The Gamer’s Dilemma is based on the intuitions that in single-player video games fictional acts of murder are seen as morally acceptable whereas fictional acts of sexual assault are seen as morally unacceptable. Recently, it has been suggested that these intuitions may apply across different forms of media as part of a broader Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. This study aims to empirically explore this issue by determining whether fictional murder is seen as more morally acceptable than fictional sexual (...) assault across different media types, and whether audio-visuality and the degree of agency afforded by the medium influences these judgments. An experimental survey study was developed where participants responded to imaginary fictional scenarios as part of a 2 (engages with fictional murder or fictional sexual assault) X 2 (in a high or low agency) X 2 (audio-visual or non-audio-visual medium) factorial design. It was found that fictional murder was seen to be more morally acceptable than fictional sexual assault across all media types, providing empirical support for the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. It was also found that the audio-visuality and degree of agency influenced judgments of moral acceptability. (shrink)

Two experiments report on the construction of the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (SOARS), a new measure for quantifying alterations to agency. In Experiment 1, 370 participants completed a preliminary version of the scale following hypnosis. Factor analysis revealed two underlying factors: Involuntariness and Effortlessness. In Experiment 2, this two factor structure was confirmed in a sample of 113 low, medium and high hypnotisable participants. The two factors, Involuntariness and Effortlessness, correlated significantly with hypnotisability and pass rates for ideomotor, challenge (...) and cognitive items. Twelve week test-retest correlations showed that Involuntariness was highly stable, but Effortlessness only moderately stable. Analysis of the combined datasets from Experiments 1 and 2 showed both SOARS scores were significantly related to the derived factors of Woody, Barnier, and McConkey's (2005) 4-factor model of hypnotisability. This scale clarifies conceptual confusion around agentive action and provides empirical support for a multifactorial account of sense of agency. (shrink)

Soccer players inescapably live under stress during the sportive career, and many real-life aspects of soccer situations operate in the ongoing performance. This study’s main objective was to elaborate the List of Stressors in Professional Indoor and Field Soccer, a self-report instrument designed to measure the impact of 77 soccer situations upon the sport performance. Participants were 138 indoor and field soccer players from the Brazilian Premier League. Each situation was evaluated on a 7-point scale, ranging from the most negative (...) to the most positive. Data were analyzed according to the players’ perception of the items: distress or eustress and its intensity, and after that, situations perceived as plus −1 and +1 were compared by time in which they were experienced and distributed among five categories established by the literature: Expectations about the Performance, Personal Factors, Competition Aspects, Training Demands, and Relationship with Significant People. Narratives of athletes’ experiences were also used to discuss the results. An Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling using Bi-factorial was employed to assess the factor structure. For the total participants, 49 situations were perceived as distress and 28 as eustress. Using the criteria established a priori, the distribution was among the five categories in the remaining 32 situations. Differences in perception between less and more experienced players were found in 11 situations. The results revealed that Brazilian professional soccer players experience various stressful situations. These events are important representations of environmental demands and could predict the performance as they are perceived as eustress or distress. Some of these stressful situations are inherent in sport and others adjacent to the sports system or environment. Coach pressure to win and conflicts with teammates are examples of stressors in-sport, family problems and disputes with press or fans are examples of stressors external to the team, also called peripheral opponents, and showed the relative social influence of significant others in soccer performance. We can conclude that the knowledge of the direction of a given stress situation has important practical implications in preparing athletes and helping them face the performance stressors that are part of soccer daily life. (shrink)

Much attention has been paid recently to the role of anomalous experiences in the aetiology of certain types of psychopathology, e.g. in the formation of delusions. We examine, instead, the top-down influence of pre-existing beliefs and affective factors in shaping an individual’s characterisation of anomalous sensory experiences. Specifically we investigated the effects of paranormal beliefs and alexithymia in determining the intensity and quality of an altered state of consciousness . Fifty five participants took part in a sweat lodge ceremony, a (...) traditional shamanic ritual which was unfamiliar to them. Participants reported significant alterations in their state of consciousness, quantified using the ‘APZ’ questionnaire, a standardized measure of ASC experience. Participants endorsing paranormal beliefs compatible with shamanic mythology, and those showing difficulty identifying feelings scored higher on positive dimensions of ASC experience. Our findings demonstrate that variation in an individual’s characterisation of anomalous experiences is nuanced by pre-existing beliefs and affective factors. (shrink)

