SOLIDARITY: RIVAL VERSIONS,CONFLICTING INTERPRETATIONS,AND THE SHAPE OF HOPE

What do we mean when we utter the word ‘solidarity’? How do we apprehend its meaning when we hear it spoken of by others? The ancient Greeks ‐ Homer, Thucydides, and Aristotle ‐ offer a vantage point from which this inquiry may begin. The Book of Genesis sets before us a cycle of stories about brothers, along with questions about the bonds that keep them together. The sagas of Iceland explore the nature of conflicts between one family and another. Thomas Aquinas gives a distinctive account of solidarity between Christians. Emile Durkheim, too, provides an influential analysis of solidarity. Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Scheler, and Richard Rorty make significant contributions to the discussion. John Paul II elaborated an impressive vision of solidarity. This essay undertakes a form of reconnaissance, then, by exploring the border region between these rival versions of solidarity.     

Optimizing the scientific study of suicide with open and transparent research practices

Suicide research is vitally important, yet—like psychology research more broadly—faces methodological challenges. In recent years, researchers have raised concerns about standard practices in psychological research, concerns that apply to suicide research and raise questions about its robustness and validity. In the present paper, we review these concerns and the corresponding solutions put forth by the “open science” community. These include using open science platforms, pre‐registering studies, ensuring reproducible analyses, using high‐powered studies, ensuring open access to research materials and products, and conducting replication studies. We build upon existing guides, address specific obstacles faced by suicide researchers, and offer a clear set of recommended practices for suicide researchers. In particular, we consider challenges that suicide researchers may face in seeking to adopt “open science” practices (e.g., prioritizing large samples) and suggest possible strategies that the field may use in order to ensure robust and transparent research, despite these challenges.     

Solidarity and the New Inequality

Economists now have the data to generate a high‐resolution picture of the economic inequalities within the very top fractions of income and wealth and between the top‐most fractions and others that have emerged since the early 1980s. I shall refer to these inequalities collectively as “the new inequality.” I argue that the moral value of solidarity can be used to raise pointed moral questions about the new inequality. In most cases, however, I shall raise such questions without answering them. For I contend that solidarity functions more usefully as part of an articulate hermeneutic of suspicion—that is, as a central element in skepticism about economic inequalities and their justifications. Seeing that it functions in this way, we can see one contribution religious ethics makes to an inquiry into the new inequality.     

Politics,democratic action,and solidarity

I agree with the critique of rationalism proposed by Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus in ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. Today the defence of democracy requires us to understand that allegiance to democratic institutions can only rest on identification with the practices, the language‐games, and the discourses which are constitutive of the democratic ‘form of life’, and that it is not a question of providing them with a rational justification. My comments are developed in two directions. First, as a development of their thesis concerning the centrality of practices, I suggest that in order to grasp the present crisis of democratic forms of individuality we can learn a lot from Nietzsche's analysis of ‘nihilism’. Second, I point to a dimension which I consider to be missing in the perspective put forward in the article. It fails to take account of the fact that the constitution of a ‘we’ always requires the determination of a ‘them’. This, in my view, has important consequences for the relation between solidarity and politics. I conclude by arguing for the need to introduce an agonistic element in the view of solidarity, and for the crucial role of the category of the adversary in a pluralist democracy whose aim is to transform antagonism into agonism.     

On the relation between conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics

In recent years, there has been growing discussion amongst philosophers about “conceptual engineering”. Put roughly, conceptual engineering concerns the assessment and improvement of concepts, or of other devices we use in thought and talk (e.g., words). This often involves attempts to modify our existing concepts (or other representational devices), and/or our practices of using them. This paper explores the relation between conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, where conceptual ethics is taken to encompass normative and evaluative questions about concepts, words, and other broadly “representational” and/or “inferential” devices we use in thought and talk. We take some of the central questions in conceptual ethics to concern which concepts we should use and what words should mean, and why. We put forward a view of conceptual engineering in terms of the following three activities: conceptual ethics, conceptual innovation, and conceptual implementation. On our view, conceptual engineering can be defined in terms of these three activities, but not in a straightforward, Boolean way. Conceptual engineering, we argue, is made up of mereologically complex activities whose parts fall into the categories associated with each of these three different activities.     

Couples Relationship Education and Couples Therapy: Healthy Marriage or Strange Bedfellows?

