RESPECTING HUMAN DIGNITY: CONTRACT VERSUS CAPABILITIES

Abstract: There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism's justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all.     

Scientific misconduct: Present problems and future trends

Substantial progress in handling scientific misconduct cases has been made since the first cases were investigated by the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity in 1989. The successor Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has simultaneously reduced the backlog of cases and increased the professionalism with which they are handled. However, a spate of lawsuits against universities, particularly those brought under the federal False Claims Act, threatens to undermine the ORI by encouraging use of the courts as an alternate route for resolving claims of research misconduct. Next steps should include establishing a government-wide definition of scientific misconduct, providing immunity from lawsuits for institutions that follow proper procedures in investigating charges of scientific misconduct, and participating in the development of international guidelines for maintaining scientific integrity. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium entitled “Misconduct in Science: A Decade of Progress or Merely Years of Controversy” held during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 13 February, 1998.     

The Dream of Consensus: Finding Common Ground in a Bioethical Context

Consensus is the holy grail of bioethics, the lynch pin of the assumption that well informed, well intentioned people may reach generally acceptable positions on ethically contentious issues. It has been especially important in bioethics, where advancing technology has assured an increasing field of complex medical dilemmas. This paper results on the use of a multicriterion decision making system (MCDM) analyzing group process in an attempt to better define hospital policy. In a pilot program at The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, a series of small scale focus groups was constituted to examine criteria defining organ transplant eligibility. Criteria were organized hierarchically using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, an MCDM approach, and the resulting data was analyzed using Expert Choice 9.0, software designed to facilitate AHP analysis. Qualitative and quantitative analysis map barriers to practical consensus in a way not previously possible.     

Information and preference in partial orders: A bimatrix representation

This paper presents a bimatrix structure for examining ordinal partial rankings. A set of axioms is given similar to those of Kemeny and Snell (1962) and Bogart (1973), which uniquely determines the distance between any pair of such rankings. Thel ¹ norm is shown to satisfy this set of axioms, and to be equivalent to the Kemeny and Snell distance on their subspace of weak orderings. Consensus formation is discussed.This research was supported by a NSERC grant A8966.     

Combined antecedent variables as motivating operations within functional analyses

Functional analysis test conditions typically manipulate a single antecedent variable and an associated consequence to better isolate response-reinforcer relations. In some instances no problem behavior is observed, perhaps representing a false-negative finding. The present study evaluated one approach to assess potentially false-negative findings within functional analyses. Participants were exposed to single-antecedent functional analysis test conditions and combined-antecedent test conditions within a multielement design. Both participants engaged in problem behavior primarily during the combined-antecedent test conditions, and treatments matched to the results were effective in reducing problem behavior. Findings are discussed in terms of clinical implications of combining antecedent variables to further examine potentially false-negative functional analysis results.     

The novelty effect: support for the Novelty-Encoding Hypothesis

In two experiments, we examined the "Novelty-Encoding Hypothesis" proposed by Tulving and Kroll (1995), suggesting that the encoding of online information into long-term memory is influenced by its novelty and that novelty increases recognition performance. In Phase 1 (familiarization phase), subjects participated in a standard memory experiment in which different types of materials (verbs and nouns) were studied under different encoding conditions (enactment and non-enactment) and were tested by an expected recognition test. In Phase 2 (critical phase), subjects evaluated the materials (both familiar materials which were encoded earlier in Phase 1, and novel materials which were not presented earlier in Phase 1) in a frequency judgment task and were given an unexpected recognition test. The results of both experiments showed that novel items were recognized better than familiar items. This result held true for both hit rates - false alarms and hit rates. The novelty effect was observed for different subjects (Swedish and Japanese), different materials (verbs and nouns; high frequency and low frequency), and different types of encoding in Phase 1 (enactment and non-enactment). These findings provide support for the "Novelty-Encoding Hypothesis" stating that the effect is based on the encoding of target items at the time of the critical study (Phase 2). A comparison between the present experiments and the Tulving and Kroll (1995), Dobbins, Kroll, Yonelinas & Liu (1998) and Greene (1999) studies suggests that the novelty effect is more pronounced under incidental encoding than under intentional encoding.     

The sensory‐cognition association in adulthood: Different magnitudes for processing speed,inhibition, episodic memory,and false memory?

One hundred and forty-six participants (age range = 20-80) completed a battery of tests designed to measure visual acuity, processing speed, inhibition, episodic memory and false memory. The relations between visual acuity and general cognitive ability, as well as between visual acuity and the indicators of this construct, were evaluated with structural equation modeling. The measurement model confirmed that the indicators of the individual cognitive abilities could be grouped into a general cognitive functioning factor. However, the relation between episodic and false memory was not completely explained by the shared association with this general factor. Furthermore, visual acuity predicted approximately half of the age-related variance in the general cognition factor. Also, the proportion of age-related variance shared with vision was highest in inhibition and lowest in false memory. The results are discussed in the light of common cause accounts of cognitive aging.     

False Consensus and Adolescent Peer Contagion: Examining Discrepancies between Perceptions and Actual Reported Levels of Friends’ Deviant and Health Risk Behaviors

Adolescents perceptions of their friends behavior strongly predict adolescents own behavior, however, these perceptions often are erroneous. This study examined correlates of discrepancies between adolescents perceptions and friends reports of behavior. A total of 120 11th-grade adolescents provided data regarding their engagement in deviant and health risk behaviors, as well as their perceptions of the behavior of their best friend, as identified through sociometric assessment. Data from friends own report were used to calculate discrepancy measures of adolescents overestimations and estimation errors (absolute value of discrepancies) of friends behavior. Adolescents also completed a measure of friendship quality, and a sociometric assessment yielding measures of peer acceptance/rejection and aggression. Findings revealed that adolescents peer rejection and aggression were associated with greater overestimations of friends behavior. This effect was partially mediated by adolescents own behavior, consistent with a false consensus effect. Low levels of positive friendship quality were significantly associated with estimation errors, but not overestimations specifically.     

The institutional impact of research challenges and constraints on psychology and other social and behavioral sciences

Psychology and other social and behavioral disciplines are severely limited by the extraordinary complexity of the phenomena of study and numerous legal, ethical, and logistical constraints. In this article, we examine the impact of these research challenges on the institutional standing of and support for our disciplines. The immense challenges of human research have contributed to unfavorable stereotypes of the capabilities of social and behavioral scientists and fostered self-censure of our fields. Low consensus for research questions, frameworks, and approaches, and frustration with the limitations of studies have fragmented disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. The numerous obstacles and impediments have led to the subordination of social and behavioral science which has been maintained through policies, practices, ideologies, and stereotypes favoring the natural sciences. Psychologists and other social and behavioral scientists need to recognize the limitations of their research enterprise imposed by the complexity of the study phenomena and stop disparaging their work. Moreover, they need to recognize the potential for conflict and division because of the low consensus in our fields and act collectively to promote social and behavioral science.     

Filling in the Gaps: False Memories and Partisan Bias

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people's propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one's interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they “heard about” the event. False-memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.