This book contains new essays in honor of Melvin J. Lerner, a pioneer in the psychological study of justice. The contributors to this volume are internationally renowned scholars from psychology, business, and law. They examine the role of justice motivation in a wide variety of contexts, including workplace violence, affirmative action programs, helping or harming innocent victims and how people react to their own fate. Contributors explore fundamental issues such as whether people's interest in justice is motivated by self-interest (...) or a genuine concern for the welfare of others, when and why people feel a need to punish transgressors, how a concern for justice emerges during the development of societies and individuals, and the relation of justice motivation to moral motivation. How an understanding of justice motivation can contribute to the amelioration of major social problems is also examined. (shrink)

This volume argues that the commitment to justice is a fundamental motive and that, although it is typically portrayed as serving self-interest, it sometimes takes priority over self-interest. To make this case, the authors discuss the way justice emerges as a personal contract in children's development; review a wide range of research studying the influences of the justice motive on evaluative, emotional and behavioral responses; and detail common experiences that illustrate the impact of the justice motive. Through an extensive critique (...) of the research on which some alternative models of justice are based, the authors present a model that describes the ways in which motives of justice and self-interest are integrated in people's lives. They close with a discussion of some positive and negative consequences of the commitment to justice. (shrink)

A four dimensional approach to Newtonian physics is used to distinguish between a number of different structures for Newtonian space-time and a number of different formulations of Newtonian gravitational theory. This in turn makes possible an in-depth study of the meaning and status of Newton's Law of Inertia and a detailed comparison of the Newtonian and Einsteinian versions of the Law of Inertia and the Newtonian and Einsteinian treatments of gravitational forces. Various claims about the status of Newton's Law of (...) Inertia are critically examined including these: the Law of Inertia is not an empirical law but a definition; it is not a law simpliciter but a family of schemata; it is a convention and gravitational forces exist only by convention; it is (or is not) redundant; the concepts it embodies can be dispensed with in favor of operationally defined entities; it is unique for a given theory. More generally, the paper demonstrates the importance of space-time structure for the philosophy of space and time and provides support for a realist interpretation of space-time theories. (shrink)

Caplan & Waters's arguments for separate working memory subsystems for “interpretive” and “post-interpretive” comprehension processes do not have a solid empirical basis. The likely involvement of a separate phonological loop makes their memory-load data irrelevant to theory evaluation, and the lack of statistical power from nonoptimal experimental designs and analyses unfairly reduces the chances of detecting the relevant interactions.

Economists tend to view ignorance as ?rational,? neglecting the possibility that ignorance is unintentional. This oversight is reflected in economists? model of ?information search,? which can be fruitfully contrasted with ?information browsing.? Information searches are designed to discover unknown knowns, whose value is calculable ex ante, such that this value justifies the cost of the search. In this model of human information acquisition, there is no primal or ?radical? ignorance that might prevent people from knowing which information to look for, (...) lacking omniscience. Unlike ignorance that is rationally chosen on the basis of an accurate cost/benefit calculation, radical ignorance can explain human error. An account of error as grounded in radical ignorance bypasses the need to appeal to irrationality in order to explain economic (and other) mistakes. (shrink)

Economists tend to view ignorance as “rational,” neglecting the possibility that ignorance is unintentional. This oversight is reflected in economists’ model of “information search,” which can be fruitfully contrasted with “information browsing.” Information searches are designed to discover unknown knowns, whose value is calculable ex ante, such that this value justifies the cost of the search. In this model of human information acquisition, there is no primal or “radical” ignorance that might prevent people from knowing which information to look for, (...) lacking omniscience. Unlike ignorance that is rationally chosen on the basis of an accurate cost/benefit calculation, radical ignorance can explain human error. An account of error as grounded in radical ignorance bypasses the need to appeal to irrationality in order to explain economic (and other) mistakes. (shrink)

Both unipolar and bipolar depression have been linked with impairments in executive functioning. In particular, mood symptom severity is associated with differences in common EF, a latent measure of general EF abilities. The relationship between mood disorders and EF is particularly salient in adolescence and young adulthood when the ongoing development of EF intersects with a higher risk of mood disorder onset. However, it remains unclear if common EF impairments have associations with specific symptom dimensions of mood pathology such as (...) blunted positive affect, mood instability, or physiological arousal, or if differences in common EF more broadly relate to what is shared across various symptom domains, such as general negative affect or distress. To address this question, bifactor models can be applied to simultaneously examine the shared and unique contributions of particular mood symptom dimensions. However, no studies to our knowledge have examined bifactor models of mood symptoms in relation to measures of common EF. This study examined associations between common EF and general vs. specific symptom dimensions using structural equation modeling in adolescents and young adults with varying severity of mood symptoms. A General Depression factor capturing shared variance across symptoms statistically predicted lower Common EF. Additionally, a factor specific to physiological arousal was associated with lower Common EF. Anhedonia-specific and Mania-specific factors were not significantly related to Common EF. Altogether, these results indicate that deficits in common EF are driven by, or reflect, general features of mood pathology that are shared across symptom dimensions but are also specifically associated with physiological arousal. (shrink)

