Imaginary Situations Research Articles

Relativism and persistence

[FIRST PARAGRAPHS] Philosophers often talk as if what it takes for a person to persist through time were up to us, as individuals or as a linguistic community, to decide. In most ordinary situations it might be fully determinate whether someone has survived or perished: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, it is clear enough that you will still exist ten minutes from now, for example. But there is no shortage of actual and imaginary situations where it is not so clear whether one survives. Here reasonable people may disagree. There are "fission" cases where each of one's cerebral hemispheres is transplanted into a different head; Star-Trek-style "teletransportation" stories; actual cases of brain damage so severe that one can never again regain consciousness, even though one's circulation, breathing, digestion, and other "animal" functions continue; and stories where one's brain cells are gradually removed and replaced by cells from someone else, to name only a few favorites. In many such cases we say, correctly, that the person in question has perished; that is the right answer to the question, Has she survived? But in some of those very situations, we are told that it might have been correct to give the opposite answer, and say that the person perished--even if nothing different happened to her. Some philosophers say that we are free to choose at random between saying that the person has survived and saying that she has ceased to exist; both are equally correct descriptions of the same event. Others say that a different answer to the question, Has the person survived? is in fact false, but would be true if we had a different concept of personal identity, or if our conventions for individuating people were different--in short, if we thought and spoke differently.

Discussion Starters: Speaking Fluency Activities for Advanced ESL/EFL Students

One of the most common problems facing ESL teachers is the advanced speaking class in which the most confident students dominate the discussion and the weaker students quickly withdraw. Discussion Starters is designed to balance the oral participation of all the students in the class and thus promote an environment in which everyone has not only a chance but a real need to speak out.Each unit contains a relatively small number of exercises (usually around five) which provide speaking interaction about a central topic or idea. In most of these activities, students must work together in pairs or small groups to reach a conclusion about a topic. Other discussion books on the market today often use imaginary situations for discussion (e.g., If you had a million dollars, what would you do?). The activities and tasks in Discussion Starters are real situations from all over the world. When students are asked what they would do in a given situation or how a judge should rule in a case, all the material is real.Naturally, teachers may assign additional readings to supplement the topics in Discussion Starters; however, there is ample background material in the text to start students on their way to a discussion. Thus, students can spend their class time speaking about and discussing topics rather than reading about them. A unique and important feature of this text is the inclusion of homework exercises that call on students to sort out their ideas and opinions before coming to class. This allows all students to be prepared for the speaking activities in class and is of special importance to the weaker, less confident non- native speakers.

Caregivers' Sensitivity to Conflict:

Thirty female caregivers of elderly people living in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) volunteered to participate in the study. They were interviewed in-depth concerning their experience of caring. Their picture of caring suggests the existence of a conflict in the relationship between carer and care receiver and the caregivers' sensitivity to that conflict. This paper provides the background for and the results of using the vignette methodology to identify coping strategies among the 30 female caregivers. The caregivers' answers to the imaginary situations were found to be related to their real lief cases. In response to vignettes the caregivers exhibited a greater sensitivity to conflictual situations, felt less guilty about not fulfilling their caregiving responsibility, and reported reaching a breaking point after which they were not eager to continue. The vignette technique is introduced as a methodology for increasing insight into the issue of conflict in the caring relationship.

Use of Roleplaying in Bibliogrpahic Instruction

Roleplaying is often envisioned as acting - which it can be. It can involve imaginary worlds and situations, but in its basic state, it is a learning environment which is structured and moderated by the instructor in which the student is an active participant. Its strength as a teaching technique is that it allows students with different learning styles to transition from the concrete to the abstract while they master the underlying concepts. Because the student is actively involved, roleplaynig is a technique of active learning

Atypical Emotions in Relationships as Correlates of the MMPI

College student subjects (N = 77) were assessed for atypical emotional experience in each of 10 relationships, using the Situation Affect Test (Harrison, 1986). Atypical emotions in each relationship were assessed by 17 imaginary situations in which subjects' reported feelings were compared with normative expectations. The 10 relationship scores were correlated with 15 standard scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Thirty-two of the 150 resulting correlations were statistically significant (p < .05), a number shown to be well above chance expectations. Stepdown analyses showed that the Si, F, Sc, and Ma scores were positively related to atypical feelings in the 10 relationships; in contrast, the Es, Mf, and Lie scores were related to typical feelings. Atypical feelings in relation to one's self, sweetheart, prospective children, siblings, and mother were correlated (p < .05) with the MMPI scales. It is suggested that these results can be used to supplement standard MMPI interpretation in specifying possibly difficult or atypical relationships.

