For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

Emphasizing the predictive success and practical utility of psychological science is an admirable goal but it will require a substantive shift in how we design research. Applied research often assumes that findings are transferable to all practices, insensitive to variation between implementations. We describe efforts to quantify and close this practice-to-practice gap in education research.

Cognitive science has been traditionally organized around the individual as the basic unit of cognition. Despite developments in areas such as communication, human–machine interaction, group behavior, and community organization, the individual-centric approach heavily dominates both cognitive research and its application. A promising direction for cognitive science is the study of augmented intelligence, or the way social and technological systems interact with and extend individual cognition. The cognitive science of augmented intelligence holds promise in helping society tackle major real-world challenges that (...) can only be discovered and solved by teams made of individuals and machines with complementary skills who can productively collaborate with each other. (shrink)

Chronic stroke survivors with severe contralesional arm paresis face numerous challenges to performing activities of daily living, which largely rely on the use of the less-affected ipsilesional arm. While use of the ipsilesional arm is often encouraged as a compensatory strategy in rehabilitation, substantial evidence indicates that motor control deficits in this arm can be functionally limiting, suggesting a role for remediation of this arm. Previous research has indicated that the nature of ipsilesional motor control deficits vary with hemisphere of (...) damage and with the severity of contralesional paresis. Thus, in order to design rehabilitation that accounts for these deficits in promoting function, it is critical to understand the relative contributions of both ipsilesional and contralesional arm motor deficits to functional independence in stroke survivors with severe contralesional paresis. We now examine motor deficits in each arm of severely paretic chronic stroke survivors with unilateral damage to determine whether hemisphere-dependent deficits are correlated with functional independence. Clinical evaluation of contralesional, paretic arm impairment was conducted with the upper extremity portion of the Fugl-Meyer assessment. Ipsilesional arm motor performance was evaluated using the Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test, grip strength, and ipsilesional high-resolution kinematic analysis during a visually targeted reaching task. Functional independence was measured with the Barthel Index. Functional independence was better correlated with ipsilesional than contralesional arm motor performance in the left hemisphere damage group [JTHFT: [r = −0.73, p = 0.017]; grip strength: [r = 0.64, p = 0.047]], and by contralesional arm impairment in the right hemisphere damage group [UEFM: [r = 0.66, p = 0.040]]. Ipsilesional arm kinematics were correlated with functional independence in the left hemisphere damage group only. Examination of hemisphere-dependent motor correlates of functional independence showed that ipsilesional arm deficits were important in determining functional outcomes in individuals with left hemisphere damage only, suggesting that functional independence in right hemisphere damaged participants was affected by other factors. (shrink)

A standard objection to act utilitarian theories is that they are not helpful in deciding what it is morally permissible for us to do when we actually have to make a choice between alternatives. That is, such theories are worthless as decision procedures. A standard reply to this objection is that act utilitarian theories can be evaluated solely as theories about right-making characteristics and, when so evaluated, their inadequacy as decision procedures is irrelevant. Even if somewhat unappealing, this is an (...) effective reply to the standard objection. (shrink)

We consider a situation in which individuals search for accurate decisions without direct feedback on their accuracy, but with information about the decisions made by peers in their group. The “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis states that the average judgment of many individuals can give a good estimate of, for example, the outcomes of sporting events and the answers to trivia questions. Two conditions for the application of wisdom of crowds are that estimates should be independent and unbiased. Here, we study (...) how individuals integrate social information when answering trivia questions with answers that range between 0% and 100%. We find that, consistent with the wisdom of crowds hypothesis, average performance improves with group size. However, individuals show a consistent bias to produce estimates that are insufficiently extreme. We find that social information provides significant, albeit small, improvement to group performance. Outliers with answers far from the correct answer move toward the position of the group mean. Given that these outliers also tend to be nearer to 50% than do the answers of other group members, this move creates group polarization away from 50%. By looking at individual performance over different questions we find that some people are more likely to be affected by social influence than others. There is also evidence that people differ in their competence in answering questions, but lack of competence is not significantly correlated with willingness to change guesses. We develop a mathematical model based on these results that postulates a cognitive process in which people first decide whether to take into account peer guesses, and if so, to move in the direction of these guesses. The size of the move is proportional to the distance between their own guess and the average guess of the group. This model closely approximates the distribution of guess movements and shows how outlying incorrect opinions can be systematically removed from a group resulting, in some situations, in improved group performance. However, improvement is only predicted for cases in which the initial guesses of individuals in the group are biased. (shrink)

Written with the general reader in mind, this collection will prove useful by both scholar and student, and will lead the general reader to encounter one of the ...

