This research examines the association between attitudes on cheating and cognitive moral development. In this research, we use Rest's (1979a) Defining Issues Test, the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (Authors) and Academic Integrity Index (Authors); the last two are adaptations of the DIT. A total of 220 students from three universities participated in the study (66 psychology majors and 154 business majors). The data indicate that 66.4 percent of the students reported that they cheated in high school, college, or both high (...) school and college. Psychology majors scored higher than business majors on both the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979a) and the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (AHS, Authors). Using factor analysis, we found significant associations between students' ratings of the importance considerations present in the three cheating scenarios and their estimates of whether cheating would occur (i.e., the Academic Integrity Index). Finally, using logistic regression, we found that the scores on the Attitudes on Honesty Scale and Academic Integrity Index associate with the self-reported cheating behavior of college students. (shrink)

La publication de la première traduction française de The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) de Samuel Butler, en 2009, suscite un nouvel examen du livre et de sa thèse volontairement provocatrice : l’Odyssée aurait été écrite par une jeune femme. Les préfaces aux éditions anglaises de 1967 et 2004 soulignent la justesse des interprétations de Samuel Butler relatives au style et au ton du poème, ainsi que sa manière de revendiquer son propre positionnement critique – ceci bien avant que la (...) démarche soit théorisée par les études académiques modernes. En ce qui concerne la place fondamentale accordée aux personnages féminins et à leurs points de vue dans l’épopée, l’article propose ici une alternative à la thèse insolite de Butler, rejetée par presque tous les spécialistes, en faisant état des recherches actuelles qui s’intéressent à la réception du poème, à la mixité de l’auditoire et à l’existence de traditions poétiques orales spécifiquement féminines. (shrink)

This paper first explores a number of themes in the psychological system developed by the Austrian-American psychologist, Egon Brunswik, focusing on those that had a formative influence on Social Judgement Theory. We show that while perception was a recurring ground for Brunswik's empirical and theoretical work, his psychology was a psychology of cognition in the broadest sense. Next, two major themes in Social Judgement Theory functionalism and probabilism are described, and the elegant formulation known as Brunswik's Lens Model is introduced. (...) Some methodological and theoretical implications of these themes are presented. The paper concludes with Hammond's Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), which is a theory describing modes of cognition and how those modes are influenced by task characteristics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC THEORY AND THE PROGRAM OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Lillian E. Dykes Memphis, Tennessee No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says things mat will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims.... (William James, The Variety ofReligious Experience) Is it possible to live nonviolently? The works of René Girard involve us in understanding of the Gospel's revelation of the mechanisms of violence (...) and nonviolence, but how is one to begin applying the Gospel to end violence? If Girard shows us thatviolence is the basis ofall culture and religion, where does one find a new model today? Ifthe shift from human to transcendent mediation results only in personal destruction, then why bother? IfGirard is correct, and the power ofthe nonviolent Gospel is moving like a vapor through the world, where are the people who are living non-violently? Is there corroboration for Girard's statement, "A new kind ofhumanity is in the process of gestation; it will be both very similar to and very different from the one featured in the dreams of our Utopian thinkers" (Things Hidden 445)? Ifit were possible to show that someone, somewhere were able to live in community without the protection ofscapegoating, following their lead might save us from the spirals ofviolence we arecreating. Ifone could find a design or an application ofGirard's theories, with confirmation that the resultis peace, would people be willingto consider giving upthe protection of violence? Some demonstration that Girard's understanding of Gospel Lillian E. Dykes91 non-violence is practical and possible seems necessary in order to hasten a non-violent cure for our violent world. Perhaps we must accept on faith that it is possible to live non-violently. Ifit were not, then why would the Gospels have ever been written and why have they persisted? In my examination ofhistorical applications ofnonviolence, it seemed that whenever non-violence was implemented, the results were remarkable. Of course, we think of Jesus, Paul, Francis, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King...but they are all dead and most ofthem were murdered. Yet there is a modern community where Girard's theories ofnon-violence through the relinquishment ofhuman mediation is being lived out daily. And, thankfully, it is a flourishing community that experiences healing and renewal through the practice ofwhat René Girard terms "the abandonment ofmimetic desire" (Things Hidden 430). The world is witnessing the healing power of non-violence without knowingthatGospel non-violence is involved. Millions ofmen andwomen are attempting to live non-violently in the "Utopian" community ofGirard and the Gospels without havingread Girard and withoutthe need to believe in the truth ofthe Gospels. It seems to me that the twentieth century has seen the establishment of a community not based upon scapegoating but, rather, upon having been scapegoated. It is a fellowship ofthe Spirit that distinguishes itself by being a fellowship ofbelievers without "religious" scapegoating. Itresembles first century Christianity and is experiencingthe same explosive growth. This phenomenon is what I call the non-violent "religion" ofAlcoholics Anonymous. In this Fellowship of A. A. we can see what might be called, in Girardian terms, a community of scapegoats. Since 1935 there has been a laboratory wherein the theories of René Girard are beingapplied. Bill Wilson, anothervisionary, intuitedthe underlying mimetic principles which Girard shows us, and implemented his understandings in orderto escape the violence1 ofhis addiction to alcohol. Though he did not articulate what he discovered in the way that René Girard has, Wilson found a way to break free ofmimetic desire. He knew that to continue to drink would result in his death (AA 13). Though he did not speak ofhis dilemma in terms ofmimetic crisis, he found a way out of alcoholism by exchanging the mediator of his desires. What Girard discovered and now describes is demonstrated by the practical applications 1In the words of Jack Alexander, "There is a close resemblance between the criminal psychopath and the alcoholic mind. Both are grandiose, resentful, defiant, and hating of authority; both unconsciously destroy themselves trying to destroy others" (Pass it on 364). 92Mimetic Theory andAlcoholic Anonymous contained in the writings of Wilson, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, with its Twelve Steps, and the Twelve Traditions... (shrink)

