Commonsense View Research Articles

Active Democratic Citizenry: A Determinant of Good Governance - A Case Study of Nigerian State

The activeness of any nation citizenry determines how effective and the types of government such a nation will have. In the case of Nigeria, Nigerian citizens have been engulfed by stark illiteracy and chronic ignorance. Citizens have failed in their responsibility of participating actively in the polity of their nation. Citizens have been blindfolded that they cannot even differentiate between good governance and bad governance, as they still blindly pledge their support to bad leadership and to the decayed political parties of Nigeria, e.g. APC and PDP. Citizens found mostly in this blindness are the South western citizens despite their level of education. This paper examined the inability of Nigerian citizens to read within the lines and understand the dangers inherent in the politics of these two political parties of APC and PDP, and the fact that both parties have no better ideology and plans to better the lives of Nigerians. The paper examines the difference between People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and All progressive Congress (APC) ideology in terms of corruption in Nigeria. The paper finally examines the effect of non-democratic citizenry in Nigeria. This paper adopts the hybrids method, as interview methods of data collection are adopted while other data are gotten from the readymade works of scholars and from the common sense views of the writer. This paper finally proffers workable recommendations to the problems of bad leadership in Nigeria.

Sexual Consent and Having Sex Together

Abstract Some influential theorists have recently argued that if sex is in some sense ideal, then each partner’s consent is unnecessary: even absent each partner’s consent, neither partner infringes the other’s moral rights. I challenge a key premise in their argument for this alarming conclusion. I instead defend the Common-sense View: if you have sex with someone without their consent, you thereby infringe that person’s moral rights. In the course of defending the Common-sense View, I develop what I call the Hybrid Account of Consent. The Hybrid Account retains the benefits of two existing accounts of consent while avoiding their shortcomings. I close by suggesting some benefits of my alternative picture and some implications for law reform.

The Making of EU-Africa Trade Regionalism: The Law and Governance of the Yaoundé and Lomé Conventions (1963-1974)

How was ‘international trade’ between former European empires and their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific governed after decolonisation? As is commonly known, the vast majority of African countries became independent in the 1960s, and so new regional trade agreements (RTAs) were regarded as necessary to govern their economic relations with Europa. The Yaounde and Lome Conventions were then concluded between the European Union (EU) and the bloc of newly independent African countries. Mainstream scholarship provides comprehensive and useful accounts of these post-colonial Conventions. However, little is known about the role of law and lawyers in their making and governance. Part of this history is about the political and intellectual struggles in the legal profession to determine which projects, ideas, and norms could be validly and legitimately applied to EU-Africa RTAs. The other part is about the efforts of lawyers to organise and employ this emerging conceptual framework to structure their negotiations and production while securing the influence of international law in and over the EU-Africa trade governance. This paper combines historical and social-legal approaches to show that a distinct legal concept – which I call the development framework – was pivotal in designing, interpreting and applying the Yaounde and Lome Conventions. This legal concept was particularly developed and persuasively used by a contextualised group of European and African lawyers from 1947 through 1985. This finding contrasts with the common-sense view in the legal profession that concrete RTAs are varieties of a single legal concept. I conclude that the legal governance of EU-Africa regionalism was a singular ideational, institutional and jurisprudential experiment due significantly to the unique features of lawyers’ legal concept of EU-Africa RTAs.

Triadischer Universalismus: Repräsentation und Konsenspragmatik bei Johann Amos Comenius

