The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations

ABSTRACT This paper [1] is a defence of a modified version of Jane English's model of filial obligations based on adult children's friendship with their parents. (I) Unlike the more traditional view that filial obligations are a repayment for parental sacrifices, the friendship model puts filial duties in the appealing context of voluntary, loving relationships. (II) Contrary to English's original statement of this view, which is open to the charge of tolerating filial ingratitude, the friendship model can generate obligations to help our parents even if we are no longer friendly with them. (III) Joseph Kupfer has pointed out several ways in which parent-child relationships differ from peer friendships; but his arguments do not preclude our enjoying a type of friendship with our parents. (IV) In response to Christina Hoff Sommers, who objects that feelings of friendship toward our parents are too flimsy a ground for filial duties, the friendship model can provide a plausible, robust account of filial obligations. (V) As for adult children who have never formed friendships with their loving, caring parents, and refuse to give them much-needed assistance, they can be criticised by moral considerations independent of but compatible with the friendship model .     

Developing Anticipation Skills in Tennis Using On-Court Instruction: Perception versus Perception and Action

On-court instruction involving either Perception–action training or Perception-only training was used to improve anticipation skill in novice tennis players. A technical instruction group acted as a control. Participants' ability to anticipate an opponent's serve was assessed pre- and posttest using established on-court measures involving frame-by-frame video analysis. The perception–action and perception-only groups significantly improved their anticipatory performance from pretest to posttest. No pretest-to-posttest differences in anticipation skill were reported for the technical instruction group. The ability to anticipate an opponent's serve can be improved through on-court instruction where the relationship between key postural cues and subsequent performance is highlighted, and both practice and feedback are provided. No significant differences were observed between the perception–action and perception-only training groups, implying that either mode of training may be effective in enhancing perceptual skill in sport.     

Predictors of friend approval for romantic relationships

Three studies (1 correlational and 2 experiments) applied the investment model to explain social network approval for others' romantic relationships. Study 1 supported the prediction that friends' perceived satisfaction and perceived alternatives were predictive of their approval for target relationships, while perceived investments was not a significant predictor. Studies 2 and 3 employed experimental manipulations of perceived satisfaction to test its causal impact on relationship approval, and in these studies, perceived satisfaction was a significant predictor of relationship approval. Taken as a whole, these findings supported the prediction that perceived relationship satisfaction is a causal factor influencing friends' approval of target romantic relationships.     

EAT MY FLESH AND DRINK MY BLOOD

Disgust or horror is our natural attitude to eating human flesh and drinking human blood. How can this attitude not transfer itself to the Christian Eucharist, in which the bread is said to be Christ's body and the wine his blood? And if the aversion must transfer itself, then how can God have been, as Christians have to think, the founder of the rite? I discuss these questions with reference to several different theories of the Eucharist, one Calvinist, the others of a would‐be Roman Catholic kind.     

Graduate attributes of the 4‐year Australian undergraduate psychology program

This paper outlines the background, process and outcomes for a project that delineated a set of graduate attributes of the 4‐year Australian undergraduate psychology program. The nature of the current undergraduate psychology program and its quality assurance system is described, followed by a consideration of current issues in psychology education and training. The processes involved in delineating the six graduate attributes (i.e., knowledge and understanding, research methods, critical thinking, values, communication, and application) are then described. Some issues and suggestions related to their implementation are then outlined. Finally, the authors summarise what has been accomplished in delineating the graduate attributes, and what still needs to be achieved.     

Socratic Film

This article is about a relationship between the Socratic practice of philosophy and the aesthetic practice of watching and appreciating film. The conclusion that I defend is that certain narrative films, like the elenctic method in the hands of Socrates, are philosophical tools for examining our cognitive and emotional life and thus for gaining insight into aspects of our character. In the early sections of the article I construct an analogy between the practice of watching narrative film and the practice of self‐examination through dialogue and reflection. I argue that good aesthetic practice in film appreciation is analogous to good philosophical practice in the manner of Socrates, and I treat the elenchus as a method of self‐examination rather than of conceptual analysis and Socrates himself as an examiner of people rather than of abstract concepts. In the later sections I discuss three films directed by Christopher Nolan—Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), and Inception (2010)—as paradigm cases of Socratic film. I argue that these films show us something about ourselves by prompting extemporaneous emotional responses and cognitive judgments that we come, reflectively, to reject.