COMPATIBILISM EVOLVES?: ON SOME VARIETIES OF DENNETT WORTH WANTING

Abstract: I examine the extent to which Dennett's account in Freedom Evolves might be construed as revisionist about free will or should instead be understood as a more traditional kind of compatibilism. I also consider Dennett's views about philosophical work on free agency and its relationship to scientific inquiry, and I argue that extant philosophical work is more relevant to scientific inquiry than Dennett's remarks may suggest.     

On the Importance of History for Responsible Agency

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue is connected to a wide range of concerns, including the significance and culpability of different forms of manipulation, the plausibility of important incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, and of course, a satisfactory account of moral responsibility. As it turns out, history matters sometimes, but less frequently than we might think.     

Employee adaptive performance and job satisfaction during organizational crisis: the role of self-leadership

This study tests the hypothesis that self-leadership is positively related with employee adaptive performance and job satisfaction in rapid change and unpredictable work environments. This assumption was tested through a quasi-experimental study regarding the implementation of a self-leadership training programme in the Private Banking department of an international bank. Change in private bankers’ self-leadership, adaptive performance and job satisfaction was measured three times, over a period of 8 months. During the fourth month of the training programme implementation, the bank underwent an unexpected bailout. Fifty-two private bankers were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 28) and to a control group (n = 24). The results showed an increase in self-leadership, adaptive performance and job satisfaction for the experimental group, while job satisfaction decreased for participants in the control group. Our findings suggest that change in the level of self-leadership is positively related with change in the level of adaptive performance and job satisfaction over time. This study presents new evidence that individual adaptive performance and job satisfaction can be enhanced through self-leadership training. Self-leadership training can be used as a valuable tool to help organizations improve employees’ adaptive performance and job satisfaction, especially during organizational crisis.     

An attribution-emotion-action interpretation of the “evil eye” in everyday conflict situations

An attribution-emotion-action model was used to examine individuals’ willingness to seek for another person's face in conflict situations. To induce interpersonal conflict and frustration, participants were engaged in the ultimatum bargaining game (UBG) where they received predetermined offers. A simple UBG consists of two players, a Proposer and a Responder, who must decide how to divide a resource. Our findings confirm our predictions in that during the interpersonal conflict (i.e., betraying the norm of equality in the UBG), participants made more controllable based attributions, felt more frustrated (less sympathetic), and more likely requested to view the Proposer's photograph than when there is no conflict. Stated differently, in conflict situations, the likelihood of seeking another person's face increases when controllable attributions are made and when frustration is felt.     

Improving Migrant Students' Spelling of English and Spanish Words with Error Correction

We examined the effects of error correction on spelling accuracy of culturally and linguistically diverse students enrolled in summer Migrant Education. In an error correction strategy, students spelled a word, viewed a correct model, and corrected specific errors. In a traditional strategy, students wrote words three times each while viewing a correct model. Words were presented in Spanish or English. Results showed that students with and without learning disabilities, whose primary language was English, correctly spelled more English words in the error correction condition than the traditional. Students whose primary language was Spanish correctly spelled Spanish words equally well in both conditions, possibly because of the phonetic nature of the Spanish language.     

The triad of science foundations, instructional technology, and organizational structure

Over the centuries and across all societies educational achievement does not improve. The attempt to improve the instructional process has concentrated on instructional technology. But these attempts have overlooked the importance of two other factors: the science that should underlie the instructional technologies and the organization that must operate those technologies. A considerable step forward in handling the problems of instructional effectiveness has been the derivation of instructional technologies based on Skinnerian science. But the instructional technologies based on Skinner's analysis of behavior are promoted as if they were to operate in an organizational vacuum. The division of labor, and its necessary coordination and control, is taken for granted. But in any large scale enterprise, the organization of the division of labor must fit the technology through which that enterprise achieves its mission. Educational technology must tie directly to a pertinent science and to a proper organizational structure. To teach effectively requires an overhaul along three lines: 1) a relevant science that reflects and encapsulates an accurate understanding of behavior; 2) a contingency-based technology of instruction that directly derives its practices upon proper scientific principles; and 3) a suitable organization based on teaching teams that operate the new instructional technology.     

The Identity Development of Urban Minority Young Men in Single‐Mother Households

This phenomenological study explored the gender and career identity development of 13 urban minority young men, with an emphasis on the potential impact of father absence and single‐mother parenting. Six themes were identified: (a) emotional intelligence and maternal appreciation and internalization, (b) consequent assumption of a parentified role, (c) nontraditional perception of masculinity, (d) experienced paternal void, (e) resilience, and (f) the limitations and aspirations in career pathways. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Spatial learning and goldfish telencephalon NMDA receptors

Recent results have demonstrated that the mammalian hippocampus and the dorso-lateral telencephalon of ray-finned fishes share functional similarities in relation to spatial memory systems. In the present study, we investigated whether the physiological mechanisms of this hippocampus-dependent spatial memory system were also similar in mammals and ray-finned fishes, and therefore possibly conserved through evolution in vertebrates. In Experiment 1, we studied the effects of the intracranial administration of the noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 during the acquisition of a spatial task. The results indicated dose-dependent drug-induced impairment of spatial memory. Experiment 2 evaluated if the MK-801 produced disruption of retrieval of a learned spatial response. Data showed that the administration of MK-801 did not impair the retrieval of the information previously stored. The last experiment analyzed the involvement of the telencephalic NMDA receptors in a spatial and in a cue task. Results showed a clear impairment in spatial learning but not in cue learning when NMDA receptors were blocked. As a whole, these results indicate that physiological mechanisms of this hippocampus-dependent system could be a general feature in vertebrate, and therefore phylogenetically conserved.     

Different ways of encoding geometric information by goldfish (Carassius auratus)

On the basis of results of a probe trial in 2 different experiments, K. Cheng (2005) has proposed a common mechanism for orientation in fish trained in both a map-like or relational procedure and a directly cued procedure. However, K. Cheng's model is inconsistent with previous results of goldfish (Carassius auratus) trained in these 2 tasks. Given that K. Cheng's proposal assumes that fish choose the goal by using a matching strategy in which they try to match as many properties as possible, including geometric and featural properties, future research is necessary to clarify what properties of the environmental space are codified and used for navigation.