Beyond Skinner

Worldview ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-48
Author(s):  
Hugo Adam Bedau
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Second Look ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Ushered in with hosannahs of critical praise (“If you plan to read only one book this year, this is probably the one you should choose”—New York Times), B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity has made the bestseller lists for six months. Now that “the growing international storm” (Newsweek) over the book has subsided, a second look is in order. What, precisely, did he say? How persuasive is the behaviorism he trumpets? How does his argument stand up scientifically and philosophically?Skinner proposes to take us “beyond” freedom and dignity because, in his view, people have no freedom, and human dignity is an illusion. These ideals always were mythic, despite their honored place in the literature of our civilization. The “literature of freedom and dignity,” as Skinner describes it with barely concealed contempt, fosters a wholly false doctrine of the nature of man and nurtures our fear of the developing “science and technology of human behavior” because it reduces our opportunities for self-praise and self-esteem. These opportunities shrink as it becomes increasingly implausible to appeal to mysterious powers of the mind in order to explain heroic, clever or original conduct.

scholarly journals Unspeakable by C. Pignat

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Kung
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Quebec City ◽  
Young Adult Novel ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Pignat, Caroline. Unspeakable. Toronto: Razorbill, 2014. Print. Ellie Ryan is an eighteen-year-old girl who has suffered an insurmountable number of personal tragedies that have taught her the importance of perseverance. After her mother’s death, she finds herself unwanted by her father and is forced to move in with her aunt Geraldine. Due to Ellie’s inability to cope with her circumstances, her aunt sends her aboard the Empress of Ireland where she learns to embrace her new position as a stewardess with the help of her most trusted friend, Meg.On the second crossing of the Empress, Ellie meets Jim, a lonely fire stoker who has experienced his share of grief and tragedy, something Ellie is all too familiar with. After many chance encounters late at night along the ship's rail, she finds Jim writing in a journal. He is a quiet and secretive young man who doesn’t share much of his life, which intrigues and compels her to discover more about him. When the ship docks at Quebec City, they explore the city together, a memorable experience for her. However, tragedy strikes on their next voyage when the ship collides into another ship. Ellie appears to be the one of the few remaining crew members to survive the disaster and has no word of Jim’s whereabouts; it seems unlikely that Jim would have survived the frigid ocean. Wyatt Steele, a journalist with The New York Times, later asks Ellie for her story. She refuses at first, but unwittingly gives into him when he appears one day with Jim’s journal. Wyatt represents the last remaining hope she has to learn more about the man she had fallen in love with and to possibly discover what happened to him. In exchange for her story, he agrees to provide Jim’s journal as payment, one page at a time.               This young adult novel follows Ellie’s journey aboard the Empress of Ireland in 1914 and offers a realistic context for Canada’s worst maritime disaster. It explores themes of depression from the loss of family and friends, survivor’s guilt, and redemption. The story weaves an intricate plot that alternates the timeline before and after the ship’s sinking, in order for the reader to actively live through Ellie’s recollections in the present. Overall, the author intricately writes a romantic story in the backdrop of a historical Canadian event that is well suited to young adult audiences.Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Janice KungJanice Kung is an Academic Library Intern at the University of Alberta’s John W. Scott Health Sciences Library. She obtained her undergraduate degree in commerce and completed her MLIS in 2013. She believes that the best thing to beat the winter blues is to cuddle up on a couch and lose oneself in a good book.

scholarly journals One-for-One Companies: Helpful or Harmful?

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Alden Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The People ◽  
Preliminary Research ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The One ◽  
Beneficiary Country ◽  
The Impact

One-for-one companies, such as TOMS and Warby Parker, have become a common occurrence in the marketplace. These companies promise to donate a good or service for every product purchased. To date, millions of products have been donated worldwide. This paper seeks to analyze the positive and negative impacts of the one-for-one model on both the one-for-one company and the people receiving product donations. A specific focus of the paper is to determine whether the one-for-one model is helpful or harmful to companies and beneficiaries. To gather information, I contacted sixteen one-for-one companies and asked for reports, gathered preliminary research completed by news outlets such as Forbes and the New York Times, and analyzed academic research. The study finds that the one-for-one model can be both helpful and harmful, depending on the conditions in which the giving is done. For example, if there is an immediate need for a good that cannot be produced in the beneficiary country, then a donation would be beneficial. However, if a donation such as shoes ultimately takes away jobs and reduces the market in the beneficiary country, then it causes more harm and long-term damage than it prevents. As this model becomes more common, it is important that consumers know the impact of their purchases on the beneficiaries and the companies know the benefits and repercussions of their actions.

