Previous research has established that creative adolescents are generally low in neuroticism and as well-adjusted as their peers. From 2006 to 2013, data from cohorts of creative adolescents attending a counseling laboratory supported these results. Clinical findings of increased anxiety, depression, and suicidality among creative students in 2014 led the researchers to create 3 studies to explore these clinical findings. Once artifactual causes of these changes were ruled out, a quantitative study was conducted. Study 1, an analysis of mean differences (...) of pre-2014 and post-2014 cohorts showed that post-2014 cohorts scored significantly higher in Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness and lower in Extraversion on Big 5 inventories. Regression analyses suggested that while Neuroticism was associated with gender, Conscientiousness and Grade Point Average for the earlier group, Neuroticism in the post 2014 groups was related to complex interplay of all personality dynamics except Agreeableness. In the qualitative Study 2, focus groups of 6–10 students, for a total of 102 participants were queried about the reasons they perceived for increased anxiety and depression in creative students. Increased achievement pressures and awareness of environmental and social problems were major sources of external stressors; perfectionism and desire to fulfill expectations of others were the primary sources of internal stress. The authors suggest that creative students' openness to experience and advanced knowledge made it possible for these students to see the potential for environmental and social crises and respond to their inability to solve these problems with anxiety and depression. Study 3 was a qualitative study that followed up 19 participants from the post-2014 cohort to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and creativity. While the majority perceived a negative effect of the pandemic on their mental health, most also produced a surprising variety of creative works during that time. In conclusion, rapid changes in the lives of creative adolescents since 2014 suggest that scholars focus on current cohorts and the ways in which adolescent personality is shaped by internal expectation and external pressures and global events. Despite the pandemic, creative young people continued to create. (shrink)

Many researchers have suggested that premise interpretation errors can account, at least in part, for errors on categorical syllogisms. However, although it is possible to show that people make such errors in simple inference tasks, the evidence for them is far less clear when actual syllogisms are administered. Part of the problem is due to the lack of clear predictions for the solutions that would be expected when using modified quantifiers, assuming that correct inferences are made from them. This paper (...) presents the expected solutions for Gricean, reversible, and reversible Gricean interpretations, and evaluates these using three datasets (two currently available, and one new). The evidence supported the adoption of reversible and reversible Gricean interpretations, but not Gricean interpretations on their own. These results suggest that the categorical syllogism task tends to induce different quantifier interpretations from those identified in simple inference tasks. (shrink)

A bold argument that constitutional states are not weaker because their powers are divided -- they are often stronger because they solve collective action problems rooted in speech and communication.

Network neuroscience represents the brain as a collection of regions and inter-regional connections. Given its ability to formalize systems-level models, network neuroscience has generated unique explanations of neural function and behavior. The mechanistic status of these explanations and how they can contribute to and fit within the field of neuroscience as a whole has received careful treatment from philosophers. However, these philosophical contributions have not yet reached many neuroscientists. Here we complement formal philosophical efforts by providing an applied perspective from (...) and for neuroscientists. We discuss the mechanistic status of the explanations offered by network neuroscience and how they contribute to, enhance, and interdigitate with other types of explanations in neuroscience. In doing so, we rely on philosophical work concerning the role of causality, scale, and mechanisms in scientific explanations. In particular, we make the distinction between an explanation and the evidence supporting that explanation, and we argue for a scale-free nature of mechanistic explanations. In the course of these discussions, we hope to provide a useful applied framework in which network neuroscience explanations can be exercised across scales and combined with other fields of neuroscience to gain deeper insights into the brain and behavior. (shrink)

Consumers do not always follow their ideological beliefs about the need to engage in environmentally friendly consumption. We propose that Commitment to Beliefs —the general tendency to follow one’s value-based beliefs—can help identify who is most likely to follow their environmental ideologies. We predicted that CTB would amplify the effect of beliefs prescribing environmental stewardship, or neglect, on corresponding intentions, behavior, and purchasing decisions. In two studies, CTB amplified the positive and negative effects of relevant EF ideologies on EF purchase (...) decisions, and consumption and conservation attitudes, intentions, as well as future behavior. In each study, only people with higher levels of CTB demonstrated the most ideologically consistent consumption and conservation intentions and behavior. These findings clarify who is most likely to align their decisions and lifestyles according to their sustainable consumption ideologies. The amplification effect of CTB, and the CTB variable itself, present new contributions to consumer behavior research and the domains of sustainable or ethical consumption in particular and offer wide-ranging potential for marketing practitioners and researchers. (shrink)

