Analytical methods in the theory of psychophysical discrimination II: The Near-miss to Weber's Law, Falmagne's Law, the Psychophysical Power Law and the Law of Similarity

We examine the possibility of accounting for an empirical phenomenon in auditory psychophysics called the “Near-Miss to Weber's Law” [Jesteadt, W., Weir, C., & Green, D. (1977). Intensity discrimination as a function of frequency and sensation level. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, A, 61, 169-177], within the framework of Fechner's Psychophysics. To this end, we introduce a pair of Psychophysical Laws governing the behavior of Weber sensitivities. One of these, the Power Law, embodies ideas that Jesteadt et al. introduced in their original discussion of the near-miss phenomenon. Falmagne's Law captures ideas of Falmagne and colleagues [Falmagne, J.-Cl. (1985). Elements of psychophysical theory. New York: Oxford University Press; Doble, C., Falmagne, J.-Cl., & Berg, B.G. (2003). Theoretical note: Recasting (the near-miss to) Weber's Law. Psychological Review, 110, 365-375]. These two laws, which account for the near-miss phenomenon in quite different ways, are shown to be special cases of a more general Psychophysical Law of Similarity. We find all (smooth) solutions of this Law of Similarity that are compatible with Fechnerian psychophysics. Of the 11 solutions, four are relevant to the near-miss phenomenon; two of these solutions reproduce the models of Jesteadt et al. and Doble et al. and the other two solutions each provide a new accounting of the near-miss phenomenon. We discuss the possibility of distinguishing among these four models in empirical data.     

法律信仰转型中人的主体性

在西方法律传统的演变中,法律信仰的转型是伴随着人的主体性的凸显而发生的。基督教理论承认人的有限自由意志,在上帝之下,君主必须服从神法和以神法为依据的法律,个人意志可以高于君权,由此形成了神权保护民权、对抗王权的局面。在自然法理论中,自由意志被理性所取代,人依赖理性就可以制定出符合神法和自然法的世俗法。理性主义则认为,人不再需要神的帮助,仅凭理性的命令就可以制定出符合理性本身的法律,获得对法律的信仰。西方法律信仰的转型经历了从自由意志到理性主义的演变历程。当代中国法律信仰的基础是理性主义,将“公平”、“正义”等法治观念建立在理性的基础上,对处于目前文化境遇中的中国人来说是必然的选择。     

无知、自由与法律

哈耶克从对无知的顿悟中洞见了自由特别是个人自由对于个人和社会发展与进步的必要性。而法律则构成了实现和保证这种自由的充要条件。因此,法律与自由具有同等价值。哈耶克对自由与法治的价值的注重和执着,既推动了人类认识的发展与进步,同时也给那些正在实践或追求自由与法治的社会留下警省和启示。     

Justification Vindicated Justification: Volume One,Michael Horton,Zondervan, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐310‐49160‐6), 400 pp., pb £39.99 Justification: Volume Two,Michael Horton,Zondervan, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐310‐57838‐3), 528 pp., pb £39.99

Writing from a classical Reformed perspective, Horton reviews the entire history of ‘Justification’ and then sharply criticizes many fashionable movements in theology that he sees as a betrayal of the doctrine. These include ‘the new perspective on Paul’, the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa, Radical Orthodoxy, and even the Lutheran–Roman Catholic Joint Declaration of 1999. Writing with theological and pastoral passion, Horton is a formidable polemicist who never loses sight of his central concern, so that his book is both an exciting debate and a moving witness to the Pauline, Lutheran, and Calvinist Gospel.     