Focus groups in tropical diseases research

Focus groups have been used since the 1940s although recently they have been used in social and behavioral research. Focus groups are specific to disease or programs: family planning primary health care nutrition epilepsy and HIV or AIDS. In focus groups the moderator uses proven questioning to stimulate discussion to understand beliefs of certain population. Sessions are held in a relaxed natural setting and they are tape recorded. The unbiased attitude of the moderator with questions from the general to the specific clarifies issues and it is the precondition of success. Hypothetical questions test attitudes and normative statements and values in imaginary situations. Informal group discussions utilize village networks in a natural setting that include kin and neighbors and deal with management of illnesses while repairing nets watching over children. Focus groups are homogeneous to maximize interaction. The number of such groups in subject to debate. In Tunisia 61 groups were conducted in 4 weeks during the diarrheal season. 642 women were interviewed by 3 moderators to assess community knowledge. In contrast 1 focus group with 5-6 members in each of 7 ethnic groups may not be adequate for drawing conclusions. Focus groups provide a preliminary phase in quantitative study by narrowing research scope. Methodological issues relate to personal style content equipment failure and accuracy of analysis based on transcripts. Group dynamics also depend on size: single-respondent interviews days and mini groups. The focus group is a complementary tool for the analysis of data collected by other methods of research.

Eye on Biology

Biology is the most visual of the sciences. This comment by Phillip Ritterbush (1968b) is almost a truism; biology is so involved with visual imagery that tend take this for granted. Yet it is just such imagery that initially drew many of us the field. For example, W.I.B. Beveridge (1950) notes that ,naturalists and zoologists are often attracted study a group of animals because they find their appearance pleasing. Of course, there is more a biologist's use of vision than just looking at the beauties of nature. Agnes Arber (1954) called her book on the philosophy of biology The Mind and the Eye point up the complex relationship that exists between the two in the formation of images. And Rene Dubos (1961) thought one of the most creative aspects of the human mind was the ability to create an image-more precisely, select from the countless and amorphous facts and events which impinge upon us a few that each individual can organize into a definite pattern which is meaningful him. According Howard Gruber (1978), who studied Darwin's use of imagery, are constructed rather than chosen. They carry the specific message the individual scientist is trying formulate and convey, and they, in turn, regulate the future course of that work. What Arber, Dubos and Gruber are describing is what Rudolf Arnheim (1969) would call visual thinking, the union of perception and cognition. These have often been treated as separate mental activities, with cognition considered a higher function than perception. To Arnheim (1986) it is essential go beyond the traditional notion that pictures provide the mere raw material and that begins only after the information has been received. Rather, thinking originates in the perceptual sphere, and . .. much of the truly creative exertion of the mind in any field and at any level consists in perceptual operations (1969). In discussing ways teach visual thinking, Doug Stewart (1985) says images provide a rich, expressive medium for thought that complements analytical and offers quicker, more unexpected jumps and connections. While Arnheim and Stewart stress the importance of visual in all fields, it is particularly important in the sciences: Often defying verbal classification, phenomena and functions in the world of and mathematics depend upon visual translation (Preusser 1965). Jacob Bronowski (1978) has noted that science uses and experiments with imaginary situations, exactly as art does. He goes on say that many people see reasoning, and therefore science, as a different activity from imaging. But for him reasoning is constructed of movable images, and he thinks we do great harm children in their education when accustom them separate reason from imagination. In his book Experiences in Visual Thinking, Robert McKim (1980) says that reading, writing and arithmetic are practiced as skills that separate children from sensory experience and that this one-sided education leads 1visual atrophy. Richard Preusser (1965) sees this as a particular problem in the sciences because scientific curiosity leading discovery and invention needs the stimulus of visual as well as mental contemplation. And Robert Wolff (1965) asks: Is not the biologist critically handicapped in his task of revealing the structure of organic life students whose visual acuity and curiosity have never been seriously challenged by education before entering the biology lab? This is obviously a question that as biology teachers must consider. We have look at how now use and visual in the classroom and lab, and how could use them more effectively.

The grouping of affect terms according to the situations that elicit them: A test of a cognitive theory of emotion

A central assumption of a cognitive theory of emotion is that affect terms contain a large amount of information about the kinds of situations that elicited them. To the extent that various situations elicit the same feelings in everyone, reactions to situations that arouse the same emotion should be described by affect terms that are more or less synonymous: groups of affect terms should be defined by the fact that terms within each group are used in response to some situations and not in response to others. To test this hypothesis, 81 subjects were presented with 170 imaginary situations, and asked to describe (using one term of their own choosing) how most people would feel as the central character in that situation, and to describe how they themselves would feel. Similarity coefficients between all pairs of 197 affect terms were computed, using situations as N. Factor analysis of the variance-covariance matrix of similarity coefficients yielded 32 (out of 32) semantically coherent clusters of affect terms. The results were interpreted to mean that affects normatively have situational (and therefore cognitive) antecedents as well as connotative meanings, modes of bodily expression, and consequences for action. It is further suggested that the situational meanings of affect terms are important if one wishes to use a subject's feelings about a situation to predict his subsequent behavior.

