Capacity Of Human Beings Research Articles

Critique of ?the dream in group therapy: A reappraisal of unconscious processes in groups? by Peter J. Schlachet, Ph.D.

Peter Schlachet has presented us with an extremely ambitious effort to describe and explain nature of unitary functioning in groups. He believes that there is some kind of sharing or convergence of unconscious processes among group members, and he correctly states that there is an insufficient understanding or agreement on nature of shared and on explanation of how this process occurs. His effort was to shed further light on these questions, important both to theory of group functioning and to practicing group therapist. Schlachet begins his daunting task very properly with a series of nicely presented vignettes of dreams, all of which illustrate how dreamer in a group is spokesperson for anxieties and conflicts that group members share in common. Not only do these examples illustrate how members of a group collaborate with each other and contribute to an ever-resonating shared theme, but first three dreams, all from same group, reflect an ongoing conflict within group concerning a therapist whose active, possibly intrusive style was creating considerable anxiety lest he and group get out of control. The beauty of all clinical vignettes is that they offer prima facie evidence for operation of a commonly shared group conflict. With this auspicious beginning, reader looks forward to a significant advance toward understanding nature and causes of these unitary responses. His effort to explain the apparent convergence of this unconscious material leads Schlachet to a scholarly discussion of communication processes, including studies of innate capacities of human beings to understand and empathize with each other. He refers to a variety of studies of nonverbal communication, to theories of how dreams may be understood as a means of integrating previous day's experience with an individual's past history, and crucial importance to humans of social awareness. He emphasizes that commonly shared metaphors and symbols that exist in any given culture are basic to human communication. While all of these factors are undoubtedly significant in understanding how people communicate, both consciously and unconsciously, and are significant general considerations in how people understand each other, they are only

Abstract symbol systems (an exercise of the bottom-up approach in artificial intelligence)

Abstract Instead of some ad hoc reductions of the intellectual capacities of human beings an alternative approach to artificial intelligence is suggested that consists of the expansion of the capabilities of well-known (theoretical models of) symbol systems. By some computationally realistic axioms, an abstract computational device—the abstract symbol system—is defined. Then some specific types of the abstract symbol system are defined, namely the static and the dynamic ones, and the corresponding computational powers and complexities are examined and compared. A formal proof is given that a kind of abstract symbol system—the dynamic symbol system—can execute in real time (after some training and some increasing of its own architectural complexity) all Turing machine computations

Company management between complexity and specialization

The processing of large quantities of information is beyond the capacity of human beings. As a company increases in size, organizational complexity increases and can develop into a significant problem in large companies. The control procedures required must therefore be diminished through measures such as • • reduction in production depth • • reduction in product variety • • integration of company functions and • • reduction in process through production automation. An analysis of projects connected with flexible production automation has shown that in many cases much less than half of the capital expenditures are concerned with processing, while up to 40% involve information flow and up to 30% material flow. The latter costs can be reduced through the standardization of material flow interfaces and of logical and physical information flow interfaces. Staff requirements have increased as a result of the complexity of the production process and reduction in division of work. These developments will have a considerable effect on the working world of the future.

Reduced worktime and the management of production

This book examines the tendency in market economies to reduce the time workers spend at their place of employment and considers the role scientific management has played in this development. The author contends that the changing nature of worktime can be explained by changes in both the capitalistic production process and the demands that this process places on the psycho-physiological capacities of human beings. Between 1870 and 1980, the total annual worktime in major industrialized nations decreased by approximately 40 percent. This accelerated rate of worktime change is discussed in the context of the economic revival of capitalism that began in the first half of the twentieth century and culminated in the 'long boom' of 1945–1970. Professor Nyland argues that this revival is primarily explained by the rapid development and application of the process associated with scientific management. He further asserts that this science has been seriously misunderstood by most modern scholars outside socialist nations.

Rationality and Affectivity: The Metaphysics of the Moral Self

There is a way of doing moral philosophy which goes something like this: If it can be shown that it is rational for perfectly selfish people to accept the constraints of morality, then it will follow,a fortiori, that it is rational for people capable of affective bonds, and thus less selfish, to do so. On this way of proceeding the real argument – that is, the argument for the actual constraints (theory or principles) to be adopted – proceeds with only fully rational individuals who have no other concern than to maximize their nontuistic (selfish) preferences. Then it is noted that the affective capacities of human beings actually make quite palatable the constraints that the fully rational persons with wholly nontuistic preferences have agreed upon.