It is possible that the School of Aristotle had a ‘broad’ model as a point of reference for the Politeia of a community. The differences in character or structure will have been determined by the characteristics of the community and the documentation that the School in its in own time unearthed on each community. Although there undoubtedly was a tendency towards a certain form of structure and this is evident, the structuring of an opusculum into obligatory parts, as fixed contents, (...) is rather a tendency of modern analysis. A definition of the Athenaion Politeia as ‘atypical’ must therefore be avoided since, in their variety, the quoted sources and the Heraclidean extracts demonstrate that such a fixed model does not exist. (shrink)

At the center of every well‐constructed theory of education is a philosophical anthropology‐reasoned speculation as to the origins on man's conditions in the history of culture, especially the particular phenomenon of consciousness that underlies historical periods. Using the lens of one of the most significant theories of culture produced, we examine the philosophical anthropological accounts reflected in the theories of John Dewey and Kieran Egan, which are responsible for their divergent educational plans.

At the center of every well‐constructed theory of education is a philosophical anthropology‐reasoned speculation as to the origins on man's conditions in the history of culture, especially the particular phenomenon of consciousness that underlies historical periods. Using the lens of one of the most significant theories of culture produced, we examine the philosophical anthropological accounts reflected in the theories of John Dewey and Kieran Egan, which are responsible for their divergent educational plans.

The rating of perceived exertion can be used to monitor the exercise intensity during laboratory and specific tests, training sessions, and to estimate the internal training load of the athletes. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a specific pictorial perceived exertion scale for soccer players called GOAL Scale. The pictorial GOAL Scale was validated for twenty under-17 soccer players. In the validation phase, the athletes were evaluated in a progressive protocol involving stimuluses of 3 min (...) with 1 min for the rest into the stages until the voluntary exhaustion in Maximal Cardiopulmonary Effort Test, and in the Yo Yo Intermittent Recovery Test – Level 1. The RPE identified by the GOL Scale, by the Borg Scale 6 – 20 and by the Cavasini Scale, as well as the heart rate, perceptual of the heart rate and the blood lactate concentration were immediately evaluated after each stage of both tests. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used. Construct scale validity was examined by regressing GOAL Scale against Borg Scale 6 – 20 and Cavasini Scale and concurrent scale validity was investigated by regressing GOAL Scale against HR, beats/min and blood lactate concentration during two progressive tests. There was a significant correlation values of the GOAL Scale with Borg Scale, Cavasini Scale, %HRmax, HR and lactate during tests. The results evidenced concurrent and construct validity of the GOAL Scale across a wide range of exercise intensity. The absence of verbal anchors makes the use of this instrument to soccer, futsal and beach soccer athletes of different languages and different literacy levels possible. (shrink)

Mirrored-self misidentification is the delusional belief that one's own reflection in the mirror is a stranger. In two experiments, we tested the ability of hypnotic suggestion to model this condition. In Experiment 1, we compared two suggestions based on either the delusion's surface features (seeing a stranger in the mirror) or underlying processes (impaired face processing). Fifty-two high hypnotisable participants received one of these suggestions either with hypnosis or without in a wake control. In Experiment 2, we examined the extent (...) to which social cues and role-playing could account for participants' behaviour by comparing the responses of 14 hypnotised participants to the suggestion for impaired face processing (reals) with those of 14 nonhypnotised participants instructed to fake their responses (simulators). Overall, results from both experiments confirm that we can use hypnotic suggestion to produce a compelling analogue of mirrored-self misidentification that cannot simply be attributed to social cues or role-playing. (shrink)

L’importance d’une édition des témoignages d’Énésidème s’impose de toute évidence pour tous ceux qui s’occupent du scepticisme grec. Le problème est bien connu : le pyrrhonisme constitue un des mouvements philosophiques les plus intéressants de l’Antiquité et son influence a traversé les siècles jusqu’aujourd’hui. Mais qu’est-ce que le pyrrhonisme, quels sont ses origines et son développement? Nous sommes informés sur les deux extrêmes de cette histoire, Pyrrhon et Sextus Empiricus. Mais Pyr...

