Conventionality in family conversations about everyday objects

Children's developing understanding that words have conventional meanings and objects have conventional functions emerges in parent-child activity and conversation. Drawing on family conversations in everyday settings, the chapter explores an apparent paradox between a global analysis of conventionality as stable shared knowledge and a local notion of conventions as flexibly negotiated in activity.     

Nature,Red in Tooth and Claw<Superscript>1</Superscript>

“Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw” explores Adorno’s ideas about our mediated relationship with nature. The first section of the paper examines the epistemological significance of his thesis about the preponderance of the object while describing the Kantian features in his notion of mediation. Adorno’s conception of nature will also be examined in the context of a review of J. M. Bernstein’s and Fredric Jameson’s attempts to characterize it. The second section of the paper deals with Adorno’s Freudian account of internal nature. While arguing against Joel Whitebook’s view that Adorno needs a concept of sublimation, I contend that Adorno’s genetic account of the relationship between nature and mind enables him to respond to the Freudian injunction to displace the id with the ego with a view to fostering autonomy. In the final section of the paper, problems with Adorno’s ideas about external and internal nature are briefly discussed. In Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000) p. 195, John Bellamy Foster remarks on this line from Alfred Lord Tennyson ’s In Memoriam, claiming that it was widely known for “anticipating ”Darwinian’ ideas,’’ including much-maligned and heretical (at the time) materialist doctrines.     

Ethics and Technology ‘in the Making’: An Essay on the Challenge of Nanoethics

After reviewing portions of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act that call for examination of societal and ethical issues, this essay seeks to understand how nanoethics can play a role in nanotechnology development. What can and should nanoethics aim to achieve? The focus of the essay is on the challenges of examining ethical issues with regard to a technology that is still emerging, still ‘in the making.’ The literature of science and technology studies (STS) is used to understand the nanotechnology endeavor in a way that makes room for influence by nanoethics. The analysis emphasizes: the contingency of technology and the many actors involved in its development; a conception of technology as sociotechnical systems; and, the values infused (in a variety of ways) in technology. Nanoethicists can be among the many actors who shape the meaning and materiality of an emerging technology. Nevertheless, there are dangers that nanoethicists should try to avoid. The possibility of being co-opted from working along side nanotechnology engineers and scientists is one danger that is inseparable from trying to influence. Related but somewhat different is the danger of not asking about the worthiness of the nanotechnology enterprise as a social investment in the future.     

Power, propensity to negotiate, and moving first in competitive interactions

Five experiments investigated how the possession and experience of power affects the initiation of competitive interaction. In Experiments 1a and 1b, high-power individuals displayed a greater propensity to initiate a negotiation than did low-power individuals. Three additional experiments showed that power increased the likelihood of making the first move in a variety of competitive interactions. In Experiment 2, participants who were semantically primed with power were nearly 4 times as likely as participants in a control condition to choose to make the opening arguments in a debate competition scenario. In Experiment 3, negotiators with strong alternatives to a negotiation were more than 3 times as likely to spontaneously express an intention to make the first offer compared to participants who lacked any alternatives. Experiment 4 showed that high-power negotiators were more likely than low-power negotiators to actually make the first offer and that making the first offer produced a bargaining advantage.     

Outcomes of Requests for Summary Judgments in Federal Sexual Harassment Cases: Policy Capturing Revisited

In this study we employ a policy-capturing approach to identify those variables that appear to have a significant influence on the outcomes of defense requests for summary judgments in federal sexual harassment (SH) cases. The purpose of the study is to extend studies performed by D. E. Terpstra and D. D. Baker (1988, 1992) in light of evolving legislation and case law and address the criticisms of policy-capturing studies by M. V. Roehling (1993). Results of the analysis indicate that those variables that most influence case outcomes are: whether the plaintiff had witnesses, the severity and frequency of the SH, and Federal Circuit Court jurisdiction. Finally, the study also shows that past criticisms of this method may be addressed with modifications to data collection and coding techniques.