Procrastination as putting off until tomorrow what one had intended to do today is well-known tendency in everyday life. In an attempt to understand the character of procrastination in different life-domains, a large body of research has been accumulated over the last decades. This article was aimed to evaluate a specific decisional procrastination of school-to-work transition that is treated as maturity postponement. Two studies are reported examining SWT procrastination defined as career indecision among Polish students graduating universities. In (...) Study 1, attitudinal and identity statuses were analyzed as correlates of career procrastination. A path analysis conducted for the model, which was aimed to explain the influence of career self-efficacy and occupational commitment on career indecision, revealed its very good fitness. Those two independent variables explain 10% of career indecision variance. Stepwise multiple regression analyses conducted to ascertain relationship of five identity statuses to procrastination measure showed that Commitment Making and Ruminative Exploration are strongest predictor variables. In study 2, the stepwise multiple regression analyses conducted to ascertain the independent relationship of each of Big Five personality factor revealed that Neuroticism and Extraversion accounts of the most of explained variance of school-to-work transition procrastination. (shrink)

Career planning and career decision are important tasks for college students. The process may be affected by career stress, career exploration, and future work self, with some students facing career indecision. Combining both construction career and proactive motivation model, this study investigated the relationships between career stress, career exploration, future work self, career planning and career indecision among 1,012 Chinese college students using the Structure equation model to test (...) the proposed mediation model. Results show that career stress negatively predicts career planning, while career exploration positively predicts career planning. The mediating role of future work self has on career stress and career exploration's effects on both career planning and career indecision was verified. Moreover, the study also found future work self's positive effects on both career planning and career indecision in Chinese college students. Finally, the study's theoretical and practical significance and implications are discussed. (shrink)

This study aimed to validate career decision ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean form applicable to a Korean sample. In study 1, 17 items from the original 18-item career decision ambiguity tolerance scale were valid based on IRT. In study 2, using the confirmatory factor analysis, we showed that excluding item 4 from the original scale is better than including it in the three factors model. Given the results of study 1 and 2, the constructs in the 17-item career decision (...) ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean form were valid. In study 3, career decision ambiguity tolerance positively predicted career decision-making self-efficacy, career indecision, and career adaptability respectively, after controlling for calling and career search self-efficacy. Thus, the incremental validity of the career decision ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean form was ensured. In study 4, the reliability of the scale was retained as the test-retest (conducted over a 4-week period) demonstrated adequate results. (shrink)

The mapping of therapeutic collaboration throughout counseling deepens our understanding of how the helping relationship fosters client change. To better understand the process of career construction counseling, we analyzed the therapeutic collaboration on six successful face-to-face cases. The participants were six Portuguese adults, five women and one man, real clients of a career counseling service, and four psychologists, three female and one male trained in the career intervention model. The participants completed demographic questions and measures of (...) class='Hi'>career certainty, vocational identity, career indecision, and psychological functioning. The Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System was used to track collaboration throughout all interactive episodes. The clinical significance of the intervention was calculated by analyzing pre-post-test statistical differences for each case, with the Reliable Change Index and Z score. The findings evidenced a pattern of therapeutic collaboration evolution for good outcome cases. Based on this pattern, we propose a model of process-outcome evolution for the three phases of CCC. (shrink)

