Plagiarism is a prevalent form of academic dishonesty in the undergraduate instructional context. Although students engage in plagiarism with some frequency, instructors often do little to help students understand the significance of plagiarism or to create assignments that reduce its likelihood. This study reports survey, coding, and TurnItIn software results from an evaluation of an instructional activity designed to help students improve their understanding of plagiarism, the consequences of plagiarizing, strategies to help them engage in ethical writing, and key citation (...) elements. Results indicate students had a greater understanding of plagiarism, increased efficacy, and fewer instances of plagiarism as determined by TurnItIn plagiarism software after exposure to an instructional activity on plagiarism. Not surprisingly, when instructors prioritize academic honesty in their classrooms, train students on how to integrate others’ works, cite sources appropriately, and use plagiarism detection software, students are less likely to plagiarize. The discussion includes suggestions for instructors to help them create a plagiarism-free environment. (shrink)
Using psychosocial acceleration theory, this multimethod, multi-reporter study examines how early adversity adaptively shapes the development of a self-regulation construct: effortful control. Investigation of links between early life harshness and unpredictability and the development of effortful control could facilitate a nuanced understanding of early environmental effects on cognitive and social development. Using the Building Strong Families national longitudinal data set, aspects of early environmental harshness and early environmental unpredictability were tested as unique predictors of effortful control at age 3 using (...) multiple regression. Early harshness variables were financial harshness, mothers’ and fathers’ observed parenting, mothers’ and fathers’ reported use of harsh discipline, and harsh neighborhood conditions. Early unpredictability was measured by number of paternal transitions. Cues of harshness, specifically observed unresponsive parenting, observed harsh parenting, and neighborhood harshness, did significantly negatively predict effortful control. Paternal transitions also significantly predicted effortful control, but in the opposite direction. The results corroborate previous research linking quality of parenting to the development of children’s effortful control and place it within an evolutionary-developmental theoretical framework. Further, the results suggest that neighborhood harshness may also direct developmental trajectories of effortful control in young children, though the mechanisms through which this occurs are still unclear. This is the first study to explicitly investigate effortful control development in early childhood within the harshness and unpredictability framework. (shrink)
My dissertation is a genealogical examination of the question of history and historical experience in post-Enlightenment thinking. I examine Kant, Hegel and Foucault to determine both how the Kantian-Hegelian tradition has framed the question of history for us and whether, through the genealogical method of Foucault, philosophical thinking can step outside of that structure. My central argument is against the objectification of history that is performed in Kant and then carried to its fruition in the work of Hegel. I turn (...) to the genealogical method, as developed by Foucault out of the work of Nietzsche, for the possibilities of breaking from this post-Enlightenment Reason and its claims of transcendence to historical experience. ;The social, political and ethical ramifications of these developments frame my dissertation. An examination of post-Enlightenment thinking about history necessarily leads to the questions of historicism, relativism and essentialism in post-Enlightenment ethics. I argue that the genealogical method of Foucault opens a way of thinking about historicism that does not reduce it to the ethical chaos of a pure subjectivism or a solipsistic relativism. This kind of swift dismissal of historicism derives from a post-Kantian objectification of history that places historical phenomena in strict opposition to the "universal and necessary" bases of ethical practices. The genealogical method opens the possibility of escaping these reductions: it enacts a different kind of thinking through its engagement with plural, historical discourses. Showing different performances of reason, many of which do not operate through universal, necessary or formal criteria, genealogical thinking opens the possibility of thinking differently about human reason and its ethical enactments in the world. Both the ethical and epistemic implications of this kind of opening can then lead to ways of re-thinking problems currently facing the work of feminists and social-political philosophers. (shrink)
In the last 150 years, the ambiguous and enigmatic 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching have been translated, interpreted and adapted into the English language more than 100 times. The Tao and its subtle philosophy is currently being actively assimilated into mainstream western culture as evidenced by the popularity and volume of Taoist works. The purpose of this study was to analyse this phenomenon. First, a database of English translations of the Tao Te Ching was established. This database documents (...) the vast number of Tao Te Ching translations in print from 1868 to the present. Second, specific chapters of selected English translations of the Tao Te Ching were compared using holistic and content analysis. The holistic methods focused on the overall semantic connotation of the selected chapters. The specific (linguistic) analysis methods entailed the use of a computerised content analysis program (hyperRESEARCH for Macintosh). Through these inquiries, a specific understanding of the cross-cultural relationship between East and West was investigated. (shrink)
