A just judgement? Considerations on Ronald Srigley’s Camus’ Critique of Modernity

This paper responds critically to Ronald Srigley’s groundbreaking 2011 study Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity. Srigley’s book reasserts Camus’ credentials as a deeply serious thinker, whose literary and philosophical oeuvre was dedicated to rethinking modernity on the basis of critical reassessments of theWest’s entire premodern heritage. Yet we challenge whether Camus was ever, even in his final writings, so uncompromisingly anti-modern as Srigley contends. Srigley’s attempt to present Camus as committed to a return to the Greeks, on the basis of a total critique of modernity as deleteriously post-Christian, forces him to occlude important distinctions in Camus’ thought: those between unity and totality, rebellion and revolution. By contrast, we compare Camus’ defence of modern rebellion with Blumenberg’s argument in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: finding justification for this rebellion in the deep problem faced by Christian theology of resolving the ‘problem of evil’. Finally, we suggest that Srigley overplays the extent of Camus’ ‘Hellenic’ critique of the Christian heritage (notably its ethical commitment to protecting the weak), in contrast to Christian theodicy and eschatology, which serve to rationalize avoidable suffering.

Narratives of judgement: representations of 'privileged' Jews in Holocaust documentaries

Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s highly influential essay, “The Grey Zone”, explores the taboo issue of “privileged” Jews, those prisoners who were forced to cooperate with their Nazi captors in order to prolong their lives or the lives of their families. Levi argues that moral evaluations of privileged Jews should be suspended; however, judgements of these liminal figures have permeated representations of victims’ experiences. Taking Levi’s reflections on the “grey zone” as a point of departure, I analyse the ways in which a number of Holocaust documentary narratives construct problematic judgements of privileged Jews; nonetheless, it will be shown that some films engage with the issue in a nuanced manner. While Levi singles out the medium of film as particularly predisposed to simplistic judgements, I argue that documentary film has considerable potential to offer a complex representation of the extreme ethical dilemmas that privileged Jews faced.

A new method for deriving priority weights by extracting consistent numerical-valued matrices from interval-valued fuzzy judgement matrix

It is important to derive priority weights from interval-valued fuzzy preferences when a pairwise comparative mechanism is used. By focusing on the significance of consistency in the pairwise comparison matrix, two numerical-valued consistent comparison matrices are extracted from an interval fuzzy judgement matrix. Both consistent matrices are derived by solving the linear or nonlinear programming models with the aid of assessments from Decision Makers (DMs). An interval priority weight vector from the extracted consistent matrices is generated. In order to retain more information hidden in the intervals, a new probability-based method for comparison of the interval priority weights is introduced. An algorithm for deriving the final priority interval weights for both consistent and inconsistent interval matrices is proposed. The algorithm is also generalized to handle the pairwise comparison matrix with fuzzy numbers. The comparative results from the five examples reveal that the proposed method, as compared with eight existing methods, exhibits a smaller degree of uncertainty pertaining to the priority weights, and is also more reliable based on the similarity measure. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Does student engagement in self-assessment calibrate their judgement over time?

One of the implicit aims of higher education is to enable students to become better judges of their own work. This paper examines whether students who voluntarily engage in self-assessment improve in their capacity to make those judgements. The study utilises data from a web-based marking system that provides students with the opportunity to assess themselves on each criterion for each assessment task throughout a programme of study. Student marks were compared with those from tutors to plot changes over time. The findings suggest that overall students’ judgements do converge with those of tutors, but that there is considerable variation across achievement levels, with weaker students showing little improvement. Whilst the study is limited by the exigencies of voluntary participation and thus consequential gaps in the data set, it shows how judgement over time can be demonstrated and points to the potential for more systematic interventions to improve students’ judgements. It also illustrates the use of the web-based marking and feedback software (ReView) that has considerable utility in aiding self-assessment research.

