One of the principal challenges to human survival will be for human beings, embedded in a plurality of cultural contexts, to engage with and learn from one another respectfully in the continuing task of creating a more liveable world. I argue here that theoretical psychology can contribute to setting some of the terms for this effort through the kind of conception it advances of the person as agent. I discuss broadly two philosophical perspectives toward human agency which have become prominent (...) in psychology in the last few decades, the humanistic and the hermeneutic. I argue that these two different frameworks make complementary contributions to the project of understanding ourselves and furthering the development of our humanity. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book Time and psychological explanation by Brent D. Slife . In this book Prof. Slife has taken on the task of showing how the Western conception of time is a construct whose use in psychology is in need of just such a review. The object of Slife's critique is the modern Western tradition which takes time to be an objective and linear entity. This perspective, of course, derives from the work and thinking of Sir Isaac Newton, and it (...) is an orientation which has been fundamental to the development of Western science and culture since the period of the Enlightenment. Prof. Slife argues that the Newtonian time paradigm rests on five somewhat overlapping conceptual elements which are basic to traditional scientific explanation. These are the notions of "objectivity," "continuity," "linearity," "universality," and "reductionism." Some of these characteristics can be seen to be features of the way Newton envisioned time itself and some are aspects of events to be accounted for, because they exist in absolute time. In sum Prof. Slife has made a philosophically literate case for the need to analyze the limiting effects of Newtonian notions of time on psychology's theory and practice. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Maternal opioid use during pregnancy is a growing national problem and can lead to newborns developing neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome soon after birth. Recent data demonstrates that nearly every 15 min a baby is born in the United States suffering from NOWS. The primary treatment for NOWS is opioid replacement therapy, commonly oral morphine, which has neurotoxic effects on the developing brain. There is an urgent need for non-opioid treatments for NOWS. Transcutaneous auricular neurostimulation, a novel and non-invasive form of (...) electrostimulation, may serve as a promising alternative to morphine. tAN is delivered via a multichannel earpiece electrode worn on and around the left ear, targeting two cranial nerves—the vagus and trigeminal nerves. Prior research suggests that auricular neurostimulation exerts an anxiolytic effect on the body by releasing endogenous opioids and reduces withdrawal symptoms in adults actively withdrawing from opioids. In this first-in-human prospective, open-label trial, we investigated tAN as an adjuvant to morphine therapy in eight infants >33 weeks gestational age suffering from NOWS and receiving oral morphine treatment. Infants received tAN for 30 min 1 h before receiving a morphine dose. tAN was delivered at 0.1 mA below perception intensity at two different nerve targets on the ear: Region 1, the auricular branch of the vagus nerve; and Region 2, the auriculotemporal nerve. tAN was delivered up to four times daily for a maximum of 12 days. The primary outcome measures were safety [heart rate monitoring, Neonatal Infant Pain Scale, and skin irritation] and morphine length of treatment. tAN was well-tolerated and resulted in no unanticipated adverse events. Comparing to the national average of 23 days, the average oral morphine LOT was 13.3 days and the average LOT after tAN initiation was 7 days. These preliminary data suggest that tAN is safe and may serve as a promising alternative adjuvant for treating NOWS and reducing the amount of time an infant receives oral morphine. (shrink)

Proposes that to the extent that psychotherapy allows the individual to exercise greater freedom in his or her life it does so through enhancing psychological agency. The conceptions of free will and of agency used here are influenced strongly by J. F. Rychlak's discussion of the human capacity for "dialectical" thinking. The author discusses these conceptions of agency in terms of some of R. Schafer's recent ideas regarding psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A. H. Jenkins further notes that this conception of individuality (...) is contextually embedded and thus is fully compatible with the idea of a person devoted to others in mutually gratifying relationships and committed to self-definition through participation in community life. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Strong evidence shows that exposure and engagement with the natural world not only improve human wellbeing but can also help promote environmentally friendly behaviors. Human-nature relationships are at the heart of global agendas promoted by international organizations including the World Health Organization’s “One Health” and the United Nations “Ocean Decade.” These agendas demand collaborative multisector interdisciplinary efforts at local, national, and global levels. However, while global agendas highlight global goals for a sustainable world, developing science that directly addresses these agendas (...) from design through to delivery and outputs does not come without its challenges. In this article, we present the outcomes of international meetings between researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers from the United Kingdom and Brazil. We propose a model for interdisciplinary work under such global agendas, particularly the interface between One Health and the UN Ocean Decade and identify three priority research areas closely linked to each other: human-nature connection, conservation-human behavior, and implementation strategies. We also discuss a number of recommendations for moving forward. (shrink)

