The core dimensions of cognitive fitness, such as attention and cognitive control, are emerging through a transdisciplinary expert consensus on what has been termed the Cognitive Fitness Framework. These dimensions represent key drivers of cognitive performance under pressure across many occupations, from first responders to sport, performing arts and the military. The constructs forming the building blocks of CF2 come from the RDoC framework, an initiative of the US National Institute of Mental Health aimed at identifying the cognitive processes underlying (...) normal and abnormal behavior. Similar to physical conditioning, cognitive fitness can be improved with deliberate practice. This paper reports the development of a prototype cognitive fitness training program for competitive athletes and the protocol for its evaluation. The program is focused on primary cognitive capacities and subtending skills for adjusting training rhythms and enhancing readiness for competition. The project is driven by the Australian Psychological Society’s College of Sport & Exercise Psychology and includes the development of a Cognitive Gym program for a smartphone app-enhanced implementation. Its key building blocks are training protocols connected by a periodized training plan. A website with background supporting resources has also been developed as part of the project. National-level training squads will participate in a three-week pilot evaluation protocol, assessing the program’s efficacy and usability through gamified cognitive assessment of participants’ training gains and coaching staff evaluations, respectively. Both near and far transfer of training effects will be examined. (shrink)

We are concerned here with explaining how successful rule-following behavior might evolve and how an old evolved rule might come to be successfully used in a new context. Such rule-following behavior is illustrated in the transitive judgments of pinyon and scrub-jays (Bond et al., Anim Behav 65:479–487, 2003). We begin by considering how successful transitive rule-following behavior might evolve in the context of Skyrms–Lewis sender–receiver games (Lewis, Convention. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1969; Skyrms, Philos Sci 75:489–500, 2006). We then (...) consider two ways that an agent might come to use an old evolved rule in a new context. The first involves the agent evolving successful dispositions for one concrete type of experience, then associating a new type of experience with the old evolved dispositions. The second involves the agent evolving dispositions that represent a general inferential schema, then composing these dispositions with others in a way that allows the agent to make inferences concerning a new concrete type of experience. (shrink)

In Solidarity, Hauke Brunkhorst brings a powerful combination of theoretical perspectives to bear on the concept of "democratic solidarity," the bond among free and equal citizens. Drawing on the disciplines of history, political philosophy, and political sociology, Brunkhorst traces the historical development of the idea of universal, egalitarian citizenship and analyzes the prospects for democratic solidarity at the international level, within a global community under law. His historical account of the concept outlines its development out of, and its departure (...) from, the less egalitarian notions of civic friendship in the Greco-Roman world and brotherliness in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He then analyzes the modernization of Western societies and the destruction of the older, hierarchical solidarities. The problems of exclusion that subsequently arose -- which stemmed from growing individualization in society as well as from the exclusion of certain groups from the benefits of society -- could be solved only with democratic solidarity in the form of its "institutional embodiment," the democratic constitution. Finally, Brunkhorst examines the return of these exclusion problems as a result of economic globalization. Analyzing the possibilities for democratic self-governance at a global level, Brunkhorst finds in recent global protest movements the beginnings of a transnational civic solidarity. Brunkhorst's normative and sociological account, mediating between these two perspectives, demonstrates the necessity of keeping normative requirements systematically attuned with conditions of social reality. (shrink)

One of principal tasks of Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting is to analyze the phenomenon of social cohesion, understood not as a uniform bond, but in terms of human plurality that arises from a diversity of perspectives of remembering groups rooted in complex stratifications and concatenations. This paper focuses on the role of remembrance and of its historical inscription as a source of social cohesion, which is subject to rupture and dissolution over time. It first identifies the way in (...) which, according to Ricœur, memory and history function as essential preconditions of social cohesion; following this, it examines the significance and scope of temporal rupture and discontinuity to which this cohesion is subject. In examining Ricœur’s reflection on social cohesion and on the discontinuity to which it is subject over time, I aim to place his thought in a critical light in order to set in relief what I take to be an important aporia it encounters. (shrink)

The central claim of Monique Roelofs’s wide-ranging examination of the aesthetic is that it “hold[s] out the promise of a shared culture... people and objects [connected] in flourishing collective and material bonds”. Roelofs acknowledges Kant’s and Hume’s commitment to shared human faculties that allow judgements of taste “to attain intersubjective validity”; but her argument quickly develops from this “promise” to one with social and political consequences—of a harmonious and egalitarian society—and to radically different theoretical formulations and conclusions. Roelofs then also (...) starts from a now familiar “everyday aesthetics” position—although it is not explicitly... (shrink)

Elijah foretold evil for Ahab in the name of the Lord. ‘I will bring evil upon you; I will utterly sweep you away, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free in Israel’ … but when he heard those words, he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted and lay in the sackcloth, and went about dejectedly. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah saying ‘Have you seen how Ahab has (...) humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days I will bring evil upon his house.’. (shrink)

