Search

Little attention has been paid to the fact that Thomas Reid's epistemology applies to 'political reasoning' as well as to various operations of the mind. Reid was interested in identifying the 'first principles' of political science as he did with other domains of human knowledge. This raises the question of the extent to which the study of human action falls within the competence of 'common sense'. Our aim is to reconstruct and assess Reid's epistemology of the sciences of social action and to determine how it connects with the fundamental tenets of his general epistemology. In the first part, we portray Reid as a methodological individualist and focus on the status of the first principles of political reasoning. The second part examines Reid's views on the explanatory power of the principles of human action. Finally, we draw a parallel between Reid's epistemology and the methodology of Weberian sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Innovation (si) is a concept characterized by its multiple definitions and characteristics, arising from an increase in the interest of researchers on the subject. This denotes that SI constitutes a field under construction that, according to various authors, requires studies carried out from different disciplines and approaches that rescue the diversities and realities involved in this issue. Precisely, Organizational Studies (eo) is a transdisciplinary field that studies the realities experienced in organizations and in organizational processes, based on various theoretical contributions and study currents. Given this, the objective of the work is to reflect on the theoretical contributions that the eo offer and why they may be relevant to deepen the study of SI. The main contribution of the work is that some specific contributions of the field are rescued: organizing or organized, power and strategic analysis, ambiguity and organized anarchies, new institutionalism, learning and knowledge in organizations, organizational change, and anthropology of organizations. From the explanation of each one, it is argued how they can contribute to the SI analysis. In the end, it is concluded that the topics discussed give rise to a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An operational language is introduced in the context of organizational studies, so that certain concepts such as system, individual-actor, result, function, balance, chaos, complexity, are formalized in order to establish similarities or equivalences with concepts of science physical-mathematical, in the search for a common language that bridges store that allow rigorous dialogue between a rich sector of physicalmathematical sciences and the sector of social studies focused on organizations, and also allows to develop a mathematical model that be useful in organizational analysis, particularly applied to the field of public universities in Mexico. Regarding organizational studies, we are located within the scope of the new sociological institutionalism and more specifically in the theories of ambiguity and loosely coupled systems, which we consider as the appropriate approach for the study of public universities in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent’s memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape’s (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of studies are investigating the way that aesthetic experiences are generated across different media. Empathy with a perceived human artist has been suggested as a common mechanism []. In this study, people heard 30 s excerpts of ambiguous music and poetry preceded by neutral, positively valenced, or negatively valenced information about the composer's or author’s intent. The information influenced their perception of the excerpts—excerpts paired with positive intent information were perceived as happier and excerpts paired with negative intent information were perceived as sadder (although across intent conditions, musical excerpts were perceived as happier than poetry excerpts). Moreover, the information modulated the aesthetic experience of the excerpts in different ways for the different excerpt types: positive intent information increased enjoyment and the degree to which people found the musical excerpts to be moving, but negative intent information increased these qualities for poetry. Additionally, positive intent information was judged to better match musical excerpts and negative intent information to better match poetic excerpts. These results suggest that empathy with a perceived human artist is indeed an important shared factor across experiences of music and poetry, but that other mechanisms distinguish the generation of aesthetic appreciation between these two media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the question of whether native Mandarin Chinese speakers process and comprehend subject-extracted relative clauses (SRC) more readily than object-extracted relative clauses (ORC) in Mandarin Chinese. Presently, this has been a hotly debated issue, with various studies producing contrasting results. Using two eye-tracking experiments with ambiguous and unambiguous RCs, this study shows that both ORCs and SRCs have different processing requirements depending on the locus and time course during reading. The results reveal that ORC reading was possibly facilitated by linear/temporal integration and canonicity. On the other hand, similarity-based interference made ORCs more difficult, and expectation-based processing was more prominent for unambiguous ORCs. Overall, RC processing in Mandarin should not be broken down to a single ORC (dis)advantage, but understood as multiple interdependent factors influencing whether ORCs are either more difficult or easier to parse depending on the task and context at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to investigate lexical ambiguity resolution during sentence processing in 16 people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 16 healthy controls. Sentences were presented word-by-word on computer screen, and participants were required to decide if a subsequent target word was related to the meaning of the sentence. The task consisted of related, unrelated and ambiguous trials. For the ambiguous trials, the sentence ended with an ambiguous word and the target was related to one of the meanings of that word, but not the one captured by the sentence context (e.g., ‘He dug with the spade’, Target ‘ACE’). Both groups demonstrated slower reaction times and lower accuracy for the ambiguous condition relative to the unrelated condition, however accuracy was impacted by the ambiguous condition to a larger extent in the PD group. These results suggested that PD patients experience increased difficulties with contextual ambiguity resolution. The ERP