Amartya Sen’s comparative approach to justice makes clear that notions of justice are shaped by human agency and experience, and both his focus on the ‘internal view’ of well-being that emphasizes suffering as a central feature of illness and his recognition that social and cultural factors shape perceived injustice are critical to this approach. However, Sen questionably depicts the contributions of anthropological research to this project as limited to ‘the sensory dimension of ill-health.’ Focusing on mental health in the context (...) of global justice, I argue that Sen’s treatise on justice can be refined through an ethnographic method that synchronizes attention to (1) cultural knowledge and social relations in ecological settings; (2) fundamental human needs; and (3) levels of analytic specificity involving situations, categories, and events. This method integrates analysis of internal phenomenology and external constraints of political economy and ideology. To demonstrate I discuss three cases involving students and violence in Rio de Janeiro, women and witchcraft in Ghana, and historical migration and war trauma among Vietnamese immigrants in which external conditions of insecurity and inequality contributed to deteriorating mental health conditions including depression, trauma, and debilitating anxiety. (shrink)

This study investigates the effects of issue framing on public support for programs encouraging farmer adoption of soil health practices. While extensive research exists on farmer adoption of best soil management practices, this study uniquely examines public willingness to support such initiatives. Using data from a survey of Oklahoma residents, we assess the public’s attitudes concerning hypothetical programs supporting farmer adoption of soil health practices to control soil erosion, sequester carbon, and retain moisture. Three implementation methods were considered and framed (...) as voluntary adoption, subsidies, and mandatory. The results indicate a strong public preference for voluntary adoption over subsidized or mandated practices. Additionally, support varies with demographic factors; older individuals, those who perceive political consensus on climate change, and those with pro-environmental values are more likely to support soil health adoption by producers. These findings provide insights into aligning conservation policies with public preferences concerning producer uptake of soil health practices and promoting sustainable agricultural outcomes. (shrink)

Professor Engelhardt’s After God sets out in fine detail a “j’accuse” of the Western project from the medieval Scholastic doctors, through the Enlightenment, to Kant and Hegel, and finally to its telos in postmodernity, which in fact was the logical outcome of what Professor Engelhardt sees as the abuse of reason, for reason could never endure the demands made of it. I propose that Professor Engelhardt is correct in his description of our present epoch, though partially but critically misguided in (...) his diagnosis of why, and thus falls short in a prescription for the restoration of salus. (shrink)

For the few scientists that earn a Nobel prize, the im-, D.J. Scalapino, G. Parisi, pact and relevance of their research work is unquestion- S.G. Louie, R. Jackiw, F. Wilczek able. Among the rest of us, how does one quantify the, C. Vafa, M.B. Maple, D.J. cumulative impact and relevance of an individual’s sci- Gross, M.S. Dresselhaus, S.W. Hawkentific research output? In a world of not unlimited reing. sources such quantification (even if potentially distaste- I argue that h is preferable (...) to other single-number cri-. (shrink)

Considers Auden primarily during the first decade of his litearry career, as both public figure and private man. Contains previously unpublished or uncollected poems, prose, and letters, presented with scholarly introductions and annotation by leading Auden specialists.

Anyone interested in the highly active field of human communication will find this collection of essays by authors in different disciplines a very useful compendium of present results and problems. Communication theory is related in different essays to current work in Anthropology, Neurophysiology, Organization Theory, Philosophy of Language, Psychiatry, Psycholinguistics, Psychology, Sociology, and several other areas. The editor concludes with an essay "Toward a Theory of Human Communication." Each essay contains a very helpful bibliography of work in the appropriate area (...) and in addition the book contains a general bibliography prepared by Hugh Duncan which includes comments about the contents and nature of each book listed. The excellent essays of Searle and Fodor, Jenkins, and Saporta make the most direct connection with philosophical issues being widely discussed today, but most of the essays provide material which should be of interest to philosophers.--R. H. K. (shrink)

Carrie Jenkins presents a new account of arithmetical knowledge, which manages to respect three key intuitions: a priorism, mind-independence realism, and empiricism. Jenkins argues that arithmetic can be known through the examination of empirically grounded concepts, non-accidentally accurate representations of the mind-independent world.

As Holderlin was to Martin Heidegger and Mallarme to Jacques Derrida, so is H.P. Lovecraft to the Speculative Realist philosophers. Lovecraft was one of the brightest stars of the horror and science fiction magazines, but died in poverty and relative obscurity in the 1930s. In 2005 he was finally elevated from pulp status to the classical literary canon with the release of a Library of America volume dedicated to his work. The impact of Lovecraft on philosophy has been building for (...) more than a decade. Initially championed by shadowy guru Nick Land at Warwick during the 1990s, he was later discovered to be an object of private fascination for all four original members of the twenty-first century Speculative Realist movement. In this book, Graham Harman extracts the basic philosophical concepts underlying the work of Lovecraft, yielding a weird realism capable of freeing continental philosophy from its current soul-crushing impasse. Abandoning pious references by Heidegger to Holderlin and the Greeks, Harman develops a new philosophical mythology centered in such Lovecraftian figures as Cthulhu, Wilbur Whately, and the rat-like monstrosity Brown Jenkin. The Miskatonic River replaces the Rhine and the Ister, while Holderlin's Caucasus gives way to Lovecraft's Antarctic mountains of madness. (shrink)

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

jild-i 1. [Without special title] -- jild-i 2. Shāmil-i mustadrakāt va muṣṭalaḥāt va kullīyāt-i falsafah -- jild-i 3. Ilāhiyāt -- jildi 4. Ilāhiyāt bi-maʻnī-i akhaṣṣ -- jild-i 5. Dar Ilāhiyāt bi-maʻnī-i akhaṣṣ.

