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According to Plato, we live in a substitute world. The things we see around us are shadows of reality, imperfect imitations of perfect originals. Beyond the world of the senses, there is another, changeless world, more real and more beautiful than our own. But how can we get at this world, or attain knowledge of it, when our senses are unreliable and the perfect philosophical method remains out of reach? In the Divided Line passage of the Republic, Plato is clear that mathematics has a role to play, but the debate about the exact nature of that role remains unresolved. My reading of the Divided Line might provide the answer. I propose that the ‘mathematical’ passages of the Meno and Phaedo contain evidence that we can use to construct the method by which Plato means us to ascend to knowledge of the Forms. In this dissertation, I shall set out my reading of Plato’s Divided Line, and show how Plato’s use of mathematics in the Meno and Phaedo supports this view. The mathematical method, adapted to philosophy, is a central part of the Line’s ‘way up’ to the definitions of Forms that pure philosophy requires. I shall argue that this method is not, as some scholars think, the geometric method of analysis and synthesis, but apagōgē, or reduction. On this reading, mathematics is pivotal on our journey into the world of the Forms.

The purpose of this dissertation is to offer an interpretation of Plato's hypothetical method in his middle dialogues. The hypothetical method is given in three accounts, one in the Meno, the Phaedo and the Republic. These three accounts of the method besides their affinities, seem to present some differences. The first main problem is to see whether we can speak of one single method, or of three different hypothetical method. Plato, in the Meno (86e) says that his method is similar to one which the geometers use and gives as an elucidation of it, an obscure geometrical problem to which I offer a new solution. The second main problem of this dissertation is to examine whether there is any relation (and if there is, of what kind) between Plato's accounts of the hypothetical method and the various methodologies in Greek geometry at that time. I show In this dissertation that we have one method, in a broad sense, that employs hypotheses and proceeds in two ways: firstly, a way upwards (or backwards) towards the premisses of the argument or towards prior questions and, secondly, a way downwards from the premisses to the desired conclusion. The upward way is a heuristic process, whilst the downward one is deductive. Although we have essentially one method in all three dialogues, it is somewhat differentiated from one dialogue to the next (and in particular between the Phaedo and the Republic). In the three accounts of the hypothetical method, I see three stages of an evolutionary process similar to a corresponding one which took place in the evolution of the method of Indirect proof in geometry. More precisely, I argue that the three accounts of Plato's method reflect three corresponding stages in the evolution of the reductive method of Hippocrates of Chios (apagoge) to the geometrical method of analysis and synthesis. I argue furthermore, as regards the relation between Plato's philosophy and mathematics, that the axiomatization of geometry had an Impact on Plato's conception of knowledge and upon his conception of dialectic. Moreover, I try to show that we have good reasons to suppose that Plato proposed a programme of reducing the principles of mathematics into the fewest possible and his contribution to this programme was decisive. There is another problem regarding Plato's hypothetical method. In his middle dialogues, Plato clearly speaks about a new philosophical method of great importance and he gives extensive theoretical accounts of it. The strange thing is that it seems (and here almost all scholars agree) that nowhere does he apply his method (with the exception of a small-scale application of It In the Meno). However, this does not seem very likely. In chapters V and VI, I shall argue that we have extensive applications of the method in both the Phaedo and the Republic.

