Test

In this chapter, the authors continue with their focus on testing. They use examples from the humanities to search for impact and personal significance in Google searches. They begin elucidating the process through a Bertrand Russell logic game concerning the present king of France and whether he has hair or not. This example is used to demonstrate how sophisticated logical principles can be evaluated by using Google as a helper. Next, they highlight an example from philosophy by interrogating Google results questioning the sanity of a major scholar. Finally, the last example asks students to look for impact and personal connection by considering the reasons Eve may have eaten the forbidden fruit.

Author(s):  
James McElvenny

This book is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauri Karttunen

When the first generation of generative linguists discovered presuppositions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the initial set of examples was quite small. Aspectual verbs like stop were discussed already by Greek philosophers, proper names, Kepler, and definite descriptions, the present king of France, go back to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell by the turn of the century. Just in the span of a few years my generation of semanticists assembled a veritable zoo of ‘presupposition triggers’ under the assumption that they were all of the same species. Generations of students have learned about presuppositions from Stephen Levinson’s 1983 book on Pragmatics that contains a list of 13 types of presupposition triggers, an excerpt of an even longer unpublished list attributed to a certain Lauri Karttunen. My task in this presentation is to come clean and show why the items on Levinson’s list should not have been lumped together. In retrospect it is strange that the early writings about presupposition by linguists and even by philosophers like Robert Stalnaker or Scott Soames do not make any reference to the rich palette of semantic relations they could have learned from Frege and later from Paul Grice. If we had known Frege’s concepts of Andeutung – Grice’s conventional implicature – and Nebengedanke, it would have been easy to see that there are types of author commitment that are neither entailments nor presuppositions. 


Author(s):  
Leemon B. McHenry

What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Events or actions function linguistically as verbs and adverbs. Philosophers following Aristotle have claimed that events are dependent on substances such as physical objects and persons. But with the advances of modern physics, some philosophers and physicists have argued that events are the basic entities of reality and what we perceive as physical bodies are just very long events spread out in space-time. In other words, everything turns out to be events. This view, no doubt, radically revises our ordinary common sense view of reality, but as our event theorists argue common sense is out of touch with advancing science. In The Event Universe: The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a more adequate basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead’s theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as another key proponent of this theory, W. V. Quine. In this manner, McHenry defends the naturalized and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
M. Alameddine ◽  
K. Imrie ◽  
S. Akers ◽  
S. Verma

We developed and administered two questionnaires to assess the interview experience of both interviewers and applicants during postgraduate medical selection interviews. Using a 5 point likert scale, the questionnaires assessed three areas (1) ability to show/assess communication, interpersonal and problem solving skills; (2) ability to know the other side well and (3) level of comfort with the interview. Interviewers and applicants were asked to provide a global rating for the interview. The questionnaires were administered to both candidates and applicants from 6 departments in 18 in-person and 12 video interviews. 30 applicant and 87 interviewer survey forms were collected and analyzed. T-tests were used to compare the means of the two groups and significance levels were analyzed. Both interviewers and applicants had a higher average global satisfaction for video interviews compared to in person interviews. No difference was indicated in the ability of interviewers to assess the applicants’ skills between the two types of interviews. For both interviewers and applicants, video interviews, compared to in person interview, had a lower average score for connecting personally & establishing rapport and for satisfaction with administrative arrangements. Video interviewed applicants had a 50% probability of getting accepted in a program compared to 22% of in person interviewed candidates. We conclude that video interviews appear to be a valuable alternative to in-person interviews, with some sacrifice in personal connection and rapport. Video interviews result in significant time and cost savings for international applicants and have potential implications for the CaRMS process as well. Sackett KM, Campbell-Heider N, Blyth JB. The evolution and evaluation of videoconferencing technology for graduate nursing education. Comput Inform Nurs. 2004 (Mar-Apr); 22(2):101-6. Shepherd L, Goldstein D, Whitford H, Thewes B, Brummell V, Hicks M. The utility of videoconferencing to provide innovative delivery of psychological treatment for rural cancer patients: results of a pilot study. J Pain Symptom Manage 2006 (Nov); 32(5):453-61. Arena J, Dennis N, Devineni T, Maclean R, Meador K. A pilot study of feasibility and efficacy of telemedicine-delivered psychophysiological treatment for vascular headache. Telemed J E Health 2004 (Winter); 10(4):449-54.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski

In three studies conducted over the course of 2016 US presidential campaign we examined the relationship between radicalism of a political candidate and willingness to engage in actions for that candidate. Drawing on significance quest theory (Kruglanski et al., 2018), we predicted that people would be more willing to make large sacrifices for radical (vs. moderate) candidates because the cause of radical candidates would be more personally important and engagement on behalf it would be more psychologically rewarding. We tested these predictions among supporters of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. Our findings were in line with these predictions, as the more followers perceived their candidates as radical, the more they viewed leaders’ ideas as personally important, gained more personal significance from those ideas, and intended to sacrifice more for the leader.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during the times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 US presidential elections we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one’s candidate is related to hostile vs. benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Jee ◽  
Alsa Khan

BACKGROUND Understanding teens' relationship with technology is a pressing topic in this digital era. There seem to be both benefit and harmful implications that originate from use of technology by teens. Approximately 95% of teenagers have access to a smartphone, and several studies show a positive correlation between screen addiction and trends of Anxiety and Depression. While, at the same time, research shows that two-thirds of teenagers believe that technology is a necessity for connecting and making new friends. OBJECTIVE The aim of this research is to understand teens’ perceptions of their own and others’ relationship with personal technology and what future relationships do teens aspire to have with their technology. This will be fundamental in helping designers, healthcare practitioners and youth counselors inform design in technology accordingly. METHODS This research paper explores teens and technology relationship via three lenses. Lens-1 is teens' perception of their current relationship with their personal technology as users. Lens-2 is teens' perception of others' (parents, siblings or friends) relationship with personal technology as bystanders. Lens-3 is teens’ aspiration of how they wish to relate to their personal technology. We conducted an online survey with 619 teens in the 13-19 years age range. RESULTS We found that teens selected 'Essential,' 'Distractive,' and 'Addictive' most commonly to describe their own and others' relationship with personal technology. Whereas teens selected 'Provides an escape' more to describe their own relationship with technology. In contrast, they selected 'It's just a tool' and 'Creates Barrier' more to describe others' relationship with technology. These trends are consistent across ages and genders. Additionally, we found that 13-15 year-olds, particularly the majority of females in this age range, wish to see their future technology as their 'best friend.' However, 16-17 year-olds’ top choice was 'I don't believe in personal connection with mobile technology,’ and 18-19 year-olds’ top choice was 'My personal assistant.’ CONCLUSIONS Our three lenses approach is holistic as it allowed comparison of how teens perceive their relationship with personal technology as users vs. bystanders and from current vs. aspirational perspectives. This research not just confirms what is already known, but uncovers critical new associations more exclusive to teens' own relationship with technology. This paper presents related design implications to inform personal tech design thinking, including our guideline to shift 'user experience design' process to 'user relationship design.'


Author(s):  
Arie W. Kruglanski ◽  
Jocelyn J. Bélanger ◽  
Rohan Gunaratna

This book identifies the three major determinants of radicalization that progresses into violent extremism, the three Ns of radicalization. The first determinant is the need: Individuals’ universal desire for personal significance. The second determinant is the narrative. Because significance is conferred by members of one’s group, the group’s narrative guides members in their quest for significance. The third determinant is the network: membership of one’s group who validate the narrative and who dispense rewards (respect and veneration) to members who implement it. The quest for significance is activated in one of three major ways: (a) through a loss of significance occasioned by personal failure or affront to one’s social identity (e.g., ethnicity, religion, race), (b) through a threat of significance loss if one failed to respond to a challenge or to defend one’s group values, and/or (c) through an opportunity for a significance gain (e.g., becoming a hero or a martyr) by selflessly defending one’s group values. In groups that see their values (e.g., religion, sovereignty, culture) under threat from some (real or imagined) actor, the narrative often justifies violence against the detractor and portrays it as a supreme road to significance. Especially where violence is contrary to the norms of the mainstream society, validation of the violence–significance link by the local network is particularly important. The present 3N model of radicalization and the varied empirical evidence that supports it are leveraged to interpret prior theories of radicalization and to address major issues in the domains of deradicalization and recidivism.


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