This research improves our understanding of entrepreneurial intention in the Chinese cultural context. Drawing on career construction theory, we received 408 valid surveys from rural Chinese dwellers and examined the relationships rural Chinese have among “face consciousness,” indecisiveness, career adaptability, and entrepreneurial intention. We found that those who are fearful of losing face are less likely to have entrepreneurial intentions, but one’s desire to gain face has no significant direct impact on entrepreneurial intention. In addition, face consciousness and (...) an indecisive personality interact to influence career adaptability and, in turn, entrepreneurial intention. In sum, this study supports the career construction perspective on understanding the formation of entrepreneurial intention and offers theoretical, practical, and policy implications for entrepreneurial career counseling and training. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Jack Zupko. John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 446. Cloth, $70.00. Paper, $40.00. What does the name "John Buridan" call to mind? For many, including medievalists, not much at all—at best, perhaps, a set of apparently unrelated ideas: nominalism; an impetus theory of (...) projectile motion; and a peculiar account of the will (although "Buridan's ass," the indecisive donkey caught between two equally appetizing bales of hay, is not found in Buridan's writing). In correcting this ignorance—an injustice to arguably the most famous and influential philosopher of the early-to-mid-fourteenth century—the temptation might have been to articulate Buridan's "positions" on "the big questions," allowing readers to fit Buridan into received categories. Thankfully, the present work, the first book-length study of Buridan in any language, resists this temptation. The John Buridan that emerges from Jack Zupko's skillful "exercise in philosophical portraiture" doesn't serve to simply fill gaps in our awareness of the historical record, but to enlighten and challenge our understanding of the practice of philosophy and the study of its history.Zupko emphasizes throughout that Buridan was a teacher, a master of arts in Paris. Buridan's pedagogical concerns help make sense of his central work in logic. As the basis for his arts lectures, Buridan chose Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicales, but in commenting on Peter, Buridan moves beyond creative exegisis to comprehensive renovation. Buridan (c. 1300-c. 1361) naturally wanted to accommodate terminist or via moderna supposition theory; but more importantly, he wanted a logic text that would set out a general plan of philosophical inquiry, "a compendium of methods, a 'how-to' book for the philosopher" (135). Buridan thus designed his own Summulae de Dialectica as a new authoritative logic text, and Zupko persuasively argues that its "nominalism" should be understood as less a set of doctrines in theoretical logic, than a program of logical practice, an education in logic as the ars artium, the universal intellectual tool.Zupko's portrait of "Buridan's vision of the philosophical enterprise" is thus appropriately divided into two parts. The first summarizes Buridan's method as described in the individual treatises of his Summulae. The second displays the method in practice, rehearsing and evaluating some of Buridan's arguments on various subjects. Many scholars will gravitate first to the latter part, where Zupko offers important interpretations and clarifications of Buridan's views. In these chapters, Zupko helps us to appreciate, among other things: how the problem of universals served to help Buridan define the scope of philosophy (ch. 10); the philosophical modesty of Buridan's account of the intellectual soul's presence in the body (ch. 11); the relationship between Buridan's epistemology and the skepticism of his Parisian contemporary Nicholas of Autrecourt (ch. 12); the sense in which Buridan is an "empiricist," viz an epistemic naturalist and reliabilist (ch. 13); how Buridan regarded moral psychology as applied physics, treating virtue as a kind of impetus (ch. 14); how Buridan's account of freedom can be regarded as a "perfection" of Thomistic intellectualism (ch. 15).Throughout these discussions, Zupko always keeps in sight his larger purpose of illustrating Buridan's conception of philosophical inquiry. Zupko makes much of the fact that [End Page 219] Buridan never wrote as a theologian, remaining his entire career in the arts faculty, where he wanted logic to organize secular inquiry. As Zupko notes, in this way Buridan's scholastic project seems to prefigure the "modern." But Buridan seems modern in another way as well. As Zupko points out in his "Introduction," though a cleric, Buridan never joined a religious order, so that his ideas developed independently of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions. He was, then, a teacher without a tradition—at least without deliberate allegiance to tradition, although he was in many ways the product of traditional scholastic intellectual discipline.Perhaps this... (shrink)

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are (...) far more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

We present an axiomatic model of preferences over menus that is motivated by three assumptions. First, the decision maker is uncertain ex ante (i.e., at the time of choosing a menu) about her ex post (i.e., at the time of choosing an option within her chosen menu) preferences over options, and she anticipates that this subjective uncertainty will not resolve before the ex post stage. Second, she is averse to ex post indecisiveness (i.e., to having to choose between options that (...) she cannot rank with certainty). Third, when evaluating a menu she discards options that are dominated (i.e., inferior to another option whatever her ex post preferences may be) and restricts attention to the undominated ones. Under these assumptions, the decision maker has a preference for commitment in the sense of preferring menus with fewer undominated alternatives. We derive a representation in which the decision maker’s uncertainty about her ex post preferences is captured by means of a subjective state space, which in turn determines which options are undominated in a given menu, and in which the decision maker fears, whenever indecisive, to choose an option that will turn out to be the worst (undominated) one according to the realization of her ex post preferences. (shrink)

