It has been shown that acting in a game-like task improves preschoolers’ working memory when tested in a reconstruction task. The game context and the motor activity during the game would provide goal cues bringing support to the memory processes. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis by examining preschoolers’ working memory performance in a game-like task compared to an exercise-like task, which offers less goal cues. In the present study, 5-year-olds had to maintain a series (...) of fruits and vegetables while acting in a game-like task or remaining static during the same task presented in a school-exercise context. Memory performance was tested either through oral recall or reconstruction of the series of memory items. Despite the fact that memory performance did not differ between the two conditions whatever the type of memory tests, performance was worst in the game-like than in the exercise condition when the exercise was presented first. No difference emerged between conditions when the game condition was performed first. This result suggests that preschoolers were able to take advantage of acting in the game-like condition to integrate some task requirements, which were beneficial for performing the exercise condition. (shrink)

This is the first philosophy textbook in moral psychology, introducing students to a range of philosophical topics and debates such as: What is moral motivation? Do reasons for action always depend on desires? Is emotion or reason at the heart of moral judgment? Under what conditions are people morally responsible? Are there self-interested reasons for people to be moral? Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction presents research by philosophers and psychologists on these topics, and addresses the overarching question of how empirical (...) research is relevant to philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

IntroductionThe prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in cognition, particularly in executive functions. Cortical reactivity measured with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with Electroencephalography is altered in pathological conditions, and it may also be a marker of cognitive status in middle-aged adults. In this study, we investigated the associations between cognitive measures and TMS evoked EEG reactivity and explored whether the effects of this relationship were related to neurofilament light chain levels, a marker of neuroaxonal damage.MethodsFifty two healthy middle-aged adults from (...) the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative cohort underwent TMS-EEG, a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, and a blood test for NfL levels. Global and Local Mean-Field Power, two measures of cortical reactivity, were quantified after left prefrontal cortex stimulation, and cognition was set as the outcome of the regression analysis. The left inferior parietal lobe was used as a control stimulation condition.ResultsLocal reactivity was significantly associated with working memory and reasoning only after L-PFC stimulation. No associations were found between NfL and cognition. These specific associations were independent of the status of neuroaxonal damage indexed by the NfL biomarker and remained after adjusting for age, biological sex, and education.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that TMS evoked EEG reactivity at the L-PFC, but not the L-IPL, is related to the cognitive status of middle-aged individuals and independent of NfL levels, and may become a valuable biomarker of frontal lobe-associated cognitive function. (shrink)

Robert Johnson argues that virtue ethical accounts of right action fail because they cannot take account of the fact that there are things we ought to do precisely because we do not possess virtuous character traits. Self-improving actions are his paradigm case and it would indeed be a problem if virtue ethics could not make sense of the propriety of self-improvement. To solve this serious problem, I propose that virtue ethics ought to define right action in terms of the virtuous (...) agent's reasons for action instead of defining right action in terms of the actions that the virtuous agent performs. I argue that this revised definition of right action makes sense of the rightness of self-improving actions and that it can be given a genuinely virtue ethical interpretation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Evolution Evolutionary Psychology Ultimate vs. Proximate Causes of Behavior An Example of an Evolved Psychological Mechanism Solidified During the Pleistocene Epoch Summary Postscript: Counterpoint References.

IntroductionExcitability of the primary motor cortex measured with TMS has been associated with cognitive dysfunctions in patient populations. However, only a few studies have explored this relationship in healthy adults, and even fewer have considered the role of biological sex.MethodsNinety-seven healthy middle-aged adults completed a TMS protocol and a neuropsychological assessment. Resting Motor Threshold and Long-Interval Intracortical Inhibition were assessed in the left motor cortex and related to attention, episodic memory, working memory, reasoning, and global cognition composite scores to evaluate (...) the relationship between cortical excitability and cognitive functioning.ResultsIn the whole sample, there was a significant association between LICI and cognition; specifically, higher motor inhibition was related to better working memory performance. When the sample was broken down by biological sex, LICI was only associated with working memory, reasoning, and global cognition in men. No associations were found between RMT and cognitive functions.ConclusionGreater intracortical inhibition, measured by LICI, could be a possible marker of working memory in healthy middle-aged adults, and biological sex plays a critical role in this association. (shrink)

