Although risky decision-making has been posited to contribute to the maladaptive behavior of individuals with psychopathic tendencies, the performance of psychopathic groups on a common task of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), has been equivocal. Different aspects of psychopathy (personality traits, antisocial deviance) and/or moderating variables may help to explain these inconsistent findings. In a sample of college students (N = 129, age 18–27), we examined the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathic (...) features and IGT performance. A measure of impulsivity was included to investigate its potential as a moderator. In a joint model including main effects and interactions between primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy and impulsivity, only secondary psychopathy was significantly related to risky IGT performance, and this effect was not moderated by the other variables. This finding supports the growing literature suggesting that secondary psychopathy is a better predictor of decision-making problems than the primary psychopathic personality traits of lack of empathy and remorselessness. (shrink)

One of the most legendary educational books ever written is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Émile ou de l’Education”. Most obviously Rousseau wrote this book guided by diverse more or less conscious purposes and one of the main problems it presents is paradoxical: Does education have to promote freedom by force? In this article I will, firstly, present several aims that might have triggered Rousseau to write “Émile”. Secondly, I will discuss Rousseau’s view of the so called “educational paradox”. Since this quandary touches (...) the topic of many other of his books, I will discuss “Émile” along with Rousseau’s other works and thus place his educational story in his “great narrative”. (shrink)

Consacré à la naissance du féminisme chinois, ce livre rend compte des recherches effectuées aux États-Unis dans le cadre du programme « Repenser la Chine et le monde à la fin de la dynastie Qing (fin du xixe et début du xxe siècle) ». Parties à la recherche des voix féministes chinoises de l’époque dans leur diversité, les directrices du volume offrent aux lecteurs, outre une longue introduction, un ensemble de sources primaires traduites en anglais : six articles que la (...) féministe He-Yin Zhe... (shrink)

A topological index is a numeric quantity related with the chemical composition claiming to correlate the chemical structure with different chemical properties. Topological indices serve to predict physicochemical properties of chemical substance. Among different topological indices, degree-based topological indices would be helpful in investigating the anti-inflammatory activities of certain chemical networks. In the current study, we determine the neighborhood second Zagreb index and the first extended first-order connectivity index for oxide network O X n, silicate network S L n, chain (...) silicate network C S n, and hexagonal network H X n. Also, we determine the neighborhood second Zagreb index and the first extended first-order connectivity index for honeycomb network H C n. (shrink)

The Story of Oriental Philosophy by Lily Adams Beck offers insights into such Eastern scriptures as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the teachings of Zen, and Indian sacred writing. Chapters include: The Aryan People of India and the teachings and lore of notable figures as Buddha, Shankara, Confucius, Lao-Tsu, Mencius and many others. The ancient wisdom of Asia awaits those seeking value in thought and knowledge. L. Adam Beck was one of the more well-known and popular novelists and (...) biographers in the 1920s. Beck's fascination with Asian culture and philosophy influenced her to write not only this book but several ""oriental fantasies"" of her era. (shrink)

