Desire For Certainty Research Articles

Insights into product design students’ perception of, and engagement with, creativity in design education

Creativity is acknowledged as an essential component of the design process and considered a key design graduate attribute. Despite this assertion, several studies have highlighted that the teaching of creativity in design education is often implicit rather than explicit. Moreover, there is a paucity of research on product design students’ experience of creativity in design education, leaving a gap in knowledge relevant to how creativity may be better fostered in design education. In this study, reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data from online focus groups conducted with product design students. The three themes constructed provide insights into how students perceive and engage with creativity. Theme 1, the influence of social factors on creativity, uncovers the diametric effect students’ social eco-system can have on their creativity. These include an aversion to being associated with it due to weight of expectation and negative perceptions around creativity, as well as the ‘invisible support system’ created by peers. Theme 2, sanctuary seeking tendencies of novice design students, reveals behaviours that oppose essential creative attributes: a freedom from risk and ambiguity and desire for certainty and achievability. Theme 3, tension between passion for and pursuit of creativity, outlines the conflict between participants’ ideologies and actions when pursuing creativity highlighting a reluctance to utilise structured creativity tools while gravitating towards unstructured methods such as ‘relaxed attention’. Together, the three themes form a picture of product design students’ complex relationship with creativity and importance of self-efficacy. The findings of this study make an important contribution to our understanding of design students’ perception of, and engagement with, creativity in design education. As such these findings are relevant for both design education and future creativity tool development.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Patient acceptability of circulating tumour DNA testing in endometrial cancer follow-up.

Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is emerging as a potential option to detect disease recurrence in many cancer types, however, ensuring patient acceptability of changing clinical practice and the introduction of new technology is paramount. Patients enrolled in a non-intervention cohort study determining the ability of ctDNA to detect recurrent endometrial cancer (EC) were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview. Analysis was performed by Template Analysis. Eighteen patients were interviewed. A ctDNA blood test was viewed by participants as more physically and psychologically acceptable than clinical examination to monitor for EC recurrence. In particular, participants expressed overwhelming preference for a blood test rather than pelvic examination. Although participants acknowledged that an abnormal ctDNA result could cause anxiety, they expressed a preference to be informed of their results, even if a recurrence was too small to detect radiologically. Explanations for these opinions were a desire for certainty whether their cancer would recur or not, and knowledge would help them be more aware of symptoms that should be reported to their clinician. ctDNA monitoring to identify EC recurrence appears to be acceptable to patients, and for many, it may be preferable to clinical examination.

What an English Teacher Knows: Teaching in the Post-truth Era

ABSTRACT Post-truthism entered mainstream consciousness after being named Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2016, denoting a turn in the Western relationship with truth as a certain and indisputable object. Simultaneously, and paradoxically, rising distrust around teachers’ professional judgement and a desire for certainty in practice saw the proliferation of ‘evidence-informed’ approaches and the impetus for teachers to use data to inform their decision-making. This paper places recent changes to practice and policy in the post-truth context, suggesting that the trends of evidence-based practice and datafication can be understood within this socio-political phenomenon. It is suggested that in a moment looking for assurance and certainty, post-truth rationalities seep into education, eroding the agentic properties of English teacher knowledge in favour of mechanisms promising certitude and reliability and sacrificing subjectivity and nuance.

Неопределенность права как фактор устойчивости правовой системы (исторический пример США)

Certainty in law is a category that is ambiguously perceived by the scientific legal community. We make an attempt to analyze the meaning and role of the category of certainty in the process of creating a stable legal system with historical continuity. On the example of the US and France legislation, we give polar examples of the implementation of certainty of lawprinciple. We conclude about the undoubted usefulness and necessity of preserving this principle in the Russian legal system. However, a study of the French experience of legal regulation has shown that the desire for certainty, achieved through an overly detailed regulation of public relations, only cre-ates additional problems of interpretation and law enforcement, strengthening legal nihilism and citizens' distrust of law. At the same time, the American model, implying some uncertainty of law, has shown its effectiveness in its historical example. The ambiguity and framework nature of the American Constitution and basic federal laws makes it possible to interpret and concretize their provisions in judicial precedents in different ways, depending on the era and socio-political situation, which contributes to the flexibility and stability of the US legal system. In conclusion, it is noted that domestic legislators need to strive for a gradual transition to the American model of implementing the principle of certainty of law, while providing for detailed regulation of public relations at the level of bylaws. Such an approach will preserve the historical continuity and existence of basic normative acts for several decades, preserve the stability and predictability of legal regulation.

