Three Formulations of Cognitive Skepticism: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrīharṣa

This paper provides a study of the three most famous skeptical thinkers of classical India, examining both their commonalities and unique differences. Adepts of the controversial debate methodology called vitaṇḍā, “negative debate,” these thinkers manage to challenge the very possibility of knowledge, while espousing (at least nominal) allegiance to distinct schools of thought. They also pass negative judgement on the possibility of certainty while appealing to rational persuasion. This paper explores these paradoxes and possible contradictions, with a culminating reflection of the role of the “two truths,” ultimate vs. everyday perspectives.

Doctors and Teachers

This chapter examines the way the models of the doctor and the teacher can be combined, where the leader as doctor makes their remedies more palatable to their followers by rational persuasion. The first part describes this combined model in Plato’s last work, the Laws, where the legislator is compared to a doctor who listens to his patients and then educates them about the nature and origin of their disease. Combining the two models anticipates our notion of ‘informed consent’: if the patient/follower is addressed rationally, they will be more inclined to take the remedy. The second part uses two case studies from previous chapters: Roy Vagelos, who appeared as an example of the corporate doctor, can also been seen as a teacher; and Indra Nooyi, who educated her stakeholders at Pepsi and can be seen as a corporate doctor, trying to ween the company off short-term thinking.

An Analysis of the Dynamics of the Legitimation Processes of Innovations in Open Source Software:

Within the Open Source Software (OSS) literature, there is a lack of studies addressing the legitimation processes of innovations that are born in OSS. This study sets out to analyze the legitimation processes of innovations within the deliberations of the Drupal project. The data set constitutes 52 rational deliberation cases discussing innovations that were proposed by members of the community. Habermas’s Ideal Speech Situations (ISS) is used as the framework to view Drupal’s rational deliberations from; in fact within the 52 cases that are examined in this thesis, there were no violations to the guidelines of the ISS in the deliberations. The Communicative Action Theory, Influence Tactics theory and the theory of Validity Claims are aspects of the framework that is used to code and analyze the conversations. These aspects allow for an effective conceptualization of the dynamics of the Drupal deliberations. This thesis was able to find that legitimation processes of innovations in open source software were influenced by the type, complexity and implications of the innovations on the rest of the community. Also, bug fixes, complex innovations and innovations that have implications on the rest of the software will result in a long (in terms of number of comments) legitimation process. Also, it is empirically backed in this study that in open deliberations that aim at achieving mutual understanding towards a common goal, the communicative action type and the rational persuasion influence tactic are the most common methods for innovators to interact with the community.

An Analysis of the Dynamics of the Legitimation Processes of Innovations in Open Source Software:

Within the Open Source Software (OSS) literature, there is a lack of studies addressing the legitimation processes of innovations that are born in OSS. This study sets out to analyze the legitimation processes of innovations within the deliberations of the Drupal project. The data set constitutes 52 rational deliberation cases discussing innovations that were proposed by members of the community. Habermas’s Ideal Speech Situations (ISS) is used as the framework to view Drupal’s rational deliberations from; in fact within the 52 cases that are examined in this thesis, there were no violations to the guidelines of the ISS in the deliberations. The Communicative Action Theory, Influence Tactics theory and the theory of Validity Claims are aspects of the framework that is used to code and analyze the conversations. These aspects allow for an effective conceptualization of the dynamics of the Drupal deliberations. This thesis was able to find that legitimation processes of innovations in open source software were influenced by the type, complexity and implications of the innovations on the rest of the community. Also, bug fixes, complex innovations and innovations that have implications on the rest of the software will result in a long (in terms of number of comments) legitimation process. Also, it is empirically backed in this study that in open deliberations that aim at achieving mutual understanding towards a common goal, the communicative action type and the rational persuasion influence tactic are the most common methods for innovators to interact with the community.