Summary The paper deals with the ‘semantics of representation’ and the ‘pragmatics of consensus’ in the work of Johann Amos Comenius. The term ‘semantics of representation’ refers to the concept that things (all that can be referred to) are represented by thoughts in the mind, and thoughts are represented by words. ‘Pragmatics of consensus’ means that normative rules of communicative behaviour can be formulated which in practice lead to effective negotiation. The semantics of representation was a common sense view on language in Comenius’ time and can be seen as a presupposition in his arguing about learning, teaching, understanding and communicating in all his works, not only in the schoolbook Orbis sensualium pictus, but also in Via lucis or De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica (Consultatio catholica) and others. The pragmatics of consensus was developed mostly in latter works, especially in Consultatio catholica. At the beginning of the paper three of Comenius’ pictures (from the early novel Labyrint světa, the schoolbook Orbis pictus and the theoretical work Triertium catholicum) are compared. The famous drawing of the labyrinth of the world shows a confusing town landscape in a closed circle and symbolizes the chaotic life of man after his fall and the Babylonian language confusion. The didactic emblem for Orbis pictus shows the world in harmony with God’s will. The abstract scheme in Triertium catholicum visualizes the connections between things (res), thoughts (mens), language (lingua) and action (manus). They form a stable and universal order in which thoughts, language and action are interconnected in a triadic relation. Especially the drawing of the labyrinth and the scheme in the theoretical work Triertium catholicum build a contrast between chaos and order. But it is shown that the order of the latter one is also the underlying structure of the confused communication in the labyrinth. Therefore, in Comenius’ view the aim and the duty of the philosopher and teacher is to heal the unhealthy reality of communication, which should be done on the base of normative rules of harmonic and effective communication. These rules are developed by Comenius in his famous Consultatio catholica. The paper closes with a short discussion of the actuality and efficiency of Comenius’ suggestions.

Higher-order knowledge and sensitivity

AbstractIt has recently been argued that a sensitivity theory of knowledge cannot account for intuitively appealing instances of higher-order knowledge. In this paper, we argue that it can once careful attention is paid to the methods or processes by which we typically form higher-order beliefs. We base our argument on what we take to be a well-motivated and commonsensical view on how higher-order knowledge is typically acquired, and we show how higher-order knowledge is possible in a sensitivity theory once this view is adopted.

Gendered practices in veterinary organisations.

As a result of scandals concerning sexual harassment in Hollywood and in the media, as well as questions regarding the size of the gender pay gap, considerable attention has recently been paid to questions of gender diversity and discrimination in organisations. Gender issues would appear particularly salient within the veterinary profession, not least because women are beginning to outnumber men as practitioners. While this research on veterinary surgeons was not initially focused on gender, as the study progressed gender became an issue of such importance that it could not be ignored. Although 'feminized in numerical terms', the veterinary profession and 'its professional structure and culture remains gendered masculine'. Translated into practice, this means that although 76 per cent of vet school graduates are currently female, disproportionately few have risen or are rising through the hierarchy. On the surface it is easy to rationalise this away partly by simply stating how many female vets appear to sacrifice career for family, but the authors' aim is to go beyond merely repeating and reinforcing the common sense view of female reproduction and parenting as the sole explanation for gender inequality within this and other professions.

Understanding and addressing unequal career opportunities in the ‘new career’ era: an analysis of the role of structural career boundaries and organizational career management

By bringing together the literature on ‘new careers’, career boundaries and organizational career management (OCM), on different social identity groups, and on diversity management, this article aims to contribute to debates on unequal career opportunities and career boundaries in the ‘new career’ era. First, it develops propositions on the way structural career boundaries involving qualifications and labour market scripts contribute to unequal opportunities to share in the promises of the ‘new career’ discourse. We specifically argue that these boundaries affect the careers of different social identity groups to different degrees because common sense views of ‘ideal’ qualifications and ‘ideal’ labour market scripts are infused with social identities. Second, this article develops propositions on the way different types of OCM practices address career boundaries and whether they can contribute to equal opportunities. We argue that traditional OCM practices will only result in equal opportunities if common sense views of ‘ideal’ qualifications and ‘ideal’ labour market scripts are changed. Finally, we propose that incorporating inclusive common sense views of qualifications and labour market scripts in bundles of OCM practices enables these to effectively contribute to equal career opportunities.

Revolution in the everyday: using Gramsci to inspire hope and change with social workers

This article is a discussion about using the work of Antonio Gramsci in social work supervision. Gramsci can offer a challenge to the political ideology of the neoliberal era. Through focusing on his concepts of hegemony and common sense, an understanding of social work practice in the neoliberal era can start to be discerned and can provide a platform for developing practice that centers on people’s actual lived experience. Gramsci’s theory can also provide social workers with a way of challenging neoliberal common sense views and can, consequently, have the potential to inspire optimism and hope.