results did not reflect increased ambiguity resolution difficulties in PD, as a similar N400 effect was evident for the unrelated and ambiguous condition in both groups. However, the magnitude of the N400 for these conditions was correlated with a measure of inhibition in the PD group, but not the control group. The ERP results suggest that semantic processing may be more compromised in PD patients with increased response inhibition deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors (father and daughter) debate the necessity for and the (im)possibility of scientific research in the human sciences. As a researcher, the daughter (E) completed her PhD thesis on a study of the effectiveness of online treatment for depression. The father (A) has always doubted the claim of human scientists that they were able to explain, predict, and control human behavior. The conclusion about whether to do scientific research in the human sciences or not is, to paraphrase the Dodo bird from Lewis Carroll's (1865/1962) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "Both win and both deserve prizes!" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental evidence suggests that the frequency with which individuals get feedback information on their investments has an effect on their risk-taking behavior. In particular, when they are given information sufficiently often, they take less risks compared with a situation in which they are informed less frequently. We find that this result still holds when subjects do not know the probabilities of the lotteries they are betting upon. We also detect significant gender effects, in that the frequency with which information is disclosed mostly affects male betting behavior, and that males become more risk-seeking after experiencing a loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neil Armstrong insisted that his quote upon landing on the moon was misheard, and that he had said one small step for a man, instead of one small step for man. What he said is unclear in part because function words like a can be reduced and spectrally indistinguishable from the preceding context. Therefore, their presence can be ambiguous, and they may disappear perceptually depending on the rate of surrounding speech. Two experiments are presented examining production and perception of reduced tokens of for and for a in spontaneous speech. Experiment 1 investigates the distributions of several acoustic features of for and for a. The results suggest that the distributions of for and for a overlap substantially, both in terms of temporal and spectral characteristics. Experiment 2 examines perception of these same tokens when the context speaking rate differs. The perceptibility of the function word a varies as a function of this context speaking rate. These results demonstrate that substantial ambiguity exists in the original quote from Armstrong, and that this ambiguity may be understood through context speaking rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically relocates the debate concerning the validity and utility of projective tests within multiple interpretative and process oriented approaches. Some scholars opine that there could be alternate ways of looking at projective tests, for example using it as a technique to elicit cognitive and emotional states or as behaviour samples. Supporting, modifying or denigrating the use of projective tests may reflect different underlying attitudes toward ambiguity and multiple interpretation of a situation. Thus it represents either of two different traditions of psychology: one, aspiring to attain a structured and organized view of human behaviour facilitating prediction, and the other, an acceptance and appreciation of idiographic and divergent responses that may not necessarily be predictive, but informative about the multiple possibilities of human thought process. This latter approach would be more concerned with the process of experiencing rather than with obtaining a relatively final and fixed answer to the dilemmas of existential conditions. The possibility of such approach was always present in the history of projective tests, but has been subdued under the hegemonic pressure of diagnostic utility. The present author argues that a process oriented view of responses to ambiguous situations, along with a sensitivity to human diversity and multiple interpretations rather than emphasizing commonality, may open up a fresh relocation of projective technique within psychology. Training of projective technique may incorporate this consideration for future researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in 1998 became an important issue for the Latin American social sciences. Indeed, the very idea of being given such a major change in Venezuelan politics encouraged a number of perspectives on a process that has drawn the attention of many scholars and analysts of our reality. In 1999, the majority of Venezuelan electors gave a blank check to an electoral alliance that promised to change a nation which at that time took its toll to a democratic period which failed to adapt to a new age. Thus, we have at least three major areas for academic inquiry: First of all, the discussion about the scope of that change. Second, the discussion of the causes of that change, in terms of regarded Venezuela as a case sui-generis in comparative politics. And third, the analysis of the role played by the international variable in shaping that change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term governance describes the multitude of actors and processes that lead to collectively binding decisions. The term risk governance translates the core principles of governance to the context of risk-related policy making. We aim to delineate some basic lessons from the insights of the other articles in this special issue for our understanding of risk governance. Risk governance provides a conceptual as well as normative basis for how to cope with uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous risks. We propose to synthesize the breadth of the articles in this special issue by suggesting some changes to the risk governance framework proposed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and adding some insights to its analytical and normative implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that, though social scientists generally value tolerance for ambiguity, and some even assert a fundamental indeterminacy in human systems, there is still a discipline-wide discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity. It is argued that this distaste for uncertainty derives from a distorted view of the classical physical sciences, a view that ignores the essentially critical and radical foundations of scientific practice. The drive for certainty, it is argued, is essentially unscientific, in that certain, or adequate, forms of knowledge can only recapitulate the already known and in their dogmatic and institutionalized forms prevent the development of genuinely new knowledge. In contrast, uncertainty is defended as a positive condition, generative of new knowledge because it is open to discovery and to the mystery of the other. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that the social sciences can only progress if uncertainty, or mystery, is protected and cultivated through a scientific discourse constituted in local and concrete terms (rather than in general and universal ones) and through a self-reflective and self-critical research praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with Le Collège de Sociologie, an elective organization founded in 1937 by a group of French thinkers, among whom were Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris. It tries to show how the notion of 'force' or of 'power', constitutive to the 'new mythology' the members of the Collège wanted to create, was in fact deeply ambivalent in nature. This ambivalence can be traced back to the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory of the 'collective effervescence', which is shown to have influenced not only the collegians' notion of the sacred, but also their conception of power. This ambiguous theoretical heritage is curiously reflected in the conflicting conceptions Bataille and Caillois held of the notion of power - one of the major controversies, which later led to the dissolution of the Collège. The thesis defended here is that the seeds of this controversy lie already in the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory and that these ambivalences were in a certain manner reproduced not only in the dispute between Caillois and Bataille, but also in much of the contemporary social theory drawing its inspiration from the Durkheimian sociology of the sacred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keynesian concepts of probability and uncertainty emphasize the basis of knowledge available to economic decision makers. Conditions of uncertainty, which involve missing evidence or doubtful arguments, are distinguished from probable risk. Beyond this, on the basis of the claim that the future is yet to be created, some authors argue for further distinctions among different kinds of uncertainty. The paper reviews this particular argument, distinguishing it from Keynesian uncertainty theory generally, and provides a critique of its implication that, due to innovation, objective distributions of possible events do not generally exist at the time of economic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Jewish Social Studies presents a number of studies first discussed at a workshop held at Stanford University in the spring of 2007. The introduction briefly engages the question of the ambiguity of Sephardi identities, which is explored from a variety of perspectives by the contributors to this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates of many different approaches have, for years, attempted to usurp cognitive psychology’s dominance in the field of psychology. Unfortunately, none of these approaches have yet made a convincing case that they could take cognitive psychology’s place. Because of its explicit use of the mind-as-computer model, cognitivism gains a false sense of concreteness, and becomes pragmatically useful. Because their models are implicit, alternatives, such as phenomenology, gain a false sense of ambiguity and lose their pragmatic potential. In addition, alternative theories often alienate potential sympathizers through unnecessarily harsh criticism. This leads to a professional attitude in which one must take sides, rather than an attitude that appreciates the benefits of diversity, and may lead to the emergence of other beneficial models. If alternative approaches, such as Dr. Flores-González’s (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, ), could push through to the point of immediate usefulness, and present themselves in a less adversarial way, they would be much better placed make meaningful contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology as a scholarly vocation within the university in South Africa is bedevilled with the claims of its demise. Both the discipline and a cross-section of its practitioners seem beset with 'status anxiety' and what I call 'status ambiguity.' In this presidential address, delivered to the 2005 Congress of the South African Sociological Association (SASA). I examine these claims. The paper examines the sources of the anxiety. It argues that the claims of sociology's death are grossly exaggerated, as Mark Twain might have put it. I argue that if we were to operate on a wider canvas we might have persuaded ourselves to the position that the ebbs and flows in a discipline like sociology are not evidence of 'death', 'fall' or whatever else we might want to call it: it is not even an evidence of a discipline that is yet to attain maturity. The key to doing 'sociology beyond despair' and the recovery of disciplinary nerve requires a commitment to endogeneity, with a distinct commitment to epistemic intervention in global sociology: it requires us to take our locales seriously: it requires us to take ourselves seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to criticisms of the use of the Ideological Surround Model to analyze Tolerance of Ambiguity, emphasis is placed on how the methodologies of this model operate from Christian pacifist assumptions. This model seeks to promote social scientific methodologies that will allow competing perspectives to obtain increasing clarity on points of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical analysis of the definition of globalization in sociological studies. It argues that sociologists, unlike economists, have not achieved a commonly accepted definition of globalization. This seriously hinders the development of empirical studies. The ambiguity of the concept of globalization is rooted in three dialectics: globalization-as-a-process vs globalization-as-a-condition; globalization-as-reality vs globalization-as-futurology and one-dimensional globalization vs multi-dimensional globalization. These dialectics are rarely made explicit in different studies on globalization, which contributes to an accumulation of confusion rather than an accumulation of knowledge. The article aims to provide a theoretical framework in which concepts of globalization can be positioned through the formal analysis of a commonly used definition. Conceptual limitations that arise from the choice of a specific concept are highlighted, such as the underestimation of the present when globalization is considered a process, the neglect of internal contradictions when globalization is seen as a multidimensional concept; and the dangers of determinism and ignorance of unique features when the processes of globalization are defined by their sole destination. It challenges the sociological community to position research on globalization within this proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method often practiced but little understood. A "case study," I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of Co variational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodological tradeoffs that this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses--affinities--rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People in Kwahu-Tafo, a rural town in Southern Ghana, regard a peaceful death as a 'good death'. 