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality are often cited as structural rather than individual in nature. What does it mean to invoke a social structural explanation, and how do such explanations relate to individualistic ones? This article explores recent philosophical debates concerning the nature and usages of social structural explanation. I distinguish between two central kinds of social structural explanation: those that are autonomous from psychology, and those that are not. This distinction will help clarify the explanatory power (...) that each type of SSE has, points of convergence with methodological traditions such as critical theory and rational choice theory, and the difficulties that each type of SSE faces. (shrink)

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply ‘wisdom’), which is the understanding required to make reliably good decisions about how we ought to live, is something we all have reason to care about. The importance of wisdom gives rise to questions about its nature: what kind of state is wisdom, how can we develop it, and what is a wise person like? These questions about the nature of wisdom give rise to further questions about proper methods for studying wisdom. Is the study of (...) wisdom the proper subject of philosophy or psychology? How, exactly, can we determine what wisdom is and how we can get it? In this chapter, we give an overview of some prominent philosophical answers to these questions. We begin by distinguishing practical wisdom from theoretical wisdom and wisdom as epistemic humility. Once we have a clearer sense of the target, we address questions of method and argue that producing a plausible and complete account of wisdom will require the tools of both philosophy and empirical psychology. We also discuss the implications this has for prominent wisdom research methods in empirical psychology. We then survey prominent philosophical accounts of the nature of wisdom and end with reflections on the prospects for further interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

To what extent should we focus on implicit bias in order to eradicate persistent social injustice? Structural prioritizers argue that we should focus less on individual minds than on unjust social structures, while equal prioritizers think that both are equally important. This article introduces the framework of transactive memory into the debate to defend the equal priority view. The transactive memory framework helps us see how structure can emerge from individual interactions as an irreducibly social product. If this is right, (...) then debiasing interventions are structural interventions. One upshot is that the utility of the individual versus structural distinction is not apparent for the purposes of intervention. (shrink)

This paper argues that some widely used laws of implication are false, and arguments based upon them invalid. These laws are Exportation, Commutation, (as well as various restricted forms of these), Exported Syllogism and Disjunctive Syllogism. All these laws are false for the same reason – that they license the suppression or replacement in some position of some class of propositions which cannot legitimately be suppressed or replaced. These laws fail to preserve the property of sufficiency of premiss set for (...) conclusion. They are false, and can be seen to be false, independently of their respon- sibility for the paradoxes. Hence the main ‘independent’ argument for the paradoxes – that they follow from an allegedly immaculate set of laws – is undermined. Counterexamples to all these laws are produced. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that what we ought to do collectively does not imply anything about what each of us ought to do individually. According to this line of reasoning, if cooperating will make no difference to an outcome, then you are not morally required to do it. And if cooperating will be personally costly to you as well, this is an even stronger reason to not do it. However, this reasoning results in a self-defeating, yet entirely predictable outcome. If (...) everyone is rational, no one will cooperate, resulting in an aggregate outcome that is devastating for everyone. This dismal analysis explains why climate change and other collective action problems are so difficult to ameliorate. The goal of this paper is to provide a different, exploratory framework for thinking about individual reasons for action in collective action problems. I argue that the concept of commitment gives us a new perspective on collective action problems. Once we take the structure of commitment into account, this activates requirements of diachronic rationality that give individuals instrumental reasons to cooperate in collective action problems. (shrink)

A collection of spiritual essays written by Black thought leaders and teachers that discuss what it means to be Black in the world today.

