RAINFOREST EMPIRICISM AND QUASI'-RATIONALITY: TWO APPROACHES TO OBJECTIVE BIODATA

Two approaches to objective biodata, designed to achieve the interpretability and stability of rational approaches, yet minimize socially desirable responding, were explored. The first was a quasi-rational attempt to derive biodata analogs to an existing temperament measure, and then use them as rational scales. The second was a theory-based variant of criterion-referenced keying, termed rainforest empiricism. Both were utilized with two consecutive classes of U.S. Military Academy cadets ( n = 2,565) to predict leadership performance over four rating periods. The biodata analogs to the temperament measure added incremental validity over the Academy's current admissions package and had significantly smaller correlations with a social desirability scale than their equivalent temperament scales. Scales developed with the rainforest approach had higher incremental validities and lower social desirability. Both methods demonstrated satisfactory stability upon cross-validation, and provided complementary interpretability. Advantages to each approach, and the implications for their use, are discussed.     

Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense

Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and another community that makes Lewis's four-dimensionalist assertions, the members of each community speak the truth in their respective languages. This follows from an application of the principle of interpretive charity to the two communities.