Unitary Concept Research Articles

To the origins of the 'unitary psychosis' doctrine: from Aretaeus to V. Chiarugi

The concepts of the authors of 'unitary psychosis' doctrine preceeding the famous concepts of the XIX-th century authors J. Guislain, A. Zeller and W. Griesinger are analyzed. The beginnings of unitary psychosis doctrine are presented in the works of the antiquity period physician Aretaeus the Cappadician (II century), the founder of neurology, the English physician Thomas Willis (XVII century), the author of the term 'neurosis', the Scottish physician W. Cullen and the Florentine psychiatrist V. Chiarugi (XVIII century). The notions of partial and general insanity and some counter-arguments of the opponents of unitary psychosis concept are also discussed.

Back to Jackson or ahead to Jackson? Who brought a contemporary perspective to Jackson's conception?

One hundred and twenty years ago, J. Jackson summarized the results of his research in his seminal lecture, where he used epilepsy, as a model for the analysis of the structural-functional organization of the central nervous system. He revealed a mechanism of epileptic seizure and showed that any epilepsy, including the 'genuine' one, had focal start. However, a dichotomic conception became firmly established later. In this article, basic stages of further development of the problem are discussed and contribution of the Russian-Soviet-Russian neurological school to the return on the modern level to Jackson's unitary conception of epilepsy and a role of epileptic systems forming different courses of epileptic activity flow from epileptic focus to other cerebral structures are emphasized.

Monism and Meliorism

In 1887 the Open Court Publishing Company had its founding in a philosophy of monism. The company’s proprietor Edward C. Hegeler began the enterprise in an effort to promote his personal philosophic, religious, and moral ideas. He believed that these ideas could be conciliated with the growing scientific trends of the late nineteenth century, and that monism was the intellectual framework for doing so. Paul Carus, the editor of the journals The Open Court and The Monist, joined Hegeler as an intellectual ally in this regard. For thirty years he openly defended the doctrines of monism in countless articles and books, successfully grounding the Open Court on this philosophy. This paper uncovers the historical development of the philosophical origin of the Open Court as it began with Hegeler’s personal religious motives, his ideological tension with the original editor Benjamin Underwood, and his embrace of the monistic writings of Paul Carus. It also examines Hegeler’s and Carus’s publications and personal letters from the 1880s and 1890s in order to determine the fundamental doctrines of their unique sense of monism. In Carus’s writings in particular is proposed a monism of causality that is compatible with a deterministic worldview and a unitary conception of the sciences. Also, both Carus and Hegeler propose a monistic ethics of meliorism that conceives the diverse periods of human history to be evolving toward the one final end of the moral improvement of humankind. While these are the positive doctrines that they accept, they further reject the antitheses of philosophical dualism and irreligious attitude of agnosticism of all varieties.

Simion Bărnuţiu – Pioneer in the development of the law sciences and of the legal education in Romania

Abstract The author analyses in this paper S. Bărnuţiu’s contribution to the establishment of the legal education and to the development of the sciences of the Law in the Romanian area during the mid-19th century. Adept of the natural law philosophy, ardent promotor of human and people’s rights, Bărnuţiu remains a personality of reference in the Romanians’ history not only for being the political leader and ideologist of the Transylvanian 1848 Revolution, but also for establishing the legal education at the University of Iasi by inspiring himself from the curriculum of the profile schools of law from the Western Europe. Having a unitary conception on the law and on the history of law, considering the law from a systemic perspective, Bărnuţiu contributed into the edification of a modern, constitutional, and democratic State in the united Romanian Principalities.