This paper focuses on issues sparked by the Couples Relationship Education (CRE) field moving toward a more clinical model to meet the needs of an increasing number of distressed couples coming to CRE programs. We review the concerns raised and recommendations made by Bradford, Hawkins, and Acker (2015), most of which push CRE toward a more clinical model. We address these recommendations and make suggestions for best practices that preserve the prevention/education model underlying research‐based CRE. The three main issues are couple screening, leader training, and service delivery models. Our suggested best practices include: conducting minimal screening including the assessment of dangerous levels of couple violence, training leaders with key skills to handle issues raised by distressed couples as well as other couples who may place additional burdens on leaders, providing referrals and choices of programs available to participants at intake and throughout the CRE program, and adding (rather than integrating) clinical services to CRE services for couples who desire additional intervention. Finally, throughout the paper, we review other key issues in the CRE field and make recommendations made for future research and practice.     

Pragmatism, Relativism, and the Critique of Philosophy

The relativist strain in Rorty's work should be distinguished from the Davidsonian strain. The latter may be exploited in support of Rorty's critique of philosophy but it is at odds with his use of "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism"as explanatory concepts. Once this is recognized, there remains in Rorty's work a consistent challenge to the search for general philosophical theories of truth, objectivity, and rationality (of which relativism itself is an example). On this reading, however, Rorty's pragmatism is not a theory that offers answers to questions about the authority of beliefs and practices but rather a critical tool used to open detailed, concrete, and critical investigation into particular questions about the establishment and viability of the beliefs and practices we have.     

Assessment of mothers' concerns about infants,toddlers, and preschoolers

Only recently has determining the child-rearing concerns of parents been considered an important research objective. Existing efforts have, for the most part, either employed small sample sizes or surveyed parents already in the process of seeking help or advice. It was, therefore, felt that additional, more representative data were needed. In the present study, 583 mothers with children aged 59 months or younger were surveyed regarding their concerns about their children's development. On the „Specific Needs Assessment Report”︁ (SNAR) (copyright © 1975, by Karl F. Riem, J. Jeffrey Crisco, and Kathy Willms), mothers rated their concerns for 60 developmental-behavioral items about their children's health, attending skills, problem behaviors, communication skills, motor skills, cognitive skills, self-help skills, and social skills. Mothers were most frequently concerned to a moderate or major degree about at least one item of the problem behavior category. For this category, parent-child management, crying-whining, and temper tantrums were the individual items of greatest concern. Mothers of girls more frequently indicated health concerns than mothers of boys. These results support those of previous investigations, which suggested the need for parent education programs to help parents manage their children.     

Basic desert,conceptual revision,and moral justification

I examine Manuel Vargas's revisionist justification for continuing with our responsibility-characteristic practices in the absence of basic desert. I query his claim that this justification need not depend on how we settle questions about the content of morality, arguing that it requires us to reject the Kantian principle that prohibits treating anyone merely as a means. I maintain that any convincing argument against this principle would have to be driven by concerns that arise within the sphere of moral theory itself, whereas Vargas's argument draws solely on concerns about the expensive metaphysics involved in a libertarian conception of freedom. I argue that this amounts not just to changing the concept of free will by stipulation, but also (more problematically) to changing our moral principles by stipulation.     

Mourning the Dead,Following the Living

In this paper I take up the ambivalence we rightly feel toward leaders by examining the relationship between charismatic authority and moral exemplarity. Drawing on the social theory of Max Weber, and in dialogue with a case study of an anti‐militarism movement called the SOA (School of Americas) Watch, I demonstrate that through a “politics of sacrifice” leaders synchronize their own stories with those of communally recognized exemplars and act in ways that evidence a solidarity in the suffering of those exemplars thereby generating their charismatic authority. While performing crucial strategic, motivational, and pedagogical roles, this charisma also introduces problematic temptations to authoritarianism that short‐circuit the practical reasoning that exemplars supposedly help to form. In the end this leaves our sense of ambivalence intact. What is needed, I argue, are practices of critique that reopen the distance between leader and follower and thus allow the possibility of practical reason.     

Assessing changes in performance and monitoring processes in individual and collaborative tests according to students' metacognitive skills

This study assessed students' test performances and metacognitive processes in real classroom settings. Psychology undergraduates were categorised according to their metacognitive skills (high vs. low) and had their test performances and monitoring processes in two different types of tests (multiple-choice and short-answer tests) compared in individual and collaborative test conditions. Students' test preparation practices, attributions, and regulatory processes during test-taking were also compared by using open-ended questions. In the collaborative tests, three types of metacognitive pairings were made (high/high vs. high/low vs. low/low). Results showed that: (1) in individual tests, high-metacognitive students presented better performance and higher confidence levels due to their more effective test preparation practices and regulatory skills; (2) Differences in performance and confidence levels due to metacognitive skills disappear when students take tests collaboratively; (3) Over time, collaborative testing had particular positive effects on the low/low metacognitive pairings. Results are discussed focusing on their educational implications.     

