Images Versus Issues in the 1984 Presidential Election Differences Between Men and Women

Recent accounts of male and female personality development suggest that members of each sex differ in the orientations and capacities they bring to their experience of the political world. This article explores the relative importance of respondents’ images of the candidates and respondents’ political positions to predictions of males’ and females’ candidate preferences. It was predicted that candidate images based on interpersonal communication behavior, as opposed to respondents’ political positions, would be a more powerful predictor of females’ candidate preferences. The opposite pattern was expected to be the case for males’ candidate preferences. These predictions were supported; however, the data analysis also indicated that both candidate images and politkal positions contributed significantly to predictions of females’ candidate preferences.     

Converging Theory and Practice: example selection in moral philosophy

ABSTRACT There is a growing trend in moral philosophy that reflects a return to a more ancient perspective of the subject matter wherein moral theory and moral practice are thought to converge. Like their Greek and Hellenistic predecessors, contemporary moral philosophers are again analysing virtues and character traits, drawing normative conclusions at the end of arguments, and testing their theories against examples from common life. Unfortunately, this literature is still cluttered with abstract, general, unlikely, and cleverly-constructed examples that are more apt to draw both reader and author away from the various moral issues under consideration. This paper argues that the selection of examples drawn from literature, history and common-life experiences offers the following advantages: (1) such examples better serve the purpose of illustration; (2) they function as projects for moral inquiry; (3) they better connect both reader and author to the moral issues being discussed; (4) they help prevent the dichotomisation of moral philosophy into meta-ethics and applied ethics; and (5) they help make it possible again for moral philosophy to have the relevance and importance it once enjoyed in previous periods of history. Selection criteria are outlined, and examples are provided that satisfy them.     

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     

Perception and Representation

I oppose the popular view that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience consists in the subject's representing the (putative) perceived object as being so-and-so. The account of perceptual experience I favor instead is a version of the "Theory of Appearing" that takes it to be a matter of the perceived object's appearing to one as so-and-so, where this does not mean that the subject takes or believes it to be so-and-so. This plays no part in my criticisms of Representationalism. I mention it only to be up front as to where I stand. My criticism of the Representationalist position is in sections. (1) There is no sufficient reason for positing a representative function for perceptual experience. It doesn't seem on the face of it to be that, and nothing serves in place of such seeming. (2) Even if it did have such a function, it doesn't have the conceptual resources to represent a state of affairs. (3) Even if it did, it is not suited to represent, e.g., a physical property of color. (4) Finally, even if I am wrong about the first three points, it is still impossible for the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience to consist in it's representing what it does. My central argument for this central claim of the paper is that it is metaphysically, de re possible that one have a certain perceptual experience without it's presenting any state of affairs. And since all identities hold necessarily, this identity claim fails.     

NEGOTIATING QUALITY OF WORKLIFE, PRODUCTIVITY AND TRADITIONAL ISSUES: UNION MEMBERS'PREFERRED ROLES OF THEIR UNION

Recognizing the importance of the union in successfully implementing quality of worklife programs, numerous commentators have called for union-management collaborative programs. In response to these pleas, recent studies have addressed union activists'perceptions of their unions'roles in negotiating quality of worklife as well as other issues. Although important, these studies have focused on the union leadership and have generally failed to consider the rank and file union members' views. The primary objective of the present study was to examine union members'preferred roles of their union in negotiating quality of worklife, productivity, and traditional bargaining issues. A second purpose was to explore the correlates of their views concerning the union's role in dealing with these issues. Using data collected from 171 members of a railroad, union, the results showed that members' support for union involvement tended to vary depending upon the type of issue in question. They strongly preferred collective bargaining when dealing with traditional union concerns and joint union-management efforts when quality of worklife issues were involved. In predicting preferred union-management cooperation, the importance of the individual predictors varied across the types of negotiation issues. However, attitudinal measures were generally found to be more important in explaining members'preferences than demographic or union participation measures. The results are discussed in terms of implications for implementing joint union-management programs.     

SENIORITY: A REVIEW OF ITS LEGAL AND SCIENTIFIC STANDING

Though an important and widespread industrial relations concept, seniority has been a neglected subject of study by behavioral scientists. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the topic by reviewing seniority's legal status in the management of human resources. Further, while there is little research on seniority per se, conjecture and empirical study on the concept's salient behavioral dimensions, viz., tenure and reward, were reviewed. Suggestions were offered for the methodological and theoretical aspects of future research on seniority.