Fitelson (1999) demonstrates that the validity of various arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory depends on which confirmation measure is adopted. The present paper adds to the results set out in Fitelson (1999), expanding on them in two principal respects. First, it considers more confirmation measures. Second, it shows that there are important arguments within Bayesian confirmation theory and that there is no confirmation measure that renders them all valid. Finally, the paper reviews the ramifications that this "strengthened problem (...) of measure sensitivity" has for Bayesian confirmation theory and discusses whether it points at pluralism about notions of confirmation. (shrink)

This study presents and develops test methods for assessing sensitivity to conflict of interest (COIsen). We are aware of no study assessing COIsen, but note that some popular methods for assessing ethical sensitivity and related constructs (which include COIsen) are flawed in that their presentation of stimulus material to subjects actually guides subjects to attend to ethical (or related) issues. The method tested here was designed to avoid this flaw. Using adaptations of two existing cases, a quota sample (...) of 12 students was interviewed. Our method used funnel-sequenced, open-ended interviews that were audiotaped and transcribed, then subjected to a form of cognitive mapping. These maps revealed the presence of “indicators” of COIsen. We found that COIsen can be measured and that the global COIsen score generated by our method is able to reveal much variation across subjects, making it a worthwhile candidate for further consideration. (shrink)

Contemporary Bayesian confirmation theorists measure degree of (incremental) confirmation using a variety of non-equivalent relevance measures. As a result, a great many of the arguments surrounding quantitative Bayesian confirmation theory are implicitly sensitive to choice of measure of confirmation. Such arguments are enthymematic, since they tacitly presuppose that certain relevance measures should be used (for various purposes) rather than other relevance measures that have been proposed and defended in the philosophical literature. I present a survey of this pervasive (...) class of Bayesian confirmation-theoretic enthymemes, and a brief analysis of some recent attempts to resolve the problem of measure sensitivity. (shrink)

Measures of student ethical sensitivity and their increases help to answer questions such as whether accounting ethics should be taught at all. We investigate different sensitivity measures and alternatives to the well-established Defining Issues Test (DIT-2, Rest, J. R. et al. [1999, Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ]), frequently used to measure the effects of undergraduate accounting ethics education. Because the DIT measures cognitive development, which increases with age, the DIT scores for (...) younger accounting students are typically lower, have limited range, and are not likely to vary sufficiently with corresponding choices in ethical dilemmas. Since the DIT measures only the moral judgment component of ethical decision-making, we consider the multidimensional ethical scale (MES) to allow respondents to provide explanations for their moral and other judgments. The MES has been used to measure attitudes related to justice, utility, contractualism, egoism, and relativism. Unfortunately, the MES is not comparable in one-dimension to the DIT, and unlike the DIT, the MES has no theoretical or objective base. Therefore, we construct a comparable one-dimensional relative measure, a Composite MES Score, obtained from previous research on practicing accountants. We compare the reliability of this measure to the DIT in explaining the ethical choices of 54 specially chosen, somewhat homogeneous students, whose ages range from 18 to 19, and who are taking a second semester freshman accounting course at a private, religion-affiliated university. These particular students are relatively untrained in the formal use of questionable accounting choices. These students are less likely to recognize the dilemmas of the MES and are also less likely to demonstrate sufficient variation in their DIT scores, traditionally low for freshmen students. As freshmen, they are recent graduates of high school and more likely guided by other ethical influences including friends, family, or contractual obligations (some of the MES constructs) rather than higher cognitive development. This study confirms suspicions. We find the DIT scores do not vary sufficiently to explain the moral reasoning of freshmen. For eight dilemmas and 24 choices we find the DIT score correlates with only three choices, whereas the MES regression models have at least one significant construct for 23 out of 24 ethical choices. The Composite MES Score (a relative measure) also explains 23 out of 24 choices and is statistically related to the DIT in only one of the choices. Unlike the DIT, the Composite MES permits pretest and retesting with different dilemmas to evaluate changes in ethical sensitivity. These results argue for relative rather than absolute measures of sensitivity and guides beyond cognitive development (the DIT-score) to explain undergraduate student sensitivity. (shrink)