In this paper, I spell out a descriptive account of agnosticism that captures the intuitive view that a subject enters the mental state of agnosticism via an act or event called suspension. I will argue that agnosticism is a complex mental state, and that the formation of an attitude is the relevant act or event by which a subject commits to indecision regarding some matter. I will suggest a ‘two-component analysis’ that addresses two aspects that jointly account for the (...) settled state of agnosticism: the subject’s de facto indecision and the subject’s commitment to her indecision. Unlike meta-cognitivist or sui generis accounts, I do not take the agnostic’s commitment to indecision as constitutive for her indecision but rather as an evaluation or qualification of the indecision that she already exhibits. Agnosticism, thus, is a settled form of indecision that marks the end of inquiry. (shrink)

On the standard interpretation, if a person holds cyclical preferences, the person is prone to acting irrationally. I provide a different interpretation, tying cyclical preferences not to irrationality, but to indecision. According to this alternative understanding – coined the indecision interpretation – top cycles in a person’s preferences can be associated with a difficulty in justifying one’s choice. If an agent’s justificatory impasse persists despite attempts to resolve the cycle, the agent can be deemed undecided. The indecision (...) interpretation is compatible with the standard interpretation of such cycles as instances of irrationality. Yet indecision corresponds to a first-person, non-instrumental perspective on the problem, whereas irrationality usually corresponds to a third-person, instrumental perspective. Due to these differences, interpreting cycles in terms of indecision offers a novel conceptual perspective, pertinent both for explanatory purposes and for the aim of normative theorizing. (shrink)

One main goal of argumentation theory is to evaluate arguments and to determine whether they should be accepted or rejected. When there is no clear answer, a third option, being undecided, has to be taken into account. Indecision is often not considered explicitly, but rather taken to be a collection of all unclear or troubling cases. However, current philosophy makes a strong point for taking indecision itself to be a proper object of consideration. This paper aims at revealing (...) parallels between the findings concerning indecision in philosophy and the treatment of indecision in argumentation theory. By investigating what philosophical forms and norms of indecision are involved in argumentation theory, we can improve our understanding of the different uncertain evidential situations in argumentation theory. (shrink)

De entre los héroes sofócleos, la figura de Neoptólemo sobresale por su particular dificultad para comprometerse de manera definitiva con un curso de acción. El joven acepta llevar a cabo un engaño pergeñado por Odiseo para obtener el arco infalible de Filoctetes, quien vive hace diez años abandonado en la isla desierta de Lemnos. Pero una vez avanzada la treta, cuando se aproxima realmente al objetivo, de pronto se ve asaltado por una duda que le impide seguir adelante, de manera (...) tal que se desdibuja su posición de agente capaz de concretar el plan. Neoptólemo termina por confesar al solitario isleño el motivo fraudulento de su presencia, y, excusándose, aduce estar gobernado por una “necesidad” (v.923: anánke). En este trabajo presentaré, en primer lugar, las condiciones de emergencia y las características del plan ideado por el ingenioso rey de Ítaca; en segundo lugar, una explicación de la indecisión de Neoptólemo a partir de la particular relación entre su discurso y la realidad que pretende referir; en tercer lugar, me centraré en las derivas ontológicas del conflicto central de la obra y, finalmente, avanzaré sobre los corolarios prácticos que se siguen de lo laborado en los puntos anteriores. (shrink)

In The Good Place, Chidi Anogonye has difficulty making decisions. In fact, that may be his defining characteristic, and it is the one that ultimately led to his demise on Earth. The belief in “fundamental truths” entails a belief in “objective values,” that is, values that exist outside of the frame of human thinking. Simone de Beauvoir calls such a belief “the spirit of seriousness”. Beauvoir also makes a distinction between absurdity—that which has no meaning—and ambiguity—that which has no fixed (...) meaning. Chidi follows one of Beauvoir's favorite principles of existentialism: “Do what one must, come what may”. In order to understand both Chidi's and Beauvoir's meaning of “must” we have to move away from an understanding of right and wrong as existing in the world, independent of human thought and assessment. (shrink)

Supporting young researchers to peer-review and edit journal submissions will also accelerate their training, says Quan-Hoang Vuong. -/- *Citation: -/- Quan-Hoang Vuong. (2022, Sept. 11). Early career researchers can help fix peer review delays. Times Higher Education.

