On the importance of genetic knowledge

SUMMARY. Taking up the argument in Eric Blyth's paper, this article claims that the secrecy which currently prevails in the practice of donor insemination in the UK seems to serve the interests of all parties except the child. It analyses the arguments for replacing secrecy with confidentiality in terms of the adverse consequences of deception, the risks of unnecessary mental suffering and the infringement of children's rights. It expresses concern lest the needs of children for genetic knowledge may receive low priority in the Code of Practice of the new Licensing Authority     

个案研究的意义和限度——基于知识的增长

本文将个案研究的代表性问题替换为超越性问题,从部分与整体之关系和经验事实与理论之关系两个维度探讨了它的意义和限度。在分析和比较了费孝通的类型比较法、格尔茨的深描说和布洛维的扩展个案法三种研究取向的基础上,本文指出:由于异质性问题的存在,个案研究不可能获得对实体性整体的认识,因此提出以对关系性整体的追求取代之;个案研究的理论定位可以多样化:或是对其所属社会的一般性概括,或是提供一种全新的概念洞察力,或是对既有理论的重建,或是构建情境性理论。因此,对于知识的增长,个案研究的超越既可能是突发式的,也可能是累积性的,但都需经过学术共同体的认同。     

Minimal monotonic extensions of scoring rules

Noting the existence of social choice problems over which no scoring rule is Maskin monotonic, we characterize minimal monotonic extensions of scoring rules. We show that the minimal monotonic extension of any scoring rule has a lower and upper bound, which can be expressed in terms of alternatives with scores exceeding a certain critical score. In fact, the minimal monotonic extension of a scoring rule coincides with its lower bound if and only if the scoring rule satisfies a certain weak monotonicity condition (such as the Borda and antiplurality rule). On the other hand, the minimal monotonic extension of a scoring rule approaches its upper bound as its degree of violating weak monotonicity increases, an extreme case of which is the plurality rule with a minimal monotonic extension reaching its upper bound.

---

Variable-population extensions of social aggregation theorems

This paper examines principles for social evaluation under uncertainty in environments with a variable population. In contrast to most of the literature, we employ a model that is formulated in terms of prospects rather than lotteries. Starting from a fixed-population result, a multi-profile variant of Harsanyi’s social aggregation theorem is extended to a variable-population environment. Two nested classes of population principles under uncertainty are characterized. Each is a variable-population extension of ex-ante utilitarianism. The results continue to apply if the probability distribution may vary, as long as probabilities are objectively known or agreed upon by all individuals and society.     

On the local construction of statistical knowledge: Making up the 1861 census of the Canadas

Abstract Census material is a basic source of information for scholars concerned with many dimensions of Canadian development, yet no systematic examination of census procedures has been undertaken. An overview of the making of the 1861 census of the Canadas is followed by a brief discussion of the reflexive character of census knowledge.     

On critical faith and metacritical agnosticism: Nietzsche,Socrates, and the searches for knowledge

This article articulates a case for methodological pluralism while addressing points of contention between Michael Warren Tumolo’s “A Sublimed Experience of the Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic” and John Peterman’s “Sublimation Therapy: Helping Reason Get Back to a Solid Footing.” This discussion addresses explicit and implicit differences regarding the meaning of knowledge, authorship, advice, texts, method, and discipline. Embedded in this larger framework is a discussion of Nietzschean and Socratic understandings of self-knowledge. This essay resists hierarchical approaches to discipline and method, instead arguing for methodological pluralism in which one aims to be critically faithful and metacritically agnostic. This approach is offered as a way to demonstrate a commitment to disciplinary knowledge and to better know oneself.     

