by demonstrating an analogous recency advantage for changing-state visual stimuli that were somewhat different from those of Experiment 1. Experiment 4 demonstrated recency effects with synthesized speech stimuli that were substantially greater than were those found with the changing-state visual stimuli of the first three experiments. Implications of the results for the PAS, changing-state, and primary-linguistic hypotheses, as well as temporal-distinctiveness theories of recency, are discussed.     

An integrated approach to computer usage in the teaching of experimental psychology

Ongoing development of a series of laboratory modules for experimental psychology courses is described. The modules are designed to be implemented on a network of TRS-80 microcomputers, which are linked by a Network 3 controller. Within each module, the computer controls stimulus events, records individual data, probes the student for understanding of experimental concepts, and tabulates the class data. In addition to a discussion of the modules and their software implementation, the required hardware is described.