Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russian Revolution”

The essay concerns the highly controversial pamphlet of Rosa Luxemburg The Russian Revolution (1918/1922), in which Luxemburg criticizes Lenin’s post-revolutionary policies, in particular his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, an elected body. The essay reviews the history of the text’s publication and the intense debate, which continues to this day, over whether or not Luxemburg changed her mind on its central critique. At stake in the argument is not only Luxemburg’s evaluation of Lenin’s actions but also the correct weighting to be given to the two components in the central Marxist–Leninist dialectic of revolution: spontaneity and consciousness. In elaborating this point the essay brings in examples from the writings of Lukács and Stalin, and also discusses the dialectic’s centrality in socialist realism.     

On Defining ‘Argument’

There is no concept more central to logic and critical thinking than the concept of an argument. I here address the definition of ‘argument’ in the logical sense of the term and defend the claim that many current proposals, once they are interpreted in a way that makes them sufficiently precise, are extensionally inadequate. Definitions found in some contemporary, prominent critical thinking textbooks will serve as a springboard. I claim that each may be interpreted in an absolutist way (i.e., as providing a definition of ‘argument’ simpliciter) or a relativistic way (as providing a definition of ‘argument-for-S’, where S is some agent or group of agents), yet all turn out to be objectionable no matter which route is taken. I finish with a proposal on which the definition of ‘argument’ is an absolutist one, yet one that avoids the problems discussed for the earlier proposals.     

Scientific Writing Between Tabloid Storytelling,Arcane Formulaic Hermetism,and Narrative Knowledge

The present discussion contribution argues that O. Müller not only suppresses Goethe’s declared intentions with regard to the latter’s Theory of Colors and ignores his place in what in any case is a different scientific culture than his (Müller’s) own or Newton’s, namely a premodern culture of “narrative knowledge” in the sense specified by Lyotard. Moreover, Müller entangles himself in the paradox of wanting on the one hand to back up Goethe on the level of fact when the latter opposes the militant selfrighteousness of the Newtonian school, but doing so on the other hand by constructing an epic-heroic narrative of Newtonian militance, not to say eristic belligerence contradictory to Goethe’s own “tolerant enlightenment” in Lakatos’ sense. Thus, we are confronted with one of those cases where, as Paul de Man puts it, a multidimensional critical reading on the semiological as well as rhetorical levels shows “that the text does not practice what it preaches” (1979, 5).     

Lenin on democratic theory

Lenin’s State and Revolution is not only a project for imminent revolutionary policy and not only a legitimization argument for a revolutionary dictatorship, but also a theory of state and theory of democracy. Lenin points at the reduplication of state organs that is inherent in a democratic state. While the Russian revolutionary thinks of this reduplication as something transitory, we today increasingly see it as a durable condition coterminous with the late-modern democratic state. I use Lenin’s treatise as a point of inspiration to briefly characterize my dialectical theory of state.     

Eye of the beholder: the individual and dyadic contributions of empathic accuracy and perceived empathic effort to relationship satisfaction

This study examined links between two distinct facets of empathy-empathic accuracy and perceived empathic effort-and one's own and one's partner's relationship satisfaction. Using a video recall procedure, participants (n = 156 couples in committed relationships) reported on their own emotions and their perceptions of partners' emotions and partners' empathic intentions during moments of high affect in laboratory-based discussions of upsetting events. Partners' data were correlated as a measure of how accurately they were able to read what the other was feeling and to what degree they felt the other was trying to be empathic at those moments. The perception of empathic effort by one's partner was more strongly linked with both men's and women's relationship satisfaction than empathic accuracy. Men's relationship satisfaction was related to the ability to read their partners' positive emotions accurately, whereas women's relationship satisfaction was related to their partners' ability to read women's negative emotions accurately. Women's ability to read their husbands' negative emotions was positively linked to both men's and women's relationship satisfaction. Findings suggest that the perception of a partner's empathic effort-as distinct from empathic accuracy-is uniquely informative in understanding how partners may derive relationship satisfaction from empathic processes. When working with couples in treatment, heightening partners' perceptions of each other's empathic effort, and helping partners learn to demonstrate effort, may represent particularly powerful opportunities for improving satisfaction in relationships.     

Convergent validity of and bias in maternal reports of child emotion

This study examined the convergent validity of maternal reports of child emotion in a sample of 190 children between the ages of 3 and 6. Children completed a battery of 10 emotion-eliciting laboratory tasks; their mothers and untrained na?ve observers rated child emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, and anger) following each task, and trained coders rated videotapes of each task for the same emotions. Consistent with studies using other designs, maternal reports demonstrated weak to moderate convergence with the other rating methods. Extending prior research, a number of maternal characteristics (particularly lifetime psychiatric diagnoses and personality traits) were associated with their reports of child emotions in the lab, above and beyond the effects of objective coding and observer reports of child emotions. For some emotions, mothers' mental health and dispositional variables were more strongly related to their reports of the child's emotions than were objective indices of the child's observable emotional behavior.     

Predictors of Deliberate Self-Harm Behavior Among Emerging Adolescents: An Initial Test of a Self-Punitiveness Model

The current study examined the extent to which an expanded self-punitiveness model could be applied to deliberate self-harm (DSH) among students making the transition to university. Specific components of the self-punitiveness model included perfectionism, overgeneralization, self-criticism, and shame. A sample of 319 university students completed a measure of deliberate self-harm as well as two multidimensional perfectionism measures and measures of self-criticism, overgeneralization, and shame. Correlational analyses found few significant associations among deliberate self-harm and the self-punitiveness factors among men. In contrast, among women, deliberate self-harm was associated with dimensions of trait perfectionism such as parental criticism and socially prescribed perfectionism, as well as with overgeneralization, self-criticism, and both characterological shame and bodily shame with the strongest associations found with shame. Supplementary analyses found a strong link between overgeneralization and shame and an association between self-criticism and shame among women. The results support the contention that particularly among young women making the transition to university, deliberate self-harm behavior is a reflection of a self-punitive personality orientation with multiple facets and a sense of shame associated with an overgeneralized sense of failing to meet social expectations.     

The Effect of Embodied Temperature on Perceptions of Global Warming

Recent research has established that individuals?? perception of global warming is malleable such that individuals report that it is a more serious problem when they experience higher outdoor or indoor temperatures (Li et al. Psychological Science, 22(4), 454?C459, 2011; Risen and Critcher Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(5), 777?C793, 2011). We extend these findings on the experience of actual temperature by testing whether the embodied experience of temperature, manipulated by participants chewing cinnamon or mint gum, can activate the concept of temperature and influence perception of global warming. As predicted, compared to those who did not chew gum, those experiencing embodied temperature through chewing gum reported greater concern for global warming, but not other social problems, and were more likely to volunteer for a global warming group on campus. This suggests that the physical experience of tasting cinnamon or mint gum activated the larger conceptual system of temperature changes that subsequently influenced beliefs about global warming.