It is well established that beliefs provide powerful cues that influence reasoning. Over the last decade research has revealed that judgments based upon logical structure may also pre-empt deliberative reasoning. Evidence for ‘intuitive logic’ has been claimed using a range of measures (i.e. confidence ratings or latency of response on conflict problems). However, it is unclear how well such measures genuinely reflect logical intuition. In this paper we introduce a new method designed to test for evidence of intuitive logic. In (...) two experiments participants were asked to make random judgments about the logical validity of a series of simple and complex syllogistic arguments. For simple arguments there was an effect of logical validity on random responding, which was absent for complex arguments. These findings provide a novel demonstration that people are intuitively sensitive to logical structure. (shrink)

It is well established that beliefs provide powerful cues that influence reasoning. Over the last decade research has revealed that judgments based upon logical structure may also pre-empt deliberative reasoning. Evidence for ‘intuitive logic’ has been claimed using a range of measures (i.e. confidence ratings or latency of response on conflict problems). However, it is unclear how well such measures genuinely reflect logical intuition. In this paper we introduce a new method designed to test for evidence of intuitive logic. In (...) two experiments participants were asked to make random judgments about the logical validity of a series of simple and complex syllogistic arguments. For simple arguments there was an effect of logical validity on random responding, which was absent for complex arguments. These findings provide a novel demonstration that people are intuitively sensitive to logical structure. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories play a troubling role in political discourse. Online forums provide a valuable window into everyday conspiracy theorizing, and can give a clue to the motivations and interests of those who post in such forums. Yet this online activity can be difficult to quantify and study. We describe a unique approach to studying online conspiracy theorists which used non-negative matrix factorization to create a topic model of authors' contributions to the main conspiracy forum on Reddit. This subreddit provides a (...) large corpus of comments which spans many years and numerous authors. We show that within the forum, there are multiple sub-populations distinguishable by their loadings on different topics in the model. Further, we argue, these differences are interpretable as differences in background beliefs and motivations. The diversity of the distinct subgroups places constraints on theories of what generates conspiracy theorizing. We argue that traditional “monological” believers are only the tip of an iceberg of commenters. Neither simple irrationality nor common preoccupations can account for the observed diversity. Instead, we suggest, those who endorse conspiracies seem to be primarily brought together by epistemological concerns, and that these central concerns link an otherwise heterogenous group of individuals. (shrink)

Mindfulness is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace. This likely relates to a growing body of research linking mindfulness to a range of psychological outcomes such as reduced anxiety, depression and increased subjective wellbeing. However, while mindfulness has received a great deal of attention in clinical research, the evidence for workplace relevant benefits is less established. Additionally, outside of clinical research, mindfulness studies have rarely been replicated. Recent evidence suggests that the cognitive skills cultivated during meditation may be instrumental in (...) reducing biased thinking and increasing prosocial behaviour, but these findings have not been previously tested in a workplace setting. Specifically, mindfulness has been linked to reductions in implicit age bias, sunk-cost decision-making bias and increases in organisational citizenship behaviours. In two experiments using a workplace and laboratory sample, the present investigation aimed to test the reliability and generalisability of previous findings that a brief mindfulness meditation can reduce age and sunk-cost decision-making biases. To more directly test the potential positive benefits of mindfulness in a workplace setting, this study also investigated the impact of a mindfulness intervention on intention to perform OCB. While meditation significantly increased OCB intent, predictions relating to bias were not supported. Considerations for the degree to which empirical evidence aligns with claims in popular culture, along with implications for the practical uses of mindfulness in the workplace are explored. (shrink)

The book addresses the question of the alleged Heracliteanism of the Sceptic philosopher Aenesidemus of Cnossus.

This book provides the first edition of all the testimonia on the Sceptic philosopher Aenesidemus of Cnossus, who is deemed to be the source of Sextus Empiricus, the main surviving authority on ancient Scepticism. It provides an extensive philosophical and historical commentary, and throws light on a series of questions concerning the philosophy of the late Academy, Stoic Heracliteanism, and the interaction between medicine and philosophy in the late Hellenistic era. It will be an essential reference work for all those (...) scholars and students dealing with the history of ancient Scepticism. (shrink)

It is an established Hellenistic topos that philosophy is the ‘medicine’ of the soul, in charge of ‘healing’ the soul in the same way as medicine is in charge of healing the body. The ‘diseases’ of the soul deemed to be in need of healing are its passions, that is, its fears and desires, and the moral ‘health’ that philosophers pledge to grant their followers is freedom from passions and hence peace of mind.

Es posible que la Escuela de Aristóteles tuviera un modelo ‘amplio’ como punto de partida para redactar la Politeia de una ciudad. Las diferencias en el carácter y la estructura dependían de las características de cada comunidad y de la documentación disponible. Si bien a través de los excerpta y los fragmentos es evidente la presencia de una tendencia hacia un cierto tipo de estructura, no existía un modelo fijo y su codificación es más bien una tendencia del análisis moderno. (...) Palabras-clave: Politeiai aristótelicas, Athenaion Politeia, modelo, diferencias, comunidad. (shrink)

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Consciousness and Machines:A Commentary Drawing on Japanese PhilosophyS. D. Noam Cook (bio)Viewed from within the great unity of consciousness, thinking is a wave on the surface of a great intuition.Kitarō NishidaIntroductionRecent developments in AI have made the long-standing debate about what computers can and can't do a major public concern. What we understand the properties of such machines to be, and consequently how we design [End Page 305] and (...) deploy them, will increasingly shape how we live and how we understand ourselves. Thus, there is an urgent need for better understanding of these issues.Susan Schneider, in her book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, offers an exceptionally careful and insightful examination of key issues entailed in how we understand AI and ourselves. One of her central concerns is how we might test for machine consciousness. Given the variations in design and function among current and projected AIs, Schneider sees no likely one-size-fits-all test. So, she offers a battery of different tests that she believes together will make such testing more reliable. This seems a wise approach, and reflects the conceptual and pragmatic care Schneider takes throughout the book.Similarly, it seems to me that the question of machine consciousness should also include various understandings of consciousness itself. What consciousness is taken to be has varied widely both historically and culturally. No commonly accepted single understanding has emerged, and may never emerge. Just as having a battery of tests might help us better assess possible machine consciousness, having different understandings of consciousness might give us a better understanding of what we are testing for. The two should work in tandem, each gauging and shaping the other.Like the development of computers themselves, the predominant thinking about AI has been shaped, in part, by key presuppositions of a scientific worldview, with its origins in Western thought and culture. Among these presuppositions are materialism, reductionism, and a primary focus on objective behavior. These are reflected in the common concern with observable behavior of physical aspects of the brain in efforts to understand human consciousness, which in turn has become a familiar model for work on machine consciousness. All this is important and valuable work. But, in the spirit of Schneider's cautions, it should not be taken as one-size-fits-all. Accordingly, I offer one view of consciousness from a different perspective.In what follows, I sketch out an understanding of consciousness that draws on Japanese philosophy, particularly that of the highly influential early twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945). I then explore how the tests for machine consciousness that Schneider proposes might be viewed from that perspective.Consciousness: A Perspective from Japanese PhilosophyConsciousness was a central concern for Nishida, whose philosophy is deeply informed by Japanese culture and by Zen theory and practice. As one might expect from such a philosopher, Nishida's exploration of consciousness is not concerned with properties of the brain, but with what we might discern through disciplined reflection on the experience of our own consciousness. Ultimately, he views consciousness as an organic whole [End Page 306] of systemically organized interrelationships of activities and sensations within our subjective experience. This may be understood by first considering 'nothingness'.For Nishida, nothingness does not suggest an ultimate and absolute vacuity, as is often understandably assumed. In Nishida's sense, it is a singular "place" that mirrors the multifaceted world of our common experience. In understanding this, I am told by native Japanese speakers that the English word 'nothingness' has an advantage over the Japanese equivalent, 'mu', in that 'nothingness' can usefully be broken down as 'nothing-ness'. This suggests that nothingness is a state of consciousness where what we commonly experience as distinct (self, other, world, blue, ache, joy, etc.) is indistinct, a state of unified experience. This is consciousness without our finding or discriminating in it the myriad "things" of common experience, but rather a "pure experience" of a singular whole. Nishida introduces his concept of "pure experience" as follows:To experience means to know facts just as they are, to know in accordance with facts by completely relinquishing one... (shrink)

pt. 1. Collection of Sastri's writings and a kavya on him -- pt. 2. Select research papers presented at the birth centenary seminars.

Can philosophy offer reasonable grounds for the existence of a God possessing genuine religious significance and not proposed simply as the solution to a purely intellectual philosophical problem? Certainly many contemporary thinkers have insisted that no genuine religion could be based upon metaphysics. In this book, however, T. L. S. Sprigge examines sympathetically the most notable metaphysical systems of the last four centuries which purport to put religion on a rational footing and, after a thorough examination of their claims, considers (...) what kind of religious outlook they might support and how they actually affected the lives of their proponents. The thinkers studied include Spinoza, Hegel, T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, A. N. Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne, concluding with an exposition of the author's own viewpoint and a general discussion on the relation between metaphysics and religion. There is also a chapter on Kierkegaard as the most important critic of metaphysical religion. (shrink)

Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret.