Black magic and respecting persons—Some perplexities

Black magic (henceforth BM) is acting in an attempt to harm human beings through supernatural means. Examples include the employment of spells, the use of special curses, the burning of objects related to the purported victim, and the use of pins with voodoo dolls. For the sake of simplicity, we shall focus on attempts to kill through BM. The moral attitude towards BM has not been, as far as we know, significantly discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy. Yet the topic brings up interesting questions and poses challenges, occasionally even reaching the level of paradoxes. Ideas of respecting persons, in particular, will be seen to be challenged by this form of magic. The notion of respecting persons will be treated here broadly and pluralistically. Indeed part of the interest in the discussion will be the unfolding of the diverse ways in which this term should be understood, and the contrasts between its various uses. Often, as we shall see, respect for persons and disrespect for them, in different senses, will co-exist, and the dilemma will be one where avoiding some forms of disrespect will involve us in disrespect in other senses.     

Ungroundedness in Tarskian Languages

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Several writers have assumed that when in “Outline of a Theory of Truth” I wrote that “the orthodox approach” – that is,...     

The psychology of confessions: A comparison of expert and lay opinions

Despite a body of confessions research that is generally accepted in the scientific community, courts often exclude experts on the ground that such testimony would not assist the jury, which can use its common sense. To examine whether laypeople know the contents of expert testimony on confessions, we asked 151 lay participants to indicate their beliefs about 30 confession‐related statements used in a recent survey of 87 confession experts (Kassin et al., American Psychologist, 2018, 73, 63–80). Participants agreed with experts on only 10 of the 30 propositions, suggesting that much of the psychology of confessions is not common knowledge and that expert testimony can assist the trier of fact.     

Evolution and relationship maintenance: Fertility cues lead committed men to devalue relationship alternatives

An evolutionary perspective provides a conceptual framework with which to study adaptive processes that facilitate the maintenance of long-term relationships. One common relationship threat people face involves exposure to tempting relationship alternatives. Desirable relationship alternatives can threaten people's relationship commitment and, consequently, evoke relationship maintenance processes designed to protect people's relationship esteem. The current research examined whether cues of female ovulation–an important reproductive variable–evokes relationship maintenance processes in committed men. Men rated the attractiveness of a normally cycling relationship alternative at various points in her menstrual cycle. Unlike single men, who rated the woman as especially attractive when she was highly fertile, committed men exhibited the opposite pattern, rating her as less attractive during her period of peak fertility. This research illustrates the utility of integrating theories of relationship maintenance with evolutionary psychological theories of mating.     

Justifying Counterproductive Work Behaviors and an Integrity‐based Conditional Reasoning Test: Back to the drawing board?

Conditional reasoning tests (CRT) were proposed as an innovative approach to implicitly measure the rationalizations toward counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) often associated with overt integrity tests. The authors first set out to map a typology of justification mechanisms for general CWB, and to then validate a new integrity‐based CRT in both honest and faking testing conditions. Unfortunately, while demonstrating encouraging construct and criterion validity in the honest testing condition, the test was less resistant to faking than originally anticipated, and ceased to be valid in the faking condition. Overall, the results provide theoretical insight toward understanding how employees justify CWB, but raise concerns regarding the potential operational limitations of at least some CRTs.     

An Elementary Syllabus of Psychological Tests

The purpose of this study was to examine the universality of the “inverse square root law” insofar as it purports to show a constant relationship between emotional involvement and subjectively perceived geographical distance. It was argued that the square root exponent in the “law” was derived from experiments that used a limited range of stimuli (place names). With students as subjects, two experiments were conducted in order to discover the relationship between emotional involvement and subjective distance when both very close and very distant places were considered. It was shown that the inverse square root function was not constant but rather varied with the range of stimuli.     

Life is Good

Abstract

The author inquires into the relation between the production of genetic knowledge on the one hand, and human autonomy and self-determination on the other. He does so by specifying the notions of “genetic test” and “human autonomy”; by discussing the epistemic status of genetic knowledge, given its importance for the clarification of its anthropological and ethical implications; and by inquiring into some ethical implications by investigating the conditions under which genetic knowledge of the individual may justifiably be established. This discussion shows that the autonomy-based right to self-determination as far as gene information is concerned, is fundamental. This has major implications, which the author identifies with regard to the difficult problem of the moral legitimacy of the use of genetic knowledge in the context of insurance policies.