The Norman Rockwell image of the American physician who fixed the broken arm of a child, treated the father for hypertension, and brought an unborn child into this world is now almost nonexistent. Since the time of the Rockwell portrait, a highly technical medical industry has evolved. Now two-thirds of physicians are board certified in subspecialties, and patients visit an average of 3–4 different physicians per year. Today's physicians see themselves less as “benevolent and wise counselors overseeing the patient's (...) welfare and more as objective scientists applying the latest technical methods to bring about the desired end.” The intimate patient-physician relationship that was once the norm in our society is rapidly disappearing. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical critique of professional stereotypes in medicine. In the course of this critique, we also offer a detailed analysis of the concept of care in health care. The paper first considers possible explanations for the traditional stereotype that caring is a province of nurses and women, while curing is an arena suited for physicians and men. It then dispels this stereotype and fine tunes the concept of care. A distinction between ‘caring for’ and ‘caring about’ is (...) made, and concomitant notions of parentalism are elaborated. Finally, the paper illustrates, through the use of cases, diverse models of caring. Our discussion reveals the complexity of care and the alternative modes of caring in health care. (shrink)

Charles Taylor argues that recognition begins with the politics of "self-image," as groups represented in the past by others in ways harmful to their own identity replace negative historical self-images with positive ones of their own making. Given the centrality of "self image" to his politics of recognition, it is striking that Taylor, himself, represents disabled people in language that is both limiting and depreciating. The author argues such negative self-images are not unique to (...) Taylor but endemic to modern political thought from John Locke to John Rawls, as the disabled are constituted in direct opposition to the rational person and/or citizen. Using contemporary social theories of disability, as articulated by disabled scholars and advocates, the author concludes that such negative self-images must be purged from political theory and replaced with an alternative theory of personhood/citizenship rooted in the image of interdependency. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground “self-images” in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients’ self-images were more passive than those of (...) controls. Autobiographical memories underlying self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia. (shrink)

Reflection names the central activity of Western philosophical practice; the mirror and its attendant metaphors of reflection are omnipresent in the self-image of Western philosophy and in metaphilosophical reflection on reflection. But the physical experiences of being reflected by glass mirrors have been inadequately theorized contributors to those metaphors, and this has implications not only for the self-image and the self of philosophy but also for metaphilosophical practice. This article begins to rethink the metaphor of (...) reflection anew. Paying attention to the history of the glass mirror in Europe reveals and challenges the modern emergence of clear ontological distinctions between disembodied subjects and the objects of their knowledge, and suggests a compelling terrain of metaphilosophical analysis. On the reading offered by the article, the inherent complexity of the relationship between selves and their mirror images, a complexity mediated by social location, historical situation, and particular projects, points to significant spaces of unknowing, of indeterminacy, and of ontological ambiguity. (shrink)

(1992). National self‐images and the internationalization of tastes, values and demand: The case of Ireland. World Futures: Vol. 33, Culture and Development: European Experiences and Challenges A Special Research Report of the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 121-131.

This essay is a critical exploration of certain key elements in modernity's self-understanding – pluralism, secularism, the morally neutral state, and the the harm conditoin as a principle of law. Careful examination of all these elements reveals deep confusion about how they are to be understood. The picture that emerges is one in which modern society's self-image diverges dramatically from the reality, and critque of this self-image uncovers a pressing need for a reappraiasal of the (...) values that are commonly thought to underlie the contemporary Western world. (shrink)

This study aims to apply self-congruity theory to examine the relationship between self-congruity of tourists and their perceived image of a gambling destination. This study employs the Euclidean distance model and extends Malhotra's pars of adjectives with five new items about gambling motives. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was used, and a total of 152 samples were collected from tourists in Macau. The results show that the actual self-image of tourists is more related to their perception (...) of Macau image. For actual congruence, tourists exhibit a greater tendency to match the informal, liberal, and emotional image of Macau. For ideal congruence, they have a tendency to match the contemporary, organized, and pleasant image of Macau. This study makes up for the deficiency of self-congruity theory in tourism research. This study helps tourism departments to develop appropriate strategies to promote gambling tourism and disseminate relevant information that can bring gambling destinations closer to tourists. (shrink)

This longitudinal study (1994-1996) used the Gordon Personality Inventory to measure nursing students’ self-image (Gordon A), self-values (Gordon B) and interpersonal values (Gordon C). It was performed with students from three colleges of health in the south of Sweden: Jönköping (n = 54), Växjö (n = 24) and Kristianstad (n = 38). The null hypothesis of the study was that the new academic three-year programme did not have the power to change significantly the students’ self-image (...) and professional values. The hypothesis was tested by paired sample Student’s t-test. The result was that, at Jönköping, self-image changed and increased significantly in the dimensions of ‘cautiousness’ and ‘personal relations’, and decreased in ‘sociability’, and increased in the self-value ‘order’. At Växjö the self-image dimensions of ‘original thinking’ and ‘personal relations’ increased, and, at Kristianstad, the students increased their self-image scores in ‘responsibility’. (shrink)

