Priming family values: How being a parent affects moral evaluations of harmless but offensive acts

In modern liberal societies people are generally reluctant to morally condemn acts that they find personally distasteful so long as those acts are not harmful or unfair to others. However, in providing character education for their children, parents often have to censure harmless but offensive acts. Thus, we hypothesize that the parental role broadens the scope of morality beyond narrow considerations of harm and fairness. To test this idea we asked parents and nonparents to morally evaluate harmless/offensive acts and a control harmful act. We manipulated whether the parental role was primed before they evaluated these acts. Parents and nonparents did not differ in their moral objections to the control act regardless of parental role priming. However, when the parental role was primed parents were more morally opposed to harmless but offensive acts than were nonparents. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the dynamics of moral judgment and the recruitment of parents into moral reform movements.     

The role of the right posterior parietal cortex in temporal order judgment

Perceived order of two consecutive stimuli may not correspond to the order of their physical onsets. Such a disagreement presumably results from a difference in the speed of stimulus processing toward central decision mechanisms. Since previous evidence suggests that the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a role in modulating the processing speed of a visual target, we applied single-pulse TMS over the region in 14 normal subjects, while they judged the temporal order of two consecutive visual stimuli. Stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) randomly varied between -100 and 100 ms in 20-ms steps (with a positive SOA when a target appeared on the right hemi-field before the other on the left), and a point of subjective simultaneity was measured for individual subjects. TMS stimulation was time-locked at 50, 100, 150, and 200 ms after the onset of the first stimulus, and results in trials with TMS on right PPC were compared with those in trials without TMS. TMS over the right PPC delayed the detection of a visual target in the contralateral, i.e., left hemi-field by 24 (+/-7 SE) ms and 16 (+/-4 SE) ms, when the stimulation was given at 50 and 100 ms after the first target onset. In contrast, TMS on the left PPC was not effective. These results show that the right PPC is important in a timely detection of a target appearing on the left visual field, especially in competition with another target simultaneously appearing in the opposite field.     

Metaethical Internalism: Another Neglected Distinction

‘Internalism’ is used in metaethics for a cluster of claims which bear a family resemblance. They tend to link, in some distinctive way—typically modal, mereological, or causal—different parts of the normative realm, or the normative and the psychological. The thesis of this paper is that much metaethical mischief has resulted from philosophers’ neglect of the distinction between two different features of such claims. The first is the modality of the entire claim. The second is the relation between the items specified in the claim. In part one I explain this distinction and the problems neglecting it may cause. In part two I show that it has been neglected, and has caused those problems, at least with respect to one version of internalism. That is judgment internalism, which claims that moral beliefs are necessarily related to pro- or con-attitudes; e.g., that if you believe you ought to x you must have some motivation to x. The considerations standardly adduced in favor of judgment internalism support only a version which lacks the metaethical implications typically attributed to it, at least so far as anyone has shown. Proponents and opponents of judgment internalism fail to realize this because of their neglect of the modality/relation distinction. I illustrate by considering discussions of judgment internalism by Russ Shafer-Landau, Simon Blackburn, James Dreier, David Brink, and others.

Quantity judgments of sequentially presented food items by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Recent assessments have shown that capuchin monkeys, like chimpanzees and other Old World primate species, are sensitive to quantitative differences between sets of visible stimuli. In the present study, we examined capuchins’ performance in a more sophisticated quantity judgment task that required the ability to form representations of food quantities while viewing the quantities only one piece at a time. In three experiments, we presented monkeys with the choice between two sets of discrete homogeneous food items and allowed the monkeys to consume the set of their choice. In Experiments 1 and 2, monkeys compared an entirely visible food set to a second set, presented item-by-item into an opaque container. All monkeys exhibited high accuracy in choosing the larger set, even when the entirely visible set was presented last, preventing the use of one-to-one item correspondence to compare quantities. In Experiment 3, monkeys compared two sets that were each presented item-by-item into opaque containers, but at different rates to control for temporal cues. Some monkeys performed well in this experiment, though others exhibited near-chance performance, suggesting that this species’ ability to form representations of food quantities may be limited compared to previously tested species such as chimpanzees. Overall, these findings support the analog magnitude model of quantity representation as an explanation for capuchin monkeys’ quantification of sequentially presented food items.

