ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN TELEVISION NEWS AND SOCIAL REALITY

This study examined Israeli adolescents' differential perception of social conflicts in society and of their presentation by TV news, given the assumption that TV presents a distorted picture of real social conflicts along three dimensions: complexity, intensity, and solvability. It was hypothesized that age and degree of remoteness of social conflicts from one's life experiences will account for the main differences in an adolescent's differential perception of social conflicts. The sample consisted of 492 9th-grade and 425 12lh-grade Israeli adolescents. The data indicate that the older adolescents typically differentiate between the two realms of reality to a greater degree than do the younger adolescents. This is the case for three conflicts (school integration, labor disputes, and political terrorism) across the three dimensions. Moreover, the highest degree of differentiation between the two realms of reality was found for both age groups in the school integration conflict, with which the respondents were presumed to be most familiar, and the least differentiation for the conflict concerning political terrorism, with which they were presumed to have had the least experience.     

Not Cricket? Ethics,Rhetoric and Sporting Boycotts

abstract   Using as a background the ongoing crisis afflicting the international cricket scene over whether or not to boycott Zimbabwe, this paper seeks to explore the moral complexities surrounding the case of the sporting boycott in general as a response to morally odious regimes. Rather than attempting to provide some easy formula by which to determine justifiable from unjustifiable boycotts, we take as our starting point many of the arguments raised in the national press and explore and develop these arguments in order to shed light on the fundamental problems underlying the use of sporting boycotts as moral tools. The paper thus aims to show the inadequacy of the standard responses on both sides of the fence and, hopefully, clears the ground for future, more informed approaches to the issue.     

Indoctrination, Coercion and Freedom of Will

Manipulation by another person often undermines freedom. To explain this, a distinction is drawn between two forms of manipulation: indoctrination is defined as causing another person to respond to reasons in a pattern that serves the manipulator's ends; coercion as supplying another person with reasons that, given the pattern in which he responds to reasons, lead him to act in ways that serve the manipulator's ends. It is argued that both forms of manipulation undermine freedom because manipulators track the compliance of their victims, while neutral causal mechanisms do not. Manipulators see to it that their victims comply even in the face of forces that threaten to derail them from the manipulator's desired course. It is suggested that this has an impact on freedom because part of what we desire in wanting to be free is the availability of forms of life very different from those we actually enjoy.     

LOCKE ON IDEAS OF SUBSTANCE AND THE VEIL OF PERCEPTION

Abstract: John Yolton has argued that Locke held a direct realist position according to which sensory ideas are not perceived intermediaries, as on the representational realist position, but acts that take material substances as objects. This paper argues that were Locke to accept the position Yolton attributes to him he could not at once account for appearance‐reality discrepancies and maintain one of his most important anti‐nativist arguments. The paper goes on to offer an interpretation of Locke's distinction between ideas of substances and modes, a distinction that helps Locke to explain appearance‐reality discrepancies, although not in a large enough range of cases to strengthen Yolton's interpretation.