A Behavioural-economic Perspective on Conflicts of Interest Among Shareholders, Debtholders, and Directors

Corporations have conflicts of interest among shareholders, debtholders and directors, and, corporate law gives each party avenues to pursue others, while protecting themselves. While debtholders are exposed to excessive risk-taking by directors and abuse of limited liability by shareholders, they are protected by legal institutions like directors’ liabilities to third parties and piercing of the corporate veil. Shareholders are subject to the risk of veil-piercing and director negligence, but they are protected by derivative suits. And directors, while under threat of liability suits by debtholders and shareholders, are protected by the business judgement rule, liability exemption and liability insurance of directors and officers (D&O). This web of legal institutions comprises a dual structure of economic and psychological factors, built upon economic incentives but also upon such psychological factors as bounded rationality, the chilling effect, the desire for certainty, loss aversion and the sense of fairness. Any change in the balance will affect their behaviour; greater protection of directors, for example, provokes greater risk-taking, both economically and psychologically. JEL: K22, G41, D91

Toward the Elimination of Subjectivity: From Francis Bacon to AI

Toward the Elimination of Subjectivity:From Francis Bacon to AI Joseph E. Davis (bio) we are living in a world being remade in the image of numbers. Everywhere we turn we encounter techniques and technologies of quantification and ubiquitous talk of algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), metrics, audit, statistics, and more. They have become a part of the fabric of daily life and business, of economic and institutional routine. No domain or discipline is free of their influence or immune to their spreading deployment. The highly touted virtues of this remaking are familiar: increased efficiency and productivity, institutional accountability and responsiveness, health and safety, and ease and convenience. While these are compelling practical benefits, the turn to quantification, indeed its relentless imposition, cannot be explained in terms of merely functional or instrumental value. Deeper ethical and philosophical commitments are driving current ambitions. To bring these commitments into focus, I want to consider some historical context. In the fervent embrace of the technologies of quantification, we are seeing an intensification of one of the master trends of modernity. For centuries, fueled by a desire for certainty and human betterment, a way of representing knowledge and persons in both science and administration (the two are closely linked) has been working itself out. Its trajectory has been toward an ever more austere understanding and increasing prizing of "objective" knowledge. This is a knowledge ideally free of our subjectivity and our embodiment; free, that is, of all those personal qualities that make us who we are; a [End Page 845] "knowledge without a knower" that can, in turn, be the basis for the conquest of nature, the taming of chance, the amplification of human powers, and the efficient and lawlike administration of social and political life. Human history is complicated, contingent, and layered, so speaking of a master trend or the unfolding of the logic of philosophical commitments risks an indefensible oversimplification and determinism. My goal here, however, is to trace a moral commitment, an epistemology, and an accompanying logic of representation for which I think it is justified to speak of a master trend, even while acknowledging that historians have shown that developments toward objectivity, quantification, and the effacing of the subject have not always been linear, univocal, or uncontested. And, importantly, as philosophers of science have stressed, representations of science have often been inconsistent with the actual practices of science. In drawing out this genealogy, I will focus on figures who articulated a unified view of science (natural and social), its all-encompassing epistemology and method, and its utilitarian and moral ends. From the seventeenth century forward, modern science has had great social ambitions and has never been content with drawing limits on its proper domain. As the pioneering statistician Karl Pearson once observed, "The goal of science is clear—it is nothing short of the complete interpretation of the universe" (1911, 14). The moral end that animates the whole project is of a universal beneficence, and this humanitarian stance has infused visions of the role of science whether the imagined picture of the good society is liberal or illiberal. The goal has been to get to an impartial knowledge, a knowledge beyond dispute, which will invariably conduce to human benefit. The deep commitments at work in this history continue to shape our world, our scientific practices, and our technological choices. In this history, we see reasons for the unbridled enthusiasm and sense of inevitability that surround algorithms, AI, and other forms of quantification. They promise to make good on old and cherished promises. [End Page 846] THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS In "Two Concepts of Liberty," his famous inaugural lecture as the Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, Isaiah Berlin observed that when the ends of life are agreed upon, the only questions left are the possible means. And these questions, he says, are not "political but technical," capable, that is to say, "of being settled by experts or machines." This is why, Berlin continues, those who put their faith in some immense, world-transforming phenomenon, like the final triumph of reason or the proletarian revolution, must believe that all political and moral problems can thereby be turned into technological...

