The cosmic lottery

One version of the argument for design relies on the assumption that the apparent fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of life requires an explanation. I argue that the assumption is false. Philosophers who argue for the assumption usually appeal to analogies, such as the one in which a person was to draw a particular straw among a very large number of straws in order not to be killed. Philosophers on the other side appeal to analogies like the case of winning a lottery. I analyze the two analogies and explain why the lottery analogy is the right one to use. In the light of such an analysis, we can see that although the cosmic feature of being life-permitting is rare, it does not allow life-permitting possible universes to stand out because there are other rare cosmic features that other possible universes have.     

Internalism About Justification and the Skeptic’s Dilemma

I first argue that the skeptic needs an internalist conception of justification for her argument for skepticism. I then argue that the skeptic also needs to show that we do not have perceptual access to the world if her skepticism is to be a real threat to human knowledge of the world. This, I conclude, puts the skeptic in a dilemma, for internalist conceptions of justification presuppose that we have perceptual access to the world.     

Intrinsic motivation among regular, special, and alternative education high school students.

This study examined motivationally related variables among three types of high school students. In particular, students' perceptions of competence, control, parental autonomy support, teacher autonomy support, peer autonomy support, and academic coping were investigated. Two hundred fifty-one juniors and seniors (104 regular education, 93 alternative education, and 54 special education) from a large Southern California school district participated. Significant group differences were found on measures of perceived competence, academic coping, and parental autonomy support. Specifically, regular education students had a higher level of self-reported academic competence than did special education students. Further, regular education and special education students reported that their parents were more involved in their lives as compared with alternative education students. Finally, regular education students reported a higher level of academic anxiety than did special education and alternative education students; however, regular education students had the highest level of positive coping. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Clamped Corticosterone (B) Reveals the Effect of Endogenous B on Both Facilitated Responsivity to Acute Restraint and Metabolic Responses to Chronic Stress

To determine the effects of both corticosterone (B) and chronic stressors on acute ACTH responses to restraint, young male rats were exposed to streptozotocin-induced diabetes, cold (5-7 degreesC) or intracerebroventricular (icv) neuropeptide Y (NPY) for 5 d and then exposed to restraint within 2 h after lights on. Two groups of rats were studied: intact and adrenalectomized replaced with B pellets that maintained plasma B in the normal mean 24-h range of intact rats. In addition to ACTH and B responses to restraint on d 5, body weight, food intake, fat depots, glucose and other hormones were measured to determine the role of stress-induced elevations in B on energy balance. ACTH responses to restraint were normal in intact rats subjected to diabetes or cold. By contrast, there was no ACTH or B response to restraint in NPY-infused intact rats. All 3 groups of chronically stimulated adrenalectomized rats with clamped B had facilitated ACTH responses to restraint compared to their treatment controls. Overall food intake increased in all groups of stressed rats; however, augmented intake occurred only during the light in intact rats and equally in the light and dark in B-clamped rats. White adipose depot weights were decreased by both diabetes and cold and increased by NPY in intact rats; the decreases with cold and increases with NPY were both blunted and changes in fat stores were not significant in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats. We conclude that: 1. diabetes- and cold-induced facilitation of restraint-induced afferent input to hypothalamic control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is opposed in intact rats by the elevated feedback signal of B secretion; 2. NPY does not induce facilitation of afferent stress pathways; 3. chronic stimulation of the HPA axis induces acute hyperresponsiveness of hypothalamic neurons to restraint provided that the afferent input of this acute stimulus is not prevented by B feedback; 4. stimulus-induced elevations in B secretion result in day-time feeding; 5. insensitivity of both caloric efficiency and white fat stores to chronic stress in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats results from loss of normally variable B levels.     

Difficulties and patterns of social support of mature college students in Hong Kong: Implications for student guidance and counselling services

The extent and nature of the difficulties faced by mature college students in a university in Hong Kong were examined. Who provided which types of support in which aspects of the lives of mature students was investigated. The results showed that time constraints were a major concern of many such students. Differences were found in the problems experienced in different modes of study and with different marital statuses. Spouses were support generalists who provided all types of support to their mature student partners, while lovers, friends and family members were support specialists who provided specific types of social support. The findings lend support to the hypothesis that the more sufficient the perceived social support received by mature students, the less the degree of difficulty they experience in their lives. Implications for service approach and for the provision of services are discussed, and recommendations on how to improve services are made.     

The “making” of teenage pregnancy

I will do two things in this paper. First, I examine the issue of construction in the social sciences by using “teenage pregnancy” as an example. Following Michel Foucault's genealogical studies, I show that new categories were constructed to study teenage pregnancies, but that the construction involved does not support an extreme theory of construction—a theory which allows of nothing like “reality”. Second, I study the interaction between the categories used in investigations of teenage pregnancies and those to whom such categories are applied, namely the young mothers themselves. The interaction illustrates what Ian Hacking has described as a “looping effect” characteristic of categories used to study people and their behaviour. I claim that with teenage pregnancy, the looping effect is much more complex than Hacking suggests.     

Aldactazide-induced consummatory and operant responding to sodium by rats.

The effects of intraperitoneal injections of Aldactazide-A on rats' consumption of water and saline solution (.51M NaCl) were tested in two experiments. During the treatment sessions, the rats showed a substantial increase in saline consumption and in lever pressing to a cue light to obtain the saline, as compared with their negligible intake before the injections and after the injections had been discontinued. The results indicate that both the drinkometer and operantbox measures are sensitive to the natroexigenic effects of Aldactazide.     

Differential cerebral involvement in perceiving Chinese characters: levels of processing approach

Three experiments were designed to determine the accuracy and latency with which right-handed Chinese university students (12 females and 12 males) recognized Chinese characters in the left and right visual half-fields (VHFs). The experiments varied in the "depth" of processing required. Experiment 1 was a lexical decision task in which the configuration of the stimulus (a real Chinese character or the mirror image of a real character) determined whether the grapheme was an actual character. Experiment 2 required phonological processing; i.e., subjects had to decide whether a character (or a foil) matched the sound of an orally presented Chinese character. Experiment 3 required semantic processing; i.e., subjects had to decide if a character (or a foil) belonged to a particular semantic category. In each experiment, single characters were presented unilaterally for 150 msec. There was a significant right VHF superiority for accuracy scores for Experiments 2 and 3 but not for Experiment 1. None of the experiments yielded significant visual asymmetries in reaction time. The results do not support previous claims of orthography-specific laterality, but instead show that laterality effects for morphemic stimuli vary with the orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing demands of the task.