Sugar, pork, beer, corn, cider, scrapple, and hoppin' John all became staples in the diet of colonial America. The ways Americans cultivated and prepared food and the values they attributed to it played an important role in shaping the identity of the newborn nation. In A Revolution in Eating, James E. McWilliams presents a colorful and spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by strange new animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West (...) Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as "fit for swine," became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a "culinary declaration of independence," prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define American cuisine. McWilliams demonstrates that this was a shift not so much in new ingredients or cooking methods, as in the way Americans imbued food and cuisine with values that continue to shape American attitudes to this day. (shrink)

The number of distributors selling Fair Trade products is constantly increasing. What are their motivations to distribute Fair Trade products? How do they organise this distribution? Do they apply and communicate the Fair Trade values? This research, based on five case studies in Switzerland, aims at understanding and structuring the strategies and the managerial practices related to Fair Trade product distribution, as well as analysing if they denote an engagement with Fair Trade principles. The results show a high heterogeneity of (...) strategies and engagement. In general, strategies implemented by mainstream actors contribute to increase Fair Trade global sales but do not convey the transformative message of Fair Trade through their engagement. The latter is rather communicated through alternative channels. Problems and potential solutions to this issue are discussed. (shrink)

As of this writing, twenty‐one states have passed laws barring transgender youth‐athletes from competing on public‐school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. Proponents of these regulations claim that transgender females in particular have inherent physiological advantages that threaten a “level playing field” for their cisgender competitors. Existing evidence is limited but does not support these restrictions. Gathering more robust data will require allowing transgender youth to compete (rather than preemptively barring them), but even if trans females are shown (...) to retain some advantage, this would not have greater moral significance than the many other “fair” physical and economic advantages found across sports. These regulations deprive transgender youth, an exceptionally vulnerable population, from the vast physical, mental, and social benefits of sports. While we advocate for transgender inclusion under our current, gender‐segregated model of sport, we propose changes to the overarching structure that would promote a more inclusive and fairer athletic environment. (shrink)

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, or should you do lots of research? Should you make lists of (...) pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, this book focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, this book argues that to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, the book maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical; to be realistic; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience. (shrink)

Price is a central analytic concept in both neoclassical and old institutional economics. Combining the social network perspective with old and new institutionalist approaches to price formation, this article examines technological, economic, institutional, and political factors that shaped the earliest pricing systems for electricity used in the United States, between 1882 and 1910. We show that certain characteristics of electricity supply led to ambiguities in how the product should be priced, which created a politics of pricing among electricity producers. In (...) particular, we investigate why the “Wright system,” arguably inferior in productive efficiency to other alternatives, was widely adopted by 1900. We argue that this outcome resulted in part from the political and organizational clout of its supporters, as well as from their particular conceptions of the boundaries and future of the industry itself. The Wright system best suited the “growth dynamic” strategy promoted by the managers of large central stations in their fierce competition with smaller and more decentralized installations. Thus, even in this apparently highly technical and mainly economic issue of how to price the product, there was ample room for social construction and political manipulation. The outcome reached was by no means inevitable and had a highly significant impact on the shape of the American industrial infrastructure. (shrink)

Freedom of conscience is a core element of human rights respected by most European countries. It allows abortion through the inclusion of a conscience clause, which permits opting out of providing such services. However, the grounds for invoking conscientious objection lack clarity. Our aim in this paper is to take a step in this direction by carrying out a systematic review of reasons by midwives and nurses for declining, on conscience grounds, to participate in abortion. We conducted a systematic review (...) of ethical arguments asking, “What reasons have been reported in the argument based literature for or against conscientious objection to abortion provision by nurses or midwives?” We particularly wanted to identify any discussion of the responsibilities of midwives and nurses in this area. Search terms were conscientious objection and abortion or termination and nurse or midwife or midwives or physicians or doctors or medics within the dates 2000–2016 on: HEIN legal, Medline, CINAHL, Psychinfo, Academic Search Complete, Web of Science including publications in English, German and Dutch. Final articles were subjected to a rigorous analysis, coding and classifying each line into reason mentions, narrow and broad reasons for or against conscientious objection. Of an initial 1085 articles, 10 were included. We identified 23 broad reasons, containing 116narrow reasons and 269 reason mentions. Eighty one narrow reasons argued in favour of and 35 against conscientious objection. Using predetermined categories of moral, practical, religious or legal reasons, “moral reasons” contained the largest number of narrow reasons. The reasons and their associated mentions in this category outnumber those in the sum of the other three categories. We identified no absolute argument either for or against conscientious objection by midwives or nurses. An invisibility of midwives and nurses exists in the whole debate concerning conscientious objection reflecting a gap between literature and practice, as it is they whom WHO recommend as providers of this service. While the arguments in the literature emphasize the need for provision of conscientious objection, a balanced debate is necessary in this field, which includes all relevant health professionals. (shrink)