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. This fourth edition has been updated with new examples, including a discussion of Spygate by the New England Patriots and recent discoveries on the use of performance enhancing drugs by top athletes. Two additional authors, Cesar R. Torres and Peter (...) F. Hager, bring to this edition a discussion of the moral issues involved in youth sports and the ethics of being a fan, as well as a fresh perspective on the theories of broad internalism and the quest for excellence. Furthermore, major criticisms of broad internalism by philosophers William J. Morgan and Scott Kretchmar add a new dimension to the discussion on the moral foundations of winning. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of research practices typical of experimental philosophy. To that end, it presents a review of methodological issues that have proved crucial to the quality of research in the biobehavioral sciences. It discusses various shortcomings in the experimental philosophy literature related to (1) the credibility of self-report questionnaires, (2) the validity and reliability of measurement, (3) the adherence to appropriate procedures for sampling, random assignment, and handling of participants, and (4) the meticulousness of study reporting. It (...) argues that the future standing of experimental philosophy will hinge upon improvements in research methods. (shrink)

The very expertise with which psychologists wield their tools for achieving laboratory control may have had the unwelcome effect of blinding psychologists to the possibilities of discovering principles of behavior without conducting experiments. When creatively interrogated, a diverse range of large, real-world data sets provides powerful diagnostic tools for revealing principles of human judgment, perception, categorization, decision-making, language use, inference, problem solving, and representation. Examples of these data sets include patterns of website links, dictionaries, logs of group interactions, collections of (...) images and image tags, text corpora, history of financial transactions, trends in twitter tag usage and propagation, patents, consumer product sales, performance in high-stakes sporting events, dialect maps, and scientific citations. The goal of this issue is to present some exemplary case studies of mining naturally existing data sets to reveal important principles and phenomena in cognitive science, and to discuss some of the underlying issues involved with conducting traditional experiments, analyses of naturally occurring data, computational modeling, and the synthesis of all three methods. (shrink)

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their ...

Increasingly, US-sponsored research is carried out in developing countries, but how US Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) approach the challenges they then face is unclear.METHODS: I conducted in-depth interviews of about 2 hours each, with 46 IRB chairs, directors, administrators and members. I contacted the leadership of 60 IRBs in the United States (US) (every fourth one in the list of the top 240 institutions by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding), and interviewed IRB leaders from 34 (55%).RESULTS: US IRBs face (...) ethical and logistical challenges in interpreting and applying principles and regulations in developing countries, given economic and health disparities, and limited contextual knowledge. These IRBs perceive wide variations in developing world IRBs/RECs' quality, resources and training; and health systems in some countries may have long-standing practices of corruption. These US IRBs often know little of local contexts, regulations and standards of care, and struggle with understandings of other cultures' differing views of autonomy, and risks and benefits of daily life. US IRBs thus face difficult decisions, including how to interpret principles, how much to pay subjects and how much sustainability to require from researchers. IRB responses and solutions include trying to maintain higher standards for developing world research, obtain cultural expertise, build IRB infrastructure abroad, communicate with foreign IRBs, and ‘negotiate’ for maximum benefits for participants and fearing ‘worst-case scenarios’.CONCLUSIONS: US and foreign IRBs confront a series of tensions and dilemmas in reviewing developing world research. These data have important implications for increased education of IRBs/RECs and researchers in the US and abroad, and for research and practice. (shrink)

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not (...) just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

More than two hundred years after the publication of his seminal The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer's influence is still felt in philosophy and beyond. As one of the most readable and central philosophers of the 19th century, his work inspired the most influential thinkers and artists of his time, including Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner. Though known primarily as a herald of philosophical pessimism, the full range of his contributions is displayed here in a collection of thirty-one essays (...) on the forefront of Schopenhauer scholarship. Essays written by contemporary Schopenhauer scholars explore his central notions, including the will, empirical knowledge, and the sublime, and widens to the interplay of ethics and religion with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Authors confront difficult aspects of Schopenhauer's work and legacy--for example, the extent to which Schopenhauer adopted ideas from his predecessors compared to how much was original and visionary in his central claim that reality is a blind, senseless "will," the effectiveness of his philosophy in the field of scientific explanation and extrasensory phenomena, and the role of beauty and sublimity in his outlook. Essays also challenge prevailing assumptions about Schopenhauer by exploring the fundamental role of compassion in his moral theory, the Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist aspects of his philosophy, and the importance of asceticism in his views on the meaning of life. The collection is an internationally constituted work that reflects upon Schopenhauer's philosophy with authors presently working across the globe. It demonstrates fully the richness of Schopenhauer's work and his lasting impact on philosophy and psychoanalysis, as well as upon music, the visual arts, and literature. (shrink)

The nature of measurement is a topic of central concern in the philosophy of science and, indeed, measurement is the essential link between science and mathematics. Professor Ellis's book, originally published in 1966, is the first general exposition of the philosophical and logical principles involved in measurement since N. R. Campbell's Principles of Measurement and Calculation, and P. W. Bridgman's Dimensional Analysis. Professor Ellis writes from an empiricist standpoint. His object is to distinguish and define the basic concepts in measurement, (...) for example: scale, quantity, unit. dimension, number and probability. He discusses the problem of classifying scales of measurement and the special logical problems associated with each kind of scale. A translation of mach's Critique on the Concept of Temperature, which gives his views on the nature of measurement more fully than in any of his other works, is given as an appendix. (shrink)