On the prospects of using sociobiology in shaping the law: A cautionary note

Caution must be exercised in promoting the use of biological knowledge for guidance in legal policy decisions. Scientific information is frequently needed to heighten rationality, but judges often limit the place of such information; in so doing, they are not necessarily being parochial. A crucial problem for legal use of scientific knowledge concerns the boundary between scientific and normative judgment. In the Durham v. US (1954) decision, Judge Bazelon opened federal courts in the District of Columbia to fuller participation by psychiatrists in determining insanity than had been provided by the M'Naghten (1843) rule. Two decades later, the same court rejected the Durham rule because it led juries to abdicate judgment concerning defendants' moral responsibility. The tendency for law to seek significant guidance on normative questions from the population, rather than from technical experts, is well grounded in our legal tradition. Even where normative agreement exists, science does not necessarily contribute to the resolution of normative questions. In a heterogeneous society, biological knowledge can be of greater use in analyzing the processes by which normative consensus can be generated through social interaction. Legal thinking has already begun to examine the ways in which law can affect the norm-generating process, but much remains to be learned concerning the capacity of human beings to control conflict, optimize satisfactions, develop standards and satisfy the sense of justice.

Memory and Markets, or Why Are You Paying $2.99 for a Widget?

The constraints introduced in the analysis of individual behavior in economics were mainly two: income and time. Although we do sometimes find references to biological constraints like stomach capacity (see Becker 1971, p. 54), it and other biological constraints' implications on market behavior were not investigated. The purpose of this paper is to show that consideration of the limited memory capacity of human beings sheds light both on specific features of literature and arts and on characteristics of advertising. In Section II the formal model, which is based on Becker's (1965) approach, is presented. In Section III the subject of advertising is discussed, while in Section IV we focus on the evidence from literature and arts. Section V contains the conclusions.

Long-Term Effects of the Holocaust on Selected Social Attitudes and Behaviors of Survivors: A Cautionary Note

A random sample of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Montreal is compared with two Jewish control groups. Modest or insignificant differences were found on measures of perceived anti-Semitism, economic and political satisfaction, social segregation, economic achievement, and propensity to migrate from Quebec. The findings caution against overgeneralization of a clinical construct, the survivor syndrome, and point to the need for further research into the remarkable capacities of human beings to overcome the most severe forms of victimization.

Long-Term Effects of the Holocaust on Selected Social Attitudes and Behaviors of Survivors: A Cautionary Note

A random sample of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Montreal is compared with two Jewish control groups. Modest or insignificant differences were found on measures of perceived anti-Semitism, economic and political satisfaction, social segregation, economic achievement, and propensity to migrate from Quebec. The findings caution against overgeneralization of a clinical construct, the syndrome, and point to the needforfurther research into the remarkable capacities of human beings to overcome the most severe forms of victimization. This study seeks to identify effects of the Holocaust (attempted destruction of European Jewry) on attitudes and behaviors of Jewish survivors in Montreal some 33 years after the end of the war. The scientific literature on Holocaust survivors is predominantly psychiatric and psychoanalytical and relies heavily on clinical studies (Hoppe). These studies have documented various dysfunctional behaviors and mental disorders, of differing severity, which have been labeled the survivor syndrome (Krystal and Niederland) and include such symptoms as anxiety, depression, guilt, paranoia, psychosomatic disease, disturbances in cognition, as well as occupational and interpersonal maladjustment (Antonovsky et al.; Chodoff; Eitinger; Krystal; Matussek; Niederland). Those studies which have used controls have also found persisting effects of the Holocaust on survivors. Shuval found Jewish survivors in Israel (in 1950) to be generally more pessimistic about the future, somewhat hardened to additional strain, but not more distrustful of the outside world. Eitinger and Str0m found that non-Jewish concentration camp survivors in

