Sexual lust – understood as a feeling of sexual attraction towards another – has traditionally been viewed as a sort of desire or at least as an appetite akin to hunger. I argue here that this view is, at best, significantly incomplete. Further insights can be gained into certain occurrences of lust by noticing how strongly they resemble occurrences of “attitudinal” (“object-directed”) emotion. At least in humans, the analogy between the object-directed appetites and attitudinal emotions goes well beyond their psychological (...) structure to include similar ways in which their occurrence can be introspectively recognized, resulting in similar extensions of their functionality and meaningfulness to the subject. I conclude that although further research is needed, given the strength of the analogy, the ability of lust to satisfy some general requirements for being an emotion, and perhaps certain neurological findings, lust may somewhat uniquely straddle the line between appetite and emotion. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotion generally presuppose that emotions are “directed at” various items. They also hold that emotions have motivational properties. However, although it coheres well with their views, they have yet to seriously develop the idea that the function of emotional direction is to guide those properties. I argue that this “guidance hypothesis” can open up a promising new field of research in emotion theory. But I also argue that before appraisal theorists can take full advantage of it, they (...) must drop their further assumption that to determine an emotion's direction, one need only retrace the process that caused it. Contrary to this “retracing view,” I argue for an “independence thesis”: directed emotions are produced by two functionally independent sub-processes. The first, “affect-causation,” functions in part to produce a state with certain motivational properties given certain representations. The second, “affect-direction,” has the function of optimally guiding those motivational properties by associating them with representations that may properly be quite dissimilar from the causal ones. By provisionally adopting the independence thesis and empirically testing the guidance hypothesis, I argue that appraisal theorists stand a good chance of significantly increasing the explanatory power of their theories. (shrink)

[This paper was presented at the APA Eastern Division Conference in New York City, January 2024] -/- Can one reasonably doubt that one is voluntarily making a commitment, even when one is doing so? Given that one voluntarily makes a commitment if and only if one (personally) knows that one is doing so, the answer appears to be “No.” After all, knowing implies justifiably believing, and it seems impossible that one could (synchronically and from a single personal perspective) reasonably doubt (...) what one justifiably believes. Indeed, assuming that one reasonably doubts that P only if one has sufficient evidence to believe that not-P, traditional epistemologists may hold that such “epistemic ambivalence” entails one’s believing a contradiction, while some Bayesians should hold that it entails violating “probabilism” (the norm that credences must conform to the axioms of probability). However, I argue that in at least some cases of romantic commitment-making, such ambivalence may not only be epistemically permissible, but even required, and perhaps best dealt with pragmatically. (shrink)

Os heróis japoneses estão cada vez mais presentes no cotidiano brasileiro, influenciando o público infanto-juvenil e pré-adolescente. O animê ganhou força na década de 60 através de Osamu Tezuka. Os personagens são orientais, mas a narrativa é construída a partir da cultura pop. Hoje a preocupação se volta para Bey Blade -desenho atuante no inconsciente, colocando a razão em último plano, prevalecendo a alienação e a exclusão social.

Partiendo de una serie de tesis respecto del significado de la negación lógica, se ofrece una reflexión acerca de la relación entre el pluralismo lógico y el estatus de ciertos principios lógicos fundamentales. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar que el Problema de la Adopción, tal como se encuentra formulado por Kripke-Padró, no representa un conflicto para una visión antiexcepcionalista de la lógica. Las leyes lógicas no poseen un status privilegiado, independientemente de que existan algunas que no podemos adoptar, (...) porque sí podemos decidir abandonar principios lógicos y es abandonando reglas y no adoptándolas como se revisa una teoría lógica; en consecuencia es aceptable un tipo de pluralismo lógico que parta de considerar que más de un conjunto de principios capturan de manera adecuada el significado de la negación. (shrink)