This paper is a review of the influence that lógos has had on ancient Greek, Jewish, and Christian writings. During the philosophical era known as Middle Platonism, the concept/ontology of the lógos played a unique role in enabling Pagan, Jewish, and Christian intellectuals to communicate on a small space of common ground.

This paper motivates and explores an expressivist theory of vagueness, modelled on Allan Gibbard’s normative expressivism. It shows how Chris Kennedy’s semantics for gradable adjectives can be adjusted to fit into a theory on Gibbardian lines, where assertions constrain not just possible worlds but plans for action. Vagueness, on this account, is literally indecision about where to draw lines. It is argued that the distinctive phenomena of vagueness, such as the intuition of tolerance, can be explained in terms of (...) practical constraints on plans, and that the expressivist view captures what is right about several contending theories of vagueness. (shrink)

Drawing on goal setting theory and social cognition career theory, this study empirically proposes an operational definition of career success criteria clarity (CSCC) and further explores its impact on career satisfaction, person-job fit, and subjective well-being through the mediating role of career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE). A pilot study of 231 samples showed that the CSCC scale had good reliability and validity. To further test the effects of CSCC on crucial employment outcomes, as well as the mediating (...) role of CDSE, 240 employees were included in an additional survey. Structural equation modeling path analysis supported all the expected hypotheses. Results indicated that: 1) CSCC was positively correlated to career satisfaction; 2) CSCC was positively correlated to person-job fit; 3) CSCC was positively correlated to subjective well-being; 4) CSCC was positively correlated to CDSE; 5) CDSE fully mediated the relationship between CSCC and career satisfaction; 6) CDSE fully mediated the relationship between CSCC and person-job fit; and 7) CDSE partly mediated the relationship between CSCC and subjective well-being. The results contributed to social cognition career theory model and provided suggestions for both the career educators and consultants. (shrink)

Donald Smith (2006) argues that if ‘I’ is indeed vague, and the view of vagueness as semantic indecision correct after all, then ‘I’ cannot refer to a composite material object. But his considerations would, if sound, also establish that ‘Tibbles,’ ‘Everest,’ or ‘Toronto,’ do not refer to composite material objects either—nor hence, presumably, to cats, mountains, or cities. And they can be resisted, anyway. Or so I argue.

Even though, over the last two decades, the boundaryless career concept has stimulated a wide theoretical debate, scholars have recently claimed that research on the competencies that are necessary for managing a cross-boundary career is still incomplete. Similarly, the literature on emotional and social competencies has demonstrated how they predict work performance across industries and jobs but has neglected their influence in explaining the individual's mobility across boundaries and their impact on career success. This study aims to (...) fill these gaps by examining the effects of emotional and social competencies on boundaryless career and on objective career success. By analyzing a sample of 142 managers over a period of 8 years, we found evidence that emotional competencies positively influence the propensity of an individual to undertake physical career mobility and that career advancements are related to the possession of social competencies and depend on the adoption of boundaryless career paths. This study also provides a contribution in terms of the evaluation of the emotional and social competencies demonstrated by an individual and of the operationalization of the measurement of boundaryless career paths, considering three facets of the physical mobility construct (organizational, industrial, and geographical boundaries). (shrink)

This essay explores the thesis that for vague predicates, uncertainty over whether a borderline instance x of red/large/tall/good is to be understood as practical uncertainty over whether to treat x as red/large/tall/good. Expressivist and quasi-realist treatments of vague predicates due to John MacFarlane and Daniel Elstein provide the stalking-horse. It examines the notion of treating/counting a thing as F , and links a central question about our attitudes to vague predications to normative evaluation of plans to treat a thing as (...) F . The essay examines how the account applies to normatively defective or contested terms. The final section raises a puzzle about the mechanics of MacFarlane’s detailed implementation for the case of gradable adjectives. (shrink)

