Reliability as a virtue

This paper explores what constitutes reliability in persons, particularly intellectual reliability. It considers global reliability, the overall reliability of persons, encompassing both the theoretical and practical realms; sectorial reliability, that of a person in a subject-matter (or behavioral) domain; and focal reliability, that of a particular element, such as a belief. The paper compares reliability with predictability of the kind most akin to it and distinguishes reliability as an intellectual virtue from reliability as an intellectual power. The paper also connects reliability with insight, reasoning, knowledge, and trust. It is argued that insofar as reliability is an intellectual virtue, it must meet both external standards of correctitude and internal standards of justification.

Therapist Positioning and Power in Discursive Therapies: A Comparative Analysis

The “discursive turn” in therapy gave the therapeutic relationship its deserved significance, which was implied but never fully recognized in traditional therapy literature. The exception would be the writing of Rogers, Satir, and Whitaker. Therapists’ actions in relation to clients became the topic of critical analysis and reflection rather than a resource for addressing some underlying inter- or intra-psychic forces and processes. This paper focuses on the issue of the therapist’s relational engagement with families, particularly the notion of therapist power, as conceived within three discursive approaches to family therapy: narrative, solution-focused, and collaborative.

西晋东莱人刘毅仕宦考

以门阀士族为其统治基础的西晋王朝,在确保士族权益的同时,皇族司马氏也需要一批事功派官僚以限制士族势力的过分膨胀,从而维持其君主的专制权威.然而,晋武帝却始终没有重用事功派官僚刘毅,作者认为,其主要原因是刘毅始终忠于曹魏,一直对司马氏的统治持敌视态度.而晋武帝"容忍"刘毅的主要原因则是当时亲曹力量依然十分庞大.     

情感性动机网络使用者对负性情绪线索的前注意偏向

采用修改后的分离式Stroop任务,通过两个实验考察了基于人际情感性动机的网络使用者在双线索竞争条件下的前注意加工特性。研究结果表明,相对于信息获取型被试,在中性线索与负性情绪线索匹配条件下,人际情感型被试对负性情绪线索表现出显著的前注意加工偏向,但在中性线索和情感满足线索匹配条件下,该类被试对情感满足线索未表现出前注意加工偏向。该研究为解释人际情感型动机者的病理性网络使用行为的情绪机制提供了实验证据。     

Habermas,lifelong learning and citizenship education

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to the active engagement of the learner in community and to the knowledge skills and understanding necessary for political action. This paper sets out a theoretical framework that offers a perspective on learning suitable for these far-reaching aims. We argue that schools need to shift from the currently dominant discourse of accountability to incorporate a discourse of care in order to make room for an effective and appropriate pedagogy for citizenship. Habermas’s social theory gives us a theoretical framework that properly locates schools within the lifeworld as part of civil society. Schools should therefore attend to hermeneutical and emancipatory concerns, not only to strategic interests. We put these in the context of Habermas’s social theory to paint an alternative vision learning for citizenship education which is based in developing the dispositions, values and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning with a view to developing ongoing communicative action.

Physical aggression as a function of perceived fighting ability among male and female prisoners

Study 1 used two scenarios depicting provocations to investigate whether prisoners' willingness to engage in physical aggression would vary according to the perceived fighting ability (Resource Holding Power [RHP]) of the opponent. RHP was operationalized in terms of three levels of the size, number of allies, and reputation. The sample (both sexes; N=1,253) was taken from a range of British prisons. Unexpectedly, the prisoners said that they would be less likely to attack a weaker opponent than an equally matched one. The predicted decline from equally matched to more formidable opponents was found only under some conditions. A further sample of male prisoners (N=260), completed a similar provocation scenario, with response options covering fear, several forms of aggression, the importance of the provocation for reputation, and that the provocation was unimportant. Fear increased with RHP as predicted. Lower physical aggression to a low RHP opponent was again found, and it was associated with a lesser impact on reputation of an insult from this source. There was also a lower likelihood of responding with physical aggression to a high RHP opponent, as originally predicted. Implications of the findings for motivational theories of aggression are discussed, and also the applicability to humans of concepts from game theory models of the evolution of fighting strategies.     

Nietzsche and l’élan technique: Technics,life, and the production of time

Abstract In this paper we examine Nietzsche’s relation to the life sciences of his time and to Darwinism in particular, arguing that his account of the will to power in terms of technics eschews three metaphysical prejudices, hylemorphism, utilitarianism, and teleological thinking. Telescoping some of Nietzsche’s pronouncements on the will to power with a Bergsonian lens, our reading of the will to power, as an operation productive of time, the future or life, offers an alternative to Heidegger’s. Rather than being reducible to a technics of domination or mastery, the will to power, we argue, is best interpreted as a technics of material forces that recasts all things past and future, near and far, moment by moment.     

Aggression and bullying

Models are presented describing how bullying others and being bullied are related to proactive and reactive aggressiveness. This was investigated among 1801 pupils in Norwegian schools at the end of grade five and among 2083 pupils at the end of grade eight. Pupils in the two samples were approximately 11 and 14 years old, respectively. The procedure of structural equation modeling with latent variables was followed using LISREL 8.30 to estimate the parameters. Analyses were conducted for boys and girls separately at fifth and eighth grades. Support for the assumptions of factor solution and factorial invariance of the concepts across gender and age was obtained independently from estimating structural parameters. Both proactive and reactive aggressiveness were related to bullying others and to being bullied at Level 5. Among the older pupils, there was a strong relationship between proactive aggressiveness and bullying others, while reactive aggressiveness was much more weakly related to bullying others. Being bullied, on the other hand, was only weakly related to proactive and reactive aggressiveness among the older pupils. Age was therefore an important factor in determining how proactive and reactive aggressiveness were related to bullying. When pupil gender is concerned, power‐related proactive aggressiveness in predicting bullying was a more important factor for boys, while affiliation‐related proactive aggressiveness was a more powerful factor for girls. Aggr. Behav. 27:446–462, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Effect size, power, and sample size determination for structured means modeling and mimic approaches to between-groups hypothesis testing of means on a single latent construct

While effect size estimates, post hoc power estimates, and a priori sample size determination are becoming a routine part of univariate analyses involving measured variables (e.g., ANOVA), such measures and methods have not been articulated for analyses involving latent means. The current article presents standardized effect size measures for latent mean differences inferred from both structured means modeling and MIMIC approaches to hypothesis testing about differences among means on a single latent construct. These measures are then related to post hoc power analysis, a priori sample size determination, and a relevant measure of construct reliability.I wish to convey my appreciation to the reviewers and Associate Editor, whose suggestions extended and strengthened the article's content immensely, and to Ralph Mueller of The George Washington University for enhancing the clarity of its presentation.     

“Sherry’s Secret”

The case and commentaries below were developed as part of a project, Graduate Research Ethics Education, undertaken by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant No. SBR 9421897 and NSF Grant No. 9817880). The project aims at training graduate students in research ethics and building a community of scientists and engineers who are interested in and capable of teaching research ethics. As part of the project, each graduate student participant develops a case for use in teaching and writes a commentary to go with the case, and then a staff member is asked to write additional commentary on the case. The case below was written in the second year of the project and was published in Research Ethics: Cases and Commentaries edited by B. Schrag, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, Bloomington, Indiana, Vol. II (1998). Publication of these cases and commentaries will be a recurring feature of Science and Engineering Ethics.