学习判断的练习伴随低估效应

学习判断是元认知判断的一种重要形式,是个体对随后的记忆成绩的预测。当个体在多次学习－测验任务中学习词对时,学习判断出现了练习伴随低估效应。研究者对此进行了大量的实验并提出了多种理论,如线索应用模型,提取流畅性假说和基点－校正假说。但是,Koriat等人通过分析发现练习伴随低估效应可能不是单一因素作用的结果,而是多种效应共同影响作用的表现,并由此提出了记忆去偏差假说。文章指出了目前研究中还存在的问题以及未来研究的方向     

Reasoning about the future: Doom and Beauty

According to the Doomsday Argument we have to rethink the probabilities we assign to a soon or not so soon extinction of mankind when we realize that we are living now, rather early in the history of mankind. Sleeping Beauty finds herself in a similar predicament: on learning the date of her first awakening, she is asked to re-evaluate the probabilities of her two possible future scenarios. In connection with Doom, I argue that it is wrong to assume that our ordinary probability judgements do not already reflect our place in history: we justify the predictive use we make of the probabilities yielded by science (or other sources of information) by our knowledge of the fact that we live now, a certain time before the possible occurrence of the events the probabilities refer to. Our degrees of belief should change drastically when we forget the date—importantly, this follows without invoking the “Self Indication Assumption”. Subsequent conditionalization on information about which year it is cancels this probability shift again. The Doomsday Argument is about such probability shifts, but tells us nothing about the concrete values of the probabilities—for these, experience provides the only basis. Essentially the same analysis applies to the Sleeping Beauty problem. I argue that Sleeping Beauty “thirders” should be committed to thinking that the Doomsday Argument is ineffective; whereas “halfers” should agree that doom is imminent—but they are wrong.     

On the alleged impossibility of coherence

If coherence is to have justificatory status, as some analytical philosophers think it has, it must be truth-conducive, if perhaps only under certain specific conditions. This paper is a critical discussion of some recent arguments that seek to show that under no reasonable conditions can coherence be truth-conducive. More specifically, it considers Bovens and Hartmann’s and Olsson’s “impossibility results,” which attempt to show that coherence cannot possibly be a truth-conducive property. We point to various ways in which the advocates of a coherence theory of justification may attempt to divert the threat of these results.     

再认条件下元监测判断的影响因素

探讨了再认条件下元监测判断的影响因素。以中文双字词对作为实验材料 ,安排在不同预先呈现时间、有无进行有意识记 ,以及不同识记遍数等条件下进行元监测判断。用计算机随机呈现项目 ,再认之前先让被试做元监测判断 ,判断是否是记过的项目的把握程度 ,再对有意识记过的项目做迫选再认 ,作为标准测验 ,以验证元监测判断的准确性。结果是预先呈现时间长、有意识记过的和识记遍数多的项目 ,对其再认的反应时较短 ,相应的元监测判断等级也较高 ;对只看而未有意记过的项目的判断是呈现时间长的判断等级反而低于呈现时间短的。此结果表明 ,再认条件下 ,元监测判断的等级的高低与识记项目的激活程度有关     

类似性结构组合的实验研究

在国外研究使用点击映射(one—shot mapping)的基础上,本研究在一个实验中从新的角度使用了点击映射的方法探讨了关于类似性的一种观点：类似性判断与差异性判断不是一种对立的镜像关系;研究结果表明。类似性判断与差异性判断都是结构组合。     

学习次数和材料难度对学习判断绝对准确性的影响

本研究采用5（学习次数）×2（材料难度）被试内设计,考察材料难度和学习次数对即刻和延迟学习判断绝对准确性的影响。45名大学生被试参加实验,共收集有效数据37个。结果表明：（1） 即刻条件下,高、低难度词对都出现了练习伴随低估效应;（2） 延迟条件下,高、低难度词对均未出现练习伴随低估效应。对低难度词对的学习判断准确预测了回忆成绩,高难度词对则出现了练习伴随高估效应;（3） 随着学习次数的增加,不同难度词对在即刻条件下的练习伴随低估效应趋于消失,延迟条件下高难度词对的练习伴随高估效应趋于消失。