It is the purpose of this dissertation to show that Bakhtin, unlike other representatives of contemporary Continental thought, writes in the presence of utopia. A discussion of the significance of utopia in Bakhtin's later works is also an occasion for a rethinking of the essence of utopia. This dissertation aims to show that the principle that informs the divergence between Hegel and Bakhtin is none other than their respective views of utopia, and that utopia is not a kind of unrealistic (...) thinking, not an ideology remote from praxis, and not only an anticipatory illumination of Ernst Bloch, but a fleeting moment of fulfillment, a familiar yet elusive fragment of actuality, an instant when what is is consonant with what ought to be. ;A privation of the background presence of emancipatory utopia, characteristic of Hegel's writings, turns his notion of history as a history of the subjectivity into a history that is blunt and external to its subject, the subjectivity. The heavy thingness of history as it is seen by Hegel is put under scrutiny by Bakhtin's sense of history as inescapably lyrical and never completely outside of the evolving and experiencing self. ;The dissertation juxtaposes Hegel's discourse on possibility, given in the Encyclopedea Logic, and a view of the possible that is derived from Bakhtin's later works, such as Discourse in the Novel and Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Hegel's melancholy resignation in regard to the possible is juxtaposed to Bakhtin's utopian sense of language as potentially preserving and expressing all of the latent possibilities of the life of consciousness and its historical reality. The dissertation also advances a hypothesis that utopia is an inherent necessity of the life not only of language, but of consciousness as a whole. ;The dissertation targets through its investigation of Bakhtin's works the precarious birth of identity. However, it also concerns itself with the phenomenology of the latter identity's necessary self-undoing, its shattering for the sake of our coming closer to truth as that which cannot be possessed, which does not have solid boundaries, and appears to us in a definite form due only to our human finitude. The thesis juxtaposes Hegel's utopia of determinate knowledge with Bakhtin's utopia of language and knowledge as indefinite, Hegel's sense of history as determinate and monologic with Bakhtin's utopian sense of heteroglossia as averse to determinate boundaries. The conclusion advanced here is that dialogue embodied by heteroglossia, the dialogue continually illuminated by the rugged edge of the indefinite, and not the shining heights of Absolute Knowledge, is the point of arrival of the great Hegelian dialectic. (shrink)

Russellians, Relationists, and Fregeans disagree about the nature of propositional-attitude content. We articulate a framework to characterize and evaluate this disagreement. The framework involves two claims: i) that we should individuate attitude content in whatever way fits best with the explanations that characteristically appeal to it, and ii) that we can understand those explanations by analogy with other ‘higher-level’ explanations. Using the framework, we argue for an under-appreciated form of Russellianism. Along the way we demonstrate that being more explicit about (...) the framework in which debates about attitude content take place allows us to more precisely characterize the space of possible positions and the dialectic between them. (shrink)

In an increasingly complex world with increasingly powerful organisations it seems inevitable that society – or groups in society – would become anxious about whether these organisations could be encouraged to match that power with an appropriate responsibility. This is the function of accountability – to require individuals and organisations to present an account of those actions for which society holds them – or would wish to hold them – responsible. And the history of social accounting, at its most fundamental, (...) is a history of attempts to develop this accountability. It seems to me that the widespread and systematic practice of social and environmental accounting is a deeply essential element in any well‐functioning, complex democracy. The corollary is that the absence of such mechanisms raises fundamental questions about the nature of modern democracies. This article briefly outlines what I believe to be the three strands of social accounting. It then identifies a few of the lessons that we may be able to learn from current experience and, in particular, how social accounting is related to accountability, democracy and sustainability. The central issue of the tension between accountability and control is touched upon: I then illustrate how the stakeholder model can be used to help define the social account, and conclude with a few words on attestation. (shrink)

The framework of plateaus, dips, and leaps shines light on periods when individuals may be inventing new methods of skilled performance. We begin with a review of the role performance plateaus have played in experimental psychology, human–computer interaction, and cognitive science. We then reanalyze two classic studies of individual performance to show plateaus and dips which resulted in performance leaps. For a third study, we show how the statistical methods of Changepoint Analysis plus a few simple heuristics may direct our (...) focus to periods of performance change for individuals. For the researcher, dips become the marker of exploration where performance suffers as new methods are invented and tested. Leaps mark the implementation of a successful new method and an incremental jump above the path plotted by smooth and steady log–log performance increments. The methods developed during these dips and leaps are the key to surpassing one's teachers and acquiring extreme expertise. (shrink)