This longitudinal study used the Gordon Personality Inventory to measure nursing students’ self-image, self-values and interpersonal values. It was performed with students from three colleges of health in the south of Sweden: Jönköping, Växjö and Kristianstad. The null hypothesis of the study was that the new academic three-year programme did not have the power to change significantly the students’ self-image and professional values. The hypothesis was tested by paired sample Student’s t-test. The result was that, (...) at Jönköping, self-image changed and increased significantly in the dimensions of ‘cautiousness’ and ‘personal relations’, and decreased in ‘sociability’, and increased in the self-value ‘order’. At Växjö the self-image dimensions of ‘original thinking’ and ‘personal relations’ increased, and, at Kristianstad, the students increased their self-image scores in ‘responsibility’. (shrink)

The image, at first sight, does not resemble the cadaver, but it is possible that the rotting, decaying, cadaverous strangeness might also be from the image. (Blanchot, EL, 344; [my translation])But what is the image? When there is nothing, the image finds in this nothing its necessary condition, but there it disappears. The image needs the neutrality and the fading of the world: it wants everything to return to the indifferent deep where nothing is affirmed; (...) it tends toward the intimacy of what still subsists in the void. This is its truth. But this truth exceeds it. (Blanchot, SL, 254). (shrink)

The paper focuses on the problematic of selfinterpretation and the correspondence between selfimage and the reality. Its presupposition is, that a human being is not committed to a single way of life, fully determined by his/her biological characteristics or by the dictate of his/her social background; first of all, he/she is not dependent on single ways of the interpretation of the world or of his/her selfinterpretation. It is his/her ability to accept certain characteristics as his/her own that makes him/her a (...) human being. There is usually a distinction between his/her own seeing himself/herself, which does not necessarily, leads to a failure. The strategies of survival are various and they need not to be rooted in true interpretations in all their aspects. In conclusion the author argues, that the critical thinking making its way into everyday life as well as into the public sphere offers the possibility of the variability of the ways of life and of a consensual coexistence on the basis of manifold interpretative structures and models. Enforcing a uniform view as a presupposition of human cooperation is replaced by an approach, respecting the legitimacy of the pluralistic image of the world and of the humans, for which this approach makes no obstacle in cooperative working of society. (shrink)

The connection between integrity and the notion of self seems obvious. A person of integrity is one whose various beliefs, views, experiences, are united into one totality. But if integrity is about the self, then it is for the self to decide what her personality revolves around. This might suggest that being a person of integrity means acting for no reason at all – just because this is “who I am”. I might consider my whimsical, or even (...) corrupt ways of conduct, as manifestations of integrity, and I would not have to offer reasons to anybody. In trying to reply to such an objection, it has been suggested that integrity as an epistemic virtue, aiming at truth and correctness. I show why these attempts are mistaken. And yet, it is true that as persons of integrity we act for sound reasons. Our integrity is connected to our self image. Rather than aiming at truth, our actions manifest the people we aspire to be, the values we admire, the notions we care about. By choosing my commitments I manifest a certain image of what a worthy person should aim at, and I invite others to share this image. (shrink)

This study tested whether compassionate goals to support others and self-image goals to maintain and defend desired self-images: 1) are equivalent constructs across three cultures ; 2) overlap with interdependent self-construal; and 3) predict relationships and growth measures similarly in each country. We re-analyzed data from American and Japanese students, reported in Niiya et al., along with new data from Poland. Single and multiple group confirmatory analyses showed that the two-factor structure holds across the three cultures. (...) Interdependence correlated with compassionate and self-image goals only in Japan. In all three samples, compassionate goals correlated with non-zero-sum belief, feeling close, growth-seeking, self-compassion, and learning from failures, whereas self-image goals correlated with defensive responses to conflicts and validation-seeking. Our results suggest that compassionate and self-image goals may serve similar functions in relationships and growth across cultures. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the few professional philosophers whose writings span both technical analytical philosophy and those general moral or intellectual questions that laymen often suppose to be the province of philosophy but that are seldom discussed within its bounds. The unity of this book--made up both of original and previously published pieces--lies in its attempt to expose this dichotomy and to link beliefs and moral theories with philosophical criticism. The author successively criticizes Christianity, Marxism, and psychoanalysis for their (...) failure to express the forms of thought and action that constitute our contemporary social life, and argues that a greater understanding of our complex world will require a more thorough inquiry into the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

