A New Conventionalist Theory of Promising

Conventionalists about promising believe that it is wrong to break a promise because the promisor takes advantage of a useful social convention only to fail to do his part in maintaining it. Anti-conventionalists claim that the wrong of breaking a promise has nothing essentially to do with a social convention. Anti-conventionalists are right that the social convention is not necessary to explain the wrong of breaking most promises. But conventionalists are right that the convention plays an essential role in any satisfactory account of promising. A new conventionalism can explain this by appealing to special features of social conventions. Two of these special features have important implications for any moral requirements they mediate, such as the requirement to keep one's promises and the moral requirements attached to social or occupational roles. First, these requirements will not depend on features of a situation that are inaccessible to typical participants in the convention. Second, these requirements often cannot be tailored to fit the overly unusual circumstances of participants.     

The organizing process of the American railroad business from an evolutionary perspective

The early organizing process of the American railroads could be periodized as follows: Railroad technology become perfected by the 1860s, the national network become perfected by the 1880s, and self‐sustaining railroad systems by the 1900s. The evolutionary path seems to be largely dictated by the “perfection” of stable configurations of “lower levels,” such as technological standards (e.g., uniform standard time). In the American railroads, on each level of activity there was a process of convergence, learning and coordination of pre‐existing components toward “equilibrium,” that allowed the emergence of new combinations, i.e. new levels of integration. Thus, convergent level‐specific process, i.e. the standardization and formalization of existing activities, was an essential step for radical process of divergence in the American railroads.     

Chapter 7: The Dilemma of Aging

SUMMARY

Intergenerational programming has received much attention and has been heralded as beneficial for both children and older adults. However, little has been reported in the literature concerning adult reactions to and benefits of intergenerational activities. A report on the first two years of an ongoing intergenerational project involving a preschool and a retirement community is presented. Four adults who participated regularly were interviewed in depth and findings are reported. All categories from the interviews represented aspects of Erikson's Generativity stage, and indicated that spirituality was enhanced through intergenerational contacts. Opportunities to interact with young children engendered a sense of relatedness to others and hope for the future for the older adult interviewees. Implications of this program that strengthened links to younger generations, and fostered positive affect, well-being, and spirituality in the aging process are discussed.     

干细胞治疗的系统观

当前干细胞治疗面临着不少的技术难关和争议,需要运用现代系统论观点,从患者的整体上确定治疗目标,摸索出各种疾病所需的最佳干细胞类型和输注数量、最佳治疗时机、最佳输注途径,以发挥最佳效果。     

天命观对中国人格心理的构建与影响

中国文化传统强调天与命对人的控制,天命是人格神对人的主宰。这种思想深远的影响着中国人对人格的建构,形成了中国人典型的人格特征,并影响和渗透到现代人生活的各个方面,影响着现代社会中人对人与人、人与社会、人与自然关系的建构。     

隐喻在文章语境中的理解--概念隐喻理论探讨

概念隐喻理论认为,语言系统中存在着广泛的隐喻一致性,人们对于隐喻的理解是通过将其匹配到基本的概念隐喻来进行的。但有研究者指出,除了一些新颖的隐喻,惯用隐喻的理解并不需要概念匹配。本研究认为,概念隐喻已经储存在长时记忆中,在文章语境中,无论惯用隐喻还是新颖隐喻的理解都可能产生概念匹配。三个实验支持了这一假设。实验一通过目标句的阅读反应时探讨不同文章版本下目标句的理解情况;实验二和实验三从事后与即时两方面对各种文章版本下的概念匹配情况进行比较。研究结果支持了概念隐喻理论。     

The integration of habits maintained by food and water reinforcement through stimulus compounding.

In Experiment 1, a light and a tone were correlated independently with water reinforcement of bar pressing by rats. With different naive subjects in Experiment 2, one of these stimuli was correlated with food and the other with water reinforcement (counterbalanced). In both experiments the absence of tone and light signaled extinction. Tests of stimulus-reinforcer independence in Experiment 2 indicated that tone and light controlled behavior whose rate was specifically affected by deprivation state. In the stimulus-compounding tests of both experiments, response rates were higher to tone-plus-light than to tone or light presented alone (additive summation). This is the first report of additive summation produced through compounding stimuli paired with different reinforcers. The results are discussed in the context of the effects of incentive motivation on operant performance.     

Points of view analysis revisited: Fitting multidimensional structures to optimal distance components with cluster restrictions on the variables

Points of view analysis (PVA), proposed by Tucker and Messick in 1963, was one of the first methods to deal explicitly with individual differences in multidimensional scaling, but at some point was apparently superceded by the weighted Euclidean model, well-known as the Carroll and Chang INDSCAL model. This paper argues that the idea behind points of view analysis deserves new attention, especially as a technique to analyze group differences. A procedure is proposed that can be viewed as a streamlined, integrated version of the Tucker and Messick Process, which consisted of a number of separate steps. At the same time, our procedure can be regarded as a particularly constrained weighted Euclidean model. While fitting the model, two types of nonlinear data transformations are feasible, either for given dissimilarities, or for variables from which the dissimilarities are derived. Various applications are discussed, where the two types of transformation can be mixed in the same analysis; a quadratic assignment framework is used to evaluate the results.The research of the first author was supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW); the research of the second author by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO Grant 560-267-029). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Leuven, 1989. We wish to thank Willem J. Heiser for his stimulating comments to earlier versions of this paper, and we are grateful to the Editor and anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Global Progress II: Evolutionary Mechanisms and their Side-effects

This paper attempts to update the 18th century concept of progress by an evolutionary theoretical framework, while replying to some of the contemporary critiques. Progress, understood as increase in fitness (or its proxy, quality of life) necessarily accompanies evolution by natural selection. In socio-cultural evolution, this mechanism is reinforced by growth of knowledge and virtuous cycles, but can be accompanied by negative side-effects such as overshooting and parasitism. The most pressing of the contemporary side-effects, such as pollution and the increased pace of life, are discussed, but it is concluded that they can be tackled without really endangering global progress. The anxiety that they engender is unfortunately amplified by a bad news bias in the media, leading to an inappropriately pessimistic view of the situation by the public.     

目标焦点监控下目标信息的建构与整合

探讨文本阅读过程目标焦点监控下读者对目标信息的建构与整合。采用移动窗口技术,要求被试阅读24篇含有主人公目标的记叙文,设计了子目标未实现、子目标曲折实现或子目标直接实现三种条件,对不同条件下目标启动句阅读时间进行分析。实验1对子目标曲折实现与子目标未实现两种条件下目标启动句阅读时间进行比较,结果表明,曲折实现条件下目标启动句阅读时间长于未实现条件下目标启动句的阅读时间,说明在没有共振的情况下,目标启动句也可以激活先前的目标信息引发目标整合。实验2比较在子目标曲折实现与子目标直接实现条件对目标启动句阅读时间,以探讨在目标焦点条件下是否对相关信息进行追随性建构,结果表明,曲折实现条件下目标启动句阅读时间与直接实现条件下目标启动句的阅读时间差异不显著,说明在目标焦点监控下可以发生阅读信息的追随性建构。本实验结果初步证明,阅读不同文本信息可能会引发不同的信息加工活动,建构主义理论与记忆基础文本加工理论都只是说明了文本阅读信息加工的一个侧面。