To be free is to escape all limitations and obstacles—or so we think at first. But if we probe further, we discover that freedom embraces its own necessities, a set of conditions without which it could not exist. _Freedom's Embrace_ explores these necessities of freedom. J. Melvin Woody surveys competing conceptions of freedom and traces debates about the nature and reality of freedom to confusions about knowledge, humanity, and nature that are rooted in some of the most fundamental assumptions (...) of modern Western thought. The preemption of freedom as an exclusively human privilege with all nature relegated to mechanical necessity is a fatal error that renders both humanity and nature equally unintelligible. What distinguishes human beings from other animals is not freedom but the use of symbols, which vastly extends the range of available options and enables us to envision freedom as an ideal by which customary institutions and norms may be judged and transformed. By carefully surveying its necessary conditions and limitations, Woody reconciles the salient competing conceptions of freedom and weaves them together into a richer and broader theory that resolves old controversies and opens the way toward an ethics of freedom that can meet the challenges of relativism and nihilism that arise from recognizing the historicity and malleability of culture. (shrink)

People often judge it unacceptable to directly harm a person, even when this is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome, such as saving five other lives. We demonstrate that similar judgments arise when people consider damage to owned objects. In two experiments, participants considered dilemmas where saving five inanimate objects required destroying one. Participants judged this unacceptable when it required violating another’s ownership rights, but not otherwise. They also judged that sacrificing another’s object was less acceptable as a means (...) than as a side-effect; judgments did not depend on whether property damage involved personal force. These findings inform theories of moral decision-making. They show that utilitarian judgment can be decreased without physical harm to persons, and without personal force. The findings also show that the distinction between means and side-effects influences the acceptability of damaging objects, and that ownership impacts utilitarian moral judgment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 155-157 [Access article in PDF] Dispensing With the Dynamic Conscious J. Melvin Woody FREUD'S THEORY OF UNCONSCIOUS mental processes depends upon an extremely narrow conception of consciousness. O'Brien and Jureidini rightly focus attention on the limitations of that conception and argue that it is time to dispense with the resultant conception of the unconscious. Of course, scientists often give narrower, technical meanings (...) to ordinary words like matter and space, but in the midst of all the recently revived psychological and philosophical debates about the nature and existence of consciousness, the persistence of Freud's way of distinguishing the two can only breed confusion. Attempts to shore up or defend the dynamic unconscious of psychoanalytic theory by appeal to discussions of unconscious rules and processes in cognitive psychology attests to the potential for confusion thus spawned. In an early issue of this journal, James Phillips and I charted the differences between the neurophysiologic, cognitive, and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious (1995). Like O'Brien and Jureidini, we concluded that the evidence of a cognitive unconscious does not support the postulation of a dynamic unconscious. O'Brien and Jureidini go further in arguing that the two are incompatible. Elsewhere, I have argued that the Freudian unconscious is a hermeneutic myth, the result of a misunderstanding of the nature of interpretation (2003). Because I am in substantial agreement with them and already on record with arguments convergent with theirs on both these fronts, I will focus here on the source of confusion in the dynamic conception of consciousness and on their illuminating exploration of its limitations.Toward the end of his 1915 essay, "The Unconscious," Freud explains that the difference between conscious and unconscious thought hinges on the role of language: What we could permissibly call the conscious idea of the object can now be split up into the idea of the word (verbal idea) and the idea of the thing (concrete idea)... It strikes us all at once that now we know what is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious idea. The two are not, as we supposed, different records of the same content situate in different parts of the mind, nor yet different functional states of cathexis in the same part; but the conscious idea comprises the concrete idea plus the verbal idea corresponding to it, whilst the unconscious idea is that of the thing alone.... Now too, we are in a position to state precisely what it is that repression denies to the rejected idea in the transference neuroses—namely, translation of the idea into words which are to remain attached to the object. The idea which is not put into words or the mental act which has not received hyper-cathexis then remains in the unconscious in a state of repression. (pp. 201-202) This restriction of consciousness to verbal thought processes is not simply an innocent stipulative definition. It has perniciously misleading implications. For one thing, as Antonio Damasio points out in The Feeling of What Happens, it means that all other animals are unconscious for want of any language. Damasio recalls that when he asked what produces consciousness while he was a medical student, [End Page 155] Curiously, I always got the same answer; language did it. I was told that creatures without language were limited to their uncognizant existence but not we fortunate humans because language made us know... The answer sounded too easy, far too simple for something which I then imagined unconquerably complex, and also quite implausible, given what I saw when I went to the zoo. (Damasio 1999, 107) As Damasio notes, the trouble with explaining consciousness as a function of language is not just that it denies awareness of experience to all other animals, thus perpetuating the Cartesian view of animals as automatons, but that for all its complexities, language is far too simple to encompass the full complex range of conscious experience. O'Brien and Jureidini do well to highlight how much of our conscious experience never finds linguistic expression, indeed, how much experience seems to... (shrink)