The motive for late eighteenth-century proto-technics of photography and cinema was never quite mimetic representation: it was generating autonomous impressions of natural phenomena within the tradition ofNaturphilosophie. The article analyses a series of connections between ‘natural hieroglyphs’ (von Lichtenberg), Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles’s ‘megascope’, Wedgwood’s pre-photography, Lavater’s silhouettes and antecedents of Marey’s ‘graphic method’. The goal is to document precursor ideas, devices, setups and frameworks of photoimaging medias to show that the genealogy of photography and cinema intersected through many polymath transverses within (...) the ambit of natural philosophy (and the context of slavery). (shrink)

Rorty rejects the idea of a "permanent and neutral matrix of Heuristic concepts". The claim of privilege, however, is separable from the aim of universality, and this idea can be transposed into a regulative ideal, while still preserving the unique intellectual mission of a discipline of philosophy. Rorty's own positive picture of "edifying Philosophy" in contrast is arguably irresponsible and grounded in misreadings both of the epistemology of science and of episodes in the history of philosophy, especially the contributions of (...) Kant. (shrink)

Professor MacIntyre has here collected twenty-three of his essays. They range in topics from discussions of psychoanalysis to the relation between reasons and causes in accounts of human action. Indeed, the very range of such issues is part of the point of the book itself. In part 1 of the book, MacIntyre has collected some of the articles he has written over the last fifteen years or so for Encounter, New York Review of Books, and Partisan Review; in part 2, (...) the more traditionally philosophic pieces which first appeared in Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and Journal of Philosophy; by collecting both sets of essays within one set of covers, he has tried to make a point about the relation between such apparently different intellectual contexts. Most broadly, that point has to do with the common problem of "ideology" as it is found in each arena, whether as some explicit, historically achieved "self-image" by means of which individuals struggle "to provide the light that our individual and social lives need", or as the problem of the general role beliefs, reasons, desires, and the like should be said to play in human action, in what way such factors are related to causal explanations of action, and how decisions about such questions affect any view of what a social science is. MacIntyre believes that these somewhat more practical and more theoretical contexts need to be thought together, first because reflection on current, dominant ideologies greatly needs the benefit of "detailed, analytical conceptual inquiries," and because that analysis itself has often paid insufficient attention to its own broader, historical, even ideological context, and the effect such a context can have on methodology. Thus, while it is of the utmost importance to analyze thoroughly and as clearly as possible the language of morals, the methodology of that analysis alone cannot help in determining whether such a language is indeed the language only within which moral discourse can take place, and might also fail to appreciate historical alterations in the meaning of important terms. (shrink)

Teacher discipline strategies are well documented when it comes to its effects on students and the working climate in the classroom. Although it is commonly acknowledged that for student teachers classroom management is a major concern, student teachers? use of discipline strategies is largely unknown. In this paper, we examine student teachers? beliefs in relation to their discipline strategies. Three clusters of discipline strategies are distinguished: sensitive, directive and aggressive discipline strategies. Beliefs that were taken into account are self-images (...) on control and affiliation, control orientation and anticipated student responses on control and affiliation. All participants were student teachers of a one-year teacher education programme for secondary education in the Netherlands. Student questionnaires were used to measure discipline strategies (n?=?2506). Student teachers? (n?=?104) self-images, control orientation and anticipated student responses were measured with student teacher questionnaires. Results of the multiple regression analyses showed that student teachers? sensitive and directive discipline strategies are explained best by self-images on control; aggressive discipline strategies are explained best by self-images on affiliation and by control orientation. Apart from the possible academic interest in these particular findings, results are believed to be useful in a practical sense, in particular for teacher education programmes. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the relationship between adult attachment styles and generalized negativistic social beliefs. Two general dimensions of attachment styles, avoidance and anxiety, are considered to be manifestations of an individual’s image of other people and of the self, respectively. We suggest that both dimensions may be a substantial basis for formulating negative beliefs about the social world. Firstly, we believe that a high level of negativistic social beliefs can be positively predicted by the growth of (...) avoidance and anxiety. Secondly, we formulate an expected interaction effect. Although the nature of such an interaction is ambiguous, it may be argued as having a synergistic as well as antagonistic pattern. These hypotheses were tested and supported on a representative sample of adult Poles. (shrink)

