Nozick on Self-esteem

ABSTRACT This paper considers Robert Nozick's account of self-esteem, as presented in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I criticise three aspects of it. First, the claim that people gain self-esteem only when they believe that they possess greater quantities than others of some valued talent or attribute. Secondly, the view that there will always be a conflict of interests between people over the acquisition of self-esteem. Thirdly, the proposal that the most promising way to improve levels of self-esteem across a society is to educate people so that they value a number of different activities and attributes. I argue against Nozick that there are non-comparative standards of doing something well or successfully that provide a person with a means of self-assessment; there is no necessary conflict of interests over the acquisition of self-esteem; reforming basic social and economic institutions is a promising way for a society to increase levels of self-esteem.     

JOINING THE DISPUTATION: Taking Graham Seriously on Taking Chinese Thought Seriously

"…the understanding of Chinese philosophy depends …on philosophizing for oneself. Taking Chinese thought seriously is not simply a matter of acknowledging the rationality of some of it (and perhaps denying the name 'philosophy' to the rest), nor of discovering something valuable to oneself in the poetry of Lao-tzu ^a or the diagrams of the Yi. ^b Its study constantly involves one in important contemporary issues in moral philosophy, the philosophy and history of science, the deconstruction of established conceptual schemes, the problem of relating thought to linguistic structure, and correlative thinking to logic."¹
"To approach Chinese philosophy trusting to the dictionary and one's instinct for the language is to fail to take it altogether seriously, and the practice has been a perpetual drag on progress in discovering how much or how little that we call philosophyizing is actually there."²     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASURE OF PERCEIVED HOMOPHILY IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

This paper reports the development of a measure of perceived homophily. In both an initial investigation and in four subsequent studies employing samples from diverse populations, four dimensions of response were observed. These dimensions were labeled Attitude, Morality, Appearance, and Background. Additional results indicated that opinion leaders are perceived as more homophilous than non-opinion leaders on the dimensions of Attitude, Morality, and Background. The scales found to measure these dimensions are suggested for consideration by researchers concerned with homophily or interpersonal similarity in human communication.