Early rejected status and later social adjustment: A 3-year follow-up

Sociometric measures and rates of social interaction were obtained from 186 kindergarten children. Subjects were classified into popular, rejected, and average status groups on the basis of sociometric data. Teachers' ratings on the Bristol Social Adjustment Guides were obtained when the children were in grade 2 and again in grade 3. Analyses of variance showed rejected children to be significantly more acting-out than popular or average children by grade 3. Rejected children were rated as less physically attractive, doing less well in reading and in arithmetic. Negative peer nomination in kindergarten was more predictive of later acting-out in grades 2 and 3 than rate of interaction.Research was funded by Alberta Mental Health Advisory Council, and Alberta Advisory Committee for Educational Studies. I wish to thank Steven Asher for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

“Everything starts within”: New Age Values,Images, and Language in Israeli Advertising

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the appropriation of New Age values, images, and language by different sectors of the mainstream in a Western society—in Israel. The findings support earlier research about the shift in values in the mainstream of Western societies. Specifically, this is a shift towards the admiration of nature, Far Eastern lore, a search for a ‘balanced’ way of life, and so on, in accordance with New Age values. This article analyzes how, and for what purpose, mainstream advertisements appropriate New Age elements. The analysis of about 100 advertisements from the last decade leads to the conclusion that all mainstream sectors, including relatively conservative ones (such as academic institutions), borrow elements from New Age, but differ in the intensity and form of appropriation: some are interested in simply attracting attention, while others directly appropriate New Age values. This article discusses the differentiation between the receptivity of specific sectors to New Age and explores possible motivations for the use of New Age elements, such as the more conservative sectors’ use of esoteric elements of New Age.     

In defense of adaptive preferences

An adaptive preference is a preference that is regimented in response to an agent’s set of feasible options. The fabled fox in the sour grapes story undergoes an adaptive preference change. I consider adaptive preferences more broadly, to include adaptive preference formation as well. I argue that many adaptive preferences that other philosophers have cast out as irrational sour-grapes-like preferences are actually fully rational preferences worthy of pursuit. I offer a means of distinguishing rational and worthy adaptive preferences from irrational and unworthy ones. The distinction is based on the agent’s own appraisal of the adaptive preference.

Adolescents' preferences for organ allocation: The role of empathy and altruism in allocation judgments

Distributive justice reasoning in adolescence, regarding the allocation of scarce medical resources, has not been thoroughly studied yet. The present study aimed to explore adolescents' preferences for organ allocation, the ethical principles that form bioethical judgments in adolescence, as well as the role of empathy and altruism in the formation of those judgments. One hundred fifty one adolescents (90 females) aged between 12 and 19 years old participated in the study. Participants were asked to suggest the criteria that should be considered in the construction of transplant waiting lists, to evaluate adults' preferable criteria and to justify their judgments. Results indicate that utilitarianism and egalitarianism were both used to form allocation judgments. Ingroup favouritism was also observed. Age differences in adolescents' preferences were witnessed, but no age effect were found regarding the principles that form participants' judgments. Aspects of empathy and altruism seemed to associate with certain allocation criteria.     

Replies to Wallace,Queloz, and Kirwin

In this article, I reply to the comments offered by R. Jay Wallace, Matthieu Queloz, and Claire Kirwin on my book, The Will to Nothingness. An Essay on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (OUP, 2021). These comments and my replies cover central features of the book, including my analysis of ressentiment as an expression of the will to power; the concept of self-undermining functionality I introduce to make sense of Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal; and my reasons for omitting to examine the “unconditional will to truth,” which he presents as the latest embodiment of this ideal.     

JUSTICE AS INHERENT RIGHTS: A RESPONSE TO MY COMMENTATORS

The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs , have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what way rights are trumps; and both his comments and Bernstein's have prodded me to clarify certain aspects of the theistic account of human rights that I offered. Attridge's comments lead me to see that I was perhaps over-zealous in emphasizing the objective aspects of the semantic range of dikaiosunê as used in the New Testament and downplaying the subjective aspects. And O'Donovan's comments have provided me with the opportunity to make clear that my account of rights is not an immunities account that presupposes nominalism, and to emphasize the ways in which it is not an asocial individualistic account.     