This article aims to present the philosophical perspective upon the birth of the idea of the individual and the consequences of the discovery of the self-image on the techniques of image reproduction from the Renaissance to the present day. The process of projecting the self-image into the public space acquires a special importance with the elaboration of the portrait technique in the Italian painting of the 15th century. Through Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, this technique of (...) reproducing self-image reaches a certain perfection. Following the evolution of this kind of projections and reproductions of the self-image, it is found that there is an obvious tendency by which the individual tends to free himself from certain patterns, or rather canons, which a certain epoch imposes. This process manifested in the visual arts corresponds to a new philosophical perception of man opened by the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. The assertion of a new type of dignity, correlated with the idea of the microcosm, of the Renaissance man will lead to an affirmation of his own personality and especially to an increase of the will to power reflected more and more in the works of art. With the resurgence of the Italian renaissance, artists and philosophers experienced a decline, but found a favorable space for their development at the court of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. The art of portraiture, but also the philosophy of renaissance survives and is even more flourishing at the court of this queen. But the most important moment of this renaissance is marked by Dutch art after its liberation from Spanish rule. From this moment on, the emancipation of the individual will occur on an unimaginable scale until then. (shrink)

In this study we relate four different measures: the theodicy models proposed by van der Ven, the coping strategies proposed by Pargament, a measure of positive or negative self-image and the post critical belief scales we ourselves have developed. We analysed the data of 251 Dutch-speaking Belgians. In the analysis we focus on the relation of the different measures with the post critical belief scales. Different types of believers are using different theodicy models, somewhat different coping strategies and (...) we observe some differences in self-image, where believers have a more positive self-image than non-believers. We could suggest that there is a specific theodicy model used by symbolic believers and another theodicy model used by more literal believers. The former could be interpreted as more developed and perhaps more religiously mature. (shrink)

In this study we relate four different measures: the theodicy models proposed by van der Ven, the coping strategies proposed by Pargament, a measure of positive or negative self-image and the post critical belief scales we ourselves have developed. We analysed the data of 251 Dutch-speaking Belgians. In the analysis we focus on the relation of the different measures with the post critical belief scales. Different types of believers are using different theodicy models, somewhat different coping strategies and (...) we observe some differences in self-image, where believers have a more positive self-image than non-believers. We could suggest that there is a specific theodicy model used by symbolic believers and another theodicy model used by more literal believers. The former could be interpreted as more developed and perhaps more religiously mature. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction The Implications Conclusion Note.

In this article, we introduce our interactive art installation Neuro Mirror that was developed in 2017 for the Cybernetic Consciousness [?] exhibition that was held in 2017 at the ITAU Cultural in Sao Paulo. This artwork enables participants to interact with their own images and those of their alter egos with the help of digital mirrors. The installation consists of three screens. The middle one shows a live image of the participant that is somewhat distorted. The one on the (...) left side also displays an image of the interacting person, but with a time delay of a few seconds. On the right screen, however, another person is shown – a young man, who is acting and moving his head. In fact, this person is programmed to be an avatar or an alter ego who reacts to the participant. He ‘learns’ new behaviours by observing and imitating the participant and reacts accordingly. A neural network programme was developed to enable him to predict the participant’s next actions from his previous ones. (shrink)

Cushman's rationalization account can be extended to cover another part of his portrayal of representational exchange: thought experiments that lead to conclusions about the self. While Cushman's argument is compelling, a full account of rationalization as adaptive will need to account for the divergence in rationalizing one's actions compared to the actions of others.

An historical review of the concepts of self-consciousness is presented, highlighting the important role of the body (particularly, body perception but also body action) and the social other in the construction of self-consciousness. More precisely, body perception, especially intermodal sensory perception including kinesthetic perception, is involved in the construction of a sense of self allowing self-nonself differentiation. Furthermore, the social other, through very early social and emotional interactions, provides meaning to the infant’s perception and contributes to (...) the development of his/her symbolization capacities. This is a necessary condition for body image representation and awareness of a permanent self in a time-space continuum (invariant over time and space). Self-image recognition impairments in the mirror are also discussed regarding a comprehensive developmental theory of self-consciousness. Then, a neuropsychological and neurophysiological approach to self-consciousness reviews the role of complex brain activation/integration pathways and the mirror neuron system in self-consciousness. Finally, this article offers new perspectives on self-consciousness evaluation using the mirror as an experimental paradigm to study self- and other- image and body recognition. (shrink)

Abstract:Discussions of the ethics of advertising have been based on a general distinction between informative and persuasive advertising without looking at specific techniques of persuasion. Self-identity image ads persuade by presenting an image of an idealized person-type such as a “beautiful” woman (Chanel) or a sexy teen (Calvin Klein). The product becomes a symbol of the ideal, and target consumers are invited to use the product to project the self-image to themselves and others. This paper (...) argues that image ads are not false or misleading, and that whether or not they advocate false values is a matter for subjective reflection. Image ads can undermine a consumer’s self-esteem by collectively omitting images authentic for that sort of person (such as large women), and by combining impossible images with implied gaze. Image ads generally do not undermine autonomy of choice, internal autonomy, or social autonomy. It is concluded that image advertising is a basically ethical technique, but several recommendations are given on how use of image advertising can avoid specific harms. (shrink)