This book represents a germinal effort that urges all religious and world leaders to savor the mystical spirituality, especially the cosmology and spirituality of sacred sustainability of the indigenous peoples. The power of indigenous spirit world is harnessed for the common good of the indigenous communities and the regenerative power of mother earth. This everyday mysticism of the world as spirited and sacred serves to re-enchant a world disillusioned by the unsustainability of destructive economic systems that have spawned the current (...) ecological crises. Author Jojo Fung offers insight from his lived-experience and this book represents his effort to correlate the indigenous spirit world with Catholic Pneumatology and articulate the activity of God's Spirit as the Spirit of Sacred Sustainability. (shrink)

Gómez Pereira's Antoniana Margarita (1554) represents one of the most original works of his time. Its author develops some issues of great impact in later philosophy, such as animal automatism, soul-body radical separation and self-awareness.

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...) warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act, via science and technology, without also acquiring the capacity to act wisely. (shrink)

We examined the universality of the curse of knowledge by investigating it in a unique cross-cultural sample; a nomadic Nilo-Saharan pastoralist society in East Africa, the Turkana. Forty Turkana children were asked eight factual questions and asked to predict how widely-known those facts were among their peers. To test the effect of their knowledge, we taught children the answers to half of the questions, while the other half were unknown. Based on findings suggesting the bias’s universality, we predicted that children (...) would estimate that more of their peers would know the answers to the questions that were taught versus the unknown questions. We also predicted that with age children would become less biased by their knowledge. In contrast, we found that only Turkana males were biased by their knowledge when inferring their peers’ perspectives, and the bias did not change with age. We discuss the implications of these findings. (shrink)

We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. (...) We argue that the statistical seclusion of internal from external states of the system—entailed by the existence of a Markov boundary—can coexist happily with the multiscale integration of the system through its dynamics. Our approach does not privilege any given boundary, nor does it argue that all boundaries are equally prescient. We argue that the relevant boundaries of cognition depend on the level being characterised and the explanatory interests that guide investigation. We approach the issue of how and where to draw the boundaries of cognitive systems through a multiscale ontology of cognitive systems, which offers a multidisciplinary research heuristic for cognitive science. (shrink)

All along, many commentators stressed the differences of Chinese and Western philosophy and method of Qi, that philosophy and approach to the Western emphasis on analysis, argumentation and logic, and China's philosophical method is longer than intuition, and permits will be realized. Different methods by which they believe will give different results: the knowledge of the outside world through Western methods may be, can be obtained through the French inner truth. The former purpose we got outside, after all is also (...) in the contented. The authors believe that this orthodoxy and popular opinion is a great problem. One problem is: with or without the so-called intrinsic truth, they say, intuitive method of physical certificates but not feasible. In addition to resorting to a very small number of believers of the first-person authority, they can not explain the methods and procedures, they can not prove its effectiveness. In addition, they oppose the West, although on the surface of the speculative method, which emphasizes the importance of reflexivity within the card, but when their faith in order to convince the people off the outer ring of authenticity Wuzhen Dao, in fact, they unwittingly use on the Western speculative methods, but not the logic of Western speculative, but now the speculative. The purpose of this article, first through a thought experiment of the anti-theory, went on to argue that the orthodox view of the popular errors and false. The authors believe that: this say just false, but logically self-denial. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is a revolutionary political ideal that requires fundamental changes in political institutions, bases of collective decision making, and the distribution of resources. Perhaps because of its revolutionary character accounts of deliberation in political theory thus far have offered little guidance for actors in actually-existing democratic circumstances. This article develops an ethical account of deliberative democratic action under imperfectly just conditions characterized by material and political inequality and failures of reciprocity. Under such conditions, appropriate principles of action can resolve (...) the tension between deliberation and confrontational political activism. The logic of this account parallels the justification for civil disobedience: the extent of permissible deviationfrom deliberative norms increases according to the adversity of political circumstances. This ethical account is composed of principles of deliberative activism, applications of those principles to four kinds of increasing unfavorable circumstances, and a menu of institutional and political strategies that increase deliberative inclusion and equality. (shrink)

