Conceptualized within the framework of self-determination theory, the aim of the current study was to investigate the relation between perfectionistic concerns and (a) controlled (non-self-determined) motivation and (b) performance anxiety through basic psychological need frustration (frustration of competence, autonomy, and realtedness), and if these relations would be moderated by controlling teaching/coaching conditions. We used a cross-sectional moderated mediation design and purposefully selected Norwegian elite junior performers (N = 171; Mage = 17.3; SDage= 0.94) from talent development schools, who completed an (...) online questionnaire to report their perceptions of the study variables. Associations were examined using structural equation modeling. The results showed that perfectionistic concerns were positively associated with controlling conditions, basic needs frustration, controlled motivation, and performance anxiety. Reported controlling teaching/coaching conditions moderated the positive indirect relationship between perfectionistic concerns and (a) controlled motivation and (b) performance anxiety through competence need frustration. Specifically, these indirect associations were evident for performers reporting moderate or high levels of controlling teaching/coaching conditions. In contrast, there were no indirect associations via competence need frustration for those performers who reported low levels of controlling conditions. In conclusion, the results indicate that perfectionistic concerns appear to be a vulnerability factor that exposes elite junior performers to higher risks of entering a debilitative motivational process. This seems especially likely when exposed to controlling teaching/coaching conditions. Coaches and teachers working with elite junior performers should avoid using controlling mechanisms and instead foster autonomous functioning. (shrink)

It is common to characterise phenomenal consciousness as _what it is like_ to be in a mental state. This paper argues that the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in this context has a technical meaning, i.e. a meaning for which the association to the relevant expression is peculiar to a theoretical community. The relevant theoretical community is philosophy and some parts of cognitive science, so on this view, only philosophers and cognitive scientists use the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in the way that is characteristic in the literature (...) on phenomenal consciousness. This claim has important consequences. Firstly, I argue that the phrase says nothing informative about phenomenal consciousness. Secondly, I argue that the fact that non-philosophers use the phrase is not compelling evidence that they believe in phenomenal consciousness. These claims have further consequences for debates about phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Firms engage in social responsibility activities for diverse reasons. This study focuses on understanding firms' instrumental motivations for engaging in socially responsible activities. We suggest that the instrumental motivations underlying firms' corporate social responsibility engagement are associated with their market, learning, and risk-related behaviors; thus, we identify market orientation, learning orientation, and risk-taking attitudes as three constructs that influence firms' CSR engagement. This research was conducted in the Norwegian firewood sector, in which CSR expectations are high and in which we (...) expect CSR engagement to be encouraged by both instrumental and normative motivations. The firms in this study are micro-firms with fewer than 10 employees and represent an important but highly neglected segment of firms in CSR research. Data obtained from 230 firms were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our results indicate that market orientation, learning orientation, and risk-taking attitudes affect social responsibility toward different stakeholder groups in different ways. In some cases, the size and age of firms also affect these relationships. (shrink)

One use of the noun ‘pain’ is exemplified in sentences like ‘There is a pain in my foot’. According to the Experiential Theory, ‘pain’ in this context refers to an experience located in the mind or brain. According to the Bodily Theory, it refers to an extra-cranial bodily occurrence located in a body part. In this paper, I defend the Bodily Theory. Specifically, I argue that pains are proximal activations of nociceptors that cause experiences of pain. This view is preferable (...) to the Experiential Theory, because it accords better with common sense and offers a better interpretation or semantics of ordinary pain reports. (shrink)

In this paper, I make the case that the tradition of pragmatism may usefully inform aesthetic criticism. To that end, I contrast the anti-essentialist outlook and the ethico-political concerns of neo-pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty with the epistemological underpinnings of analytic aesthetics. The aim is to outline an alternative meta-theoretical perspective that ‘overwrites’ long-standing concerns with exactitude and objectivity. Drawing on examples from my own area of expertise, film, and television studies, I seek to explicitly set up aesthetic criticism, especially evaluation, (...) as a means of social progress and human flourishing within the framework of liberal democracy. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Wittgenstein’s critique of Moore in _On Certainty,_ and argues that this critique is largely misunderstood, for two reasons. Firstly, Wittgenstein partly misrepresents Moore. Secondly, Wittgenstein is wrongly taken to be an internalist regarding justification for knowledge. Once we realize these two points, we can understand Wittgenstein’s critique properly as a grammatical argument in that Moore fails to see how the concepts of knowledge and certainty relate to those of justification and evidence. On this reading, we can also (...) understand that Moore and Wittgenstein were in more agreement than many people have thought, even though Moore was not able to exploit and express his philosophical insights properly. (shrink)