As virtues of intellectual character are commonly discussed, they aim at _propositional _intellectual goods. But some creative works—especially those in music and the visual arts—are not primarily intended to gain, keep, or share propositional goods such as truth, knowledge, and understanding. They aim at something else. Thus, to conceive of intellectual creativity in a way that accords with standard discussions of intellectual virtue is to exclude paradigmatic works of the creative intellect. There is a kind of puzzle here: it appears (...) that we cannot maintain both the commonly-discussed notion of intellectual virtue and the claim that, say, Beethoven’s Ninth, or Monet’s Water Lilies, are central cases of intellectually virtuous creativity. We provide a two-part solution to the puzzle. First, we suggest that some works of music and visual art can convey propositional goods. Second, we appeal to the notion of _acquaintance _as an epistemic good that is conveyed through creative artistic and musical to an extent not conveyed in standard prose works. In this respect, intellectual creativity is the virtue that breaks the propositional mold of much contemporary virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard attempts to reinterpret Kantian ethics in a way that might alleviate Bernard Williams’ famous worry that a man cannot save his drowning wife without determining impartially that he may do so. She does this by dividing a reflective self that chooses the commitments that make up an agent’s practical identity from a self defined as a jumble of desires. An agent, she then argues, must act on the commitments chosen by the reflective self on pain of disintegration. Using (...) Harry Frankfurt’s emphasis on love as a final end, I argue that disintegration as motivation is not a more acceptable motivation than impartiality and so does not adequately address Williams’ criticism. I also argue that the idea of a divided self either leads to an infinite regress or to an implausible description of how our commitments evolve and change. To make this last claim, I discuss a case from John Updike’s novel 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.'. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard attempts to reinterpret Kantian ethics in a way that might alleviate Bernard Williams’ famous worry that a man cannot save his drowning wife without determining impartially that he may do so. She does this by dividing a reflective self that chooses the commitments that make up an agent’s practical identity from a self defined as a jumble of desires. An agent, she then argues, must act on the commitments chosen by the reflective self on pain of disintegration. Using (...) Harry Frankfurt’s emphasis on love as a final end, I argue that disintegration as motivation is not a more acceptable motivation than impartiality and so does not adequately address Williams’ criticism. I also argue that the idea of a divided self either leads to an infinite regress or to an implausible description of how our commitments evolve and change. To make this last claim, I discuss a case from John Updike’s novel 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God’s ShadowWalter L. ReedPostmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God’s Shadow, by Brian D. Ingraffia; xvi & 284 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, $59.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.At the beginning of John Updike’s new novel In the Beauty of the Lilies, a Presbyterian minister, trained by the Princeton Fundamentalists in the early years of the 20th century, is reading a book by (...) the popular agnostic Robert Ingersoll when he suddenly loses his faith. Brian Ingraffia’s Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology puts secular clerics at the end of the century, secure in their atheism or agnosticism, in danger of the opposite fate. Postmodern theorists are at risk here of losing their doubt. At least they are in danger of losing their confidence that Christianity need not be taken seriously since Nietzsche announced its demise and Heidegger and Derrida elaborated its obituary.Ingraffia is straightforward about his intentions. “In this study I seek to analyze critically the antipathy exhibited in postmodern theory toward theology,” he begins. “Whereas modernism tried to elevate man into God’s place, postmodern theory seeks to destroy or deconstruct the very place and attributes of God” (p. 1). Ingraffia focuses on Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, arguably the three most rigorous and original philosophers of what has come to be known more loosely as postmodern theory. He analyzes the development of each writer’s critique of Western metaphysics in its own right, but he also attends to the genealogy of subversive genealogies among them—in Heidegger’s critique of the residual metaphysics of Nietzsche, for example, [End Page 184] and Derrida’s attempt to deconstruct, at times by appealing to concepts from Nietzsche, the residual ontotheology of Heidegger. “By deconstructing the metaphysics of presence, these thinkers all claim to have deconstructed ontotheology, [that is,] both Greek metaphysics and Christian theology,” Ingraffia concludes. But as he has argued in different specific contexts throughout his persuasive book, “the logos of biblical theology is radically different from the logos of Greek philosophy and modern rationalism,” these being the real sources or substance of the ontotheology that postmoderism is so dead set against (p. 237). In planting a headstone over Christian theology, in other words, postmodern theory has got the wrong grave.The genuine “biblical theology” Ingraffia counterposes to the misrepresentations of Christianity by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida is found first and foremost in the New Testament letters of Paul. It is one of the striking features of the book that it brings a powerful voice from the first century into conversation and controversy with these powerful voices from the modern era. “The inventor of Christianity,” as Nietzsche labeled Paul in one of his many bitter aphorisms, is the central spokesman for the Christian understanding of truth that postmodernism has, deliberately as well as misadvertently, according to Ingraffia, misconstrued. Thus Paul’s doctrine of “the redemptive-eschatological separation between the present world and the world to come” (pp. 62 ff.), especially in the Letter to the Philippians, is set against Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence; Paul’s discrimination of “flesh and spirit,” with a salutary attention to the koiné Greek meanings of these terms and their cognates in the Letter to the Romans, is opposed to Heidegger’s doctrine of the authentic self. And in the most original of Ingraffia’s Pauline probes, Paul’s distinction between the “letter” (gramma) foolishly grasped and the “Scripture” (graphe) spiritually apprehended in the Second Letter to the Corinthians is counterposed to Derrida’s grammatology, where arche-writing effectively levels all hierarchies and distinctions.The strength of Ingraffia’s argument lies in his clear and, on one level, sympathetic exposition of the different but related projects of these three thinkers. This is not the kind of defensive dismissal of “secular humanism” or “godless philosophy” that evangelical Christianity has sometimes made from behind the barricades of its antimodernist revolt. With lucid expositions of crucial turns of their arguments and judicious appeals to current scholarship on each figure, Ingraffia shows how Nietzsche and Heidegger, “theology students turned philosopher” (p. 47), derive important concepts by borrowing from Christian theology on the one hand... (shrink)

