Moral Expertise?: Constitutional Narratives and Philosophical Argument

Using the bench trial of Colorado's Amendment 2 as an example, this article focuses on the more general question of expert testimony in moral philosophy. It argues that there is indeed expertise in moral philosophy but argues against admitting such expert testimony in cases dealing with what John Rawls terms "constitutional essentials" and 'matters of basic justice." Developing the idea of public reason inherent in the Rawlsian concept of political liberalism, the article argues that philosophers can and should speak out on public issues, if they do so with due respect for certain restrictions, but that they should not serve as expert witnesses on core constitutional questions, since doing so suggests that they claim a type of authority that would require fellow citizens to defer to their views. Such claims to authority in basic ethical matters threaten the mutual respect for divergent comprehensive doctrines that lies at the core of political liberalism. Philosophers have a duty to serve the public good, and they perform this service in fruitful ways. But they should refuse a public role that appears incompatible with equal respect for the committed ethical searching of their fellow citizens.     

Feasibility of a Simplified and Dynamic Bayesian System for Use in Structured Diagnostic Interviews

An important goal of clinical assessment is to balance cost-effectiveness, administration demands, and accuracy (G. Young, J. O'Brien, E. Gutterman, & P. Cohen, 1987). The incorporation of Bayesian logic into diagnostic interviewing may assist with this goal, but in previous examinations, such methods have been prohibitively complex. In this study, analysis of a simplified Bayesian system showed overall classification error rates as good or better than traditional structured interviewing, and reduction in error was positively related to the psychometric properties of the predictor used in the actuarial functions. A dynamic system using simplified Bayesian logic appears to function well in the context of a structured interview and requires comparatively less data than previously tested Bayesian approaches. This type of system appears suitable for further research with clinical populations to determine its performance in applied settings.     

专家医生的知识结构及诊断推理方式

医学专长研究中“中间者效应”的发现,引发了研究者对专家医生知识结构的探讨。在“知识打包”的基础上,医生的临床知识以“疾病脚本”的方式组织起来。随着临床经验的增加,专家医生积累了丰富的疾病脚本。在临床诊断中,他们无需对病人所有的体征和症状进行仔细地和系统地分析,而是通过非分析性的推理方式——“模式识别”或“样例识别”便可自动激活与之匹配的疾病脚本,据此对病人做出迅速而准确的诊断。医学专长的本质就在于专家医生以“疾病脚本”的方式组织起来的知识结构。“适应性专长”代表了未来医学专长研究的新方向     

Interpreting Neurath’s Protocols. Reply to Nottelmann

This paper responds to a recent criticism of Uebel's analysis of Neurath's protocol statements and proposes some independent amendments.

Logics of public communications

Multi-modal versions of propositional logics S5 or S4—commonly accepted as logics of knowledge—are capable of describing static states of knowledge but they do not reflect how the knowledge changes after communications among agents. In the present paper (part of broader research on logics of knowledge and communications) we define extensions of the logic S5 which can deal with public communications. The logics have natural semantics. We prove some completeness, decidability and interpretability results and formulate a general method that solves certain kind of problems involving public communications—among them well known puzzles of Muddy Children and Mr. Sum & Mr. Product. As the paper gives a formal logical treatment of the operation of restriction of the universe of a Kripke model, it contributes also to investigations of semantics for modal logics. This paper was originally published as Plaza, J. A. (1989). Logics of public communications. In M. L. Emrich, M. S. Pfeifer, M. Hadzikadic, & Z.W. Ras (Eds.), Proceedings of the fourth international symposium on methodologies for intelligent systems: Poster session program (pp. 201–216). Publisher: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL/DSRD-24. Research partly supported by NSF Grant CCR-8702307 and PSC-CUNY Grant 668283.     

不同经验教师对学生课堂行为加工的眼动研究

教师对课堂信息的知觉和加工是教师教学能力和教学专长发展的重要组成部分。以往有关课堂场景中学生行为知觉和注意的研究主要采用问卷调查、主观报告和定性分析等研究方式,不仅缺乏对学生课堂问题行为客观量化的分析,对教师如何加工课堂场景中学生行为也研究较少。本研究选取11名专家、9名经验教师和17名新手,让其观看一段时长约15秒的小学数学课堂教学视频,并记录其观看过程中的眼动信息。结果发现,教师对学生课堂典型行为的注视次数和注视次数比率多于问题行为;相对于专家和经验教师,新手对学生的典型课堂行为注视次数更多、总注视时间更长、注视比率更大;就学生的典型行为而言,新手比专家和经验教师注视的次数更多、总注视时间更长,注视的比率也更大。结论认为,教学经验会影响教师对课堂教学场景中学生行为信息的知觉,新手对突显的典型行为关注要多于问题行为,而专家和经验教师则在典型行为和问题行为上平均分配注意资源。     

儿童基于不同线索的所有权判断及其文化差异

对所有权的认知依赖于不同的线索。儿童很早就能通过不同的线索判断所有权。3岁幼儿能够基于先占、劳动、证言、许可控制、刻板印象等线索判断所有权。社会经济和文化因素会影响幼儿对所有权线索的利用, 如社会经济发展不发达地区儿童对先占线索的利用在发展上会有所延迟, 集体主义文化中的幼儿在进行所有权判断时更保守一些, 表现为当先占线索和劳动线索冲突时更倾向于判断物品属于先占者。未来研究应重视通过冲突线索范式探索不同线索在儿童所有权判断中的权重, 探索儿童基于不同线索判断所有权背后的内部心理机制, 同时尝试利用眼动技术等手段对2岁以下幼儿的所有权认知进行研究。     

误导信息和源检测影响证言准确性的实验研究

通过操纵信息类型与测试类型两个自变量,探讨误导信息和源检测对证言准确性、自信程度的影响,同时研究了心理控制源、焦虑、自尊与证言准确性、自信程度的相关.研究发现,误导信息是影响证言准确性的重要因素,自信程度与心理控制源、自尊之间存在正相关.     

Assessing threats of violence: Professional skill or common sense?

When faced with threats of violence, it is of great importance to assess the risk for actual harm to occur. Over the last decades, this task has developed into a domain of its own and professionals have specialised in threat assessment . However, it is yet unknown whether professional experience affects the quality of threat assessments. The present study examined how threat assessment professionals (N  = 44), university students (N  = 44), and laypersons (N  = 45) assessed the risk for violence in three fictitious cases. The assessments (i.e., assigning risk values to different pieces of information) were found to be strikingly similar across the three groups. Yet, professionals agreed more with one another on their assessments, and professionals identified more relevant (empirically supported) threat cues when given the opportunity to request additional information. These results suggest that threat assessment professionals know better than nonprofessionals what information to look for, and hence, they may contribute most in the process of gathering information to clarify the threat. Such knowledge can help to optimise the use of expertise, which may improve the quality of threat assessments. The current findings can be of value to those who consult threat assessment professionals, as well as to the professionals themselves.     

不胜任专家对团队互动模式的影响:团队成员补偿效应

团队中专家的作用日益受到关注,而不胜任专家对于团队互动模式的影响鲜有研究。采用实验室任务团队,通过对专家胜任力进行精确操纵,研究发现不胜任专家团队条件下出现了明显的"成员补偿效应"。即普通成员的主导行为和功能性行为显著增加;影响力水平显著提升。同时,普通成员影响力水平受到领导开放性的调节。只有在高领导开放性的团队中,普通成员对不胜任专家的补偿效应才能发挥作用。