The Humanization of Economic Life: The Legacy of Martin Buber

In this article, I explore how our economic life can be reconciled with Martin Buber’s norm of dialogical life or communion. Known for his lifelong advocacy of dialogue between persons and between nations, Buber has tirelessly emphasized the necessity of restoring immediacy between fellow beings. Every human being is called to communion with his and her fellow beings. Such fellowship is the precondition for a truly human life. Given the technological and bureaucratic organization of our political and economic lives, this fundamental need is not being fulfilled. Instead of communion, it is the will to dominate and objectify that is fostered and normalized. The transcendence of this inhuman condition is what is entailed by the transition to the I-Thou relation. I here explain what it means to approach someone as a Thou, Buber’s reconceptualization of love, and the relationship between unified souls and a wholesome economy.

Werteerziehung als Aufgabe der Familie – ein aktuelles Thema

During researching values, one of many basic questions is about how attitudes towards values develop, how values change during human life. Values are not congenital, even many international researches show that basic values like: love of neighbor, tolerance, respect, and the desire for certainty appear in all cultures as valid. One’s own orientation towards values is shaped throughout life. Development of attitudes towards values is never closed and is still conditioned by meeting new people – and personal life experience. Parents and other members of the family have a significant influence on building their own axiological orientation.

Transsexuality as Aesthetic Experience

Transsexuality as Aesthetic Experience

Human Rights Indicators and the Sovereignty of Technique

Indicators are increasingly used in international human rights monitoring, and time, expertise and resources are being devoted in ever-growing quantities to the production of more apparently powerful and sophisticated ways to objectively measure human rights performance. However, there is a certain level of resistance and scepticism to the statistical measurement of human rights on the part of many practitioners and advocates, who argue that it is reductionist and disruptive to their work. This article uses the writing of Michael Oakeshott as a lens through which to examine the shift towards indicators and argues that it is a project that is strongly characterized by rationalism: a desire for certainty, uniformity and clarity that neglects the experiential, tacit, and conversational. This not only provides a method for analysing the dangers present in the phenomenon but also explains why the reliance on indicators and other measurement methods seems destined to grow despite the reservations held by practitioners and scholars alike.

Getting Over the Originalist Fixation

New Originalism is founded on the Thesis, the claim that the meaning of a legal text is at the time of enactment. Professor Larry Solum has done the best job of articulating this thesis and explaining that it, in itself, does not have normative implications for legal theory. Using Solum as my interlocutor, I argue that the Fixation Thesis is false. Drawing from the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I argue that the Fixation Thesis falsifies the experience of meaning as the result of hermeneutical activity. By neglecting the ontology of human understanding, legal theorists permit the New Originalist program to get off the ground with an intuitive appeal to a fixed meaning. Later efforts to argue on behalf of a living constitution wilt in the face of the desire for constraint; who can successfully argue against the comforting fantasy of judges who discern objective meaning without having to make judgments?The Fixation Thesis is aptly named. As Freud emphasized, fixations are a failure to achieve full maturity by getting stuck at a stage of development. I argue that the Fixation Thesis represents a stunted inability to move beyond a certain stage of development in legal theory, and that we are best counseled to overcome the Fixation Thesis therapeutically. The desire for certainty is a powerful motivating force in our lives, giving rise to all manner of confused self-understandings that cloak our nature and provide some measure of psychological comfort in the face of our human condition. As painful as it may be, though, it is time to wean ourselves of the Fixation Thesis in law.