Quite honestly, it is not easy to see what all the fuss is about. Sir Julian Huxley was clearly impressed. “A landmark in modern thought which we cannot afford to pass by” wrote John Stewart Collis in the Sunday Times, and the following week Arnold Toynbee in the Observer wrote: “This is a great book. If it is eclipsed by anything, it is by the spirit of the author, which shines through it”. The French reaction to the original text was (...) at least equally enthusiastic. André Rousseaux in Figaro Littéraire says: “Not since the 12th. Century has there been such a satisfying exposition of the perfect understanding between the material world and that of Christ Incarnate”. One wonders how much of the enthusiasm is due to the fact that Father Teilhard was not allowed to publish his philosophical thought in his own lifetime. The facts of his life are well known. Born in 1881, he joined the Jesuits in 1899 and was ordained. in 1912. Prehistory, geology, palaeontology, anthropology, were his chief intellectual interests, and he took his doctorate in the Sorbonne in 1922. He became professor of geology in the Institut Catholique in Paris and in 1923 went with Pére Licent S.J. to China on a palaeontological mission. The detail is given by Sir Julian in the introduction, in the course of which he pays Père Teilhard many felicitous tributes, notably that he was “a dedicated Christian priest.” On his return to France, Sir Julian tells us, “some of the ideas which he had expressed in his lectures about original sin and its relation to evolution, were regarded as unorthodox by his religious superiors, and he was forbidden to continue teaching.” He spent the next twenty years mostly in China with occasional scientific visits to India, Burma, Java, Abyssinia and the United States. The work under review was all but finished in Peking in 1938-1940. (shrink)

Participants were asked to draw inferences about correlation from single x,y observations. In Experiment 1 statistically sophisticated participants were given the univariate characteristics of distributions of x and y and asked to infer whether a single x, y observation came from a correlated or an uncorrelated population. In Experiment 2, students with a variety of statistical backgrounds assigned posterior probabilities to five possible populations based on single x, y observations, again given knowledge of the univariate statistics. In Experiment 3, statistically (...) naïve participants were given a problem analogous to that given in Experiment 1, framed verbally. Experiment 4 replicated Experiment 3 but added an “impossible to determine” response option. Models that rely on computing sample correlations make no predictions about these investigations. From a Bayesian perspective, participants’ inferences in all four experiments tended to make probabilistically valid inferences as long as the single datum was directional. The results are discussed in light of the Brunswikian notion of vicarious functioning. (shrink)

This is an important work. It is sub-titled “Reality orion?” and makes a valiant effort to reinstate the notion of person as the keyconcept in psychology. There is a preface by Professor Oeser, of the University of Melbourne, which gives a good indication of what the book is about, and incidentally does great credit to the faculty of psychology in Melbourne. “When” says Professor Oeser, “about the middle of the nineteenth century, the science of experimental psychology was born, the infant (...) was crippled by an array of physical and physiological instruments. It was starved on a diet of psychophysics, and later of rats….” Instead of a preoccupation with psychophysics and rats, Oeser contends that the science should concern itself with “the person”, and lauds Lafitte for the devastating way in which he has dealt with “the perversions or pseudo-sciences of some psychometricians, psycho-analysts and rat-lovers”. This is trenchant writing, and Lafitte in the substance of the work lives up to the promise of the foreword, both in ideas and in style. (shrink)

