The Phenomenology of Democracy

Molly Farneth’s Hegel’s Social Ethics hearkens back to the tradition of Josiah Royce, which has continued in the work of Richard Bernstein and Jeffrey Stout. At the same time, it reflects the impact of three decades of interpretive work which has offered an alternative to the 19th and early 20th century reading of Hegel as a metaphysical systematizer. In this new reading he was from the beginning a social critic and political theorist who looked to lay the groundwork for post-Enlightenment vision of the social world as evolving toward one of social cooperation based on mutual recognition. Farneth has developed this reading of Hegel into one of powerful resources for democratic pluralism.     

Mead, Intersubjectivity, and Education: The Early Writings

This article seeks to reconstruct the early writings of George Herbert Mead in order to explore the significance of his work for the development of an intersubjective conception of education. The reconstruction takes its point of departure in Mead's claim that reflective consciousness has a social situation as its precondition. In a mainly chronological account of Mead's writings on psychology and philosophy from the period 1900–1925, it is shown how Mead explains the social origin of conscious reflection and self-consciousness. It is further shown, how Mead redefines the social in terms of meaningful, creative, radically undetermined, but not yet conscious, interaction. Mead's position thereby implies a reversal of the traditional way in which the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is conceived. The article ends with an outline of the main implications of this reversal for our understanding of education.     

The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason

According to John Rawls's ideal of liberal public reason, comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines should play no more than an auxiliary or marginal role in the political life of constitutional democracies. David Reidy has recently claimed that since liberal public reason is incomplete, comprehensive doctrines, and non-public reasons, must play a wider role than Rawls admits. In response, I argue that Reidy's arguments do not establish that liberal public reason is incomplete. Furthermore, even if the substantive values embodied in liberal public reason were insufficient to determine certain fundamental decisions, such indeterminacy need not be eliminated by recourse to comprehensive doctrines. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

乡村公共伦理建设的难题解析

乡村现代化运动提出了建设支持“人的普遍联系”和公共生活的公共伦理的历史性要求、致力于乡村公共伦理建设,必须寻求解决三类难题,即基础难题、结构难题、操作难题。     

The Irrelevance of Democracy to the Public Justification of Political Authority

Democracy can be a means to independently valuable ends and/or it can be intrinsically (or non-instrumentally) valuable. One powerful non-instrumental defence of democracy is based on the idea that only it can publicly justify political authority. I contend that this is an argument about the reasonable acceptability of political authority and about the requirements of publicity and that satisfying these requirements has nothing to do with whether a society is democratic or not. Democracy, then, plays no role in publicly justifying political authority. I also show that any non-instrumental defence of democracy must make claims about what justice requires and make several further claims that require substantial justification.

Evasion, private events, and pragmatism: A Reply to Moore's response to my review of Conceptual Foundations of Radical Behaviorism

Moore's screed in response to my review of his book uses several rhetorical tricks to counter criticism without actually addressing it: he tries to preempt the transparency of his own orthodoxy by groundlessly accusing me of orthodoxy; he caricatures my criticisms to make them appear obviously wrong; he professes lack of understanding so as to dodge having to attempt a genuine response; and he engages in pejorative labeling to dismiss the criticisms without analysis. From a scientific and pragmatic point of view, private events are a mistake, precisely because they are private. They cannot serve as independent variables, as Moore suggests, because they cannot be measured; “private independent variable” is a contradiction in terms. When we carefully examine locutions like “observe” and “report on,” we discover that they entail only public verbal and nonverbal behavior, not objects and not private events as objects. A person in pain is not reporting on anything, is engaging in public verbal and nonverbal pain‐behavior, and an infant or a dog may be considered to be in pain. The public behavior is all that matters, because determining whether a person is really in pain privately is impossible. The same is true of any private event, and the control of the public behavior on which the verbal community comments lies in the public environment. We cannot have two sets of principles, one for verbal behavior and one for nonverbal behavior or one for humans and one for other animals.     

Focus,Scope, and Practice of Behavioral Consultation to Public Schools

SUMMARY

Public school districts frequently seek professional consultation to improve educational services. This article is an overview of the focus, scope, and practice of behavioral consultation to public schools. A four-stage process of consultation is described, followed by a discussion on the expanding role of behavior support intervention. Next, the involvement of consultants in the design of individual-student, classroom-wide, and whole-school programs is considered. Contemporary approaches to consultation are presented such as positive behavior support, functional behavioral assessment, and efficacy evaluation that targets natural data sources. A concluding section sets forth recommendations for the successful practice of public school behavioral consultation.     

