Rock Records explores the intricate entanglements between Anthropos and Geos through a wide range of writings about stone, from media theory and ecophilosophy to the role of stones in art and the aesthetics of viewing stones. Authors engage the activity, vitality, and relationality of lithic matter and articulate multiple modalities of 'geo-affection,' as well as forms of geo-mythology, geo-sociality, and occult lithography. As the initial issue in a new digital/intermedial series of SubStance aimed at interweaving creative and critical work, Rock (...) Records also features digital versions of essays with photo-rich content, as well as a virtual exhibition of viewing stones and a series of speculative studies in... (shrink)

Although widely studied in other domains, relatively little is known about the metacognitive processes that monitor and control behaviour during reasoning and decision-making. In this paper, we examined the conditions under which two fluency cues are used to monitor initial reasoning: answer fluency, or the speed with which the initial, intuitive answer is produced, and perceptual fluency, or the ease with which problems can be read. The first two experiments demonstrated that answer fluency reliably predicted Feeling of Rightness judgments to (...) conditional inferences and base rate problems, which subsequently predicted the amount of deliberate processing as measured by thinking time and answer changes; answer fluency also predicted retrospective confidence judgments. Moreover, the effect of answer fluency on reasoning was independent from the effect of perceptual fluency, establishing that these are empirically independent constructs. In five experiments with a variety of reasoning problems similar to those of Alter et al., we found no effect of perceptual fluency on FOR, retrospective confidence or accuracy; however, we did observe that participants spent more time thinking about hard to read stimuli, although this additional time did not result in answer changes. In our final two experiments, we found that perceptual disfluency increased accuracy on the CRT, but only amongst participants of high cognitive ability. As Alter et al.’s samples were gathered from prestigious universities, collectively, the data to this point suggest that perceptual fluency prompts additional processing in general, but this processing may results in higher accuracy only for the most cognitively able. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