Much of the commentary in the wake of the Charlie Gard litigation was aimed at apparent shortcomings of the law. These include concerns about the perceived inability of the law to consider resourcing issues, the vagueness of the best interests test and the delays and costs of having disputes about potentially life-sustaining medical treatment resolved by the courts. These concerns are perennial ones that arise in response to difficult cases. Despite their persistence, we argue that many of these criticisms are (...) unfounded. The first part of this paper sets out the basic legal framework that operates when parents seek potentially life-sustaining treatment that doctors believe is against a child’s best interests, and describes the criticisms of that framework. The second part of the paper suggests an alternative approach that would give decision-making power to parents, and remove doctors’ ability to unilaterally withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment that they regard is futile. This proposal is grounded in several values that we argue should guide these regulatory choices. We also contend that the best interests test is justifiable and since the courts show no sign of departing from it, the focus should be on how to better elucidate the underlying values driving decisions. We discuss the advantages of our proposed approach and how it would address some of the criticisms aimed at the law. Finally, we defend the current role that the judiciary plays, as an independent state-sanctioned process with a precedent-setting function. (shrink)

As Heraclitus, Cioran conceives man as a being that possesses lógos and is ruled in his life by it in its multiple aspects. Man not only makes use of word; this word also shapes him and traverses him entirely. Word is the necessary and intrinsic expression of every human being, and, as a result, he cannot elude it. In many of his works, Cioran warns us about the dangers that lógos has for man: not to find his genuine expression in (...) the midst of so many words, and to fall into totalizing fictions that lead us to deception and indoctrination. For this reason, in the midst of this misfortune, Cioran even considers silence as the only possible way out. However, if man denies the mark of language by avoiding all forms of expression, the anguish that his own existence entails will end up destroying him. Paradoxically, Cioran finds that the expression of lógos is the only possible salvation for man from the clutches of death, and that is, why by expressing oneself through lógos, one's own unhappiness becomes a necessary condition of life. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta reflexões teóricas sobre a atividade de ensino que se torna práxis bem-sucedida. Essa discussão gira em torno de duas categorias teóricas: atividade e afetação. A atividade, categoria teórica de base marxista, é discutida a partir dos aportes da psicologia sócio-histórica. A categoria afetação é aqui analisada com base na filosofia de Baruc de Espinosa. Realizamos este estudo a partir de pesquisa bibliográfica que tem como objetivo refletir sobre o que contribui para que o professor consiga realizar um (...) ensino capaz de afetar com alegria seus alunos levando ao desenvolvimento de uma práxis bem-sucedida. A pesquisa bibliográfica é realizada a partir dos teóricos da psicologia sócio-histórica, sobretudo Vygotsky e Leontiev. Da filosofia de Espinosa pesquisamos a obra Ética. Os resultados revelam que professores e alunos são sujeitos que se constituem historicamente, a partir de múltiplas mediações. Significados, sentidos e afetações são parte das mediações que constituem professores e alunos envolvidos em atividades de ensino consideradas exitosas. O estudo aprofundado acerca dessas categorias poderá contribuir de forma determinante para que o ensino, como atividade social que se realiza entre pessoas, possa tornar-se um encontro alegre, gerador de afetos que potencializem desejos e aumentem a potência de agir e pensar de professores e alunos, fato que contribui para a emancipação humana. Palavras-chave: Atividade de ensinar. Sentido e significado. Encontros alegres. Afetação. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither the (...) subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