Introductory, by B. H. Streeter.--Love and omnipotence, by C. F. D'Arcy.--The survival of the fittest, by Lily Dougall.--Power, by Lily Dougall.--The defeat of pain, by B. H. Streeter.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences ed. by Hans S. ReindersAdam ClarkThe Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences Edited by Hans S. Reinders Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. 191pp. $18.00Jean Vanier introduces this collection of essays with a concise articulation of the themes that define L’Arche communities: those with (...) impairments “cry out” for loving service, yet love involves the receptivity by which those without obvious impairments learn to claim their own good amid a vulnerability that [End Page 205] appears to be its negation. Subsequent essays expand upon these themes, drawing on a range of theological and social-scientific perspectives. Most could serve as introductions for undergraduate or graduate classes. The volume also invites disability scholars to examine whether and how this “Vanier school” has succeeded in its attempt to reimagine and serve both those with and those without obvious impairments.For Vanier’s “school,” such reimagining entails perceiving those with impairments as “teachers.” Executing this, however, is difficult. Xavier Le Pichon, for example, argues that “the disabled” help us recover positive views of dependency in “childhood innocence” and “aged suffering” (since they embody both stages). Focusing on the suffering that human beings experience before death, he claims that paleo-anthropological evidence suggests that societies evolved as their care of the disabled taught them to accept suffering. His argument, however, risks strongly identifying persons with their impairments, thus reinforcing the social construction of “disability” as a marginalizing category in discourse and policy.Moreover, this difficulty is not limited to associations with disvalue. Hans Reinders draws on Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Ulrich in a comparison of the severely disabled to the “teachers” of Matthew 6: the birds and lilies. The disabled, he argues, embody a positive image of “humanity” characterized by dependence on God and a lack of competition with others. Such an image of grace “frees” one from a political economy that drives toward rational mastery of self and world. Yet, do the severely impaired always experience and manifest such dependence? If not, are they not being used to create a “human” image for others in which they, in fact, do not appear?Kevin Reimer’s essay contains similar difficulties. For him, the instructive values are “trust” and “gracious openness.” Citing studies that demonstrate how these values sustain communities—even absent rational agreement—he argues that they should replace rationality as the chief marker of moral maturity (as exemplified, e.g., in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development). Like Reinders, Reimer clearly wants those with cognitive impairments to be appreciated as teachers of values that displace the rationalist ones that deprecate them. However, like Reinder’s argument, this easily slides toward defining “humanity” under a certain ideal form, thereby still implicitly devaluing those who do not embody that ideal form. Also, one finds here the danger of romanticizing that is often identified with Vanier: one only sees the form and not the real person.William Gaventa and Brian Brock, however, provide a counterresponse, the first pivotal turn in the book. Gaventa argues that the discovery of another’s value as “teacher” occurs only when one has already acknowledged her as a person (104). In other words, any “form” taught must come only after one has encountered a “person,” which is understood as a complete image of human [End Page 206] value. Here Vanier’s argument for mutual receptivity becomes a fundamental anthropology that grounds an ethic. Love must serve both persons—the teacher with impairments and the learning respondent—along distinct lines of practical action (107). In addition, Gaventa argues that persons need sources of support that are both familial and private, on the one hand, and institutional and public, on the other—thus transcending the usual splits between conservatives and liberals.Brock develops a similar anthropological ethic drawing on Martin Luther. Being human together simply means “becoming neighbors” through the absolute (Christological) imputation of personal value. Brock criticizes practices that negate this neighborly bond. In particular, he rejects the view, often endorsed by genetic counselors, that bearing potentially impaired... (shrink)

In a recent article on the Vettius affair Professor Lily Ross Taylor has tried to show that this letter should be dated to mid-July 59, and that it is therefore antecedent to 2. 20, 21, and 22. According to the hitherto accepted view the letters 2. According to the hitherto accepted view the letters 2. 18–25 are given by the manuscripts in the right chronological order, and since 21 is certainly later than Pompey's contio on 25 July , 23 (...) and 24 must fall later in the year; a terminus ante quem for the description of the Vettius affair in 24 is to be found in in Vat. 25, which shows that L. Lentulus, one of the persons Vettius implicated, was then a candidate for the consulship and that the letter is therefore antecedent to the consular elections, postponed by Bibulus' edict to 18 October . The purpose of this note is to defend this view and show that Professor Taylor's new dating is wrong. (shrink)