This book is the first study to explore an ancient philosopher’s attitude towards the vast majority of society, who had no knowledge or affiliation with philosophy—namely laypeople. It reveals that Epictetus held a sophisticated viewpoint regarding laypeople and envisaged means for lay reform outside of philosophical study.

The passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a triumph for the field of public health. Its inclusion of many provisions intended to prevent illness and promote health endorses the core belief of public health as expressed by Dr. Georges Benjamin, the long-time executive director of the American Public Health Association, in a Washington Post opinion piece praising ACA for “provid[ing] care as far upstream as possible… [in order to] reduce costs by identifying problems early and then (...) managing them to reduce or eliminate the need for more costly care in the future.” In this article, I consider the conflict between ACA’s adoption of public health goals seeing population health and societal interests in protecting individuals from discrimination based on their health. The article focuses on one aspect of ACA which seeks to lower the costs to employers who provide health insurance for their employees by making it easier for them to offer their employees substantial incentives for participating in and meeting the goals of employer-sponsored Wellness Programs. (shrink)

Whereas there is extensive documentation that attribute framing influences the content of peoples thought, we generally know less about how it affects the processes assumed to precede those thoughts. While existing explanations for attribute framing effects rely completely on valence-based associative processing, the results obtained in the present study are also consistent with the notion that negative framing stimulates more effortful and thorough information processing than positive framing. Specifically, results from a simulated business decision-making experiment showed that decision makers receiving (...) negatively framed information had significantly better recall than those receiving positively framed information. Furthermore, decision makers in the negative framing condition were less confident than decision makers in the positively framed condition. Finally, compared to a no-framing condition, decision makers receiving positive framing deviated significantly more in evaluation than decision makers receiving negative framing did. (shrink)

It is common in cognitive science to ascribe psychological predicates to the brain, i.e. to assert that the brain sees, feels, thinks, etc. This has prompted philosophical debate. According to the Nonsense View, the relevant locutions of cognitive scientists are nonsensical or false (Bennett and Hacker 2003, 2007). According to the Literal View, they are literal truths and report the psychological properties of brains (Dennett 2007; Crane 2015; Figdor 2018). In this paper, I propose the Synecdoche View, according to which (...) cognitive scientists’ locutions are figurative, with ‘brain’ referring to the human being, such that ‘the brain thinks’ reports the thinking of the human being, not the thinking of the brain. I compare this view to the dominant views in the literature and argue that it is a plausible alternative. One consequence of this is that there is no reason to believe that the locutions of cognitive scientists indicate empirical support for the claim that brains possess psychological properties. (shrink)

In recent years substantial effort has been expended by scholars to better understand the nature of the ancient interest in divination. This study will argue that the Stoic philosopher Epictetus’ views of divination have been largely overlooked and mistakenly defined by his modern interpreters. While often portrayed as being opposed to the art, it is proposed that he envisages divination can be beneficially employed: namely in highlighting certain moral actions, and in motivating individuals to commence philosophical study.

Le dossier DB 58 des Archives de la préfecture de police de Paris, souvent évoqué mais jamais analysé, est ici présenté. Ce fonds qui aurait pu être majeur pour l’étude des « travesties » du XIXe siècle, puisqu’il était censé conserver les demandes et les autorisations de porter l’habit masculin en vertu de l’ordonnance de 1800 est hélas dans un piètre état de conservation. Il apparaît comme une « butte témoin » infidèle et hétéroclite des pratiques, et jette une faible (...) lueur sur leur contrôle et la documentation réunie par ceux qui étaient censés l’exercer. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 44-46, February 2012.