In a range of contexts, individuals arrive at collective decisions by sharing confidence in their judgements. This tendency to evaluate the reliability of information by the confidence with which it is expressed has been termed the ‘confidence heuristic’. We tested two ways of implementing the confidence heuristic in the context of a collective perceptual decision-making task: either directly, by opting for the judgement made with higher confidence, or indirectly, by opting for the faster judgement, exploiting an inverse correlation between confidence (...) and reaction time. We found that the success of these heuristics depends on how similar individuals are in terms of the reliability of their judgements and, more importantly, that for dissimilar individuals such heuristics are dramatically inferior to interaction. Interaction allows individuals to alleviate, but not fully resolve, differences in the reliability of their judgements. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of confidence and collective decision-making. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts ed. by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. ConwayHans SeigfriedSalim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. Conway, editors. Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 351. Cloth, $69.95.The editors contend that much contemporary reflection on the relationship between philosophy and art has been shaped by Nietzsche’s “experiments with an ‘aesthetic politics’ and a politization of aesthetics.” (...) For this reason, all contributions examine Nietzsche’s aesthetic account of the origins and ends of philosophy and the transformative power of aesthetic activity in social and personal life. They concentrate on his idea of a strictly aesthetic justification of existence. The editors argue that Nietzsche, more [End Page 686] than other philosophers, understood “art as the basic transformative impulse known to human experience,” that he replaced the traditional theoretical justification of existence with an exclusively aesthetic justification, and that he not only theorized about art, but also had artistic aspirations, and that this “dual relationship to art” accounts for his continued influence. They hope that this collection will “set out the ground for future debate” of these matters.The volume is well organized. Grouped in three parts, four essays discuss basic aspects of Nietzsche’s idea of art as a transformative power, three his understanding of particular arts and the influence of his ideas on them, and five the connection between the transformative power of art and the values that guide our transactions in social and political matters. In Part One, E. Behler, M. Nussbaum, A. Del Caro, and R. Havas discuss the power of art in ironic distancing in passion, “Dionysian rapture,” and the justification of existence. In Part Two, S. Bann explores Nietzsche’s ideas about historical consciousness and representation in French romanticism, T. W. White examines the connection between Utopian vision and genuine truth in Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze,” and J. Carvalho discusses “improvising without memory” in jazz as an illustration of Nietzsche’s Dionysian model for self-transformation. In Part Three, F. Jenkins compares and contrasts moral and aesthetic self-formation, H. Staten reconstructs “the common matrix of aristocratic-authoritarian and democratic-liberationist tendencies in Nietzsche’s writings,” S. Kemal develops some implications of the final rejection of the “artists’ metaphysics” that Nietzsche still defended in his annus mirabilis (1886), D. W. Conway scrutinizes the political and aesthetic roles philosophers could and should play, and C. Crawford reviews some physiological processes involved in aesthetic transformation in the arts of dance, song, laughter, etc.Although the importance of Nietzsche in the discussion of art in our culture cannot be overestimated, one might want to quarrel with the editors’ claim that there are no other philosophers who believed as strongly as did Nietzsche that art was “the basic transformative impulse” in human experience. The same view was carefully developed by Dewey in Art as Experience and expanded in many other contributions to cover almost all areas of experience. But Nietzsche’s view of art and his idea that all human efforts need a strictly aesthetic justification still belong to the very best we have, and they deserve further discussion more than anything else in his writings.While these essays go a long way toward explaining the transformative power of art and aesthetic justification, they ultimately do not make clear what precisely Nietzsche’s reasons were for insisting that the meaning of existence can be justified only aesthetically and not conceptually, or why he thought that human experience is a process of transfiguration, or transformation, and not one of representation or conformation. It might help to review the reasons Nietzsche initially gave for abandoning the belief that existence can be transparently organized by the received “mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences,” and why he rejected the principle of sufficient reason as the basis of knowledge and dismissed the idea of “correct perception.” His description of experience as the “aesthetic operation”—Verhalten, not Verhältnis, as translated—of tentatively transferring things into a delicately woven web of changing human needs and interests does not mean that Nietzsche abandoned the conceptualization of experience. [End Page 687] Rather, it shows why we must recognize conceptualization as an... (shrink)