This book is a companion to logical thought and logical thinking in China with a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces the basic ideas and theories of Chinese thought in a comprehensive and analytical way. It covers thoughts in ancient, pre-modern and modern China from a historical point of view. It deals with topics in logical (including logico-philosophical) concepts and theories rooted in China, Indian and Western Logic transplanted to China, and the development of logical studies in contemporary China and (...) other Chinese communities. The term “philosophy of logic” or “logico-philosophical thought” is used in this book to represent “logical thought” in a broad sense which includes thinking on logical concepts, modes of reasoning, and linguistic ideas related to logic and philosophical logic. Unique in its approach, the book uses Western logical theories and philosophy of language, Chinese philology, and history of ideas to deal with the basic ideas and major problems in logical thought and logical thinking in China. In doing so, it advances the understanding of the lost tradition in Chinese philosophical studies. (shrink)

Motivated by the disproportionately high incidence of fraudulent financial reporting in the IT sector where technological capability is a major source of competitive advantage, this study investigates the possible relationship between technological capability and fraud probability in the IT sector. Technological capability is measured by a firm’s technical efficiency relative to peers in transforming cumulative R&D resources into innovative output, which is a source of competitive advantage, according to the resource-based view of the firm. Technical efficiency is estimated via data (...) envelopment analysis. A sample of fraud firms taken from Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases is matched with control samples of non-fraud firms. Consistent with the RBV, technological capability is found to have a negative and economically significant effect on fraud probability. Moreover, fraud probability is insignificantly associated with the scale efficiency of innovative activities, as investment in R&D resources per se is not a source of sustainable competitive advantage. (shrink)

Background Residual dried blood spots (rDBS) from newborn screening programmes represent a valuable resource for medical research, from basic sciences, through clinical to public health. In Hong Kong, there is no legislation for biobanking. Parents’ view on the retention and use of residual newborn blood samples could be cultural-specific and is important to consider for biobanking of rDBS. Objective To study the views and concerns on long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening programmes among Hong Kong Chinese (...) parents. Methods A mixed-method approach was used to study the views and concerns on long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening programmes among Hong Kong Chinese parents of children 0–3 years or expecting parents through focus groups (8 groups; 33 participants) and a survey (n = 1012, 85% mothers) designed with insights obtained from the focus groups. We used framework analysis to summarise the themes as supportive factors, concerns and critical arguments for retention and secondary use of rDBS from focus group discussion. We used multiple logistic regression to assess factors associated with support for retention and secondary use of rDBS in the survey. Results Both in focus groups and survey, majority of parents were not aware of the potential secondary use of rDBS. Overall secondary use of rDBS in medical research was well accepted by a large proportion of Hong Kong parents, even if all potential future research could not be specified in a broad consent. However parents were concerned about potential risks of biobanking rDBS including leaking of data and mis-use of genetic information. Parents wanted to be asked for permission before rDBS are stored and mainly did not accept an “opt-out” approach. The survey showed that parents born in mainland China, compared to Hong Kong born parents, had lower awareness of newborn screening but higher support in biobanking rDBS. Higher education was associated with support in rDBS biobanking only among fathers. Conclusion Long-term storage and secondary use of rDBS from newborn screening for biomedical research and a broad consent for biobanking of rDBS are generally acceptable to Hong Kong parents given their autonomy is respected and their privacy is protected, highlighting the importance of an accountable governance and a transparent access policy for rDBS biobanks. (shrink)

Fan Zhen’s 范縝 Shenmielun 神滅論 is a famous Chinese treatise discussing the body-soul problem. This discussion had been advocated by Huan Tan 桓譚 and Wang Chong 王充. However, their views did not receive positive attention: at the beginning of the Eastern Han dynasty, their intellectual weight was far from significant enough to spur the court’s interest in the topic. During the time of Fan Zhen, Emperor Wu of Liang, a keen protector of the thought of dharma, raised the question of (...) the soul and the body to a political level, making it the focus of academic debate. The aim of this article is to give a comprehensive account on the development of the idea of the nonidentity and inseparability of the body and the soul as promulgated by Fan Zhen and his predecessors from the perspective of the history of ideas. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction and an original contribution to a study of the major evolutionary events, from the orgin of life to the emerence of the human mind.