Cultivating Constructivism: Inspiring Intuition and Promoting Process and Pragmatism

Given the compelling strength of its theory, research, and practice, why does constructivism remain at the fringes of our field rather than comprising the mainstream? Constructivism assumes that humans create knowledge in ever-changing contexts, rather than the more common view that nature reveals to us its own innate, foundational “way that it is” that confers meaning to us. Acknowledging the human desire for certainty might inform our response to our critics. We might understand individuals’ choices between these two views as based on intuition, temperament, and core beliefs that determine whether one accepts dominant discourses or seeks alternatives. Advancing and fostering constructivism might benefit from appealing to the latter population. Two approaches might assist in that appeal. First, we might actively embrace a process view of ontology that comprehends phenomena in terms of interrelated, changing relationships rather than a container of fixed entities with innate permanent characteristics. Second, we might reaffirm the merits of American pragmatist philosophy, the foundation of constructivist psychology, demonstrating its current relevance by considering second- and third-generation contemporary pragmatists who emphasize the fundamentally human role in knowledge creation. Finally, I suggest that because the discipline of psychology studies how living organisms create knowledge, it could assume a greater role as the foundation of all disciplines.

The Most Agreeable of All Vices: Nietzsche as Virtue Epistemologist

It has been argued with some justice by commentators from Walter Kaufmann to Thomas Hurka that Nietzsche's positive ethical position is best understood as a variety of virtue theory – in particular, as a brand of perfectionism. For Nietzsche, value flows from character. Less attention has been paid, however, to the details of the virtues he identifies for himself and his type. This neglect, along with Nietzsche's frequent irony and non-standard usage, has obscured the fact that almost all the virtues he praises are intellectual rather than moral. The vices he most despises include dogmatism, intellectual partisanship, faith, boredom, the desire for certainty and pity. The virtues he most appreciates include curiosity, honesty, scepticism, creativity, the historical sense, intellectual courage and intellectual fastidiousness. These tables of values place Nietzsche squarely among so-called responsibilist virtue epistemologists, such as Lorraine Code and Linda Zagzebski, who emphasize that knowledge is infused with desire and affect. I argue that curiosity construed as the specification of the will to power in the domain of epistemology is the cardinal Nietzschean virtue, and that the others – especially intellectual courage and honesty – are presupposed by curiosity. Thus, Nietzsche turns out to accept his own peculiar brand of the thesis of the unity of virtue.

Resilience in Transboundary Water Governance: the Okavango River Basin

When the availability of a vital resource varies between times of overabundance and extreme scarcity, management regimes must manifest flexibility and authority to adapt while maintaining legitimacy. Unfortunately, the need for adaptability often conflicts with the desire for certainty in legal and regulatory regimes, and laws that fail to account for variability often result in conflict when the inevitable disturbance occurs. Additional keys to resilience are collaboration among physical scientists, political actors, local leaders, and other stakeholders, and, when the commons is shared among sovereign states, collaboration between and among institutions with authority to act at different scales or with respect to different aspects of an ecological system. At the scale of transboundary river basins, where treaties govern water utilization, particular treaty mechanisms can reduce conflict potential by fostering collaboration and accounting for change. One necessary element is a mechanism for coordination and collaboration at the scale of the basin. This could be satisfied by mechanisms ranging from informal networks to the establishment of an international commission to jointly manage water, but a mechanism for collaboration at the basin scale alone does not ensure sound water management. To better guide resource management, study of applied resilience theory has revealed a number of management practices that are integral for adaptive governance. Here, we describe key resilience principles for treaty design and adaptive governance and then apply the principles to a case study of one transboundary basin where the need and willingness to manage collaboratively and iteratively is high—the Okavango River Basin of southwest Africa. This descriptive and applied approach should be particularly instructive for treaty negotiators, transboundary resource managers, and should aid program developers.

