Orientation or dis-orientation?

This study was undertaken in an effort to determine the effect of freshman orientation upon student perceptions of university environment, knowledge of university information, and attitudes toward the orientation experience. The most important finding was that orientation significantly influenced student perception of university environment, as measured by the CUES. On the Practicality, Awareness, and Scholarship scales, differences between the pre-test and post-test groups were found to be significant at the .01 level of confidence; on the Community scale the difference was significant at the .05 level. The interesting point is, however, that these differences were not in the desired or expected direction.     

Schizophrenia or Possession?

Schizophrenia is typically a life-long condition characterized by acute symptom exacerbations and widely varying degrees of functional disability. Some of its symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations, produce great subjective psychological pain. The most common delusion types are as follows: “My feelings and movements are controlled by others in a certain way” and “They put thoughts in my head that are not mine.” Hallucinatory experiences are generally voices talking to the patient or among themselves. Hallucinations are a cardinal positive symptom of schizophrenia which deserves careful study in the hope it will give information about the pathophysiology of the disorder. We thought that many so-called hallucinations in schizophrenia are really illusions related to a real environmental stimulus. One approach to this hallucination problem is to consider the possibility of a demonic world. Demons are unseen creatures that are believed to exist in all major religions and have the power to possess humans and control their body. Demonic possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors which could be interpreted as a number of different psychotic disorders with delusions and hallucinations. The hallucination in schizophrenia may therefore be an illusion—a false interpretation of a real sensory image formed by demons. A local faith healer in our region helps the patients with schizophrenia. His method of treatment seems to be successful because his patients become symptom free after 3 months. Therefore, it would be useful for medical professions to work together with faith healers to define better treatment pathways for schizophrenia.     

Sidman or statistics?

Murray Sidman's statements regarding variability, experimental control, and generality are interwoven with examples from the literature on conditional discrimination. Sidman's position was that statistical inferences from group studies produce no information about the behavior of individual subjects and that statistical treatment of individual subject data masks variability which may represent conditions that are not controlled. Sidman's work on conditional discrimination provides excellent examples of how complex discriminations should be examined in detail with accuracy levels obtained for each type of discrimination within an experiment. Sidman made important contributions to the foundation of behavior analysis with extensive basic research as well as applications of methods and principles to clinical and educational settings.     

Persuasion or Alignment?

Persuasion is a fact of social life, one upon which positive and negative views can be taken. Argumentative rhetoric is often functionally defined as aiming to persuade. Different views on persuasion are taken in argumentative studies, and many other disciplines focus on persuasion. This article takes an “inter-discursive” view of argumentation, and, following the “Hamblin’s trend”, suggests a possible replacement for the concept of persuasion by the inter-discursive concept of alignment.     

Tolerance or Hospitality?

Facing the development of pluralistic cultures and the conflict of varied civilizations, we should examine political theory frameworks, particularly as concerns the construction of world order. On the problem of “tolerance or hospitality,” tolerance has been the target of opposition. Jacques Derrida deconstructs this concept and supports Immanuel Kant’s notion of hospitality instead of tolerance. However, Jürgen Habermas advocates reconstructing the concept of tolerance, although he does note its limits. We should regard hospitality as the fundamental spirit of international relations and take the notion of “Seeking Sameness and Respecting Diversity” as a principle for handling relations between different cultures.     

Alexithymia--state or trait?

Alexithymia refers to a specific disturbance in emotional processing that is manifested by difficulties in identifying and verbalizing feelings and a tendency to focus on and amplify the somatic sensations that accompany emotional arousal. Alexithymia is conceptualized both as an affect-deficit disorder and a continuous personality variable. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the stability levels of alexithymia with regard to changes in emotional distress levels caused by university exams. We tested 20 university students at four different times, before and after the exams. Alexithymic features and self-reported emotional distress (trait anxiety and physical symptoms) were measured. Whereas emotional distress measures changed significantly during the diverse phases, the level of alexithymia remained unchanged. We therefore conclude that alexithymia represents a constant trait.     

Forgiveness or Fairness?

Abstract

Several philosophers who argue that forgiveness is an important virtue also wish to maintain the moral value of retributive emotions that forgiveness is meant to overcome. As such, these accounts explicate forgiveness as an Aristotelian mean between too much resentment and too little resentment. I argue that such an account ends up making forgiveness superfluous: it turns out that the forgiving person is not praised for a greater willingness to let go of her resentment, but rather for her fairness or good judgment. I conclude by arguing that the virtue of fair-mindedness is more compatible with maintaining the value of the retributive emotions than the virtue of forgiveness.     

Humanity or justice?

This paper reflects on a critique of cosmopolitanism mounted by Tom Campbell, who argues that cosmopolitans place undue stress on the issue of global justice. Campbell argues that aid for the impoverished needy in the third world, for example, should be given on the Principle of Humanity rather than on the Principle of Justice. This line of thought is also pursued by ‘Liberal Nationalists’ like Yael Tamir and David Miller. Thomas Nagel makes a similar distinction and questions whether the ideal of justice can even be meaningfully applied on a global scale. The paper explores whether the distinction between the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice might be a false dichotomy in that both principles could be involved in humanitarian assistance. It will suggest that both principles might be grounded in an ethics of caring and that the ethics of caring cannot be so sharply distinguished from the discourse of justice and of rights. As a result, the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice cannot be so sharply distinguished either. It is because we care about others as human beings (Principle of Humanity) that we pursue justice for them (Principle of Justice) and the alleviation of their avoidable suffering.