Information,knowledge and wisdom: groundwork for the normative evaluation of digital information and its relation to the good life

This paper provides a general philosophical groundwork for the theoretical and applied normative evaluation of information generally and digital information specifically in relation to the good life. The overall aim of the paper is to address the question of how Information Ethics and computer ethics more generally can be expanded to include more centrally the issue of how and to what extent information relates and contributes to the quality of life or the good life, for individuals and for society. To answer that question, the paper explores and provides by way of a theoretical groundwork for further research, the concept of wisdom understood as a type of meta-knowledge as well as a type of meta-virtue, which can enable one to both know in principle what a good life is and how to successfully apply that knowledge in living such a life in practice. This answer will be based on the main argument presented in this paper that the notion of wisdom understood as being at once a meta-epistemological, meta-axiological and meta-eudemonic concept, provides the essential conceptual link between information on the one hand and the good life on the other. If, as we are told, this is the Age of Information, both the theoretical examination and analysis of the question of how information relates to the good life and the provision of an adequate answer to that question are essential for developing a deeper understanding of how to evaluate the theoretical and practical implications and ramifications of information for the good life, for individuals and societies generally.     

Hazard and Outrage: Developing a Psychometric Instrument in the Aftermath of Katrina

This article details the development of a psychometric instrument measuring the constructs of hazard and outrage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The study focused on the interplay of perceived hazard and outrage in relation to evacuation from the New Orleans area, with specific attention to demographic differences. Perceptions of hazard and outrage during Katrina served to illustrate the utility of the scale in examining these responses across different demographic groups. Possible ways that this information can be used to design messages that alert audiences to hazards, yet successfully address the need for outrage, emerged from the study.     

Welcoming Our Robot Overlords: Initial Expectations About Interaction With a Robot

This study examined the relationships between faculty workplace bullying with graduate students’ burnout and organizational citizenship behaviors. Graduate students (N = 272) completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the degree to which faculty bully them at work (i.e., through belittlement, punishment, managerial misconduct, exclusion) along with reports of their student burnout (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy) and use of organizational citizenship behaviors (i.e., helping, civic virtue, sportsmanship). Results of canonical correlations revealed that faculty bullying was related positively to graduate student burnout and was related inversely to organizational citizenship behaviors.     

Emerging: An Art Field Placement’s Impact on Practice

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study examined the experiences of 9 stakeholders in an art gallery field placement during their social work education. The study sought to understand how the nontraditional field placement prepared students for practice. In addition, personality traits of students that best fit the placement was examined. Findings suggest that students had been prepared to engage in a variety of practice behaviors, work independently, and be more creative. However, they also felt that the field placement setting did not give them enough direct practice opportunities. The two most salient personality traits were being flexible and an initiator.     

The DisHuman child

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we consider the relationship between the human and disability; with specific focus on the lives of disabled children and young people. We begin with an analysis of the close relationship between ‘the disabled’ and ‘the freak’. We demonstrate that the historical markings of disability as object of curiosity and register of fear serve to render disabled children as non-human and monstrous. We then consider how the human has been constituted, particularly in the periods of modernity and the rise of capitalism, reliant upon the naming of disability as antithetical to all that counts as human. In order to find a place for disabled children in a social and cultural context that has historically denied their humanity and cast them as monstrous others, we develop the theoretical notion of the DisHuman: a bifurcated complex that allows us recognise their humanity whilst also celebrating the ways in which disabled children reframe what it means to be human. We suggest that the lives of disabled children and young people demand us to think in ways that affirm the inherent humanness in their lives but also allow us to consider their disruptive potential: this is our DisHuman child. We draw on our research projects to explore three sites where the DisHuman child emerges in moments where sameness and difference, monstrosity/disability and humanity are invoked simultaneously. We explore three locations – (i) DisDevelopment; (ii) DisFamily and (iii) DisSexuality – illuminating the ways in which the DisHuman child seeks nuanced, politicized and complicating forms of humanity.     

Conditions for young infants' perception of object trajectories

When an object moves behind an occluder and re-emerges, 4-month-old infants perceive trajectory continuity only when the occluder is narrow, raising the question of whether time or distance out of sight is the important constraining variable. One hundred and forty 4-month-olds were tested in five experiments aimed to disambiguate time and distance out of sight. Manipulating the object's visible speed had no effect on infants' responses, but reducing occlusion time by increasing object speed while occluded induced perception of trajectory continuity. In contrast, slowing the ball while it was behind a narrow or intermediate screen did not modify performance. It is concluded that 4-month-olds perceive trajectory continuity when time or distance out of sight is short.     

Young,free and single? Theorising partner relationships during the first year of university

Recent research into young people’s private social worlds has highlighted the significance of family and friend relationships for students’ experiences of the transition to university. Drawing on data generated through a qualitative longitudinal study with 24 young women undergraduate students, this paper provides an original contribution to this growing body of literature by bringing committed partner relationships into view. The following discussion uses the notion of the ‘moral tale’ in order to reveal the ways in which singleness and commitment to a partner were experienced and articulated by young women undergraduate students at this important juncture. This paper raises important questions about how young women are able to take on ‘traditional’ and ‘authentic’ student identities whilst also remaining connected to important sources of love and support at this time of heightened change