The motivational impairment effect in the communication of deception: Replications and extensions

Past research (e.g., DePaulo & Kirkendol, in press) has documented a motivational impairment effect in the communication of deception, whereby people who are more highly motivated to get away with their lies (relative to those who are less highly motivated) are less successful at doing so whenever observers can see or hear any of their nonverbal cues. In the present study, we report a conceptual replication of the effect: Subjects who told ingratiating lies under conditions in which they thought that the ability to convey particular impressions was an important skill (high competence-relevance) were less successful at getting away with those lies when judges could observe their nonverbal behaviors. We also report a conceptual replication of an unpredicted finding from an earlier study (DePaulo, Stone, & Lassiter, 1985b): Under the same conditions (ingratiating lies, high competence relevance), women were more likely to show the motivational impairment effect than were men. We predicted in this study that more attractive speakers would be less susceptible to the motivational impairment effect than less attractive speakers. Consistent with this prediction, under high motivational conditions (ingratiating lies, high competence-relevance), more attractive speakers were less likely to show the impairment than were less attractive speakers. Finally, we report suggestive evidence that the motivational impairment effect may occur when subjects are trying deliberately to control simultaneously all of their verbal and nonverbal behaviors.This research was supported by an NIMH research grant and an NIMH Research Scientist Award to the first author. We thank Paul Ekman for his comments, and Ann Ashworth, Joan Hairfield, Bruce Hedrick, Morgan Kulow, Margaret Lluy, Terri Michell, Helen Ponte, Carissa Smith, and Debby Winokur for their help with this research.     

The circulation of knowledge beyond the academia: On scholarly couplers at porous borders

With strong pressure to make academic research socially and economically relevant, academics face the problem of reconciling inherently academic products through which they are assessed (e.g. scientific articles) with other products that are often demanded by non-academic social actors. These products, which we call scholarly couplers, make up an important part of academic work, often ignored or underestimated in evaluation instances. In this article, we show how these types of products articulate with traditional ones and argue that academic production should be observed (and evaluated) through heterogeneous product chains, fostering more diverse academic profiles.     

A reexamination of agency theory assumptions: extensions and extrapolations

In this paper, we discuss agency theory in the context of the individual principal and agent, and also in the context of the organization and its groups. Agency theory is examined in the context of goal orientation, obligation and reciprocity, risk, and self-interest. We offer propositions given agency theory’s assumptions. We also extend agency theory and offer alternative propositions based on a relaxing of agency theory’s assumptions. In relaxing the assumptions of agency theory, insights from outside the agency literature, specifically from behavioral theories are used. Implications of agency theory and the extension of this theory are also discussed in relation to outcomes associated with economic exchanges.     

The behavior of the listener,generic extensions,and the communicative adequacy of verbal behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Except for a few words, children first become listeners of a word before becoming speakers of the word. The analysis of listener behavior is therefore of...     

Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on knowledge and the knowledge society within the Sustainable Development Goals

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to analyze discourses of knowledge and the knowledge society in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discourse analysis is a collective name for a number of scientific methodologies for analyzing semiosis, namely how meaning is created and communicated though written, vocal or sign language. Employing a genealogical approach which locates discourses in the field of prior discourses, two prior discourses of the knowledge society are identified in the key document of the SDGs. The concepts knowledge and knowledge society are found to have a marginal position within the main policy document “Transforming our world,” adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The techno‐scientific‐economic discourse is found to be dominant at the level of implementation and of goals, while there is some evidence of the pluralist‐participatory discourse at the level of vision and strategy. Analysis of some of the policy advice provided by international organizations and civil society indicates that more pluralist‐participatory discourses on knowledge were represented when the SDGs were being formulated. Developed countries and the corporate sector were very influential in determining the final text and were probably instrumental in excluding more transformational discourses and maintaining the status quo.     

