The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables , results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less linguistic complexity, and (...) less referential coherence . The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes that are likely operating on a subconscious level. (shrink)

According to familiar accounts, Rousseau held that humans are actuated by two distinct kinds of self love: amour de soi, a benign concern for one's self-preservation and well-being; and amour-propre, a malign concern to stand above other people, delighting in their despite. I argue that although amour-propre can (and often does) assume this malign form, this is not intrinsic to its character. The first and best rank among men that amour-propre directs us to claim for ourselves is that of occupying (...) 'man's estate'. This does not require, indeed it precludes, subjection of others. Amour-propre does not need suppression or circumscription if we are to live good lives; it rather requires direction to its proper end, not a delusive one. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

O'Hagan agrees with Dent that in Rousseau's idea of "amour-propre" we encounter a powerful, coherent model of human psychology, according to which individuals find their own identities by engaging in a network of relationships within a more or less reconstituted social order. He examines five ways in which people strive to attain that goal and five ways in which they characteristically fail. In the sixth section he discusses Rousseau's strategy of retreat from society, which is also a retreat from the (...) demands of "amour-propre". (shrink)

Did Alcidamas invent the story of the contest of Homer and Hesiod? Martin West has argued that he did , 433 ff.). I believe that there are a number of reasons for thinking this improbable. The stories of the deaths of Homer and Hesiod were traditional before Alcidamas. Heraclitus knew the legend of the riddle of the lice and Homer's death , and the story of Hesiod's death was well known by Thucydides’ time . The first attempt to record information (...) about Homer's life is ascribed to Theagenes of Rhegium, in the late sixth century b.c. . By that time it seems likely that there was already a considerable body of legends about the early poets. The pieces of hexameter verse in the Herodotean Life of Homer, some of which show detailed knowledge of the area around Smyrna in the archaic period, probably date from before 500 b.c. In relating the stories of the poets’ deaths Alcidamas is recording the results of στορα, and this is what he implies in Michigan papyrus 2754 . West's theory requires one to assume that he has incorporated with these traditions his own fiction of the contest. This seems to me to go against what we know in general about the activity of sophists such as Alcidamas. Although they were capable of inventing myths , there is no evidence that they created such stories about earlier historical figures, rather than collecting popular legends about them, and using these for their own purposes. It is true that Critias used the evidence of Archilochus’ own poetry to draw conclusions about his life . But this is not the same as inventing a story virtually from scratch. Hesiod's own testimony about his poetic victory , the original starting-point for the legend of the contest with Homer, did not on its own provide a basis from which such inferences could be drawn. It seems more likely that the legend is the product of earlier popular embroidery, at a time when speculation about these early poets’ lives was becoming common. (shrink)

Liberal critics of plato's republic criticise him for ignoring the moral autonomy of persons, their right to form and to express their own moral ideas. It is argued that this criticism is superficial. Neither plato, nor his liberal critics, wish all moral views to be held and acted on; they both wish to set limits to what is acceptable. The true source of disagreement is over the scope of reason in human affairs; plato understands that narrowly; his liberal critics in (...) a broad, permissive, way. (shrink)

In this substantial and challenging book, O’Hagan gives central place to three of Rousseau’s works—the Discourse of Inequality, the Emile, and the Social Contract—which, he says, “constitute the axes of Rousseau’s idea of formation. The formation of the human race is the axis of the Second Discourse, the formation of the individual that of the Emile, and the formation of the citizen that of the Social Contract”. However, he also draws extensively on other material, particularly Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, (...) to extend and deepen some of Rousseau’s accounts, particularly of moral and psychological issues. Such selectivity enables O’Hagan to consider in some detail each of his chosen texts, which he does with persistent intensity and rigor, in chapters 2 to 6, devoting three of these chapters to his treatment of the Social Contract. Additionally, he selects certain topics for particular attention, with individual chapters on amour-propre, on Rousseau’s views about men and women, on Rousseau’s treatment of some issues concerning language, and he closes with an extended treatment of Rousseau’s religious ideas and views about the role of religion in society. It is pleasing to see this aspect of Rousseau’s thought, which is seldom considered at length these days, dealt with with such care. Another useful aspect of O’Hagan’s discussion is that he makes available and engages with some of the ideas of leading French critics of Rousseau, which helpfully broadens the horizons of the assessments he makes. (shrink)

In this substantial and challenging book, O’Hagan gives central place to three of Rousseau’s works—the Discourse of Inequality, the Emile, and the Social Contract—which, he says, “constitute the axes of Rousseau’s idea of formation. The formation of the human race is the axis of the Second Discourse, the formation of the individual that of the Emile, and the formation of the citizen that of the Social Contract”. However, he also draws extensively on other material, particularly Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, (...) to extend and deepen some of Rousseau’s accounts, particularly of moral and psychological issues. Such selectivity enables O’Hagan to consider in some detail each of his chosen texts, which he does with persistent intensity and rigor, in chapters 2 to 6, devoting three of these chapters to his treatment of the Social Contract. Additionally, he selects certain topics for particular attention, with individual chapters on amour-propre, on Rousseau’s views about men and women, on Rousseau’s treatment of some issues concerning language, and he closes with an extended treatment of Rousseau’s religious ideas and views about the role of religion in society. It is pleasing to see this aspect of Rousseau’s thought, which is seldom considered at length these days, dealt with with such care. Another useful aspect of O’Hagan’s discussion is that he makes available and engages with some of the ideas of leading French critics of Rousseau, which helpfully broadens the horizons of the assessments he makes. (shrink)

