Cognitive scientists distinguish between automatic and controlled mental processes. Automatic processes are either innately involuntary or become automatized through extensive practice. For example, reading words is a purportedly automatic process for proficient readers and the Stroop effect is consequently considered the “gold standard” of automated performance. Although the question of whether it is possible to regain control over an automatic process is mostly unasked, we provide compelling data showing that posthypnotic suggestion reduced and even removed Stroop interference in highly hypnotizable (...) individuals. Drawing on a large sample of highly hypnotizable participants, we examined the effects of suggestion on Stroop performance both with and without a posthypnotic suggestion to perceive the input stream as meaningless symbols. We show that suggestion administered to highly hypnotizable persons significantly reduced Stroop interference and derailed a seemingly automatic process. (shrink)

Feminists debate whether women can autonomously embrace their own subordination. Some argue that it is the process of identifying with desires and values that matters; others, that it is the content of the desires and values that matters. In this paper, I introduce a novel class of cases of ‘thwarted autonomy,’ in which women pursue autonomy but in ways that reinforce gendered subordination, and draw on these cases to develop an expressivist view of women’s autonomy. On this view, agents must (...) embody desires and values in the social world if they are to achieve self-understanding, such that the social world mediates the relation-to-self. Oppressive meanings and norms can channel this expressive activity in ways that violate women’s physical integrity and involve self-abnegation that is incompatible with autonomy. (shrink)

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a (...) positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined the role of reflection on personal cases for making ethical decisions with regard to new ethical problems. Participants assumed the position of a business manager in a hypothetical organization and solved ethical problems that might be encountered. Prior to making a decision for the business problems, participants reflected on a relevant ethical experience. The findings revealed that application of material garnered from reflection on a personal experience was associated with decisions of higher ethicality. However, whether the case (...) was viewed as positive or negative, and whether the outcomes, processes, or outcomes and processes embedded in the experience were examined, influenced the application of case material to the new problem. As expected, examining positive experiences and the processes involved in those positive experiences resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. Future directions and implications for understanding ethical decision making are discussed. (shrink)

This study shows how Goethe's Die pilgernde Torin, Kleist's Die Marquise von O..., Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and James' Daisy Miller can appeal to the reader who identifies a message friendly towards woman and her plight, whether the message was the author's intention or not.

Ciertos rasgos de la filosofía de Popper y Gadamer hacen pensar en dos concepciones irreconciliables. Sin embargo, bajo muchos aspectos, ambos filósofos acuerdan de modo notable, más allá del hecho histórico de que ninguno dé ellos haya destacado el valor de esos acuerdos, subrayando, en cambio, las discrepancias. La intención fenomenológica que guía la hermenéutica de Gadamer difiere en algunos rasgos fundamentales del racionalismo crítico popperiano. En cambio, Popper y Gadamer coinciden en la visión humanística de la filosofía y se (...) apartan del ideal de certeza de la ilustración. Con distintos argumentos, ambos se oponen al relativismo subjetivista y defienden el carácter objetivo del conocimiento. Bajo el supuesto de que es posible señalar coincidencias sustantivas entre estos dos filósofos, me propongo confrontar algunas de sus afirmaciones, en especial en lo referido a: 1) La valoración positiva del prejuicio en la formación del conocimiento; 2) el carácter abierto de la experiencia; 3) El papel del lenguaje en la argumentación en favor del carácter objetivo del conocimiento. (shrink)

I. En el presente trabajo me propongo examinar criticamente la fundamentación popperiana de la libertad, que a mi juicio, puede esquematizarse de la siguiente manera- 2. - Nuestra conducta está influida por el conocimiento, o sea, por las teorías que aceptamos. 3. - Somos libres frente a nuestras teorías, es decir, su aceptación o rechazo depende de nuestras decisiones. Por lo tanto, 4. - Nuestra conducta no está determinada sino que, por el contrario, es libre. Lo que intentaré discutir es, (...) no la corrección del argumento precedente, sino la segunda de sus premisas Después de mostrar que Popper efectivamente sostiene la tesis que le he atribuido, trataré de sugerir que la relación que postula entre libertad y racionalidad tropieza con dificultades graves. Más específicamente, procuraré defender la idea de que, en la aceptación o el rechazo de teorías somos racionales justamente en la medida en que nuestras decisiones" no son libres. (shrink)

What is the nature of agency under oppressive social conditions? Oppressive structures inhibit our agency in ways to which we are often blind, yet social movements show that as agents we can enact emancipatory change. My dissertation articulates a social ontology to account for this conflict between structure and agency. I analyze structures in terms of practices built around implicit values, which require agents to occupy valued or denigrated statuses. Agents can participate in practices without being aware of their oppressive (...) frames, thereby unwittingly perpetuating oppression. Making these frameworks explicit can lead to social change but, as oppressive practices shape agents’ senses of value and status, practices themselves must also change. (shrink)

Beginning in the nineteenth century, scientists speculated that the Pleistocene megafauna—species such as the giant ground sloth, wooly mammoth, and saber-tooth cat—perished because of rapid climate change accompanying the end of the most recent Ice Age. In the 1950s, a small network of ecologists challenged this view in collaboration with archeologists who used the new tool of radiocarbon dating. The Pleistocene overkill hypothesis imagined human hunting, not climate change, to be the primary cause of megafaunal extinction. This article situates the (...) Pleistocene overkill hypothesis in a broader history of the emergence of historical ecology as a distinct sub-discipline of paleoecology. Tracing the work of the Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and an interdisciplinary research network that included Paul Sears, Richard Foster Flint, Edward Deevey, Kathryn Clisby, and Paul S. Martin, it reveals how both the methods and the meaning of studying fossil pollen shifted between the 1910s and 1960s. First used as a tool for fossil fuel extraction, fossil pollen became a means of envisioning climatic history, and ultimately, a means of reimagining global ecological history. First through pollen stratigraphy and then through radiocarbon dating, ecologists reconstructed past biotic communities and rethought the role of humans in these communities. By the 1980s, the discipline of historical ecology would reshape physical environments through the practice of ecological restoration. (shrink)

This project examined the ethical issues faced by academics and professionals in the Humanities. We conducted focus groups to gather information about the ethical concerns in these fields and used the qualitative data arising from the discussions to create a taxonomy that represents the structure of ethical issues in the Humanities. A key implication of our findings is that while the focus of ethics research and interventions has been primarily on the sciences and engineering, academics and professionals in other fields (...) also encounter some unique critical ethical dilemmas that require further research and methods of intervention. (shrink)