Willingness to Recommend: Does Workplace Incivility Actually Play a Role?

Journal of Business and Psychology - To prevent workplace incivility, scholars encourage organizations to use reference checks to help eliminate uncivil applicants. However, under certain...     

Does Moral Disagreement Pose a Semantic Challenge to Moral Realism?

Philosophia - Many philosophers have argued that moral disagreement raises metaphysical and/or epistemological challenges for moral realism. In this paper, I consider whether widespread moral...     

Does Suppressing the Thought of a Self-Relevant Stigma Affect Interpersonal Interaction?

ABSTRACT

In the current study, we examined the effects of women's suppressing negative gender stereotypes while interacting with a male confederate. Compared with control participants, those who suppressed negative thoughts about women's ability experienced less self-confidence, lower self-esteem, and were more nonverbally submissive during the interaction, particularly if they were high in stigma consciousness (Pinel, 1999 Pinel, E. C. 1999. Stigma consciousness: The psychological legacy of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 114–128. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). These findings illustrate the negative intra- and interpersonal consequences of stigma suppression.     

Does Spirituality Represent the Sixth Factor of Personality? Spiritual Transcendence and the Five-Factor Model

This study reports on the development of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale, a measure designed to capture aspects of the individual that are independent of the qualities contained in the Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM). Using two separate samples of undergraduate students including both self-report ( N s = 379 and 356) and observer data ( N = 279), it was shown that Spiritual Transcendence: (a) was independent of measures of the FFM; (b) evidenced good cross-observer convergence; and (c) predicted a wide range of psychologically salient outcomes, even after controlling for the predictive effects of personality. Given the long theoretical pedigree of Transcendence in the psychological literature, it was argued that Spiritual Transcendence represents a broad-based motivational domain of comparable breadth to those constructs contained in the FFM and ought to be considered a potential sixth major dimension of personality.     

Does Wittgenstein Actually Undermine the Foundation of Artificial Intelligence?

Wittgenstein is widely viewed as a potential critic of a key philosophical assumption of the Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) thesis,namely,that it is in principle possible to build a programmed machine which can achieve real intelligence.Stuart Shanker has provided the most systematic reconstruction of the Wittgensteinian argument against AI,building on Wittgenstein's own statements,the "rule-following" feature of language-games,and the putative alliance between AI and psychologism.This article will attempt to refute this reconstruction and its constituent arguments,thereby paving the way for a new and amicable rather than agonistic conception of the Wittgensteinian position on AI.     

Debt Resistance and Satisfaction? Notes from Catherine of Siena toward a Theology of Redemption against Neoliberal Capitalism

Adding to recent concerns about resonances between debt in Christian soteriologies and in capitalism, Hollis Phelps has argued that Anselm’s satisfaction theory provides subjective reinforcement for neoliberalism’s biopolitical use of debt, and thus calls for an abandonment of the idea that humans must be redeemed from debt to God. Without advocating mere retrieval of satisfaction theory, I submit that such a concept of debt can have the opposite effect by analyzing how it plays out in Catherine of Siena’s mystical theology and the way she articulates satisfaction in her writings. Catherine’s doctrine of creation casts humanity’s unremittable debt as an obligation to love God, self, and neighbor that is divinely designed to benefit all. This concept of debt determines what satisfaction signifies for Catherine, fostering an “indebted subjectivity” incompatible with that of neoliberalism. Her theology thereby suggests a productive way to leverage the language of a prominent Western atonement theory against the neoliberal concepts of debt that discipline Western society—namely, by rooting debt in a doctrine of creation that emphasizes relationships of mutuality and interdependence that benefit all.     

Does the Thought Count? Gratitude Understanding in Elementary School Students

Gratitude, although studied throughout history by scholars from diverse backgrounds, has been largely understudied in psychology until recently. The psychological literature on gratitude is expanding, but it is still particularly limited with children. The authors compared younger (first- and second-grade students; n = 30) and older (fourth- and fifth-grade students; n = 27) children on gratitude-related ratings surrounding gift giving vignettes that included either a desirable (e.g., a birthday cupcake) or an undesirable (e.g., a melted ice cream cone) gift. Empathy was also measured. Hierarchical regressions revealed different patterns of predictors for desirable and undesirable gifts. For desirable gifts, liking significantly predicted gratitude and liking predicted effort. For undesirable gifts, older children and those who perceived the target as liking the gift more predicted higher gratitude ratings. Finally, higher gratitude rating predicted both higher ratings of giver effort (i.e., intention or how hard did the giver try to give a nice gift) and liking of the undesirable gifts. More research on children's understanding of gratitude is needed but these results suggest that school-aged children take into account givers’ intentions and thoughts behind gift giving in determining feelings of gratitude. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.     

What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?

The question of how many Jews died and how many survived in 1648 has produced much historical discussion. The problem is always the incompatibility of scholarly estimates and what is found in contemporary chronicles. Using demographic tools and applying them to all the regions of the Ukraine, it appears that no more, and possibly much fewer, than fifty percent of the 40,000 or so Jews in that region perished. The survivors mostly returned to their homes and rebuilt. Though speculative, the commensurability of the results argues their probable accuracy. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Intellectual Tennis without a Net? Thought Experiments and Theology

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between thought experiments and theology in three respects. First, it explores the theological dimension of Newton's famous bucket experiment. Second, it looks at the role of the biblical narrative of Adam's Fall in discussions that resulted in the foundations of modern science. Finally, the paper argues that there are at least two classes of thought experiments in medieval thought that depend for their existence on theological assumptions.     