The Effect of Stress on Cognitive Structuring

In this article, we outline a model of the factors involved in the relationship between stress and cognitive structuring. More specifically, we propose that the desire for certainty, the need for cognitive structure, and perceived efficacy at satisfying one’s epistemic needs intervene in the effect exerted by stress on cognitive structuring. We further suggest expanding the model to account for aspects of general information processing and to encompass the effect of various trait-like characteristics on the cognitive response to stress. We also offer an account of the possible effects of extreme stress on the model’s components.

Iterative Processes for Resilient Transboundary Water Management: Collaboratively Governing the Okavango for Adaptation

When the availability of a vital resource varies between times of overabundance and extreme scarcity, management regimes must manifest flexibility and authority to adapt while maintaining legitimacy. Unfortunately, the need for adaptability often conflicts with the desire for certainty in legal and regulatory regimes, and laws that fail to account for variability often result in conflict when the inevitable disturbance occurs. Additional keys to resilience are collaboration among physical scientists, political actors, local leaders, and other stakeholders, and, when the commons is shared among sovereign states, collaboration between and among institutions with authority to act at different scales or with respect to different aspects of an ecological system. At the scale of transboundary river basins, where treaties govern water utilization, particular treaty mechanisms can reduce conflict potential by fostering collaboration and accounting for change. One necessary element is a mechanism for coordination and collaboration at the scale of the basin. This could be satisfied by mechanisms ranging from informal networks to establishment of an international commission to jointly manage water, but a mechanism for collaboration at the basin scale alone does not ensure sound water management. To better guide resource management, study of applied resilience theory has revealed a number of management practices that are integral for adaptive governance. In this article we describe key resilience principles for treaty design and adaptive governance and then apply the principles to a case study of one transboundary basin where the need and willingness to manage collaboratively and iteratively is high- the Okavango River Basin of southwest Africa. This descriptive and applied approach should be particularly instructive for treaty negotiators, transboundary resource managers, and aid program developers.

Certainty. Entitlement – assurance – utopia

Referring to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological perspective, this article focuses on the phenomenon of uncertainty and analyzes the handling of this phenomenon. The utopian content of concepts of the self and the community, its meaning as a compensation for missing certainty, and socio-political techniques to offset the perceived lack of certainty will be elaborated. Referring to pseudo-confidence generating measurements in the context of social work the promise of certainty will be embedded in a perspective of the theory of power within the social relation between market, government and prognoses. Furthermore it will be shown how paradoxical interrelations, i.e. the anthropological need, requirement and desire for certainty on the one hand and the governmental promise of certainty as well as the non-feasibility of this promise, like a utopia of certainty, on the other hand, create a spiral of certainty.

“It's not like I can change my mind later”: Reversibility and decision timing in prostate cancer treatment decision-making

ObjectiveTo explore whether reversibility, decision timing, and uncertainty are relevant to men deciding on treatment for localized prostate cancer (LPC). DesignSecondary qualitative data analysis of unstructured interviews. MethodsContent analysis of previously collected qualitative data (31 individual interviews, 5 focus groups). We identified the frequency of references to reversibility, decision timing, and uncertainty and related sub-themes. ResultsWe identified eight themes: reversibility, timing of decision, number of options, “getting it over with,” “the way I make decisions,” uncertainty among experts, desire for certainty, and probability. Fifteen men mentioned reversibility in individual interviews; 13 mentioned the importance of the timing of their decision. Eleven mentioned the importance of the number of options; twelve “the way I make decisions.” Eleven men mentioned the uncertainty of experts, fourteen the desire to “get it over with,” and six a desire for certainty. ConclusionThis study provides compelling preliminary data suggesting that men consider the reversibility, decision timing, and uncertainty in the prostate cancer treatment decision. Practice implicationThese findings may be helpful in enhancing support for men facing the treatment decision.

