Interview With An Educator: John Morrison

This is an interview with John Morrison who works at Edinburgh Napier University teaching Digital Media and Interactive Design.

His interests include, technology enhanced learning, digital literacy and visual communication driven documentary. John talks about his experiences of education and dyslexia, how he came to be in education, about what makes him light up about teaching and also some of the things which he encounters in his role as a teacher and educator. The interview took place in George Square gardens next to a willow tree in June 2014… Read more…

A Social and Environmental Philosophy: Human Action in the Biosphere by Kenneth Wilson

This is the first part of the first section [Action] of Kenneth Wilson’s thesis “A Social and Environmental Philosophy”

As G. H. von Wright comments, “The notion of a human act is related to the notion of an event, i.e. a change in the world.”[1] An action then is a manifestation of the cause-effect relations which constitute what it is to be a human being. What is more, any action is undertaken in relation to some external state of affairs, whether these involve other people, other living entities or processes, or simply the inanimate context.
Von Wright also comments that, “To act is, in a sense, to interfere with “the course of nature.””[2] This quotation clearly points the way to the role of intention. Intention is connected to the concepts of free will and the deliberate choice of some course of action. Therefore the use of the concept as valid is underpinned by a position in the opposition between free will and determinism. While I accept the validity of intention as a concept and thus support the existence of free will, I nevertheless see a role for determined behaviour. Read more…

Podcast: The Social Psychology of Relationships by Professor Ray Miller

This is a podcast of Professor Ray Miller talking about the social psychology of relationships.  This is the fifth in a series of talks given by Ray at the Ragged University events.

When people talk about relationships, they are often thinking about those interpersonal interactions that characterise our experiences of love and emotion. Relationships are the stuff of fascination, whether it is the search for the perfect partner, the compatibility of personality or horoscope profiles or the headlines about the latest Hollywood make or break-up. But relationships are far more than that: Read more…

Ethnocentrism and Country of Origin Effects: The Process of Purchasing by Doreen Soutar

The early models of purchasing behaviour were developed in the 1970s, and were informed by research in psychology into the relationship between the individual’s intention to act and their subsequent behaviour (Fishbein & Azjen, 1975).

These models relatively simplistic, suggesting that behaviour was a result of a reasoning process which took internal thought processes and external influences into account. As these models were applied to purchasing decisions and expanded, it became clear that purchasing decisions were only partly rational, and contained a much wider and more complex interaction of influences.
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