Universities need to change dramatically in order to help humanity make progress towards as good a world as possible.

A. C. Graham thinks that the parallelism in the Neo‐Moist Canons is about the deduction of sentences. On the contrary, Chad Hansen thinks that they are not plausibly treated as inference of deductive forms since the later Moists are at pains to show that they can “go wrong.” In this article, I shall try to provide a logical analysis and a constructive rather than defeatist interpretation of parallelism in the text. I argue that the Moists tend to express their ideas (...) in the “material mode of speech” to build up their semantic and pragmatic sensibility in philosophical thinking. (shrink)

In the latest edition of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon appears the entry, —, fantastic, Gloss.’’ No more information is given. Gloss, refers to the Corpus Glossariorum Latirtorum edited by G. Loewe, G. Goetz, and F. Schoell.. If one consults that work, however, one finds that does not appear in it. Nor does it appear in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon before the new, revised edition of 1925.

The most important term in Wang Yang-ming’s 王陽明 (1472-1528) philosophy, “liang-zhi 良知,” has been interpreted in various different ways. However, these different interpretations have failed to provide a satisfactory understanding of Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy. To give a reasonable interpretation of Wang Yang-ming’s idea of liang-zhi that coheres with his philosophy, we have to move beyond the approach of mentalism, no matter whether it be of a transcendental or nontranscendental type. In this paper, I elaborate the deep structure of liang-zhi and (...) demonstrate that liang-zhi cannot simply be described as non-empirical, more importantly, I show that it cannot be identified as any kind of knowledge or knowing capacity, enlightenment or enlightening capacity, intellectual intuition or mystical feeling. Liang-zhi is not an epistemic concept in any sense. To treat liangzhi as some kind of knowing faculty or mental capacity is to stray from Wang Yangming’s main philosophical train of thought. -/- The major purpose of this paper is to give a new and coherent interpretation of liang-zhi which is consistent with the doctrines of “xing-ji-qi 性即氣,” “xin-wai-wuwu/ shi 心外無物／事” (no things/events outside the mind), “xin-wai-wu-li 心外無理” (no orders/principles outside the mind) and “zhi-xing-he-yi 知行合一”1 (the unity of enlightenment and action/act). In this paper, I use the concepts of “realization” and “supervenience” to explain the relationship between xing and qi, on the one hand, and the relationship between zhi and xing, on the other. Based on this preliminary study, I conclude that Wang Yang-ming viewed all the things/events in the organic universe as being endowed with a (emergent) power or (functional) property of cosmic vitality or universal spirituality, i.e., the (functional) property of sheng-sheng 生生 (the cycling order of natural production). This universal power or property by itself is invisible, without trace, and does not have an independent ontological status. However, the actual function of the power or property can be found in phenomena because certain responsive mental events made by human beings can be recognized as the realization of this power or property. In turn, certain related physical events initiated by human beings can be understood as the bases on which the mental events are supervenient. Based on these two distinct relationships: realization and supervenience, we can elaborate a framework of three layers consisting of the layer of cosmic spirituality, the layer of the mental, and the layer of the physical. This framework of three layers is moreover situated in two domains: the internal domain of the human body and the external domain of human action. Based on this framework of three layers and two domains, I elaborate a theory concerning “heaven’s production” (tian-cheng 天成), or “accomplishment and assistance in the universal process of production and reproduction,” concluding that it can be understood as an important component of Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy. (shrink)