Musical Ontology and the Question of Persistence

According to certain models of the musical work-performance relationship, musical works persist through time. Dodd and Thomasson argue that perdurantist accounts of musical persistence—according to which musical works persist by having temporal parts at every time they exist—are untenable, and Tillman argues that musical endurantism—according to which persisting works are wholly present at each time they exist—avoids Dodd’s worries. In this paper, I argue that both Dodd’s and Thomasson’s arguments—and Tillman’s response—rely on assumptions linking theories of persistence to common-sense views about musical works and, moreover, that these assumptions are unwarranted. As a result, only an attitude of neutrality towards questions about the nature of musical persistence is warranted.

The Lump and the Ledger: Material Coincidence at Little-to-No Cost

This paper aims to make headway on two related issues—one methodological, the other substantive. The former concerns cost–benefit analyses when applied to metaphysical theory choice. The latter concerns material coincidence, i.e., multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time, such as the statue and the clay from which it’s made. The issues are entwined as many reject coincidence on the grounds that it’s costly. I argue this judgment is unjustified. More generally, I set out and defend a framework for the use of cost–benefit analyses in metaphysics. The framework employs a fourfold division of pretheoretical costs and benefits (inconsistency or consistency with common sense), and theoretical costs and benefits (loss or gain of theoretical virtues such as simplicity). Yet these do not hold equal weight. Instead I argue that the appeal to theoretical benefits is illegitimate if the theory in question cannot first account for the relevant evidence or data, including, crucially, certain bits of pretheoretical or common knowledge. This is crucial because I not only argue that material coincidence is consistent with common sense, against what is widely believed, but that coincidence may even be a feature or implication of the common sense view. Put together, the result is that accepting an anti-coincidence theory for its putative theoretical virtues at the expense of common sense is an improper usage of the cost–benefit methodology. I instead conclude that material coincidence should be accepted with equanimity—which, after all, is free.

Perfecting the Theory of Meaning: The Story of Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

The common sense view of what language is for is that language is used for communication. However, some of the most prominent linguists in the field reject this view. In other words, the majority of professional linguists used to adopt a view of language which is at odds with the view held by non-linguists. The phenomenon of communication has often been thought of as peripheral in linguistic research. This view is a result of the strong hold the abstract objectivist language conception has had on modern linguistic thought. Communication has been reduced to a subordinate place amongst the possible functions of language. This low status attributed to communication is challenged by different pragmatic approaches to language. On the other hand, the content and use of the term “communication” is even by humanistic standards extremely ambiguous, and it has, therefore, often been difficult to use in practical, empirical work. This study is primarily a deep survey of the major contributions of both “discourse analysis” and “pragmatics” in an attempt to clarify the problem of understanding meaning in language use. In addition, it attempts to show how language is used, as a persuasive tool, in political discourse.The present study demonstrates that it would be a mistake to adopt an approach to pragmatics and discourse analysis which focuses on linguistic factors alone, or social factors alone, to the exclusion of cognitive factors. Also, it would be a mistake to adopt an approach which is exclusively speaker-oriented or exclusively hearer-oriented. The process of making meaning is a joint accomplishment between speaker and hearer; between writer and reader. In addition, the present study shows that both disciplines “pragmatics” and “discourse analysis” are hybrid fields of inquiry; and their common themes are “language”, “language users”, “communication”, and “meaning in interaction”. Both disciplines have borrowed their theoretical and methodological orientations from almost the same social and human disciplines. Accordingly, the terms “pragmatics” and “discourse analysis” can be used interchangeably. Finally, the present study shows that political speech is one of the main persuasive tools used by politicians to present their political persons and to further their political agendas.

In Defense of the Explanationist Response to Skepticism

A promising response to the threat of external world skepticism involves arguing that our commonsense view of the world best explains the sensory experiences that we have. Since our commonsense view of the world best explains our evidence, we are justified in accepting this commonsense view of the world. Despite the plausibility of this Explanationist Response, it has recently come under attack. James Beebe has argued that only a version of the Explanationist Response that provides an a priori justification of inference to the best explanation can hope to respond to two serious objections. Additionally, he has argued that providing such an a priori justification requires an acceptable account of a priori probability and that it is unclear whether such an account can be developed. In this paper I argue that Beebe fails to provide adequate support for either of these claims.