The role of legal and moral norms to regulate the behavior of texting while driving

Despite a nationwide lawful effort to regulate texting-while-driving behavior, little change has been reported. This study assessed the effect of current legal enforcement on attitudinal and behavioral responses toward texting while driving in conjunction with potential influences of two types of perceived norms—legal and moral. An online survey was conducted with 313 college students recruited from three states where the history of a banning law of texting while driving varied (more than 3 years, less than 1 year, and none). The students self-reported perceived legal norm, perceived moral norm, perceived risk of texting while driving, frequency of texting while driving, attitude toward texting while driving, and intention of texting while driving. General linear model analyses revealed that the mere presence of legal enforcement showed a negative relationship with frequency of behavior only for the state with the banning law in effect more than 3 years. While the perceived legal norm showed inconsistent relationships with outcome variables, the perceived moral norm appeared most promising to discourage texting while driving among young drivers. A banning law for texting-while-driving behavior not only backfired on the actual behavior in a short-term effect, but also required a long-term exposure of the law to change the actual behavior among college students. On the other hand, cultivation of a moral norm to regulate the behavior of texting while driving is particularly encouraged in that the stable nature of this psychological variable can play a role to suppress possible reactance evoked by an external force. Policy makers are encouraged to harness their approach to regulate young drivers’ texting while driving with the strategy that appeals to the drivers’ moral beliefs rather than simply forcing them to comply with the law.     

Prophetic performatives: the New Age’s pending efficacy through self-prophecy

This paper broadens the limited area of scholarship on New Age spiritualism by providing and explanation for the suasive force of one of its main themes, the ‘Law of Attraction’. Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, is utilised as emblematic of the doctrine, where the individual is seen to engage in a dynamic similar to that of classical predictive prophecy, with the role of prophet being internalised. Three elements discussed are the positioning of the prophet, prophecy’s temporal ambiguity, and its linguistic tense. This paper suggests that the Law of Attraction re-imagines and employs the predictive prophetic structure and suggests that such a belief can act as a fetish.     

Contractualism and Global Economic Justice

This article examines Rawls's and Scanlon's surprisingly undemanding contractualist accounts of global moral principles. Scanlon's Principle of Rescue requires too little of the world's rich unless the causal links between them and the poor are unreliable. Rawls's principle of legitimacy leads him to theorize in terms of a law of peoples instead of persons, and his conception of a people leads him to spurn global distributive equality. Rawls's approach has advantages over the cosmopolitan egalitarianism of Beitz and Pogge. But it cannot generate principles to regulate the entire global economic order. The article proposes a new cosmopolitan economic original position argument to make up for this lack in Rawls's Law of Peoples.     

Multi(ple) cultural voices speaking “Outside the Sentence” of counselling and psychotherapy

This paper examines the notion that marginalized clients through their socio-cultural and geo-political histories are positioned “outside” the masculine cultural metaphors and conventional theoretical epistemologies of counselling, psychology and psychotherapy. In other words, these minoritized clients are “outside the sentence” of the texts and contexts of therapy. The discursive practice of therapeutic reconstitution and restoration produces a particular set of vocabularies and sentences that facilitate transformation and psychic equilibrium consistent with the process of individuation and self actualization. However, for marginalized groups, such as black and other visible minority, women, deaf, gay and lesbian clients the hegemonic masculine narratives of counselling psychology and psychotherapy only make it possible for these clients to be “outside the sentence”, not just grammatically and metaphorically of the therapeutic project, but in the external reality of how the practice is clinically governed. In other words, the social and cultural marginalization outside the clinic room is in a dialectical relationship with the therapy dyad. For the minoritized client being “outside the sentence” produces the effect of being “inside” another process, i.e., the history of subjugation, domination, diaspora, and displacement. This paper explores this issue and argues that the only way for counselling, psychology and psychotherapy to bring the diversity client “within the sentence” of therapy is to assign and re-inscribe the history, memory and pain of “the Other” voices to the “inside” of the therapeutic space, to interrupt and disrupt the hegemonic masculine narratives, thus transforming “non-sentences” into sentences and paragraphs, and eventually into essays of the discursive subject.     

Observing evidence accumulation during multi-alternative decisions

Most decision-making research has focused on choices between two alternatives. For choices between many alternatives, the primary result is Hick’s Law—that mean response time increases logarithmically with the number of alternatives. Various models for this result exist within specific paradigms, and there are some more general theoretical results, but none of those have been tested stringently against data. We present an experimental paradigm that supports detailed examination of multi-choice data, and analyze predictions from a Bayesian ideal observer model for this paradigm. Data from the experiment deviate from the predictions of the Bayesian model in interesting ways. A simple heuristic model based on evidence accumulation provides a good account for the data, and has attractive properties as a limit case of the Bayesian model.