Emotional processing and episodic memory are closely related throughout childhood development. With respect to emotional episodic memory, available evidence shows that the consolidation of information is accompanied by an arousal that generates longer duration and persistence of the memory representations. In the case of early stages of development (i.e., first 5 years), it is less clear how these associations emerge and are modulated by individual and environmental factors. In this study, 116 4- to 5-years old Argentinean children from different socio-environmental (...) contexts (i.e., favorable or unfavorable living conditions at home), performed a task of visual emotional memory in which they observed a set of 15 images with variable emotional valences (negative, neutral, and positive). The child’s task was to appraise each image using one of the following three possible valences: (a) drawings of faces with smiles (positive valence), (b) drawings of faces with tears and round mouth with edges down (negative valence), or (c) drawings of faces with horizontal mouth (neutral valence). Five years-old children exhibited greater accuracy appraisal. Individual differences in emotional accuracy appraisal allowed us to observe different performances in free recall of negative visual images. Accuracy appraisal did not vary between children with respect to gender, living conditions at home, or language ability. Seven to ten days after the emotional appraisal children were asked to tell the experimenter all the images they remembered (variables of interest: free recall of negative, positive, or neutral images). Results showed individual (age) differences. Specifically, 5-years-old children evoked more images than 4-years-old children. These findings contribute to the understanding of emotional memory in early developmental stages and raise the need to include emotional appraisal in the assessment of episodic memory. (shrink)

Can one’s belief that one romantically loves another be false? If so, under what conditions may one come to reasonably doubt, or at least suspend belief, that one does so? To begin to answer these questions, I first outline an affective/volitional view of love similar to psychologist R. J. Sternberg’s “triangular theory”, which analyzes types of love in terms of the degrees to which they include states of passion, emotion, and commitment. I then outline two sources of potential bias that (...) may cause one to believe that one romantically loves another when one does not. Partly on the basis of those potential sources of bias and partly on the basis of more specific issues, I then argue that at least to the extent that one is aware of these issues, one may reasonably doubt that one is experiencing romantic love’s emotional feelings, and one may reasonably doubt that one is making romantic love’s commitments. Finally, I order by relative dubitability the propositions that must be true about one’s passions, emotions, and commitments toward another in order for one to romantically love them. (shrink)

Background Victoria was the first Australian state to legalize voluntary assisted dying (elsewhere known as physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia). Some institutions indicated they would not participate in voluntary assisted dying. The Victorian government issued policy approaches for institutions to consider Objective To describe and analyse publicly available policy documents articulating an institutional objection to voluntary assisted dying in Victoria. Methods Policies were identified using a range of strategies, and those disclosing and discussing the nature of an institutional objection were thematically (...) analysed using the framework method. Results The study identified fifteen policies from nine policymakers and developed four themes: (1) extent of refusal to participate in VAD, (2) justification for refusal to provide VAD, (3) responding to requests for VAD, and (4) appeals to state-sanctioned regulatory mechanisms. While institutional objections were stated clearly, there was very little practical detail in most documents to enable patients to effectively navigate objections in practice. Conclusion This study demonstrates that despite having clear governance pathways developed by centralized bodies (namely, the Victorian government and Catholic Health Australia), many institutions’ public-facing policies do not reflect this guidance. Since VAD is contentious, laws governing institutional objection could provide greater clarity and regulatory force than policies alone to better balance the interests of patients and non-participating institutions. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo increase knowledge of how doctors perceive futile treatments and scarcity of resources at the end of life. In particular, their perceptions about whether and how resource limitations influence end-of-life decision making. This study builds on previous work that found some doctors include resource limitations in their understanding of the concept of futility.SettingThree tertiary hospitals in metropolitan Brisbane, Australia.DesignQualitative study using in-depth, semistructured, face-to-face interviews. Ninety-six doctors were interviewed in 11 medical specialties. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using thematic (...) analysis.ResultsDoctors’ perceptions of whether resource limitations were relevant to their practice varied, and doctors were more comfortable with explicit rather than implicit rationing. Several doctors incorporated resource limitations into their definition of futility. For some, availability of resources was one factor of many in assessing futility, secondary to patient considerations, but a few doctors indicated that the concept of futility concealed rationing. Doctors experienced moral distress due to the resource implications of providing futile treatment and the lack of administrative supports for bedside rationing.ConclusionsDoctors’ ability to distinguish between futility and rationing would be enhanced through regulatory support for explicit rationing and strategies to support doctors’ role in rationing at the bedside. Medical policies should address the distinction between resource limitations and futility to promote legitimacy in end-of-life decision making. (shrink)

Understanding the psychological computations underlying motivation can shed light onto motivational constructs as emergent phenomena. According to Murayama and Jach, reward-learning is a key candidate mechanism. However, there's no such thing as a free lunch: Not only benefits (like reward), but also costs inherent to motivated behaviors (like effort, or uncertainty) are an essential part of the picture.

