Some reflections on potential abuses of psychology’s knowledge and practices

This article identifies ten implicit and explicit assumptions of Western psychology that are rooted within its cultural history, traditions, and values. Unfortunately, these assumptions have informed and dominated the knowledge and practice of psychology across the world because of historic, cultural, political, and economic reasons. It is now clear, however, that the indiscriminate acceptance and application of Western psychological knowledge and practices constitutes a serious abuse for non-Western people and for ethnic/racial minorities in Western nations. This abuse is often transmitted and exacerbated via the training of international and ethnic minority students who learn to accept Western psychology as universal. In a global community in which all our lives have become interdependent, it is essential Western psychology be re-considered as a “cultural construction” with all the ethnocentric limitations this implies. As a counter, efforts must be made to acknowledge, develop, and transmit the diverse indigenous/national psychologies from across the world.     

Is choice a reliable predictor of choice? A comment on Sagarin and Skowronski

In a recent working paper, Chen (2008) argues that a methodology central to the cognitive dissonance literature (the free-choice paradigm) has suffered from an inability to separately measure how much choices affect people’s preferences, and how much they simply reflect those preferences, by failing to fully control for the fact that subjects tend to choose goods they prefer. Although Sagarin and Skowronski concede this, they discount Chen’s argument, claiming that for revealed preferences to completely account for observed choice-effects the relationship between choice and preference would have to be unrealistically high. In this comment, we argue that their critique both misses the crux of Chen’s analysis, and is incorrect. Specifically, to properly test whether choices affect preferences, it is essential that researchers experimentally control for revealed preferences rather than speculate how much of a role they may play. Moreover, Sagarin and Skowronski’s critique rests on two fundamental errors—a misunderstanding of the function of the null-hypothesis and a misunderstanding of preference-measurement psychometrics. These errors leads Sagarin and Skowronski to suggest alternative experimental designs which while a good first step, do not address the problems identified in Chen (2008).     

Honneth and the Communitarians: Towards a Recognitive Critical Theory of Community

This paper attempts to sketch a critical model of political community by drawing upon recent contributions to the theory of ‘recognition’, particularly in the work of Axel Honneth. The paper proceeds by, first, delineating key features shared by a range of positions associated with ‘communitarianism’, along with the limitations and problems incurred by these commitments. The second part of the paper attempts to mobilise Honneth’s theoretical work to develop a conception of community that shares a number of the basic premisesvis-á-vis political life associated with communitarianism, but which nevertheless accommodates the reservations expressed by communitarianism’s liberal and radical critics. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

After the Terror: A Book and Further Thoughts

There are great goods desired by all of us, and the lack of themmakes for bad lives. One sample of bad African lives involves aloss of 20 million years of living time. The questions raised bythese and other facts are to be answered by the Principle ofHumanity, about bad lives and rationality. It is superior tomorality of relationship and all else, and in a way is undeniable.The principle together with other things issues in six propositions.One gives us a moral responsibility, our politicians at our head,for the terrorism of September 11. To be ordinary is not to beinnocent. Another proposition is that the Palestinians have a moralright to their terrorism. The latter proposition can be given stillmore support than in the book from which this paper derives.     

简论社会主义道德的核心和原则

社会主义道德的核心和原则,是理解和把握社会主义道德的本质特征、先进性、高尚性、科学性的关键。为人民服务的丰富内涵及其作为社会主义道德核心的内在根据。集体主义的科学含又及其作为社会主义道德原则的全面分析。     

原始道德的自制力从何而来?

原始道德的自制力,主要表现为原始人对其生物本能的克制和调整。它来源于原始先民的精神心理与其群体社会生活的互动机制。具体包括两种生产活动的社会制约,神灵信仰的敬畏心理,自我观念的发生与发展,原始理解的能力与机制等因素。     

The Insufficiency of Integrity

As part of its evolving notions of self, contemporary Western culture has come to regard integrity as a preeminent public and private virtue. The meanings now given to integrity appear to cluster around its form, which is personal coherence, and its content, which is standing for something important. Building on Stephen Carter's explication of integrity, and in response to its veneration as a moral panacea, three limitations of integrity are discussed. First, integrity does not guarantee that right and wrong have actually been discerned, only that an attempt has been made, that moral reflection has occurred. Second, integrity does not necessarily engender or even preserve interpersonal peace, but instead frequently causes conflict it is then unable to resolve. Third, integrity does not always precipitate or prevent the reform of social structures and organizations, because it remains subject to the exercise of interpersonal power.     

论小康社会的政治文明建设

政治文明包括政治思想、政治制度、政治行为文明的丰富内涵。社会主义政治文明建设的提出与实施对全面推进社会主义现代化建设,实现我国小康社会的发展目标具有深远意义。社会主义政治文明建设的基本任务是社会主义民主政治建设与法制建设。     

结构实在论评析

The epistemological version of structural realism, proposed by Cao Tianyu, has great influence in the philosophy of science. Syntheses has published a special volume discussing the topic. Cao criticizes anti-realism, as well as the epistemic and ontic versions of structural realism. From the concepts of structure, ontology, and construction, he analyzes the objectivity of scientific theories as having five aspects: construction, historicity, holism, revision, and revolution. This paper systematically analyzes and comments on Cao's structural realism. The author agrees with his criticism of the under-determination thesis, is neutral to his argument against ontological discontinuity, and questions his universal language argument. Translated by Yu Jinlong from Ziran Bianzhengfa Yanjiu 自然辩证法研究 (Studies in Dialectics of Nature), 2006, (11): 34–38     

Mokken Scale Analysis for Dichotomous Items Using Marginal Models

Scalability coefficients play an important role in Mokken scale analysis. For a set of items, scalability coefficients have been defined for each pair of items, for each individual item, and for the entire scale. Hypothesis testing with respect to these scalability coefficients has not been fully developed. This study introduces marginal modelling as a framework to derive the standard errors for the scaling coefficients and test hypotheses about these coefficients. Several examples demonstrate the possibilities of marginal modelling in Mokken scale analysis. These possibilities include testing whether Mokken’s criteria for a scale are satisfied, testing whether scalability coefficients of different items are equal, and testing whether scalability coefficients are equal across different groups.