KOMUNIKASI PERSUASIF DALAM MEMPERTAHANKAN LOYALITAS RELAWAN PADA KOMUNITAS SOSIAL

Abstrak Komunikasi persuasif merupakan bagian yang berperan penting dalam jalannya sebuah komunitas. Komunitas tidak akan bertahan jika anggota didalamnya tidak mempertahankan loyalitas yang menjadi bentuk kontribusi anggota kepada komunitas. Untuk mempertahankan loyalitas anggota komunitas, dibutuhkan upaya dalam melibatkan hubungan antara berbagai unsur komunikasi persuasif. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membahas mengenai komunikasi persuasif dalam mempertahankan relawan komunitas sosial Sebung Bandung. Komunitas yang sudah berjalan selama 3 tahun ini, memiliki metode komunikasi persuasif dalam upaya mempertahankan relawan, yang secara rutin menggerakan aksi berbagi sebungkus nasi kepada tuna wisma dan kaum duafa. Lima teknik dalam metode komunikasi persuasif yang dilakukan pengurus Sebung Bandung terhadap relawannya yaitu rational persuasion, consultation tactics, ingratiation tactics, personal appeals tactics, dan exchange tactics. Penelitian ini menerapkan teknik pengumpulan data dengan observasi partisipatif, wawancara semi terstruktur, dan dokumentasi. Wawancara dilakukan dengan tujuh narasumber yaitu satu informan kunci, lima informan utama, dan satu informan ahli. Hasil penelitian menunjukan kelima teknik komunikasi persuasif diterapkan kepada seluruh rangkaian kegiatan mingguan Sebung yaitu briefing, turun ke jalan, sharing session, dan acara bebas, yang membentuk sense of community pada relawan komunitas, sehingga timbul keinginan untuk berpartisipasi dalam setiap kegiatan Sebung Bandung. Pada akhirnya terbentuklah loyalitas relawan yang ditunjukan oleh keinginan relawan untuk bertahan dalam komunitas Sebung Bandung.Kata-kata kunci: Komunikasi; Komunitas; Loyalitas; Persuasif; Relawan Abstract Persuasive communication is a part that plays an important role in the course of a community. The community will not survive if the members do not maintain loyalty which is a form of member contribution to the community. To maintain the loyalty of community members, efforts are needed in engaging relationships among various elements of persuasive communication. This study aims to discuss persuasive communication in maintaining social community volunteers in Sebung Bandung. The community, which has been running for 3 years, has persuasive communication methods in its efforts to retain volunteers; it routinely mobilizes the sharing of a packet of rice to the homeless and the poor. The five techniques in the persuasive communication methods carried out by Sebung Bandung's management of volunteers are rational persuasion, consultation tactics, ingratiation tactics, personal appeals tactics, and exchange tactics. This study applies data collection techniques namely participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentation. Interviews were conducted with seven sources, namely one key informant, five key informants, and one expert informant. The results showed that the five persuasive communication techniques were applied to the entire series of Sebung's weekly activities, namely briefings, going to the streets, sharing sessions, and free events, which formed a sense of community in community volunteers, thus arising a desire to participate in every Sebung Bandung activity. In the end, volunteer loyalty was formed, which was shown by volunteers' desire to stay in the Sebung Bandung community.Keywords: Communication; Community; Loyalty; Persuasive; Volunteer

Tactics of Influence and Deinfluentization, Personality and the Personal Sense of Power Among Polish Managers