Behavior Analysts to the Front! A 15-Step Tutorial on Public Speaking

Mainstream prominence was Skinner’s vision for behavior analysis. Unfortunately, it remains elusive, even as we approach the 110th anniversary of his birth. It can be achieved, however, and there are many routes. One that seems overlooked in many (most?) behavior analytic training programs is what I call the front of the room. The front of the room is a very powerful locus for influencing people. Mastering it can turn a commoner into a king; a middling man into a mayor; or a group of disorganized, dispirited people into an energized force marching into battle. The most powerful members of our species had their most memorable moments at the front of the room. If so much is available there, why is mastery of it in such short supply, not just in behavior analysts but in the population at large? In this paper, I address why, argue that the primary reason can be overcome, and supply 15 behaviorally based steps to take in pursuit of front of the room mastery.     

The Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes--Stuttering (POSHA-S): summary framework and empirical comparisons

Purpose

The Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes-Stuttering (POSHA-S) was developed to make available worldwide a standard measure of public attitudes toward stuttering that is practical, reliable, valid, and translatable. Mean data from past field studies as comparisons for interpretation of POSHA-S results are reported.

Method

Means for POSHA-S items (converted to −100 to +100 scales), components comprising clusters of items, subscores comprising clusters of components, and Overall Stuttering Scores comprising two subscores for stuttering were generated from 64 samples, totaling 2876 respondents who completed experimental versions of the POSHA-S.

Discussion

Lowest, highest, and median sample values, which vary with the addition of new sample data to the growing POSHA-S database archive, provide points of comparison for any potential sample rather than predetermined values.

Conclusions

The final POSHA-S, together with an ongoing and growing archive, can provide increasingly meaningful comparisons for stakeholders measuring public attitudes toward stuttering.Educational objectives: (1) Describe the subscores and components of the POSHA-S, (2) describe the Overall Stuttering Score of the POSHA-S, and (3) describe the format for interpretation of the POSHA-S.     

晚清中国乡村的公共道德生活探微

晚清时期,中国乡村公共道德生活基本延续着传统格局.晚清中国乡村传统公共道德生活格局存在着许多历史的局限性,但沉淀着中国千百年古老的道德文明精华,是近代化公共道德生活在中国乡村发生和发展的重要基点.     

传统文化价值的四类解读方式

19世纪中期以来,在西方文化的冲击下,中国先进知识分子开始了对中国传统文化价值的解读,并因此形成了公例主义、科学主义、唯物主义和实用主义四类解读方式。四类解读方式的形成及运用,不仅使丰富多彩的传统文化价值被发掘出来,而且赋予传统文化新的意义;同时为建构更为科学、合理的解读传统文化价值的方法体系准备了思想和经验的基础。     

The Complexity of Justice - A Challenge to the 21st Century

The author discusses two questions, the relation between liberalism and democracy, and the relation between ethics, morality and law. As to the first question, she argues that neither liberalism nor democracy are merely formal. Roughly spoken, it can be said that liberalism stands for negative liberties, whereas democracy stands for positive ones. She observes a non-contingent tension between the ethos of liberalism (personal freedom) and the ethos of democracy (equality; majority rule). It is the task of morality to maintain and restore the balance between these two kinds of ethos. As to the second question, she is worried about the balance between law (legal regulation), ethics, and morality. On the one hand, abolishing legal regulations would amount to abolishing the freedom of the moderns. On the other hand, the substitution of legal regulations for ethical regulations would lead to a similar result: the end of the freedom of the moderns through the homogenisation of life. In the former case, personal support, charity, magnanimity, and caring would get lost, while in the latter there would be no escape from community pressure towards uniformity.     

The (Old) New Realism: What Holt Has to Offer for Ecological Psychology

As Ecological Psychology pushes into new areas, success will be made easier by a rediscovery its theoretical history, in particular the “New Realism”, lead in part by E. B. Holt. Three New Realists tenants seem particularly relevant: (1) we experience reality, (2) relations are real, and (3) things are what you see when you see those things. Though the two groups differ in terms of their conception of perception, and what can be perceived, their conceptions are related in very insightful ways. Further, the comparison reemphasizes the extent of unique empirical claims ecological psychologists make, and grounds those claims within a larger framework for psychology as a whole. This makes obvious the need for further work on the mathematics of invariants, the physiological mechanisms of information extraction, and the behaviors of perception.