Body Image Preference in the United States and Rural Thailand: An Exploratory Study

The authors conducted a field study to examine the female body image preferences of young women and young men in a rural northern province of Thailand and in central California. The Thai participants did not have stronger body image preferences than did the U.S. participants overall. However, the young women preferred a significantly more slender body image than did the young men, F(1, 80) = 14.98, p < .001, and the Respondent Gender x Nationality interaction was also significant, F(1, 80) = 4.42, p = .039. Thai men, as expected, exhibited preferences for figures that were heavier than those preferred by their U.S. counterparts. Thai women, in contrast, exhibited preferences for figures that were thinner than those preferred by their U.S. counterparts or their male countrymen. These results are explained in terms of traditional Thai and U.S. values and in terms of Western cultural influences in modern Thailand.     

Editorial: Culture and religion

Based on theories of category formation (Baird) and genealogy (Foucault and Asad), and writing myself reflexively into the field, I question the consensus view that there is (or ever was) a viable social or religious ‘movement’ called ‘New Age’. Through a brief review of secondary sources, I disaggregate and historicise the field, drawing attention to signs of incompleteness, heterogeneity and cultural diffusion in preference to the dominant argument for a sui generis phenomenon. Within the field, I trace connections between Alice Bailey's discourse and Findhorn colony practice to illustrate one particular ‘New Age’ genealogy. I argue that ‘New Age’ is better represented as an expression of contemporary Anglo-American ‘popular religion’, a (re)conceptualisation that encourages more fruitful comparative historical and ethnographical analyses. Finally, I identify an emergent ‘second wave’ of ‘New Age’ studies, characterised by a concern for localised and contextualised representations.     

Distinguishing indeterminate belief from “risk-averse” preferences

I focus my discussion on the well-known Ellsberg paradox. I find good normative reasons for incorporating non-precise belief, as represented by sets of probabilities, in an Ellsberg decision model. This amounts to forgoing the completeness axiom of expected utility theory. Provided that probability sets are interpreted as genuinely indeterminate belief (as opposed to “imprecise” belief), such a model can moreover make the “Ellsberg choices” rationally permissible. Without some further element to the story, however, the model does not explain how an agent may come to have unique preferences for each of the Ellsberg options. Levi (1986, Hard choices: Decision making under unresolved conflict. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press) holds that the extra element amounts to innocuous secondary “risk” or security considerations that are used to break ties when more than one option is rationally permissible. While I think a lexical choice rule of this kind is very plausible, I argue that it involves a greater break with xpected utility theory than mere violation of the ordering axiom.     

Factors Affecting the Psychodiagnostic Significance of Color Perception

50 males, 17 and 18 years of age, and their natural parents were given the Blacky Defense Preference Inventory to determine if there are commonalities of defense preferences within families and within sex groups.

The results tended to support the hypothesis that male adolescents manifest defense preferences more similar to those of their father than to nonrelated adult males but failed to support a comparable hypothesis concerning the adolescent's similarity of defense preferences to his mother versus nonrelated adult females. The adolescent males did not reveal defense preferences more similar to those of their father than of their mother nor were sex differences in defense preferences observed. An additional finding suggested that the adult males are more heterogeneous in their defense preferences than are adult females.     

Views and Counterviews

Mark S. Hanson, An Open Letter to Dialog Readers, p. 78 John Benson, A Response to “New Age” Lutheranism, p. 79     

A model-theoretic criterion of ontology

Conclusion My aim has been to adapt Quine's criterion of the ontological commitment of theories couched in standard quantificational idiom to a much broader class of theories by focusing on the set-theoretic structure of the models of those theories. For standard first-order theories, the two criteria coincide on simple entities. Divergences appear as they are applied to higher-order theories and as composite entities are taken into account. In support of the extended criterion, I appeal to its fruits in treating the various examples considered above and to the healthy intuitions of the non-noneists among us. Don't O(m) and E(m) comprise just the things we should have though existed according to a particular interpretation m of a language or a theory? Whatever the answer (and it will hardly be unanimous), I hope to have pointed the way towards a recognition of ontology as a worthwhile branch of modern theory.Earlier versions of parts of this paper were read at New York University, at the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and at the University of Sydney. I am very grateful to William Barrett, Keith Campbell, Gregory Currie, Kenneth Gemes, Toomas Karmo, and Stephen Read for comments and criticisms.     

Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage

Several scholars have argued that New Age spirituality is best understood as a form of ‘self-spirituality’ and as an expression of the consumer capitalist tendency to commodify all things, in the process converting religion into a ‘spiritual marketplace’. This article examines the phenomenon of New Age pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to natural ‘power places’, with a focus on New Age practices at Sedona, Arizona, USA. The author assesses New Age notions of sacred space, nature, and the self, and compares pilgrim practices and sensorial interactions with Sedona's red rock landscape to forms of tourist practice and commodification more prevalent in Sedona. He argues that New Age pilgrimage, in theory and sometimes in practice, rejects the consumerist impulse, and that the New Age ‘self’ is both more open-ended and ‘postmodern’, and less central to New Age practice, than is suggested by the characterisation of New Age as ‘self-spirituality’.     