University expansion and the knowledge society

For centuries, the processes of social differentiation associated with Modernity have often been thought to intensify the need for site-specific forms of role training and knowledge production, threatening the university’s survival either through fragmentation or through failure to adapt. Other lines of argument emphasize the extent to which the Modern system creates and relies on an integrated knowledge system, but most of the literature stresses functional differentiation and putative threats to the university. And yet over this period the university has flourished. In our view, this seeming paradox is explained by the fact that modern society rests as much on universalistic cosmological bases as it does on differentiation. The university expands over recent centuries because – as it has from its religious origins – it casts cultural and human materials in universalistic terms. Our view helps explain empirical phenomena that confound standard accounts: the university’s extraordinary expansion and global diffusion, its curricular and structural isomorphism, and its relatively unified structure. All of this holds increasingly true after World War II, as national state societies made up of citizens are increasingly embedded in a world society constituted of empowered individuals. The redefinition of society in global and individual terms reduces nationally bounded models of nature and culture, extends the pool of university beneficiaries and investigators, and empowers the human persons who are understood to root it all. The changes intensify universalization and the university’s rate of worldwide growth. For the university’s knowledge and “knowers,” and for the pedagogy that joins them together, the implications are many. The emerging societal context intensifies longstanding processes of cultural rationalization and ontological elaboration, yielding great expansions in what can and should be known, and in who can and should know. These changes in turn alter the menu of approved techniques for joining knowledge and knower as one. The “knowledge society” that results is distinguished by the extraordinary degree to which the university is linked to society. But it is also distinguished by the degree to which society is organized around the university’s abstracted and universalized understandings of the world and its degree-certified graduates.

---

Network knowledge and the use of power

Complementing recent work on the effects of power on network perceptions, we offer a theory specifying how knowledge of network structures and exchange processes differentially affect the use of power by advantaged and disadvantaged positions. We argue that under certain conditions, network knowledge is beneficial to occupants of low-power positions, but not to occupants of high-power positions. Any low-power actor can benefit from having superior information, but if all low-power actors have equally sound knowledge, then all are worse off—a type of social trap. We tested these arguments by manipulating power and the availability of information on network structure and exchange processes in an experimental exchange network setting. The results were supportive.     

On distributional change,pro-poor growth and convergence

This paper proposes a unified approach to the measurement of distributional change. The framework is used to define indices of inequality in proportional growth rates, convergence, and pro-poorness of growth and associated equivalent growth rates. A distinction is made between non-anonymous and anonymous measures. The analysis is extended by using the notion of generalized Gini index. This unified approach is then implemented to study the link between income and other non-income characteristics, such as education and health. Empirical illustrations based on Indian data on individual educational achievements and on state wide infant survival levels highlight the usefulness of the proposed measures.     

On the limits of a realist conception of knowledge: a pragmatist critique of Archerian realism

In her book Being Human (2000), Margaret Archer presents intriguing pragmatist emphases on practice, embodiment and non‐linguistic knowing‐how, as regards to understanding humanity. However, as Archer attempts to conjoin these ideas with the morphogenetic realism she has been working on for the last few decades, she ends up holding on to a subject–object dualism, which makes things complicated. The authors’ alternative pragmatist account defended in the article flows from Deweyan pragmatist and Rortian antirepresentationalist insights. The main issues in the article concern Archer’s complicated tripartite concept of knowledge, which is contrasted with a (Deweyan–Rylean) distinction between linguistic knowledge‐that and embodied knowing‐how. It is argued that knowledge is a natural, sophisticated tool that human organisms use when coping with their environment; it is always acquired on the strength of embodied knowing‐how, from some actor’s point of view, but the term ‘knowledge’ itself should be reserved for the propositional, linguistic knowledge‐that.     

Five concepts of religion

In the face of continuing debate about the adequacy and definition of the concept of ‘religion’, this paper argues that it is necessary for the social sciences to become more self-critical about their various – and changing – uses of the term. As this paper shows, three main uses are currently dominant: religion as belief/meaning, religion as identity, and religion as structured social relations. By contrast, some uses which were once important are currently recessive, including Marxist approaches to religion as ideology, and Parsonian conceptions of religion as norms and values. Some new uses are also emerging, including ‘material’ religion, religion as discourse, and religion as practice. Drawing these together, the paper proposes a taxonomy of five main major uses of the term. It reflects on their adequacy, and points out where there are still occlusions: above all with regard to ‘super-social’ or ‘meta-social’ relations with non-human or quasi-human beings, forces and powers.