Whorf and Wittgenstein. Language, world view and argumentation

Whorf and Wittgenstein are perhaps the most famous names in linguistics and philosophy associated with the assumption that language plays a decisive role in shaping our view of reality. After a critical discussion of Whorf's linguistic relativity principle I conclude that it is not language as a system, but the use of language according to the rules of language games which connects language thought and world view, especially if some particular usage becomes the commonly accepted norm. This traditional norm also enters argumentative discourse in the form of background assumptions occuring in the premises of arguments. Thus, traditional points of view and prevailing ideologies in a society, even if challenged in discussions, can become reinforced and stabilized. This is illustrated with a critical analysis of the role and function of tautological utterances in argumentative discourse, which only apparently are compelling means of argumentation.     

论《孙子兵法》的战略思想对张瑞敏经营哲学的影响

《孙子兵法》博大精深,其战略思想可以用于企业经营。在这方面,张瑞敏是一个典范,其战略思想深受孙子影响。本文重点探讨孙子的“势胜”、“知胜”和“变胜”思想对张瑞敏经营哲学的影响。张瑞敏的成功证明中国古代文化对现代企业经营具有重要的指导意义。     

Do liberals and conservatives use different moral languages? Two replications and six extensions of Graham,Haidt, and Nosek’s (2009) moral text analysis

Do liberals and conservatives tend to use different moral languages? The Moral Foundations Hypothesis states that liberals rely more on foundations of care/harm and fairness/cheating whereas conservatives rely more on loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation in their moral functioning. In support, Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009; Study 4) showed that sermons delivered by liberal and conservative pastors differed as predicted in their moral word usage, except for the loyalty foundation. I present two high-powered replication studies in religious contexts and six extension studies in politics, the media, and organizations to test ideological differences in moral language usage. On average, replication success rate was 30% and effect sizes were 38 times smaller than those in the original study. A meta-analysis (N = 303,680) found that compared to liberals, conservatives used more authority r = 0.05, 95% confidence interval = [0.02, 0.09] and purity words, r = 0.14 [0.09, 0.19], fewer loyalty words, r = −0.08 [−0.10, −0.05], and no more or less harm, r = 0.00 [−0.02, 0.02], or fairness words, r = −0.03 [−0.06, 0.01].     

Prisoners of hate

The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001 as well as domestic terrorism in the United States and elsewhere in the world has prompted an analysis of the psychology of the terrorist. The perpetrators' profound sense of being wronged--their values undermined by foreign powers or a corrupt domestic power structure--has cried out for revolution and revenge. The fanatic ideology of the perpetrators has provided the matrix for a progressively more malevolent representation of the oppressors: the Image of the Enemy. Retribution against the Enemy in the form of mass murder of anonymous civilians becomes an imperative. The counterpart of the image of the Enemy is the idealized collective self-image of members of the movement, faction, or cult. The group narcissism of the white supremacists in the United States, the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, and the Islamic extremists enhance their collective self-image as pure, righteous, and united. While the foot soldiers, as in any war, gain glory through martyrdom, the instigators and leaders have their own personal narcissistic goals (power and prestige) and plan. For the extremist Islamists the ultimate goal has been overthrow of the moderate Islamic governments; for the domestic terrorists, destabilization of the national government and reinstitution of the traditional values.     

英国新马克思主义的哲学探索

英国新马克思主义者站在时代的前沿,对马克思主义的传统理论命题,经济基础与上层建筑、社会主体、意识形态等问题进行了全新的解读,在此基础上,形成了一种独具特色的马克思主义文化理论阐释模式,并在当今世界上日益彰显出优越的价值。     

The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles,Interaction Styles,and the Things They Leave Behind

Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological,” evidence suggests that meaningful left‐right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy‐five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self‐reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open‐minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized.     

Accountability and ideology: When left looks right and right looks left

Managers face hard choices between process and outcome systems of accountability in evaluating employees, but little is known about how managers resolve them. Building on the premise that political ideologies serve as uncertainty-reducing heuristics, two studies of working managers show that: (1) conservatives prefer outcome accountability and liberals prefer process accountability in an unspecified policy domain; (2) this split becomes more pronounced in a controversial domain (public schools) in which the foreground value is educational efficiency but reverses direction in a controversial domain (affirmative action) in which the foreground value is demographic equality; (3) managers who discover employees have subverted their preferred system favor tinkering over switching to an alternative system; (4) but bipartisan consensus arises when managers have clear evidence about employee trustworthiness and the tightness of the causal links between employee effort and success. These findings shed light on ideological and contextual factors that shape preferences for accountability systems.     

Costs and benefits of political ideology: The case of economic self-stereotyping and stereotype threat

Across two experiments, the cognitive salience of a stigmatized ingroup identity harmed self-evaluation and elicited stereotype-consistent behavior to the degree that participants endorsed the political status quo. In Experiment 1, ethnic identity salience caused Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong to evaluate their own labor as meriting less pay if they were high in social dominance orientation but more pay if they were low in social dominance orientation. In Experiment 2, gender identity salience caused women in the US to evaluate their work on a logic task (but not a verbal task) as meriting less pay if they were politically conservative but more pay if they were politically liberal—a pattern mirrored in task performance. Depending on the degree to which the political status quo is accepted or rejected, findings suggest that members of stigmatized groups can be either implicit participants in their own subjugation or agents of change.