This note discusses critically a point in a d m walker's paper "the ideal of sincerity" ("mind", October 1978). Walker claims that desires are insincere if corrupted by incompatible desires. This view accounts for some cases, But not for all. It is argued, In the note, That superficial, Factitious, 'got up' desires are judged insincere as such because not 'natural' to a man. This is implied by the claim of andre gide's which walker misinterprets. The issue of natural desires in (...) contrast to artificial desires introduces the question of 'authenticity', Which is looked at in connection with lionel trilling's "sincerity and authenticity". (shrink)

The social, educational and political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have become enormously influential in the 200 years since his death. But the breadth as well as the depth of Rousseau's achievement - he was amongst other things a creative writer and musical composer as well as a philosopher - is not always appreciated. In around 100 articles, alphabetically arranged and fully cross-referenced, N. J. H. Dent explores all facets of Rousseau's work and thoughts, while his subject's remarkable life is summarized (...) in a biographical introduction. Details of works by and about Rousseau are listed in an extensive bibliography. For students or general readers seeking an introduction to Rousseau's work, and for those already familiar with the material who require a convenient reference source, this dictionary is essential reading. (shrink)

In the six remarkable elegidia transmitted in the Tibullan corpus as 3.13–18 we appear to possess the writings of an educated Roman woman of aristocratic family and high literary connections: a woman, moreover, who participates as an equal in one of the most distinguished artistic salons of the age, and composes poetry in an obstinately male genre on the subject of her own erotic experience, displaying a candour and the exercise of a sexual independence startingly at odds with the ideology (...) of her class. Such a figure is either, depending on one's viewpoint, too good to be true or too embarrassing to be tolerated. The case could easily be put that Sulpicia, more perhaps even than Sappho, has found her poems condemned by accident of gender to a century and a half of condescension, disregard, and wilful misconstruction to accommodate the inelastic sexual politics of elderly male philologists. Certainly even the most sympathetic of recent comment is prone to lapse into a form of critical language outlawed in Catullan scholarship thirty years ago. Yet feminist critics have been strangely cautious in their response. A scholar who rose swiftly to the defence of Erinna when that elusive poet's identity was impugned has notoriously written of Sulpicia: ‘She was not a brilliant artist: her poems are of interest only because the author is female.’ Five years late, Sulpicia has found a place in the major sourcebook on ancient women, but with the cycle of poems violently reordered after the judgment of a nineteenth-century critic, anxious to restore his poetess's chastity against the disconcerting frankness of the texts. (shrink)

Anthropologists and linguists have long been aware that the body is explicitly referred to in conventional description of emotion in languages around the world. There is abundant linguistic data showing expression of emotions in terms of their imagined ‘locus’ in the physical body. The most important methodological issue in the study of emotions is language, for the ways people talk give us access to ‘folk descriptions’ of the emotions. ‘Technical terminology’, whether based on English or otherwise, is not excluded from (...) this ‘folk’ status. It may appear to be safely ‘scientific’ and thus culturally neutral, but in fact it is not: technical English is a variety of English and reflects, to some extent, culture-specific ways of thinking (and categorising) associated with the English language. People — as researchers studying other people, or as people in real-life social association — cannot directly access the emotional experience of others, and language is the usual mode of ‘packaging’ one’s experience so it may be accessible to others. Careful description of linguistic data from as broad as possible a cross-linguistic base is thus an important part of emotion research. All people experience biological events and processes associated with certain thoughts (or, as psychologists say, ‘appraisals’), but there is more to ‘emotion’ than just these physiological phenomena. Speakers of some languages talk about their emotional experiences as if they are located in some internal organ such as ‘the liver’, yet they cannot localise feeling in this physical organ. This phenomenon needs to be understood better, and one of the problems is finding a method of comparison that allows us to compare descriptions from different languages which show apparently great formal and semantic variation. Some simple concepts including feel and body are universal or near-universal, and as such are good candidates for terms of description which may help to eradicate confusion and exoticism from cross-linguistic comparison and semantic typology. Semantic analysis reveals great variation in concepts of emotion across languages and cultures — but such analysis requires a sound and well-founded methodology. While leaving room for different approaches to the task, we suggest that such a methodology can be based on empirically established linguistic universal (or near-universal) concepts, and on ‘cognitive scenarios’ articulated in terms of these concepts. Also, we warn against the danger of exoticism involved in taking all body part references ‘literally’. Above all, we argue that what is needed is a combination of empirical cross-linguistic investigations and a theoretical and methodological awareness, recognising the impossibility of exploring other people’s emotions without keeping language in focus: both as an object and as a tool of study. (shrink)

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: (...) in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges. (shrink)