The Difference Between Lonely Old Ladies and CCTV Cameras: A Response to Ryberg

This article considers the question of whether it is meaningful to speak of privacy rights in public spaces, and the possibility of such rights framing the basis for regulating or restricting the use of surveillance technologies such as closed circuit television (CCTV). In particular, it responds to a recent article by Jesper Ryberg that suggests that there is little difference between being watched by private individuals and CCTV cameras, and instead argues that state surveillance is qualitatively different from (and more problematic than) surveillance by ‘lonely old ladies’.

Image Events, the Public Sphere, and Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups

Operating from the assumption that a primary dynamic of contemporary public argument involves the use of visual images the authors explore the argumentative possibilities of the `image events' (staged protests designed for media dissemination) employed by radical ecology groups. In contextualizing their discussion, the authors offer an analysis of the contemporary conditions for argumentation by describing the character and operation of public communication, social problem creation, and public opinion formation in a mass-mediated public sphere. The authors argue that image events are a form of postmodern argumentative practice, a kind of oppositional argument that creates social controversy, and animates and widens possibilities for debate. They further suggest that image events are a postmodern form of argument involving acts of protest which deliver images as argumentative fragments. Employing the tools of traditional argument theory the authors describe how images are capable of offering unstated propositions and advancing indirect and incomplete claims in ways that function to block enthymemes and advance alternatives. In concluding, the authors discuss the implications of image events for our understanding of the public sphere and the possibilities for argumentation in a postmodern age.     

公共卫生的作用及政府职责

从20世纪人类健康的进步的贡献和2003年非典危机的爆发,都反映了公共卫生的作用,公共卫生投入对国家社会经济发展和政治及宏观经济的稳定具有不可忽视的作用和不可取代的贡献.理论研究和实证研究揭示了政府公共卫生投入与健康指标的关联,政府为全体人民提供基本公共卫生产品的必要性.而政府提供基本公共卫生服务和保障基本公共卫生产品供给的重要前提是确保政府预算对公共卫生的投入,使其对人民健康产生正向的积极促进作用.明确各级政府在公共卫生中的责任,实行分级管理和考核监督机制,是急待研究和解决的问题.进一步加大政府对公共卫生政府投入水平和改善投入机制,是今后强化中国政府公共卫生职责的一个突破口.     

Philosophy, Psychology, and Public Policy Aspects of Well-Being All Wrapped in One Book Designed to Ruffle Your Feathers

This is a book review of Daniel M. Haybron’s book titled The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being, published by Oxford University Press, 2008.

The Structure of Self-Consciousness in Children and Young Adolescents and Relations to Social Anxiety

Decades of research have examined the structure of self-consciousness in adults and its relationship to social anxiety. This study examined the structure of self-consciousness via the Self-Consciousness Scales (Fenigstein et al., J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 43:522–527, 1975) in a school sample of 175 children and young adolescents (92 girls; mean age = 11.5). Confirmatory factor analysis best supported a five-factor solution (Internal State Awareness, Self-Reflectiveness, Appearance Consciousness, Style Consciousness and Social Anxiety). Although some factor based subscales evidenced low internal consistencies, convergent and discriminant correlations with self-report measures of social phobia, negative affect, and positive affect as well as parent-report measures of internalizing and externalizing problems provided additional support for the five-factor model. Future studies should further examine the multidimensional nature as well as the developmental course of self-consciousness and its relation to social anxiety longitudinally.

The Duty to Protect: Privacy and the Public University

This article addresses the tensions between the sense of responsibility that university administrators feel to protect student privacy with the requirement to be accountable and transparent to the public. This discussion is placed in the context of the history and purpose of post-secondary education.     

The Relation of Parental Guilt Induction to Child Internalizing Problems When a Caregiver Has a History of Depression

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between parental guilt induction and child internalizing problems in families where a caregiver had experienced depression. A total of 107 families, including 146 children (age 9–15), participated. Child-reported parental guilt induction, as well as three more traditionally studied parenting behaviors (warmth/involvement, monitoring, and discipline), were assessed, as was parent-report of child internalizing problem behavior. Linear Mixed Models Analysis indicated parental guilt induction was positively related to child internalizing problems in the context of the remaining three parenting behaviors. Implications of the findings for prevention and intervention parenting programs are considered.