Normative reconstruction and social memory: Honneth and Ricoeur

Normative reconstruction is a form of immanent critique which judges society in terms of values which are already institutionalized and implicitly expressed across everyday forms of interaction. Honneth, for his part, reads the value of social freedom into the normative grammar of modern institutions and anticipates further advances towards its institutionalization. Many have voiced doubts over the extent to which the model of normative reconstruction which Honneth proposes is solidly anchored in social reality: at worst, it is argued, this reality is resistant to reconstruction in terms of the value of social freedom; at best, it is too susceptible to multiple readings to allow for such a reconstruction. I seek to respond to these charges, while also testing the reach of Ricoeur’s understanding of the philosophical anthropological idea of indebtedness to the past, by following up on Honneth’s appeal to a horizon of social memory in response to his own uncertainties over the viability of normative reconstruction. More generally, I seek to arrive at a better understanding of the capacity of memory to orientate social critique within a shifting historical landscape.

     

The adaptive change model: an advance on the transtheoretical model of change

The author proposed a hypothetical model of change, the adaptive change model (ACM), to advance the current conceptualization and operationalization of the transtheoretical model of change (TTM; D. Grimley, J. Prochaska, W. Velicer, M. Blais, & C. DiClemente, 1994; J. Prochaska, 1979; J. Prochaska & C. DiClemente, 1984). He used exploratory factor analysis to identify items contributing to 2 sets of factors defining the Adaptive Change Questionnaire (T. Bowles, 2001). The factors were consistent for both clinical (n = 222) and nonclinical (n = 194) respondents. The first set of factors defined the process of change and included Openness to Opportunity, Visualization, Planning, Action, and Closure. The second set of factors described the factors that support change and included Social Support, Inner Drive, and Negative Emotions. Through analysis of gender effects, the author found that men scored significantly and slightly higher than did women on Openness to Opportunity, Visualization, and Inner Drive. There were no interactions involving gender and clinical status. Discriminant function analysis predicting clinical status on the basis of the 8 factors placed 80% of respondents in the correct category. The author discusses the relevance of the ACM in comparison with the characteristics of the TTM.     

On the neural correlates of object recognition awareness: relationship to computational activities and activities mediating perceptual awareness

Based on theoretical considerations of Aurell (1979) and Block (1995), we argue that object recognition awareness is distinct from purely sensory awareness and that the former is mediated by neuronal activities in areas that are separate and distinct from cortical sensory areas. We propose that two of the principal functions of neuronal activities in sensory cortex, which are to provide sensory awareness and to effect the computations that are necessary for object recognition, are dissociated. We provide examples of how this dissociation might be achieved and argue that the components of the neuronal activities which carry the computations do not directly enter the awareness of the subject. The results of these computations are sparse representations (i.e., vector or distributed codes) which are activated by the presentation of particular sensory objects and are essentially engrams for the recognition of objects. These final representations occur in the highest order areas of sensory cortex; in the visual analyzer, the areas include the anterior part of the inferior temporal cortex and the perirhinal cortex. We propose, based on lesion and connectional data, that the two areas in which activities provide recognition awareness are the temporopolar cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Activities in the temporopolar cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the remote past (consolidated object recognition), and those in the medial orbitofrontal cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the recent past. The activation of the sparse representation for a particular sensory object in turn activates neurons in one or both of these regions of cortex, and it is the activities of these neurons that provide the awareness of recognition of the object in question. The neural circuitry involved in the activation of these representations is discussed.     

Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: behavioral and electrophysiological measures

Data on typically developing children suggest a link between social interaction and language learning, a finding of interest both to theories of language and theories of autism. In this study, we examined social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing chronologically matched (TDCA) and mental age matched (TDMA) children. The social measure was an auditory preference test that pitted 'motherese' speech samples against non-speech analogs of the same signals. The linguistic measure was phonetic discrimination assessed with mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential (ERP). As a group, children with ASD differed from controls by: (a) demonstrating a preference for the non-speech analog signals, and (b) failing to show a significant MMN in response to a syllable change. When ASD children were divided into subgroups based on auditory preference, and the ERP data reanalyzed, ASD children who preferred non-speech still failed to show an MMN, whereas ASD children who preferred motherese did not differ from the controls. The data support the hypothesis of an association between social and linguistic processing in children with ASD.     

A critique of science and R&D-based models of endogenous growth

Conclusion We have argued against the conventional treatment of science from two directions: firstly, we show that its assumptions about the mechanics of technology transfer are at odds with what occurs in practice. Secondly, the predictions of models based on conventional assumptions receive little support empirically, and are on some occasions contradicted by the data. We believe that the weaknesses we have discussed prompt a re-analysis of science as the workings of invisible colleges. Moreover, we note that there appears, at present, to be no empirical or sound theoretical reason to suppose that, for reasons of economic growth, governments need fund science. the author of The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1996.