Scholars often turn to Livy’s famous digression on Aulus Cossus and the spolia opima (4.17–20) to shed light on his larger political inclinations. These readings generally regard Livy as either an Augustan (or at least a patriotic Roman) or an apolitical skeptic. Yet neither view, I argue, fully explains the Cossus affair. What is needed is an interpretation that recognizes the political nature of the Cossus digression and its skepticism toward Augustus. Attending to Livy’s rhetorical strategy in the digression allows (...) us to see it as an instance of oblique criticism of Augustus and his control over Roman life. The explanatory power of this reading extends to episodes from the life of Romulus as well. I argue Livy uses these stories to make a theoretical argument about the nature of despotism, namely, that it seeks to control narratives of the past just as much as it aims for political domination. (shrink)

Luke in the preface of his Gospel says that he is going to write ‘in an orderly account’ (Lk 1:3). However, scholars have no consensus about the kind of order Luke is seeking. Many believe that Luke writes as a historian. Because Greco-Roman historians seem to have a practice to indicate in their prefaces the writing methodologies of their writings, this article aims to ascertain Luke’s writing order through a comparison of Luke’s two prefaces with those in the writings of (...) the Greco-Roman historians. This article proposes that Luke most likely adopts the common writing methodologies of the Greco-Roman historians and writes in chronological order. (shrink)

There are increasing calls for coverage of medicine during the Holocaust in medical school curricula. This article describes outcomes from a Holocaust and medicine educational program featuring a study trip to Poland, which focused on physician complicity during the Holocaust, as well as moral courage in health professionals who demonstrated various forms of resistance in the ghettos and concentration camps. The trip included tours of key sites in Krakow, Oswiecim, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, as well as meeting with survivors, (...) lectures, reflective writings, and discussions. In-depth interviews and reflective writings were qualitatively analyzed. Resulting themes centered on greater understanding of the relationship between bioethics and the Holocaust, recognizing the need for moral courage and social awareness, deeper appreciation for the historical roles played by dehumanization and medical power and their contemporary manifestations, and the power of presence and experiential learning for bioethics education and professional identity formation. These findings evidence the significant impact of the experience and suggest broader adoption of pedagogies that include place-based and experiential learning coupled with critical reflection can amplify the impact of bioethics and humanism education as well as the process of professional identity formation of medical students. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

In _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience. The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker's _Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience_ (Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, two philosophers who have written extensively on the subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond. Their impassioned debate encompasses a wide range of (...) central themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of the notion of an intentional stance, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness. In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University) explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature into the framework of science itself. In Robinson's estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting and challenging, _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ is an exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems raised by cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Biomedical ethics is an essential part of the medical curriculum because it is thought to enrich moral reflection and conduce to ethical decisionmaking and ethical behavior. In recent years, however, the received idea that competency in moral reasoning leads to moral responsibility “in the field” has been the subject of sustained attention. Today, moral education and development research widely recognize moral reasoning as being but one among at least four distinguishable dimensions of psychological moral functioning alongside moral motivation, moral character, (...) and moral sensitivity. In a reflection of this framework, medical educators and curriculum planners repeatedly advance the idea that educators should be concerned with supporting empathy, and this, very often, as a means of improving on and broadening medical ethics education’s traditional focus on moral reasoning. (shrink)

Health equity is increasingly identified as a principal goal to be achieved through public health policies and activities. However, what is to be measured in the assessment of health equity and how inequities in health ought to be redressed are among the pressing questions that must be answered if health equity is to serve as a meaningful and consistent ethical guide for measurement and intervention in public health. In this article I argue that the concept of health equity, in the (...) form it is predominantly found in public health, suffers from normative indeterminacy and is therefore unlikely to provide actionable normative guidance to public health policy-makers, practitioners and researchers. I argue that the concept of health equity, as it is commonly defined in public health, ultimately rests upon assumptions of a more fundamental, yet tacit, conception of justice to do its normative work. In this vein, I expand upon a critique of Margaret Whitehead’s oft-cited definition of health equity made by James Wilson to raise additional reasons not explored by Wilson, or others, as to why Whitehead’s definition remains inadequate in providing normative guidance to policy-makers, practitioners and researchers in public health. (shrink)

Empowering Affected Interests brings together a group of leading contemporary democratic theorists and philosophers to debate a taken-for-granted principle at the heart of the democratic project but increasingly under strain in a global era: the idea all those affected by a decision should be included in the making of that decision.