Human Needs and Freedom: Three Contrasting Perceptions and Perspectives

Discussions on human needs assume, even when not explicitly stated, certain ontological, historical and anthropological perspectives, and they often represent a mix of normative and empirical elements. Moreover, such discussions often ignore or sidetrack the linkages of need-satisfaction with larger issues such as freedom, social justice and ecological balance. These linkages point to the necessity of establishing harmony between man, society and nature. This paper deals with how these linkages have been perceived in three streams of thinking, Liberalism, Marxism and Gandhism. Believing in the idea of linear progress, the Liberals (excepting J. S. Mill) and Marx did not recognize that unrestrained proliferation of needs was subject to limits to growth, depletion of natural resources and degradation of natural environment. Marx believed that the process of need-satisfaction mediating between Man as subject and Nature as object releases the dormant, creative capacities of human beings. Marx therefore stood for large-scale industrial production as necessary for human need-satisfaction. He saw dehumanization and alienation as the consequence, not of industrialization, but of a disjunction between the forces of production and the relations of production, which is the characteristic of capitalism and which will disappear in socialism. Neither the liberals nor Marx saw that industrialization itself entails centralization, degradation of human values and spoliation of nature. Gandhi, on the other hand, saw in need proliferation the root cause of human predicament and in industrialization its exacerbation. He did not accept the proposition that by changing social forms, man will shed his covetousness, self-aggrandizing tendency, etc. He therefore called for self-restraint and limitation of wants, which would obviate the necessity of large-scale industrialization. He clearly saw that man himself has created the civilizational predicament through his own activities, and therefore emphasized that the reform of the system must begin with the reform of man through non-attachment, non-violence and quest for truth.

The Resources Available for Agriculture

The physical resources of earth fire and water although they are very large are ultimately fixed. However the biological and social resources are far from being pressed to the limit. According to Thomas Malthus the human population will always increase until it reaches the limit set by the food supply. This limit is determined by the physical resources available for agriculture. He recognized that farm production increases with improved technology; however the rates of increase would always be lower than the potential capacity of human beings to multiply. This paper considers the inverse of Malthuss proposition--whether the effective utilization of resources for food production can be made to increase the limits set by human population size. A more important inquiry is whether rates of growth of agricultural production can be made to exceed rates of population growth. It is noted that the amount of cultivated land per person could be increased in every part of the world by the year 2000. However large capital investments would be needed for a major increase in crop yield in favorable regions. One way to accomplish this is to increase scientific knowledge of plant and animal biology and of the environment and to transform scientific advances into practical knowledge farmers can use. In addition many resources other than arable land and water must be utilized to increase world food production.

Method of Area Evaluation for Land Use Planning

In order to make land use plan, in city and rural plan, which is in harmony with planning region, land evaluation map is necessary. However, research on land evaluation has just been started. In this situation, it is the purpose of this paper to propose a method of land evaluation in the second type of land use plan.Before going into the main argument, the propositions concerning to area evaluation, which include the meaning of evaluation, evaluation capacity of human beings and measures of impartiality, are discussed. Then the measure of evaluation for area evaluation is adopted from the basis of capacity of human beings.The main purpose of this paper lies in the introduction of “area evaluation function”, which means the relation between the above mentioned evaluation measure by human beings and elements of each area. The function is expressed as follows, in the form of quantification theory, here, In a town, Shinasahi-cho, Siga-prefecture, the evaluation coefficients are determined from the sample areas and the weights of elements for evaluation are discussed.Then the estimated values of areas from the determined evaluation function are calculated and mapped in mesh.

Evolution consciousness and the new technologies: crisis in communication for the twenty-first century

SUMMARY The rapid pace of technological change in the late twentieth century is drastically altering the capacity of human beings to manipulate their ontological being. We have tremendous power to transform the world, but this power is being used to exploit and deplete the earth's natural resources in a seemingly unsustainable fashion. In this time of evolutionary change which sees the merger of ‘man and machine’ there is a need to re-inspirit the world and to transform the power relationships of society to achieve advanced democratic cultures. Hegel's idea of ‘mind’ is central to this evolutionary thesis, within the emergent paradigm of energy and connectivity. Evolution, according to Jantsch, occurs through the self-transcendence of dynamic systems. The consciousness of the mass society is expressed through the media, so mechanisms of empowerment through community and interactive media are proposed. This involves the development of what Illich terms ‘convivial technologies’ which can overcome the problem of alienation.

Indeterminacy in the social sciences

It is maintained that a principle of indeterminacy exists in the social sciences which bears some resemblance to the Heisenberg principle in the realm of physics. In the social sciences, however, the principle is grounded not on physical interference, but on the capacity of human beings to alter their behavior on the basis of changing conceptions of their social condition, and so the contention of writers like Nagel ‘that no distinct principle of explanation is involved’ must be rejected. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the causes of social indeterminacy, which suggests that the phenomenon is ineradicable.