Design features for language and stone toolmaking (not tool use) involve similar if not homologous cognitive processes. Both are arbitrary transformations of internal symbolization, whereas non-human tool using is mostly an iconic transformation. The major discontinuity between humans and non-humans (chimpanzees) is language. The presence of stone tools made to standardized patterns suggests communicative and social control skills that involved language.

Despite the ontogenetic allometric size effects that explain much of phyletic variation in brain components, the residuals of some structures indicates that mosaic brain evolution was an important factor in hominid evolution, and that reorganization of the hominid brain may have occurred as early as 3+ MY. Finlay et al.'s allometric technique masks residual variation around allometric trends, and the patterns of residuals relevant to species-specific departures from strict allometric trends.

If POT (parieto-occipital-temporal junction) reorganization came earlier in australopithecines than in Homo, it is likely that the selective pressures were different, and not necessarily directed toward language. The brain endocast evidence for the POT in A. afarensis is actually better than it is for early Homo.

Data do exist to support the fact that the corpus callosum is relatively larger in women than in men. The corpus callosum is an integral part of the brain, and contrary to Fitch & Denenberg's examples of “pseudostatistics,” is not an extrinsic structure when determining its relative size.

Given the primate propensity to make noise, it is unclear why a manual gestural stage would have been necessary in the development of either language or right-handedness. Cortical asymmetries are present in australopithecines but become clearly human-like with the appearance of Homo about two million years ago, including Broca's cap regions. Stone tool-making is still our only empirical entry into past cognitive processes.

Proceeding from the observation by Ryle that I cannot prepare myself for the next thought that I am going to think, I argue that conscious acts cannot control my bodily motions or thoughts. This position is not compatible with indeterminism. I also argue that consciousness represents the irreducible and multi-modal output of the behavioral control system sensors necessary for the control of human behavior demonstrated by Marken . My analysis supports one experimental result obtained by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl (...) , namely, that the initiation of a "voluntary act" is an unconscious cerebral process. I conclude that the following are not realizable: "mental intentions" acting on the supplementary motor area as postulated by Eccles and Robinson , and "veto," a conscious abort of a motor act after subjects reported "wanting to act" . These two items would seem to be amenable to test by studies similar to or refinements of Libet's. (shrink)

One hundred years ago, Abraham Flexner pulled no punches. He tore the fabric of medical education in the existing medical schools and initiated a revolution that lives on to this day. Among the factors driving the 1910 Carnegie Foundation's Flexner Report was the recognition that "the requirements of medical education have enormously increased and the fundamental sciences upon which medicine depends have been greatly extended" (p. viii). This familiar mantra, enhanced by several log orders, resonates strongly in our own times. (...) Certainly another major factor—if not the predominant one—leading to the Flexner Report was the ineffectual medical educational process employed in most of the 155 commercial and private .. (shrink)

The best way to improve your quality of life is through the decisions you make. This book teaches several fundamental decision-making skills, provides numerous applications and examples, and ultimately nudges you toward smarter decisions. These nudges frame more desirable decisions for you to face by identifying the objectives for your decisions and generating superior alternatives to those initially considered. All of the nudges are based on psychology and behavioral economics research and are accessible to all readers. The new concept of (...) a decision opportunity is introduced, which involves creating a decision that you desire to face. Solving a decision opportunity improves your life, whereas resolving a decision problem only restores the quality of your life to that before the decision problem occurred. We all can improve our decision-making and reap the better quality of life that results. This book shows you how. (shrink)

This report provides a critique of the target article's premise that measures of rigidity are biased against religiously committed individuals. The report is found to have serious conceptual and methodological problems that undermine its contribution. Conceptually, the paper does not demonstrate that rigidity scales are indeed biased, as that term is used in the field of psychometrics. Methodologically, the paper suffers from multiple weaknesses, including not demonstrating that the "translated" items are comparable to the original items they are intended to (...) replace, the presence of multi-colinearity among the measures, and inconsistent patterns of convergent correlations for the "new" scale. As such, the target article is unable to provide any credible scientific support for its claims. In response, this paper argues that a more sophisticated understanding of the constructs of rigidity and religious commitment can make sense of this claimed "bias". (shrink)

The twenty-third volume of RSSSR includes a landmark collection of papers on Theism and Non-Theism in Psychological Science, as well as papers on other key areas in the study of religion such as spirituality and social capital.