The calibration of student judgement through self-assessment: disruptive effects of assessment patterns

Can extended opportunities for self-assessment over time help students develop the capacity to make better judgements about their work? Using evidence gathered through students' voluntary self-assessment of their performance with respect to assessment tasks in two different disciplines at two Australian universities, the paper focuses on the effects of sequences of units of study and the use of different types of assessment task (written, oral, analysis, and project) in the development of student judgement. Convergence between student criteria-based gradings of their own performance in units of study and those allocated by tutors was analysed to explore the calibration of students' judgement over time. First, it seeks to replicate analyses from an earlier smaller-scale study to confirm that students' judgements can be calibrated through continuing opportunities for self-assessment and feedback. Second, it extends the analysis to coherently designed sequences of units of study and explores the effects of different types of assessment. It finds that disruptive patterns of assessment within a sequence of subjects can reduce convergence between student and tutor judgements.

Gestures of judgement and welcome in public spaces: hypervisible migrant newcomers in Darwin, Australia

This paper draws on ethnographic research to show how pigmentation intensities of skin and facial characteristics make bodies of colour recognisable in public spaces of Darwin, a small multiethnic and multiracial north Australian city. This paper shows that the visibility of newcomers, in particular, humanitarian migrants from countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, circulates negative sentiments of fear, anxiety and discomfort in public spaces when instantaneous judgements are made. These judgements of misrecognition made by residents of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds lead to simmering tensions that unfold as visceral events of vulnerability in public spaces such as bus interchanges, neighbourhood streets, shopping centres and car parks. These events that have the potential to wound and numb bodies contribute to the “urban unconscious” of Darwin as a city where public spaces are safe with heightened surveillance. This paper argues, however, that events of hypervisibility, judgement and interracial tensions can unfold quite differently in public spaces if humanitarian migrants sense gestures of welcome, particularly from Aboriginals. Such fleeting moments of welcome in Darwin have the potential to bring together bodies with different histories and geographies of racialisation, so that multiple publics emerge through everyday habits of living with difference.

Combining clinical judgement and formalised risk assessment techniques in anaesthesiology : lessons from bushfire emergency management

The underlying thinking in bushfire management has much to offer anaesthetists. Although it is imperative to develop improved methods of predicting the risk of perioperative patient morbidity and mortality, we must avoid them being used in a way that can undermine both individual clinical judgment on a case-by-case basis and the effectivenessof the methods themselves. This requires all concerned to be aware of the reliability and validity of the algorithms used to provide such predictions as well as the quality of the data upon which they are based. Like fire behaviour analysts, anaesthetists should still be free to trust their knowledge, expertise and experience. When experienced fire fighters sense a conflict between what the evidence on the ground is telling them and what a predictive fire map is saying, they use their understanding of limitations of the fire analysts’ predictions to inform their own professional judgment.

Perceptive variation of carboxylate ligand and probing the influence of substitution pattern on the structure of mono- and di-butylstannoxane complexes

By reacting 2- and 3-aminobenzoic acids (HL1 and HL2, respectively), as well as 2-, 3- and 4-((E)-2-[4-(dimethylamino)phenyl]diazenyl)benzoic acids (HL3, HL4 and HL5, in this order) with a n-butyltin(IV) source [ n BuSn(O)OH or n Bu2SnO], the drum-type butylstannoxane complexes of general composition [ n Bu6Sn6O6(L n )6] [L n =L1 (1), L2 (2) and L3 (3)] and the ladder-type compounds [ n Bu8Sn4O2(L n )4] [L n =L3 (5), L4 (6) and L5 (7)] were obtained and fully characterized. By reacting 1 with 2-((E)-[4-(dimethylamino)benzylidene]amino)benzoic acid (HL6), a co-crystal (4) was achieved which comprises the metal complex aggregate found in 1 and the neutral HL6 molecule. The solution properties of the compounds were assessed from 1H and 13C NMR studies and, for the metal complexes, also from 119Sn NMR. The molecular structures of 1, 2, 4-7 were confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Compounds 1-3 and the complex moiety of 4 display hexameric Sn6O6 clusters with drum-like structures, but 5-7 reveal Sn4O2 cores with ladder-type structural motifs. Besides the observed relationship between the ligand N-functional group and obtained (drum- or ladder-type) assemblies, the relative position of the carboxylate group in the ligand itself influences its coplanarity.

