Michael Polanyi: the anthropology of intellectual history

Scientific and political developments of the early twentieth century led Michael Polanyi to study the role of the scientist in research and the interaction between the individual scholar and the surrounding conditions in community and society. In his concept of “personal knowledge” he gave the theory and history of science an anthropological turn. In many instances of the history of sciences, research is driven by a commitment to beliefs and values. Society plays the role of authority and communicative backdrop that presupposes individual liberty. As a system of beliefs science is rooted in community and also in history. However, as soon as fellow humans become the objects of research, their appeal transcends the researcher. Consequently, the history of human endeavor reveals a “firmament” of standards and obligations which represent an ontological reality, for which Polanyi invokes Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of noosphere.     

Factors affecting the division of labor in households

This study reports on the division of household labor in 108 Australian married-couple households and the factors which affect it. The data confirm the persistence of a very segregated division of household labor within Australian families and thus support L. Bryson's (“Thirty Years of Research on the Division of Labor in Australian Families,” Australian Journal of Sex, Marriage & Family, 1983, 4, 125–132) claim that the situation has changed very little in the last few decades. Nevertheless, some couples had moved toward more egalitarian arrangements, with the husband and wife sharing the majority of tasks. Performance of masculine household tasks is not predicted by many of the variables included in the study, with those most highly related being of an ideological nature (political orientation and egalitarianism) or personality variables (masculinity and femininity). Feminine household tasks, though, are done increasingly more often by women as time progresses in terms of age of parents, length of marriage, and number and ages of the children. These results may indicate true changes over time and/or cohort effects. Countering this trend toward greater traditionalism over time are factors that represent peoples' ideas or exposure to ideas, such as educational level achieved, whether currently receiving education, a Labor party political orientation (i.e., less conservative), and egalitarian attitudes. Occupational variables have less association than expected, and while males' income and hours worked mitigate against them participating in feminine areas of housework, women's work hours have no impact. The results for the number of shared tasks reflect those for the feminine tasks, such that as the feminine tasks are done relatively more often by women than by men, there is less sharing of tasks. The validity of measures of household task performance are discussed.     

Perceived justice in the division of domestic labor: Actor and partner effects

This study analyzed the division of domestic labor as a relational phenomenon. Using structural equation modeling with data of dual‐earner couples from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (N = 389), actor and partner effects of perceived distributive and procedural justice in the division on relationship satisfaction were investigated. Experience of relationship conflict was considered as possible mediator between perceived justice and relationship satisfaction. Results with actor effects indicate that perceived justice is relevant only to wives' but not to husbands' relationship satisfaction. Results with partner effects, however, show that wives' perceived justice is associated with husbands' relationship satisfaction through the relationship conflict experienced by husbands. Altogether, this study illustrates the importance of considering the relational character of the division of domestic labor.     

Attitudes of adolescents toward division of labor in the home

A statewide study of adolescents' attitudes toward division of labor in the home was conducted to determine if adolescents are becoming more egalitarian in their approach to sex roles. This investigation attempted to examine adolescents' attitudes toward household tasks based on gender and maternal employment. A survey-research design was employed to collect data on 893 students in grades 7 to 12 as part of a larger study to develop a profile of today's adolescents. In general, the findings indicated that adolescents' attitudes were still somewhat traditional. Although some variations in sex-role performance of tasks were evident between males and females and students with employed and unemployed mothers, these differences were not significant.     

The division of labor in close relationships: An asymmetrical conflict issue

This research addresses couples’reports of their (hypothetical) attempts to maintain or change a gendered division of labor through conflict interactions. Two experiments in which spouses responded to scenarios showed that spouses reported more conflict over the division of housework than conflict over paid work and child care, and that wives more often than husbands desired a change in their spouses’contribution. Spouses reported more wife‐demand/husband‐withdraw than husband‐demand/wife‐withdraw interaction during hypothetical conflict over the division of labor, but only when the wife desired a change in her spouse's contribution. Together, the data imply that wife‐demand/husband‐withdraw interaction is a likely response to the asymmetrically structured conflict situation in which the wife is discontent with her husband's contribution to housework, while her husband wants to maintain the status quo. We further showed that defenders of the status quo were more likely expected to reach their goal than complainants. In the role of complainant, wives were more likely expected to reach their goal than were their husbands, but only when the conflict issue concerned their own gender stereotypical domain (i.e., family work).     

Information integration in multiple cue judgment: a division of labor hypothesis

There is considerable evidence that judgment is constrained to additive integration of information. The authors propose an explanation of why serial and additive cognitive integration can produce accurate multiple cue judgment both in additive and non-additive environments in terms of an adaptive division of labor between multiple representations. It is hypothesized that, whereas the additive, independent linear effect of each cue can be explicitly abstracted and integrated by a serial, additive judgment process, a variety of sophisticated task properties, like non-additive cue combination, non-linear relations, and inter-cue correlation, are carried implicitly by exemplar memory. Three experiments investigating the effect of additive versus non-additive cue combination verify the predicted shift in cognitive representations as a function of the underlying combination rule.     

