We investigated the influence of personality and culture on effects of mortality salience over cultural worldview defense. We hypothesized that CWVD reactions to MS differ between Germany and Poland because of the higher conservatism of the latter country, and that they are moderated by action vs. state orientation. In this study German and Polish, participants were exposed either to MS or to a control condition. Punishment ratings to trivial offences and serious social transgressions were measures of CWVD. Results showed that (...) social transgressions in both conditions were more strongly punished in Poland than in Germany. Additionally, compared to the control condition, under MS action oriented punished serious transgressions more strongly in Germany whereas state oriented punished serious transgressions more strongly in Poland. That is, the effects of MS on CWVD are moderated by personality and culture. We interpret the opposite pattern of punishment to serious social transgressions given by action and state orientedin in Germany and Poland, respectively, according to the higher emotional autonomy of action-oriented persons in either culture. (shrink)

Upregulation of implicit positive affect (PA) can act as a mechanism to deal with negative affect. Two studies tracked temporal changes in positive and negative affect (NA) assessed by self-report and the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009). Study 1 observed the predicted increases in implicit PA after exposure to a threat-related film clip, which correlated positively with the speed of recognising a happy face among an angry crowd. Study 2 replicated increases in (...) implicit PA after exposition to the same film clip, and showed that such increases were enhanced by priming self-referential stimuli. The findings are discussed against the background of personality systems interaction (PSI) theory (Kuhl, 2000, 2001), which emphasises the role of the implicit self in affect regulation. (shrink)

Socio-economic decisions are commonly explained by rational cost versus benefit considerations, whereas person variables have not much been considered. The present study aimed at investigating the degree to which dispositional power motivation and affective states predict socio-economic decisions. The power motive was assessed both indirectly and directly using a TAT-like picture test and a power motive self-report, respectively. After 9 months, 62 students completed an affect rating and performed on a money allocation task. We hypothesized and confirmed that dispositional power (...) should be associated with a tendency to maximize one’s profit but to care less about another party’s profit. Additionally, positive affect showed effects in the same direction. The results are discussed with respect to a motivational approach explaining socio-economic behaviour. (shrink)

Humans are unconditionally confronted with social expectations and norms, up to a degree that they, or some of them, have a hard time recognizing what they actually want. This renders them susceptible for introjection, that is, to unwittingly or “unconsciously” mistake social expectations for self-chosen goals. Such introjections compromise an individual’s autonomy and mental health and have been shown to be more prevalent in individuals with rumination tendencies and low emotional self-awareness. In this brain imaging study, we draw on a (...) source memory task and found that introjections, as indicated by imposed tasks that are falsely recognized as self-chosen, involved the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Notably, reduced right MPFC activation within this condition correlated with trait scores of ruminations and reduced emotional self-awareness, but also introversion. Moreover, correct recognition of tasks as self-chosen involved the right MPFC. Accordingly, the right MPFC may play a role in supporting the maintenance of psychological autonomy and counteract introjection, which individuals with certain personality traits seem to be prone to. This research has significant implications for the study of mechanisms underlying autonomous motivation, goal and norm internalization, decision-making, persuasion, education, and clinical conditions such as depression and burnout. (shrink)

The problem of truthmakers for negative propositions was introduced by Bertrand Russell in 1918. Since then the debate has mostly been concerned with whether to accept or reject their existence, and little has been said about what it is that makes a negative proposition negative. This is a problem as it is obvious that you cannot just read it off from the grammar of a sentence. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that propositions may be negative or positive (...) in many ways: it offers a typology, and shows how the question of the existence of negative facts will receive a different answer depending on its relationship to that typology. (shrink)

The increasing prevalence of ecologically sustainable products in consumer markets, such as organic produce, are generally assumed to curtail anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Here I intend to present an alternative perspective on sustainable production by interpreting the relationship between recent rises in organic agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production. I construct two time series fixed-effects panel regressions to estimate how increases in organic farmland impact greenhouse gas emissions derived from agricultural production. My analysis finds that the rise (...) of certified organic production in the United States is not correlated with declines in greenhouse gas emissions derived specifically from agricultural production, and on the contrary is associated positively overall agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. To make sense of this finding, I embed my research within the conventionalization thesis. As a result I argue that the recent USDA certification of organic farming has generated a bifurcated organic market, where one form of organic farming works as a sustainable counterforce to conventional agriculture and the other works to increase the economic accessibility of organic farming through weakening practice standards most conducive to reducing agricultural greenhouse gas output. Additionally, I construct my own theoretical framework known as the displacement paradox to further interpret my findings. (shrink)