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

Pourquoi un Clio sur la prostitution? Le débat politique et social actuel s’y prêtait, bien sûr… Mais au-delà des questions du présent, auxquelles on ne peut rester indifférentE, l’aboutissement de plusieurs travaux de jeunes chercheuses et chercheurs nous a incitées à réaliser ce dossier, qui vient enrichir une bibliographie plutôt maigre, en France. S’inscrivant dans le vaste domaine de l’histoire de la sexualité, elle peine, en effet, à rebondir après les études magistrales d’Alain Corbin...

Sous la forme alerte de l'entretien (avec Jean Lebrun, historien et journaliste à France-Culture), Michelle Perrot évoque les formes de la présence et/ou de l'absence des femmes dans la Cité (au double sens d'espace public/ politique et de la Ville au cours des deux derniers siècles). L'ouvrage, remarquablement illustré par de nombreuses reproductions en couleur, s'ouvre sur les images, ces représentations fantasmées du Sexe (pour reprendre une expression qui désignait autrefois les fe..

The future of biomedical and scientific research in the United States is inextricably attached to the universities and academic medical centers funded by the government. And the work many of us do commenting on ethical issues arising from that funded research is dependent on its continuation. Yet the institutions of higher education and the academic medical centers where this federally funded research takes place are under attack on many fronts. What would the world look like without federally supported research universities? (...) It is likely that the number of institutions doing funded research would drop dramatically, perhaps to the one hundred or so institutions that already receive the vast majority of funding. (shrink)

The business case for social responsibility is one of the most widely studied topics in the business and society literature that focuses on large firms. This attention is understandable because large firms have an obligation to shareholders who, as commonly assumed, seek to maximize returns on their investments, in turn, pressing corporate managers to show that firms’ expenditures in social engagement would pay off. Small firms, on the other hand, rarely face such pressures, yet the BCSR logic is increasingly applied (...) to small firms as well. Our primary objective in this paper is to examine whether and how much do small firm owners’ perceptions of BCSR affect the firm’s social engagement. In finding a fine-grained answer to those questions, we consider BCSR as a two-dimensional construct consisting of tangible and intangible benefits, and also integrate the BCSR perspective with the slack resource perspective to offer a motivation-capacity lens to examine firm’s social engagement. Drawing on a multi-industry sample of 478 small firms in the US, we find that while small firm owners’ perceptions about potential tangible benefits of social engagement are not related to the firm’s social engagement, perceptions about potential intangible are positively related. Firm's financial performance is also positively related to its social engagement, but there is no interaction between potential benefits and financial performance. This study contributes to an improved understanding about small firms’ social engagement, which still remains an understudied area. Our results are in line with studies which argue that firms’ social engagement is a response to institutional factors. (shrink)

The diversity in colour patterns on butterfly wings provides great potential for understanding how developmental mechanisms may be modulated in the evolution of adaptive traits. In particular, we discuss concentric eyespot patterns, which have been shown by surgical experiments to be formed in response to signals from a central focus. Seasonal polyphenism shows how alternate phenotypes can develop through environmental sensitivity mediated by ecdysteroid hormones, whereas artificial selection and single gene mutants demonstrate genetic variation influencing the number, shape, size, position, (...) and colour composition of the eyespots. The expression patterns of the regulatory gene Distal-less reveal that these changes can arise at several different developmental stages, and the phenotypes indicate that some forms of changed pattern may occur much more readily than others. Further study of the genes, of the developmental mechanisms, and of the functions of the patterns will provide novel insights about the evolution of morphological diversity. BioEssays 21:391–401, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In this article, we sketch up an action research process designed to give voice to those who traditionally have not had a voice in organizations. In particular, the research process was structured around “serious play” and designed as a talk show, where researchers played parts, including a talk show host, and where questions pertaining to organizational life were discussed in depth. The structure of the discussion was construed based on reflective teams, i.e., two actors performing a dialogue and a silent (...) group as listeners. The key research question concerns in what ways such an action research process is replicable? Applying a critical lens, we argue that even if strong claims of replicability are not met, as in being able to reproduce results and/or generalize them, this is outside the point. Rather, as we set out to apply a qualitative research design to achieve cogenerative learning effects, we advance an understanding of replicability-as-recoverability. This entails giving explicit grounds for our epistemic anchoring in critical realism and sketching out a research design which is sufficiently clear and transparent to undergo critical scrutiny. (shrink)