Forecaster’s Dilemma: To Explore or to Construct?

The article discusses the problem of the possibility of knowing the future, especially the future of social phenomena compared with the future of natural ones. This problem is formulated as a dilemma: the future can be explored or can be only constructed. The idea of constructive character of knowledge of the future is viewed in two possible interpretations.The first one is a special case of the constructivist interpretation of knowledge, according to which different pictures of the future are arbitrarily constructed on the basis of information about the past and current state. The second interpretaion can be presented in the form of a praxeological question: what should be an action in relation to the future, first and foremost to the future of social phenomena - cognitive or creative. It is shown that, in the first case, there is an ability to interpret knowledge of the future from the point of view of epistemological realism, in the second case, both cognitive and creative types of activity as a pragmatic position in relation to the future are necessary and cognitive activity cannot be reduced to creative one. It is also shown that forecaster’s dilemma reflects the problematic nature of forecasting under the conditions of transformation of scientific rationality and point of view of common sense, which is observed in recent decades.

An Atomic Magnetometer with Spin-Projection Noise Proportional to **Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 51675034 and 61273067, and the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality under Grant No 7172123.

There is a common sense view for atomic magnetometers that their spin-projection-noises (SPNs) are inversely proportional to , where T2 is the transverse relaxation time. We analyze the current atomic magnetometer types and give a counter-example of this common sense, which is the all-optical spin precession modulated three-axis atomic magnetometer proposed by our group in 2015. Unlike the other atomic magnetometers, the SPN of this kind of atomic magnetometers is proportional to due to the fact that the scale factor between Px and B can be unrelated to the transverse relaxation time T2. We demonstrate this irrelevance experimentally and analyze the SPN theoretically. Using short-pulse ultra-high power laser to fully polarize the atoms, the phenomenon that SPN decreases with T2 may also be demonstrated experimentally and a new tool for researching SPN in atomic magnetometers may be realized.

Delay differential equations as a tool for mathematical modelling of population dynamic

The manuscript constitutes a lecture from a course “Mathematical modelling of biological processes”, adapted to the format of the journal paper. This course of lectures is held by one of authors in Ugra State University. 
 Delay differential equations are widely used in different ecological and biological problems. It has to do with the fact that delay differential equations are able to take into account that different biological processes depend not only on the state of the system at the moment but on the state of the system in previous moments too. The most popular case of using delay differential equations in biology is modelling in population ecology (including the modelling of several interacting populations dynamic, for example, in predator-prey system). Also delay differential equations are considered in demography, immunology, epidemiology, molecular biology (to provide mathematical description of regulatory mechanisms in a cell functioning and division), physiology as well as for modelling certain important production processes (for example, in agriculture).
 In the beginning of the paper as introduction some basic concepts of differential difference equation theory (delay differential equations are specific type of differential difference equations) is considered and their classification is presented. Then it is discussed in more detail how such an important equations of population dynamic as Maltus equation and logistic (Verhulst-Pearl) equation are transformed into corresponsive delay differential equations – Goudriaan-Roermund and Hutchinson.
 Then several discussion questions on using of a delay differential equations in biological models are considered. It is noted that in a certain cases using of a delay differential equations lead to an incorrect behavior from the point of view of common sense. Namely solution of Goudriaan-Roermund equation with harvesting, stopped when all species were harvested, shows that spontaneous generation takes place in the system.
 This incorrect interpretation has to do with the fact that delay differential equations are used to simplify considered models (that are usually are systems of ordinary differential equations). Using of integro-differential equations could be more appropriate because in these equations background could be taken into account in a more natural way. It is shown that Hutchinson equation can be obtained by simplification of Volterra integral equation with a help of Diraq delta function.
 Finally, a few questions of analytical and numerical solution of delay differential equations are discussed.

Challenging Your Implicit Leadership Theory

Each of us has an implicit leadership theory, a mental model we are largely unaware of, that represents the skills, traits, and qualities that define effective leaders. Curiously, the peer- reviewed literature has reported almost exclusively on the ideal attributes of leaders, overlooking the axiomatic and taken-for-granted views people have about the activity we colloquially refer to as “leadership.” Some of these beliefs about leadership are so common and accepted as true that challenging them is counterintuitive, yet they can limit organizational effectiveness. In this article, we discuss four common leadership misunderstandings that contribute to the fabric of our self-evident, unexamined common sense view of leadership. Challenging these misconceptions provides the opportunity to create a new paradigm of leadership, one that could enhance organizational performance.

