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Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

Kant, Quasi-Realism, and the Autonomy of Aesthetic Judgement

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2001
Robert Hopkins
Aesthetic judgements are autonomous, as many other judgements are not: for the latter, but not the former, it is sometimes justifiable to change one's mind simply because several others share a different opinion. Why is this? One answer is that claims about beauty are not assertions at all, but expressions of aesthetic response. However, to cover more than just some of the explananda, this expressivism needs combining with some analogue of cognitive command, i.e. the idea that disagreements over beuaty can occur, and when they do it is a priori that one side has infringed the norms governing aesthetic discourse. This combination can be achieved by reading Kant's aesthetic theory in expressivist terms. The resulting view is a form of quasi-realism about beauty. The position has its merits, but cannot ultimately explain the phenomena which motivate it. This conclusion generalises to quasi-realism about other matters. [source]

Learning Disabilities in Taiwan: A Case of Cultural Constraints on the Education of Students with Disabilities

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 3 2007
Shih-Jay Tzeng
Learning disabilities (LD) has been recognized as a category of special education in Taiwanese law since 1984, and policies ensure educational services for children and youth who have LD. The official definition and identification criteria established in Taiwan's laws closely correspond with those of the United States, but practice differs, largely influenced by the people's cultural and linguistic background. I discuss these legal and cultural features as well as other matters (e.g., growth and change in professional literature on LD). Compared to economically developed countries such as the United States, the educators in Taiwan implement identification procedures, placement, and services at a lower cost. Contents of implementation are introduced in detail. The prevalence rate of LD has been very low (<1 percent). I examine culture- and/or society-specific reasons for low prevalence, such as Chinese orthography, regular teachers' compliance with referral procedures, the education-first belief of parents, and problems with identification procedures. [source]

Nuclear Deterrence and Animosity in Japan-North Korean Relations: Steps to Coexistence

PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 1 2006
Anthony DiFilippo
The relationship between Japan and North Korea continues to be characterized by a considerable amount of animus and distrust, their geographical proximity notwithstanding. While the "history problem" still creates antagonism in the bilateral relationship, several other matters, such as the North Korean nuclear crisis and the missile and abduction issues, have not made the prospects for rapprochement especially good. Also not helping to better this very strained bilateral relationship is Japan's recent willingness to strengthen its security alliance with the United States and Washington's policy toward North Korea, which Pyongyang sees as uncompromising and hubristic. Of particular concern is that both Japan and North Korea reason that a real or claimed nuclear deterrent force is necessary for the purpose of national security. This article argues that Tokyo and Pyongyang need to implement bold measures that palpably demonstrate their commitment to improving bilateral ties, stressing that trust-building actions are important for them to experience peaceful coexistence. [source]

Minorities and the National Ethos

POLITICS, Issue 2 2009
Amitai Etzioni
This essay focuses on the question of how to curb the tension between the rights of members of minorities and the particularistic values of the national community. The essay first examines a radical multicultural treatment of this issue and shows it to be unattainable and inadvisable. The essay then proposes an alternative treatment, Diversity Within Unity, a societal design that combines the nurturing communities of minorities and of the majority and is more conducive to human flourishing. Diversity Within Unity assumes that all citizens will embrace a core of values while being welcomed to follow their own subcultures on other matters. [source]

Sympathy reconfi gured: Some reflections on sympathy, empathy and the discovery of values

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 3 2004
David M. Black
Two words, sympathy and empathy, are commonly used to describe three distinguishable things. These are: i) an elementary, involuntary capacity which puts us in touch with the emotional state of another; ii) the use of ,trial identification' to discover, consciously or unconsciously, the emotional state of another; iii) the affect of compassion. Because these three usages have not been clearly sorted out, and because the word sympathy has been disparaged, empathy has been overused, and a variety of technical terms (including intersubjectivity, recurrent primary identification, projective identification, alpha function etc.), all of which have important specialised applications, have been used confusingly to describe functions at a much higher level of generality. This paper attempts to sort out the three meanings with reference to the history of the two words, and also to show that the use of clear general terms gives us a more intelligible linguistic base from which other matters can be considered: in particular, whether an origin can be discerned for judgements of value other than that of superego internalisation. [source]