RESUMO: Desde os primórdios dos espetáculos teatrais inteiramente musicados, estabelece-se a convenção tácita do final feliz. Desse modo, até mesmo episódios oriundos de escritores antigos, com conhecidos finais funestos, acabaram sendo transformados, acomodando a trama aos usos dos locais onde óperas eram apresentadas. Apesar de parecer uma solução fácil ou episódica, há algumas questões poéticas envolvidas, o que transparece sobretudo em alguns escritos sobre ópera, no século XVIII. A proposta deste artigo é discutir, em primeiro lugar, através de exemplos, como (...) o final feliz acontece em algumas óperas e qual a função que nelas desempenha; num segundo momento, a intenção é mostrar como a crítica italiana do final do século XVIII se mobiliza para dar conta da questão. ABSTRACT: Ever since the appearance of the first dramas entirely set to music, happy endings have emerged as a tacit convention. Even ancient myths with their sad endings were transformed, adapting plots to local customs where operas were performed. Although it may seem a facile or occasional solution, there are some important poetical questions involved which appear in certain writings on opera from the eighteenth century. The purpose of this article is to discuss, by means of examples, how the happy ending appears in some operas, and what function it has. The article also pretends to show how Italian critics of the late eighteenth century approached the question. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers of mind have been guided by a brainbound approach: the mind, whatever it turns out to be, will be related to or identical with the brain. The body, under this approach, plays a merely instrumental role — it is what keeps the brain alive and healthy. Over the past few decades there has been increasing resistance to the brainbound approach, and a strongly supported push for taking a non-brainbound approach: the body is not merely instrumental, but in many (...) ways constitutive of the mind — the mind, whatever it turns out to be, is bodily in many fundamental respects. Thus, in explaining the mind, we must consider not only brain states, but also wider bodily processes. What those wider bodily processes are, and how they constitute certain mental states, are the key questions that we now face as non-brainbound philosophers of mind. -/- One avenue of investigation that many have taken in view to answering these two questions has been to look at bodily awareness and its relation to our sense of self. How does our body, and our awareness of our body more specifically, constitute our sense of self and our subjective experience of the world. A clear way of investigating this last question is to turn to pathological cases of body awareness, e.g. body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is an interesting case. The DSM-5 distinguishes anorexia nervosa from body dysmorphic disorder — the former is classified as an eating disorder, while the latter is classified as a mental disorder. As I will explore in this chapter, this very manner of distinguishing among such pathologies admits of a traditional brainbound approach to separating the mind/brain from the body. Here I shall consider how a non-brainbound approach might give us different, and perhaps even better insight into cases such as anorexia nervosa, and I shall, conversely, consider how such body awareness disorders might serve to further strengthen the view that the right approach to understanding the mind is the non-brainbound approach. (shrink)

Zu den wichtigsten Entwicklungen der Diskussion der Frage, ob Freiheit und moralische Verantwortung einerseits, und der Determinismus andererseits miteinander vereinbar sind, zählen nach verbreiteter Ansicht die Überwindung der Konditionalanalyse von Freiheit, sowie der wachsende Zweifel daran, dass alternative Möglichkeiten Voraussetzung für Verantwortung sind. In meiner Habilitationsschrift versuche ich zu zeigen, dass beide Entwicklungen Irrwege sind. Das Buch gliedert sich in zwei Hauptteile. Im ersten Teil wird der Begriff der praktischen Fähigkeit bzw. der Handlungs- und Willensfreiheit analysiert. Unter welchen Bedingungen kann (...) ein Akteur etwas anderes als das tun, was er faktisch tut, bzw. unter welchen Bedingungen ist ein Akteur frei, anders zu handeln? In der philosophischen Diskussion dieser Frage ist traditionell ein zentraler Aspekt, ob zu diesen Bedingungen auch Indetermination zählt. Philosophen, die die Freiheit, anders zu handeln, für kompatibel mit dem Determinismus halten, haben oftmals eine konditionale Analyse von Freiheit/Können vertreten (Augustin, Hobbes, Hume, Moore, Tugendhat). Gegen diese Analyse sind jedoch zahlreiche Einwände erhoben worden, die von den meisten Philosophen, auch von Kompatibilisten, für triftig gehalten werden. Ich versuche im ersten Teil, die Konditionalanalyse gegen die erhobenen Einwände zu verteidigen. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit geht es um die Frage, unter welchen Bedingungen Akteure moralisch verantwortlich gemacht werden können. Diese Frage ist mit der Frage nach der Fähigkeit, anders zu handeln, dadurch verbunden, dass einer lange unbestrittenen Annahme zufolge jemand nur dann moralisch verantwortlich sein kann, wenn er anders hat handeln können. Diese Annahme ist in neuerer Zeit – im Gefolge Harry Frankfurts – angezweifelt worden. Ich versuche zu zeigen, dass die Annahme dennoch richtig ist. Ich entwickle eine an Überlegungen Peter Strawsons angelehnte Analyse von moralischer Verantwortung, der zufolge ein Akteur moralisch verantwortlich für ein Ereignis ist, wenn er in einer kausalen Beziehung zu ihm steht, welche Rückschlüsse auf die moralische Qualität seines Willens ermöglicht. Durch eine Analyse der Adäquatheitsbedingungen moralischer Beurteilung von Akteuren versuche ich zu zeigen, dass die relevanten Kausalbeziehungen dann bestehen, wenn eine bestimmte Konditionalanalyse die Fähigkeit zuschreibt, anders zu handeln. Alternative Möglichkeiten im Sinne dieser Analyse sind notwendig und hinreichend für moralische Verantwortung. (shrink)