Neuroscience and Ethics: Intersections

This essay will address the ethical issues that have emerged in the first considerations of the newly emerging stem cell technology. Many of us in the field of bioethics were deliberating related issues as we first learned of the new science and confronted the ethical issues it raised. In this essay, I will draw on the work of colleagues who were asked to reflect on early stages of the research (members of the IRBs, the Geron Ethicist Advisory Board, and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission) as the field debated the issues of consent, moral status, use of animal tissues, abortion, use of fetal tissue, and the nature and goals of entrepreneurial research. In this new capacity, ethicists weighed the problem of privacy, the role of justice considerations, and the issues of the marketplace in science. At this point, it is clear that far more issues remain unresolved than are settled, that there is largely unexplored territory ahead, and that the single most important task that faces us as a field is a steady call for ongoing conversation and public debate.     

Seven Paths of the Hero in Lord of the Rings: The Path of the Wizard

The test for a wizard, already the wisest of the wise, is to resist arrogance and serve those less wise. If he passes this test, a time will come when he must willingly accept his own death in order to be transformed into something still greater. In Tolkien's great story, Lord of the Rings, the wizard Saruman fails his tests, while Gandalf passes with flying colors. Where once Saruman was the stronger of the two, now Gandalf easily surpasses Saruman's powers. Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White, taking on Saruman's mantle. When the dwarf Gimli comments that Gandalf is dressed all in white now, Gandalf replies “Yes, I am white now. Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say. Saruman as he should have been.”     

Intuition and the socratic method: Two opposed ways of knowing?

Socratic method and intuition are two ways of knowing commonly thought as opposed. The author shows how both ways of knowing can be linked in an education that has philosophy as its armature.An earlier version of this paper was presented at theWays of Knowing conference at Appalachian State University, and published in the proceedings of that conference. Lee S. Shulman's helpful comments at that time led to this revised version. I would like to thank Jim Garrison for comments and conversation on this topic. Any errors remain my own.     

Spacetime theory as physical geometry

Discussions of the metaphysical status of spacetime assume that a spacetime theory offers a causal explanation of phenomena of relative motion, and that the fundamental philosophical question is whether the inference to that explanation is warranted. I argue that those assumptions are mistaken, because they ignore the essential character of spacetime theory as a kind of physical geometry. As such, a spacetime theory does notcausally explain phenomena of motion, but uses them to construct physicaldefinitions of basic geometrical structures by coordinating them with dynamical laws. I suggest that this view of spacetime theories leads to a clearer view of the philosophical foundations of general relativity and its place in the historical evolution of spacetime theory. I also argue that this view provides a much clearer and more defensible account of what is entailed by realism concerning spacetime.I would like to thank William Demopoulos and Michael Friedman for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the anonymous referees forErkenntnis for their suggestions. Work on this paper was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Attachment,religiousness, and distress among the religious and spiritual: links between religious syncretism and compensation

Using the Adult Attachment Interview, we explored differences in attachment, distress, and religiousness among groups of traditionally religious, New Age spiritual, and religiously syncretistic (high on both) participants (Ps) (N?=?75). Religiously syncretistic Ps showed a preponderance of insecure attachment and were raised by non-religious parents, who were estimated as relatively insensitive. Moreover, religiously syncretistic Ps perceived a personal relationship with God and had experienced increased religiousness/spirituality during difficult life periods, but did not suffer elevated distress. New Agers often mirrored the religiously syncretistic, but had a more even secure–insecure attachment distribution, typically did not perceive a personal relationship with God, and did suffer elevated distress. Traditionally religious Ps were low on distress and raised by religious parents, estimated as relatively sensitive. We conclude that religious syncretism may often express religion/spirituality as compensation. Finally, we speculate that a perceived relationship with God may attenuate distress among those at risk.     

What is it to “B” a relation?

The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, I look to show Oaklander’s (The ontology of time. New York: Prometheus Books, 2004) theory of time to be false. Second, I show that the only way to salvage the B-theory is via the adopting of the causal theory of time, and allying this to Oaklander’s claim that tense is to be eliminated. I then raise some concerns with the causal theory of time. My conclusion is that, if one adopts eternalism, the unreality of time looks a better option than the B-theory. With thanks to Robin Le Poidevin, Robbie Williams, Andrew McGonigal, Peter Simons, Chris Timpson and an anonymous referee for this journal for comments on a previous draft.