In Defence of Constructive Empiricism: Maxwell’s Master Argument and Aberrant Theories

Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B. C. van Fraassen’s view of science called Constructive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we conclude from this silence that no defence is possible and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all? Or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? A careful dissection of Maxwell’s reasoning will make it clear that neither is the case. This dissection includes an analysis of Maxwell’s ‘aberrance–argument’ (omnipresent in his many writings) for the claim that science implicitly and permanently accepts a substantial, metaphysical thesis about the universe, which then paves the way for his own metaphysical-realist hierarchy-view of science. This aberrance-claim, which Maxwell directs against a widely shared and harmful ideology of science called ‘Standard Empiricism’, generally has been ignored too, for more than a quarter of a century. Our conclusions will be that (i) Maxwell’s attacks on CE can be beaten off, and (ii) his ‘aberrance–arguments’ do not establish what Maxwell believes they establish, but (iii) we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertarian nature of CE.     

The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior at fifty

The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior was founded in 1958 by a group of male psychologists, mainly from the northeastern USA and connected with either Harvard or Columbia. Fifty years later about 20% of both editors and authors reside outside this country and almost the same proportion is made up of women. Other changes in the journal include having its own website for more than a decade and now publishing online as well as on paper. A recent connection with PubMed Central of the National Library of Medicine has made possible the completely free electronic presentation of the entire archive of about 3,800 articles.     

Loss aversion and perceptual risk aversion

We prove that, in cumulative prospect theory, the weak loss aversion for S-shaped value functions is equivalent to a notion of risk aversion that we define from the perceptual point of view. No additional assumption or condition on the probability distortion is needed. It is demonstrated that a power S-shaped value function does not satisfy weak loss aversion, i.e., a decision maker is risk seeking with respect to some mixed sign lotteries.     

乙肝抗病毒治疗存在的问题及其对策

对乙肝的治疗,抗病毒是核心和关键,但抗病毒治疗自身存在着诸多问题:费用高、疗程长、疗效有限、治疗时机和条件难以掌控;药物有潜在或者明确的不良反应;医患认知不足;疗效评价极端化;治疗中不可预测因素的干扰等。通过细致的分析,探讨了乙肝治疗中的难点,并针对这些问题和难点就未来乙肝的治疗提出了一些有益的建议。     

The ultimate challenge: prove B. F. Skinner wrong

For much of his career, B. F. Skinner displayed the optimism that is often attributed to behaviorists. With time, however, he became less and less sanguine about the power of behavior science to solve the major problems facing humanity. Near the end of his life he concluded that a fair consideration of principles revealed by the scientific analysis of behavior leads to pessimism about our species. In this article I discuss the case for Skinner's pessimism and suggest that the ultimate challenge for behavior analysts today is to prove Skinner wrong.     

B. F. Skinner's Utopian Vision: Behind and Beyond Walden Two

This paper addresses B. F. Skinner's utopian vision for enhancing social justice and human well-being in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. In the first part, we situate the book in its historical, intellectual, and social context of the utopian genre, address critiques of the book's premises and practices, and discuss the fate of intentional communities patterned on the book. The central point here is that Skinner's utopian vision was not any of Walden Two's practices, except one: the use of empirical methods to search for and discover practices that worked. In the second part, we describe practices in Skinner's book that advance social justice and human well-being under the themes of health, wealth, and wisdom, and then show how the subsequent literature in applied behavior analysis supports Skinner's prescience. Applied behavior analysis is a measure of the success of Skinner's utopian vision: to experiment.     

干扰素治疗慢性乙型肝炎管理策略初探

在慢性乙肝抗病毒治疗中干扰素作为一线治疗取得了一定的疗效。在治疗过程中通过选择合适的慢性乙肝患者、监测疗效、确立个体化的疗程和剂量、及时监测不良反应和恰当的处理和最大限度的提高患者的依从性可使干扰素的疗效达到最大化。     

Anomalous brain dominance and the immune system: Do left-handers have specific immunological patterns?

Geschwind and Behan (1982) and Geschwind and Galaburda (1985a, 1985b, 1985c) suggested a correlation between brain laterality and immune disorders. To test whether this hypothesis holds true not only for the frequency of immune diseases and circulating autoantibodies, but extends also to cellular immunity, we examined the association between handedness and markers of cellular immunity. Twenty-seven left-handed and 37 right-handed subjects were serologically screened for cellular parameters and 22 left-handed subjects were typed for human leukocyte antigen (HLA). When compared to the right-handers, the left-handed group showed a significant decrease in the inflammatory cell types CD3(+) T cells (total T cells), CD4(+) T cells (T-helper cells), and HLA-Dr (MHC-II, antigen-presenting cells) as well as in the CD19(+) cells (B cells) and CD16/CD57(+) cells (natural killer cells). We assume a relationship exists between cerebral hemispheric specialisation and the immune system not only for humoral but also for cellular immunity, and we discuss the role of the major histocompatibility complex in neurological and immunological development.     

B2C电子商务中的消费者决策支持系统

B2C电子商务环境下的决策支持系统主要包括专家系统,推荐系统和智能代理系统或者其组合等。其目标是帮助消费者发现和澄清需求,在网络海量的信息环境下发现和比较信息,筛选符合客户需要的产品,或者提供建议。该文回顾了近年来网上决策支持系统的研究进展,并对其在B2C电子商务中的应用前景和研究发展趋势进行了预测与展望     

B2C电子商务中消费者的风险来源及其影响

研究目的是通过考察B2C(Business to Consumer)电子商务中消费者知觉到的风险来源来验证电子商务交易中的虚实界面假设。通过访谈法和问卷法调查了337名被试,探讨了B2C电子商务中消费者认知到的风险来源结构,以及这些风险来源对消费者认知风险的影响。结果表明：消费者在B2C电子商务中的认知风险一部分来源于虚实界面