SELF-IMAGE,INFORMATION EXCHANGE AND SOCIAL CHARACTER1

On interroge des individus sur l'image qu'ils se font d'eux-mêmes, l'image qu'ils désireraient donner d'eux-mêmes dans deux situations sociales distinctes (réunion amicale — entretien professionnel) et les traits d'autrui sur lesquels ils chercheraient, dans ces mêmes situations, à s'informer. Les AA. ont choisi des sujets qui sont représentatifs des types psycho-sociologiques de Riesman : étudiants de l'Inde méridionale (orientation traditionnelle); étudiants américains d'un collège exclusivement noir (orientation vers soi); étudiants américains d'un collège exclusivement blanc (orientation vers autrui). Pour se décrire eux-mêmes, les sujets indiens ont mis l'accent sur les origines démographiques, les noirs américains sur les traits de personnalité et les américains blancs sur les attitudes et opinions, ce qui est conforme aux hypothèses tirées du caractère dominant qu'ils représentent. On constate également que les Indiens changent de critères selon le type de situation évoquée, tandis que les Américains blancs changent très peu, les noirs américains se situant entre les deux.     

RESPONSIBILITY AND DISABILITY

Abstract: This essay explores the boundaries of the moral community—the collection of agents eligible for moral responsibility—by focusing on those just inside it and those just outside it. In particular, it contrasts mild mental retardation with psychopathy, specifically among adults. For those who work with and know them, adults with mild mental retardation are thought to be obvious members of the moral community (albeit not full-fledged members). For those who work with and theorize about adult psychopaths, by contrast, they are not members of the moral community (albeit not in such a full-fledged fashion as the insane). Both psychopaths and adults with MMR have a disability, and the essay is interested in how disability sometimes exempts one from the moral community and sometimes doesn't. It will be through two associated puzzles that we will eventually come to see the complicated tripartite relation between disability, responsibility, and moral community.     

CONTEXTUALISM, SUBJECT-SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM AND KNOWLEDGE OF KNOWLEDGE

§I schematizes the evidence for an understanding of 'know' and of other terms of epistemic appraisal that embodies contextualism or subject-sensitive invariantism, and distinguishes between those two approaches. §II argues that although the cases for contextualism and sensitive invariantism rely on a principle of charity in the interpretation of epistemic claims, neither approach satisfies charity fully, since both attribute meta-linguistic errors to speakers. §III provides an equally charitable anti-sceptical insensitive invariantist explanation of much of the same evidence as the result of psychological bias caused by salience effects. §IV suggests that the explanation appears to have implausible consequences about practical reasoning, but also that applications of contextualism or sensitive invariantism to the problem of scepticism have such consequences. §V argues that the inevitable difference between appropriateness and knowledge of appropriateness in practical reasoning, closely related to the difference between knowledge and knowledge of knowledge, explains the apparent implausibility.     

SCIENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE: WESTPHAL,DERRIDA, AND RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract. On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would simply be a contingent construction in accordance with social determinants. However, postmodernism does not necessarily abandon fidelity to the objects of thought. Merold Westphal's Derridean philosophy of religion emphasizes that even theology need not eliminate the transcendence of the divine other. By drawing an analogy between natural and supernatural transcendence, I argue that science is similarly called to responsibility in the encounter with that which lies outside its horizon of expectation. Science's rational autonomy is overcome by the heteronomy of realities that precede it. Understanding species as homeostatic property clusters is an example of nonessentialist, postmodern, and scientific realism. Science is still a vehicle for encountering natural alterity, thus decentering the relativism thought to characterize postmodernism. However, natural science must not attempt to place the whole of being at human disposal if it is to fulfill the potential of Westphal's philosophy of religion.     

KNOWLEDGE, SPEAKER AND SUBJECT

I contrast two solutions to the lottery paradox concerning knowledge: contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism. I defend contextualism against an objection that it cannot explain how 'knows' and its cognates function inside propositional attitude reports. I then argue that subject-sensitive invariantism fails to provide a satisfactory resolution of the paradox.     

LONELINESS,CLOSENESS AND SHARED RESPONSIBILITY IN SUPERVISION

This paper examines the meaning of stepping in and out of the formal supervisory roles and allowing relational unbidden experiences in the supervisory space. Such episodes evolve the supervisory relationship because they help to relieve the supervisees of their sense of aloneness in bearing a burdensome clinical responsibility: they change the supervisees’ perspective on therapeutic processes from first person singular to first person plural. Despite their evaluative function and the professional community that they share with supervisees, supervisors can facilitate the emergence of these episodes with the widely accepted practice of imagining therapeutic interactions. Such activity changes the hierarchy and reduces the tension in the supervisory space, and allows unbidden relational experiences to emerge. Thus, challenging the supervisory framework and temporarily stepping out of the formal roles not only strengthens the supervisees’ ethical clinical position but also allows for productive and creative processes in supervision.     

UNESCO'S PROJECT ON THE EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE FOR ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT

“Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power.” More than ever, this saying is acquiring compelling force, although it has in fact been true since man sought to communicate and to free himself from the constraints and dangers threatening his survival or hampering the development of his highest potentialities. But with the extension of relationships with societies, this maxim of Auguste Comte becomes even more pertinent. Those who lack knowledge see their fate shaped by others in the light of their own interests. This is true of individuals as well as of social groups and of people. Millions of human beings are subjected to oppressive forms of domination, both covert and overt, because they lack access to knowledge. What will the situation be tomorrow? Does irreversible “planetarization” mean that some individuals or groups of people will become the brain, storing and originating knowledge, while others will be reduced to functioning as connective or muscular tissue? The metaphor (if such it is) may be open to criticism, but the question, which is at the heart of this whole research on the exchange of knowledge, remains valid. We must face the possibility, remote though it may be, of an unequal division of mankind into a more or less standardized, mechanized, and “functional” mass and an initiated elite in possession of all the power. Processes are moving ahead that will culminate in such a situation - unless we prove capable of instituting a new international economic order. No further evidence is needed than the increase in the disparities and inequalities of income and ability to acquire knowledge not only between industrialized and Third World countries, but also within each of these groups of countries, between sections of the population, between regions, and between town and country.     

NEUROMEDIA,EXTENDED KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

Imagine you had the functions of your smartphone miniaturized to a cellular level and accessible by your neural network. Reflection on this possibility suggests that we should not just concern ourselves with whether our knowledge is extending “out” to our devices; our devices are extending in, and with them, possibly the information that they bring. If so, then the question of whether knowledge is “extended” becomes wrapped up with the question of whether knowing is something we do, or something we can share with, or outsource to, instruments. And that in turn raises the two questions of this paper: First, to what extent does such technology put pressure on the idea that we might have more than one conception of knowledge (or types of knowledge)? And second, what is the value of states that fit these conceptions (or types) of knowledge?