ON "HUXLEYS EVOLUTION AND ETHICS IN SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE" BY GEORGE C. WILLIAMS

Abstract. I concur with Williams that improving human ethics requires full consideration of the biogenetic facts; but I argue that the understanding of biogenetic facts, and of ethics also, can be improved by a fuller view of nature's mechanism for selecting what is fit, a view recently generated by physical scientists. For me ethics necessarily must fit the evolved genotype, but ethics does not emerge until the rise of cultural evolution, where nature selects a culturetype symbiotic with the genotype. I outline my integrated dynamics of the relation of culturetypes to genotypes and to the laws governing physical systems. The biologist's finding that a living organism is of transient significance compared with its lines of heritage and their consequences, I argue, is constructively important for ethical and theological understanding.     

Assessment of risk for substance use disorder consequent to consumption of illegal drugs: psychometric validation of the neurobehavior disinhibition trait.

Previous research has shown that the trait neurobehavior disinhibition (ND), which consists of affect, behavior, and cognitive indicators of self-regulation, is a significant predictor of substance use disorder (SUD) between childhood and young adulthood. The authors evaluated the psychometric properties of the ND trait in 278 boys evaluated at ages 10-12 and 16 years. ND score significantly predicted SUD and outcomes that commonly manifest in tandem with SUD by age 19, such as violence, arrests, committing crime while intoxicated, and concussion injury. In addition to predictive validity, the ND trait was found to have good construct, discriminative, and concurrent validity, as well as good test-retest and internal reliability. The ND trait may be useful for detecting youths at high risk for developing SUD and related outcomes.     

Another look at fear of success,fear of failure,and test anxiety: A motivational analysis using the five-factor model

Perhaps one of the more theoretically engaging areas of motivation research concerned the construct fear of success [M. S. Horner (1968) Sex Differences in Achievement Motivation and Performance in Competitive and Non-Competitive Situations, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan]. Although much investigative effort was devoted to it, the research process was plagued with numerous theoretical and technical problems, not the least of which was a consistent inability to discriminate the construct from other related variables such as fear of failure and test anxiety. This report argued that the empirical overlap among these variables suggested the presence of larger motivational constructs. To evaluate this hypothesis, 263 predominantly Caucasian college women completed measures of fear of success, test anxiety, achievement motivation, and fear of failure. Scores on each variable were correlated with markers of the five-factor model of personality that revealed that these scales were factorially complex. A regression analysis showed that it was the personality domains of neuroticism and conscientiousness that were most relevant to these performance-related variables. A preliminary model of motivation was proposed that was based on these two personality domains.I would like to thank Joanne Marie Greer, Michael Hyland, and Robert Wicks for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Department of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola College, 7135 Minstrel Way, Columbia, MD 21045.     

The interaction of stressful life events and chronic strains on community mental health

One of the possible adaptive costs of coping with stress is diminished capacity to respond to subsequent adaptive demands. This paper examined the complex interplay between major life events and one source of chronic strain. Residents of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area exposed to higher levels of smog, who had also experienced a recent stressful life event, exhibited poorer mental health than those exposed to pollution who had not experienced a recent stressful life event. There were, however, no direct effects of smog levels on mental health. These patterns of results were replicated in both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study. The interplay of psychosocial vulnerability and environmental conditions is discussed.     

High-fat diets impair spatial learning in the radial-arm maze in mice

It has been suggested that hyperglycemia and insulin resistance triggered by energy-dense diets can account for hippocampal damage and deficits of cognitive behaviour. We wonder if the impairment of learning and memory processes detected in diet-induced obese (DIO) mice is linked to diet composition itself. With this purpose we have evaluated learning performance in mice undergoing a short-term high-fat (HF) treatment, which leads to a pre-obese state characterized by increased adiposity without significant changes of glucose and insulin plasma levels. C57BL/6J mice were fed either a HF (45 kcal% from fat) or control diet (10 kcal% from fat) during 8 weeks. Learning performance was evaluated by using the four-arm baited version of the eight-arm radial maze test (RAM). Mice were trained to learn the RAM protocol and then memory was tested at different time-points. Time spent to consume food placed in baited arms and errors committed to find them were measured in all sessions. DIO mice significantly spent more time in learning the task and made a greater number of errors than controls. Moreover, retention tests revealed that both working and total memory errors were also more numerous in DIO mice. The current results show that short-term DIO impairs spatial learning and suggest that impairment of hippocampal learning elicited by HF diets might be perceptible before metabolic alterations linked to obesity develop.     

非形式逻辑与演绎主义

非形式逻辑出现于上个世纪70年代,它首先是一种寻求更好的大学逻辑教学方式的努力。进而,非形式逻辑学者们逐渐开始触及和探讨越来越多的理论议题,即发展不依赖于形式逻辑的关于论证以及好论证的理解方式。在1998年世界哲学大会上,布莱尔和我阐释了非形式逻辑为哲学所带来的理论后果,其中一点我们称之为“演绎主义的终结”。那时我们并未给出演绎主义的定义,而只是把它等同于麦金泰尔的那个精炼的说法：“任何推理,不是演绎的,就是有缺陷的。”但现在看来,我们在当时就作出“演绎主义的终结”这一论断,显然是有点为时过早了。因为演绎主义似乎至今都还很有生命力,甚至在那些倾向于非形式逻辑的学者那里它也能得到支持：恩尼斯长期以来都辩护演绎主义是一种论证重构策略,格罗尔克更是致力于辩护它是一种论证评价理论。在本文中我将论证,非形式逻辑最好被理解为一种不诉诸于演绎技巧和演绎规范的逻辑研究。当我们意识到演绎和演绎主义已经如何深深地扎根于我们的哲学发展史中,并且牢牢地控制了我们关于逻辑研究的理解,我们就能明白非形式逻辑这一理论努力是多么的困难和重要。我将首先澄清“演绎主义”的意思,然后再分别考察那些赞成和反对演绎主义的论证,最后,我将表明非形式逻辑是从演绎主义中挽救逻辑的理论尝试。