Republication of “Acceptability of Behavioral lnterventions Used in Classrooms: The Influence of Amount of Teacher Time, Severity of Behavior Problem, and Type of Intervention”

This article explored factors related to teacher judgments that an intervention is either acceptable or unacceptable for use in typical classroom environments. The acceptability of various interventions was assessed by having 180 preservice and student teachers read case studies involving a classroom intervention and then judging the acceptability of the intervention according to five factors — whether the intervention was considered generally acceptable, whether it posed undue risk to the child, whether it required excessive teacher time, whether it had negative effects on nontarget children, and whether it required such high levels of teacher skill that the typical teacher could not implement it. The major outcomes of the study included: (a) the determination that acceptability of a classroom intervention is not a unitary concept, rather it embodies five components; (b) the construction of a reliable instrument for assessing the acceptability of classroom interventions; and(c) the finding that various interventions differ markedly in their acceptability. Results are discussed in terms of relevance to developing interventions that are effective and yet can be utilized by regular classroom teachers.

Nietzsche Or Aristotle? Reflections on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue

Nietzsche Or Aristotle? Reflections on Alasdair MacIntyre's <i>After Virtue</i>

Ownership of Digital Assets and the Numerus Clausus of Legal Objects

The classical approach to property law can still be applied to legal objects which have historically been accepted as such: physical things, particularly land and also movable property, monetary claims and intellectual property. Next to the numerus clausus of property rights, limiting their number and content, in the civil law strengthened by the unitary concept of ownership, the number and type of legal objects can also be characterised as a numerus clausus. The type of object is decisive for the type of applicable property right. An example can be found in, e.g., the new Dutch Civil Code in which ownership is defined as the most complete right concerning a physical thing. Consequently, if the thing is not physical, that particular object cannot be “owned”. This does not mean that no primary right (in the sense of the maximum of powers, rights, privileges and immunities) exists, but it is not ownership, but entitlement. The legal object is therefore the qualifier for the property right to be applied. In classical property law, if an asset could be qualified as a legal object, still no property right could exist if not a second leading principle had been fulfilled: transparency, demanding a specific description of the object concerned and publicity (balanced by the demands of privacy). After a comparative analysis of leading cases and particularly analysing the new article 567, par. 2, of the Luxemburg Commercial Code, it seems that – perhaps more implicitly than explicitly and more hesitatingly than boldly – data have been accepted as a new legal object. The difficulties seem more to arise from the requirement of specificity than, among other problems, from the classification of data as tangible or non-tangible.

Examining validity in computerized dynamic assessment

Abstract Computerized dynamic assessment (CDA) posits itself as a new type of assessment that includes mediation in the assessment process. Proponents of dynamic assessment (DA) in general and CDA in particular argue that the goals of DA are in congruence with the concept of validity that underscores the social consequences of test use and the integration of learning and assessment (Sternberg &amp; Grigorenko, 2002; Poehner, 2008; Shabani, 2012;). However, empirical research on CDA falls short in supporting such an argument. Empirical studies on CDA are riddled with ill-defined constructs and insufficient supporting evidence in regard to the aspects of validity postulated by Messick (1989, 1990, 1996). Due to the scarcity of research on CDA, this paper explores the potentials and the viability of this intervention-based assessment in computer assisted language testing context in light of its conformity with Messick’s unitary view of validity. The paper begins with a discussion of the theoretical foundations and models of DA. It then proceeds to discuss the differences between DA and non-dynamic assessment (NDA) measures before critically appraising the empirical studies on CDA. The critical review of the findings in CDA literature aims at shedding light on some drawbacks in the design of CDA research and the compatibility of the concept of construct validity in CDA with Messick’s (1989) unitary concept of validity. The review of CDA concludes with some recommendations for rectifying gaps to establish CDA in a more prominent position in computerized language testing.