This research investigates the perceived effectiveness of relations among human service organizations providing mental health services. Although it has been argued that the perceived effectiveness of relationships is critical for the ability of human service organizations to maintain and develop relationships over time, no set of factors which might increase or decrease such perceptions of effectiveness have been identified. It is suggested that relationship effectiveness is an important element of organizational effectiveness and, as such, it is important to identify the correlates and determinants of this dimension of effectiveness. By employing both the resource dependence and network perspectives on interorganizational relations, two types of resource exchange relations are distinguished: those which provide the organization with resource certainty and those which provide the organization with resource independence. Relationships which provide resource independence are particularly important because they provide the organization with alternative sources of resources. A model, including organizational specialization and interorganizational conflict, links resource independence and resource certainty to perceptions of the effectiveness of those relations. Eight hypotheses are proposed. The most important predictions are that the impact of resource certainty and resource independence on effectiveness will depend on whether or not the organization is specialized, but that resource independence will always have the strongest positive impact on effectiveness. The data analyzed here were collected in Syracuse, New York in 1981, and include information about the relations among sixty-nine organizations providing mental health or other support services needed by the chronically mentally ill. The secondary analyses of these data indicated that whether or not the organization is specialized makes no difference for the impact of resource certainty and resource independence on perceived effectiveness. The detailed predictions made by the hypotheses were not supported by the data in this respect. However, it was found that, as hypothesized, resource independence did have a stronger positive impact on perceived effectiveness than resource certainty. This finding supports the idea that the context, consisting of all the relations in which the organization engages, has an important impact on the effectiveness of any one relationship. The importance of including such contextual assessments in the study of relational effectiveness, and in the interorganizational study of human service organizations in general, is emphasized and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the nature and strength of relationships between the extra-legal characteristics of offenders and select judicial processing decisions. The conflict perspective posits extra-legal factors to be dominant in criminal justice decision-making, and the consensus view expects sanctions to be based essentially upon legal factors. It was hypothesized that older offenders and males would receive harsher treatments than younger offenders and males and these effects would be primarily mediated through the legal status variables, prior record and charge severity. It was also hypothesized that nonwhites would receive harsher treatments than white offenders, but this relationship would be conditioned by the interaction of three community contextual factors, crime rate, juvenile delinquent placement rate, and nonwhite population percentage. To test these hypotheses, Offender-Based Transaction Statistics data were obtained on 32,670 convicted upper court defendants eligible for Youthful Offender treatment in New York State between 1980-1986. Preliminary analyses showed significant relationships between extra-legal factors and offender outcomes in the hypothesized directions. Older offenders were less likely to receive a YO adjudication and more likely than younger offenders to receive an incarcerative sentence. Males were less likely to be adjudicated and more likely than females to receive an incarcerative sentence. Further, nonwhites were also less likely to be adjudicated YO and more likely than white offenders to receive an incarcerative sentence. However, these extra-legal statuses were clearly entangled with legal status variables. Older offenders, males, and nonwhite offenders had more lengthly prior criminal records than younger offenders, females, and white offenders, respectively. Multivariate analyses showed prior record and charge severity to be prominent factors negatively related to adjudication as a Youthful Offender and positively related to sentence severity. Extra-legal factors had little direct or indirect effect on offender outcomes, although there was sufficient race effect to retain this variable at each stage of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the popular imagination, legal proceedings and their rules of law are thought of as paths to unalloyed truth. Both practitioners and scholars know this is often not the case because the law is, as are other domains, riddled with fictions. Indeed, the law sometimes borrows fictions from other domains to help it achieve results that would otherwise be unobtainable. One such place is securities law, in which courts in the United States have borrowed the concept of the ‘efficient market’ from economics to make fraud class actions possible. But that concept is—if not wholly—at least in good measure fictional.

In order to bring structure to many of the judgment and decision making problems people encounter, decision makers are often required to generate, from memory, hypotheses explaining their observations. This dissertation focuses on this predecisional process of hypothesis generation which underlies and supports much judgment and decision making behavior. Although we are beginning to understand a great deal about the mechanisms governing the generation and utilization of hypotheses (Thomas, R.P. et al. 2008) more work is needed to fully appreciate how these retrieval, judgment, and choice processes operate in real-world task environments.