The article explores the place of affect in community relations with respect to trauma following the closure of a steelworks for a working-class community in the South Wales valleys in 2002. A review of sociological approaches to community demonstrates the poor handling of relational and affective aspects which, it is argued, are central to the way in which community relations were formed and provided a safe and containing skin against the uncertainty of industrial production. Using psychoanalytic approaches to affect which (...) stress the importance of skin, particularly the work of Bick, Tustin, Winnicott and Anzieu, the article explores how a sense of a containing skin provides a feeling of ontological security for a community beset by uncertainty and insecurity. It is argued that, following the closure of the steelworks in 2002, this skin is ruptured and that it is difficult for the members of the community to find a way forward. Using examples taken from psychosocial interviews with community members, the case is made for a range of affective relations and practices through which the skin is created. The absence of these practices and relations creates a profound sense of lack of safety and fear of death within the inhabitants, which needs to be addressed, but is rarely discussed in approaches to community or regeneration. (shrink)

Habermas élabore une théorie radicale de la démocratie qui entend répondre aux défis posés tant par la mondialisation économique que par la tentation de repli des « peuples » qui cherchent à retrouver une souveraineté perdue. Une telle théorie, qui prend une forme délibérative, projette la démocratie dans la constitutionnalisation du droit international, et implique une perspective cosmopolitique. Dans ce cadre, la réflexion sur la politique européenne et ses institutions est centrale, et permet de montrer que la théorie critique n’a (...) rien perdu de sa lucidité quand il s’agit de mettre en garde notamment contre un « fédéralisme postdémocratique de l’exécutif » dans lequel l’Europe risque de se perdre. (shrink)

What is well-being? This is one of humanity's oldest and deepest questions; Valerie Tiberius offers a fresh answer. She argues that our lives go well to the extent that we succeed in what matters to us emotionally, reflectively, and over the long term. So when we want to help others achieve well-being, we should pay attention to their values.

Hermeneutic research in nursing: developing a Gadamerian‐based research method This paper takes the stance that although there are many different approaches to phenomenological and hermeneutic research, some of these have become blurred due to multiple interpretations of translated materials. Working from original texts by the German philosophers, this paper reconsiders the relevance of phenomenology and hermeneutics to nursing research. We trace the development of Gadamer's philosophy in order to propose a research method based in this tradition. Five steps have been (...) identified as a guide for nurse researchers. These are deciding upon a question, identification of preunderstandings, gaining understanding through dialogue with participants, gaining understanding through dialogue with text and establishing trustworthiness. (shrink)

The rise of private standards, including those involving multi-stakeholder processes, raises questions about whose interests are served and the kind of power that is exerted to maintain these interests. This paper critically examines the battle for ideas—the way competing factions assert their own narratives about value chain relations, the role of standards and related multi-stakeholder processes. Drawing on empirical research on the horticulture and floriculture value chains linking Kenya and the United Kingdom, the analysis explores the framing of sustainability issues, (...) especially around labor issues and good agricultural practice, and the choice of response with respect to private standards and multi-stakeholder initiatives since the late 1990s. We identify four competing narratives currently in play: a dominant global sourcing narrative, a pragmatic development narrative, a broader development narrative and a narrative we term potentially transformative. This last narrative is currently emerging through the unpacking of narratives in relation to the framing of sustainability problems and solutions, and in terms of legislative, executive and judicial governance. The paper contributes to emerging understanding of power in value chains, moving beyond material power to a consideration of how ideational power is exerted and resisted. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis of an extract from a Collective Philosophical Inquiry. Through this case study, we show the possible misunderstandings linked to the duality of two « worlds » : that of the teacher who experiments with CPI in her classroom and that of the researcher who is responsible for the design of this type of session. The « world » is defined as « conceptual, axiological and praxical background ». The confrontation between these worlds therefore questions both (...) the modalities of their necessary collaboration and the conditions of the construction and use of a true « professional genesis. (shrink)

(2014). Tin Men: Ethics, Cybernetics and the Importance of Soul. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-19. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.908011.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.