Power in organizations creates interpersonal settings and lays the ground for designating individual roles and positions of superiors and subordinates. In such a context, influence tactics are situation-specific behaviors used to change the behavior of others and achieve organizational goals. The notion that power and influence can be based on personal or positional variables was used to design the framework of the present studies intended to describe how trait- and state-like variables are related to influence tactics and deinfluentization. The subjects were 250 Polish managers. Study 1 (n = 250) was undertaken to collect data about the influence tactics of Polish managers to fill the void in information in the field of social psychology in organizations. In Study 2 (n = 104) we correlated influence tactics with the personal sense of power. The results proved that the perception of having the ability to exert power over others was positively related to rational persuasion, apprising, and pressure. In Study 3 (n = 69) we investigated the relationships of influence tactics and deinfluentization with the Big Five and directiveness. The results showed that Neuroticism was positively correlated with pressure, legitimating, and coalition, but negatively with rational persuasion and consultation. Extraversion was positively correlated with rational persuasion, so was Conscientiousness. Agreeableness was negatively related to coalition. Directiveness was in a positive relation with pressure but correlated negatively with personal appeals. Deinfluentization positively correlated with Agreeableness and negatively with directiveness.

A VALORAÇÃO DA PROVA ORAL NO PROCESSO PENAL BRASILEIRO

The present work had as main objective the accomplishment of a jurisprudential survey regarding the analysis that has been carried out by the Courts when evaluating the oral evidence in the scope of the domestic criminal process. Initially, brief considerations were made regarding the system of evidential valuation adopted mostly in Brazil -rational persuasion -in order to enter objectively in the assessment of oral evidence by national jurisprudence. In this context, several judgments of the Supreme Federal Court, Superior Court of Justice and several State Courts were analyzed, in which precedents were established regarding the valuation of the victim's word, the testimony of police witnesses and informants, as well as the statements of the defendant, whether he is a collaborator or not.Data collection was performed based on accessible sources, such as: printed documents, scientific articles, books and judges, always considering the need for data collection from various sources. The data were analyzed using the hypothetical-deductive method, collected information analyzed and compared in a dialectical way. The results achieved with the research with concrete as to the contribution to the debate that permeates the theme, concluding by the need to build a jurisprudential framework that allows the valuation of the evidence in order to respect the principles of the presumption of innocence and the prohibition of protection deficient.

‘If Men Were Angels, No Government Would Be Necessary’: The Intuitive Theory of Social Motivation and Preference for Authoritarian Leaders

We postulate that at least two distinct cognitive systems affect political judgements. The first system, moral cognition, delivers intuitions about what societal outcomes would be ideal. The second system, which we dub the intuitive theory of social motivation, makes predictions about how other citizens will behave in practice, and hence feeds into opinions on how their conduct should be regulated. Both systems are situation sensitive. We illustrate this thesis through a study of intuitions about redistribution and governance. We present four experiments in which 750 U.K. adults prescribed ideal levels of redistribution for hypothetical societies under different circumstances, and predicted what level of redistribution those societies would actually be able to achieve. Participants judged that the level of redistribution societies would achieve was lower than the ideal. The gulf was particularly large for societies facing war or scarcity, because a subset of people was predicted to respond selfishly to these threats. Strong, authoritarian leaders were seen as more desirable in these circumstances. Specifically, this was because citizens facing these threats were predicted to become less amenable to rational persuasion and their inherent moral sense, and more amenable to control through harsh punishment, which is what strong leaders can deliver. We complement our experimental results with an analysis of World Values Survey data from 52 countries, showing that authoritarian governance preferences are positively associated with the perceived threat of war, and negatively associated with per capita GDP, a proxy for the abundance of resources.

Controlling Influences

Drawing on the rationalist account of autonomy outlined in the previous chapter, this chapter provides a framework for identifying different forms of influence on individual decision-making. The author explains how his theory allows for a broader understanding of rational persuasion than that which is suggested by the standard account, and shows how different forms of persuasion can be compatible with autonomous decision-making. Such persuasion can be contrasted with psychological manipulation, which serves to directly alter an individual’s motivational states in a manner that bypasses the cognitive element of the target’s decisional autonomy. Having identified the various forms that psychological manipulation can take, the author argues that global forms of manipulation, which involve wholesale changes to an individual’s psychological economy, raise concerns about identity and responsibility but not autonomy. Finally, he outlines the implications of his theory for informational manipulation and deception.