The paradox of knowability, derived from a proof by Frederic Fitch in 1963, is one of the deepest paradoxes concerning the nature of truth. Jonathan Kvanvig argues that the depth of the paradox has not been adequately appreciated. It has long been known that the paradox threatens antirealist conceptions of truth according to which truth is epistemic. If truth is epistemic, what better way to express that idea than to maintain that all truths are knowable? In the face of the (...) paradox, however, such a characterization threatens to undermine antirealism. If Fitch's proof is valid, then one can be an antirealist of this sort only by endorsing the conclusion of the proof that all truths are known.Realists about truth have tended to stand on the sidelines and cheer the difficulties faced by their opponents from Fitch's proof. Kvanvig argues that this perspective is wholly unwarranted. He argues that there are two problems raised by the paradox, one that threatens antirealism about truth and the other that threatens everybody's view about truth, realist or antirealist. The problem facing antirealism has had a number of proposed solutions over the past 40 years, and the results have not been especially promising with regard to the first problem. The second problem has not even been acknowledged, however, and the proposals regarding the first problem are irrelevant to the second problem. This book thus provides a thorough investigation of the literature on the paradox, and also proposes a solution to the deeper of the two problems raised by Fitch's proof. It provides a complete picture of the paradoxicality that results from Fitch's proof, and presents a solution to the paradox that claims to address both problems raised by the original proof. (shrink)

Commentary on Montero, B. (2020) What experience doesn’t teach: Pain-amnesia and a new paradigm for memory research, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 27 (11–12).

while william james's research in mental healing, psychical research, and religious experience are all well-documented, his foray into phrenology remains unexplored and undeveloped. This paper begins with Ralph Barton Perry's narrative, which portrays James as a believer in the truth of phrenology and as someone who thinks it should be valued as an art. While this depiction of James has not made its way into the recent biographies, there are a few individuals who, in fact, perpetuate this idea within the (...) secondary literature. In response, this paper offers a critical assessment of Perry's account by demonstrating that there is sufficient reason to be suspicious of his assertions. The... (shrink)

The medieval fascination with the mysterious language of Dionysius the Areopagite is nowhere more evident than in the thirteenth-century textbook edition of his treatise on liturgical rites. Dionysius employed unfamiliar Greek to describe people, actions, and texts that would have been perfectly familiar to his readers. The Latin translation used in the thirteenth-century textbook strives to preserve this unfamiliarity, but commentaries are introduced between its lines and paragraphs, disrupting its ability to bewilder and surprise. These commentaries make the Dionysian text (...) less mysterious, while also slightly altering its meaning. In the hands of the commentators, Dionysius becomes less interested in the aesthetic mystery of the liturgy, and more interested in credal orthodoxy. To read text and commentary together is to confront seven hundred years of competing voices speaking on the nature and purpose of the Christian church. (shrink)

Virgil's fourth Eclogue is one of the most quoted, adapted and discussed works of classical literature. This study traces the fortunes of Eclogue 4 in the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance. It sheds new light on some of the most canonical works of Western art and literature, as well as introducing a large number of other, lesser-known items, some of which have not appeared in print since their original publication, while others are extant only in manuscript. Individual chapters (...) are devoted to the uses made of the fourth Eclogue in the political panegyric of Medici Florence, the Venetian Republic and the Renaissance papacy, and to religious appropriations of the Virgilian text in the genres of epic and pastoral poetry. The book also investigates the appearance of quotations from the poem in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century fresco cycles representing the prophetic Sibyls in Italian churches. (shrink)

The typical approach to decoding speech from the brain (using brain-machine interfaces) is to decode low-level linguistic units (e.g. phonemes, syllables) from motor articulation areas (e.g. Premotor cortex) with the aim of assembling these low-level units into higher-level discourse. We propose that brain-to-speech decoding may benefit from adopting a functional view of language, which conceives of language as an instrumental tool for interacting with others' intentions in order to fulfil one's own intentions. This functional view of language motivates adopting usability (...) (i.e. the decoder's usefulness as a tool for achieving goals), in addition to decoding accuracy, as a criterion for assessing decoder performance. Decoders may achieve gains in usability by incorporating data about communicative situations and speaker intentions in order to generate and fill in speech act templates. We suggest that this intention-oriented, template-based, and functionally inspired view of brain-to-speech decoding may facilitate efforts to achieve naturalistic speech decoding. (shrink)