Studies have documented that career exploration is significantly associated with CDSE, but how this association occurred is not clear yet. This study committed to clarifying the mechanism underlying the relationship between career exploration and CDSE by investigating the mediation effect of work volition and career adaptability among 586 pre-service kindergarten teachers. The participants are recruited from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China, covering Han, Hui, and other minorities. They took part in a two-wave longitudinal survey and (...) reported on their career exploration at T1, work volition, career adaptability, and career decision self-efficacy at T2. Results showed that T1 career exploration is directly related to the T2 CDSE. Further, career exploration contributed to the CDSE through both the separated mediation path and the chained mediation path of T2 work volition and T2 career adaptability. The results suggest that individuals who engage in more career exploration activities are likely to have more confidence in their abilities to make career decisions over time, which was partially and serially explained by individuals’ perception of capacity despite constraints and greater self-regulatory strength. This study is a first attempt to deeply clarify the link between career exploration and CDSE, and the findings shed light on the independent and serial mediating effects of work volition and career adaptability. The implications and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the student-athletes' capability to face the academic, sport, and social challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and to disclose novel aspects of dual careers. A 32-item online survey encompassing demographic characteristics, sport and university engagement, support and dual-career benefits, physical activity, sitting time, and the time deemed necessary to recover the previous level of performance was developed. Four hundred sixty-seven student-athletes (males: 57%, females: 43%) from 11 countries, competing in 49 different sports (...) (individual: 63.4%, team: 36.6%) at regional (17.5%), national (43.3%), and international (39.2%) levels, and enrolled at high school (21.9%) and university (78.1%) levels completed the survey. During the lockdown, the respondents decreased the time dedicated to sport and academics, although they maintained an active lifestyle. Student-athletes from countries under severe contagion were more likely to train at home, dedicate to academics, and receive support from the coach but less likely receive support from their teachers. With respect to their team sport counterparts, athletes competing in individual sports trained more and were more likely to receive support from their coaches. International athletes showed the highest training time and support from their coaches and as student-athletes. High school students received more support from their coaches and teachers, whereas university students were more likely considering dual careers useful to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study substantiates the relevant role of competitive sports participation in the maintenance of active lifestyles, with student-athletes considering home training and e-learning valuable resources during the lockdown. Furthermore, their sport and academic commitments helped student-athletes cope with the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.

This lecture presents my own solution to the problem posed in Lecture I. Instead of a new theory of speech acts, it offers a new theory of the contents expressed by vague assertions, along the lines of the plan expressivism Allan Gibbard has advocated for normative language. On this view, the mental states we express in uttering vague sentences have a dual direction of fit: they jointly constrain the doxastic possibilities we recognize and our practical plans about how to draw (...) boundaries. With this story in hand, I reconsider some of the traditional topics connected with vagueness: bivalence, the sorites paradox, higher-order vagueness, and the nature of vague thought. I conclude by arguing that the expressivist account can explain, as its rivals cannot, what makes vague language useful. (shrink)

Abstract:Boundaryless careers may be beneficial to people with rare and valuable skills, but might prove harmful to many others. The idea ofemployabilityas an ethical responsibility of employers to employees is introduced; it is argued that attention to employability in private practice and public policy partially resolves the ethical problems inherent to in boundaryless careers. Because employability programs are considered to be voluntary, some means of holding employers accountable for such responsibilities needs to be considered when discussing boundaryless careers. Implications for (...) practice and public policy are also discussed. (shrink)

This article develops the concept of experiential careers, drawing theoretical attention to the routinization and de-routinization of specific experiences as they unfold over social career trajectories. Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in two religious communities, we compare the social-temporal patterning of religious experience among newly religious Orthodox Jews and converted Muslims in two cities in the United States. In both cases, we find that as newly religious people work to transform their previous bodily habits and take on newly (...) prescribed religious acts, the beginning of their religious careers becomes marked by what practitioners describe as potent religious experiences in situations of religious practice. However, over time, these once novel practices become routinized and religious experiences in these situations diminish, thus provoking actors and institutions in both fields to work to re-enchant religious life. Through this ethnographic comparison, we demonstrate the utility of focusing on experiential careers as a sociological unit of analysis. Doing so allows sociologists to use a non-reductive phenomenological approach to chart the shifting manifestations of experiences people deeply care about, along with the patterned enchantments, disenchantments, and possible re-enchantments these social careers entail. As such, this approach contributes to the analysis of social careers and experiences of “becoming” across both religious and non-religious domains. (shrink)

After presenting a negative characterization of metaphysical vagueness and the main tenets of the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, the paper critically discusses the objection that such a view requires that at least some vagueness not be just constituted by semantic indecision—but rather by the metaphysical vagueness of some semantic relations themselves submitted by Trenton Merricks and, more recently, Nathan Salmon.

