The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Darwinism

As a young proponent of "creation science," I rejected Darwinian biology as false, bad, and ugly. Now I defend Darwinism as true, good, and beautiful. Moreover, I now see Darwinism as compatible with the natural piety that arises as one moves from nature to nature's God.     

Knowledge,Authority and Identity: A Prolegomenon to an Epistemology of the Clinic

Disputes about theory in bioethics almost invariablyrevolve around different understandings of morality or practicalreasoning; I here suggest that the field would do well to becomemore explicitly contentious about knowledge, and start the taskof putting together a clinical epistemology. By way of providingsome motivation for such a discussion, I consider two cases ofresistance to shifts in clinical practice that are, by and large,not ethically controversial, highlighting how differentconceptions of epistemic authority may contribute to clinicians'unwillingness to adopt these changes, and sketching out someinitial suggestions for epistemic analysis of clinical practice.     

自然物体分类的ERP研究

对事物进行分类的能力是人类的一种基本认知功能。该文主要就近年来自然物体分类的事件相关电位（ERP）研究情况进行综述。首先介绍与自然物体分类有关的ERP早晚期成分;接着讨论了快速视觉分类的加工机制,认为前馈机制在这种复杂分类任务的视觉加工过程中起重要作用;最后详细介绍了两个分离的视觉加工机制,认为自然物体的视觉分类在不同时程涉及不同机制：即首先是任务无关的早期知觉加工过程,其次是任务相关的、类别无关的加工机制,与被试的决策有关。也讨论了这两个分离的加工过程涉及的神经基础。     

核心知识系统及其对相关研究的启示

核心知识系统出现于人类个体发展和种系发展的早期,在人类复杂认知能力的发生发展中起着建构模块的作用。该文以表征物体和数量关系的两类核心知识系统的性质及二者在儿童的“数”概念形成和成人的数学思维中所起的作用为例,综述了以灵长类动物、婴儿、儿童和成人为被试的研究证据,并进而提出了核心知识系统给相关研究带来的若干启示。     

Natural Disaster and Depression: A Prospective Investigation of Reactions to the 1993 Midwest Floods

A statewide sample of 1735 Iowa residents, approximately half of whom were victims of the 1993 Midwest Floods, participated in interviews 1 year prior to, and 30 to 90 days after, the disaster. Employing a rigorous methodology including both control-group comparisons and predisaster assessments, we performed a systematic evaluation of the disaster's impact. Overall, the disaster led to true but small rises in depressive symptoms and diagnoses 60–90 days postflood. The disaster–psychopathology effect was not moderated by predisaster depressive symptoms or diagnostically defined depression; rather, predisaster symptoms and diagnoses uniquely contributed to increases in postdisaster distress. However, increases in symptoms as a function of flood impact were slightly greater among respondents with the lowest incomes and among residents living in small rural communities, as opposed to on farms or in cities. Implications for individual- and community-level disaster response are discussed.     

Choosing among natural stimuli

Pigeons worked on concurrent variable-interval, variable-interval schedules with the alternatives signaled by slides either containing trees or not. The schedules were designed to hold both overall and relative rates of reinforcement within narrowly constrained limits, and slides were quasi-randomly ordered each day. Responding to the two alternatives was well described by the generalized matching equation with substantial undermatching. Using an adaptation of the matching law, we estimated that the subjects were correctly classifying 82% to 95% of exemplars. The matching performance transferred to new exemplars of trees and nontrees with only slight generalization decrement. The pigeons appeared to be discriminating among exemplars even when the alternatives provided equal rates of reinforcement and the average relative performances were close to 50%.     

BARROW AND TIPLER'S ANTHROPIC COSMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE

Abstract. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler's recently published Anthropic Cosmological Principle is an encyclopedic defense of melioristic evolutionary cosmology. They review the history of the idea from ancient times to the present, and defend both a "weak" version, and two "strong" versions of the anthropic principle. I argue the weak version of the anthropic principle is true and important, but that neither of the two strong versions are well grounded in fact. Their "final" anthropic principle is a revision of Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary cosmology. They rectify Teilhard's factual errors but commit even more serious psychological and religious errors of their own.     

HUXLEY'S EVOLUTION AND ETHICS IN SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract. T. H. Huxley's essay and prolegomena of 1894 argued that the process and products of evolution are morally unacceptable and act in opposition to the ethical progress of humanity. Modern sociobiological insights and studies of organisms in natural settings support Huxley and justify an even more extreme condemnation of nature and an antithesis of the naturalistic fallacy: what is, in the biological world, normally ought not. Modern biology also provides suggestions on the origin of the human moral impulse and on tactics likely to be effective in the combat against nature urged by Huxley.     

SCIENCE AND THE FORTUNES OF NATURAL THEOLOGY: SOME HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract. The object is to examine strategies commonly used to heighten a sense of the sacred in nature. It is argued that moves designed to reinforce a concept of Providence have been the very ones to release new opportunities for secular readings. Several case studies reveal this fluidity across a sacred-secular divide. The irony whereby sacred readings of nature would graduate into the secular is also shown to operate in reverse as anti-providentialist strategies invited their own refutation. The analysis is used to support the claim that the sciences have put fewer constraints on religious belief than is generally assumed.     

Concept learning by monkeys with video picture images and a touch screen.

Two rhesus monkeys were trained in a same/different task to discriminate digitized computer-stored picture stimuli. The pictures were digitized from 35-mm slides and presented in pairs on a computer monitor. The monkeys were required to touch the pictures and then make a choice response to indicate whether the pictures were identical or nonidentical. The response areas and stimuli were located to the sides of the picture stimuli. Responses were defined and monitored by an infrared matrix touch screen. After learning the same/different task, both monkeys showed performance accuracy with novel picture stimuli similar to that with training picture stimuli. This accurate novel-picture transfer indicates that a same/different concept had been learned, a concept similar to the one they had previously demonstrated in a different apparatus with rear-projected slide stimuli and a response lever.