Two Kinds of Commitments (And Two Kinds of Social Groups)

In this paper, I draw a distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of commitments by highlighting some previously unnoticed subtleties in the pragmatics of "commissive" utterances. I argue that theories which seek to model all commitments on promises, or to ground them all on voluntary consent, can account only for one sort of obligation and not for the other. Since social groups are most perspicuously categorized in terms of the sorts of commitments that bind their members together, this puts me in a position to distinguish two importantly different kinds of social groups, which I call aggregations and associations. I try to show that this position can account for features of the normative structure of social groups that are overlooked by those theorists (e.g. Margaret Gilbert) who have attempted to offer a unitary, voluntarist account of the phenomena under investigation.     

Transcendental Aspects,Ontological Commitments and Naturalistic Elements in Nietzsche's Thought

Nietzsche's views on knowledge have been interpreted in at least three incompatible ways – as transcendental, naturalistic or proto‐deconstructionist. While the first two share a commitment to the possibility of objective truth, the third reading denies this by highlighting Nietzsche's claims about the necessarily falsifying character of human knowledge (his so‐called error theory). This paper examines the ways in which his work can be construed as seeking ways of overcoming the strict opposition between naturalism and transcendental philosophy whilst fully taking into account the error theory (interpreted non‐literally, as a hyperbolic warning against uncritical forms of realism). In doing so, it clarifies the nature of Nietzsche's ontological commitments, both in the early and the later work, and shows that his relation to transcendental idealism is more subtle than is allowed by naturalistic interpreters while conversely accounting for the impossibility of conceiving the conditions of the possibility of knowledge as genuinely a priori.     

Home, School, and Community Partnerships: Integrating Issues of Race, Culture, and Social Class

The current review is an examination of home–school–community partnerships utilizing an ecological approach to understand the influences of race, culture, and social class. The ecological approach recognizes that families and schools are embedded in communities, and that these settings influence each other and the development of children. The roles of race, culture, and social class in the development of partnerships between the home, school, and community settings are explored. Race, culture, and social class may interact with parent and family attributes, teacher and school qualities, and community context. These factors are often misunderstood either through underinvestigation or lack of integration. The implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

A Moderate Eclecticism: Ontological and Epistemological Issues

The principle of eclecticism is discussed with the point of departure in a definition of psychology and its subject areas. It is argued that eclecticism constitutes one of the key developmental conditions for science. The argument begins with an analysis of the distinction between real and recognized object and concludes that a scientific object always has an infinite number of aspects and that this fact is not reducible to a question of complexity. Next a differentiation between theoretical levels based on ontological arguments are introduced and it is concluded that it is necessary to accept positive eclectic processes in theories, and that development of theories is due to an eclectic relationship with other theories. A series of examples are given for different versions of the eclectic development of psychological disciplines and concepts, namely phenomenology, psychoanalysis, stress, and cognition.     

"网恋"及其伦理问题辨析

“网恋”可划分为“网恋I”(通过网络恋爱 )和“网恋II”(纯粹的网恋 )两种类型 ,由“网恋”引发的伦理问题可分为“问题I”、“问题II”和“问题III”。这种区分有助于分辨网恋带来的不同性质的伦理问题 ,针对不同类型的网恋及其问题 ,提出不同的应对方法。     

Social Justice and Race in the United States: Key Issues and Challenges for Couple and Family Therapy

Social justice tends to be narrowly defined as equality without due recognition of human dignity and respect for those whose daily lives continue to be adversely impacted by race. This article seeks to explore key issues and challenges at the intersection of social justice and race for couple and family therapy. These include: (a) defining social justice; (b) diversity and inclusion; (c) power and privilege; (d) witness; and (e) personal responsibility.     

Policy, Principle, and Incrementalism: Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Race

For several decades, Ronald Dworkinhas been one of the most prominent voicesdefending the legality and justifiability ofrace-conscious programs aimed at undoing thecontinuing effects of prejudice. Writingwithin the framework of a liberal legalphilosophy, he has formulated powerfularguments against the view that color-blindpolicies are the only defensible ones. Nonetheless, I argue that a more completeliberal defense of race-conscious policieswould need to develop and modify Dworkin's lineof argument. Such a defense would go beyondhis policy-based arguments and incorporatearguments of principle. Race-conscious policiesdo not only promote the general good; they arealso required in order to help realize theconstitutional right of equal citizenship.     

