General Versus Specific Victim Blaming

Abstract

The authors investigated (a) whether victim blaming is a general variable in a person's make-up or (b) whether the extent of blaming depends on the kind of victim considered. The authors evaluated scales for blaming (a) victims in general, (b) society in general, (c) a specific kind of victim (i.e., AIDS), and (d) the society in which AIDS victims live. The general and specific scales had favorable psychometric properties, including reliability. General and specific victim blaming were significantly and positively correlated, whereas victim blaming and society blaming were not significantly correlated. Multiple regression analyses provided evidence of construct validity for the scales. All blaming variables were significantly related in the hypothesized directions to social distance, social responsibility, and discrimination (regarding persons with AIDS). The general and specific scales made significant and unique contributions. Implications for attribution theory and research are specified.     

Objections and replies within the fifth meditation

Malebranche held that God acts only by general volitions and so is not constantly interfering in the world. The content of God's volitions appears to include the general laws of nature and the particular initial configuration of the created world, so that occasional or natural causes have an important explanatory role. It is clear that at the least Malebranche meant by a ‘general volition’ the willing of events which followed general laws. Steven Nadler argued that this is all we should understand by a ‘general volition’, and so we should think that general volitions are simply particular volitions which follow a general law.

I argue that this view is not the correct interpretation of Malebranche's general volitions, for it does not do justice to the theological doctrine of the Treatise, masks the genuine difference between Arnauld and Malebranche, and conflicts with what Malebranche says about practical volitions. I then argue that despite Malebranche's view of general volitions, there is still an important difference between his view and Leibniz's.     

Malebranche and the General Will of God

Central to Nicolas Malebranche’s theodicy is the distinction between general volitions and particular volitions. One of the fundamental claims of his theodicy is that although God created a world with suffering and evil, God does not will these things by particular volitions, but only by general volitions. Commentators disagree about how to interpret Malebranche’s distinction. According to the ‘general content’ interpretation, the difference between general volitions and particular volitions is a difference in content. General volitions have general laws as their content and particular volitions have particular contents. The ‘particular content’ interpretation holds that all of God’s volitions have particular contents. The difference between general and particular volitions is whether the content of the volition is in accordance with the laws that God has established. A proper interpretation of this distinction is essential to understanding Malebranche’s theodicy, as well as his account of occasionalism and God’s causal activity in the world. In this paper, I defend the ‘particular content’ interpretation of the distinction.     

Preventing The Oil “Resource Curse” In Ghana: Lessons From Nigeria

Ghana joined the list of oil-producing countries with the export of its first oil from the Jubilee oilfield in January 2011. President John Atta Mills's statement drawing attention to the potential paradigm shift as well as risks that the discovery of oil and gas imposes not only speaks to the complexity of extractive-industry-engendered development, but it also makes it imperative that the country learns from other countries’ successes and failures. In this article, we use the “resource curse” thesis to examine the emerging dynamics and complexities in Ghana's oil industry, with the attempt to draw both correlations with and lessons from the Nigerian case. The article highlights five key lessons in Nigeria's management of its oil–gas resources related to the legal-regulatory framework, development of the oil-producing areas, Corporate Social Responsibility, management of oil revenues, and oil–civil society nexus that Ghana should give serious thoughts to in order to leverage its new found oil wealth and avert the “resource curse.”     

The orientation of evolution and the intellect

Prediction has been central in the development of both science and society. Chaos theory, however, has given rise to the widespread belief that in all but the most stable situations prediction of the future is impossible. But this belief is contradicted by theory and findings over many years of the psychology of prediction as well as by the findings of the new field of chaos psychology and the experience of entrepreneurs in business and political leaders. At stake is a belief central to an enormous body of “law” in all scientific fields as well as to business, political, and governmental managers and leaders concerned with governance of economic and political systems in a time of global social chaos. At its core, the problem is a critical one for the development of a General Evolution Theory that can span the findings of natural science and social science to find “laws” consonant with systems requirements at both pre‐human and human evolutionary levels. This paper analyzes the problem in terms of chaos theoretical views of the limits of predictability, evidence from the fields of psychology and brain research of human predictive abilities that transcend these limits, and the practical consequence of a resolution of this conflict for science and society.     

Do commodities reproduce themselves through human beings? Toward an ecology of goods

The argument of this paper—'an ecology of goods'—could be summarized as follows: Goods exist only in relation to each other. Goods form groups, and in time higher organizational levels, groups of groups, i.e. networks of artifacts emerge. Mass consumption society is the most developed manifestation of this organizing process. The process of association and dissociation of goods is only partly controllable through human decisions. Human beings making decisions about buying, using and disposing of goods are constrained by the “logic” of the general organizing process. This process emerges out of different kinds interactions between commodities and feedback cycles with unintended consequences. In routinization and institutionalization processes commodity interactions become stabilized, i.e. the fidelity of replicative cycles increases. From this perspective, a system of commodities could be seen as an entity, which reproduces itself in a continuous resource exchange with its co‐actors and environment. In a system there is both a tendency toward functional differentiation and integration with other systems. Accordingly, systems of goods are cyclic processes within processes rather than given stable entities. This approach places many theoretical and practical problems of consumer society in a new perspective.     

What the Wise Ought Believe: A Voluntarist Interpretation of Hume's General Rules

This paper advances an interpretation of what Hume called ‘the general rules’: natural principles of belief-formation that nevertheless can be augmented via reflection. According to Hume, reflection is, in part, what separates the wise from the vulgar. In this paper, I argue that for Hume being wise must therefore be, to some degree, voluntary. Hume faced a significant problem in attempting to reconcile his epistemic normativity, i.e. his claims about what we ought to believe, with his largely involuntarist theory of the mind. Reflection on the General Rules, and an interpretation of that reflection as voluntary, helps explain not only Hume's theory of belief, but also how he hoped to reconcile epistemic normativity with naturalism about the mental.     

关于内科临床技能培训教学课程设置的探讨

通过对参加内科临床技能培训的大连医科大学2007级、2009级五年制及七年制临床医学专业学生进行问卷调查及客观结构化临床考试（OSCE）,探讨内科临床技能培训课程的学时及课程内容等设置.100%的学生认为有开设临床技能培训课的必要,50%以上的学生认为在大学4年级开设本课程较合适,50%以上的学生认为12学时的设置较合理,80%以上的学生认为应每4人共用一名模拟人.OSCE证实毕业前12学时培训组成绩优于实习前8学时组.     

Uncovering and managing unconscious ways of ‘looking’: A case study of researching educational care

Abstract

In this paper the author argues for the importance of those working as counsellors with children and adolescents to have specialist training. She outlines the need for many more properly trained counsellors to be available to children, and emphasizes the need for them to have detailed knowledge of children's emotional development. The argument is throughout illustrated with clinical examples. She draws attention to the differences between working with children and adolescents as opposed to adults, with an exploration of the special skills that need to be developed if working with younger clients. Reference is made to the differences in the contract and the thinking about the family. She explores the importance of including in a specialist training infant observation and the consideration of group and institutional dynamics.