In this qualitative study, the elements and quality of musher-sled dog relationships were investigated. In-depth interviews with a narrative design were conducted with eight mushers from northern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario. The mushers were asked to contribute ideas by sharing stories and experiences of working with dogs, as well as art or photographs. While all the participants had their own ideas about musher-sled dog relationships, six themes emerged. The mushers stated the importance of getting to know the dogs, their respect (...) for their sled dogs’ abilities, the idea of a two-way communication that takes place, the importance of trust, the notion of partnership, and what can be learned through working with sled dogs. This study supports other research suggesting that humans and animals engage in interspecies relationships and that these can be quality relationships with multiple elements. The importance of researching and teaching about dogs as subjects is discussed, as well as the significance of humans having direct experience with other animals. (shrink)

Aristotle did not see a sharp contrast between the psychological and the physical. He viewed the physical as just the natural, and treats the psychological as part of the physical. This essay attempts to explain why this is so, and presents observations about Aristotle’s framework. It explores the relation of hylomorphism to functionalism, and argues against funtionalist interpretations of Aristotle due to the belief that Aristotle was confronting a different set of concerns and issues.

In this comment I respond to the criticisms put forth by Muller et al. It is my assessment that the authors’ make useful suggestions for future analyses. However, their conclusion regarding the invalidity of my results are based on a misconception of the goals and data used in my article.

Closed systems are mental artefacts whose structure can neither be explained in terms of innate dispositions nor in terms of the mechanism of natural selection and which stands in contradiction to the conditions of the possibility of information transfer. Kant takes the formal structure of pure mathematics as a guarantor for his reconstruction of a closed system of the subject's structures of knowledge a priori, thereby giving rise to the problem of a normative interface between interior system and exterior information (...) – a problem which is, in this form, not to be solved. By tracing the structure of generative grammar and formal logics back to innate modules, respectively, Chomsky and Fodor are creating the same interface problem, whose basic structure has not yet received the necessary attention. (shrink)

Our emotional states affect how we perceive the world. If I am stressed, annoyed, or irritated, I might experience the sound of children laughing and screaming as they play around the house in a negative manner — it is unpleasant, loud, piercing, and so on. Yet, if I’m in a relaxed, happy, loving mood, the very same sounds might be experienced as pleasant, playful, warm, and so on. The sounds being made by the children are the same in both cases, (...) but how they are experienced differs. The auditory experience is affected by the emotional state that I am in. I perceive the sounds differently depending on how I’m feeling. Although this might at first seem to be a trivial observation, it certainly is not. We take for granted that our perceptual experiences give rise to justified beliefs and knowledge. Thus, if my perceptual experience of an object can differ based on my emotional state, and I take my perceptual experience to justify my beliefs and even lead to knowledge, then we might have a problem. If emotions — which are not fixed and in large part uncontrolled — affect our ability to accurately perceive the world, then they may undermine the justified beliefs and knowledge gained on the basis of our perceptual experience of the world. My goal here is to explore this potential problem. -/- I consider how we might understand the effect that emotions have on the justification of our perceptual beliefs about the world, beliefs that we acquire from a variety of sensory modalities — audition, gustation olfaction, and so on. I take the problem to be associated with one of two forms of perceptual influence: penetration or multisensory integration. In any given perceptual moment there are multiple sensory modalities and mental states at play, each affecting the overall experience. Whether we understand the influence of emotion on perception as a form of non-perceptual penetration or a form of non-visual sensory perception of the inner body — interoception — the potential epistemological difficulties remain: how can we be said to acquire justified beliefs and knowledge on the basis of such influenced perceptual experience. As has been the norm, only the five exteroceptive senses of vision, audition, olfaction, taste and touch are typically discussed in the context of sensory perception. However, as I argue, there is strong reason to accept the claim that emotional experience is a form of interoception, and that interoception ought to be considered when discussing sensory perception. In this way, then, I propose that clarifying the role played by interoception in sense perception across modalities is necessary if we are to make progress on the epistemological problems at hand. (shrink)

