The intellectual basis for Latino AIDS policy: Towards the humanities and health policy

The AIDS epidemic touches upon basic humanities themes: sex, death and social worth, to name just three. AIDS policy in general builds upon society's discourse on these topics. The growing Latino population (25% of California and Texas) needs an AIDS policy that builds upon the Latino humanities tradition. The contours of the Latino intellectual tradition, as focused on issues attendant to health, are presented, with examples from Aztec, colonial and modern times.     

Community Psychology and Transformative Policy Change in the Neo-liberal Era

I present ideas about how community psychologists, as researcher-activists, can influence public policy. I begin by describing the current neo-liberal era, noting the immense obstacles it poses to progressive policy change. Next I contrast two approaches to understanding policy formation, evidence-based policy and discursive policy analysis, and argue that transformative policy change can benefit from both approaches. I then propose three types of policy outcomes that community psychology research and activism should aim to promote: (a) shaping problem definition, (b) controlling channels for debate and participation, and (c) allocating resources. I use examples from community psychologists’ involvement in policy, mostly in Canada, to illustrate how such policy change can be both achieved and constrained. I conclude by discussing implications for theory and practice related to policy change.     

Affirming the Interdependent Self: Implications for Latino Student Performance

We examined whether culture-relevant affirmations that focus on family (i.e., family affirmation) would enhance performance for Latino students compared to affirmations that focus on the individual (i.e., self-affirmation). In Study 1 (N = 82), Latino middle school students exposed to a family affirmation outperformed Latino students exposed to a self-affirmation. In Study 2 (N = 269), Latino college students exposed to a family affirmation outperformed Latino students exposed to a self-affirmation and outperformed European American students across conditions. European American students performed equally well across conditions. The findings suggest that culture provides a meaningful framework for developing effective classroom strategies.     

Where to Look for Emergent Properties

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the emergence issue. The contemporary debate, in contrast with that of past times, has to do not so much with the mind–body problem as with the relationship between the physical and other domains; mostly with the biological domain. One of the main sources of this renewed interest is the study of complex and, in general, far-from-equilibrium self-preserving systems, which seem to fulfil one of the necessary conditions for an entity to be emergent; namely, that its causal powers are not predictable from the causal powers of basic physical properties. However, I argue that much of the current emergentism debate has misfired by focusing on the interpretation of self-maintaining systems. In contrast, I claim that if we want to find emergent properties, we should look not at complex systems, but at selection (natural selection, in particular). I argue that selection processes make the causal world ‘exuberant’ by making non-physical functional and relational properties enter the causal web of the world.     

Talent Development and the Luck Problem

This paper examines the relationship between the development of talented young sports people and conceptions of social justice. It is set within the context of recent policy developments in the United Kingdom that place renewed emphasis on talent development (and wider issues of ‘gifted and talented education’), and justifies this with explicit reference to social justice. After providing a summary of relevant policy initiatives and their often-unstated presumptions, the paper goes on to examine the different ways in which philosophers have conceptualised the role of luck in human affairs. Luck is a matter of particular interest to social justice theorists, who often frame their discussions in terms of the neutralisation of luck. This presents something of a problem for policy makers, as talent development seems destined to exaggerate the effects of luck, not neutralise them. In other words, it is suggested here that talent development cannot be justified in terms of social justice – at least the version of social justice advocated my many of the leading theorists – because it results in the opposite outcome than would be desired. None of this means that talent development is indefensible; it is just indefensible in the terms used in the UK talent development policy.     

“The right thing to do?” Transformation in South African sport

In this paper I attempt to unpack the current public debate on racial transformation in South African sport, particularly with regard to the demographic make-up of its national cricket and rugby sides. I ask whether the alleged moral imperative to undertake such transformation is, in fact, a moral imperative at all. I discuss five possible such imperatives: (1) the need to compensate non-white South Africans for the injustices in sport's racist history, (2) the imperative to return the make-up of our national sides to what they would have been in the absence of that history, (3) the requirement that national sides be representative of the country, (4) the need to eliminate ongoing racial bias in selection, and (5) the obligation to provide all South Africans, regardless of their race, the opportunity to compete as equals for places in the national side. I argue that the first three, drawn from talk of “rectifying the injustices of the past”, “achieving demographic proportionality between the sides and the country”, “representivity”, and “transformation” itself, are not compelling. The remaining two are of great moral import, but, I argue, they have little to do with the sorts of phrases just mentioned, and which are frequently used in the debate.     