The 25th volume of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion continues to provide readers with an interdisciplinary assortment of high quality research studies aimed at capturing salient, contemporary trends in the field. The current volume presents a special section examining the role of spiritual and religious themes in sexuality research.

The natural progression of a behavioral scientist is from confidence in “measurement under controlled conditions of observation” to a growing skepticism in the usefulness of the results. Add to this the change from studies of rat subjects to a closing chapter on “What is Human Nature?” and you describe the progression of Jay N. Eacker in his professional writings. His doctoral dissertation prepared for Washington State University in 1966 was The Relation of Visual Complexity, Maintenance Illumination, and Test Illumination to (...) Behaviorally Produced Illumination Changes. The subjects: 144 male albino rats 90 days old. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the basics of the measurement of human dignity at the individual level, as well as within social contexts such as teams and organizations. In accordance with the prevailing literature, we define human dignity as the unconditional belief in the intrinsic value of life. Based on this, we established a model that understands dignity as a latent construct by evaluating personal sense of worth as well as behaviors that either violate or honor such an intrinsic value (...) in social contexts. We developed and tested a 3-factor measure of dignity. The first factor assessed a personal sense of dignity (individual level), the second the extent to which leadership honors dignity and how work teams themselves express dignity to their members. The third factor assessed the extent to which the organizational culture honors and protects the dignity of its members. We examined the internal reliability, temporal stability, convergent, divergent, and predictive validity of our scales and presented a psychometrically sound assessment tool of intrinsic value for organizations, teams, and individuals. (shrink)

Several authors have hypothesized that completely positive maps should provide the means for generalizing quantum dynamics. In a critical analysis of that proposal, we show that such maps are incompatible with the standard phenomenological theory of spin relaxation and that the theoretical argument which has been offered as justification for the hypothesis is fallacious.

Published in 1913 as _La Philosophie Bergsonienne_, this incisive critique of the thought of Henri Bergson was Jacques Maritain's first book. In it he shows himself already to have an authoritative grasp of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and an uncanny ability to demonstrate its relevance to alternative philosophical systems such as that of Henri Bergson. Volume 1 in the series _The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain_, this edition faithfully reproduces the 1955 translation published by the Philosophical Library. It (...) would be difficult to overestimate Bergson’s role in extricating French philosophy from the deadening materialism that dominated the Sorbonne. It was that cultural milieu that brought Maritain and his wife Raïssa to the brink of suicide. They drew back for two major reasons. First were the lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France, in which the Maritains found a defense of metaphysics, of the transcendent beyond the material, within which they could find meaning in life. The second reason was their conversion to Catholicism, a move they and many of their contemporaries made after being introduced to Bergson’s work. Soon after his conversion, Jacques Maritain immersed himself in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and was struck by the comparative weaknesses of Bergson. This book is Maritain’s relentless criticism of the philosophy of the man whose lectures had meant so much to him. Its ferocity marks it as a young man’s book, written in part to exorcize the defects of Bergson’s philosophy as they were understood by one now schooled in Thomism. Twenty-five years later, Maritain, while not retracting his criticisms, regretted their intemperance and, as a result, moderated his assessment of Bergson in a long preface to the second edition. In it, we find a philosopher who mastered his craft and a critic of rare perception and refinement. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility that linear dynamical maps might be used to describe the energy-conserving, entropy-increasing motions which occur in closed thermodynamic systems as they approach canonical thermal equilibrium. ForN-level quantum systems withN>2, we prove that no such maps exist which are independent of the initial state.

Subjects enrolled in studies testing high risk interventions for incurable or progressive brain diseases may be vulnerable to deficiencies in informed consent, such as the therapeutic misconception. However, the definition and measurement of the therapeutic misconception is a subject of continuing debate. Our qualitative pilot study of persons enrolled in a phase I trial of gene transfer for Parkinson disease suggests potential avenues for both measuring and preventing the therapeutic misconception. Building on earlier literature on the topic, we developed and (...) tested an interview guide that focuses on how the subjects decided to participate, emphasizing the integration of subjects’ various statements that are relevant to assessing the therapeutic misconception, rather than evaluating them as isolated statements. The results indicate that a subject’s understanding of the purpose of research is best explored in juxtaposition to the subject’s motivation for participating. (shrink)

An underlying assumption of default-interventionist dual-process theory (DI-DPT) of reasoning is that humans tend to act as cognitive misers. Although miserly cognitive processing occurs when indiv...