Predicativism about names—the view that names are metalinguistic predicates—has yet to confront a foundational issue: how are names represented in the lexicon? I provide a positive characterization of the structure of the lexicon from the point of view Predicativism. I proceed to raise a problem for Predicativism on the basis of that characterization, focusing on cases in which individuals have names which are spelled the same way but pronounced differently. Finally, I introduce two potential strategies for solving the problem, and (...) offer reasons not to be optimistic about either. (shrink)

Why games? How could anyone consider action games an experimental paradigm for Cognitive Science? In 1973, as one of three strategies he proposed for advancing Cognitive Science, Allen Newell exhorted us to “accept a single complex task and do all of it.” More specifically, he told us that rather than taking an “experimental psychology as usual approach,” we should “focus on a series of experimental and theoretical studies around a single complex task” so as to demonstrate that our theories of (...) human cognition were powerful enough to explain “a genuine slab of human behavior” with the studies fitting into a detailed theoretical picture. Action games represent the type of experimental paradigm that Newell was advocating and the current state of programming expertise and laboratory equipment, along with the emergence of Big Data and naturally occurring datasets, provide the technologies and data needed to realize his vision. Action games enable us to escape from our field's regrettable focus on novice performance to develop theories that account for the full range of expertise through a twin focus on expertise sampling and longitudinal studies of simple and complex tasks. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of errors in a simple, rule‐based task—programming a VCR—required analyzing the interactions among human cognition, the artifact, and the task. This analysis was guided by least‐effort principles and yielded a control structure that combined a rule hierarchy task‐to‐device with display‐based difference‐reduction. A model based on this analysis was used to trace action protocols collected from participants as they programmed a simulated VCR. Trials that ended without success (the show was not correctly programmed) were interrogated to yield insights (...) regarding problems in acquiring the control structure. For successful trials (the show was correctly programmed), steps that the model would make were categorized as matches to the model; steps that the model would not make were violations of the model. The model was able to trace the vast majority of correct keystrokes and yielded a business‐as‐usual account of the detection and correction of errors. Violations of the model fell into one of two fundamental categories. The model provided insights into certain subcategories of errors; whereas, regularities within other subcategories of error suggested limitations to the model. Although errors were rare when compared to the total number of correct actions, they were important. Errors were made on 4% of the keypresses that, if not detected, would have prevented two‐thirds of the shows from being successfully recorded. A misprogrammed show is a minor annoyance to the user. However, devices with the approximate complexity of a VCR are ubiquitous and have found their way into emergency rooms, airplane cockpits, power plants, and so on. Errors of ignorance may be reduced by training; however, errors in the routine performance of skilled users can only be reduced by design. (shrink)

ArgumentIt would have been easy for a less imaginative historian of mathematics than Herbert Mehrtens to have portrayed the work of Hilbert, Hausdorff, and other modernists as pioneers, and those who did not subscribe to their program as people who failed, were not good enough to make the turn, and were eventually and convincingly left behind. That he did not do so is not only because this would have been a shallow, selective view of the facts: it is incompatible with (...) his Foucauldian approach to the relations between knowledge and power. Instead, he defined what I see as the most intriguing category of actor in his Moderne—Sprache—Mathematik (1990), the Gegenmoderner, or counter-moderns. The three men who characterize this position are Felix Klein, Henri Poincaré, and Luitzen Brouwer, and each merits a section in the book.Of the three, Poincaré is the hardest to contain within that category. The range of his work, the nature of his influence, and the shifting standards by which mathematical significance has been evaluated by mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and society at large, all contribute to the problem. After thirty years, the methodological presumptions and aspirations of historians of mathematics have also changed, and I shall suggest that one way to appreciate the richness of Mehrtens’ book, to gain insight into what is meant by mathematical modernism, and to acknowledge a generation of work by other historians since 1990, is to re-examine aspects of Poincaré’s life and work and scholarship about him. Prodded by remarks by Leo Corry, Moritz Epple, and David Rowe, I shall suggest that the simple but useful dichotomy modern/counter-modern must be seen as a way into a more complicated situation, one in which different aspects of mathematics, specifically applied mathematics and the relationship of mathematics to contemporary physics, require fresh accounts of the role of modern mathematics in society. (shrink)

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)