'Peaceful' refers to the dying person having finished all business and made peace with others before his/her death and implies being at peace with his/her own death. It further refers to the manner of dying: not by violence, an accident or a fearsome disease, not by foul means and without much pain. A good and peaceful death comes 'naturally' after a long and well-spent life. Such a death preferably takes place at home, which is the epitome of peacefulness, surrounded by children and grandchildren. Finally, a good death is a death which is accepted by the relatives. This 'definition' of good death- 'bad death' is its opposite-does not imply, however, that it is a fixed category. The quality of one's death is liable to social and political maneuver and, therefore, inherently ambiguous. The good death of a very old and successful person can be decried by the younger generation as the death of a witch who managed to live long at the expense of young people who died prematurely. The article is based on anthropological fieldwork carried out intermittently from 1971 to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of high-stakes accountability in the past decades has created an unavoidable tension with contemporary efforts to promote multicultural curricula. Accountability requires that states establish common standards, a difficult task when there is disagreement about what content students should learn. Policy makers can adopt an "augmentative" strategy and add material to standards. This approach is less effective, however; in high-stakes systems where standards are expected to provide concrete guidance. At such times, negotiations become more nearly "zero sum" -- something has to come out of the standards for each new item that goes in. Given the nature of the American system, conflicts are more often resolved by devising ambiguous and aspirational standards. Conflict is more common in the humanities and social sciences than in mathematics or science because the "soft" subjects are less able to appeal to a neutral authority and because additional content can be grafted onto them more readily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to describe the trajectory of gender in the social sciences, starting with the resistance which the concept encountered in the various disciplines, leading on to the ambiguity with which the topic was dealt with by the various feminist tendencies, and culminating in the development of post-modern feminist theory in the 90's. Looked at with this type of approach, which has been built up from a critical appreciation of scientific practice in the past, the object of study has shifted from the sexes themselves to the processes whereby differences between them are constructed.

I argue here that in the end Bourdieu's theory of practice fails to overcome the problem on which it expressly centers, namely, subject-object dualism. The failure is registered in his avowed materialism, which, though significantly "generalized, "remains what it says: a materialism. In order to substantiate my criticism, I examine for their ontological presuppositions three areas of his theoretical framework pertaining to the questions of (1) human agency (as seen through the conceptual glass of the habitus), (2) otherness, and (3) the gift. By scrutinizing Bourdieu's powerful and progressive social theory, with an eye to finding fault, I hope to show the need to take a certain theoretical action, one that is patently out of keeping with the usual self-presentation and selfunderstanding of social science. The action I have in mind is this: because the problem of subject-object dualism is in the first place a matter of ontology, in order successfully to address it there must take place a direct shift of ontological starting point, from the received starting point in Western thought to one that projects reality in terms of ambiguity that is basic. With this shift the dualism of subject and object dissolves by definition, leaving a social reality that, for reasons of its basic ambiguity, is best approached as a question of ethics before power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positivity effect in judgments of personal experiences is a well-established finding. In this article, we posit that this effect may not manifest in the case of product experiences We base this on literature that suggests that social stimuli (such as personal experiences) are more ambiguous than nonsocial stimuli (such as experiences associated with products) Because of this ambiguity, construal processes are more likely to occur for social versus nonsocial stimuli, increasing the likelihood of the operation of self-serving theories in social judgments. Experiment 1 reveals that positive personal experiences are more likely to be retrieved than negative personal experiences, however, there is no difference in recall of positive and negative product experiences Experiments 2 and 3 extend this finding to judgments of past and future experiences, respectively, and replicate the better-than-average effect for personal, but not product, experiences Experiment 4 then examines the motivational underpinnings of construal processes and shows that construals can operate even for relatively unambiguous product experiences when participants believe such experiences implicate the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary exploration of a neglected area in sociology of religion. It aims to interpret and to characterize the distinctive performative basis of Christian liturgy. Ambiguities in liturgical enactment can be routinely handled as long as they relate. to the nuministic content of the rite and not to its social form. Silence is a distinctive non-reducible phenomenon of rite that can be related to the regulation of ceremonial form through tactful management of the implicit. Liturgies work on the basis of an apophatic characteristic that makes them distinctive as religious rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]