This study examines the family environments and hormone profiles of 316 individuals aged 2 months-58 years residing in a rural village on the east coast of Dominica, a former British colony in the West Indies. Fieldwork was conducted over an eight-year period (1988–1995). Research methods and techniques include radioimmunoassay of cortisol and testosterone from saliva samples (N=22,340), residence histories, behavioral observations of family interactions, extensive ethnographic interview and participant observation, psychological questionnaires, and medical examinations.Analyses of data indicate complex, sex-specific effects (...) of family environment on endocrine function. Male endocrine profiles exhibit greater sensitivity to presence of father than do female endocrine profiles. Father-absent males tend to have (a) low cortisol levels during infancy, (b) high or abnormal cortisol profiles during childhood and adolescence, and (c) high cortisol and low testosterone levels during adulthood compared with those of males raised with a resident father. These results indicate that early family environment has significant effects on endocrine response throughout male life histories. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry. By James Turner Johnson.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bridge From Analysis to Action:Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American ImmanenceAJ Turner (bio)I. IntroductionThe purpose of this essay is to work constructively with Michael S. Hogue's groundbreaking American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World to demonstrate how psychodynamic analyses of religion are essential theoretical allies in the fight for resilient democracy. The "revolution in mind"1 that psychodynamic approaches contribute, especially in their analyses of (...) religion, both complements and complicates socio-political theory as a whole. In the improvisational spirit of "yes-and," the goal here is not to identify and decry the failures and shortcomings of Hogue's theopolitical vision but rather to inspire the recovery of a sibling discourse—a kind of "rebirth of a forgotten alternative"2—that also draws deeply from the American immanental tradition in order to add psychodynamic depth to Hogue's timely and important analysis. Psychodynamic theories of religion shed light on how symbolic identifications, including and especially ultimate concerns, structure personal and collective experience. By engaging religion and theology sympathetically, constructively, and creatively, theorists such as Rollo May, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Ernest Becker departed from the skepticism, reductionism, and dismissal that characterized psychoanalytic analyses of religion in the wake of Freud.3 Each of these figures, and especially Becker whose work will be a focus in this essay, are noteworthy interlocutors for extending Hogue's theopolitical theorizing of resilient democracy, particularly in how they drew unique inspiration from the American immanental tradition [End Page 44] in their social analyses. In this respect, they provide a more robust theorization of the psychosocial conditions of the associational ethos needed to connect Hogue's conception of resilient democracy with forms of agonistic organization and democratic activism. Briefly stated, psychodynamic approaches are a helpful bridge for connecting these proposals to strategies of organization, their impediments, and collective action.In this way, both psychodynamic analyses of religion and Hogue's theopolitical innovation insist that no revolutionary political change is possible, and certainly not of the kind or scale needed to counter our wickedly entangled global crises, without a deep engagement with theological imaginaries. They differ, however, in their theoretical aims. Whereas Hogue compellingly argues for the political upshot of a theology deriving from the American immanental tradition, psychodynamic analysts of religion focus on the function of ultimate concerns in individual and collective life. In other words, American Immanence rests on a methodology of analyzing the philosophical and theological assumptions that have contributed to our climate crises and then presenting clear and compelling articulation of an alternative paradigm meant to open up new ways of being. In contrast psychodynamic analyses leverage conceptual clarity of psychic reality for the fundamentally therapeutic aim of transformation. At their best, both approaches share what could be called an etiological orientation to ontological questions in order to provide liberative alternatives through rational understanding and clarification, but the terrain, and thus the problems they hope to mitigate in their analyses are focused differently. Extending the visual metaphor, they are different lenses highlighting different areas of the same landscape. Furthermore, it must be said that neither are sufficient in themselves, but the psychodynamic theorists of religion to be highlighted in this essay share deeply with Hogue's heading in American Immanence.II. A Problematic AssumptionIn emphasizing and attempting to explain4 the role of non-rational processes in the both individual and social processes of perception and organization of experience, psychodynamic theories confound a widely held and problematic assumption that the triumph of rational analysis is the hallmark for building the society to which we should aspire. Political theory in general, [End Page 45] especially as it has taken its cues from a rationalist legacy about the inherently liberating force of Reason, has been weighted toward an assumption that its task of exposing the mystifications of power would suffice in inspiring more "rational" and therefore necessarily equitable social organization. This speaks to the longstanding socio-political interest in "consciousness raising" tactics, which are often meant to dispel "false consciousness." It even comes across in the emphases of Deweyan pragmatists on education. Psychologists of all stripes point out that this approach... (shrink)

In the UK, the Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment (ReSPECT) is a widely used process, designed to facilitate shared decision-making between a clinician and a patient or, if the patient lacks capacity to participate in the conversation, a person close to the patient. A key outcome of the ReSPECT process is a set of recommendations, recorded on the patient-held ReSPECT form, that reflect the conversation. In an emergency, these recommendations are intended to inform clinical decision-making, and thereby (...) enable the attending clinician—usually a general practitioner (GP) or paramedic—to act in the patient’s best interests. This study is the first to explore the extent to which ReSPECT recommendations realise their goal of informing best interests decision-making in community contexts. Using a modified framework analysis approach, we triangulate interviews with patients and their relatives, GPs and nurses and care home staff. Our findings show that inconsistent practices around recording patient wishes, diverging interpretations of the meaning and authority of recommendations and different situational contexts may affect the interpretation and enactment of ReSPECT recommendations. Enacting ReSPECT recommendations in an emergency can be fraught with complexity, particularly when attending clinicians need to interpret recommendations that did not anticipate the current emergency. This may lead to decision-making that compromises the patient’s best interests. We suggest that recording patients’ values and preferences in greater detail on ReSPECT forms may help overcome this challenge, in providing attending clinicians with richer contextual information through which to interpret treatment recommendations. (shrink)

Among the many outstanding features of Professor Stout's Gifford Lectures, Mind and Matter , there are two which possess special interest to readers of Philosophy : the author”s exposition of a more definite Realism than has been presented in his earlier works, and a renewed defence of the much-maligned faculty, Common Sense, here regarded as “a social product maintained and transmitted from generation to generation through the co-operation and conflict of many minds in thinking and willing ”.