Research on bodily awareness has focused on body illusions with an aim to explore the possible dissociation of our bodily awareness from our own body. It has provided insights into how our sensory modalities shape our sense of embodiment, and it has raised important questions regarding the malleability of our sense of ownership over our own body. The issue, however, is that this research fails to consider an important distinction in how we experience our body. There are indeed two ways (...) in which we can be aware of our body: via observational awareness, which involves attending to the body as an object, and via non-observational awareness, where the body is given as the subject of experience and does not involve attention. The research to date has focused on the former—observational bodily awareness—and has left the latter—non-observational bodily awareness—in the dark. This is detrimental to ever formulating a complete account of how we are aware of our body. It is understandable, however, because of the inherent problem in studying non-observational bodily awareness: how would you instruct subjects to report on their unattended bodily awareness? In view to resolving this problem, I propose here a working hypothesis on the basis of research on interoception and the rubber hand illusion, and on the effect of meditation on awareness and attention. This working hypothesis can show us a way to begin studying non-observational bodily awareness, and finally build a complete theory of bodily awareness. (shrink)

Wnt proteins can activate different intracellular signaling cascades in various organisms by interacting with receptors of the Frizzled family. The first identified Wnt signaling pathway, the Wnt/β‐catenin pathway, has been studied in much detail and is highly conserved among species. As to non‐canonical Wnt pathways, the current situation is more nebulous partly because the intracellular mediators of this pathway are not yet fully understood and, in some cases, even identified. However, there are increasing data that prove the existence of non‐canonical (...) Wnt signaling and demonstrate its involvement in different developmental processes. In vertebrates, Wnt‐11 and Wnt‐5A can activate the Wnt/JNK pathway, which resembles the planar cell polarity pathway in Drosophila. The Wnt/Ca2+‐pathway has only been described in Xenopus and zebrafish so far and it is unclear whether it also exists in other organisms. Two recent papers provide us with new insight into non‐canonical Wnt signaling by (1) presenting a new intracellular mediator of non‐canonical signaling in Xenopus1 and (2) implicating the existence of an additional non‐canonical Wnt signaling pathway in flies.2 BioEssays 24:881–884, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this book, Julius M. Moravcsik disputes that a natural language is not and should not be represented as a formal language. The book criticizes current philosophy of language as having an altered focus without adjusting the needed conceptual tools. It develops a new theory of lexical meaning, a new conception of cognition-humans not as information processing creatures but as primarily explanation and understanding seeking creatures-with information processing as a secondary, derivative activity. In conclusion, based on the theories of (...) lexical meaning and cognition, this work sketches an argument showing that the human understanding of human understanding must always remain just partial. (shrink)

The vertebrate heart comprises a variety of cell types, the majority of which are cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle and endothelial cells. Their origin is still an intriguing research topic and the question is whether these cells derive from a common or from multiple distinct progenitor cell(s). Three recent publications not only suggest the existence of a single progenitor cell that can give rise to cardiovascular lineages but additionally uncovered, at least in part, the molecular identity of such a multipotent precursor cell.1-3 (...) These findings constitute major progress in the quest for stem-cell therapies for cardiac diseases. BioEssays 29:422–426, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Formation of a multicellular organism is a complex process involving differentiation and morphogenesis. During early vertebrate development, the radial symmetric organization of the egg is transferred into a bilateral symmetric organism with three distinct body axes: anteroposterior (AP), dorsoventral, and left–right. Due to cellular movements and proliferation, the body elongates along the AP axis. How are these processes coupled? Two recent publications now indicate that cell migration as well as orientated cell divisions contribute to axis elongation. The processes are coupled (...) through the planar cell polarity pathway.1 At the same time, the AP axis is patterned independently of convergent extension. This process, however, is required for cell migration and represents a cue for polarized cell motility during gastrulation. Thus, it is AP polarity that instructs individual cells how to orientate with respect to the embryonic axis and provides positional information for the process of convergent extension.2 BioEssays 26:1272–1275, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Experimental results on spectra and wave functions of a ray-splitting microwave billiard are presented. The billiard is formed by a flat rectangular microwave cavity with a quarter-circle insert made of teflon in one of the corners. Using the Gutzwiller trace formula, the contribution of the periodic orbits of the billiard to the density of states are determined. The wave functions, many of them showing scars associated with periodic orbits, are interpreted in terms of the semiclassical Green function.

Originally published in 1990, this book centres on a certain way of surveying a variety of theories of language, and on outlining a new proposal of meaning within the framework set by the survey. One of the key features of both survey and proposal is the insistence on the need to locate theories of language within a large framework that includes questions about the nature of thought and about general ontological questions as well. The book deals in an interconnected way (...) with both very general and specific issues. At one end of this spectrum there are discussions of the contrast between realist and nominalist ontologies, while at the other are analyses of specific lexical items of English. (shrink)