Rethinking Ethiopian Secured Transactions Law through comparative perspective: lessons from the Uniform Commercial Code of the US

Various countries have reformed their secured transaction laws recognizing the significance of modern secured transactions law in enhancing access to credit and economic development. Ethiopia has not undertaken comprehensive secured transactions law reform, despite the demonstrable mismatch between the legal regime governing security interests and the country’s current political, economic and commercial realities. In-depth analysis of the Ethiopian secured transactions law is made in this article in the light of Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Art 9, English, and French secured transactions laws and the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) Model law and the experience of civil law jurisdiction of Louisiana. I argue that secured transaction law reform in Ethiopia can be implemented based on UCC Art. 9 with some adjustment in light of Louisiana’s experience. The article uses the unitary concept of security interest and floating lien to exemplify the supremacy of the approaches and policies of UCC Art. 9 and its suitability as a model for potential secured transactions law reform in Ethiopia.Keywords: Credit market, UCC, unitary concept/theory, functional approach, floating lien, floating charge, security interest, self-help repossession, efficiency

Perpetrator Responses to Victim Confrontation: DARVO and Victim Self-Blame

ABSTRACTPerpetrators of violence often use a strategy of Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO) to confuse and silence their victims. Although some previous research has examined the individual elements of DARVO, this is the first study to directly examine DARVO as a unitary concept and to investigate how it relates to feelings of self-blame among victims. Subsequently, 138 undergraduate students were asked to report on a time they confronted an individual over a wrong-doing. DARVO was assessed with a new measure constructed for this study. Analyses revealed that: (1) DARVO was commonly used by individuals who were confronted; (2) women were more likely to be exposed to DARVO than men during confrontations; (3) the three components of DARVO were positively correlated, supporting the theoretical construction of DARVO; and (4) higher levels of exposure to DARVO during a confrontation were associated with increased perceptions of self-blame among the confronters. These results provide evidence for the existence of DARVO as a perpetrator strategy and establish a relationship between DARVO exposure and feelings of self-blame. Exploring DARVO aids in understanding how perpetrators are able to enforce victims’ silence through the mechanism of self-blame.

Translatio Andalusiae. La construction d’une identité juive locale dans le Sud de la France

This article explores the question of national group cohesion among the Jews of southern France. The numerous political borders and the expulsion of the Jews from Languedoc (1306) afford us the opportunity to examine local – Provencal – Jewish group identity, in contrast to a broader Jewish conception of nationhood. An analysis of some Hebrew documents demonstrates the significance of the expulsion of the Jews as the “destruction of my native land”. This is one enlightening example of a unitary socio-cultural conception of the Provencal region, which did not recognize political borders. wThe primary marker of this Provencal identity was their Andalusian Jewish tradition.

THE KNOWN UNKNOWN: IN SEARCH FOR A LEGAL STRUCTURE OF THE SIGNIFICANCE CRITERION OF THE SIEC TEST

This article establishes the thesis that the notion of “significant” in the SIEC test of the European Merger Control Regulation lacks a clear legal concept in the current decisional practice. Antitrust economists and authorities have developed a set of theories of harm and have constantly refined them. Yet these theories often do not explain when certain price-effects or other implications of a merger have reached an intensity that is “significant” in the meaning of Article 2 EU Merger Regulation (EUMR).1 This renders the notion of significance a “known unknown” in legal terms. It is argued here that this legal uncertainty as to the relevant definition of “significant” has led to an increase in discretion in the handling of merger cases, a bias toward the detrimental effects of mergers, and a deflation of potential efficiency considerations. The article purports that, as a consequence, mergers are often treated similarly to cartels in concentrating on the elimination of competition and regarding efficiencies as a rare exemption for which the parties carry the burden of proof. Against this background, it shall be attempted to construe a unitary concept of significance that integrates efficiency analysis and includes a differentiated allocation of the burdens of proof for procompetitive and anticompetitive effects of mergers.

Puffed-up but shaky selves: State self-esteem level and variability in narcissists.

