哲学践行:从理论走向实践的哲学运动——奥斯卡·博列尼菲尔访谈录

哲学学者不能仅满足于了解哲学,不能太过于侧重描述,而忽略了哲学本身是一种思考与改变现实世界的活动,这正是哲学践行的重要方面。随着人文精神的发展,人们意识到,真正的教育不应该是让学生"学习,然后复述",学习的目的不是为了简单地说出知识,而是要应用,要将知识外化出去,以使人类得到某种程度上的自主与自由。哲学教育的目的不是让学生机械地学习哲学知识,而应当是寻找"为何这样"、"如何改变"以及了解"你是谁"、"如何从事社会生活"等一系列问题答案的工作。这就需要进行有效地思考。然而,人们常谈论的"思考"大部分缺乏实质意义。当人的头脑中充满了各种观念和想法时,便无法有效思考。"思考"这一概念在哲学史上之所以意义深远在于它是一种有序的东西。在思考时,个体有时需要增加内容以把脑中繁杂的观念整理出一个结构;而有时却恰恰相反,个体需要丢弃一些观念以使自己的思想精简、清晰。在哲学史上,相较于各个哲学家所坚持的主张,他们的方法论更值得重视,因为不同的哲学家会有不同的思维直觉,他们所建构的方法论能够为人类提供许多与思考有关的工具,对我们建构思想以及澄清思维都很有好处。苏格拉底的追问式对话法、辩证法、现象学还原法以及中国的老子思想等都是对思考很有帮助的哲学工具。实际上,哲学可以被用在任何地方,哲学践行工作者可以在各种具体的社会情境中工作,在目前哲学践行发展的形势下,我们应当更多地鼓励人们认识、了解以及关注哲学的社会展现,将那种令人畏惧的学院派哲学逐渐转变为实用的、易于接受与应用的思想并带给社会大众。     

‘Whose side are you on?’ Dilemmas in conducting feminist ethnographic research with young women

Drawing on two recently completed ethnographic studies of young women in the West Midlands, this paper explores a series of issues about the application of feminist principles and practice to such research. One study analysed young women's friendships, mainly through participant observation in school, supplemented by participation at a youth club. The other explored the likely success of the former Conservative Government's ‘Health of the Nation's’ targets for aspects of young women's health, through extended attendance at two youth clubs, supplemented by ‘shadowing’ informants at school. Both studies also used interviews, diaries and other data sources. Driven by the researchers' desire to ‘give a voice’ to their informants, this paper reviews power relationships in the production of knowledge; issues about self-presentation; securing access to and winning the trust of the young women; and their resolution of some of the ethical dilemmas which confronted the researchers in the course of their fieldwork.     

Why privacy keeps dying: the trouble with talk about the end of privacy

It is a curious fact how much talk about privacy is about the end of privacy. We term this ‘privacy endism,’ locating the phenomenon within a broader category of endist thought. We then analyze 101 newspaper articles between 1990 and 2012 that declare the end of privacy. Three findings follow. First, claims about the end of privacy point to an unusually broad range of technological and institutional causes. Privacy has been pronounced defunct for decades, but there has never been a near consensus about its causes. Second, unlike other endist talk (the end of art or history, etc.), privacy endism appears ongoing and not period specific. Finally, our explanation of the persistence and idiosyncrasy of claims to the end of privacy focuses on Warren and Brandeis’s 1890 negative conception of privacy as ‘the right to be let alone’: namely, modern privacy talk has always been endist because the right to privacy was born out of the conditions for its violation, not its realization. The conclusion comments on implications of that basic proposition.     

A House Divided: How Nonprofits Experience Union Drives

Drawing from forty in‐depth interviews as well as personal experiences, the researchers identify the areas for argument in unionization drives among nonprofit organizations. The topic is placed in the context of the nonprofit sector's ongoing discussion of its relationship with, and distinction from, the government and business sectors.     

Adult children of parents with mental illness: navigating stigma

The experiences of children who live with parental mental illness are becoming increasingly recognized. However, there remains a limited body of knowledge in relation to an individual's longer term experiences. This study sought adult children's experiences of childhood parental mental illness. It generated reflections of 13 adult children who had lived with parents with mental illness during their childhood. The narrative design of the study facilitated a voice for participants. The paper presents one main theme of the findings. The findings offer a unique insight into childhood awareness of social stigmas and children's behavioural changes to avoid disclosure of parental mental illness. Participants noted that they were aware of social stigmas associated with mental illness during their childhood. This contributed to their fear of disclosure to others that fuelled a culture of familial secrecy, reinforcing the children's own sense of difference. Further work is required to enhance community understanding about the familial journeys of parental mental illness and the impact of negative‐natured stigmas.     