De Corbière à Tristan: "Les amours jaunes," une quête de l'identité (review)

Reviewed by: De Corbière à Tristan: “Les Amours jaunes,” une quête de l’identité Heather Williams Rannou, Pascal . De Corbière à Tristan: “Les Amours jaunes,” une quête de l’identité. Paris: Champion, 2006. Pp. 560. ISBN 2745314823. Pascal Rannou's contention that Corbière's work must be understood as the result of cultural hybridity was already familiar to specialists from shorter pieces such as his contribution to Visages de Tristan Corbière, ed. Pascal Rannou (Morlaix: Skol Vreizh, 1995), but it seemed more a hypothesis than a definitive argument. Here, in contrast, we have the detailed, tightly structured and full argument in the form of an updated and revised version of his doctoral thesis of 1998 (initially published by Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, at Lille, 1999), and it has earned him the Prix Henri Régnier for 2007. "Cerner la 'bretonnité' éventuelle de notre auteur" (14) may seem a somewhat modest aim. Indeed to many it will seem a marginal, or even irrelevant one, as Corbière criticism tends to see the investigation of Breton culture as unnecessary for appreciating Corbière's originality, and views discussion of his Bretonness as sufficiently unimportant to be left in the ghetto of "Corbière criticism from and for Brittany." However, Rannou shows this attitude to be caught in the trap set by Verlaine over a century ago in Les Poètes maudits, when he claimed to prefer the Breton Corbière to the Parisian. Rannou exposes critics from Brittany, France and beyond as anti-Breton, or shows how they have misunderstood the (Francophone bourgeois) cultural milieu into which Corbière was born, overstated his knowledge of the Breton language and culture, or even been too pro-Breton. Having set the record straight, with a thorough état present, Rannou's contribution in this study is to demonstrate that [End Page 173] Corbière's encounter with Breton culture plays a key part in the multifaceted search for identity and voice that can be traced in Les Amours jaunes. Taking "la problématique identitaire" as its main issue and organizing principle, this book is highly ambitious both in the boldness of its vision and the thoroughness of its investigation. Rannou posits a tripartite movement, from what he calls "Corbière" (the author), to "Tristan," the "voix singulière et multiple" (134), that is the creation and projection of the author. The first stage in the progression from one to the other is a fragmentation of voice that is discernable in the interplay of various "responsables de la parole" (74), which he analyses in a selection of poems. The second is the rejection and denial of the culture of origin, that is the Francophone bourgeoisie of Morlaix (for this Rannou's analysis inventories clothes, food, education, the canon, Romantic poetry, religion, the conception of woman, versification, language in the sense of "bon usage"). This rejection leads to a "désarroi identitaire profond," and a sense of "aliénation" or exile, which Rannou then explores with the help of theorists Kristeva and Sélim Abou. The third stage is a desire for certainty, and the affirmation of an identity, which is where Bretonness comes in, as it offers an alternative culture, just as Bohemian Parisian culture posed an alternative. Breton culture is only one way in which "Tristan" the projection searches for an identity, in a culture "dont son origine familiale aurait dû lui interdire l'accès" (391), but discussion of this particular way is also the crux of the book: "la partie où nous pensons avoir le plus d'informations originales à donner" (391) states Rannou. His assessment of Corbière's likely exposure to Breton culture proves enlightening. An authoritative review of the Bretonisms in his language was long overdue, and sets us straight on calques, syntax, lexical exoticism, supposed "mistakes" and so forth. This provides a definitive correction of Verlaine's 'Breton bretonnant' to "bretonnant approximatif" (405), with Rannou concluding that Corbière had a "connaissance profonde," but not a "connaissance érudite" of Breton culture. More importantly Rannou has finally demolished the dichotomy between Paris and Brittany that was taken for granted by generations of critics, and was also attributable...