先秦分工正义考论

荀子的"群居和一之道"与柏拉图的"正义"均以社会团结为主题,两者实质上都是应做-应得的正义。不同时代的分工-分配正义差异有赖于人与神以及人与人之间关系的不同。儒家通过"君子理天地""人有其治"的分工正义突破神的正义,建立起人类的正义之道。所有权与治理权之辨将君权神授的君主与臣民一同纳入到统一的社会分工正义体系之中,遵循按德分工与按能分工两个基本正义原则。君子与小人、劳心者与劳力者、治理者与被治理者上下两个阶层的划分乃是缘于各宜其分、各取所长的分工合作的需要,但两者最终形成"以上正下"的单向主从关系而非平等合作关系。"选贤与能""立贤无方"等理念的真正实现有赖于人与人平等关系的建立。     

Asymmetric division of labor in human skilled bimanual action: the kinematic chain as a model

This article presents a tentative theoretical framework for the study of asymmetry in the context of human bimanual action. It is emphasized that in man most skilled manual activities involve two hands playing different roles, a fact that has been often overlooked in the experimental study of human manual lateralization. As an alternative to the current concepts of manual preference and manual superiority-whose relevance is limited to the particular case of unimanual actions-the more general concept of lateral preference is proposed to denote preference for one of the two possible ways of assigning two roles to two hands. A simple model describing man's favored intermanual division of labor in the model are the following. 1) The two hands represent two motors, that is, decomplexity is ignored in the suggested approach. 2) In man, the two manual motors cooperate with one another as if they were assembled in series, thereby forming a kinematic chain: In a right-hander allowed to follow his or her lateral preferences, motion produced by the right hand tends to articulate with motion produced by the left. It is suggested that the kinematic chain model may help in understanding the adaptive advantage of human manual specialization.     

Predictors of conflict over the household division of labor among women employed full-time

This empirical study examined predictors of conflict over the household division of labor among a group of 319 middle class, less traditional married women in order to examine the degree to which equity factors predicted conflict. Forty of the women were either African American, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian. An analysis of covariance indicated that there were no differences by race/ethnicity. The study explored the following: (1) the degree to which equity factors predict conflicts over household labor, (2) which equity factors best account for conflict, (3) the degree to which particular equity factors mediate the relationship of conflict with other variables, (4) whether equity factors are more compelling in predicting conflicts than practical or status variables, and (5) whether women's perceptions of the reasons for conflict put more emphasis on equity than on other issues. Results indicated that while both equity and practical factors predicted conflict, equity factors were more statistically significant. The best overall model of conflict suggested that it was predicted by lower satisfaction with the division of labor (which, in turn, was contingent upon time differentials between spouses and the time a womans' spouse spent on traditional women's tasks), a larger number of household members, a woman's younger age, and performing a greater number of overall household tasks. Equity is important to such women and constitutes a basis for making arguments about justice. However, these employed women devote twelve hours more per week to household labor than their partners and are relatively satisfied with the division. Chaeftz's theory of gender equity identifies where this sample of employed women may be located in the process of change.Thanks to Diane Blohowiak for statistical assistance and to Susan Jacquet, Laura Thieme, Annette Tierrien, and Mark Hoven Stohs for assistance with data gathering. Special thanks to the reviewers.     

Sense of fairness in the division of labor in close relationships: Procedure and gender role ideology

The present study examined whether the procedures used in establishing a couple's division of labor and each partner's gender role ideology have a significant impact on the perception of fairness in the division of labor. The data collection involved conducting a questionnaire survey of 181 Japanese participants who shared basic household work and paid work. The results from a multiple regression analysis presented a clear pattern of sex differences in the way and degree to which fairness was perceived. In the model for women, the variables of the procedure and gender role ideology had significant predictive power. In particular, the interactive communication procedure was a powerful predictor of women's sense of fairness. In contrast, among men the perception of fairness in the division of labor did not have a significant relation to the variables of the procedure and gender role ideology.     

Same old, same old: the same-order representation theory of consciousness and the division of phenomenal labor

The same-order representation theory of consciousness holds that conscious mental states represent both the world and themselves. This complex representational structure is posited in part to avoid a powerful objection to the more traditional higher-order representation theory of consciousness. The objection contends that the higher-order theory fails to account for the intimate relationship that holds between conscious states and our awareness of them–the theory ‘divides the phenomenal labor’ in an illicit fashion. This ‘failure of intimacy’ is exposed by the possibility of misrepresentation by higher-order states. In this paper, I argue that despite appearances, the same-order theory fails to avoid the objection, and thus also has troubles with intimacy. A version of this paper was presented at the ‘Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness’ conference, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona, March 18th–20th, 2005.     

Computing the meanings of words in reading: cooperative division of labor between visual and phonological processes

Are words read visually (by means of a direct mapping from orthography to semantics) or phonologically (by mapping from orthography to phonology to semantics)? The authors addressed this long-standing debate by examining how a large-scale computational model based on connectionist principles would solve the problem and comparing the model's performance to people's. In contrast to previous models, the present model uses an architecture in which meanings are jointly determined by the 2 components, with the division of labor between them affected by the nature of the mappings between codes. The model is consistent with a variety of behavioral phenomena, including the results of studies of homophones and pseudohomophones thought to support other theories, and illustrates how efficient processing can be achieved using multiple simultaneous constraints.     

An Enlightened Revolt: on the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell

This paper is a reaction to the book “Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom”, whose central concern is the philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. I distinguish and discuss three concerns in Maxwell’s philosophy. The first is his critique of standard empiricism (SE) in the philosophy of science, the second his defense of aim-oriented rationality (AOR), and the third his philosophy of mind. I point at some problematic aspects of Maxwell’s rebuttal of SE and of his philosophy of mind and argue in favor of AOR.