Are Faculty Strikes Unethical?

It has been argued that strikes are morally objectionable in the university context. They injure third parties – the students – and for this reason ought to be rejected. More generally, the strike weapon has led to a reduction of the power of Boards of Governors to adjust universities to changing times. And furthermore, the use of the strike weapon and the ensuing conflicts can injure the collegial form of governance that is essential to higher education. It is here argued that these arguments are hardly conclusive, and that there are virtues to having the strike as a means to resolve disputes. But keeping things on track requires both parties to adhere to the moral and social virtue of civility.     

Toleration vs. Doctrinal Evil in Our Time

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Exasperations as Blessings: Meaning-Making and the Caregiving Experience

This study examines the process of how caregivers can shape the frustrations and exasperations of caring for a family member with Alzheimer's disease into blessings. Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenological perspective is used to interpret a caregiver's narrative, in which she describes caring for her husband with Alzheimer's disease. The interpretive analysis focuses specifically on how the caregiver finds meaning in the caregiving process. The analysis reveals that the caregiver constructs meaning by emphasizing particular aspects of her experiences, including cherished memories, creating a happy life by living life intensely, and counting her blessings. While some caregivers naturally find such meaning, this study suggests that reading the narratives of others as well as writing about one's own thoughts and feelings can facilitate this meaning-making process. Structured written emotional expression, in particular, fosters meaning-making, diminishes psychological distress, improves immune function, and promotes health and well-being.     

On teaching psychoanalysis

Teaching psychoanalysis is no less an art than is the practice of psychoanalysis. As is true of the analytic experience, teaching psychoanalysis involves an effort to create clearances in which fresh forms of thinking and dreaming may emerge, with regard to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Drawing on his experience of leading two ongoing psychoanalytic seminars, each in its 25th year, the author offers observations concerning (1) teaching analytic texts by reading them aloud, line by line, in the seminar setting, with a focus on how the writer is thinking/writing and on how the reader is altered by the experience of reading; (2) treating clinical case presentations as experiences in collective dreaming in which the seminar members make use of their own waking dreaming to assist the presenter in dreaming aspects of his experience with the patient that the analytic pair has not previously been able to dream; (3) reading poetry and fi ction as a way of enhancing the capacity of the seminar members to be aware of and alive to the effects created by the patient's and the analyst's use of language; and (4) learning to overcome what one thought one knew about conducting analytic work, i.e. learning to forget what one has learned.     

Personality Traits (“Big Five”) and the Propensity to Political Protest: Alternative Models

In a representative panel study, citizens of Leipzig (East Germany) were interviewed in 1993 and 1996 about their incentives for and participation in political protest activities. Conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, and extraversion (the Big Five) were measured with 16 bipolar adjectives. The present report supplements a previous work of the authors that drew on the theories of rational choice and collective action and conceived of incentives as proximal causes and personality dispositions as distant causes of political protest. Based on structural equation modelling (SEM), the present article deals with the respondents' recurrent reports on protest incentives and protest acts as indicators of the latent construct protest propensity that is according to the predictions directly influenced by openness to experience (O+), agreeableness (A?), neuroticism (N?), and reciprocity orientation (N*E+) with 35% explained variance.     

Distributive Justice for Others,Collective Angst,and Support for Exclusion of Immigrants

Harsh treatment of others can reflect an underlying motivation to view the world as fair and just and also a dispositional tendency to believe in justice. However, there is a critical need to refine and expand existing knowledge, not only to identify underlying psychological processes but also to better understand how justice may be implicated in support for exclusionary policies. Across two studies, we show that support for policies that restrict immigrants is exclusively associated with thoughts about fair outcomes for other people (distributive justice for others). In Study 1, Americans' dispositional tendency to believe in distributive justice for others was associated with greater support for a policy proposing to further restrict immigrant job seekers' capacity to gain employment in the United States. In Study 2, we experimentally primed thoughts about justice in a sample of U.S. police officers. Support for a policy that mandated stricter policing of illegal immigration was strongest among officers who first thought about fair outcomes for other people, relative to other unique justice primes. Across both studies, distributive justice for others was associated with greater collective angst—perceived threat towards the future existence of Americans. Moreover, collective angst mediated the link between distributive justice for others and support for restrictive policies. Overall, this research suggests that thoughts about distributive justice for others can especially diminish compassion towards immigrants and other underprivileged groups via support for exclusionary policies. In addition, merely thinking about distributive justice for others may be sufficient to amplify social callousness.     

独立预测作用,还是基础性影响？——价值观对集体行动的影响机制

为阐明价值观在集体行动参与中的地位和影响机制,研究者以利比亚事件为背景,针对现实和网络场域中不同程度的4类集体行动倾向,在天津市957名大学生中进行问卷调查研究,结果发现：价值观显著增加了低成本集体行动倾向解释率,并调节着情绪、工具性动机和社会认同对集体行动倾向的影响;中国人进行集体行动决策时具有集体主义理性计算特征;不同场域和程度的集体行动有其各自规律.结论：价值观在集体行动参与决策中是一种与社会认同类似的基础性变量.     

How to Understand Communicative Musicality?

Music is to a large extent understood as if it is a language. This is also true when it comes to the recently published book Communicative Musicality edited by Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen (2009a). In this essay it is demonstrated that a lingocentric understanding of music is strongly connected to modernity, but also that early experimental psychology presupposed a distinction between music and language. Polyphony, therefore, is here presented as a characteristic for the musical system.

摹仿与原始社会中的伦理道德

摹仿在人类原始文化中的作用和功能是什么 ?传统的解释多集中在美学领域。从文化人类学的角度 ,探讨摹仿在原始社会物质生产和精神生产中的巨大作用及其在原始社会伦理道德意识的起源、形成和传承中作用是有重要意义的。     

Men of Honor Don't Talk: The Relationship Between Masculine Honor and Social Activism Against Criminal Organizations in Italy

Criminal organizations have a strong influence on social, political, and economic life in Italy and other parts of the world. Nonetheless, local populations display collective passivity against organized crime, a phenomenon known as omertà. Omertà is linked to the concepts of honor and masculinity. That is, in order to fit ideological constructions of manliness, individuals should display indifference toward illegal activities and should not collaborate with legal institutions. In two studies, we investigated the link between endorsement of a masculine honor ideology and collective action intentions against criminal organizations (antimafia). Study 1 (N = 121) involved a Northern Italian sample, and Study 2 (N = 301) involved a Southern Italian sample. Across studies, results showed that endorsement of masculine honor ideology was associated with lower willingness to engage in social activism against criminal organizations. This relationship was mediated by attitudes toward criminal organizations (Study 1 and 2) and, in line with the notion of omertà, by lower levels of collective motive and more anxiety about interacting with police (Study 2). Directions for future research are discussed.