Crossing the Border: Latino Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy

In the midst of the ongoing and highly polarized immigration debate, it seems that little attention has been paid to how Latinos view efforts to address the issues of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States and enhanced enforcement efforts along the U.S.–Mexico border. Consequently, questions arise as to the degree of support for or rejection of such measures within the Latino community and among the various segments of that community. Do U.S.-born Latinos, foreign-born naturalized citizens, and undocumented immigrants from various parts of Latin America have similar or divergent views on these issues? It is generally assumed that ethnicity is an important factor in influencing attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies. Some studies have found that foreign-born Latinos have more positive attitudes toward immigration than native-born Latinos due in part to their shared immigration experience. There are, however, other studies demonstrating that Latino immigrants have often expressed support for more restrictive immigration policies. It may hold true, in fact, that many Latinos have ambiguous and conflicting attitudes about these issues. This article will try to shed some light on Latinos’ attitudes regarding specific policy measures by analyzing data from the Pew Hispanic Center National Survey of Latinos, which allows for considerable differentiation among various sectors of the Latino population.     

探析美国国家生命伦理学委员会--历史沿革及启示

在一个没有单一国教或价值权威能全盘解决科技政策与价值问题的多元社会中,由政府设置公共论坛性质的政策咨询委员会,是一项值得采纳的作法.美国先后设立过6个国家生命伦理学委员会,探析它们的建立与变迁,可以为我国类似组织提供参考.     

Saving the intuitions: polylithic reference

My main aim in this paper is to clarify the concepts of referential success and of referential continuity that are so crucial to the scientific realism debate. I start by considering the three dominant theories of reference and the intuitions that motivate each of them. Since several intuitions cited in support of one theory conflict with intuitions cited in support of another something has to give way. The traditional policy has been to reject all intuitions that clash with a chosen theory. A more radical policy, tied to some experimental philosophers, has called for the rejection of any evidential role for intuitions. I explore a largely ignored third alternative, i.e. saving intuitions (and their evidential role) even when they are at odds. To accommodate conflicting intuitions different sets of internally consistent (yet externally inconsistent) intuitions are taken to lend credence to different concepts of reference. In the current context, this means that the concepts of referential success and referential continuity are not monolithic. They are what I call ‘polylithic’. This paper is as much about meta-philosophical concerns with the role of intuitions as it is about reference and the scientific realism debate. Regarding the former I hope that a blueprint will emerge for similar projects in other philosophical domains. Regarding the latter, I hope that polylithicity helps disentangle claims about referential success and continuity in the scientific realism debate by making perspicuous which concepts are best equipped to evaluate the realist’s epistemic claims against the historical record of science.     

Issues and Strategies for Studying Latino Student Dropout at the Local Level

Latino student dropout is a national concern that must also be addressed strategically in local communities. Although national studies are important for pointing out areas of concern, local studies can provide more specific information for local policy development and implementation. This paper presents an example of local community-initiated needs assessment that addresses issues of Latino access to education. Focus groups and interviews were held with Latino students, parents, and community leaders as well as teachers and administrators. Issues and strategies of the needs assessment process are presented, which include involving key stakeholders, engaging community members as research partners, and engaging school personnel. General findings are presented and linked to accomplishments of the needs assessment process, such as increasing community awareness of issues and building commitment to implement strategies identified to reduce Latino student dropout.     

Cognitive reappraisal in the context of oppression: implications for psychological functioning

Research on emotion regulation has shown cognitive reappraisal to be positively correlated with better psychological functioning. Prior research has failed to account for contextual influences on this important relationship. We examined how this relationship plays out across two United States ethnic groups that represent different contexts of oppression: Puerto Ricans, experiencing distal oppression (societal level) but not proximal oppression (immediate environment), and Latino Americans, experiencing both. We also captured individual beliefs regarding oppression of one's group and implications of that oppression by measuring oppressed minority ideology (OMI). Results confirmed our hypothesis that the relationship between reappraisal and psychological functioning would be moderated by the context of oppression (as measured by ethnic group membership and OMI). For Latino Americans high on OMI, reappraisal was negatively associated with psychological functioning. For Puerto Ricans, regardless of OMI, this relationship remained positive, suggesting a possible benefit for minorities in being surrounded by in-group members.     

An efficient coding approach to the debate on grounded cognition

The debate between the amodal and the grounded views of cognition seems to be stuck. Their only substantial disagreement is about the vehicle or format of concepts. Amodal theorists reject the grounded claim that concepts are couched in the same modality-specific format as representations in sensory systems. The problem is that there is no clear characterization of (modal or amodal) format or its neural correlate. In order to make the disagreement empirically meaningful and move forward in the discussion we need a neurocognitive criterion for representational format. I argue that efficient coding models in computational neuroscience can be used to characterize modal codes: These are codes which satisfy special informational demands imposed by sensory tasks. Additionally, I examine recent studies on neural coding and argue that although they do not provide conclusive evidence for either the grounded or the amodal views, they can be used to determine what predictions these approaches can make and what experimental and theoretical developments would be required to settle the debate.     

