Political connections,professional advancement,and moral education in Durkheimian sociology

Four related aspects of the Durkheimians' work are explored: (1) their political commitments, especially as these are revealed in their sociological works; (2) their support for the democratic “left establishment” in the Third Republic, particularly for the educational reforms initiated by that group; (3) their academic politics, specifically their struggles with philosophy for control of an intellectual field; and (4) their theories of moral education, especially as those were designed to support the political regime. The four aspects are so closely related that it is hard to understand one of them except in the context of the other three.     

Free will in context: a contemporary philosophical perspective

Philosophical work on free will is inevitably framed by the problem of free will and determinism. This paper offers an overview of the current state of the philosophical art. Early sections focus on quantum indeterminism, an outline of the most influential logical argument for incompatibilism between free will and determinism, and telling problems that face incompatibilism. A major portion of the paper focuses on the compatiblist alternative, favored by many working philosophers. The conditional account of free will offered by classical compatibilism can be shown to be inadequate. A number of compatibilist options remain open, however, and seem promising for future research. These include "hierarchical" or "mesh" accounts of free will, normative perspectives and an approach to free will in terms of an emphasis on context. Final sections draw out the implications of contemporary compatibilism for the brain and behavioral sciences and for the law.     

Introduction: The many faces of context

This paper introduces a special issue of the journal Personal Relationships dealing with context and relationships. It reflects on the state of the literature and discusses five approaches to the interplay of context and relationships.     

Jonestown--two faces of suicide: a Durkheimian analysis

This paper takes exception to much of the literature on Jonestown. The authors of this literature claim that an explanation of the mass suicide in Jonestown requires an understanding of how its residents came to a common consciousness. Such an analysis implies that the residents of Jonestown died for essentially the same reason. This paper, using Durkheim's typology of suicides, demonstrates that the residents of Jonestown died for very different reasons and that two types of suicide occurred simultaneously on November 18, 1978: altruistic and fatalistic. Some of the residents of Jonestown died because they put the group above the self; they committed altruistic suicide. The majority, however, died for fatalistic reasons. Jonestown in fact had become a hopeless, demeaning, and antagonistic environment. The analysis here suggests caution to those who assume that a mass suicide is necessarily a homogeneous event.     

A Durkheimian analysis of youth suicide: Canada, 1971 and 1981.

Durkheim hypothesized that suicide varies inversely with the extent of social integration in family, religious, political, and economic life. In this study I examine the relationship between three of these sources of social integration on young Canadians' (aged 15-29) suicide rate for 1971 and 1981: family integration (as measured by divorce), religious integration (as measured by the percent of the population reporting no religious affiliation), and economic anomie (unemployment). The findings of this research provide confirmation for the hypothesis that religious detachment among the young is associated with increased proneness to commit suicide. The effect of family dissolution was positive and significant for both young men and women in 1981 but not in 1971, giving partial confirmation for the family integration explanation of suicide. These results pertaining to unemployment are not consistent with the American-based literature that calls for a significant and positive impact on the odds of self-destruction.     

Hiring practices in British sociology: linkages among top-rated sociology doctoral programs

The extent to which top-rated and lower-rated doctoral programs in sociology in Great Britain hired their own and one another's graduates was evaluated. The 8 top-rated doctoral programs in sociology in Great Britain did not hire one another's graduates to the extent this occurs in such doctoral programs in sociology in the United States.     

Social machines: a philosophical engineering

In Weaving the Web (2000), Berners-Lee defines Social Machines as biotechnologically hybrid Web-processes on the basis of which, “high-level activities, which have occurred just within one human’s brain, will occur among even larger more interconnected groups of people acting as if the shared a larger intuitive brain” (201–202). The analysis and design of Social Machines has already started attracting considerable attention both within the industry and academia. Web science, however, is still missing a clear definition of what a Social Machine is, which has in turn resulted in several calls for a “philosophical engineering” (Halpin 2013; Hendler & Berners-Lee 2010); Halpin et al. 2010). This paper is a first attempt to respond to this call, by combining contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science with epistemology. The idea of philosophical engineering implies that a sufficiently good conception of Social Machines should be of both theoretical and practical advantage. To demonstrate how the present approach can satisfy both objectives it will be used in order to address one of Wikipedia’s (the most famous Social Machine to date) most worrying concerns—i.e., the current and ongoing decline in the number of its active contributors (Halfacker et al. 2012).     

Inductive reasoning in psychometrics: A philosophical corrective

A brief historical overview of inductive logic is presented, and the logic of enumerative induction is discussed in its two generalized forms: rule-derivative and event-predictive. The psychometric tradition and experimental studies in induction are briefly recapitulated to indicate that they have not included event-predictive induction, that probabilities have not been prevalently included in rule-generative induction, and that the linguistic medium might be utilized more fully in the inductive area. An experimental test model designed in order to address these considerations is discussed. This test model of event-predictive induction in the linguistic medium was administered to a large sample of college graduates. Statistical characteristics of the tests and items were very satisfactory when compared to operational subtests. The theoretical significance of the study for future psychometric and experimental investigations in induction is discussed.     

Confidentiality in crisis counseling: a philosophical perspective

Crisis interventionists frequently confront a moral dilemma when violating client trust seems necessary if self-destructive behavior is to be prevented. Two fundamental moral values conflict in such cases: concern for client welfare and respect for client rights and autonomy. Each of these values is grounded in one of two important Western ethical traditions: Utilitarianism and Kantian Formalism, respectively. Following critical examination of each of these theories, attention is given to a series of hypothetical cases involving the confidentiality dilemma.     

Loss: the ultimate philosophical problem

This paper draws on Jan Zwicky’s claim in Lyric Philosophy that loss is the ultimate philosophical problem and Wittgenstein’s attitude to philosophy in his Culture and Value that: ‘philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition’. This paper will enter the difficult territory of loss using poetry and reflections to engage loss as a spiritual challenge and perhaps one of the major forces shaping cultural ways. Death inescapably brings loss into life for those who remain after a death but loss has many other forms and is a persistent experience in living that touches every stage of the life journey. It is a philosophical problem rooted in common human experience from childhood on that has been addressed in a multitude of forms, conceptualizations, rituals, belief systems and religions. As a method, poetry is a way of inquiry that allows one to enter experience and meet the intensity of events, particularly loss. In her essay ‘Entering the Bird Cage: Poetry and Perceptibility’, Jane Hirschfield says that poetry allows us ‘to understand the world beyond the narrow self’ and to do so ‘it is necessary to be available to the unknown’ and loss moves experience into the unknown.