This paper explores a dimension of the contemporary western understanding of nature as it has been shaped by the thought of Hegel. Emblematic of a tradition that struggles to think nature on its own terms but which, more often than not, formulates it as the ground upon which human progress is built, Hegel’s philosophy sacrifices nature to spiritual progress. Orienting this study through Dennis J. Schmidt’s work on death and sacrifice in the dialectic, I trace Hegel’s formulation of the natural (...) to show how the denigration of nature plays into a larger pattern evident in the western tradition, one that that positions the natural as somehow “outside” the political and spiritual, thereby subjecting it to mischaracterization and misuse. I conclude with a call for a post-sacrificial understanding of the natural world in an effort to help challenge the destructive force inherited by this tradition. (shrink)
Much maligned for deeply problematic language describing female physiology and its peculiar use of "data," Simone de Beauvoir's chapter on biology from The Second Sex appears to be an unusual entry point into the question of woman as Other. In "Biological Data," Beauvoir traces a relationship between the female animal and the species that becomes more alarming as she moves from unicellular organisms to complex mammalian life. By the time she reaches human beings, we are bombarded with passages emphasizing woman's (...) "enslavement" to the species, the tyranny of her hormonal and reproductive life, and the impeding effects of physical limitations. Such claims lead commentators to accuse Beauvoir, for example, of adopting... (shrink)
In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir traveled to the United States for a four-month stay, during which she toured the country extensively. Her copious notes taken during this time eventually became the travelogue, America Day by Day as well as a piece written for the May 25, 1947 edition of the New York Times Magazine, “An Existentialist Looks at Americans.” In both of these writings, Beauvoir offers an astute criticism of American culture from a foreign perspective. This paper explores Beauvoir’s treatment (...) of American abstraction and race with three goals in mind: first, to understand the American relationship to time and money as abstractions. Ignoring the past and projecting an idealistic future, leads to a strange kind of fatalism and lack of passion that profoundly impacts White and Black Americans but in distinctively different ways. The second part of the paper explores these differences through an analysis of how White Americans attempt to live with “good” consciences through the positing of and attachment to abstract values and things. This attitude, in turn, produces a largely instrumental and racist treatment of many populations, in particular, Black Americans. The final section focuses on how Beauvoir confronts the fact of her own whiteness, and in so doing undergoes the movement of race as an abstract theoretical category to one of lived embodiment. (shrink)
The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.
The expression “continental rationalism” refers to a set of views more or less shared by a number of philosophers active on the European continent during the latter two thirds of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. Rationalism is most often characterized as an epistemological position. On this view, to be a rationalist requires at least one of the following: (1) a privileging of reason and intuition over sensation and experience, (2) regarding all or most ideas as innate (...) rather than adventitious, (3) an emphasis on certain rather than merely probable knowledge as the goal of enquiry. While all of the continental rationalists meet one or more of these criteria, this is arguably the consequence of a deeper tie that binds them together—that is, a metaphysical commitment to the reality of substance, and, in particular, to substance as an underlying principle of unity. (shrink)
The lore is that standard information theory provides an analysis of information quantity, but not of information content. I argue this lore is incorrect, and there is an adequate informational semantics latent in standard theory. The roots of this notion of content can be traced to the secret parallel development of an information theory equivalent to Shannon’s by Turing at Bletchley Park, and it has been suggested independently in recent work by Skyrms and Bullinaria and Levy. This paper explicitly (...) articulates the semantics latent in information theory and defends it as an adequate theory of information content, or natural meaning. I argue that this theory suggests a new perspective on the classic misrepresentation worry for correlation-based semantics. (shrink)
This study demonstrates the importance of social context to the study of networks vital to business success. Results from analyses of the personal and business characteristics associated with different types of networks, a topic that has been neglected in past research, show the importance of structural perspectives emphasizing that women and men in the same situations have similar networks. Yet there are some network differences even among these women and men who operate the same kinds of businesses. This suggests that (...) insights from gender construction perspectives should be integrated into network and other gender inequality studies. (shrink)