Pregnant women and their interests have been underrepresented in health research. Little is known about issues relevant to women considering research participation during pregnancy. We performed in-depth interviews with 22 women enrolled in either one of two trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to assess the safety and immunogenicity of the H1N1 vaccine during pregnancy. Three themes characterized women’s decisions to participate in research: they valued early access to the vaccine, they perceived a safety advantage when participating in (...) research, and they wanted to help advance scientific knowledge. However, there were also some considerations that would disincline them to participate in research—for instance, a significant risk of maternal or fetal harm, the presence of a placebo arm in a study, or a requirement to significantly change planned therapy or behavior. Pregnant women who participated in the H1N1 vaccine trials viewed research favorably, citing its advantages over standard clinical care. These findings emphasize that access to benefit should guide policy for including pregnant women in research. (shrink)

This essay engages with Oliver D. Crisp’s parsimonious model of divine simplicity while offering a defense of a maximal account of simplicity. Specifically, I clarify the way in with Reformed orthodox theologians, like Gisbertus Voetius, anticipate something like Crisp’s model, that pure actuality is an explication, rather than an entailment, of the doctrine of simplicity, and that the doctrine of simplicity remains consistent with epistemic modesty in relation to theological matters.

Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) provide up to 80% of the direct care to older adults in long‐term care facilities.CNAs are perceived as being at the bottom of the hierarchy among healthcare professionals often negatively affecting their job satisfaction. However, manyCNAs persevere in providing quality care and even reporting high levels of job satisfaction. The aim of the present investigation was to identify primary themes that may helpCNAs make meaning of their chosen career; thus potentially partially explaining increases in job satisfaction (...) among this group. Focus groups were conducted withCNAs at three long‐term care facilities. Four themes emerged from the data:CNAwork is good or special;CNAas relationship builder;CNAas expert;CNAas team member. These themes reflect the perceptions that theseCNAs held in regard to themselves and their relationships to others in the work environment and, when present, can contribute to intrinsic job satisfaction. Our meaning‐making themes support the premise thatCNAs do not passively accept the evaluations of others but instead actively frame identities that validate their importance to residents and the institution. (shrink)

A TRADITIONAL VIEW OF UTILITY AND RIGHTS According to a conventional view, no project could be more hopelessly misconceived than the enterprise of attempting a utilitarian derivation of fundamental rights. We are all familiar – too familiar, perhaps – with the arguments that support this conventional view, but let us review them anyway. We may begin by recalling that, whereas the defining value of utilitarianism – pleasure, happiness or welfare – contains no mention of the dignity or autonomy of human (...) beings, it is this value which utilitarianism in all its standard forms invokes as the criterion of right action. Worse, insofar as utilitarian policy must have as its goal the maximization of welfare conceived as an aggregate summed over the utilities of everyone affected, legal and political utilitarianism seems bound to have a collectivist bias, trading on the dangerous fiction of a social entity and ignoring the distinctness of separate selves with their several incommensurable claims. It seems that, if individuals can appear in the utilitarian calculus at all, it will only be as ciphers, abstract place-holders for units of welfare. For, as an aggregative value, utility must be indifferent to distribution, and insensitive to the preeminently distributive considerations marked by claims about rights. So, if whatever has utility can be broken down into units or elements which are subject to measurement or at least comparison by a common standard, then it will always be possible that a very great loss of welfare for one man or a few men can be justified if it produces a great many small increments of welfare for a vast multitude of men. (shrink)

Shaw explores the concept of the ego and its role in human psychology and philosophy. He discusses different theories of the ego and its relationship to the self and society. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in psychology or philosophy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly (...) other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The debate around the ethics of homeopathy in recent issues of the journal has been approached as a binary question; is homeopathy ethical or not? This paper suggests that this is an unhelpful question and instead discusses a framework to establish the extent to which the dominant culture should tolerate non-dominant health practices such as homeopathy. This requires a sophisticated understanding of the placebo effect, a critical evaluation of what evidence is available, a consideration of the harm that the non-dominant (...) practice might cause, and a consideration of how this might be affected by the culture of the patient. This is presented as a matter of cultural competence. At a clinical level clinicians need to respect the values and beliefs of their patients and communicate with all the practitioners involved in a patient’s care. At a societal level there are a number of factors to be considered when a community decides which practices to tolerate and to what extent. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an alternative approach to ethics in social work: virtue ethics. We argue that Habermas's theory of communicative action and discourse ethics needs to be supplemented with virtue ethics to provide an account useful to social work. In these times, sensitivity to others is needed for social work to succeed as a profession interested in combating the complacency, self-interest and lack of compassion evident in cutbacks to social welfare programmes and the resultant concerns with outcomes and (...) efficiencies that have all but obliterated care and compassion. We see in Habermas a furthering of Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy, most importantly with respect to his focus on emancipatory knowing?the critically reflective knower who knows self as the person doing the knowing. Habermas's distinction between values (objective), ethics (social) and morals (subjective) makes the province of emancipatory knowing (his epistemological theory) consistent with his moral theory?morality is personal. (shrink)