This study investigates the influence of chief executive officers' (CEOs) career horizon on the adoption of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards for corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Using data from A-share Chinese listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2020, we employ logistic regression analysis to examine the empirical relationship. Our findings indicate that companies led by CEOs with shorter career horizons (older CEOs) are less inclined to adopt GRI reporting standards for CSR (...) reporting. This association is particularly pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Additionally, we observe a weaker relationship between CEO career horizon and GRI adoption when the CEO possesses foreign experience. These results remain robust across various measures of CEO career horizons and econometric methodologies as well. The implications of our findings are significant for understanding the development and implementation of GRI standards for CSR reporting, particularly within the context of China. (shrink)

After presenting a negative characterization of metaphysical vagueness and the main tenets of the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, the paper critically discusses the objection that such a view requires that at least some vagueness not be just constituted by semantic indecision—but rather by the metaphysical vagueness of some semantic relations themselves submitted by Trenton Merricks and, more recently, Nathan Salmon.

I can say that a building is tall and you can understand me, even if neither of us has any clear idea exactly how tall a building must be in order to count as tall. This mundane fact poses a problem for the view that successful communication consists in the hearer’s recognition of the proposition a speaker intends to assert. The problem cannot be solved by the epistemicist’s usual appeal to anti-individualism, because the extensions of vague words like ‘tall’ are (...) contextually fluid and can be constrained significantly by speakers’ intentions. The problem can be seen as a special case of a more general problem concerning what King has called “felicitous underspecification.” Traditional theories of vagueness offer nothing that can help with this problem. Appeals to diagonalization do not help either. A more radical solution is needed. (shrink)

A Career of Japan is the first study of one of the major photographers and personalities of nineteenth-century Japan. Baron Raimund von Stillfried was the most important foreign-born photographer of the Meiji era and one of the first globally active photographers of his generation. Based on extensive new primary sources and unpublished documents from archives around the world, this book examines von Stillfried's significance as a cultural mediator between Japan and Central Europe.

One approach to the problem is to keep the orthodox notion of a proposition but innovate in the theory of speech acts. A number of philosophers and linguists have suggested that, in cases of felicitous underspecification, a speaker asserts a “cloud” of propositions rather than just one. This picture raises a number of questions: what norms constrain a “cloudy assertion,” what counts as uptake, and how is the conversational common ground revised if it is accepted? I explore three different ways (...) of answering these questions, due to Braun and Sider, Buchanan, and von Fintel and Gillies. I argue that none of them provide a good general response to the problem posed by felicitous underspecification. However, the problems they face point the way to a more satisfactory account, which innovates in the theory of content rather than the theory of speech acts. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thesis and two semantic properties of sentences that have come to be recognized recently, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision.1 More specifically, I will examine what the indeterminacy thesis entails for sentences of the form 'By sentence S (or word w), agent A means that m' and 'Agent A believes that p.' My primary goal is to shed light on the indeterminacy thesis and its consequences. I will distinguish two (...) kinds of indeterminacy that have very different sources and very different consequences. But this does not purport to be an exhaustive study: there may well be other forms of indeterminacy that this .. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thesis and two semantic properties of sentences that have come to be recognized recently, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision. More specifically, I will examine what the indeterminacy thesis entails for sentences of the form ‘By sentence S, agent A means that m’ and ‘Agent A believes that p.’ My primary goal is to shed light on the indeterminacy thesis and its consequences. I will distinguish two kinds of indeterminacy (...) that have very different sources and very different consequences. But this does not purport to be an exhaustive study: there may well be other forms of indeterminacy that this paper does not address.I will first explain the phenomena of semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision, and then explore their relationships with the indeterminacy thesis. (shrink)

[v. 1] From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.--v. 2. From the German Enlightenment to the age of Darwin.

