RESPONSE‐DEPENDENCE ABOUT AESTHETIC VALUE

The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response‐dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs:

• 1 The belief that challenges brought against response‐dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response‐dependent accounts of aesthetic value.
• 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates this purported fact.
• 3 The belief that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates the widely acknowledged anthropocentricity of aesthetic value.
• 4 The belief that response‐dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates aesthetic normativity.

We argue that each of these beliefs is false, and that the dominance of response‐dependent accounts of aesthetic value is therefore largely without foundation.     

DOING COMPETENCIES WELL: BEST PRACTICES IN COMPETENCY MODELING

The purpose of this article is to present a set of best practices for competency modeling based on the experiences and lessons learned from the major perspectives on this topic (including applied, academic, and professional). Competency models are defined, and their key advantages are explained. Then, the many uses of competency models are described. The bulk of the article is a set of 20 best practices divided into 3 areas: analyzing competency information, organizing and presenting competency information, and using competency information. The best practices are described and explained, practice advice is provided, and then the best practices are illustrated with numerous practical examples. Finally, how competency modeling differs from and complements job analysis is explained throughout.     

ANALYTIC MIND USE AND INTERPSYCHIC COMMUNICATION: DRIVING FORCE IN ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE,PATHWAY TO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL LIFE

Developed from established psychoanalytic knowledge among different psychoanalytic cultures concerning unconscious interpsychic communication, analysts' use of their receptive mental experience—their analytic mind use, including the somatic, unconscious, and less accessible derivatives—represents a significant investigative road to patients' unconscious mental life, particularly with poorly symbolized mental states. The author expands upon this tradition, exploring what happens when patients unconsciously experience and identify with the analyst's psychic functioning. The technical implications of the analyst's “instrument” are described, including the analyst's ego regression, creation of inner space, taking mind as object, bearing uncertainty and intense affect, and self‐analysis. Brief case vignettes illustrate the structure and obstacles to this work.     

Recovery from conflict and revival of intimacy in cohabiting couples

Couples who seek a stable and satisfying relationship must recover emotionally and reestablish their intimate connection after their conflicts are over. In a 3‐week diary study, 100 cohabiting couples reported on their daily moods, intimacy, relationship satisfaction, and conflicts. Results indicated that on days following a conflict, couple partners have worse mood, less satisfaction, and less self‐disclosure than on other days. Attachment security and intimacy partially moderated the ability of relationship partners to recover positive and reduce negative affect on days following conflict. Partners of anxiously attached individuals experienced more pronounced postconflict changes in mood and intimacy than partners of securely attached individuals. More intimacy in postconflict interactions was associated with a faster recovery from conflict.     

VIRTUE, EMOTION, AND ATTENTION

Abstract: The perceptual model of emotions maintains that emotions involve, or are at least analogous to, perceptions of value. On this account, emotions purport to tell us about the evaluative realm, in much the same way that sensory perceptions inform us about the sensible world. An important development of this position, prominent in recent work by Peter Goldie amongst others, concerns the essential role that virtuous habits of attention play in enabling us to gain perceptual and evaluative knowledge. I think that there are good reasons to be sceptical about this picture of virtue. In this essay I set out these reasons, and explain the consequences this scepticism has for our understanding of the relation between virtue, emotion, and attention. In particular, I argue that our primary capacity for recognizing value is in fact a non-emotional capacity.     

BBC NATURAL HISTORY VERSUS SCIENCE PARADIGMS

In 1979 the finale of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth featured Attenborough’s iconic forest floor romp with mountain gorillas. Two decades later and Sir David was still being asked to re-enact this memorable piece of television on the Parkinson chat show. Life on Earth had become the BBC’s first David Attenborough blockbuster to be followed by The Trials of Life, The Living Planet, The Life of Plants, up to the most recent, The Life of Mammals, in 2002. The outcome of this success has been to invest BBC natural history television with scientific authority. The BBC Natural History Unit and BBC Wildlife Magazine have become dominant conduits for popular natural science in the UK. Natural history television often relied implicitly upon science for advice and subject material. Recently the links have been made explicit with wildlife filmmakers and scientists’ research depicted working hand in hand, e.g. The Blue Planet and Walking with Dinosaurs. However the very success of the BBC’s wildlife output has produced a schism between the presentation of natural history and of the other sciences, e.g. cosmology, geology, non-wildlife biology. These sciences, explored in other generic programmes, e.g. Horizon or specific series e.g. Space, are promoted separately from natural history programmes. This schism extends to the BBC’s website, www.bbc.co.uk, which separates the genres between ‘/science’ and ‘/nature’, respectively. The science of natural history not only occupies its own broadcasting niche; it works to a different paradigm.