What Does it Mean to be a Man Today?: Bloke Culture and the Media

Psychologists have paid scant attention to the positive relationships and community contributions of working class men who are not in trouble, and have focused instead on men who are ‘in trouble.’ In addressing this oversight, we draw on insights from ethnographic observations, life narrative interviews, photographic techniques and media items, which have been compiled by 12 working class men from a shared community of practice in New Zealand. We illustrate how these men often appropriate aspects from contemporary media deliberations regarding what it means to be a man today in order to make sense of their own lives. The implications of participants’ emphasis on friendship, support, familial obligations, and community participation are discussed in relation to the place of working class men in society.     

Does quantity matter to a stingless bee?

Animal Cognition - Quantitative information is omnipresent in the world and a wide range of species has been shown to use quantities to optimize their decisions. While most studies have focused on...     

Omniscience and the problem of radical particularity: Does God know how to ride a bike?

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Does the Demographic Objection to Epistocracy Succeed?

In most, if not all, forms of epistocracy, we can expect (at least in the near future) that the more advantaged demographic groups would have higher rates of representation than less advantaged groups. The Demographic Objection to Epistocracy holds that this means epistocracy is unjust. One version of the Demographic Objection holds that the unequal representation is inherently unfair. I show that this argument fails, as proceduralist concern for fairness does not get us to universal equal suffrage at all. A second version holds that by giving some kinds of people more power than others, epistocracy will tend to help the advantaged and harm the already disadvantaged. In contrast, I argue that certain forms of epistocracy escape this objection altogether. For the others, though, this version of the objection relies on questionable empirical assumptions. In the end, neither version of the Demographic Objection succeeds. The Demographic Objection to epistocracy is much weaker than it seems.     

Does the need for linguistic expression constitute a problem to be solved?

This paper has two objectives. The first is to formulate a critique of present-day cognitive linguistics (CL) concerning the inner workings of the cognitive system during language use, and the second is to put forward an alternative account that is inspired by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Due to its third-person methodology, CL views language use essentially as a problem-solving activity, as coping with two subproblems: the problem of minimum and maximum, which consists in selecting the appropriate expression out of an unlimited multitude of possibilities, and the problem of the underdetermination of signification. This approach presupposes a notion of an isolated subject and a representationalist view of perception. We defend an alternative view of man's relation to the world in which intersubjectivity is constitutive of embodied subjectivity and which exchanges the representationalist view of perception for a direct nonrepresentationalism. We describe the ensuing view of linguistic action as intra- and interpersonal “all-at-onceness.” This approach dismisses the two subproblems CL implicitly identifies as constitutive of language use. The first is countered by rethinking what it means to be a situated speaking subject and results in the concept of “style.” The second is tackled by opposing the concept of “overdetermination” to CL's notion of underdetermination.     

Meaning and mind: Wittgenstein's relevance for the ‘Does Language Shape Thought?’ debate

This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology for the two major contemporary approaches to the relation between language and cognition. As Pinker describes it, on the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ language is ‘an insidious shaper of thought’. According to Pinker's own widely-shared alternative view, ‘Language is the magnificent faculty that we use to get thoughts from one head to another’. I investigate Wittgenstein's powerful challenges to the hypothesis that language is a device for communicating independently constituted (or individuated) thoughts. I argue that Wittgenstein offers instead a subtle version of the thesis that language determines thought.     

The Thought of Building a Human Community with a Shared Future: Inheritance and Innovation to Marx’ s Thought of Community

Marx’s thought of community has experienced three stages in logic and is rooted in the social fundamental contradictions between productive forces and universal communication in content. It reflects the evolution of history into world history and human’s free and all-round development tending towards the unity of individuals and communities. Faced with the profound changes never seen in a century, the thought of building a human community with a shared future inherits and carries forward Marx’s idea of community in three aspects, i.e., the practice of building a social community, the ultimate focus on human destiny, and the grand vision of promoting historical development in human society. In addition, under the historical context of socialism and capitalism coexisting, the thought of building a human community with a shared future creates and shows a new state of Marx’s idea of community in three aspects, namely, dimension remodeling, path reshaping, and value reinterpretation. It presents a new model for historical significance and human civilization of a world of openness, probability and promise to promote the transformation from the modern society to a human society.     

Erikson Meets the Postmodern: Can Classic Identity Theory Rise to the Challenge?

In this article, I differentiate between 2 ways in which the postmodern is described as challenging Erikson's identity theory: postmodernity as a unique context of development and postmodernism as a critical theory of knowledge. Erikson's theory is evaluated from both perspectives. It is suggested that Erikson's writings contain significant concepts that can be used to constructively address many of the concerns of postmodernists. Erikson's concept of identity structure as a goal-oriented configuration of identity elements created through the interaction of the individual and society, coupled with his portrayal of multiple possible cultural goals and values guiding childrearing practice, are seen as key concepts with which Erikson's theory can explain and acknowledge diverse and context-sensitive structures of identity. A call is made to bring both values and cultural content back into the domain of the psychological study of identity.