Persons as Sui Generis Ontological Kinds: Advice to Exceptionists

Many metaphysicians tell us that our world is one in which persisting objects are four‐dimensionally extended in time, and persist by being partially present at each moment at which they exist. Many normative theorists tell us that at least some of our core normative practices are justified only if the relation that holds between a person at one time, and that person at another time, is the relation of strict identity. If these metaphysicians are right about the nature of our world, and these normative theorists are right about what justifies our normative practices, then we should be error theorists about the justification of at least some of our core normative practices and in turn, arguably we should eliminate those practices for which justification is lacking. This paper offers a way of resolving the tension between these two views that does not lead into the grips of error theory. It is a way that is amenable to “exceptionists” about persons: those who think there is something special about persons and the first‐person perspective; that personhood cannot be explained naturalistically, and the first‐person perspective is naturalistically irreducible. The conclusion is thus a conditional: given that one is an exceptionist, an attractive way to resolve this tension is to embrace the view that persons are sui generis ontological kinds.     

Social Issues,Authoritarianism, and Ideological Conceptualization: How Policy Dimensions and Psychological Factors Influence Ideological Labeling

Ideology's crucial theoretical and empirical role in explaining political behavior makes it imperative that scholars understand how individuals conceptualize and apply ideological labels. The existing literature on this topic is quite limited, however, because it relies almost exclusively upon data from the 1970s and 1980s, and it does not examine how psychological factors influence conceptualizations of ideological labels. This article uses data from two original laboratory experiments to test the relative impact of four major policy dimensions on participants' evaluations of candidate ideology and to test authoritarianism's role in shaping ideological conceptualization. These analyses indicate that individuals most often define liberalism and conservatism primarily in terms of social policies closely associated with religious values, each of which invert traditional ideological orientations toward the appropriate size and role of government. The causal mechanism shaping this relationship is authoritarianism, because, I argue, the religious social policy dimension most clearly evokes the deep‐seated value conflicts associated with an authoritarian view of political conflict.     

Social Class, Race, and Ethnicity: Career Interventions for Women Domestic Violence Survivors

This story describes a community intervention study conducted with women domestic violence survivors and a research dilemma related to the complex interrelationships between women's social class, race and ethnicity, and career development needs and experiences. The author presents diversity and research dilemmas related to facilitating women's critical consciousness of power dynamics at work in their lives. The influence of community context, career intervention curricula, and research team members' values on research decisions are described. This story highlights the importance of researchers examining their values and how those values impact the communities that they serve.     

Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence: Race and Gender Issues

Previous research has notextensively addressedhow attitudes toward domestic violence vary betweenethnicities and genders. This experiment utilizeddomestic violence scenarios with the husband's andwife's ethnicities varied to form four combinations ofEuropean-American and African-American couples.Participants were 156 European-American (87 female and69 male) and 109 African-American (73 female and 36 male)undergraduate introductory psychologystudents aged 18-24 years. Participants read thescenario and completed 7 questionnaires about theirattitudes toward the scenario, domestic violence, andwomen. Analyses showed that women relative to menblamed the husband more for the abuse, sympathized morewith the wife, and rated the incident as more serious,and African-American participants sympathized more with African-American victims. In addition,participants blamed the African-American husband lessfor the abuse than the EuropeanAmerican husband. Bothwomen and European-Americans, relative to men and African-Americans, had more positive views ofwomen and disapproved more strongly of wife beating.This research demonstrates that participant gender andethnicity, as well as abuser and victim ethnicity, do have an effect on attitudes toward domesticviolence.     

Ontological Issues and the Possible Development of Cultural Psychology

Ontological issues have a bad reputation within mainstream psychology. This paper, however, is an attempt to argue that ontological reflection may play an important role in the development of cultural psychology. A cross-reading of two recent papers on the subject (Mammen & Mironenko, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49(4), 681–713, 2015; Simão Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50, 568–585, 2016), aimed at characterizing their respective approaches to ontological issues, sets the stage for a presentation of Cornelius Castoriadis’ ontological reflections. On this basis, a dialogue is initiated with E.E. Boesch’s Symbolic Activity Theory that could contribute to a more refined understanding of human psychological functioning in its full complexity.     

