The relationship of self and occupational concepts to the occupational preferences of adolescents

This study tested aspects of Super's self-concept theory of career development with a sample of British schoolchildren. Findings suggested that self-concepts and concepts of occupational preferences do have a role in career development, though there were some indications that the theory is more applicable to more able youngsters and to those high in self-esteem, than to others. Agreement between ideal-self-concepts and occupational preference concepts was significantly greater than that between actual-self-concepts and occupational preference concepts. This finding was interpreted as reflecting the youngsters' greater concern for the future and the possible, rather than the present and the given, and it suggested that refinements are needed in Super's theory.     

Double Agents

Jennifer Herdt's Putting On Virtue argues for the theological and normative superiority of noncompetitive accounts of divine and human agency. Although such accounts affirm the indispensability and sovereignty of divine grace they also acknowledge human agents as active participants in their own moral change. Indeed, Herdt contends we cannot coherently describe the human telos as entailing a transformation of character without affirming that human agents meaningfully contribute to that change. Nevertheless, a recurrent worry in Putting On Virtue is that persons may view their growth in virtue as a personal achievement and that the pleasure of positive self‐regard will displace disinterested—and hence truly virtuous—moral aspiration. This discussion of Herdt's volume sympathetically canvasses her argument. It then looks briefly at the reflexive structure of human agency to consider the relationship between the human telos and the transformation of character, and to encourage a more generous attitude toward positive self‐regard.     

Flashing the Yellow Traffic Light: Choices Forced Upon Us by Gene Editing Technologies

The 2018 birth of two designer babies in China has sparked an immediate global controversy over the ethics of gene editing. For the longer range future, however, we must assess how CRISPR/Cas9, like so many other new bio-technologies, is forcing choice—moral choice—on a large scale. Gene editing for purposes of medical therapy, human enhancement, engineering of future children, and even creating a posthuman species, confront our society with the inescapable necessity of making moral choices. The task for churches in partnership with universities is not to decide in advance what is right or wrong. Rather, it is to prepare our people to make responsible choices.     

“Patching up Virtue”

Herdt's Putting On Virtue has two chief aims. The first is to champion the virtue tradition against Christian moral quietism and modern deontological ethics. The second is to facilitate reconciliation between Augustinian and Emersonian virtue. To accomplish these tasks Herdt constructs a counter‐narrative to Schneewind's Invention of Autonomy, in which Luther's resignation and Kant's innovation are tragic consequences of “hyper‐Augustinianism”—a competitive conception of divine and human agency, which leads to excessive suspicion of acquired virtue. This review argues that Putting On Virtue succeeds in its first aim but leaves its second intriguingly uncompleted. Despite this deficiency, however, this essay also argues that Putting On Virtue makes plausible Herdt's audacious suggestion that Augustinian and Emersonian perfectionism may be reconciled by bringing acquired and infused virtue under a single term.     

Sheldon's physical-psychical typology revisited

In order to clarify some of the general findings in the literature with respect to relationships between body type and the personality dimension extraversion/introversion, typical experimental paradigms common to this field were replicated but using the first-order factors (from the R. B. Cattell, H. W. Eber, & M. M. Tatsuoka (1970, Handbook for the sixteen personality factor questionnaire, Windsor: N.F.E.R.) analysis) that load on this continuum rather than the continuum itself. Use was made of standard statistical procedures as well as discriminant analysis. The most noteworthy finding was that subjects were able to utilize the first-order factor structure for the continuum extraversion/introversion in a discriminating manner and to assign such factors in a fairly clear-cut way to three extreme body types. Personality appraisals of the mesomorphic body type and an ideal type (composed by the subjects) were shown to be virtually identical. The most positive extravert characteristics were assigned to the endomorph body build and the most positive introvert characteristics to the ectomorph. No differences in personality appraisals by male (n = 50) and female (n = 50) subjects with the exception of factor Q₂ by the ectomorphic body type were found. Both male and female subjects showed a preference for the (male) mesomorphic body type although significant differences between male and female subjects in the pattern of their distribution of preferences over the three body types were found. While the results confirm previous findings, they also extend them by the use of a first-order factor structure for the continuum extraversion/introversion and by the introduction of the explanatory concepts “extravert of affect” and “extravert of action.”     

Saint Thomas Aquinas's Pagan Virtues?

Today's conversations in virtue ethics are enflamed with questions of “pagan virtues,” which often designate non‐Christian virtue from a Christian perspective. “Pagan virtues,” “pagan vices,” and their historied interpretations are the subject of Jennifer Herdt's book Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (2008). I argue that the questions and language animating Herdt's book are problematic. I offer an alternative strategy to Herdt's for reading Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. My results are twofold: (1) a different set of conclusions and questions regarding the moral life that lend a fresh perspective to “pagan virtues” and (2) corresponding methodological suggestions for improving Herdt's project that would, to my mind, reaffirm her normative conclusions regarding the most viable ways forward for contemporary discussions of virtue.     

Messianic language in trans public speech*

ABSTRACT

This essay examines how two trans public figures, Lou Sullivan and Jennifer Finney Boylan, try to realize the need for transgender legibility through messianic rhetoric. Messianism is a site of contention in queer theory, between advocates for either antirelational queer theory or queer utopianism. This essay sees messianic rhetoric as a strategy found in the public speech and writing of Sullivan and Boylan, each of whom instrumentalize it to achieve legibility. Such rhetoric works to the political end of broader transgender acceptance. However, it also relies upon a flattening of trans life into a monolith. Messianic rhetoric legitimates a singular narrative of “how to be trans” through excluding other possibilities. Public speech that rejects this universalizing messianic impulse is possible. The zine “Fucking Trans Women” represents such a possibility, focusing attention on experience and pleasure over narrative linearity, thus providing one path forward for trans public speech.     

Knowledge of language in action

Knowledge of a language is a kind of knowledge, the possession of which enables a speaker to understand and perform a variety of linguistic actions in that language. In this paper, I pursue an agency-oriented approach to knowledge of language. I begin by examining two major agency-oriented models of knowledge of language: Michael Dummett's Implicit Knowledge Model and Jennifer Hornsby's Practical Knowledge Model. I argue that each of these models is inadequate for different reasons. I present an Acquaintance Knowledge Model, in which a speaker's knowledge of a language is a combination of the speaker's first-order linguistic ability and second-order acquaintance with his ability and actions.     

Progressive dysfluency associated with right hemisphere disease

A late onset progressive dysfluency following a right hemisphere stroke occurred in a 62-year-old male. Dysfluency was characterized by pronounced word and phrase reiterations, and sound and syllable reiterations to a lesser degree. Spontaneous speech was significantly more dysfluent than oral reading and repetition. Recitation and singing were minimally dysfluent. Reiterations were accompanied by reduced vocal loudness and increased rate of speech. Reiterations occurred in initial, medial, and final sentence position. Secondary symptoms such as facial grimacing were absent. In contrast to acquired cortical stuttering which is characterized by a preponderance of sound and syllable sentence initial repetitions, dysfluency was more closely characteristic of palilalia. The dysfluency occurred as a symptom of a diffuse nonspecific subcortical projection system defect related to massive infarction in the right middle cerebral artery distribution with associated atrophy.