One must freely admit that there is here a sort of circle from which, so it seems, there is no way of escape. In order the order of efficient causes, we assume that we are free so that we may think of ourselves as subject to moral laws in the order of ends. And we think of ourselves as subject to these laws because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of the will. Freedom and self-legislation of the will are both (...) autonomy and are hence reciprocal concepts.Post-traumatic stress disorder stems from an overwhelming experience of complete helplessness. The traumatized victim has utterly lost all sense of agency. He or she may well dissociate from that helpless, passive self and become... (shrink)

In About Time, William Friedman provides a new integrated look at research on the psychological processes that underlie the human experience of time.

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love--which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace. The first (...) systematic study of Fromm's influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker's most important works, especially _Escape from Freedom_ and _The Art of Loving_, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm's political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm's support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm's direct contact with high officials in the American government on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm's key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of "social character," in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm's conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker's historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been. (shrink)

This volume brings Cassirer s work into the arena of contemporary debates both within and outside of philosophy. All articles offer a fresh and contemporary look at one of the most prolific and important philosophers of the 20th century. The papers are authored by a wide array of scholars working in different areas, such as epistemology, philosophy of culture, sociology, psychopathology, philosophy of science and aesthetics.".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mourning or MelancholiaJ. Melvin Woody (bio)Keywords“objective correlative”, depression, grief, cognitive-affective dissonanceIn a celebrated and controversial critical essay, T.S. Eliot faults Shakespeare's Hamlet on the grounds that the playwright has not provided sufficient “objective correlative” for the moods of his melancholy Dane. For lack of the “complete adequacy of the external to the emotion” that he finds in Shakespeare's other tragedies, Eliot judges that “the play is almost certainly (...) an artistic failure” (Eliot 1921, 101, 98). Dr. Bailey's explanation of Colin's melancholy provokes parallel critical reflections. When his initial expectation that he will discover the cause of depression in traumatic battle experiences in Iraq proves groundless, he finds that cause, instead, in the very absence of traumatic experiences. I cannot but wonder whether the lack of opportunity to prove heroic provides an adequate objective correlative for Colin's mood.To be sure, persistent sadness cannot be regarded as pathological if adequate reasons for sadness also persist. There lies the difference between mourning and melancholia. As Freud remarks at the outset of his comparison of the two, “although grief involves grave departures from the normal attitudes to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a morbid condition and hand the mourner over to medical treatment.” Even though the mourner displays almost all the same symptoms as melancholia, where there is a recognizable objective correlative, we look upon any interference “as inadvisable or even harmful... because we know so well how to explain it... this attitude does not seem to us pathological” (Freud 1963, 165). Neither the absence of battlefield trauma nor the lack of heroic opportunities seems sufficient occasion for Colin's sadness. But (perhaps) that very explanatory insufficiency justifies regarding his plight as pathological, as a case of melancholia rather than mourning and therefore as warranting psychiatric interference. Insofar as that is true, the self-criticisms engendered by his trauma-free stint in Iraq might best be regarded as an effect rather than cause of his depression. Freud found this sort of “fall in self esteem” that “finds utterance in self reproaches and self revilings” to be the singular feature that distinguishes melancholia from mourning.” In the clinical picture of melancholia, dissatisfaction with the self on moral grounds is far the most outstanding feature” (Freud 1963, 167, 169).Anyone who has dealt with depression will recognize such feelings as standard symptoms. The DSM- IV cites “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt” as one of the defining criteria of a major depressive episode and “low self esteem” as a diagnostic criterion of dysthymic disorder.Freud speculated that the melancholic's attacks upon himself actually aim at an abandoned but internalized love object. But he acknowledged [End Page 245] that his speculation was based on “a small number of cases the psychogenic nature of which was indisputable,” and that some cases of melancholia suggest more somatic causes. Recent psychiatry has veered sharply toward somatic causes and cures, although the psychogenic nature of depression associated with traumatic stress is generally acknowledged. But in the absence of trauma and stress, as in Colin's case, a somatic account seems more plausible than supposing that the depression is triggered by that very absence.The contrast between somatic and psychological sources of depression threatens to prove distracting, however. We are not faced with a simple either/or here, and however we sort out the genetic, environmental, somatic, and psychological sources of depression in any given case, the depression itself is always a profoundly incarnate experience. Moreover, what seems of especial pertinence to this case, the loss of self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness and guilt seem to prevail regardless of the particular balance of causes of the depression and can, therefore, be regarded as characteristic symptoms rather than explanatory causes of the mood. And the blackness of melancholy typically extends well beyond such negative self-judgments to cast a shadow on the depressive's whole world and future.Epistemology and pathology converge in the clinical diagnosis of depression. Depression seems pathological insofar as it seems unreasonable in light of the circumstances as we apprehend them. Of course, the person who is depressed... (shrink)

