A review of the literature on corporate governance serves to demonstrate the applicability of many governance solutions to the university setting. Based on a review of university scandals, most of which are recent but some of which took place decades ago, it is possible to categorize them as follows: sex scandals, drugs, cheating, hazing, admissions and diplomas, on-the-job consumption, athletics, and murder. Several examples are provided in the paper, along with their impact on various stakeholders. The paper then discusses a (...) variety of solutions designed to either preempt the activities potentially leading to scandal, to deter them or to punish perpetrators. Some of these involve structural changes, institutional policies and procedures, fines, terminations, and sanctions. The paper emphasizes the proactive safeguards which govern and monitor to make sure that universities do not suffer on the back end and that their reputations do not suffer into the future. (shrink)

Many recent commentators have noticed how Adorno, in his late works, borrows Kant’s definition of enlightenment to define key areas of his own critical practice. These discussions, however, have failed to notice how these late borrowings present an image of Kant’s enlightenment which is diametrically opposed to his previous discussions. By tracing the development of Adorno’s engagement with Kant’s essay, I discover Adorno deliberately sublating Kant’s definition as to enable its incorporation into his own works. Further, the article will examine (...) some problems which appear to arise for Adorno when borrowing Kant’s definition of enlightenment in his late works, which coalesce around the topics of negativism and the prospects for societal change. (shrink)

There are clear associations between the overall quantity of input children are exposed to and their vocabulary acquisition. However, by uncovering specific features of the input that matter, we can better understand the mechanisms involved in vocabulary learning. We examine whether exposure to wh-questions, a challenging quality of the communicative input, is associated with toddlers' vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills in a sample of low-income, African-American fathers and their 24-month-old children. Dyads were videotaped in free play sessions at home. (...) Videotapes were transcribed and reliably coded for sheer quantity of fathers' input as well as the number of wh-questions fathers produce. Children's productive vocabulary was measured at 24 months using the McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory MCDI, and children's verbal reasoning skills were measured 1 year later using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Results indicate that the overall quantity of father talk did not relate to children's vocabulary or reasoning skills. However, fathers' use of wh-questions related to both vocabulary and reasoning outcomes. Children's responses to wh-questions were more frequent and more syntactically complex, measured using the mean length of utterance, than their responses to other questions. Thus, posing wh-questions to 2-year-olds is a challenging type of input, which elicits a verbal response from the child that likely helps build vocabulary and foster verbal reasoning abilities. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning_ offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.

G. P. Meredith; XIII—Words as Instruments, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 241–260, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

This book charts and challenges the bruising impact of post-Saussurean thought on the categories of experience and self-presence. It attempts a reappropriation of the category of lived experience in dialogue with poststructuralist thinking. Following the insight that mediated subjectivity need not mean alienated selfhood, Meredith forwards a postmetaphysical model of the experiential based on the interpenetration of poststructuralist thinking and hermeneutic phenomenology. Since poststructuralist approaches in feminist theory have often placed women's lived experiences "under erasure," Meredith uses this (...) hermeneutic/deconstructive model to attempt a rehabilitation of the singular "flesh and blood" female existent. (shrink)

There is considerable debate amongst philosophers as to the basic philosophical problem Wittgenstein is attempting to solve in _Philosophical Investigations_. In this bold and original work, Meredith Williams argues that it is the problem of "normative similarity". In _Blind Obedience_ Williams demonstrates how Wittgenstein criticizes traditional, representationalist theories of language by employing the ‘master/novice’ distinction of the learner, arguing that this distinction is often overlooked but fundamental to understanding philosophical problems about mind and language. The book not only provides (...) revealing discussions of Wittgenstein’s corpus but also intricate analyses of the work of Brandom, Dummett, Frege, Sellars, Davidson, Cavell and others. These are usefully compared in a bid to better situate Wittgenstein’s non-intellectualist, non-theoretical approach and to highlight is unique features. (shrink)