Entanglement measures quantify the amount of quantum entanglement that is contained in quantum states. Typically, different entanglement measures do not have to be partially ordered. The presence of a definite partial order between two entanglement measures for all quantum states, however, allows for meaningful conceptualization of sensitivity to entanglement, which will be greater for the entanglement measure that produces the larger numerical values. Here, we have investigated the partial order between the normalized versions of four entanglement measures based (...) on Schmidt decomposition of bipartite pure quantum states, namely, concurrence, tangle, entanglement robustness and Schmidt number. We have shown that among those four measures, the concurrence and the Schmidt number have the highest and the lowest sensitivity to quantum entanglement, respectively. Further, we have demonstrated how these measures could be used to track the dynamics of quantum entanglement in a simple quantum toy model composed of two qutrits. Lastly, we have employed state-dependent entanglement statistics to compute measurable correlations between the outcomes of quantum observables in agreement with the uncertainty principle. The presented results could be helpful in quantum applications that require monitoring of the available quantum resources for sharp identification of temporal points of maximal entanglement or system separability. (shrink)

An instrument to assess 'ethical sensitivity' has been developed. The instrument presents four clinical vignettes and the respondent is asked to list the ethical issues related to each vignette. The responses are classified, post hoc, into the domains of autonomy, beneficence and justice. This instrument was used in 1990 to assess the ethical sensitivity of students in all four medical classes at the University of Toronto. Ethical sensitivity, as measured by this instrument, is not related to age (...) or grade-point average. Sensitivity increases between the 1st and 2nd year and then decreases throughout the rest of undergraduate medical training, such that the 4th-year students identify fewer issues than those entering medical school. Students expressing a career choice of family medicine identify more issues than their peers. Several problems with the use of the instrument and the interpretation of the data were found. Nonetheless, these findings, if reproducible, are important and their meaning needs further discussion. (shrink)

BackgroundValue sensitivity – the ability to recognize value-related issues when they arise in practice – is an indispensable competence for medical practitioners to enter decision-making processes related to ethical questions. However, the psychological competence of value sensitivity is seldom an explicit subject in the training of medical professionals. In this contribution, we outline the traditional concept of moral sensitivity in medicine and its revised form conceptualized as value sensitivity and we propose an instrument that measures value (...) sensitivity.MethodsWe developed an instrument for assessing the sensitivity for three value groups in a four step procedure: 1) value identification ; 2) value representation ; 3) vignette construction and quality evaluation ; and 4) instrument validation by comparing nursing professionals with hospital managers.ResultsWe find that nursing professionals recognize and ascribe importance to principle-related issues more than professionals from hospital management. The latter are more likely to recognize and ascribe importance to strategy-related issues.ConclusionsThese hypothesis-driven results demonstrate the discriminatory power of our newly developed instrument, which makes it useful not only for health care professionals in practice but for students and people working in the clinical context as well. (shrink)

There are currently no instruments available to measure ethical sensitivity in the therapeutic sciences. This study therefore aimed to develop and implement a measure of ethical sensitivity that would be applicable to four therapeutic professions, namely audiology, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech-language pathology. The study followed a two-phase, sequential exploratory mixed-methods design. Phase One, the qualitative development phase, employed six stages and focused on developing an instrument based on a systematic review: an analysis of professional ethical (...) codes, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, a review of public complaints websites, and an expert panel review. The development phase culminated in the Measuring Instrument for Ethical Sensitivity in the Therapeutic Sciences (MIEST), a pen-and-paper measure for studying ethical sensitivity in the therapeutic sciences.Phase Two, the quantitative stage, focused on implementing the MIEST in two different stages. A total of 100 participants completed the instrument. MIEST scores were found to be comparable for all four professions, which confirmed the multidisciplinary usability of the instrument. Participants tended to base decisions on the ethical principle of beneficence. The MIEST is effective to assess and describe the ethical sensitivity of professionals in the four specified therapeutic sciences. The constructed vignettes also make the MIEST appropriate for use in problem-based learning programs. (shrink)

Stanley Stevens draws a useful distinction among ordinal scales, interval scales, and ratio scales. Most recent discussions of confirmation measures have proceeded on the ordinal level of analysis. In this article, I give a more quantitative analysis. In particular, I show that the requirement that our desired confirmation measure be at least an interval measure naturally yields necessary conditions that jointly entail the log-likelihood measure. Thus, I conclude that the log-likelihood measure is the only good candidate (...) interval measure. (shrink)

Visual masking of primes lowers prime visibility but spares processing of primes as reflected in prime–target congruence and prime–response compatibility effects. However, the question is how to appropriately measure prime visibility. Here, we tested the influence of three procedural variables on prime visibility measures: prime–target similarity, prime–response similarity, and the variability of prime–response mappings. Our results show that a low prime–target similarity is a favorable condition for a prime visibility measure because it increases the sensitivity of this (...) measure in comparison to a high prime–target similarity. (shrink)