Protective Measures,Personal Experience,and the Affective Psychology of Time

We examined the role of time and affect in intentions to purchase a risk‐protective measure (Studies 1 and 2) and explored participant abilities to factor time into the likelihood judgments that presumably underlie such intentions (Study 3). Participants worried more about losing their possessions and were more likely to purchase a protective measure given a longer term lease than a short‐term lease, but only if their belongings were described in affect‐poor terms. If described instead as being particularly special and affect‐rich, participants neglected time and were about equally likely to purchase a risk‐protective measure for shorter and longer term leases. However, and consistent with prior literature, the cognitive mechanism underlying this time‐neglect‐with‐affect‐richness effect seemed to be the greater use of the affect heuristic in the shorter term than the longer term. Study 2 results demonstrated that prior experience with having been burglarized amplified the interactive effect of time and affect. Greater deliberation did not attenuate this effect as hypothesized whether deliberation was measured through numeracy or manipulated through instructions. The results of Study 3 indicated that few participants are able to calculate correctly the risk numbers necessary to take time into account. Two possible solutions to encourage more purchases of protective measures in the long term are discussed.     

Risk perception and the economic crisis: a longitudinal study of the trajectory of perceived risk

We conducted a longitudinal survey of public response to the economic crisis to understand the trajectory of risk perception amidst an ongoing crisis. A nation-wide panel responded to seven surveys beginning in late September 2008 at the peak of the crisis and concluded in October 2009. At least 600 respondents participated in each survey, with 413 completing all seven surveys. Our online survey focused on perceptions of risk (savings, investments, retirement, job), negative emotions toward the financial crisis (sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, worry, stress), confidence in national leaders to manage the crisis (President Obama, Congress, Treasury Secretary, business leaders), and belief in one's ability to realize personal objectives despite the crisis. We employed latent growth curve modeling to analyze change in risk perception throughout the crisis. Our results suggest that, in general, people's perceptions of risk appear to decrease most rapidly during the initial phase of a crisis and then begin to level off. Negative emotion about the crisis was the most predictive of increased risk perception, supporting the notion of risk as feelings. Belief in one's ability to realize personal objectives was also predictive. Confidence in national leaders, however, was not predictive of perceived risk. Finally, our results demonstrate that groups may experience a crisis differently depending on a combination of personal characteristics such as gender, income, numeracy, and political attitude. Risk management and communication should work in sync with these mechanisms and differences across groups.     

Can Adequate Child Support Be Legislated? Responses to Guidelines and Enforcement

This article explores the relationship between noncustodial parents' willingness to pay child support, state child support guidelines and enforcement efforts, and child support awards and subsequent compliance. Our game theoretic model, which distinguishes cases of asymmetric information from cases of symmetric information, demonstrates that guidelines and increased enforcement can increase payments when awards are court-ordered but may not increase payments and could even reduce child expenditures when some payment would otherwise have occurred voluntarily. Our analyses of awards to divorced or separated mothers from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are consistent with the model.     

An emotion-based model of risk perception and stigma susceptibility: cognitive appraisals of emotion, affective reactivity, worldviews, and risk perceptions in the generation of technological stigma.

A study (N=198) was conducted to examine hypotheses derived from an emotion-based model of stigma responses to radiation sources. A model of stigma susceptibility is proposed in which affective reactions and cognitive worldviews activate predispositions to appraise and experience events in systematic ways that result in the generation of negative emotion, risk perceptions, and stigma responses. Results of structural equation modeling supported the hypotheses. Radiation sources that scored higher on a measure of stigma were included in the analyses (i.e., nuclear power plants, radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, radiation from nuclear weapons testing). Individual differences in negative reactivity and worldviews were associated with the strength of emotional appraisals that were associated, in turn, with negative emotion toward stigmatized radiation sources. As hypothesized, the model fit better with perceived risk as a function of negative emotion rather than vice versa. Finally, a measure of stigma was associated with negative emotion and, to a lesser extent, with risk perceptions. Risk communication about stigmatized objects may benefit from a more complete understanding of how affective and emotional reactions are constructed and the routes through which they affect responses and behaviors.