In 2011, Peterson suggested that the main reason why C.H. Waddington was essentially ignored by the framers of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1950s was because they were Cartesian reductionists and mathematical population geneticists while he was a Whiteheadian organicist and experimental geneticist who worked with Drosophila. This paper suggests a further reason that can only be seen now. The former defined genes and their alleles by their selectable phenotypes, essentially the Mendelian view, while Waddington defined a gene through (...) its functional role as determined by genetic analysis, a view that foresaw the modern view that a gene is a DNA sequence with some function. The former were interested in selection, while Waddington focused on variation. The differences between the two views of a gene are briefly considered in the context of systems biology. (shrink)

Parmi les travailleurs handicapés, plusieurs ont des emplois à temps partiel. Cependant, la recherche sur la relation entre handicap et travail à temps partiel n’a que partiellement éclaircit la façon dont les personnes handicapées qui reçoivent une pension d’invalidité complète ou partielle perçoivent et gèrent l’articulation entre travail à temps partiel et leur pension. Cet article s’intéresse aux stratégies employées par les personnes handicapées, tel qu’elles le racontent, pour gérer cette articulation. Le travail à temps partiel, utilisant les données d’entretiens (...) avec 10 citoyens norvégiens sont mobilisées. Les résultats montrent que la flexibilité et la visibilité sont des stratégies spécifiques que nos informateurs mettent en place quand les problèmes de santé et les heures de travail réduites ont comme résultat une connexion affaiblie avec le lieu de travail. L’article montre la façon dont le discours autour de l’emploi payé facilite ces stratégies. L’article se conclue sur des recommandations relatives aux conditions à mettre en place pour accompagner l’articulation entre travail à temps partiel et pension d’invalidité partielle. (shrink)

New observations by Hatini et al.(1) on the ‘winged helix’ transcription factor BF‐2 will make us change our views about kiney development. This gene is only expressed in stromal cells associated with the kidney medulla and cortex, but the BF‐2 knockout has unexpected abnormalities. Although the stromal cells appear normal, the kidney is small, the ducts have limited branching and, instead of the many normal nephrogenic aggregates, there are relatively few large mesenchymal aggregates that fail to differentiate. The stromal cells (...) thus seem to produce factors regulating other aspects of kidney development, while the abnormalities highlight a series of unsolved problems in kidney morphogenesis. (shrink)

Valerie Steele, conservatrice du musée du Fashion Institute of Technology de New York et rédactrice en chef d'une revue de grande qualité, Fashion Theory : the journal of Dress, Body and Culture, est une référence très importante dans le domaine de l'histoire de la mode. Ce livre (traduit de l'américain) ne répond que très imparfaitement à son titre ambitieux ­ « se vêtir » ­, qui est aussi celui d'une collection (deux ouvrages déjà parus, l'un sur le Moyen Âge et (...) l'autre sur le XVIIIe... (shrink)

Historienne, membre de l'Institute for Research on Women and Gender de Stanford, active au sein de l'International federation for research in women's history, Karen Offen concentre dans ce livre vingt-cinq ans de lectures et de recherches sur l'histoire du féminisme en Europe. Elle tire un grand profit de l'explosion récente des études sur l'histoire du féminisme et des colloques internationaux sur le féminisme en Europe. C'est le genre de livre que l'on lit, crayon à la main, et où l'...

In recent years, explanations of primate cognition highlighted clever arguments, rather than different ability. In the target article, definitions unify, explanations rely on basic nervous system functioning, theory is built on data that fit, and the emphasis is on evolutionary continuities. This commentary describes complexities inherent in the development of empathy that are not accounted for in Preston & de Waal's theory.