User involvement in research: power and compromise

The extent to which collaborative research can redress power imbalances is debated with reference to some of the relevant literature. Different ways in which research can be collaborative and power shared between researchers and participants are discussed. The benefits and challenges specific to collaboration in the area of mental health research are considered, illustrated with examples from research we conducted into the experience of taking antipsychotic medication. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Pragmatic Case against Pragmatic Scientific Realism

Pragmatic Scientific Realism (PSR) urges us to take up the realist aim or the goal of truth although we have good reason to think that the goal can neither be attained nor approximated. While Newton-Smith thinks that pursuing what we know we cannot achieve is clearly irrational, Rescher disagrees and contends that pursuing an unreachable goal can be rational on pragmatic grounds—if in pursuing the unreachable goal one can get indirect benefits. I have blocked this attempt at providing a pragmatic justification for the realist aim of PSR on precisely the same pragmatic grounds—since there is a competing alternative to PSR, and the alternative can provide whatever indirect benefits PSR can offer while being less risky than it is, prudential reasoning favours the alternative to PSR. This undermines the pragmatic case for the realist aim of science since the instrumentalist alternative does not aim at the truth.     

Missed Opportunities: Speculation on What Japanese Psychology Could Have Been

Takasuna (Integr. Physiol. Behav. Sci. 41, 2007) mentioned the ease with which evolutionary theory was accepted by Japanese psychologists, and certainly this is admirable. He also mentioned the stubborn force which had to be used to gain an understanding of the (thoroughly Western) subjective–objective distinction. Alas, during the formative years of Japanese psychology, there was much philosophical work afoot attempting to destroy that distinction. It is speculated that only a small change of which books were translated, or with which Americans early Japanese psychologists trained under, would have made Japan into a haven for these still underdog theories.     

智能组织中的人机协同决策：基于人机内部兼容性的研究探索

智能时代已然来临。智能技术的发展正加速推动组织的智能化进程。越来越多的企业在生产和管理中采用智能技术以提高竞争力。在此背景下,人机协同工作日益普遍,人机协同决策成为新型组织决策方式。然而,当前智能组织中的人机协同决策还面临信任度低、可控性低、透明度低、协同度低等一系列问题,它们阻碍了决策质量、效率和体验的提升。本项目认为,人机兼容性,特别是人机内部兼容性,如认知兼容性、情感兼容性、价值兼容性等,或是影响人机协同决策绩效的根本原因。因此,本项目基于人机内部兼容性理论视角,综合采用决策心理学、认知科学、组织行为学等多学科理论与方法,通过一系列现场研究和模拟实验,力图揭示人机协同决策中存在的问题及其成因,探究人机协同决策中内部兼容性的影响因素和作用机制,进而提出若干人机协同决策优化方法。项目研究成果将有助于促进人机协同决策理论与人机兼容性理论的发展,提升人机协同决策绩效,推进组织决策的智能化进程。     

The Virtues of Metaphysics: A Review of Iris Murdoch's Philosophical Writings

Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy has long influenced contemporary ethics, yet it has not, in general, received the kind of sustained critical attention that it deserves. Existentialists and Mystics and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals provide new access to most of Murdoch's philosophical writings and make possible a deeper appreciation of her contribution to current thought. After assessing the recent critical reception of Murdoch's thought, this review places her moral philosophy in the context of contemporary trends in ethics by tracing her influence on the work of Charles Taylor, highlights the distinctive features of her moral philosophy (especially her analysis of consciousness), and suggests future directions for Murdochian ethics.     

Investigation of collaborative inhibition for key-term definitions

Collaborative inhibition is the counterintuitive finding that learners working in a group recall less information compared with the combined nonredundant output of the same number of learners working individually (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997). Although research has shown that collaborative inhibition occurs for a variety of to-be-learned material, no research has evaluated whether the effect emerges for key-term definitions. In two experiments, learners individually studied key-term definitions during an initial study phase. Learners then completed a retrieval practice phase, which occurred either collaboratively or individually. After a delay, all learners individually completed a final test phase. Performance during the retrieval practice phase is of greatest interest for present purposes. Results established collaborative inhibition such that recall was lower for learners in the collaborative group versus the individual group, which provides novel evidence to the collaborative memory literature by demonstrating that the effect emerges with key-term definitions.     

SCIENCE AND VALUES: MY DEBT TO ERNAN McMULLIN

Abstract Ernan McMullin's 1982 presidential address to the Philosophy of Science Association dealt with the issue of science and values, arguing that although scientists are rightfully wary of the infiltration of cultural and social values, their work is guided by “epistemic values,” such as the drive for consistency and predictive fertility. McMullin argued that it is the pursuit of these epistemic values that drives nonepistemic values (like religious yearnings) from science. Using the case study of the fate of the nonepistemic value of progress in the history of evolutionary theorizing, I show that, vital though McMullin's thinking was for my own scholarship, in fact the study shows that the connections between epistemic and nonepistemic values in science are more complex than either of us supposed.     

Katz’s Revisability Paradox Dissolved

Quine's holistic empiricist account of scientific inquiry can be characterized by three constitutive principles: noncontradiction, universal revisability and pragmatic ordering. We show that these constitutive principles cannot be regarded as statements within a holistic empiricist's scientific theory of the world. This claim is a corollary of our refutation of Katz's [1998, 2002] argument that holistic empiricism suffers from what he calls the Revisability Paradox. According to Katz, Quine's empiricism is incoherent because its constitutive principles cannot themselves be rationally revised. Using Gärdenfors and Makinson's logic of belief revision based on epistemic entrenchment, we argue that Katz wrongly assumes that the constitutive principles are statements within a holistic empiricist's theory of the world. Instead, we show that constitutive principles are best seen as properties of a holistic empiricist's theory of scientific inquiry and we submit that, without Katz's mistaken assumption, the paradox cannot be formulated. We argue that our perspective on the status of constitutive principles is perfectly in line with Quinean orthodoxy. In conclusion, we compare our findings with van Fraassen's [2002] argument that we should think of empiricism as a stance, rather than as a doctrine.     

高压氧医学与康复医学的协同发展

随着医学理论与实践的不断创新和发展,中国也正在努力寻求一种具有中国特色的现代医学发展模式.高压氧医学与康复医学都是新兴的边缘交叉性学科,具有广阔的发展潜能和空间;然而,两者在快速发展的同时也突显了一些问题,如:后续动力不足、发展方向不明确等.本文从哲学中联系与发展的角度出发,通过机制探讨及发展趋势的分析,试图寻找两者共同发展的结合点,为推动康复医学与高压氧医学在临床工作中的继续向前发展提供一种借鉴与参考.