Virtual worlds are a class of computer game in which large numbers of players access a shared environment simultaneously to have fun. What “having fun” means, however, is not obvious. Players talk about immersion, which suggests to some commentators that their fun may derive from the well-known psychological concepts of presence and flow. However, although these states of mind are indeed import...

In this rejoinder we clarify several issues raised by the commentators with the hope of resolving some disagreements. In particular, we address the distinction between information-based and experience-based metacognitive judgments and the idea that memory monitoring may be mediated by direct access to internal representations. We then examine the possibility of unconscious metacognitive process...

There is now a societal and cultural expectation that doctors and nurses should feel, and display, empathy for their patients. Many commentators argue that medical and nursing students should be taught empathy. Empathy, however, is difficult to define: it is not the same as kindness, as it implies a degree of psychological insight into what the patient is thinking or feeling. Empathy is seen by...

We are very heartened by the thoughtful responses to our article. Unlike some of the responses to a previous meta-analysis of antidepressant drug effects ( Kirsch & Sapirstein, 1998), there is now unanimous agreement among commentators that the mean difference between response to antidepressant drugs and response to inert placebo is very small. It is so small that, despite sample sizes involvin...

There has been a troublesome anomaly in the UK between cash payment to men for sperm donation and the effective assumption that women will pay to donate eggs. Some commentators, including Donald Evans in this journal, have argued that the anomaly should be resolved by treating women on the same terms as men. But this argument ignores important difficulties about property in the body, particular...

The idea that humans -especially females -are prone to some form of ‘midlife crisis’ has typically been viewed with extreme skepticism by social scientists. We point out the potential equivalence between an age U-shape in a new well-being literature and a matching hill-shape in especially female suicide risk (evident in 28 countries and visible in the United States even 30 years ago). This conc...

In his paper titled “Did Hayek Commit the Naturalist Fallacy?” published in the September 2004 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Erik Angner develops three theses. The first is that Friedrich Hayek’s own writings and those of competent commentators give plentiful evidence that Hayek appears to have inferred values from facts. (The appears is stressed because Angner himsel...

This issue of Systemic Practice and Action Research, celebrating the work of Peter Checkland, in the particular nature and development of soft systems methodology (SSM), would not have happened unless the work was seen by others as being important. No significant contribution to thinking happens without a secondary literature developing. Not surprisingly, many commentaries have accompanied the ...

From the perspective of scientists involved in biogerontology, the branch of science focused on the biology of aging, ethical themes can be classified as either belonging to an ‘inner sphere’ where the conduct of the aging research itself is under ethical scrutiny; or, secondly, an ‘outer sphere’ where questions are raised about the philosophical and social implications of ‘curing aging’. There...

Accounts of the future of the welfare state are often presented in crisis terms. Some commentators identify globalization as a force that has already led to a major retreat by the state and is likely to lead to further downsizing of the public sector. Others see the future burden of an aging population as creating huge public expenditure pressures that can be countered only by increased parsimo...