The Brier Rule Is not a Good Measure of Epistemic Utility (and Other Useful Facts about Epistemic Betterness)

Measures of epistemic utility are used by formal epistemologists to make determinations of epistemic betterness among cognitive states. The Brier rule is the most popular choice (by far) among formal epistemologists for such a measure. In this paper, however, we show that the Brier rule is sometimes seriously wrong about whether one cognitive state is epistemically better than another. In particular, there are cases where an agent gets evidence that definitively eliminates a false hypothesis (and the probabilities assigned to the other hypotheses stay in the same ratios), but where the Brier rule says that things have become epistemically worse. Along the way to this ‘elimination experiment’ counter-example to the Brier rule as a measure of epistemic utility, we identify several useful monotonicity principles for epistemic betterness. We also reply to several potential objections to this counter-example.     

The Religion of the Educated Classes Revisited: New Religions,the Nonreligious,and Educational Levels

A number of different studies carried out in the late 20th century indicated that new religious movements (NRMs) tended to recruit individuals who were highly educated. In the present study, we confirm this pattern utilizing data from the national censuses of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, and Wales. Additionally, we found that educational patterns for NRMs in the censuses tended to fall into at least two subgroups, one of which had educational levels comparable to mainline denominations and the other of which had significantly higher educational achievements. Furthermore, census respondents who expressed some variety of nonbelief were comparable to this latter group in terms of educational accomplishments. We discuss this latter finding in terms of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell's analysis of secularization.     

The Educational Community as In-tentional Community

This paper reassesses a perennial concern of philosophy of education: the nature of the educational community and the role of the teacher in relation to such a community. As an entry point into this broader question, we turn to Philosophy for children (P4C), which has consistently emphasized the importance of community. Yet, not unlike pragmatist notions of community more broadly, the P4C community has largely focused on the goal-directed, purposive, aspect of the process of inquiry. The purpose of our paper is to move beyond P4C (as it has traditionally been conceived) in order to theorize a non-instrumental, in-tentional, educational community without pre-conceived goals or intentions. Drawing largely from the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we describe the P4C-classroom as one that refuses to be operative (moving forward toward reaching common goals) and thus undermines the taken-for-granted logic of means and ends that underlies how educational communities are typically depicted and justified. Again drawing from Agamben, we identify the specific ways in which the experience of love and friendship (both of which are pure means rather than means to an end) constitute the in-tentional community. The silence of the voice of the teacher enables the experience of love and friendship to come about. Being included as an exclusion via his/her silence, the teacher is neither immanent (facilitator of student learning) nor transcendent (outside or beyond learning) but alongside the community as a paradigm of friendship.     

Predicting Short‐Term Remembering as Boundedly Optimal Strategy Choice

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are boundedly optimal. Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and external resources are boundedly optimal where optimality is defined relative to experience, cognitive constraints, and reward. The theory makes predictions that are tested against data, not fitted to it. The experiments use a no‐choice/choice utility learning paradigm where the no‐choice phase is used to elicit a profile of each participant's performance across the strategy space and the choice phase is used to test predicted choices within this space. They show that the majority of individuals select strategies that are boundedly optimal. Further, individual differences in what people choose to do are successfully predicted by the analysis. Two issues are discussed: (a) the performance of the minority of participants who did not find boundedly optimal adaptations, and (b) the possibility that individuals anticipate what, with practice, will become a bounded optimal strategy, rather than what is boundedly optimal during training.     

Every scar tells a story: Insight into people’s self-injury scar experiences

Scarring, a common and salient consequence of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), remains an under-explored issue in the field. Thus, the current investigation explored NSSI scar perspectives using online testimony from members of a popular NSSI message board; focus was attenuated to a series of message board posts pertinent to people’s experiences with scars resulting from NSSI. Data (message board posts) were collected using the website’s search function. A total of 53 posts involving discussion of people’s NSSI scar perceptions and experiences were retained. A thematic analysis of the data indicated that individuals viewed their scars in a number of ways. Many viewed scars in a resilient manner, often in the context of a self-narrative. Others, however, were unaccepting of their scars (e.g. expressed feelings of shame, hatred, or disgust). For some, they were able to gradually accept their scars but only after a period of difficulty. And, finally, some individuals expressed mixed feelings toward their scars (e.g. a love/hate relationship). Hence, scars stemming from NSSI seem to differentially impact individuals who self-injure. Possible implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Better Late than Never: The Reparative Therapeutic Relationship in Regression to Dependence by Lorraine Price,Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 216 pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Beyond inference by eye: Statistical and graphing practices in JEAB, 1992‐2017

Debates about the utility of p values and correct ways to analyze data have inspired new guidelines on statistical inference by the American Psychological Association (APA) and changes in the way results are reported in other scientific journals, but their impact on the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) has not previously been evaluated. A content analysis of empirical articles published in JEAB between 1992 and 2017 investigated whether statistical and graphing practices changed during that time period. The likelihood that a JEAB article reported a null hypothesis significance test, included a confidence interval, or depicted at least one figure with error bars has increased over time. Features of graphs in JEAB, including the proportion depicting single‐subject data, have not changed systematically during the same period. Statistics and graphing trends in JEAB largely paralleled those in mainstream psychology journals, but there was no evidence that changes to APA style had any direct impact on JEAB. In the future, the onus will continue to be on authors, reviewers and editors to ensure that statistical and graphing practices in JEAB continue to evolve without interfering with characteristics that set the journal apart from other scientific journals.