Knowledge Representation: Two Kinds Of Emergence

Two different but closely related issues in current cognitive science will be considered in this essay. One is the controversial and extensively discussed question of how connectionist and symbolic representations of knowledge are related to each other. The other concerns the notion of connectionist learning and its relevance for the understanding of the distinction between propositional and nonpropositional knowledge. More specifically, I shall give an overview of a result in Rantala and Vadén (1994) establishing a limiting case correspondence between symbolic and connectionist representations and, on the other hand, study the problem, preliminarily investigated in Rantala (1998), of how propositional knowledge may arise from nonpropositional knowledge. I shall also try to point out that on some more or less plausible assumptions, often made by cognitive scientists, these results may have some significance when we try to comprehend the nature of human knowledge representation. Some of these assumptions are rather hypothethical and debatable for the time being and they will become justified in the future only if there will be more progress in the empirical and theoretical research on the brain and on artificial networks. The assumptions concern, besides some questions of the behavior of neural networks, such things as the relevance of pattern recognition for modelling human cognition, in particular, knowledge acquisition, and the relation between emergence and reduction.     

Conservatism. A defence

Conservatism has an essence, or so I argue. Typical of the conservative attitude is to take what is an established fact or order to be worthy of preservation, precisely because it is well established. The question what fact is established must be answered in a context, and people of different political bent answer it differently. This is why we have left‐wing as well as right‐wing conservatism, sharing a common rationale. In my Conservatism for Our Time I discuss various different aspects of this rationale, and my answer to certain strictures raised by Robert Grant concerns several of them. The most important concerns a conservative or traditionalist criticism of rationalism. This criticism has been developed by ‐ among others ‐Michael Oakeshott. In my book, and in my answer to Grant, I defend and elaborate on this criticism.     

关注焦点:女性主义伦理学、发展理论与人权

从两个方面探讨--强调全球性的关注和女性主义伦理学的交叉:人权及发展理论.首先,对以权利为基础的理论进行批评.其次,在人权运动中,努力考虑全球的健康问题.尔后,采纳可选择的范例是,寻求结合发展和人权理论形成一个全球伦理.最后,对于全球女性主义伦理学提出一个可选择的框架,对于实践有更充分的应答,以加强所有人享受健康及生育的能力.     

Trade-offs, individual differences, and misunderstandings about evolutionary psychology

Replies to comments on Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations (see record 2010-02208-001) by Confer et al. The purpose of which was to clarify the logic of evolutionary psychology and clear up some of the more common misunderstandings about it. In this response, we address the key points raised by the commentators.     

Personhood: Elusive But Not Illusory

Bioethics as a field has been fortunate that its values and concerns have mirrored the values and concerns of society. In light of the September 11th attacks, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition in American culture, one fraught with implications for bioethics. The emphasis on autonomy and individual rights may come to be tempered by greater concern over the collective good. Increased emphasis on solidarity over autonomy could greatly alter public response to research abuses aimed at defense from bioterrorism, to privacy of genetic information, and to control of private medical resources to protect the public health.     

Bioethics after the terror

Bioethics as a field has been fortunate that its values and concerns have mirrored the values and concerns of society. In light of the September 11th attacks, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition in American culture, one fraught with implications for bioethics. The emphasis on autonomy and individual rights may come to be tempered by greater concern over the collective good. Increased emphasis on solidarity over autonomy could greatly alter public response to research abuses aimed at defense from bioterrorism, to privacy of genetic information, and to control of private medical resources to protect the public health.     

Treatment,enhancement, and the ethics of neurotherapeutics

Emerging neurotechnologies, including psychopharmaceuticals, brain stimulation, implantable brain chips, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and brain imaging raise a number of ethical questions. One of the most contentious is the proper role of these technologies in improving or increasing mental and neurological traits and skills in those with no identifiable pathology. The "enhancement" debate centers around a number of concerns and philosophical approaches to the proper role of medicine, therapeutics, and desirable human qualities. Arguements for and against neurological enhancement are reviewed, and historical and social perspectives are offered.     

ON “NOT THREE GODS”—AGAIN: CAN A PRIMARY‐SECONDARY SUBSTANCE READING OF OUSIA AND HYPOSTASIS AVOID TRITHEISM?

This article is both historical and constructive. The historical side addresses the question of whether a consistent line of analogy for the Trinity can be found among the Cappadocians. I answer in the affirmative, arguing that an analogy of primary-secondary substance for the one ousia and three hypostases of the Godhead is present in Basil and the two Gregories. The constructive side concerns the question raised by modern critics over whether Primary-Secondary Substance Trinitarianism (PST) can ultimately avoid tritheism. I will consider objections to this analogy in an effort to show that PST, when taking its cues from the Cappadocians, can successfully sustain its claim to monotheism.