This article describes the development of a computerized version of a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance, the Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test. The REST was based on James Rest's 4-component model of moral development and the professional codes of ethics from school-based professions. The new version, Racial and Ethical Sensitivity Test-Compact Disk, consists of 5 videotaped scenarios followed by an interactive "interview" presented on compact discs. Data from a study with 58 students provides (...) initial validation of the REST-CD. Ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance in schools, as measured by the REST-CD, was moderately related to attitudes toward racial and gender equity issues in society as measured by the Quick Discrimination Index. The results provide evidence for both interrater and internal reliability of the REST-CD scores. This study also tests the hypothesized relationship between REST-CD scores and previous multicultural and ethics course work. Students with multicultural and ethics course experience have scored significantly higher on the REST-CD than students without course work. The paper-and-pencil tests are not significantly related to previous ethics/multicultural course work. In this article, we discuss the implications of the results and directions for future research. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to establish foundations for the interaction between hyperintensional semantics and two-dimensional indexing. I examine the significance of the semantics, by developing three, novel interpretations of the framework. The first interpretation provides a characterization of the distinction between fundamental and derivative truths. The second interpretation demonstrates how the elements of decision theory are definable within the semantics, and provides a novel account of the interaction between probability measures and hyperintensional grounds. The third interpretation concerns the contents of the (...) types of intentional action, and the semantics is shown to resolve a puzzle concerning the role of intention in action. Topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics can be interpreted epistemically and metasemantically. (shrink)

Reward and punishment sensitivity seem important traits in understanding behavior in general and psychopathology in particular. Though the definitions used for reward and punishment sensitivity differentiate between responsivity and motivation, the measures thus far used to assess these constructs do not. Further, specificity of the type of reward and punishment in questionnaires might result in measurement bias especially when examining the relationship with psychopathology. Therefore, we developed a stimulus-independent multidimensional questionnaire of reward and punishment sensitivity that differentiates (...) between responsivity and motivation. This study addresses the psychometric qualities of this newly developed reward and punishment responsivity and motivation questionnaire. On the basis of exploratory ordinal factor analysis that was used to examine the quality of the initial pool of 39 items, the number of items was reduced to 18. Confirmatory ordinal factor analysis on the remaining items in an independent sample supported a 18-item four-factor model, and showed acceptable to good internal reliability. The relationship between the subscales of the RPRM-Q and often used questionnaires was examined in the combined sample, which showed some first support for the ability of the new questionnaire to differentiate between responsivity and motivation to approach/avoid. The findings indicate that the RPRM-Q might be a helpful instrument to further test the relevance of punishment and reward sensitivity in psychopathology. (shrink)

Changing weather conditions and barometer changes usually coincide. Accordingly, the propositions that my barometer falls and that the weather conditions deteriorate are quite coherent—especially under the assumption that there is a drop in atmospheric pressure. Nevertheless, scenarios like these involving common causes turn out to be highly problematic for a prominent class of probabilistic coherence measures, namely, those explicating coherence based on the idea of relevance-sensitivity. In this article, we show that none of these measures accords with the intuition (...) that in the light of a common cause, two propositions referring to the cause’s effects should turn out to be coherent. This result casts doubts on the view that these measures can be considered proper explications of the concept of coherence. 1Introduction2Relevance-Sensitive Coherence Measures3Common Causes, Screening-off, and Coherence4Discussion 4.1Multiple explications of coherence4.2Conditionalization versus set expansion5Conclusion. (shrink)

Measuring the effectiveness of medical interventions faces three epistemological challenges: the choice of good measuring instruments, the use of appropriate analytic measures, and the use of a reliable method of extrapolating measures from an experimental context to a more general context. In practice each of these challenges contributes to overestimating the effectiveness of medical interventions. These challenges suggest the need for corrective normative principles. The instruments employed in clinical research should measure patient-relevant and disease-specific parameters, and should not be (...) sensitive to parameters that are only indirectly relevant. Effectiveness always should be measured and reported in absolute terms (using measures such as 'absolute risk reduction'), and only sometimes should effectiveness also be measured and reported in relative terms (using measures such as 'relative risk reduction')-employment of relative measures promotes an informal fallacy akin to the base-rate fallacy, which can be exploited to exaggerate claims of effectiveness. Finally, extrapolating from research settings to clinical settings should more rigorously take into account possible ways in which the intervention in question can fail to be effective in a target population. (shrink)

An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect + pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association (...) of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss (...) in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 44-46, December 2011.