Leisure as not work: a (far too) common definition in theory and research on free-time activities

ABSTRACTIn Leisure's Legacy Stebbins [2017. Leisure’s legacy: Challenging the common sense view of free time. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.] explored the nature of the common-sense definition, comparing it with what leisure studies has learned since its inception around 1970. A different tack is taken in the present article, doing so by looking into how common sense has affected thought and research in the social sciences as well as that in professional, administrative and governmental work. The common-sense or popular definition of leisure is “leisure as not work, leisure as fun.” Attention in this article will be limited to the ways that leisure is defined in philosophy and those social sciences that have a theoretic interest in free time. The latter set includes economics, political science, psychology, sociology, geography, and history. A section follows in which the consequences of the leisure-as-not-work image are examined in contemporary higher education, leisure provision, and governmental policy. In conclusion, leisure studies scholars must become proactive and insist wherever called for on correcting the commons-sense view of leisure. The hint that such action is needed should be evident when the conversation or the text leans heaviest on work, with leisure seen as residual and unspecified, as not work.

The influence of evaluative right/wrong feedback on phonological and semantic processes in word learning.

Feedback is typically incorporated in word learning paradigms, in both research studies and commercial language learning apps. While the common-sense view is that feedback is helpful during learning, relatively little empirical evidence exists about the role of feedback in spoken vocabulary learning. Some work has suggested that long-term word learning is not enhanced by the presence of feedback, and that words are best learned implicitly. It is also plausible that feedback might have differential effects when learners focus on learning semantic facts, or when they focus on learning a new phonological sequence of sounds. In this study, we assess how providing evaluative (right/wrong) feedback on a spoken response influences two different components of vocabulary learning, the learning of a new phonological form, and the learning of a semantic property of the phonological form. We find that receiving evaluative feedback improves retention of phonological forms, but not of semantic facts.

Mental health reportage in Ghanaian newspapers between 2000 and 2015: A qualitative analysis

Print media plays an important role in the circulation of information in contemporary Ghanaian society. We thematically examined the content of 164 mental health-related articles published between 2000 and 2015 in six widely circulating Ghanaian newspapers. The articles included investigative reports related to specific public events and incidents; advice columns; editorials; and didactic pieces. The articles covered the following four major topics: (1) Mental health awareness and advocacy; (2) Suicide; (3) Donations; and (4) Religion. Our findings demonstrate that Ghanaian newspapers promote awareness about mental disorders; advocate for those with mental disorders; provide mostly accurate basic knowledge about the nature and management of specific disorders; and inform the public about the state of mental health care in Ghana. We also observed that newspapers serve as a medium through which social representations of mental disorder in society are circulated, and in which tensions between common sense views and evidence-based information on mental health are expressed.

The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review.

This article presents a comprehensive integration of current experimental evidence and theories about so-called parapsychological (psi) phenomena. Throughout history, people have reported events that seem to violate the common sense view of space and time. Some psychologists have been at the forefront of investigating these phenomena with sophisticated research protocols and theory, while others have devoted much of their careers to criticizing the field. Both stances can be explained by psychologists' expertise on relevant processes such as perception, memory, belief, and conscious and nonconscious processes. This article clarifies the domain of psi, summarizes recent theories from physics and psychology that present psi phenomena as at least plausible, and then provides an overview of recent/updated meta-analyses. The evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away by the quality of the studies, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms. The evidence for psi is comparable to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines, although there is no consensual understanding of them. The article concludes with recommendations for further progress in the field including the use of project and data repositories, conducting multidisciplinary studies with enough power, developing further nonconscious measures of psi and falsifiable theories, analyzing the characteristics of successful sessions and participants, improving the ecological validity of studies, testing how to increase effect sizes, recruiting more researchers at least open to the possibility of psi, and situating psi phenomena within larger domains such as the study of consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record