Lessons and new directions for extended cognition from social and personality psychology

This paper aims to expand the range of empirical work relevant to the extended cognition debates. First, I trace the historical development of the person-situation debate in social and personality psychology and the extended cognition debate in the philosophy of mind. Next, I highlight some instructive similarities between the two and consider possible objections to my comparison. I then argue that the resolution of the person-situation debate in terms of interactionism lends support for an analogously interactionist conception of extended cognition. I argue that this interactionism might necessitate a shift away from the dominant agent-artifact paradigm toward an agent–agent paradigm. If this is right, then social and personality psychology—the discipline(s) that developed from the person-situation debate—opens a whole new range of empirical considerations for extended cognition theorists which align with Clark & Chalmers original vision of agents themselves as spread into the world.     

Prostitution and the Ideal State. A Defense of a Policy of Vigilance

The debate concerning prostitution is centered around two main views: the liberal view and the radical feminist view. The typical liberal view is associated with decriminalization and normalization of prostitution; radical feminism stands in favor of prohibition or abolition. Here, I argue that neither of the views is right. My argument does not depend on the plausible (or actual) side effects of prohibition, abolition, or normalization; rather, I am concerned with the ideals involved. I will concede to liberals their claim that prostitution is not harmful in itself. Yet, I will argue that prostitution cannot be thought of as “just another job”. Even if prostitution is not harmful in itself, it can do much harm. I will argue that a policy of vigilance is the most adequate one to adopt with regard of prostitution, given the risk of harm associated with prostitution. A policy of vigilance tries to discriminate between those who take a certain course of action willingly and those who do not. It puts no restraints on those who exercise their genuine will, but protects those who are openly or subtly coerced.     

Shades of American Identity: Implicit Relations between Ethnic and National Identities

The issue of ethnic diversity and national identity in an immigrant nation such as the USA is a recurrent topic of debate. We review and integrate research examining the extent to which the American identity is implicitly granted or denied to members of different ethnic groups. Consistently, European Americans are implicitly conceived of as being more American than African, Asian, Latino, and even Native Americans. This implicit American = White effect emerges when explicit knowledge or perceptions point in the opposite direction. The propensity to deny the American identity to members of ethnic minorities is particularly pronounced when targets (individuals or groups) are construed through the lenses of ethnic identities. Implicit ethnic–national associations fluctuate as a function of perceivers' ethnic identity and political orientation, but also contextual or situational factors. The tendency to equate being American with being White accounts for the strength of national identification (among European Americans) and behavioral responses including hiring recommendations and voting intentions. The robust propensity to deny the American identity to ethnic minority groups reflects an exclusionary national identity.     

A satisfied clientele seeking more diverse services: Latinos and the courts

This article assesses Latino views of the court system, both of their beliefs about the courts and their experiences with the courts. Relying primarily on the Latino over-sample of the National Center for State Courts (2000) survey of public attitudes toward the courts, we evaluate three aspects of the Latino-judicial relationship. First, we measure whether there are differences between Latino and non-Latino views of the courts. Second, we assess whether there are differences within the Latino community, particularly differences based on nativity, in Latino attitudes toward the courts. Finally, we assess the implications of Latino views of the courts for US society in general. We are particularly concerned about whether having a greater share of Latinos in the population will create new pressures to reform the judiciary.     

"Queremos Aprender": Latino Immigrants' Call to Integrate Cultural Adaptation with Best Practice Knowledge in a Parenting Intervention

Despite the unique and challenging circumstances confronting Latino immigrant families, debate still exists as to the need to culturally adapt evidence-based interventions for dissemination with this population. Following the grounded theory approach, the current qualitative investigation utilized focus group interviews with 83 Latino immigrant parents to explore the relevance of culturally adapting an evidence-based parenting intervention to be disseminated within this population. Findings from this study indicate that Latino immigrant parents want to participate in a culturally adapted parenting intervention as long as it is culturally relevant, respectful, and responsive to their life experiences. Research results also suggest that the parenting skills participants seek to enhance are among those commonly targeted by evidence-based parenting interventions. This study contributes to the cultural adaptation/fidelity balance debate by highlighting the necessity of exploring ways to develop culturally adapted interventions characterized by high cultural relevance, as well as high fidelity to the core components that have established efficacy for evidence-based parenting interventions.