The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in 984 women in 2017 and (...) 633 women in 2020 by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity is known to be the starting point for moral competence and even is a core concept in the curricula for bachelor’s-level nursing students in the Netherlands. While the development of moral sensitivity in nursing is commonly agreed to be important, there is no clear understanding of how to develop moral sensitivity through nursing education and what components of nursing education contribute to moral sensitivity. Studies on educational interventions could build knowledge about what works in (...) developing moral sensitivity and how to achieve this outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore if and how educational interventions contribute to the development of moral sensitivity in nursing students. A scoping review was conducted. Four electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE and SpringerLink. Articles that were not about formal or initial nursing education and that had no link to moral development or moral sensitivity were excluded. After the final selection on educational interventions, 10 articles out of the initial 964 resources were included in the review. Three different but related dimensions of moral sensitivity emerged from the literature: (1) raising moral awareness, (2) providing the ability to frame and name ethical issues and (3) improving moral reasoning ability. Half of the studies used quantitative measures to evaluate the educational intervention, in particular the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire; the other half used diverse qualitative evaluation methods. None of the studies presented teaching methods that included all three dimensions of moral sensitivity. Moral awareness of self appears to be more loosely connected to the other two dimensions, which raises the question of whether it can be seen as a prerequisite for them. To encompass all dimensions of moral sensitivity, a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures seems most appropriate to study that topic. (shrink)

This descriptive study was undertaken to identify the degree of ethical sensitivity of staff nurses and to analyze the differences in ethical sensitivity in terms of both general and ethics-related characteristics. Participants were 236 staff nurses working in general hospitals in Korea. Ethical sensitivity was measured by means of an instrument developed by the researchers. The results showed that the mean score for the degree of ethical sensitivity was 0.71 out of a possible maximum score of (...) 1 (range 0.30 to 0.97). For general characteristics, there was a significant difference in ethical sensitivity according to age (F (df 2233)-3.99, P-0.02). For characteristics related to ethics, there was a significant difference in ethical sensitivity according to attitude towards the nursing profession (F (df 4231)-2.94, P-0.03). It is therefore recommended that a training program reflecting these variables be developed to enhance staff nurses’ ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

A key goal for a professional ethics teacher is to help students improve their moral reasoning within the context of their profession, with the ultimate aim of developing a commitment to the values of their future profession. Using Rest’s Four Component Model as a framework, this study examines the relationship between the first two components of moral sensitivity and moral judgment. The study utilises two scores from the same cohort of computing undergraduates: a score for ethical sensitivity using (...) a devised dilemma analysis; and a score for change in moral judgment resulting from an educational intervention, using the Defining Issues Test (DIT). Although average DIT scores showed no significant improvement in moral judgment, this study found that levels of ethical sensitivity had a significant impact on the development of moral judgment. The paper provides evidence that ethical sensitivity appears to play a key role in the development of moral judgment. Therefore an initial key objective critical to any ethics course should be to raise student levels of ethical sensitivity as a necessary foundation for development of moral judgment. The paper also highlights the wide range of levels of ethical sensitivity measured within one cohort and suggests targeted learning support should be provided to students who score in the lower part of the scale to raise their levels of moral sensitivity early in the course. (shrink)

Consciousness can be measured in various ways, but different measures often yield different conclusions about the extent to which awareness relates to performance. Here, we compare five different subjective measures of awareness in the context of an artificial grammar learning task. Participants expressed their subjective awareness of rules using one of five different scales: confidence ratings , post-decision wagering , feeling of warmth , rule awareness , and continuous scale . All scales were equally sensitive to conscious knowledge. PDW, however, (...) was affected by risk aversion, and both RAS and SDS applied different minimal criteria for rule awareness. CR seems to capture the largest range of consciousness, but failed to indicate unconscious knowledge with the guessing criterion. We close by discussing the theoretical implications of scale sensitivity and propose that CR’s unique features enable a finer assessment of subjective states of awareness. (shrink)

A key goal for a professional ethics teacher is to help students improve their moral reasoning within the context of their profession, with the ultimate aim of developing a commitment to the values of their future profession. Using Rest’s Four Component Model as a framework, this study examines the relationship between the first two components of moral sensitivity and moral judgment. The study utilises two scores from the same cohort of computing undergraduates: a score for ethical sensitivity using (...) a devised dilemma analysis; and a score for change in moral judgment resulting from an educational intervention, using the Defining Issues Test (DIT). Although average DIT scores showed no significant improvement in moral judgment, this study found that levels of ethical sensitivity had a significant impact on the development of moral judgment. The paper provides evidence that ethical sensitivity appears to play a key role in the development of moral judgment. Therefore an initial key objective critical to any ethics course should be to raise student levels of ethical sensitivity as a necessary foundation for development of moral judgment. The paper also highlights the wide range of levels of ethical sensitivity measured within one cohort and suggests targeted learning support should be provided to students who score in the lower part of the scale to raise their levels of moral sensitivity early in the course. (shrink)