Testing Inference To The Best Explanation

Inference to the Best Explanation has become the subject of a livelydebate in the philosophy of science. Scientific realists maintain, while scientificantirealists deny, that it is a compelling rule of inference. It seems that anyattempt to settle this debate empirically must beg the question against theantirealist. The present paper argues that this impression is misleading. A methodis described that, by combining Glymour's theory of bootstrapping and Hacking'sarguments from microscopy, allows us to test IBE without begging any antirealistissues.     

A Davidsonian argument against incommensurability

The writings of Kuhn and Feyerabend on incommensurability challenged the idea that science progresses towards the truth. Davidson famously criticized the notion of incommensurability, arguing that it is incoherent. Davidson's argument was in turn criticized by Kuhn and others. This article argues that, although at least some of the objections raised against Davidson's argument are formally correct, they do it very little harm. What remains of the argument once the objections have been taken account of is still quite damaging to the thesis that formerly endorsed scientific theories are incommensurable with those of today's science.     

Gender differences in the motivational processing of facial beauty

Gender may be involved in the motivational processing of facial beauty. This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain motivational regions, to healthy heterosexual subjects. Matched samples of men and women were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images. Men expended more effort (via the key-press task) to extend the viewing time of the beautiful female faces. Women displayed similarly increased effort for beautiful male and female images, but the magnitude of this effort was substantially lower than that of men for beautiful females. Heterosexual facial attractiveness ratings were comparable in both groups. These findings demonstrate heterosexual specificity of facial motivational targets for men, but not for women. Moreover, heightened drive for the pursuit of heterosexual beauty in the face of regular valuational assessments, displayed by men, suggests a gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon.     

Commitment to Islam in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan: An Item Response Theory Analysis

Worthington conceptualized a model of religiosity assessment. The dimensions of the model include Religious Norms, Religious Doctrine, and Authority of Leaders. A 10-item scale for Islamic religious assessment was constructed and administered in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. First-order factor analysis conducted on the 10 items of the religiosity scale revealed factorial structure corresponding to Worthington’s model. A second-order factor analysis assured 1 underlying latent trait. Two-parameter logistic item response theory models were fit to responses collected in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Results supported psychometric soundness of the instrument. The items on the scale revealed excellent discrimination properties between the populations of high and low religious commitment. The study offers a short, practical scale for assessment of commitment to Islam in Central Asian countries.     

Neurophysiologic markers of primary motor cortex for laryngeal muscles and premotor cortex in caudal opercular part of inferior frontal gyrus investigated in motor speech disorder: a navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study

Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have so far reported the results of mapping the primary motor cortex (M1) for hand and tongue muscles in stuttering disorder. This study was designed to evaluate the feasibility of repetitive navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for locating the M1 for laryngeal muscle and premotor cortical area in the caudal opercular part of inferior frontal gyrus, corresponding to Broca’s area in stuttering subjects by applying new methodology for mapping these motor speech areas. Sixteen stuttering and eleven control subjects underwent rTMS motor speech mapping using modified patterned rTMS. The subjects performed visual object naming task during rTMS applied to the (a) left M1 for laryngeal muscles for recording corticobulbar motor-evoked potentials (CoMEP) from cricothyroid muscle and (b) left premotor cortical area in the caudal opercular part of inferior frontal gyrus while recording long latency responses (LLR) from cricothyroid muscle. The latency of CoMEP in control subjects was 11.75 ± 2.07 ms and CoMEP amplitude was 294.47 ± 208.87 µV, and in stuttering subjects CoMEP latency was 12.13 ± 0.75 ms and 504.64 ± 487.93 µV CoMEP amplitude. The latency of LLR in control subjects was 52.8 ± 8.6 ms and 54.95 ± 4.86 in stuttering subjects. No significant differences were found in CoMEP latency, CoMEP amplitude, and LLR latency between stuttering and control-fluent speakers. These results indicate there are probably no differences in stuttering compared to controls in functional anatomy of the pathway used for transmission of information from premotor cortex to the M1 cortices for laryngeal muscle representation and from there via corticobulbar tract to laryngeal muscles.     

Shaping our personal past: Assessing the phenomenology of autobiographical memory and its association with object and spatial imagery

A new instrument has been developed that allows a comprehensive assessment of the relevant dimensions of the phenomenology of autobiographical memories (Assessment of the Phenomenology of Autobiographical Memory, APAM), and their association with visual object and spatial imagery has been examined. An initial version of APAM consisting of 30 items (the first 28 measured on a seven-point Likert-type scale) was developed and administered to a sample of 138 undergraduates. To test whether each item consistently measured the same dimension across different memories, all questions were rated for 12 cues. Results showed that 25 Likert-type items possessed adequate levels of internal consistency and unidimensionality across cues. We also found that higher levels of visual object imagery were associated with more sensory details and recollective qualities of memory, and with stronger experience of sensory and emotional reliving. The theoretical and practical usefulness of APAM as well as the relevance of visual object imagery in the phenomenology of autobiographical memory are discussed.     

The circumplex structure of affect: A Swedish version

The taxonomy of a circumplex model has been widely applied in the emotion domain and especially by researchers advocating a systematic arrangement of conscious emotional experience (see Fabrigar, Visser & Browne, 1997; Feldman Barett & Russell, 1999 for recent reviews). To rule out some of the lexical problems in the naming of affective states in the circumplex space, Larsen and Diener (1992) suggested a labeling system with forty-eight English adjectives representing eight affective states. The objective of the present study was to examine how well Swedish adjectives map onto a dimensional model of this kind, in doing so, to compose a Swedish measure for self-reported affect. The forty-eight Swedish adjectives translated from Larsen and Diener (1992) failed to capture a pure circumplex structure. However, when approximately two thirds of these adjectives were reanalyzed, a reasonable consistency with the circumplex model was reached. This suggested a composite Swedish measure for self-rated affect, with up to four adjectives representing each of the eight affective states in the circumplex space.     

A Defence of van Fraassen's Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to Psillos

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen's arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen's own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos' criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen's arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos' arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen's broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective.