Watson reported moderate correlations between the Iowa Sleep Experience Survey and self-report measures of dissociation and schizotypy. Subsequent investigations reported similar, although somewhat more modest, correlations between the ISES and measures of dissociation and schizotypy, as well as with measures of absorption and negative affect. The present study tested subjects in conditions in which the measures of sleep experiences were administered with other measures in either the same or a different test context. We determined that sleep experiences were associated with (...) measures of dissociation, absorption, and schizotypy. We closely replicated Watson and found that the ISES correlations with other measures were not affected by the test context. We suggest that Watson’s hypothesized common domain of unusual cognitive and perceptual experiences may be underpinned by common ties to imaginative experiences. (shrink)

Although we are sympathetic to his central thesis about the illusion of will, having previously advanced a similar proposal, Wegner's account of hypnosis is flawed. Hypnotic behavior derives from specific suggestions that are given, rather than from the induction, of trance, and it can be observed in 90% of the population. Thus, it is very pertinent to the illusion of will. However, Wegner exaggerates the loss of subjective will in hypnosis.

Dissociative symptoms have been related to higher rapid eye movement sleep density, a sleep phase during which hyperassociativity may occur. This may enhance artistic creativity during the day. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a creative photo contest to explore the relation between dissociation, sleep, and creativity. During the contest, participants (N = 72) took one photo per day for five consecutive days, based on specific daily themes (consisting of single words) and the instruction to take as creative a photo (...) as possible each day. Furthermore, they completed daily measures of state dissociation and a short sleep diary. The photos and their captions were ranked by two professional photographers and two clinical psychologists based on creativity, originality, bizarreness, and quality. We expected that dissociative people would rank higher in the contest compared with low-dissociative participants, and that the most original photos would be taken on days when the participants scored highest on acute dissociation. We found that acute dissociation predicted a higher ranking on creativity. Poorer sleep quality and fewer hours of sleep predicted more bizarreness in the photos and captions. None of the trait measures could predict creativity. In sum, acute dissociation related to enhanced creativity. These findings contribute to our understanding of dissociative symptomatology. (shrink)

To examine the influence of hypnotic suggestibility testing as a source of individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness, we compared behavioral and subjective responses on three scales of hypnotic suggestibility: The Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A . Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. Berlin: Consulting Psychologists Press); the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale . The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Normative data and psychometric properties. Psychological Reports, 53, 523–535); and the Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability . (...) The Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability and response booklet. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27, 20–31). Behavioral and subjective responses to the CURSS were significantly different than those on the HGSHS: A and GSHA. More participants were classified as “low suggestible” on the CURSS and they reported subjective experiences more similar to everyday mentation. Attitudes and expectancies of participants who received the GSHA were less predictive of responding, but rates of responding and subjective experiences were similar on the GSHA and the HGSHS: A. Discussion focuses on implications for the use of group hypnotic suggestibility scales. (shrink)

By shifting the focus of analysis from forgetting and remembering to interpreting and making-meaning, Erdelyi allows theoretical consideration of repression to move beyond the heuristic assumption that personal memory is necessarily private memory. In this commentary, repression is considered to be a collective process in which memories are shaped by the need for coherence between individual and social narratives.

It is a foundational prediction of evolutionary theory that human beliefs accurately approximate reality only insofar as accurate beliefs enhance fitness. Otherwise, adaptive misbeliefs will prevail. Unlike McKay & Dennett (M&D), we think that adaptive belief systems rely heavily upon misbeliefs. However, the case for positive illusions as an example of adaptive misbelief is weak.

The present study examined the trait-like nature of hypnotic suggestibility by examining the stability of hypnotic responsiveness in a test–retest design in which the procedures were administered either live or by audiotape. Contrary to the idea that hypnotizability is a largely immutable, stable trait, scores on the scale of hypnotic responsiveness decreased significantly at the second session. Measures of subjective experiences and expectancies accounted for a sizable portion of the variance in hypnotic responding, both at initial test and at retest. (...) Participants became disengaged with the hypnotic procedures at retest. Participants who received the hypnotic induction by audiotape did not differ from participants who received it live. The results are consistent with sociocognitive and altered state theories of hypnosis, and underline the important role of subjective experiences in hypnotic responding. (shrink)

Deficits in the ability to read the emotions of others have been demonstrated in mental disorders, such as dissociation and schizophrenia, which involve a distorted sense of self. This study examined whether weakened self-referential source memory, being unable to remember whether a piece of information has been processed with reference to oneself, is linked to ineffective emotion recognition. In two samples from a college and community, we quantified the participants’ ability to remember the self-generated versus non-self-generated origins of sentences they (...) had previously read or partially generated. We also measured their ability to read others’ emotions accurately when viewing photos of people in affect-charged situations. Multinomial processing tree modelling was applied to obtain a measure of self-referential source memory that was not biased by non-mnemonic factors. Our first experiment with college participants revealed a positive correlation between correctly remembering the origins of sentences and accurately recognising the emotions of others. This correlation was successfully replicated in the second experiment with community participants. The current study offers evidence of a link between self-referential source memory and emotion recognition. (shrink)

Llewellyn has written a fascinating article about rapid eye movement dreams and how they promote the elaborative encoding of recent memories. The main message of her article is that hyperassociative and fluid cognitive processes during REM dreaming facilitate consolidation. We consider one potential implication of this analysis: the possibility that excessive or out-of-phase REM sleep fuels dissociative symptomatology. Further research is warranted to explore the psychopathological ramifications of Llewellyn's theory.

Discover how the automatic choices you make in life-- without even noticing-- can sabotage you. Fogel and Rosin show you how to learn to interrupt your self-defeating behavior and make better choices.

This is a collection of highly engaging and provocative essays by top scholars in the increasingly interrelated fields of Philosophy, Film Studies, and Communication Arts that deal with the epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and ...

It is often assumed that one cannot be forced to accept an offer as one can always reject it and be no worse off than one would have been had the offer not been made; offers involve benefits rather than the pains associated with threats. The confusion arises from the fact that we often also assume that in all cases where Q is forced to choose to do what P wants him to do, P coerces Q. I have argued that (...) coercion is only one “mode of non-voluntary compliance”. By distinguishing the different ways one can be forced to comply with another’s wishes, I have attempted to sketch out the various ways that non-voluntary compliance can operate with offers as well as threats. (shrink)

It is often assumed that one cannot be forced to accept an offer as one can always reject it and be no worse off than one would have been had the offer not been made; offers involve benefits rather than the pains associated with threats. The confusion arises from the fact that we often also assume that in all cases where Q is forced to choose to do what P wants him to do, P coerces Q. I have argued that (...) coercion is only one “mode of non-voluntary compliance”. By distinguishing the different ways one can be forced to comply with another’s wishes, I have attempted to sketch out the various ways that non-voluntary compliance can operate with offers as well as threats. (shrink)

This illuminating book examines today's most controversial and philosophically interesting issues in the major schools of contemporary political theory. In the past two decades, the study of political theory has undergone an unexpected renaissance and has once again taken center stage in philosophical debates in the West. Paradigms in Political Theory sets out some of the major controversies circulating in four schools of contemporary political theory: liberalism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. Rather than attempting to cover the major elements of each (...) school of thought in a comprehensive manner, this volume reveals some of the more contentious issues facing each brand of political theory so that its cutting edge can be exposed. Chapters on liberalism criticize the foundations of the school from its assumptions and analytical methods to the problems of legitimacy and paternalism. Other chapters provide a basis for political obligation, analyze collective action, or critique the main proponents of liberalism in our time. The works on Marxism range from traditional critical interpretation of the work of classical authors to contemporary applications of analytical Marxism or undertake a synthesis between Marx and Nietzsche. The feminist essays present vigorous analyses of the self, the self in political action, and the self seeking personal and social truth in new ways. The section on post-modernism addresses the major issues in the political theories of Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudrillard. (shrink)

Though Karl Marx never developed a systematic theory of the state, he did have much to say about state action. In recent times philosophers have made attempts to capture essential elements of Marx’s political theory in order to reconstruct a general understanding of his ideas about state action that is consistent with his theory of history. It has been my purpose in this paper to layout and synthesize recent developments in this area with ideas developed in the late 1960’s and (...) early 1970’s in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of what Marx meant. The debate of nearly two decades past, between instrumentalists and structuralists, is developed here in the context of more recent theories of “abdication” and “class balance” to generate four basic principles of state action consistent with Marx’s statements about the state. (shrink)

Though Karl Marx never developed a systematic theory of the state, he did have much to say about state action. In recent times philosophers have made attempts to capture essential elements of Marx’s political theory in order to reconstruct a general understanding of his ideas about state action that is consistent with his theory of history. It has been my purpose in this paper to layout and synthesize recent developments in this area with ideas developed in the late 1960’s and (...) early 1970’s in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of what Marx meant. The debate of nearly two decades past, between instrumentalists and structuralists, is developed here in the context of more recent theories of “abdication” and “class balance” to generate four basic principles of state action consistent with Marx’s statements about the state. (shrink)

Radical Philosophy of Law represents a cross section of contemporary critiques of the legal establishment—its theoretical foundations and its institutions and processes. Recognizing that proposals for alternatives to mainstream legal theory and practice do not belong to any single discipline, Caudill and Gold select essays by scholars in philosophy, sociology, criminology, and political theory, in addition to law professors and practitioners. Recognizing, as well, that no single perspective dominates radical legal theory, the essays exemplify the approaches associated with Marxian and (...) neo-Marxian analyses, American Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory, radical feminism, semiotics, liberal theology, and psychoanalytic theory and criticism. (shrink)

Joanna Crosby and Dianna Taylor: The theme of this special section of Foucault Studies, “Foucauldian Spaces,” emerged out of the 2016 meeting of the Foucault Circle, where the four of you were participants. Each of the three individual papers contained in the special section critically deploys and/or reconceptualizes an aspect of Foucault’s work that engages and offers particular insight into the construction, experience, and utilization of space. We’d like to ask the four of you to reflect on what makes a (...) space Foucauldian, and whether or not you’d consider the space created by the convergence of and intellectual exchanges among an international group of Foucault scholars at the University of New South Wales in the summer of 2016 to be Foucauldian. (shrink)

Drawing the line on physician assistance in physician-assisted death continues to be a contentious issue in many legal jurisdictions across the USA, Canada and Europe. PAD is a medical practice that occurs when physicians either prescribe or administer lethal medication to their patients. As more legal jurisdictions establish PAD for at least some class of patients, the question of the proper scope of this practice has become pressing. This paper presents an argument for restricting PAD to the terminally ill that (...) can be accepted by defenders as well as critics of PAD for the terminally ill. The argument appeals to fairness-based paternalism and the social meaning of medical practice. These two considerations interact in various ways, as the paper explains. The right way to think about the social meaning of medical practice bears on fair paternalism as it relates to PAD and vice versa. The paper contends that these considerations have substantial force when directed against proposals to extend PAD to non-terminally ill patients, but considerably less force when directed against PAD for the terminally ill. The paper pays special attention to the case of non-terminally ill patients who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, as these patients present a potentially strong case for extending PAD beyond the terminally ill. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the ethics of clinical research against the charge of paternalism. We do so not by denying that the ethics of clinical research is paternalistic, but rather by defending the legitimacy of paternalism in this context. Our aim is not to defend any particular set of paternalistic restrictions, but rather to make a general case for the permissibility of paternalistic restrictions in this context. Specifically, we argue that there is no basic liberty-right to participate in clinical (...) research and that considerations of distributive fairness justify some paternalistic protections of research subjects. (shrink)

The allocation of vaccines and therapeutics for Covid‐19 obviously raises ethical questions, and physicians and ethicists have begun to address them. Writers have identified various criteria that should guide allocation decisions, but the criteria often conflict and need to be balanced against one another. This article proposes a model for thinking about how different considerations that are relevant to the distribution of vaccines and scarce treatments for Covid‐19 could be integrated into an allocation procedure. The model employs the construct of (...) a weighted lottery, which is a construct that has been employed in other contexts that involve the distribution of scarce resources. The article highlights the advantages of applying a weighted lottery to the Covid‐19 context and offers an illustration for how it might work in practice. The primary aim of the article is to articulate the structural features of a weighted lottery for this context and to bring out its advantages over other methods for allocating Covid‐19 medications. (shrink)

There is a lack of published evidence which demonstrates the impacts of public engagement in science and technology policy. This might represent the failure of PE to achieve policy impacts or indicate a lack of effective procedures for discerning the uptake by policy makers of PE-derived outputs. While efforts have been made to identify and categorize different types of policy impact, research has rarely attempted to link policy impact with PE procedures, political procedures, or the connections between them. In this (...) article, we propose a simple conceptual model to capture this information, based on semistructured interviews with both policy makers and PE practitioners. A range of criteria are identified to increase the policy impact of PE. The role of PE practitioners in realizing impacts through their interactions with policy makers in the informal “in-between” spaces of public engagement is emphasized. However, the potential contradictions between the pursuit of policy impacts and the more traditional conceptualizations of PE effectiveness are discussed. The main barrier to the identification of policy impacts from PE may lie within policy processes themselves. Political institutions have responsibility to establish formalized procedures for monitoring the uptake and use of evidence from PE in their decision-making processes. (shrink)

The term “exploitation” has gained wide currency in recent discussions of biomedical and research ethics. This is due in no small measure to the influence of Alan Wertheimer’s path-breaking work on the topic (Wertheimer 1999, 2011). Wertheimer presented a clear and compelling non-Marxist account of the concept of exploitation—one that stressed the connection between exploitation and unfair distributive outcomes. On this account, when one party exploits another, she takes advantage of the other to gain unfairly. A number of contemporary bioethicists (...) have accepted Wertheimer’s account of exploitation and have proceeded to apply it to a range of issues in research ethics (Hawkins and Emanuel 2008; Miller and Brody .. (shrink)

The ethical standards that regulate clinical research have multiple rationales. Among them is the need to protect potential subjects from making imprudent decisions, which extends beyond the soft paternalistic concern to protect people from making uninformed decisions to participate in trials. This article argues that a plausible risk/benefit restriction on clinical trials is presumptively justified by hard paternalism, which in turn is supported by a deeper fairness-based rationale. This presumptive case for hard paternalism in research is not defeated by the (...) alleged right to participate in clinical trials, by concerns about insult or status, by the need to conduct early phase trials that promise little to no benefit to participants, or by the recognition that some potential subjects are altruistically motivated. (shrink)

This paper is based on a literature review of articles discussing the teaching and learning of philosophy in primary and secondary schools. The purpose of this review was to address two research questions: What 'is 'philosophy? What does philosophy do? This paper addresses the first research question—What 'is' philosophy?—by gathering together the various understandings of the word ‘philosophy’ circulating in the literature. There are ten understandings of what philosophy 'is' that have arisen from the literature: philosophy as a foundational concept; (...) philosophy as thinking—a skill, a disposition, a practice; philosophy as method or process; philosophy as a tool or instrument; philosophy as a creative task; philosophy as inquiry; philosophy as search for truth; philosophy as non-dogmatic teaching and hence the emancipation of thought; philosophy as communal activity; philosophy as a way of life. These ten understandings have been consistent over time, from writing in the field in the 1970s through to the present day. Many commentators hold and work with multiple understandings of what philosophy 'is' in their writing. (shrink)

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least three ways. First, a discursive study of scientific knowledge has the epistemological consequence of avoiding the selective perception that occurs when facts are abstracted from the historical conditions of (...) their emergence. Second, a discursive approach to scientific knowledge can also be an example of science‐as‐exploration. Third, literacy and discourse studies contribute insights that alter assumptions about pedagogical appropriateness in science education. The paper concludes by suggesting that when science literacy includes the historical production of scientific knowledge, it can thereby extend the possibilities for what can be thought, studied and imagined in the name of science education. (shrink)

“Recognizing that prisons disproportionately confine sick people, with mental illness, substance abuse, HIV disease among other illnesses; and that prisoners are subject to further morbidity and mortality in these institutions, due to lack of access and/or resources for health care, overcrowding, violence, emotional deprivation, and suicide.… condemns the social practice of mass imprisonment.”After decades of steady decline, tuberculosis has emerged as a significant public health threat in the United States. The rising rates of tuberculosis cases, an increasing proportion of which (...) are resistant to standard chemotherapies, are linked to the many scourges threatening our communities: the explosion of poverty, drug use, violence, the HIV epidemic, and the concomitant rise in congregate housing including homeless shelters, residential drug treatment programs and incarceration facilities. Jails and prisons have disproportionately high rates of tuberculosis infection and have been implicated as points of tuberculosis spread and, as such, are a critical point for tuberculosis control interventions. (shrink)

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least three ways. First, a discursive study of scientific knowledge has the epistemological consequence of avoiding the selective perception that occurs when facts are abstracted from the historical conditions of (...) their emergence. Second, a discursive approach to scientific knowledge can also be an example of science‐as‐exploration. Third, literacy and discourse studies contribute insights that alter assumptions about pedagogical appropriateness in science education. The paper concludes by suggesting that when science literacy includes the historical production of scientific knowledge, it can thereby extend the possibilities for what can be thought, studied and imagined in the name of science education. (shrink)