This essay reviews four longer arguments regarding the status of critical thinking on psychology. The commentary understands criticality as somehow sitting at the edge of theory itself. Given Psychology's perpetual identity crisis, the question of its edges and thus where criticality should nibble is brought to bear on the basic premises of the paper. Two of the papers are addressed in terms of the implied metapsychology they would presuppose and where that might break down . Two essays are addressed in (...) terms of being a form of reading: one founded in adumbrations of desire and the other in a faith in science. The authors are asked if their work might not be informed by recent trends philosophy of science and through particular psychoanalytic lenses. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This essay is primarily an exposition of a Lacanian view of subjectivity, as one that is literally informed by the fact of speaking. The genesis within speaking is related to a possible bridge between the social and the subjective that has troubled psychology for decades. The inherence of alterity to the structuration of the subject is described as part of this exposition. This intrinsic otherness as a self-difference and as a framing of the speaking act is described as a way (...) to reexamine recalcitrance and everyday problems in diversity. It is argued that diversity, far from being a dalliance or trite new set of rules for civil behavior, taps into a problematic of the subject. Ways of understanding the encounter with the other, as might follow from Lacan's work, are articulated within the context of religious law and of the social contract in current late capitalist society. Each foray into a particular instance of encountering diversity is framed within the overall exposition of subjective structuration. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between science and ethics and its implications for educational refonn and environmental change. It is a personal account of my search to find a place for ethics in an environmental science dass and how, in the process, the dass itself is being transfonned. I document how I have come to believe that the dassroom is a model of the world: within my own development, thetransfonnation of a course is implicated and, within the development of the (...) course, the potential transfonnation of an educational system and the world is enfolded. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between science and ethics and its implications for educational refonn and environmental change. It is a personal account of my search to find a place for ethics in an environmental science dass and how, in the process, the dass itself is being transfonned. I document how I have come to believe that the dassroom is a model of the world: within my own development, thetransfonnation of a course is implicated and, within the development of the (...) course, the potential transfonnation of an educational system and the world is enfolded. (shrink)

This paper examines the market response to the events leading up to the passage of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to explore whether investors value mandatory human rights disclosures of conflict mineral usage. Using a sample of 3639 US registrants from January 1, 2008 to September 30, 2014, we document a significant negative stock market reaction to the passage of the Act. Using a sample of 1206 filers, we also find a negative market (...) reaction to conflict mineral disclosures under the Act. The market reaction is more negative and limited to companies that source their minerals from the DRC and adjoining countries, companies with prior records of human rights violations, and companies with ambiguous disclosures. However, the market appears to reward firms that use risk-mitigation strategies. This paper provides preliminary evidence that the mandatory disclosure of conflict mineral information on Form SD poses a threat to firms’ legitimacy, resulting in a net cost to investors. The results of this study provide economic justification for companies with poor records of conflict mineral sourcing to improve their practices for the purpose of avoiding the high costs that will arise if they are forced to disclose human rights abuses related to conflict mineral use. (shrink)

Many legal arguments pertaining to equal rights for gay and lesbian families have relied upon empirical research on the `healthy' childraising environment of these families. While neither disputing recent legal gains nor diminishing their importance, this article looks at some of the conceptual categories that drive this research. The limitations of such research, as salutary as it is, are typically understood in terms of their obvious political context. Such research avoids highlighting any differences between gay/lesbian families and traditional families because (...) an emphasis on such differences feeds cultural stereotypes that are damaging to non-traditional families. This article takes a different tack, looking at how the concepts that frame research are based in binaries and fantasies about families and sex that we argue are too limiting. It assumes that the elision of sexuality within such studies is symptomatic of a broader repression of a variety of meanings of family. In response, the article brings in queer theory and psychoanalysis to broaden our approach to understanding new forms of family and kinship initiated by gay and lesbian families. The article addresses single household lesbian families that are most frequently the object of empirical research. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has inquired into the socio-historical, discursive genesis of trauma. Trauma and the Ontology of the Modern Subject, however, seeks what has not been actualized in trauma studies - that is, how the necessity and unassailable intensity of trauma is fastened to its historical emergence. We must ask not only what trauma means for the individual person's biography, but also what it means to be the historical subject of trauma. In other words, how does being human in this current (...) period of history implicate one's lived possibilities that are threatened, and perhaps framed, through trauma? Foucauldian sensibilities inform a critical and structural analysis that is hermeneutically grounded. Drawing on the history of ideas and on Lacan's work in particular, John L. Roberts argues that what we mean by trauma has developed over time, and that it is intimately tied with an ontology of the subject; that is to say, what it is to be, and means to be human. He argues that modern subjectivity - as articulated by Heidegger, Levinas, and Lacan - is structurally traumatic, founded in its finitude as self-withdrawal in time, its temporal self-absence becoming the very conditions for agency, truth and knowledge. The book also argues that this fractured temporal horizon - as an effect of an interrupting Otherness or alterity - is obscured through the discourses and technologies of the psy-disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy). Consideration is given to social, political, and economic consequences of this concealment. Trauma and the Ontology of the Modern Subject will be of enduring interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as well as scholars of philosophy and cultural studies. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Enjoy your symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out by Slavoi Zizek. The following reviews one of Slavoi Zizek's books, Enjoy your symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. Zizek's book and this review aim to address the relevance of Lacan for many of the ethical questions that arise when psychology begins to envision its own concepts and practices as culturally embedded. The matrix of discourse, power, and subject is most often articulated in psychology through the ideas (...) of Foucault, but Lacan illuminates the same field of effects with closer attention given to the specifics of language, the body, the individual, and intersubjectivity. Lacan most obviously addresses the role of speech in a clinical setting. But the implications reach further and Slavoi Zizek takes the Lacanian intervention into the social order. At present Zizek represents the most explicit and uncompromising Lacanian reader of contemporary culture. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Little research has explored the perceptions of military medical providers in the deployed environment and how their perceptions may change over time across an extended military conflict. To our knowledge, no studies have examined military medical providers’ opinions on readiness for their roles in the post-9/11 contingency operations. What has been published indicates that, during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, military medical providers often deployed with little notice and minimal formal training. The present report examines data obtained from multiple (...) cohorts of military medical providers (N = 321) deployed to Iraq between 2005 and 2009. Despite varying degrees of support from the U.S. public, our findings indicate that U.S. Air Force military medical providers’ support for the people of Iraq, their belief in the mission, and their ability to influence change did not vary with time. (shrink)

This paper examines whether a classical model could be translated into a PDP network using a standard connectionist training technique called extra output learning. In Study 1, standard machine learning techniques were used to create a decision tree that could be used to classify 8124 different mushrooms as being edible or poisonous on the basis of 21 different Features (Schlimmer, 1987). In Study 2, extra output learning was used to insert this decision tree into a PDP network being trained on (...) the identical problem. An interpretation of the trained network revealed a perfect mapping from its internal structure to the decision tree, representing a precise translation of the classical theory to the connectionist model. In Study 3, a second network was trained on the mushroom problem without using extra output learning. An interpretation of this second network revealed a different algorithm for solving the mushroom problem, demonstrating that the Study 2 network was indeed a proper theory translation. (shrink)

The contemporary operating environment for deployed United States military operations largely focuses on deployments to predominantly Islamic countries. The differences in cultural values between d...

We examine the influence of face-based judgments of CFO and CEO honesty on earnings management for the largest publicly traded companies in America. After controlling for incentives and opportunities to manage earnings, CFOs perceived to be less honest engage in higher levels of accruals earnings management and real earnings management. The beneficial impact of perceived honesty on earnings quality is most pronounced when both the CFO and the CEO are perceived to be more honest. Findings are consistent with our conjecture (...) that both the CFO and CEO contribute to a firm’s financial reporting environment. (shrink)

PDP networks that use nonmonotonic activation functions often produce hidden unit regularities that permit the internal structure of these networks to be interpreted (Berkeley et al., 1995; McCaughan, 1997; Dawson, 1998). In particular, when the responses of hidden units to a set of patterns are graphed using jittered density plots, these plots organize themselves into a set of discrete stripes or bands. In some cases, each band is associated with a local interpretation. On the basis of these observations, Berkeley (...) (2000) has suggested that these bands are both subsymbolic and symbolic in nature, and has used the analysis of one network to support the claim that there are fewer differences between symbols and subsymbols than one might expect. We suggest below that this conclusion is premature. First, in many cases the local interpretation of each band is difficult to relate to the interpretation of a network's response; a more appropriate relationship only emerges when a band associated with one hidden unit is considered in the context of other bands associated with other hidden units (i.e., interpretations of distributed representations are more useful than interpretations of local representations). Second, the content that a band designates to an external observer (i.e., the interpretation assigned to a band by the researcher) can be quite different from the content that a band designates to the output units of the network itself.. We use two different network simulations – including the one described by Berkeley (2000) – to illustrate these points. We conclude that current evidence involving interpretations of nonmonotonic PDP networks actually illustrates the differences between symbolic and subsymbolic processing. (shrink)