scholarly journals Krugman vs Garicano: Individual and Cultural Differences in the Rhetoric of two Economic Op-ed Writers

2016 ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
María Ángeles Orts Llopis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Western World ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
The One

The present paper attempts to account for the rhetorical traits of two prestigious economists, who are also authors of economic op-eds: Paul Krugman and Luis Garicano, who write for a prestigious American newspaper, the New York Times, and for the renowned Spanish newspaper, El País, respectively. Through a contrastive study of a roughly 12-thousand-word corpus of either author, this analysis has attempted, on the one hand, to endeavor a qualitative analysis scrutinizing the formal, or lexical-semantic aspects, of their prose in terms of technical words, clichés and coinages, as well as the patterns of conceptualization of the metaphors they use to describe the economic crisis that is sweeping the Western world at large. The second part of the analysis has concentrated upon the interpersonality of the texts, at the pragmatic layer of the op-ed genre, thus covering the extra-linguistic context of the texts which have been scrutinized under the umbrella of metadiscourse. These two different, but complementary, levels of analysis have led to the conclusion that the authors’ styles depict two individual ways in which op-eds are written in the economic world, but that their styles also refl ect cultural and linguistic differences in the way columns are viewed in the English and Spanish languages.

The Rise and Fall of Labor Reporting

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Christopher Martin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The One

Chapter 2 discusses the historical rise and decline of the labor journalism at U.S. newspapers, the one place where the topic of work was regularly covered. At one point in the twentieth century, the New York Times alone employed up to five labor reporters at a time. Although America has an even larger workforce today, the Times has just one labor reporter, and nationally there are only just a handful of labor reporters. This contributes to the invisibility of America’s working class.

Postmodernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The term ‘postmodernism’ appears in a range of contexts, from academic essays to clothing advertisements in the New York Times. Its meaning differs with context to such an extent that it seems to function like Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifier’(Derrida 1982: 290): not so much to express a value as to hold open a space for that which exceeds expression. This broad capacity of the term ‘postmodernism’ testifies to the scope of the cultural changes it attempts to compass. Across a wide range of cultural activity there has been a sustained and multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture since at least the fifteenth century and in some cases since the fifth century bc: assumptions about structure and identity, about transcendence and particularity, about the nature of time and space. From physics to philosophy, from politics to art, the description of the world has changed in ways that upset some basic beliefs of modernity. For example, phenomenology seeks to collapse the dualistic distinction between subject and object; relativity physics shifts descriptive emphasis from reality to measurement; the arts move away from realism; and consensus politics confronts totalitarianism and genocide. These and related cultural events belong to seismic changes in the way we register the world and communicate with each other. To grasp what is at stake in postmodernism it is necessary to think historically and broadly, in the kind of complex terms that inevitably involve multidisciplinary effort. This multilingual impetus, this bringing together of methods and ideas long segregated both in academic disciplines and in practical life, particularly characterizes postmodernism and largely accounts for such resistance as it generates. Although diverse and eclectic, postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions. First, the assumption that there is no common denominator – in ‘nature’ or ‘truth’ or ‘God’ or ‘the future’ – that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the possibility of neutral or objective thought. Second, the assumption that all human systems operate like language, being self-reflexive rather than referential systems – systems of differential function which are powerful but finite, and which construct and maintain meaning and value.

Ethical Pitfalls in the Digital Age

2017 ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tendai Chari
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Ethical Practices ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Unethical Practices ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One

Using the case study approach, this chapter examines ethical shortfalls confronting the media in the Internet era. The one case is drawn from a story published in The New York Times in 2015, while the other is a story published in a Zimbabwean newspaper, the Daily News. The objective was to broaden knowledge on how the Internet is impacting ethical practices in local and global political environments. The chapter argues that the Internet's architecture predisposes journalists to a host of unethical practices that were uncommon to the legacy media environment. Its immediacy exerts pressure on journalists to publish stories without adequate verification out of the fear of being “scooped” by competitors and citizen journalists who are less constrained to adhere to old-age journalistic ethics such as factual reporting and verification.

The Pentagon Papers Framework, Fifty Years Later

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Allison Aviki ◽  
Jonathan Cedarbaum ◽  
Rebecca Lee ◽  
Jessica Lutkenhaus ◽  
Seth P. Waxman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
National Security ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
New York Times ◽  
National Defense ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One

In New York Times Co. v. United States,1 the Supreme Court confronted a problem that is inherent in a democratic society that values freedom of expression and, in particular, the role of the press in challenging the truthfulness of claims by the government, especially in the realm of national security. On the one hand, as Justice Potter Stewart wrote in his concurring opinion, “it is elementary” that “the maintenance of an effective national defense require[s] both confidentiality and secrecy.”...