Different theoretical conceptualizations characterize grandiose narcissists by high, yet fragile self-esteem. Empirical evidence, however, has been inconsistent, particularly regarding the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem fragility (i.e., self-esteem variability). Here, we aim at unraveling this inconsistency by disentangling the effects of two theoretically distinct facets of narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry) on the two aspects of state self-esteem (i.e., level and variability). We report on data from a laboratory-based and two field-based studies (total N = 596) in realistic social contexts, capturing momentary, daily, and weekly fluctuations of state self-esteem. To estimate unbiased effects of narcissism on the level and variability of self-esteem within one model, we applied mixed-effects location scale models. Results of the three studies and their meta-analytical integration indicated that narcissism is positively linked to self-esteem level and variability. When distinguishing between admiration and rivalry, however, an important dissociation was identified: Admiration was related to high (and rather stable) levels of state self-esteem, whereas rivalry was related to (rather low and) fragile self-esteem. Analyses on underlying processes suggest that effects of rivalry on self-esteem variability are based on stronger decreases in self-esteem from one assessment to the next, particularly after a perceived lack of social inclusion. The revealed differentiated effects of admiration and rivalry explain why the analysis of narcissism as a unitary concept has led to the inconsistent past findings and provide deeper insights into the intrapersonal dynamics of grandiose narcissism governing state self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record

The conception of public interest in Dutch flood risk management: Untouchable or transforming?

The governance of flood risks varies considerably in different parts of the world. Obviously this is due to the nature and characteristics of flood risks, but in part governance approaches vary because of political differences in the nature of governance itself. What is ‘appropriate’ in this respect depends partly on the prevailing conceptions of the public interest in a country. By applying Alexander’s (2002) categorization of public interest to flood risk management practices in The Netherlands, we show that the strongly unitary conception of the public interest (a historic ‘flood risk safety for all’), is intertwined with a state-based, sector-based, hydro-technical governance and expertise system. Although this conception is very strong it is no longer self-evident. Because of changing conceptions of governance in general and because of the felt necessity to adapt to climate change, Dutch flood risk management is gradually changing. Increasingly, the Dutch government has to deal with more dialogical and utilitarian approaches to public interest in the governance of flood risks. The Dutch approach is rooted in community-based interests in flood protection and was centralized and rationalized during the 19th and 20th century. The current flood risk standards are based upon a coarse utilitarian benefit-cost analysis, but evolved into mostly a unitary idea of national safety materialized in law by statutory flood risk standards. The findings show that this unitary concept and status of the public interest of flood risk safety has not diminished; it must, however, increasingly take into account the importance of both processes of decision making (dialogues, deliberations) and neighboring public interests. We conclude that the Dutch conception of the public interest on flood safety is still strong but nevertheless gradually changing, not the least because of a general availability of the information and technology to calculate and differentiate risks.

The Anglosphere in the Brexit Referendum

The Anglosphere was one of the surprise winners of the 2016 referendum campaign. As an explicitly stated concept it appeared early on in the campaign but soon faded from view. But where it did play a part in the campaign was less as a unitary concept but more in its constituent parts: sometimes as an example to emulate and at other times as another layer of global interference to reject. The Anglosphere assumed increased importance after the shock result as Leave leaders sought to elaborate an alternative to Europe that they seemed not to have developed deeply before 24 June.

Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?

This paper re-examines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these points shed much-needed light on the relationship between objective and subjective truth, conceived not as different kinds or species of truth but as different ways in which truth manifests itself as a standard of success across different contexts of inquiry.

The Many Saliences of Justice Michael D. Ryan: A Comparative Empirical Analysis of Concepts of Salience as Applied in State Appellate Courts

This Essay began as an effort to honor the work of the late Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael D. Ryan by examining the impact of his work on Arizona law through the lens of his “most important” opinions. As with all things touched by Justice Ryan it has become something greater than its initial purpose. The Author began this project by surveying three hundred seven Arizona judges about Justice Ryan’s published opinions. The results of this survey were quite surprising. Rather than identifying a common core of important opinions, the survey identified two mutually exclusive sets of important opinions: one for the appellate court and the other for the trial court. In an effort to understand this result, the Author reviewed the salience literature (which identifies measures of case or issue importance) and identified fourteen measures of salience. The application of those measures to Justice Ryan’s published opinions only confirmed the results of the survey because no two measures identified the same set (or even similar sets) of opinions as important. This empirical analysis and review of Justice Ryan’s published opinions demonstrated three things. First, Justice Ryan’s opinions matter to a wide range of people including grandparents, illegal aliens, homeowners, schoolchildren, employees, and convicted felons on death row. Second, the salience literature does not identify a single unitary concept of importance, but rather many different concepts of importance. Finally, the empirical analysis discussed herein unequivocally demonstrates that whether an opinion is important depends upon who you ask.