Whatever happened in Torres Strait?: interpreting the Anglican split of 1998

Recent movements within world Anglicanism towards a more democratic representation of the church are in contrast to Torres Strait Islanders' assertion of their own male-led conservative and hierarchical body. These characteristics have marked Torres Strait Island Anglicanism for many years. On the surface, the various strands leading to a conflict over a choice of leader in 1997 focused upon discordant relationships and faulty decision-making procedures, especially the surrender of the diocese of Carpentaria to the adjacent diocese of North Queensland and a subsequent choice of a bishop where Torres Strait clergy claimed that the terms of the surrender had been dishonoured. Yet below the surface, the cleavage between Island and European leadership was also a sign of the ideological shift which was occurring in the Anglican Church of Australia. Supported by European elements within that church opposed to the ordination of women, Islander clergy charged that the mainland body was deserting the faith and order of the 'church of the fathers'. With the Islanders newly empowered, as they perceived it, by the Mabo judgement of the High Court of Australia in 1992, their perception appears to have been that, in spirit, the mainland church denied what the High Court's decision recognised: the ultimate control by Islanders over their own affairs.

Ensuring balance in corporate governance : parts 2F.1 and 2F.1A of the Corporations Law

Effective corporate governance must balance the competing, and at times conflicting, objectives of efficient endeavour and accountability. The CLERP amendments to the Corporations Law introduced on 13 March 2000 go a long way towards providing this balance. While the business judgement rule was introduced to promote efficient endeavour, Pts 2F.1 and 2F.1A maintain corporate accountability. This article compares Pts 2F.t and 2F.1A of the Corporations Law. It is argued that, although there are procedural and substantive differences between the two parts that need to be understood by practitioners, the importance of the two Parts is that they work together to provide for a much-needed improvement and enhancement of shareholder rights and remedies, thus upholding accountability in corporate governance.

La caze on envy and resentment

Marguerite La Caze has recently published a stimulating analysis of the emotions of envy and resentment in which she argues that to envy others for a benefit they have received or to resent them for such a reason can be ethically acceptable in cases where that benefit has been unjustly obtained (La Caze, 2001). I question this on the ground that the judgement that the benefit has been unjustly obtained plays a more complex role in the structure of envy and resentment than La Caze allows and should alter the nature of the feeling that is evoked. From the perspective of virtue ethics there is nothing creditable about still feeling envy or resentment in such circumstances.

Improving children's recall of an occurrence of a repeated event: is it a matter of helping them to generate options?

Three experiments were conducted to explore whether children's recall of an occurrence of a repeated event could be improved by encouraging them to consider various details that occurred across a series of events prior to making a judgement about which details were included in the target (to-be-recalled) occurrence. Experiment 1 explored whether children's recall of the target occurrence was better after the interviewer presented all the items from the series prior to the child identifying the final item. Experiment 2 explored whether having the children generate all the items facilitated their subsequent recall of the target occurrence. Finally, Experiment 3 directly compared the effectiveness of the above 2 procedures. Regardless of the children's age, the retention interval, or the type of item, children's capacity to identify which details were included in a target occurrence was enhanced when they were initially provided with all the possible details from the series of events. However, without relying on the interviewer to generate the options, the benefit of the technique was directly contingent on the children's ability to generate content details; this was a distinct source of difficulty for the children. Indeed, having children generate options had no beneficial effect on decisions about the temporal position of items unless performance was made conditional on the children's ability to remember the relevant details in the first place. The implications of the findings for the legal setting and for future research are discussed.