This little essay of Bergson’s was originally delivered as a lecture to the Institut Psychologique in 1901, and published the same year in the Revue Scientifique. The date is significant: it was the year after Freud’s great work, The Interpretation of Dreams, was published. Bergson’s lecture came therefore at the end of the era of the old introspective psychologists, and before the new depth theories had become the commonplace they now are. So Bergson can state: “There is nothing mysterious about (...) the birth of a dream”. Dreams are due to the fact that our senses continue to function in sleep, responding to external stimuli though less accurately than when we are awake, and at the same time responding to what we would now perhaps call the internal spontaneous discharges of the end–receptors themselves. (shrink)

Recent advances in the cognitive psychology of inference have been of great interest to philosophers of science. The present paper reviews one such area, namely studies based upon Wason's 4-card selection task. It is argued that interpretation of the results of the experiments is complex, because a variety of inference strategies may be used by subjects to select evidence needed to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Empirical evidence suggests that which strategy is used depends in part on the semantic, syntactic, (...) and pragmatic context of the inference problem at hand. Since the factors of importance are also present in real-world science, and similarly complicate its interpretation, the selection task, though it does not present a quick fix, represents a kind of microcosm of great utility for the understanding of science. Several studies which have examined selection strategies in more complex problem-solving environments are also reviewed, in an attempt to determine the limits of generalizability of the simpler selection tasks. Certain interpretational misuses of laboratory research are described, and a claim made that the issue of whether or not scientists are rational should be approached by philosophers and psychologists with appropriate respect for the complexities of the issue. (shrink)

Pihlström’s book, Pragmatist Metaphysics, offers what he feels “no previous book-length study” (viii) has accomplished: as the title suggests, he sketches how metaphysics would look when done from a pragmatic perspective. This involves rejecting two assumptions: that metaphysics is necessarily “realistic” and that pragmatism is necessarily antimetaphysical. Taking his bearings from pragmatists both classic (e.g. Peirce, James, and Dewey) and contemporary (e.g. Putnam), he argues for a “pragmatic realism” that examines the basic characteristics of our human reality. A good primer (...) for those with some background and interest in pragmatism and metaphysics, and who would like to see the latter tailored to the former .. (shrink)

Jose Marti contributed greatly to Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain with words as well as revolutionary action. Although he died before the formation of an independent republic, he has since been hailed as a heroic martyr inspiring Cuban republican traditions.

This research examines the association between attitudes on cheating and cognitive moral development. In this research, we use Rest's (1979a) Defining Issues Test, the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (Authors) and Academic Integrity Index (Authors); the last two are adaptations of the DIT. A total of 220 students from three universities participated in the study (66 psychology majors and 154 business majors). The data indicate that 66.4 percent of the students reported that they cheated in high school, college, or both high (...) school and college. Psychology majors scored higher than business majors on both the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979a) and the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (AHS, Authors). Using factor analysis, we found significant associations between students' ratings of the importance considerations present in the three cheating scenarios and their estimates of whether cheating would occur (i.e., the Academic Integrity Index). Finally, using logistic regression, we found that the scores on the Attitudes on Honesty Scale and Academic Integrity Index associate with the self-reported cheating behavior of college students. (shrink)

Desire is an important philosophical topic that deeply impacts everyday life. Philosophical practice is an emerging trend that uses philosophical theories and methods as a guide to living a eu‐ daimonic life. In this paper, we define desire philosophically and compare different theories of desire in specific Eastern and Western traditions. Based on the Lacanian conceptual–terminological triad of “Need‐Demand‐Desire”, the research of desire is further divided into three dimensions, namely, the subject of desire, the object of desire, and the desire (...) itself. The concept of desire is then an‐ alyzed from this triad and these three dimensions through different philosophical theories. This paper selects Buddhism as the representative of Eastern tradition, and Stoicism as the representative of the West, paying special attention to Stoicism’s “spiritual exercises” following Pierre Hadot. By exploring and comparing the Buddhist paths to liberation from suffering (i.e., the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path) and the two theoretical pillars in Stoicism (i.e., the notions of “living according to nature” and “the dichotomy of control”), practical guidance is then provided for un‐ derstanding and regulating desire in times of crisis. This understanding and regulation of desire constitutes a philosophical therapy for today’s troubles, particularly those caused by excessive or irrational desires. (shrink)