Concerning the Importance of Ontological Issues for Cultural Psychology: a Reply to Comments

The paper continues the “ontological” discussion in IBPS, addressing the question of the importance of ontological issues for contemporary development of cultural psychology. The language psychological science speaks is considered as an ontological issue and a most topical one for cultural psychology, aiming at “constructing a psychology that is universal while being culture-inclusive” (Valsiner 2009, p.2). Ontological issues could stay implicit and neglected, as long as the ‘etant, “the mode of being”, “the particularities” were discussed within the circle of adherents of one and the same school, who implicitly had in mind the same ‘entre. However, as soon as the discussion involves representatives of different schools, ontological issues become crucial for mutual understanding and meanings of the words have to be explicated. Same words like “psyche”, “subjectivity”, “social”, “culture”, etc., ? often mean different things when they are pronounces or written by representatives of different theoretical trends. The discussion of the ‘etant without clear indicating of the ‘entre under consideration is likely to turn into a Babel. Global modernity requires constant efforts and insistent desire for mutual understanding across the diversified global scientific community. Thus, creative collaboration in epistemological developments has to ground on clear comprehension of the ontological stances of the debaters.     

Race,Religion, and Anti‐Poverty Policy Attitudes

Using the 2008 National Politics Study, the present study indicates that while African Americans are more likely than whites to hear sermons about poverty and other political issues, hearing such sermons more consistently associates with support for anti‐poverty government programs among non‐Hispanic whites than among both African Americans and Hispanics. The racially/ethnically marginalized status of blacks and Hispanics may contribute to these groups being more receptive than whites to religious messages emphasizing social inequality. The contrasting racial experiences of dominance and marginalization may also help explain why hearing politicized sermons is more meaningful to the progressive social welfare attitudes of whites than to African Americans and Hispanics. This expectation is rooted in the heightened variability of perspectives among whites and their religious organizations regarding the government's role in aiding the economically disadvantaged. Conversely, the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics support the government helping individuals who fallen upon hard times. The greater variability in opinion among whites may also allow for greater differences in opinion to emerge between whites who attend relative to those outside of religious congregations led by clergy emphasizing spiritual and political solidarity with the poor than is the case for African Americans and Hispanics.     

On Social Attribution: Implications of Recent Cognitive Neuroscience Research for Race, Law, and Politics

Interpreting the world through a social lens is a central characteristic of human cognition. Humans ascribe intentions to the behaviors of other individuals and groups. Humans also make inferences about others?? emotional and mental states. This capacity for social attribution underlies many of the concepts at the core of legal and political systems. The developing scientific understanding of the neural mechanisms used in social attribution may alter many earlier suppositions. However, just as often, these new methods will lead back to old conundrums. Cognitive neuroscience will not dispel the hard problems of social judgment.     

Caring,Social Policy,and Homelessness

Care theory offers a way to overcome a weaknessof liberalism – its reluctance to intervene inthe private lives of adults. In caring for thehomeless, we must sometimes use a limited formof coercion, but our intervention is alwaysinteractive, and the process of finding asolution is one of negotiation between theneeds expressed by the homeless and the needswe infer for them.     

The Social Authority of Paradigms as Group Commitments: Rehabilitating Kuhn with Recent Social Philosophy

By linking the conceptual and social dynamics of change in science, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions proved tremendously fruitful for research in science studies. But Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability provoked strong criticism from philosophers of science. In this essay I show how Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality illuminates and strengthens Kuhn’s model of scientific change. After recalling the central features and problems of Kuhn’s model, I introduce Tuomela’s approach. I then show (a) how Tuomela’s conception of group ethos aligns with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as group commitments, and (b) how Tuomela’s distinction between I-mode and we-mode forms of collective intentionality can capture the shifting paradigmatic commitments in Kuhn’s model of change as a cycle of normal and revolutionary science. But Tuomela’s analysis does not rely on meaning holism, and thus does not involve the problematic notion of incommensurability that burdened Kuhn’s analysis.