SLOTE'S SATISFICING CONSEQUENTIALISM

The article discusses Michael Slote's Satisficing Consequentialism, which is the view that moral agents are not required to maximise the good, but merely to produce a sufficient amount of good. It is argued that Satisficing Consequentialism is not an acceptable alternative to Maximising Consequentialism. In particular, it is argued that Satisficing Consequentialism cannot be less demanding in practice than Maximising Consequentialism without also endorsing a wide range of clearly unacceptable actions. It is then argued that Slote's inability to provide adequate reasons for moral satisficing stems from a mistaken analogy between rationality and morals. The sense of ‘good enough’ which is relevant to morality is one which focusses on the effort an agent puts in, rather than on the outcome she produces. However, replacing outcomes with efforts would undermine Slote's Consequentialist project. Finally, it is suggested that similar problems will be faced by others who seek to construct essentially Consequentialist theories which are not unduly demanding.     

Psychological assessment of catatonic schizophrenia

Probably due to the rarity of the disorder and the general inability of catatonic patients to cooperate with standardized assessment, no data exist documenting the psychological features associated with catatonic schizophrenia that may appear on psychological tests. This study utilized standard assessment techniques to examine clinical hypotheses regarding the psychogenic correlates of catatonic conditions from the performance of one man on psychological tests. In accordance with previous theory, test findings indicated frequent constriction, rigidity, and negativism in conjunction with compulsive traits. Experiences of cognitive and self-fragmentation were juxtaposed with a formal, mechanistic body ego; disorganization and discontinuity were countered with attempts at self-cohesion. Depressed feelings and human interest were apparent, although interpersonal relatedness was frequently characterized by an avoidant, distancing style.     

THE SIMILARITY OF BRAIN ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH TRUE AND FALSE RECOGNITION MEMORY DEPENDS ON TEST FORMAT

Abstract— Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures). When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et. al., 1996). When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar. We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e g, PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed.     

The modification of auditory hallucinations

The ABAB withdrawal design was used to document the effectiveness of a behavioral treatment package in reducing the duration of auditory hallucinations of a chronically mentally ill inpatient. Results revealed clear functional control of the treatment package over the occurrence of the subject's auditory hallucinations during a 2-hr time period.     

Computerized fuzzy ratings: The concept of a fuzzy class

In this paper, we outline the concept of a fuzzy class used in programs for eliciting computerized fuzzy ratings. Fuzzy ratings allow respondents to provide symmetrical or asymmetrical latitudes of acceptance around a preferred point. These ratings have been used in research testing career theories and person-environment fit models. The variables defining the fuzzy class and the various functions that can be performed by it are described in the paper. The idea of a fuzzy class may be of interest to those involved in expert systems, knowledge engineering, or in fuzzy classification and measurement in general. A program, FUZRATE, written in object-oriented C++ code that uses the concept of a fuzzy class, is available on request. Both source code and a binary (executable) file are available.     

Teaching peer reinforcement and grocery words: An investigation of observational learning and instructive feedback

A multiple probe across behaviors design, replicated across participants, assessed the effectiveness of constant time delay in teaching appropriate peer reinforcement and grocery words to 3 elementary students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Additionally, pretests and posttests assessed the acquisition of the participants' observational learning (acquisition of peers' grocery words) and instructive feedback (related information supplied by the teacher in the consequent event). Results indicate that the participants learned (a) how to appropriately reinforce peers, (b) to read their grocery words, (c) some of the targeted stimuli of their peers, and (d) much of the instructive feedback that was associated with each of the grocery words. Maintenance data indicate that the participants maintained their target grocery words at high levels of accuracy.     

Conversational skills training with a chronically hospitalized psychiatric inpatient

While conversational skills training has been conducted with select psychiatric populations, it has rarely been used with severely debilitated inpatients. The purpose of this study was to use a multiple baseline design across conversational components to evaluate the effectiveness of a conversational skills training package to enhance the conversational repertoire of a severely impaired inpatient. Audiotaped conversations with a standard confederate were evaluated for the frequency of questions, self-disclosures, and reinforcing/acknowledging comments. Generalization probe conversations to novel partners were also obtained. Training effects were noted for the 3 conversational units. Mixed results were obtained for generalization and follow-up.     

Listener ratings of severity for specific disfluency types in children

This study investigated whether some types of disfluency are perceived as more severe than others and if listener groups differ in their perception of severity for some disfluency types. Three normal speaking children were trained to produce eight types of disfluency and one sample of fluency. The experimental tape, consisting of three examples for each of the eight disfluency types and of fluency, was presented auditorily to 40 judges divided into four groups of 10 each: parents of stutterers, parents of nonstutterers, speech clinicians, and elementary school teachers. The judges rated the disfluency and fluency on a 15-point severity continuum, divided into four nominal categories of Fluent, Normal Disfluency, Mild Stuttering, Moderate Stuttering, and Severe Stuttering. Results showed that although listener groups did not significantly differ in their severity ratings, the specific types of disfluency did differ significantly. The type of disfluency emitted by a speaker is apparently more salient in perceiving and judging disfluency than the type of listener making the judgment.     

Constraints on Analogical Mapping: A Comparison of Three Models

Three theories of analogy have been proposed that are supported by computational models and data from experiments on human analogical abilities. In this article we show how these theories can be unified within a common metatheoretical framework that distinguishes among levels of informational, behavioral, and hardware constraints. This framework clarifies the distinctions among three computational models in the literature: the Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME), and the Incremental Analogy Machine (IAM). We then go on to develop a methodology for the comparative testing of these models. In two different manipulations of an analogical mapping task we compare the results of computational experiments with these models against the results of psychological experiments. In the first experiment we show that increasing the number of similar elements in two analogical domains decreases the response time taken to reach the correct mapping for an analogy problem. In the second psychological experiment we find that the order in which the elements of the two domains are presented has significant facilitative effects on the ease of analogical mapping. Of the three models, only IAM embodies behavioral constraints and predicts both of these results. Finally, the immediate implications of these results for analogy research are discussed, along with the wider implications the research has for cognitive science methodology.     

Good ‘Cat’, Bad ‘Act’

Philosophia - A widespread intuition is that words, musical works, and flags are intentionally produced and that they’re abstract types that can have incorrect tokens. But some philosophers,...