This report aims to offer insights into cutting-edge research on digital well-being. Many of these insights come from a 2-day academic-impact event, The Future of Digital Well-Being, hosted by a team of researchers working with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in February 2024. Today, achieving and maintaining well-being in the face of online technologies is a multifaceted challenge that we believe requires using theoretical resources of different research disciplines. This report explores diverse perspectives on how digital (...) well-being can be actively cultivated, while also emphasising the importance of considering individual differences, societal contexts, and nuanced cultural factors. We aim to offer a holistic view of the future of digital well-being, one that will inspire the next generation of designers of online tools, as well as policymakers who will regulate these tools. We start by asking what digital well-being is – how we can best define a concept that is used by diverse stakeholders and researchers from many disciplines in various ways. To do this, we explore the classic ethical theories of well-being, showing how they can give us insights into how the term digital well-being is currently deployed. We then move to look at the existing strategies that have been proposed to actively cultivate digital well-being, exploring the business models that threaten digital well-being and the relative advantages of the digital and non-digital solutions that are currently proposed. On the one hand, digital tools – such as Apple’s Screen Time and app blockers such as Opal and Forest – integrate seamlessly with the digital lifestyles of users. They also create precise metrics for digital well-being, which facilitates their solutions to reduce screen time. On the other hand, non-digital solutions, including mindfulness practices, digital detoxes, and digital well-being coaching, offer a new set of tools to reconnect individuals to their natural rhythms and help to actively promote offline activities. We then move to discuss diversity and how various groups of users have strikingly different digital well-being needs. Embracing neurodiversity in digital well-being is crucial as it strongly impacts the users’ experience of online technologies. When designing for diversity, organisations and designers alike need to prioritise customization for people with physical disabilities, mitigate harmful content for users with mental well-being conditions, address gender stereotypes and online harassment, and be designed in ways that recognize the very real risks of online technologies. This report closes by examining cultural differences. We believe that non-Western conceptions of well-being offer rich sources for enhancing digital well-being insofar as these traditions can inform and inspire the designers of future online technologies. We focus on East-Asian and South-Asian traditions, although in further work we recognise it would be useful to investigate conceptions of well-being that are influential in the Gulf region, Africa, and South America. Each of these areas have ethical frameworks that discuss well-being in depth as well as a rich cultural heritage. In conclusion, this report’s insights underscore the imperative of recognizing diversity in digital well-being, both in terms of cultural contexts and disciplinary perspectives. It emphasises the need for culturally responsive design methodologies and the integration of non-Western philosophical perspectives into current digital well-being research. Embracing this diversity, we believe, offers the best chance to create digital environments that prioritise well-being for users and the societies they live in across the world. Ultimately, we believe that it is not only about designing better online products; it’s about shaping a digital landscape that promotes well-being and flourishing for everyone. (shrink)

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In (...) the first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill. (shrink)

The draft Code of Conduct for Research is an important initiative towards assisting the scientific community in complying with the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). However, its approach towards cross-border data sharing should be reconsidered to clarify the ambiguities inherent in the legal requirements for the cross-border sharing of health data in the POPIA. These ambiguities include the concept of ‘transfer of information’, the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer, the (...) nature of consent for cross-border sharing and the scope of the recipient third party. We suggest that the draft Code of Conduct for Research can be improved by: Explaining or defining the concept of ‘transfer of information’ and when it applies to cross-border sharing in research Clarifying the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer vis-à-vis the other alternatives Expanding on the interpretation and application of consent as a legal mechanism for cross-border transfers Expanding the category of persons who may be recipients of personal information in a third country. (shrink)

The appearance of Jesus Christ in his time was inevitable. Plato's ideas were to find a material embodiment on earth. The image of Christ as a balance, the harmony of light-spirit and darkness-matter, is the materialization of the ideal image.

Many people believe the global economy is unjust, but they don't know what to do about it. What responsibilities do American consumers have to workers in China making their iPhones? Should they still buy clothes made in Bangladesh's sweatshops? Offering an overview of how neoliberalism orients us to the world, Benjamin L. McKean shows the practical shortcomings of neoliberal approaches to the world and develops an alternative way of thinking and acting guided by a compelling new account of freedom. Disorienting (...) Neoliberalism offers a framework for understanding the politics of the global economy and shows how we can act in solidarity to promote justice. (shrink)