Philosophers ought to develop,theorize about,and use philosophically relevant AI

The transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to philosophy—the only question is the degree to which philosophers will harness it. This paper argues that the application of AI tools to philosophy could have an impact on the field comparable to the advent of writing, and that it is likely that philosophical progress will significantly increase as a consequence of AI. The role of philosophers in this story is not merely to use AI but also to help develop it and theorize about it. In fact, the paper argues that philosophers have a prima facie obligation to spend significant effort in doing so, at least insofar as they should spend effort philosophizing.     

What Works for the Gander Does Not Work as Well for the Goose: The Effects of Leader Behavior

This study examines the effects of leader behaviors and leader gender on employees' perceptions of support from the organization and employee commitment to the organization. Ninety-one employees completed a survey measuring leader behaviors, perceived organizational support, and organizational commitment. Results confirmed the hypothesis that a high interpersonal orientation and high task orientation had the most positive effect on employee attitudes. However, the high interpersonal orientation and high task orientation were not equally effective for both female and male leaders. Employees perceived more support from the organization when their supervisors, either female or male, used a high consideration–high initiating structure style than when they used a low consideration–low initiating structure style. On the other hand, only those employees who work for a male supervisor who is high in consideration and high in initiating structure were more committed to the organization.     

Discourse after Closed Head Injury in Young Children

This study examined narrative discourse in 23 children, ages 6 to 8 years, who sustained a severe closed head injury (CHI) at least 1 year prior to assessment. Narratives were analyzed at multiple levels using language and information structure measures. Results revealed significant discourse impairments in the CHI group on all measures of information structure, whereas differences in the linguistic domain failed to reach significance. In addition, effects of age at injury and lateralization of lesion on discourse were considered. Although no significant differences were found according to age at injury, a consistent pattern of generally poorer discourse scores was found for the early injured group (<5 years). With regard to lesion focus, the group findings were unimpressive. However, preliminary examination of individual CHI cases with relatively large lateralized lesions suggested that the late injured children may show the language–brain patterns reported in brain-injured adults, whereas early injured children may not.     

Cross-cultural Differences in Self-reported Decision-making Style and Confidence

The Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (Mann, Burnett, Radford, & Ford, 1997) measures self-reported decision-making coping patterns. The questionnaire was administered to samples of University students in the US (N = 475), Australia (N = 262), New Zealand (N = 260), Japan (N = 359), Hong Kong (N = 281), and Taiwan (N = 414). As predicted, students from the three Western, individualistic cultures (US, Australia, and New Zealand) were more confident of their decision-making ability than students from the three East Asian, group-oriented cultures (Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan). No cross-cultural differences were found in scores on decision vigilance (a careful decision-making style). However, compared with Western students, the Asian students tended to score higher on buck-passing and procrastination (avoidant styles of decision making) as well as hypervigilance (a panicky style of decision making). Japanese students scored lowest on decision self-esteem and highest on procrastination and hypervigilance. It was argued that the conflict model and its attendant coping patterns is relevant for describing and comparing decision making in both Western and Asian cultures.     

Equity, justice, and altruism

According to traditional equity theory, justice is motivated by selfishness. However, critics of equity have argued that it is only one rule of justice that people can apply, and that sometimes other rules of justice are used, such as equality and need, that appear to be altruistically based; that is, they involve sharing and caring in a way that ignores contributions or “inputs” and the probability of receiving outcomes in return. Disagreements have arisen, however, as to the status of these alternative rules as elements of justice, the roles of altruism and selfishness within them, and the relative status of altruism and justice as moral principles. The main aim of this article is to help resolve some of these difficulties by examining the relationship between altruism and justice from the perspective of Wagstaff s theory of Equity as Desert (EAD). This theory integrates a number of allocation rules (including those related to the treatment of offenders) with the concepts of equal opportunity and personal responsibility. One of the advantages of this position is that it enables a conceptual and an empirical distinction to be made between helping and responsiveness to need as altruistic norms, and helping and responsiveness to need as justice norms. It is concluded that there may be something to be gained from viewing core rules of justice in the form of EAD as the sophisticated descendants of the sociobiological concept of reciprocal altruism, that is, a set of algorithms designed to limit both unbridled selfishness and indiscrimi-nate altruism.     