The first note examines current assumptions about the medieval origins of the sand-glass and underlines the defective nature of our knowledge. The second note suggests a possible etymology for an unusual fifteenth-century English term for the instrument. The third note assembles such evidence as can be found on the price of sand-glasses and the structure of the trade that produced them.

This essay argues that the philosophy of the Mengzi is not an idealism or naturalism which makes morality something innate. These interpretations are limited by Cartesian presuppositions of objectivity and subjectivity, which were not a part of the Mengzi’s philosophical repertoire. This essay rehearses the problem of subjectivity and objectivity in Western philosophy. It then argues that no such dichotomy informed the Mengzi; instead, it maintains that minds and their worlds are mutually entailing and constituting. It explores the relationship between (...) the concepts of heart-mind, human nature, and tian, arguing that heart-mind is the emergence of human nature which is the internalized interpretive framework of an external Confucian morality referred to as tian. It argues that humans are situated within historical traditions that provide their world horizons. There is no world beyond the Confucian world and no mind beyond the Confucian mind: the Mengzi is a realism with a Confucian face. (shrink)

BackgroundEngagement is important within cohort studies for a number of reasons. It is argued that engaging participants within the studies they are involved in may promote their recruitment and retention within the studies. Participant input can also improve study designs, make them more acceptable for uptake by participants and aid in contextualising research communication to participants. Ultimately it is also argued that engagement needs to provide an avenue for participants to feedback to the cohort study and that this is an (...) ethical imperative. This study sought to explore the participants’ experiences and thoughts of their engagement with their birth cohort study.MethodsParticipants were recruited from the Children of the 90s (CO90s) study. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 42 participants. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and uploaded onto Nvivo software. They were then analysed via thematic analysis with a constant comparison technique.ResultsParticipants’ experiences of their engagement with CO90s were broadly based on three aspects: communication they received from CO90s, experiences of ethical conduct from CO90s and receiving rewards from CO90s. The communication received from CO90s, ranged from newsletters explaining study findings and future studies, to more personal forms like annual greeting cards posted to each participant. Ethical conduct from CO90s mainly involved participants understanding that CO90s would keep their information confidential, that it was only involved in ‘good’ ethical research and their expectation that CO90s would always prioritise participant welfare. Some of the gifts participants said they received at CO90s included toys, shopping vouchers, results from clinical tests, and time off from school to attend data collection (Focus) days. Participants also described a temporality in their engagement with CO90s and the subsequent trust they had developed for the cohort study.ConclusionThe experiences of engagement described by participants were theorized as being based on reciprocity which was sometimes overt and other times more nuanced. We further provide empirical evidence of participants’ expectation for a reciprocal interaction with their cohort study while highlighting the trust that such an interaction fosters. Our study therefore provides key insights for other cohort studies on what participants value in their interactions with their cohort studies. (shrink)