A Dictionary of Affect in Language: II. Word Inclusion and Additional Validation

Validation for the bipolar two-dimensional ratings of the “Dictionary of Affect in Language” word list of Sweeney and Whissell is deduced on the basis of 7 single-word descriptors of potential emotional reactions to imaginary situations produced by 27 subjects for each of 9 situations. Mean scores for Pleasantness and Activation in each situation, based on ratings from the list, showed significant differences associated with situations. Results for Pleasantness completely mirrored a priori predictions, while those for Activation were somewhat less systematic. Of the 2676 words produced by subjects, only 14% (173 distinct words) were not included in the original list.

Oral History and the Boundaries of Fiction

I FLINCHED when I saw it. Never before had the contents of The Public Historian prompted such a visceral reaction. But there it was, undeniably, on pages 38 and 39 of the Winter 1984 issue of this quarterly journal.1 The right-hand page boldly heralded an essay by John E. Wills, Jr., entitled Taking Historical Novels Seriously. Facing from the left-hand page was a photograph illustrating three books all bedecked with dust-jacket costumes, all propped atop a horizontal copy of An Explanation of World History, the massive tome by William L. Langer, Jr. The visual message was unmistakable: these historical novels can elucidate aspects of mankind's diverse adventures through time. I had no quarrel with two of these books, Ole E. Rolvaag's saga of Norwegian-American pioneers the austere Dakota Territory, Giants the Earth, and James Clavell's epic of Japan, Sh6gun. But the third was Alex Haley's Roots. For this oral historian the juxtaposition was unnerving. Roots is historical fiction? Others classify it as oral history. Is oral history fiction? The implications were hardly comforting. Actually, Wills has little to say about Roots beyond acknowledging it owed its appeal both to its link to an actual family story and to Haley's skill developing imaginary situations and dialogue that went well beyond his family traditions. Wills is harsher with the televised version of Roots: It would be easy to carp at the latter, with its idyllic West Africa, its Hollywood-style romanticization of relations among slaves, and its omission of so much of the information that enriches the book. Nonetheless, he concedes that in the extraordinary performances of its black actors and the reaching and moving of huge numbers of people who don't read books at all, it went far beyond the book as a national political and moral event.2

Perceived Locus of Causality as a Variable Affecting Use of Emotional Words

The role of locus of causality (attribution: self, none or other) and event outcome (success or failure) in the use of emotional words was addressed when 129 subjects rated 20 emotions in terms of how strongly they would feel them in 6 imaginary situations. Significant main effects were associated with outcome (for 17 words) and with locus of causality (10 words). The interaction of locus and outcome was also significant (5 times). Parallels are drawn between the dimensions of attribution (including locus) and the dimensions of affective space.

The relationship between some beliefs held by physicians and their life-prolonging decisions.

A Guttman scale was developed to elicit physicians' tendencies in regard to life-prolonging decisions. The great majority (79.4%) of the 92 physicians in the sample favored withdrawing treatment from terminally ill patients in at least two out of three imaginary situations. A comparison of the sample's life-prolonging decisions by their beliefs in God and afterlife yielded no significant differences. Comparison of the sample's life-prolonging decisions by their beliefs about death indicated that physicians who favored withdrawal of treatment from terminally ill patients viewed death more as a negative than as a neutral or positive phenomenon.

2 Cultural Processes

Hypotheses on the nature and processes of culture can be framed from rough observation and general knowledge of cultural situations, or even from logic and imaginary situations, but to test these assumptions one must have more than theory. Thus, although the archaeologist's raw data are for the most part artifacts, from which his deductions about ancient culture are largely inferred and his discipline's role in contributing to culture theory is correspondingly limited, nevertheless this limitation has its advantage in that it forces this particular branch of anthropology to conclusions via data that, for the very reason that they are objects, can usually be dealt with quantitatively. Linguistics, physical anthropology, and certain aspects of ethnology share this characteristic with archaeology, but only linguistics, genetics, anthropometry, and a few of the ethnological studies (for example, kinship) have taken full advantage of it.

In Defense of Hedonism

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionIn Defense of HedonismD. H. MonroD. H. Monro Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 60, Number 4Jul., 1950 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/290734 Views: 5Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.