Research within psychology and other disciplines has shown that exposure to natural environments holds extensive physiological and psychological benefits. Adding to the health and cognitive benefits of natural environments, evidence suggests that exposure to nature also promotes healthy human decision-making. Unhealthy decision-making (e.g., smoking, non-medical prescription opioid misuse) and disorders associated with lack of impulse control [e.g., tobacco use, opioid use disorder (OUD)], contribute to millions of preventable deaths annually (i.e., 6 million people die each year of tobacco-related illness worldwide, (...) deaths from opioids from 2002 to 2017 have more than quadrupled in the United States alone). Impulsive and unhealthy decision-making also contributes to many pressing environmental issues such as climate change. We recently demonstrated a causal link between visual exposure to nature (e.g., forests) and improved self-control (i.e., decreased impulsivity) in a laboratory setting, as well as the extent to which nearby nature and green space exposure improves self-control and health decisions in daily life outside of the experimental laboratory. Determining the benefits of nearby nature for self-controlled decision-making holds theoretical and applied implications for the design of our surrounding environments. In this article, we synergize the overarching results of recent research endeavors in three domains including the effects of nature exposure on (1) general health-related decision-making, (2) health and decision-making relevant for application to addiction related processes (e.g., OUD), and (3) environmentally relevant decision-making. We also discuss key future directions and conclusions. (shrink)

Fifteenth century Scotland relied upon matrimonial diplomacy to create ties with mainland Europe and further solidify their alliances with the French and Burgundian courts. Studies of matrimonial diplomacy often solely focus on the political lead-up to the marital alliances, rather on the fates of the individual women who were thrust into foreign courts to sink or swim. Focusing on six key examples of Scottish royal women of the fifteenth century in comparison with the feminine ideals of Christine de Pizan’s The (...) Treasure of the City of the Ladies and the popular memory of St. Margaret, this paper attempts to address how the Scottish royal women of the fifteenth century worked within societal expectations to solidify their powerbase and create a role for themselves at court. (shrink)

This book develops and empirically tests a social theory of political participation. It overturns prior understandings of why some people vote more often than others. The book shows that the standard demographic variables are not proxies for variation in the individual costs and benefits of participation, but for systematic variation in the patterns of social ties between potential voters. Potential voters who move in larger social circles, particularly those including politicians and other mobilizing actors, have more access to the flurry (...) of electoral activity prodding citizens to vote and increasing political discussion. Treating voting as a socially defined practice instead of as an individual choice over personal payoffs, a social theory of participation is derived from a mathematical model with behavioral foundations that is empirically calibrated and tested using multiple methods and data sources. (shrink)

Doig, Meredith The promise from new Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, to make Victoria the 'education state' is welcome and timely.

The problem of how we can be both animals living in a causal world and agents acting through norms, principles, and rules in that same world persists. Many have understood this as a clash between science and our ordinary ways of talking. For many, this clash has been resolved in favour of the scientific image, either by reducing the intentional and normative to the causal laws of behaviourism or by eliminating our 'folk psychology' altogether in favour of a syntactic or (...) computational model of mind. Drawing on Wittgenstein, I argue that this mislocates the problem and so misunderstands what is required for its resolution. Our sophisticated language games are grounded in a bedrock of normative similarity judgments. The role these play in our language games can be seen most clearly in the initiate learning situation, that of the child just learning language or the pupil receiving first instruction in arithmetic. It is here that we can look for an accommodation of causality and normativity by understanding the relation between the novice and the master of the practice. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart (...) would act more pig-like but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the “minimalist” position (Strevens,2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor-to-recipient transfers indicated that Indians essentialized more types of transfers than Americans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 120-121.

Introduction. The digital : an aesthetic ontology -- From analog pictures to digital notations -- Points, divisions, and pixels : from modern to contemporary digitality -- Vasarely, Watz, and the new abstraction : from op art to generative art -- Spectral analogies : From wall drawing to the art of programming -- Conclusion. Amalgamations : from digital painting to information visualization.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s “sovereign individual,” which appears in the second treatise of his 1887 On the Genealogy of Morality. I argue that Nietzsche’s presentation of that figure’s sovereignty is much more ambiguous than has hitherto been recognized. In contrast to scholars who argue that he is either completely free from moral conscience or entirely subservient to it, I argue that he is neither completely autonomous nor heteronomous. He surpasses the need for the enforcement of custom (...) only by internalizing it, i. e. by developing a conscience. This positions him as a crucial link in Nietzsche’s understanding of the human being’s dependence on morality. Attending to the sovereign individual’s ambiguities reveals Nietzsche’s skepticism about the possibility of autonomy within the political community. (shrink)