Relativism about Reasons

Historians must be sensitive to the alienness of the past. Insofar as they are concerned with their actors’ reasoning, they must (through open-minded empirical investigation) find out how their actors thought, and not assume that they thought like us. This is familiar historiographical advice, but pushed too far it can be brought to conflict with rather weak assumptions about what historians must presuppose if they are to interpret their actors at all. The present paper sketches those assumptions, and argues that the influential ‘Strong Program’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) falls foul of them. We do not argue from the correctness of the assumptions to the falsity of SSK. Rather, we note the incompatibility, and then show how SSK theorists’ tendency to take interpretation for granted blinds them—and perhaps their readers—to the existence of the conflict.

The indifference argument

I argue against motivational internalism. First I recharacterise the issue over moral motivation. Second I describe the indifference argument against motivation internalism. Third I consider appeals to irrationality that are often made in the face of this argument, and I show that they are ineffective. Lastly, I draw the motivational externalist conclusion and reflect on the nature of the issue. Thanks for helpful comments to Philippa Foot and especially to an anonymous referee. Distant ancestors of the paper were given as talks in an American Philosophical Association conference in New Orleans and in St Andrews.     

The Doomsday Argument and the Self–Indication Assumption: Reply to Olum

In a recent paper in this journal, Ken Olum attempts to refute the doomsday argument by appealing to the self–indication assumption (SIA) that your very existence gives you reason to think that there are many observers. Unlike earlier users of this strategy, Olum tries to counter objections that have been made against (SIA). We argue that his defence of (SIA) is unsuccessful. This does not, however, mean that one has to accept the doomsday argument (or the other counter–intuitive results that flow from related thought–experiments). A developed theory of observation selection effects shows why the doomsday argument is inconclusive, and how one can consistently reject both it and (SIA).     

The generalized universal law of generalization

It has been argued by Shepard that there is a robust psychological law that relates the distance between a pair of items in psychological space and the probability that they will be perceived as similar. Specifically, this probability is a negative exponential function of the distance between the pair of items. In experimental contexts, distance is typically defined in terms of a multidimensional space—but this assumption seems unlikely to hold for complex stimuli. We show that, nonetheless, the Universal Law of Generalization can be derived in the more complex setting of arbitrary stimuli, using a much more universal measure of distance. This universal distance is defined as the length of the shortest program that transforms the representations of the two items of interest into one another: The algorithmic information distance. It is universal in the sense that it minorizes every computable distance: It is the smallest computable distance. We show that the Universal Law of Generalization holds with probability going to one—provided the probabilities concerned are computable. We also give a mathematically more appealing form of the Universal Law.     

Learning and Unlearning the Myths We Are Taught: Gender and Social Dominance Orientation

Within social dominance theory (SDT) the invariance hypothesis predicts that men will be higher in social dominance orientation (SDO) even after accounting for cultural or social factors. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the relationship between sex and SDO while controlling for the effects of gender socialization. Our first two studies demonstrated that the sex difference in SDO is mediated by gender socialization and that masculinity and femininity are differentially related to two different forms of SDO. Study 3 extended these results by showing that SDO decreases as a function of feminist identity acquisition. These results suggest that the status hierarchy based on gender has properties of arbitrary classifications such as race, and they call into question the classification of gender as invariant within SDT.     

Using image analysis techniques to analyze figure-copying performance of patients with visuospatial neglect and control groups.

Figure copying is often used to detect visuospatial neglect (VSN) in brain-damaged patients. We describe algorithms that enable the computation of parameters for describing figure-copying performance. The researcher can readily implement these algorithms on a computer using image analysis software, and they provide information on goodness-of-fit, relative to a standard model, as well as on dynamic aspects of subjects' performance in completing figure copies. To demonstrate the clinical utility of these algorithms, preliminary results from a group of right-hemisphere brain-damaged patients, some of whom have VSN, are compared with those for age-matched controls.     

The role of social categorization and identity threat in the perception of migrants

This paper investigates how the categorization of migrant workers shapes their reception. In an experiment with Northern Irish Protestants we manipulated the representation of Poland to make the Catholicism of Polish migrants either more, or less, salient. Furthermore, judgements of Polish migrants were obtained under conditions designed to encourage participants to believe that sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland was either resolved, or still a strong feature of the present social landscape. Overall, results showed that when Poland's Catholicism was salient, participants were less welcoming of Polish migrants. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by increases in the level of symbolic threat participants believed the migrants posed to participants' (Protestant) community identity. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PsychoPro 2.0: Using multidimensional scaling to examine the perceptual categorization of race

Recently, researchers examining cognitive mechanisms involved in the detection of racial markers have been using psychophysics to examine perceptual thresholds delineating race using a program called PsychoPro (MacLin, MacLin, Peterson, Chowdhry, & Joshi, 2009). PsychoPro allows researchers to collect data using facial stimuli morphed along a racial continuum with psychophysical methodology. PsychoPro 2.0 was updated so researchers could collect paired-comparison data that can then be analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS). MDS allows researchers to examine the perceptions of racial boundaries along perceptual dimensions not bounded by the stimulus continuum, by having the observer make paired comparisons to racial stimuli based on their perceived similarity. Results indicate that ratings were made on the basis of at least six different racial dimensions that suggest the emergence of a third race not represented by the original morph starting images. Details of the software, the new paired-comparison feature and its relevance in psychophysical studies in general and racial categorization in particular are presented.