Lloyd Wells' four examples of loss of self challenge both philosophers and clinicians to ponder just what it is that has been lost in such cases. If a self has been lost, who lost it? And how can personal identity be so insecure that it can be lost in so many different ways? Empiricist thinkers, both Western and Eastern, have questioned the very existence of a self; much recent thought about the nature of the self has converged on notions that (...) it is not a substantial reality, but a narrative, the product of the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives so that we can knit together our experiences into a continuous plot. Owen Flanagan and Valerie Hardcastle have already brought one version of this theory to bear on one of Wells' cases and James Phillips explores the capacity of narrative theory to account for each of these cases in an accompanying essay. In this essay, I challenge the adequacy of narrative theories of the self in general and their application to these particular cases. The details of Wells' cases highlight the limitations of narrative theories to discursive, secondary process thought by directing attention to the richer and more expressively forceful resources of metaphor and nondiscursive forms of symbolism. Narrative unity or continuity is no guarantee against experiences of the loss of self. The monological character of narrative masks the sociality of the self, the ways in which each individual self is constituted and threatened by interactions with other selves. I argue for the power of drama, opera, music, dance, and spatial forms of symbolism to cope with the diversity of what Flanagan has dubbed the multiplex self, (Flanagan 1994) especially when narrative fails. Language and narrative certainly play a crucial role in human self-consciousness. But human imagination and art command other resources as well and a theory that acknowledges their contributions can accept and incorporate the insights of narrative theories without confining itself to the limitations of story telling. (shrink)

Recently, Rueger and Sharp (1996) and Koperski (1998) have been concerned to show that certain procedural accounts of model confirmation are compromised by non-linear dynamics. We suggest that the issues raised are better approached by considering whether chaotic data analysis methods allow for reliable inference from data. We provide a framework and an example of this approach.

Conflicts of interest have an erosive effect on trust in science, damaging first the attitude of the public toward scientists and their research, but also weakening the trusting interdependence of scientists. Disclosure is recognized as the key tool for management of conflicts, but rules with sanctions must be improved, new techniques for avoidance of financial conflicts by alternative funding of evaluative research must be sought, and there must be new thinking about institutional conflicts of interest. Our profession is education, and (...) both the public and research professionals of all ages would benefit from greater understanding of how science should and does work. (shrink)

Practical issues throughout scientific research can be found to have an ethical aspect. There is a gray area in which scientific error (“honest error”) may be difficult to distinguish from unacceptably poor research practice or an unethical failure to follow scientific norms. Further, there is no clear margin between deceptive practices which are widely accepted and those which must be considered fraudulent. Practical problems arise in matters of data management and presentation, authorship, publication practices, “grantsmanship”, and rights of research trainees, (...) as well as the well-recognized areas of human and animal experimentation. Beyond the gray areas, the legal definition of research misconduct is discussed in relation to research fraud, and the latest proposed definition of the Commission on Research Integrity is briefly reviewed. It is noted that the standards of ethical research are changing. Finally, there is a comment on the idea of institutional integrity in research, and the critical role of the mentor in transmitting research standards to the next generation. (shrink)

The sensible response to conflicts of interest is impaired by misconceptions and sloppy usage of terminology. Apparent and potential are widely misused modifiers for conflicts. Excessive legislative focus on financial interests limits understanding of the scope and significance of researchers' conflicts of interest. There is no moral or ethical failing in having a conflict of interest; the problem occurs when conflicts are not disclosed appropriately and when conflicts are allowed to bias research, teaching, or practice. Avoidance and prevention should be (...) applied to bias, not conflicts. (shrink)