Career transitions in psychiatry have rarely been discussed openly. Yet, in the light of health care reform and other forces affecting clinical practice, it is more important than ever that psychiatrists have information about the career options within their specialty. _Career Pathways in Psychiatry: Transition in Changing Times_ serves that purpose. It explores the professional development and career choices of prominent American psychiatrists, each of whom is identified with a particular career track and many of whom (...) have themselves experienced one or more career transitions. The autobiographical accounts of the contributors survey a wide range of career pathways in psychiatry, including clinical practice, HMO practice, research, administration, entrepreneurism, psychoanalysis, organized medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, public psychiatry, occupational psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and military psychiatry. These accounts are as engaging as they are informative; their anecdotal nature and conversational tone make for pleasurable reading. References at the end of each chapter serve as recommended reading for those who wish to learn more about specific career options. Intended for psychiatric residents and psychiatrists early in their careers, _Career Pathways in Psychiatry_ will also appeal to their more experienced colleagues, including seasoned clinicians who have contemplated career changes. With a preface summarizing research on career transitions in medicine and numerous chapters shedding light on factors contributing to resistance to change, this book will also be of interest to social scientists, mental health administrators, and professional recruiters. (shrink)

Career transitions in psychiatry have rarely been discussed openly. Yet, in the light of health care reform and other forces affecting clinical practice, it is more important than ever that psychiatrists have information about the career options within their specialty. _Career Pathways in Psychiatry: Transition in Changing Times_ serves that purpose. It explores the professional development and career choices of prominent American psychiatrists, each of whom is identified with a particular career track and many of whom (...) have themselves experienced one or more career transitions. The autobiographical accounts of the contributors survey a wide range of career pathways in psychiatry, including clinical practice, HMO practice, research, administration, entrepreneurism, psychoanalysis, organized medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, public psychiatry, occupational psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and military psychiatry. These accounts are as engaging as they are informative; their anecdotal nature and conversational tone make for pleasurable reading. References at the end of each chapter serve as recommended reading for those who wish to learn more about specific career options. Intended for psychiatric residents and psychiatrists early in their careers, _Career Pathways in Psychiatry_ will also appeal to their more experienced colleagues, including seasoned clinicians who have contemplated career changes. With a preface summarizing research on career transitions in medicine and numerous chapters shedding light on factors contributing to resistance to change, this book will also be of interest to social scientists, mental health administrators, and professional recruiters. (shrink)

Increasing attention and efforts are being put towards engaging patients in health research, and some have even argued that patient engagement in research is an ethical imperative. Yet there is relatively little empirical data on ethical issues associated with PER. A three-round Delphi survey was conducted with a panel of early-career researchers involved in PER. One of the objectives was to examine the ethical dimensions of PER as well as ECRs’ self-perceived level of preparedness to conduct PER ethically. The (...) study was conducted among awardees of the Québec SPOR-SUPPORT Unit in Canada, who represent the next generation of researchers involved in PER. Many themes were addressed throughout the study, such as definition, values, patients’ roles, expected characteristics of patients, and anticipated challenges. Open-ended questions were used, and all quantitative data were collected through statements using 7-point Likert scales. Between April and November 2016, 25 ECRs were invited to participate; 18 completed both the first and second rounds, and 16 completed the third round. Panelists consisted of nine women and seven men with various backgrounds. The majority were between 25 and 44 years old. Panelists’ responses showed PER raises important ethical issues: 1) professionalization of patients involved in research ; 2) adequate remuneration of patients; 3) fair recognition of patients’ experiential knowledge; and 4) tokenism. While the panelists felt moderately prepared to confront these ethical issues, they reported being uncomfortable applying for an ethics certificate for a PER project. If PER is an ethical imperative, it is vital to establish clear ethical standards and to train and support the PER community to identify and resolve ethical issues. Despite their overall readiness to conduct PER, panelists did not feel adequately prepared to address many of these issues. It is not easy for ECRs to reconcile ethical desiderata and logistical imperatives. Additional research should focus on supporting the responsible conduct of PER, which, if not done, can undermine the credibility and feasibility of the entire PER enterprise. (shrink)

We analyze a series of interviews with Estonian humanities researchers to explore topics related to the beginning of academic careers and the relationships with supervisors and mentors. We show how researchers strive to have meaningful relationships and produce what they consider quality research in the conditions of a system that is very strongly oriented towards internationalization and project-based funding, where their efforts are compromised by a lack of policies helping them establish a stable position in academia. Leaving researchers to face (...) these obstacles alone places a great burden on them and may lead to a loss of talent in academia. Identifying and addressing these issues is thus important for both the well-being of early career researchers and the future of academia. (shrink)