This paper discusses the political implications of the British military's Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) approach to personnel suffering from combat-related mental debilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Drawing on narratives that emerged from qualitative interviews with trained TRiM practitioners and military welfare workers, I tease out some of the assumptions and beliefs about mental health and mental illness that underpin this mental health intervention programme. I explore TRiM as a biopolitical strategy targeted towards the construction of a particular conceptualisation of (...) mental wellness and militarised masculine personhood. As a biopolitical strategy, I argue that TRiM plays an important role in the construction of ideas around mental well-being and mental frailty that best enable the operation of military power in the contemporary British context. I discuss the narrative of transformation in militarised models of masculinity that emerge from discussions of TRiM, and highlight the important political function that this plays in enabling and legitimating militarism. Finally, I draw attention to the ways in which the focus on individual and cultural factors, rather than war as the primary cause of difficulties for servicemen experiencing psychological distress, functions to neutralise the potential trouble that could be instigated for the British military by the bodies of servicemen psychologically damaged by their experiences of conflict. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

Do noncombatants in warfare receive immunity because of their subjective or objective characteristics? Can a noncombatant be ‘weaponized’, and if so, how does this weaponization change the noncombatant's moral status as protected from direct attack? The purpose of this article is to analyze the moral issues that arise when noncombatants are made into weapons, specifically as delivery systems for biological weaponry. Examining such a tactic, I go on to explore how the problems that arise from ‘weaponized’ noncombatants illustrate deeper problems (...) in the theorization of noncombatant status. (shrink)

The use of dialogue in Xenophon's Hellenica is a phenomenon that needs explanation. Among previous historians, Herodotus had used it frequently but Thucydides hardly at all. In Xenophon's own time, Ctesias had used it but not the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia nor Ephorus to any great extent, as far as we can tell. Theopompus had plagiarized one of the Hellenica dialogues as well as adding others of his own. Generally, dialogue occurred less frequently in history writing than the set (...) speech. Yet there have been no serious studies of dialogue in the Hellenica, and where opinions are expressed they often vary. Sordi considered that the purpose of dialogue was decorative and agreed with the estimates of ancient critics about the liveliness of the conversations. Breitenbach also thought they had literary merit but suggested that their purpose was moral and didactic. Henry agreed that their purpose was didactic but thought them flat and lifeless and lacking in literary merit. Bruce thought their purpose was to illustrate personality. These differences of opinion should be settled. Moreover, Sordi's view that the content, style and purpose of dialogue is quite different from that of the set speech, and that this reflects a difference of genre within the Hellenica, dialogue being typical of memoir and the set speech of ‘serious’ history, cannot go unchallenged. Herodotus used dialogue in what was clearly not memoir. Further, there has been no serious attempt to place dialogue in the Hellenica in the tradition of dialogue writing in history or to examine its relationship to dramatic dialogue or the philosophical dialogue. This needs to be attempted. Such are the aims of this paper. (shrink)

“Deep Thoughts” and “Fuzzy Memories” were fan favorites as transitional pieces between larger set pieces on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s. Delivered over soothing music and serene images, Jack Handey's bits never showed his face on screen, calling to mind his observation that “the face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.” Some dark and offbeat takes on the human condition often have an existentialist feel. Existentialism is a philosophy concerned with “the (...) individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life.” In other words, human beings find themselves trying to live meaningful lives without truly comprehending the nature of what that meaning may be, or whether or not true meaning could even exist. (shrink)

This study begins by briefl,y examining the methodological premises underlying many post-war studies of communist parties by Western scholars. The analysis proceeds to consider the phenomenon of Eurocommunism and how many traditional studies of European communism have not allowed for the rich national and political traditions in Italy, Spain and France. The brief history of Eurocommunism - culminating in the events leading up to the 1977 Madrid «summit» - is seen as the accumulated need of the Italian, Spanish, and French (...) Communist Parties to assert their national identitiesand adapt to the changing demands of their individual national political contexts. The analysis continues with a resumé of the current strategies of the PCI, PCE, and PCF in the late 1970s, comparing and contrasting similarities and differences on domestic levels. Lastly, the relations between the Eurocommunist parties and the Soviet Union are examined. (shrink)