Not in the lay mind only, but also to a wide extent throughout the realm of Science itself, there exists the belief that no matter how thoroughly research is pursued, it can never yield anything more than descriptions of whatever it may be concerned with. Undeniably, such descriptions are becoming so complicated in detail, and at the same moment so far-ranging in their applications, that they inevitably assume the aspect of more or less final explanations; and previous investigators often regarded (...) them as being actually explanatory, finding indeed in this supposed result one of the most powerful impulses to carry their inquiries to their utmost limit. This however, it is frequently contended, is at best a short-sighted error and at worst a misleading superstition; the truth, no matter how unwelcome it may seem, being that explanation is unattainable because it is a wholly non-scientific category and ideal. If then we wish to discover any sufficient reason, any ultimate ground, any final solution, we must turn from Science to Philosophy; and even so, many sceptics do not hesitate to add, we are foredoomed to disappointment. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville construiu sua obra-prima de dois volumes, A fábula das abelhas, em torno de um poema largamente ignorado originalmente publicado em 1705, sua "A colmeia resmungona". Esse poema tenta proporcionar o contexto literário para a escolha feita por Mandeville da metáfora apiana. Examinamos exemplos antigos e modernos de teoria social e política informados e articulados por referência à organização e estrutura dos apiários e seus habitantes. A consideração desse contexto, conforme argumentamos, demonstra de uma nova maneira o caráter subversivo (...) de “A colmeia resmungona” e suas iterações subsequentes como A fábula das abelhas. Mandeville vira do avesso as suposições desgastadas pelo tempo sobre a harmonia natural das colmeias, sua relação com a sociedade humana, e o papel da fala e da razão em seu florescimento. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine whether United States -style regulatory intervention to encourage whistle-blowing can be immediately effective if transplanted into another country with a distinctly different historical cultural background and institutional system. A total of 98 U.S. and 84 German accountants participated in a laboratory experiment relating to a case of financial statement fraud. The provision of anti-retaliation protection and monetary rewards for whistle-blowing were manipulated and participants were asked to assume the role of an internal (...) auditor. We hypothesize and find that the provision of anti-retaliation protection and monetary rewards encourage U.S. accountants to blow the whistle. In contrast, among German accountants, where their country features a historical fear and distrust of whistle-blowers, U.S.-style regulatory interventions are less effective. Together, our findings provide strong support for the theory of path-dependence, suggesting that whistle-blowing regulation should not be uniformly transplanted without due consideration of the unique history and culture of a country. (shrink)

Aims. Currently, methylphenidate (MPH, trade name Ritalin) is the most widely prescribed medication for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We examined the ability of repeated MPH administration to produce a sensitized appetitive eagerness type response in laboratory rats, as indexed by 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (50-kHz USVs). We also examined the ability of MPH to reduce play behavior in rats which may be partially implicated in the clinical efficacy of MPH in ADHD. Design. 56 adolescent rats received injections of either 5.0 mg/kg (...) MPH, or vehicle each day for 8 consecutive days, and a week later received a challenge injection of either MPH or vehicle. Measurements. Both play behavior (pins) and 50-kHz USVs were recorded after each drug or vehicle administration. Results. MPH challenge produced a substantial 73% reduction in play behavior during the initial treatment phase, and during the last test (1 week post drug), 50-kHz USVs were elevated approximately threefold only in animals with previous MPH experience. Conclusions. These data suggest that MPH treatment may lead to psychostimulant sensitization in young animals, perhaps by increasing future drug-seeking tendencies due to an elevated eagerness for positive incentives. Further, we hypothesize that MPH may be reducing ADHD symptoms, in part, by blocking playful tendencies, whose neuro-maturational and psychological functions remain to be adequately characterized. (shrink)

Few current problems have become so confused as that of Value. Its increasing importance in all departments of modern thought has made it the focal point of so many diverse aspects that the result seems a mass of formidable contradictions. But these can never be overcome by attempting to simplify the situation, which must on the contrary be recognized from the outset as presenting an extreme complexity that will inevitably advance pan passu with the advancing complexities of human experience. If, (...) then, simplification is impossible, the only alternative is to attempt to grasp the salient features and present these in their true relation, in the same way that an invading army seizes the principal bases of hostile territory. (shrink)

In this reply, we provide an analysis of Alter et al. response to our earlier paper. In that paper, we reported difficulty in replicating Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, and Eyre’s main finding, namely that a sense of disfluency produced by making stimuli difficult to perceive, increased accuracy on a variety of reasoning tasks. Alter, Oppenheimer, and Epley argue that we misunderstood the meaning of accuracy on these tasks, a claim that we reject. We argue and provide evidence that the tasks were (...) not too difficult for our populations and point out that in many cases performance on our tasks was well above chance or on a par with Alter et al.’s participants. Finally, we reiterate our claim that the distinction between answer fluency and perceptual fluency is genuine, and argue that Thompson et al. provided evidence that these are distinct factors that have different downstream effects on cognitive processes. (shrink)