In this dissertation we present a novel computational method, as well as its software implementation, to compare two samples by a nonparametric likelihood-ratio test. The basis of the comparison is a mean-type hypothesis. The software is written in the R-language [4]. The two samples are assumed to be independent. Their distributions, which are assumed to be unknown, may be discrete or continuous. The samples may be uncensored, right-censored, left-censored, or doubly-censored. Two software programs are offered. The first program covers the case of a single mean-type hypothesis. The second program covers the case of multiple mean-type hypotheses. For the first program, an approximate p-value for the single hypothesis is calculated, based on the premise that -2log-likelihood-ratio is asymptotically distributed as ­­χ2(1). For the second program, an approximate p-value for the p hypotheses is calculated, based on the premise that -2log-likelihood-ratio is asymptotically distributed as ­χ2(p). In addition we present a proof relating to use of a hazard-type hypothesis as the basis of comparison. We show that -2log-likelihood-ratio is asymptotically distributed as ­­χ2(1) for this hypothesis. The R programs we have developed can be downloaded free-of-charge on the internet at the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) at http://cran.r-project.org, package name emplik2. The R-language itself is also available free-of-charge at the same site.

Content analyses of research in the literature of gifted education (Coleman, 2006; Rogers, 1999, 2006) has shown a consistent absence of research investigating methodology for instructing gifted students and for the development of expertise using new technologies. In this study, utilising electronic instructional delivery, an investigation was undertaken of the differential effects and appropriateness of matching the prior knowledge of the learner to the instructional method. Underpinned with a theoretical understanding of gifted education and cognitive load theory, a series of three experiments was designed and implemented to determine whether gifted students learn more effectively under guided discovery design than with example based instruction, while not identified as gifted ability students perform significantly better under direct example based instruction than with guided discovery. Data were collected and analysed in three stages. Experiment 1 was conducted in the novel domain of Boolean switching equations. Experiments 2 and 3 used identical test instruments with novel tasks in the semi-familiar domain of geometry. A total of 155 Years 7, 8 and 9 students at three metropolitan secondary schools participated. The study explored whether the presence of schemas, that facilitated greater problem-solving ability in gifted students, would generate clear evidence of instructional efficiency and preference for either mode of instruction. As students advanced from novice state to expert in particular domains of learning, it was anticipated that gifted students would progress from benefiting from worked example instruction to more efficient learning in guided discovery mode. This hypothesis was rejected as the results from each of the experiments did not confirm the hypothesised outcomes. There was no manifested expertise-reversal effect. The absence of any clear delineation of enhanced learning proficiency mode of instruction for gifted students does, however, contribute to the advancement and understanding of cognitive load theory and the complexity of learning strategies necessary for gifted learners

In multiple, open-ended interviews with 7 former participants of a specialized treatment program for sexually abusive young women, respondents' narrative accounts revealed how they had made sense of their acts using the explanatory narratives proffered by correctional facility treatment staff. In line with the way some of the literature conceives of sexual offending by females, staff privileged the 'abused-abuser hypothesis,' an etiological account that focuses on the role of past sexual victimization in the development of sexually abusive behavior. In the first set of findings, I present detailed case summary information about each of these sexually abusive young women, their acts, and their experiences of past victimization. Given the saliency with which all respondents spoke of disrupted relationships with their mother or primary caregiver, I address how to interpret this finding in light of their harmful sexual behaviors. The second set of findings concern the discursive processes by which the young women made sense of their acts in interaction with explanatory narratives proffered by staff. Under an imperative to create a coherent explanatory account, respondents recounted being presented with the abused-abuser hypothesis as an acceptable explanatory account. The young women varied in their uptake of this explanatory account based on their relation to the label of 'sexual offender' and their gender identity. To frame the process of respondents' collaborative meaning making with staff, I used Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of guided learning and the development of inner speech. To examine the variance in participants' uptake of the abused-abuser explanatory narrative---as inflected by gender orientation---I used Messerschmidt's theory of gendered enactment in delinquency. Using Penuel and Wertsch's sociocultural theory of identity formation---which brings together the work of Vygotsky on social learning and Erikson on identity development---in combination with Messerschmidt's theory of gendered enactment, I see hegemonic masculinity or femininity as a dominant cultural representation these women can use to enact their identities. In differently accessing particular hegemonic notions of femininity and masculinity using the victim-focused narrative of the abused-abuser hypothesis, these sexually abusive young women illustrate the degree to which the concepts of victimization and perpetration are gendered.