Shannon information is commonly assumed to be the wrong way in which to conceive of information in most biological contexts. Since the theory deals only in correlations between systems, the argument goes, it can apply to any and all causal interactions that affect a biological outcome. Since informational language is generally confined to only certain kinds of biological process, such as gene expression and hormone signalling, Shannon information is thought to be unable to account for this restriction. It (...) is often concluded that a richer, teleosemantic sense of information is needed. I argue against this view, and show that a coherent and sufficiently restrictive theory of biological information can be constructed with Shannon information at its core. This can be done by paying due attention some crucial distinctions: between information quantity and its fitness value, and between carrying information and having the function of doing so. From this I construct an account of how informational functions arise, and show that the “subject matter” of these functions can easily be seen as the natural information dealt with by Shannon’s theory. (shrink)
Competent patients’ refusals of nursing care do not yet have the legal or ethical standing of refusals of life-sustaining medical therapies such as mechanical ventilation or blood products. The case of a woman who refused turning and incontinence management owing to pain prompted us to examine these situations. We noted several special features: lack of paradigm cases, social taboo around unmanaged incontinence, the distinction between ordinary versus extraordinary care, and the moral distress experienced by nurses. We examined this case on (...) the merits and limitations of five well-known ethical positions: pure autonomy, conscientious objection, paternalism, communitarianism, and feminism. We found each lacking and argue for a ‘negotiated reliance’ response where nurses and others tread as lightly as possible on the patient’s autonomy while negotiating a compromise, but are obligated to match the patient’s sacrifice by extending themselves beyond their usual professional practice. (shrink)
ObjectiveParenting sensitivity and mutual parent-child attunement are key features of environments that support children’s learning and development. To-date, observational measures of these constructs have focused on children aged 2–6 years and are less relevant to the more sophisticated developmental skills of children aged 7–8 years, despite parenting being equally important at these ages. We undertook a rigorous process to adapt an existing observational measure for 7–8-year-old children and their parents. This paper aimed to: describe a protocol for adapting an existing (...) framework for rating parent-child interactions, determine variations in parents’ sensitive responding and parent-child mutual attunement by family demographics, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the newly developed measure.MethodParent-child dyads completed one home visit, including a free-play observation and parent questionnaire. Dyads were provided with three toy sets: LEGO® Classic Box, Classic Jenga®, and animal cards. The Coding of Attachment-Related Parenting was adapted for use with 7–8-year-old children, and rating procedures were streamlined for reliable use by non-clinician/student raters, producing the SCARP:7–8 Years. Trained staff rated video-recorded observations on 11 behaviors across two domains.ResultsData were available for 596 dyads. Consistently strong inter-rater agreement on the 11 observed behaviors was achieved across the 10-week rating period. Average ICCs were 0.77 for sensitive responding and 0.84 for positive mutuality. These domains were found to be related but distinct constructs. For both domains, average ratings were strongly associated with the main toy used during the observation. Adjusted multivariate linear regression models revealed that less sensitive responding was associated with younger parent, male parent, non-English speaking background, and greater neighborhood disadvantage. Construct validity was demonstrated using six parent-reported psychosocial and parenting measures.ConclusionThe SCARP: 7–8 Years shows promise as a reliable and valid measure of parent-child interaction in the early school years. Toy selection for direct observation should be considered carefully in research and practice settings. (shrink)
State health departments are at the core of the United States public health infrastructure. Surveillance to monitor trends in disease and injury; the development, coordination, and delivery of services; and public education are some of the core functions health department employees oversee every day. As such, agencies and their employees are well positioned to inform policy decisions that affect the public’s health. However, little is known about the role of health department staff — a sizeable proportion of the public health (...) workforce — as advocates for public health policies, independent of their agency roles. Anecdotally, some health department employees with whom we have spoken expressed reluctance to engage in policy advocacy for fear of violating little known or understood agency or state rules. (shrink)