BackgroundThis paper investigates the content of Australian policies that address withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment to analyse the guidance they provide to doctors about the allocation of resources.MethodsAll publicly available non-institutional policies on withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment were identified, including codes of conduct and government and professional organization guidelines. The policies that referred to resource allocation were isolated and analysed using qualitative thematic analysis. Eight Australian policies addressed both withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment and resource allocation.ResultsFour resource-related themes were (...) identified: doctors’ ethical duties to consider resource allocation; balancing ethical obligations to patient and society; fair process and transparent resource allocation; and legal guidance on distributive justice as a rationale to limit life-sustaining treatment.ConclusionOf the policies that addressed resource allocation, this review found broad agreement about the existence of doctors’ duties to consider the stewardship of scarce resources in decision-making. However, there was disparity in the guidance about how to reconcile competing duties to patient and society. There is a need to better address the difficult and confronting issue of the role of scarce resources in decisions about life-sustaining treatment. (shrink)

El texto presenta un adelanto de un profundo “trayecto” de trabajo colectivo en curso impulsado por un grupo de jóvenes investigadores y docentes que integran el Programa “Problemáticas comunicacionales barriales, organizacionales y políticas. Experiencias de lucha y resistencia a comienzos de siglo XXI en la provincia de Córdoba” (Argentina), desde el año 2011. La sistematización de las distintas experiencias, que presenta el libro, permite poner en común las peculiaridades de los contradictorios escenarios de conflicto y resistencia analizados, organizada en tres (...) capítulos que repasan con cuidadosa “vigilancia epistemológica” los procesos realizados con los actores sociales que integran los proyectos a saber: habitantes de las ciudades-barrio, trabajadores de la economía solidaria y vecinos e instituciones que forman parte de instancias participativas en los gobiernos locales. (shrink)

Medications of choice, necessary supplies, and evidence-based health care now seem like luxuries. The contrast between my experience at a well-funded health unit and the Lev El Lev (“heart to heart”) African Refugee Clinic in Tel Aviv, Israel, is staggering. The complex personal, social, health, psychological, educational, and economic difficulties create a unique ethical environment for the health care provider.

Debate a formação de educadores e de professores na sociedade contemporânea, com destaque para as políticas de formação de professores presentes na estrutura institucional do Estado e da sociedade brasileira. Analisa as condições históricas da produção das políticas de educação e, dentro delas, os aspectos de formação e de preparação de professores para as diversas etapas, graus e níveis da Educação Básica. Estuda as causas históricas e políticas do atraso cultural, institucional e político da organização da escola no Brasil e (...) debate as ressonâncias dessas contradições na vida cotidiana, na identidade subjetiva dos professores e em sua autoestima. Apresenta fundamentos filosóficos de uma formação docente para as relações humanas de igualdade e de alteridade, de dialeticidade e de elevação ética e estética. Apresenta a educação escolar como processo de formação humana e destaca a tarefa de educar como processo de desenvolvimento ou de formação humana. Apresenta as esperadas características de uma docência humanizadora e emancipatória. Enuncia processos humanistas e atitudes éticas de acolhimento voltados para as práticas de formação de professores, com destaque para os estágios e os percursos formativos. Destaca com esperanças as novas propostas de novas docências diante de novos sujeitos sociais e de novos desafios para a educação e a escola na sociedade tecnológica. (shrink)

The article is an approach to the work of Colombian writer Manuel Mejía Vallejo having as starting point the recognition of the importance of memory for literary creation, especially the remembrance of childhood. It is evident in the work of Mejía Vallejo the intention of leaving proof of the time and space in which he lived, as well as a concern to work out the role of memory in the life of the human being. It is argued in the article (...) that the literary style of the author might be understood as a narrative of memory, where memory reaches the category of poetic. (shrink)

Aristoteles behandelt die Wahrnehmung im Rahmen seiner umfassenden Wissenschaft vom Lebendigen; die Schrift De anima stellt hierfür den begrifflichen Ausgangspunkt und Rahmen bereit, indem die Seele als das basale explanatorische Prinzip des Seienden, insofern es lebendig ist, anhand ihrer verschiedenen Vermögen definiert wird. Von allen seelischen Vermögen erfährt dabei die Wahrnehmung die ausführlichste Behandlung. Das ist der zentralen Bedeutung dieses Vermögens geschuldet, durch dessen Besitz sich die Tiere von den Pflanzen unterscheiden.

En las últimas décadas, se ha consolidado un campo de estudios alrededor de la expertise que articula enfoques y programas de investigación heterogéneos, según los modos de conceptualizar la relación entre ciencia y política, saber y poder, de fijar sus conexiones y de determinar el nivel del análisis para su abordaje. El corpus foucaulteano contiene herramientas analíticas fructíferas para el tratamiento sustantivo de la politicidad inherente a los saberes, al cuestionar las lecturas instrumentales de aquella relación e inscribir la actividad (...) especializada en estrategias de gobierno y en formas de resistencia hacia ellas. Sin embargo, las conceptualizaciones del saber experto desde una matriz foucaulteana registran cierta dispersión y, pese al avance de los estudios sobre gubernamentalidad en este aspecto, la ausencia de una reflexión sobre la categoría de expertise introduce el riesgo de que en estos análisis se establezca una cuestionable relación de coherencia y correspondencia entre saberes y racionalidades de gobierno. En este artículo, nos proponemos revisar el corpus foucaulteano y sistematizar otras claves de lectura sobre los saberes y su condición política, a fin de aportar con ello al campo de estudios sobre expertise. Examinamos la “hipótesis de la guerra”, mostramos su pulso en el ejercicio de saber y ponemos en juego estas coordenadas analíticas en un pequeño trabajo de archivo sobre una serie documental de textos de Hayek, a propósito de la articulación de la racionalidad neoliberal de gobierno. La conformación del corpus y el análisis de los textos se valieron, metodológicamente, de una traducción instrumental de tales coordenadas mediada por una perspectiva materialista del discurso. (shrink)

In typical development, word learning goes from slow and laborious to fast and seemingly effortless. Typically developing 2-year-olds seem to intuit the whole range of things in a category from hearing a single instance named—they have word-learning biases. This is not the case for children with relatively small vocabularies. We present a computational model that accounts for the emergence of word-learning biases in children at both ends of the vocabulary spectrum based solely on vocabulary structure. The results of Experiment 1 (...) show that late-talkers' and early-talkers' noun vocabularies have different structures and that neural networks trained on the vocabularies of individual late talkers acquire different word-learning biases than those trained on early-talker vocabularies. These models make novel predictions about the word-learning biases in these two populations. Experiment 2 tests these predictions on late- and early-talking toddlers in a novel noun generalization task. (shrink)

ExcerptTo the Columbia Community:Over the past six months, many have spoken in our name. Some are wellmeaning alumni or non-affiliates who show up to wave the Israeli flag outside Columbia’s gates. Some are politicians looking to use our experiences to foment America’s culture war. Most notably, some are our Jewish peers who tokenize themselves1 by claiming to represent “real Jewish values,” and attempt to delegitimize our lived experiences of antisemitism. We are here, writing to you as Jewish students at Columbia (...) University, who are connected to our community and deeply engaged with our culture and history. We would like to speak in our name. (shrink)