The Evaluation of Parental Fitness in Termination of Parental Rights Cases: A Functional-Contextual Perspective

This article highlights issues involved in carrying out evaluations for termination of parental rights cases and suggests caution for mental health professionals doing such evaluations. It argues that current models of parenting that come from the child development and child maltreatment fields are too narrow in their focus to act as a foundation for such evaluations and are often based on research with select groups in our society making them open to bias. Similarly, it is argued that traditional assessment measures are limited in their utility for responding to the kinds of relational and basic care questions asked in such evaluations. A functional-contextual model is offered as an alternative with examples of potentially useful measurement strategies. With such a frame as a starting point, the field might progress to providing more useful information to courts. Future research directions to improve this practice arena are discussed.     

Book notes

First Nations Faith and Ecology. Freda Rajotte, 1998 London: Cassell x +117 pp., £8.99 (pb) ISBN 0–304–70312–5

Religious Pluralism in the West. David George Mullan, ed., 1998 Oxford: Blackwell 350 pp., £50.00/US$64.95 (hb), £15.99/US$29.95 (pb) ISBN 0–631–20669–8 (hb), ISBN 0–631–20670–1 (pb)

Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. Kim Knott, 1998 Oxford: Oxford University Press 139 pp., £5.99 ISBN 0–19–285341–4

Psychoanalytic Studies of Religion: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography. Benjamin Beit‐Hallahmi, 1996 Westport, Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press 188 pp., £55.50 ISBN 0–313–27362–6

The Psychology of Religion: Theoretical Approaches. Bernard Spilka & Daniel N. Mcintosh, eds., 1996 Boulder, Colorado/Oxford: Westview Press 282 pp., £48.50 (hb), £16.95 (pb) ISBN )‐8133–2946–9 (hb), ISBN 0–8133–2947–7 (pb)

The Religious Function of the Psyche. Lionel Corbett, 1996 London/New York: Routledge 264 pp., £45.00 (hb), £14.99 (pb) ISBN 0–415–14400–0 (hb), ISBN 0–415–14401–9 (pb)

The Possibility of Resurrection and Other Essays in Christian Apologetics. Peter Van Inwagen, 1998 Boulder, Colorado/Oxford: Westview Press 118 pp., £41.50 ISBN 0–8133–2731–8

Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel. Oded Borowski, 1998 Walnut Creek/London/New Dehli: Altamira Press/Sage 296 pp., £35.00 (hb), £16.50 (pb) ISBN 0–7619–8918–8 (hb), ISBN 0–7619–8919–6 (pb)

A Critical Review. Michael Milston, 1997 London/Los Angeles/Sydney: Minerva Press 50 pp., £3.99 ISBN 1–86106–341–5

I Communiste Una religione dell'aldiquà. Michele Straniero, 1997 Milan: Mondadori 141 pp., Lire 12.000 ISBN 88–04–38672‐X

Bulgaria in the Circles of Anontie. Jelio Vladimirov, Todor Todorov, Ivan Katzarski, & Momtchil Badjakov, 1998 Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Swiss Institute for Development 121 pp., no price indicated no ISBN indicated     

Book Reviews

Pastoral Psychology -     

A COMPARISON OF MALE AND FEMALE COLLEGE STUDENTS' EXPERIENCES OF SEXUAL COERCION

Research comparing men's and women's experiences of sexual coercion has typically assessed differences in prevalence rates and risk. We extended this line of research by comparing the contexts of sexual coercion and reactions to sexually coercive experiences in an attempt to understand the meanings that men and women attribute to these events. Participants were 433 randomly selected college students who responded to an anonymous survey. In line with past research, more men than women reported being sexually coercive, and more women than men reported being sexually coerced in the preceding year. There was a great degree of correspondence between men's and women's reports of the contexts within which sexual coercion occurred. According to their reports, sexual coercion occurred primarily within the heterosexual dating context. Compared to men, however, women reported more negative reactions and stronger resistance to the use of sexual coercion. These findings emphasize how comparisons of prevalence rates alone may obscure important differences in the phenomenology of sexually coercive incidents for men and women. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for the development of education and prevention programs and the need to reevaluate current approaches to interpreting prevalence reports.