When Celebrity and Political Journalism Collide: Reporting Standards, Entertainment, and the Conundrum of Covering Donald Trump’s 2016 Campaign

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-143
Author(s):  
Amber E. Boydstun ◽  
Regina G. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Political Journalism ◽  
The Press ◽  
Celebrity Politics ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Entertainment Value

While the rise of celebrities-turned-politicians has been well documented and theorized, how their bids for office are treated by the establishment press has been less closely examined. Research on celebrity politics on the one hand, and on journalism standards on the other, have rarely been brought into conversation with one another. Here, we draw from both literatures to explore how the press covered Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Prior research on political journalism would likely have predicted that Trump, with his lack of conventional political experience and a career in reality TV, would have been treated to derisive, dismissive press coverage, which we refer to as “clown” coverage. But Trump’s fame and wealth, and the high entertainment value of his campaign, would also lead the media to cover him heavily. We argue that the collision of entertainment-infused politics with traditional journalism practices created a profound dilemma for the press’s ability to cover the campaign coherently, and that the press responded to this dilemma by giving Trump as much clown-like coverage as serious coverage, throughout not just the primary but also the general election. We support our argument through qualitative evidence from interviews with journalists and other political insiders, and quantitative evidence from a content analysis of New York Times and Washington Post coverage of Trump at key points throughout the campaign.

Culture, Revolution, and the Times of History: Mao and 20th-Century China

2006 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 693-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Karl
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Era ◽  
The Times ◽  
The One

The recent spate of English-language exposés of Mao Zedong, most prominently that written by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, seems to announce a culmination of the tendency towards the temporal-spatial conflation of 20th-century Chinese and global history. This sense was only confirmed when the New York Times reported in late January that George W. Bush's most recent bedtime reading is Mao: The Unknown Story, or when, last month, according to a column in the British paper The Guardian, “the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the ‘crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,’ linking them with Nazism…” The conflation, then, is of the long history of the Chinese revolution with the Cultural Revolution, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, of Mao Zedong with every one of the most despicable of the 20th century's many tyrants and despots. In these conflations, general 20th-century evil has been reduced to a complicit right-wing/left-wing madness, while China's 20th century has been reduced to the ten years during which this supposed principle of madness operated as a revolutionary tyranny in its teleologically ordained fashion. In this way are the dreams of some China ideologues realized: China becomes one central node through which the trends of the 20th century as a global era are concentrated, channelled and magnified. China isglobal history, by becoming a particular universalized analytic principle, in the negative sense. That is, universality becomes a conflationary negative principle.

scholarly journals Immersive journalism: the factors of effective functioning

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-55
Author(s):  
O. Kyrylova
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
User Preferences ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Functional Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Object Of Study

The main approaches to the definition of the “immersive journalism” phenomenon is considered and its working definition is derived. This working definition incorporates both traditional and newest approaches to the structure-forming, technological and functional factors of the production of VR-content. There are the levels of immersion into the story are analyzed on the example of video–360 ° scenes (posted on the official YouTube channel of t The New York Times) in this study. The factors influencing the formation of the system of user preferences are studied. The results of vidIQ analysis of five the most popular immersive scenes are compared and presented. It tried to measure the presence in the virtual environment by the of the Witmer-Singer’s method. The study also used the methodology of actor-network theory and the approaches of Maria-Laure Ryan. The object of study are the most popular vidIQ assessment immersive video of “The New York Times” (2015–2017): “Walking New York”, “The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima”, “The Fight for Falluja”, “Seeking Pluto's Frigid Heart” and “The Displaced” as the one of the most resonant immersive publications. In this empirical material, the components of the VR effect are highlighted: presence, involvement, immersion. Each of the components is built up by the functioning of a few factors from the Witmer-Singer model. It’s determined that the components of the VR effect are not equivalent. The basis of the immersive narration is the effect of presence, supported either by immersion in the storu, or by involvement into the environment. The results indicate that it’s quite difficult to consider the whole complex of factors in the production of journalistic materials. In full, they work in making and consuming of not immersive, but VR-content. For the media, the VR technology is not yet a priority, and therefore they prefer to create a presence effect through the possibilities of influencing the algorithm of narrative deployment and the realism presented environment.

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