Redeeming the Chinese modernity? Zen Buddhism, culture-led development and local governance in Xinxing County, China

This article explores culture-led urban development in Xinxing County, Guangdong Province. Arguing for the relevance of cultural governance to the study of culture-led development in China, it heeds to the specific cultural knowledge and discourses that frame policy, and thinks critically on the creation of a unitary, all-encompassing idea of culture, which many culture-led development projects fall prey to. Empirically, this article presents a study of the Ecological Tourism Industrial Park of the Sixth Patriarch’s Hometown, a high-end leisure and recreation complex. It first sketches the ways in which Zen is re-packaged as a redeeming force that cures the alienating effects of modernisation. It moves to an analysis of the production of culturally encoded consumption spaces envisioned by the Plan of the Ecological Tourism Industrial Park of the Sixth Patriarch’s Hometown. Finally, this article reflects on how the Ecological Tourism Industrial Park of the Sixth Patriarch’s Hometown imposes a dominant, unitary conception of local culture, excluding pre-established practices and routines that connect local people and Zen in lived and habitual ways, yet are devalued by the notion of Zen as high-end symbolic goods.

'&lt;i&gt;Unit terms thinking&lt;/i&gt;' as first stage in modelling and simulating behaviour of technical 'matter systems'

'Unit terms thinking' is an approach that formalises the technical matter systems and the correlated knowledge in scientific, unitary concepts, as cause-effects variables, involved structure elements, modified inner interconnections, sequenced system states, etc., of the investigated objects. The subject covers the knowledge dominion of the applied chemistry, materials science, food and agricultural sciences and biotechnologies, focused on the industrial products. 'Unit terms thinking' helps to 'enter' in the technical systems structures, extending to the inner of their 'black-boxes' the conventional engineering unitary approaches to processes stated at the macroscale. The fundamental concept of property of a technical 'body' is formally established as unit property based on an array of basic unit terms. For this purpose, an analogical behaviour-model of the system is presented, stated on three 'input/output' sub-models; two 'black-box', stated on matter/energy exchanges and information processing; and one 'white-box', focused on the inner transformations mechanisms. A fourth hybrid grey-box model, allows to draw all current quantitative math models employed in modelling the technical properties of the materials (unit systems laws).

'&lt;i&gt;Unit terms thinking&lt;/i&gt;' as first stage in modelling and simulating behaviour of technical 'matter systems'

'Unit terms thinking' is an approach that formalises the technical matter systems and the correlated knowledge in scientific, unitary concepts, as cause-effects variables, involved structure elements, modified inner interconnections, sequenced system states, etc., of the investigated objects. The subject covers the knowledge dominion of the applied chemistry, materials science, food and agricultural sciences and biotechnologies, focused on the industrial products. 'Unit terms thinking' helps to 'enter' in the technical systems structures, extending to the inner of their 'black-boxes' the conventional engineering unitary approaches to processes stated at the macroscale. The fundamental concept of property of a technical 'body' is formally established as unit property based on an array of basic unit terms. For this purpose, an analogical behaviour-model of the system is presented, stated on three 'input/output' sub-models; two 'black-box', stated on matter/energy exchanges and information processing; and one 'white-box', focused on the inner transformations mechanisms. A fourth hybrid grey-box model, allows to draw all current quantitative math models employed in modelling the technical properties of the materials (unit systems laws).