Is There a Right to Be Forgiven?

Philosophia - Imagine a case of wrongdoing—not something trivial, but nothing so serious that adequate reparations are impossible. Imagine, further, that the wrongdoer makes those reparations...     

Should We Be Kantians? A Defence of Empiricism (Part One)

In his book Mind and World (1994), John McDowell defends the Kantian position that the content of experience is conceptual. Without this Kantian assumption, he argues, it would be impossible to understand how experience may rationally constrain thought. But McDowell's Kantianism is either false or empty, and his view of the relation between mind and world cannot be stated without transcending the bounds of sense. McDowell's arguments supporting the Kantian thesis, which are very different from Kant's arguments, essentially involve a fallacy of ambiguity. In order to understand how thought may be rationally constrained by experience we should become empiricists.     

Should We Be Talking About Ethics or About Morals?

This article seeks to revisit the distinction between the words ethics and morals. First, we understand the word ethics to be focused on the way we seek to live our own life, and hence to connote a relativistic and essentially subjective perspective, whereas we understand the word morals to be focused on the way we should live our lives together, especially through sensitivity to viewpoints other than our own. Second, we perceive a usefulness in such a differentiation when the ethical values of those in a dilemmatic situation are conflicted in order to prioritize moral decision making in contemporary society. We argue that in our current era, characterized by a multiplicity of faiths and by pronounced value pluralism, a philosophical basis for moral decision making needs to be clearly attuned with intersubjectivity and interconnectivity among people. It should be able to determine principles of conduct toward others, no matter how one’s own ethical values, conceptions of the good, or life choices might differ from those of others. To do this, we relocate ethical decision making away from an essentially monological reflection on our own values and purposes into a social space wherein we have an inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue.     

Is There Really a Beauty Premium or an Ugliness Penalty on Earnings?

Purpose

Economists have widely documented the “beauty premium” and “ugliness penalty” on earnings. Explanations based on employer and client discrimination would predict a monotonic association between physical attractiveness and earnings; explanations based on occupational self-selection would explain the beauty premium as a function of workers’ occupations; and explanations based on individual differences would predict that the beauty premium would disappear once appropriate individual differences are controlled. In this paper, we empirically tested the three competing hypotheses about the “beauty premium”.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We analyzed a nationally representative and prospectively longitudinal sample from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

Findings

The results contradicted the discrimination and self-selection explanations and strongly supported the individual differences explanation. Very unattractive respondents always earned significantly more than unattractive respondents, sometimes more than average-looking or attractive respondents. Multiple regression analyses showed that there was very weak evidence for the beauty premium, and it disappeared completely once individual differences, such as health, intelligence, and Big Five personality factors, were statistically controlled.

Implications

Past findings of beauty premium and ugliness penalty may possibly be due to the fact that: 1) “very unattractive” and “unattractive” categories are usually collapsed into “below average” category; and 2) health, intelligence (as opposed to education) and Big Five personality factors are not controlled. It appears that more beautiful workers earn more, not because they are beautiful, but because they are healthier, more intelligent, and have better (more Conscientious and Extraverted, and less Neurotic) personality.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to show that: 1) very unattractive workers have extremely high earnings and earn more than physically more attractive workers, suggesting evidence for the potential ugliness premium; and 2) the apparent beauty premium and ugliness penalty may be a function of unmeasured traits correlated with physical attractiveness, such as health, intelligence, and personality.

     

One or two? A Process View of pregnancy

Philosophical Studies - How many individuals are present where we see a pregnant individual? Within a substance ontological framework, there are exactly two possible answers to this question. The...     

How Should I Be? A Defense of Platonic Rational Egoism

There has been a long tradition of interpreting Plato as a rational egoist. Over the past few decades, however, some scholars have challenged this reading. While Rational Egoism appeals to many ordinary folk, in sophisticated philosophical circles it has fallen out of favor as a general and complete account of the nature of reasons for action. I argue that while the theory of practical rationality that is often equated with rational egoism—a view that I call ‘Simple‐Minded Rational Egoism'—is neither plausible nor endorsed by Plato in his Republic, there is a more complex version of Rational Egoism to which Plato is indeed committed. Moreover, such a conception of practical rationality is not vulnerable to the standard set of objections that contemporary philosophers have made against Rational Egoism.     

Is It Possible to Become Happier? (And If So,How?)

Although some theory suggests that it is impossible to increase one's subjective well-being (SWB), our 'sustainable happiness model' ( Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005 ) specifies conditions under which this may be accomplished. To illustrate the three classes of predictor in the model, we first review research on the demographic/circumstantial, temperament/personality, and intentional/experiential correlates of SWB. We then introduce the sustainable happiness model, which suggests that changing one's goals and activities in life is the best route to sustainable new SWB. However, the goals and activities must be of certain positive types, must fit one's personality and needs, must be practiced diligently and successfully, must be varied in their timing and enactment, and must provide a continued stream of fresh positive experiences. Research supporting the model is reviewed, including new research suggesting that happiness intervention effects are not just placebo effects.     

Religious Right,Religious Left,Both, or Neither? Understanding Religio‐Political Identification

In this article we analyze the effects of religious, political, socioeconomic, and demographic variables on religious Americans’ propensity to identify with religio‐political movements. Using data from the 2013 Economic Values Survey collected by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), we sort nonsecular Americans into four categories: religious right, religious left, both religious right and religious left, or neither religious right nor the religious left. We estimate a multinomial logit model in which we depict religio‐political identification as a function of religious affiliation, worship attendance, religious embeddedness, religious convictions, political attitudes, and socioeconomic and demographic controls. We find that a wide range of religious, political, and socioeconomic/demographic variables affect individuals’ identification with the religious right and/or religious left. Our empirical results also permit us to analyze the seeming paradox of identifying with both the religious right and the religious left. We find that individuals who identify with both movements come from the ranks of the highly religious, those who believe that being moral requires one to believe in God, Tea Party supporters, strong partisans, those with lower education and income, older individuals, and blacks and Hispanics.     

Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?”

Eighty-nine black women’s racial and gender identities were examined within an intersectional framework that emphasized their unique integration of these identities. Quantitative analyses indicated that the intersected black-woman identity was more important than the individual identities of woman and black person. Further, interference in the black identity (but not interference in the woman identity) was related to lower self-esteem and depression. Qualitative analyses of rewards and difficulties experienced as black women identified four themes: stereotyping and discrimination, personal esteem, isolation from others, and opportunities and resources. Black women who mentioned any reward reported higher self-esteem than those who did not. The value of an intersectional framework for thinking about black women’s identities is discussed.     

A confusion of tongues or whose reality is it?

In a 1933 paper Ferenczi implied that conflict between the adult's and the child's construction of reality is traumatic for the child. As all individuals construct their own view of reality, it is inevitable that there will be conflicting constructions between child and adult--and between analyst and analysand. This may be biologically rooted; recent ethological studies suggest that parent-child conflict is ubiquitous because of a divergence of needs. When a child perceives a marked divergence between his or her construction of reality and that of the caretaker, the child may tend to reject the information proffered by the caretaker. This may appear later as a resistance to learning from the analyst. The divergence of needs between child and caretaker may have a profound influence on the child's cognitive development. The capacity to share other constructions of reality is a developmental achievement which may be facilitated by the psychoanalytic process.     

Should We Be Trying So Hard to Be Postmodern? A Response to Drees,Haught, and Yeager

This paper explores the thesis that both modernism and postmodernism, as contemporary cultural phenomena, have been unable to come to terms with the issue of human rationality in any positive way. As a result of this, nearly all of the stereotyped ways of relating theology and science through models of conflict, independence, consonance, harmony, integration, or dialogue are likely to be revealed as too simplistic generalizations about the relationship between these two dominant forces in our culture. What is proposed is a postfoundationalist model where theology and science can rediscover the resources of rationality shared by these two reasoning strategies. Postfoundationalism in theology and science wants to point creatively beyond the confines of the local community, group, or culture toward a plausible form of interdisciplinary conversation. In taking seriously the role of local context and interpreted experience, postfoundationalism in theology and science should enable us to reach beyond the walls of our own communities in cross-contextual, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary conversation.     

What is Psychological Well-Being, Really? A Grassroots Approach from the Organizational Sciences

Research on psychological well-being (PWB) in organizational settings is now facing two major challenges. First, conceptual confusion surrounds PWB (Danna and Griffin 1999; Diener 1994; Ryff 1989), and the debate about the superiority of concurrent hedonic, eudaimonic, and integrative approaches is still open. Second, researchers in the organizational sciences mainly study context-free PWB while measuring organizational correlates, despite contextualized non-cognitive measures having proven their incremental validity over context-free measures (e.g. English 2001; Hunthausen et al. 2003). In an attempt to address these issues from a new perspective, an inductive approach was proposed. To confer good content validity to our model of PWB at work (PWBW), a preliminary bottom-up qualitative phase was carried out. On this basis, a quantitative study was conducted. From the 80 manifestations of PWBW obtained, a new instrument was generated and administered to 1,080 workers, supplemented by measures of context-free PWB and distress, of positive and negative affect, and of life satisfaction. Exploratory factor analyses revealed that PWBW can be conceptualized through 5 dimensions, namely, Interpersonal Fit at Work, Thriving at Work, Feeling of Competency at Work, Desire for Involvement at Work, and Perceived Recognition at Work. The questionnaire showed satisfactory internal consistency. Correlational analyses support the “related but distinct” nature of PWBW with regard to context-free hedonic and eudaimonic PWB dimensions and psychological distress indicators. In sum, the study led to the development of a grounded conceptualization of PWBW based on a work frame-of-reference and tied to a reliable and valid measure.     

Exploring the Time Preferences by Procrastinators: Night or Day,Which is the One?

In study 1, trait procrastinators compared to nonprocrastinators claimed they were ‘night persons’, individuals who are most alert and active in the late afternoon and evening hours. However, there were no significant individual differences in time preference for a set of social and individual activities considered pleasurable. In study 2, participants kept daily records for six straight days of when they had engaged in activities. Proneness toward behavioral (but not decisional) procrastination was significantly related to number of activities performed in the evening. Together, these studies suggest that procrastinators may be ‘late starters’ who prefer to engage in daily activities later in the day than early in the morning. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Unilateral Right and Left Face Contractions Induce Positive and Negative Emotions? A Further Test of Schiff and Lamon's (1989) Hypothesis

Schiff and Lamon (1989) proposed that unilateral face contractions induce positive or negative changes in emotion depending on the side of contraction; support for this proposal, however, has been mixed. In a new test, 40 right-handed and 38 left-handed men performed four alternating face contractions (LRLR or RLRL) and, after each one, completed a different version of the Depression Adjective Checklist (Lubin, 1994). A repeated-measures ANCOVA failed to reveal any significant effect of side of face contraction or handedness on direction of emotion change. Instead, regardless of side of contraction, the subjects' negative emotional state increased significantly across the four contractions with the degree of change being significantly related to the subjects' reported level of difficulty in holding the contraction irrespective of whether the more difficult side was the left or the right.