Ethics Shock: Technology, Life Styles and Future Practice

During the past ten years a new movement has developed in the United States which has taken as its major emphasis the study of the future. The futureologists led by Kahn, Weiner, and Theobald, have projected a number of alternatives for the United States. The value of this movement has been: 1) to alert the country to the fact that change is occurring at an extremely rapid pace; 2) to provide a transdisciplinary view, not only utilizing projections from various disciplines, but illustrating the multiplier effect that the combination of developments from many disciplines may have on our society; and 3) to illustrate that we can, if we wish, and if we act soon enough, influence the change. The purpose of this paper is to examine selected changes from the vast visions of possible change, most likely to have impacts on society which will have to be taken into account by social work. How will these changes influence our profession? And, what techniques and approaches will our profession have to construct in order to deal with the changes taking place? If we do not prepare, we too will find ourselves in shock - reacting on the spur of the moment, reeling without plan, purpose, professional means or goals to guide us. Weightless, we will drift, seeking a role in a society which needs help, but in which we make no impact. Clearly this would constitute failure to meet our professional responsibilities. We shall conclude by examining the potential of the ethical code of the profession as a source of guidance in dealing with these dilemmas and questions. In evaluating the code we shall consider the extent to which it meets the standards set in other areas for achieving a cognitive base for action. We shall propose that steps be taken to make it more scientific

Ethics Shock: Technology, Life Styles and Future Practice

During the past ten years a new movement has developed in the United States which has taken as its major emphasis the study of the future. The futureologists led by Kahn, Weiner, and Theobald, have projected a number of alternatives for the United States. The value of this movement has been: 1) to alert the country to the fact that change is occurring at an extremely rapid pace; 2) to provide a transdisciplinary view, not only utilizing projections from various disciplines, but illustrating the multiplier effect that the combination of developments from many disciplines may have on our society; and 3) to illustrate that we can, if we wish, and if we act soon enough, influence the change. The purpose of this paper is to examine selected changes from the vast visions of possible change, most likely to have impacts on society which will have to be taken into account by social work. How will these changes influence our profession? And, what techniques and approaches will our profession have to construct in order to deal with the changes taking place? If we do not prepare, we too will find ourselves in shock - reacting on the spur of the moment, reeling without plan, purpose, professional means or goals to guide us. Weightless, we will drift, seeking a role in a society which needs help, but in which we make no impact. Clearly this would constitute failure to meet our professional responsibilities. We shall conclude by examining the potential of the ethical code of the profession as a source of guidance in dealing with these dilemmas and questions. In evaluating the code we shall consider the extent to which it meets the standards set in other areas for achieving a cognitive base for action. We shall propose that steps be taken to make it more scientific

Jewish and non-Jewish club leaders in Jewish community centers

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Linear semigroups with coarsely dense orbits

Let $S$ be a finitely generated abelian semigroup of invertible linear operators on a finite dimensional real or complex vector space $V$. We show that every coarsely dense orbit of $S$ is actually dense in $V$. More generally, if the orbit contains a coarsely dense subset of some open cone $C$ in $V$ then the closure of the orbit contains the closure of $C$. In the complex case the orbit is then actually dense in $V$. For the real case we give precise information about the possible cases for the closure of the orbit.Comment: We added comments and remarks at various places. 14 page

Experimental evidence for the influence of structure and meaning on linear order in the noun phrase

Recent work has used artificial language experiments to argue that hierarchical representations drive learners’ expectations about word order in complex noun phrases like these two green cars (Culbertson & Adger 2014; Martin, Ratitamkul, et al. 2019). When trained on a novel language in which individual modifiers come after the Noun, English speakers overwhelmingly assume that multiple nominal modifiers should be ordered such that Adjectives come closest to the Noun, then Numerals, then Demonstratives (i.e., N-Adj-Num-Dem or some subset thereof). This order transparently reflects a constituent structure in which Adjectives combine with Nouns to the exclusion of Numerals and Demonstratives, and Numerals combine with Noun+Adjective units to the exclusion of Demonstratives. This structure has also been claimed to derive frequency asymmetries in complex noun phrase order across languages (e.g., Cinque 2005). However, we show that features of the methodology used in these experiments potentially encourage participants to use a particular metalinguistic strategy that could yield this outcome without implicating constituency structure. Here, we use a more naturalistic artificial language learning task to investigate whether the preference for hierarchy-respecting orders is still found when participants do not use this strategy. We find that the preference still holds, and, moreover, as Culbertson & Adger (2014) speculate, that its strength reflects structural distance between modifiers. It is strongest when ordering Adjectives relative to Demonstratives, and weaker when ordering Numerals relative to Adjectives or Demonstratives relative to Numerals. Our results provide the strongest evidence yet for the psychological influence of hierarchical structure on word order preferences during learning

Sedimentary geology of the Middle Carboniferous of the Donbas region (Dniepr-Donets basin, Ukraine)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Cross-linguistic evidence for cognitive universals in the noun phrase

Noun phrase word order varies cross-linguistically, however, two distributional asymmetries have attracted substantial attention (i.a., Greenberg 1963, Cinque 2005). First, the most common orders place adjectives closest to the noun, then numerals, then demonstratives (e.g., N-Adj- Num-Dem). Second, exceptions to this are restricted to post-nominal position (e.g., N-Dem- Num-Adj, but not Adj-Num-Dem-N). These observations have been argued to reflect constraints on cognition. Here we report two experiments, following work by Culbertson & Adger (2014), providing additional support for this claim. We taught English- and Thai-speaking participants artificial languages in which the position of modifiers relative to the noun differed from their native order (post-nominal position in English, pre-nominal in Thai). We trained participants on single-modifier phrases, and asked them to extrapolate to multiple modifier phrases. We found that both populations infer relative orders of modifiers that conform to the tendency for closest proximity of adjectives, then numerals, then demonstratives. Further, we show that Thai participants, learning pre-nominal modifiers, exhibit a stronger such preference. These results track the typology closely and are consistent with the claim that noun phrase word order reflects properties of human cognition. We discuss future research needed to rule out alternative explanations for our findings, including prior language experience