This paper investigates relationships between men’s testosterone and family life in a sample of approximately 350 Jamaican fathers of children 18–24 months of age. The study recognizes the role of testosterone as a proximate mechanism coordinating and reflecting male life history allocations within specific family and cultural contexts. A sample of Jamaican fathers and/or father figures reported to an assessment center for an interview based on a standardized questionnaire and provided a saliva sample for measuring testosterone level. Outcomes measured include (...) subject demographics such as age and relationship status as well as partnership quality and sexuality and paternal attitudes and behavior. The variation in these fathers’ relationship status (e.g., married co-residential fathers, fathers in new non-residential relationships) was not associated with men’s testosterone. Too few stepfathers participated to enable a direct test of the prediction that stepfathers would have higher testosterone than biological fathers, although fathers who reported living with partners’ (but not his own) children did not have higher testosterone than fathers not reporting residing with a non-biological child. Fathers’ relationship quality was negatively related to their testosterone. Measures of paternal attitudes and behavior were not related to fathers’ testosterone. Consistent with previous ethnography, this sample of Jamaican fathers exhibited variable life history profiles, including residential status. We discuss why fathers’ relationship quality was found to be negatively related to their testosterone level, but other predictions were not upheld. (shrink)

An unprovable theorem is a mathematical result that can-not be proved using the com-monly accepted axioms for mathematics (Zermelo-Frankel plus the axiom of choice), but can be proved by using the higher infinities known as large cardinals. Large car-dinal axioms have been the main proposal for new axioms originating with Gödel.

A non-expert who struggles to make good decisions and who turns to decision theory for help, might be more than a little surprised by what they find. If they read a standard treatment of the subject, they will find that they are assumed to be logically omniscient: they know all the logical facts about the propositions whose truth they have considered. Their beliefs are also assumed to be logically closed: if they believe each of a set of propositions S, then (...) they believe everything that can be deduced from S. Finally, they are assumed to be maximally opinionated—they have assigned precise probabilities and cardinal utilities to each possible state of the world that can be formulated via S. The normative core of standard decision theory consists of some very weak axioms for these probabilities and car-dinal utilities, plus the advice to maximize their expected utility, which is a function of the probabil-ities and cardinal utilities for each possible state of the world given each possible choice that they can make. The non-expert might understandably react by saying that this theory is too idealized to be useful for human beings. It is this criticism that Richard Bradley addresses with patience, rigour, and ardour in this book. (shrink)