It is widely known that one of the projects that was most preoccupying the late, and much regretted, Alexander Kazhdan in his latter years was a study of Byzantine literature that would bring this field into the modern era. For far too long Byzantine literature, he asserted, had been encased in the strait-jacket imposed by Krumbacher's magisterial Geschichte. Byzantinists were constrained by a Handbuch mentality whose bonds had been confirmed by the three volumes that replaced Krumbacher's single tome: Beck on (...) ‘Theologische Literatur’ and ‘Volksliteratur’ and Hunger on high-style secular literature. However humane the tone might appear at times in these reference works (Hunger's contributions being particularly noteworthy), nothing could disguise the fact that these books were taxonomic catalogues. Byzantium's literary output was categorised by genre, genres largely imposed by modern historians and not necessarily recognisable to any Byzantine: authors were disposed under a series of at times arbitrary divisions and it was virtually impossible to have a sense of any individual's total output; Psellos was perhaps the most notoriously splintered example. Furthermore, the content of these catalogues was resolutely pragmatic: names, dates, works, editions, contents. Qualitative assessments were eschewed, there was little interpretation of literary movements. (shrink)

While acknowledging the psychological experience of intimacy, evolutionary theory postulates proliferation as the underlying grounds for human relationships. Intimacy, according to evolutionary theory, is merely a psychological mechanism whereby sexual selection and parental investment are facilitated. Unfortunately, the assumption of an underlying evolutionary mechanism which governs human relationships including romantic love, jealousy, and parent–child bonds is fraught with problematic consequences. Unlike the evolutionary understanding of intimacy, the philosophy of E. Levinas offers an alternative conceptualization in which human relationships themselves constitute (...) the grounds of intimacy. This alternative conceptualization escapes the problematic consequences of evolutionary theory. Intimacy from this grounding is inextricably tied to the infinite obligation we take on in relation to others. Implications of this conceptualization are explored. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In Jeffrey P. Bishop's The Anticipatory Corpse it is argued that the dead body has become epistemologically normative in contemporary medicine. In order to regain the communal bonds necessary for the responsive encounter with the other, medicine is in need of living traditions. This leads Bishop to question whether only theology can save medicine. The present essay takes up on this question with a reply from a Bonhoefferian anthropology, arguing for the embodied human being as being-there-with-others and shows how (...) this is Christologically shaped. The broader aim of the essay is to contribute to the debate on embodiment in theological bioethics. The essay maintains a normative understanding of the corporeal reality of what it means to be human and yet argues that this must always be understood in connection with the responsive relation to the other. (shrink)

The relations between reason, motivation and value present problems which, though ancient, remain intractable. If values are objective and rational how can they move us and if they are dependent on our contingent desires how can they be rational? E. J. Bond makes a bold attack on this dilemma. The widespread view among philosophers today is that judgements contain an irreducible element of personal commitment. To this Professor Bond proposes an account of values as objective and value judgements (...) as true or false, employing a distinction between grounding and motivating reasons to establish their connection with action. He defines and tests his position against a number of recent theories, providing in the process forceful criticism of Williams, Wiggins, Foot, Narveson and Nagel, among others. A distinctive contribution to the subject, it will stimulate interest and worthwhile debate among philosophers, while also serving as an introduction to this vital topic. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material others (...) such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

This is an ideal introduction to moral philosophy for beginning students and general readers, dealing with the philosophical theories which often lie behind everyday opinions and inviting the reader to examine those theories thoroughly. Using numerous examples and diagrams, Professor Bond guides the reader through the key problems of theoretical ethics seeking to outline a substantial view of morality in universal practical reason, he concludes in an attempt to show that a viable universal morality can only relate to the (...) thriving, flourishing or well-being of individuals in a community. (shrink)

A defining characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is difficulty in retrieving semantic memories, or memories encoding facts and knowledge. While it has been suggested that this impairment is caused by a degradation of the semantic store, the precise ways in which the semantic store is degraded are not well understood. Using a longitudinal corpus of semantic fluency data, we derive semantic network representations of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and of healthy controls. We contrast our network-based approach with analyzing fluency data with (...) the standard method of counting the total number of items and perseverations in fluency data. We find that the networks of Alzheimer’s patients are more connected and that those connections are more randomly distributed than the connections in networks of healthy individuals. These results suggest that the semantic memory impairment of Alzheimer’s patients can be modeled through the inclusion of spurious associations between unrelated concepts in the semantic store. We also find that information from our network analysis of fluency data improves prediction of patient diagnosis compared to traditional measures of the semantic fluency task. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An intellectually charitable understanding of populism might begin by recognizing that, since populist citizens tend to be politically uninformed and lacking in higher education, populist ideas are likely to be inarticulate reproductions of the tacit assumptions undergirding non-populist or “mainstream” culture rather than stemming from explicit theoretical constructs, such as an apotheosis of the unity or the will of “the people.” What features of our ambient culture, then, could explain the simplistic and combative approach that populists seem to take (...) to politics and policy, their impatience with political debate and deliberation, their willingness to set aside democratic legal forms and political norms, their nationalism, their personalization of politics, their inclination toward conspiracy theorizing, their fondness for fringe sources of information, and their suspicion of political, scientific, and media elites? Using focus group and survey data, we can understand these populist traits as reflections of the culture of “democratic technocracy”: a regime in which we, the people, are assumed capable of rendering sound judgments about how to solve our social and economic problems. Whether or not this assumption is warranted, its cultural dominance seems likely to generate the ideas that populist citizens apparently take for granted. (shrink)

This essay examines one of the cornerstones of Leibniz's defense of teleology within the order of nature. The first section explores Leibniz's contributions to the study of geometrical optics, and argues that his "Most Determined Path Principle" or "MDPP" allows him to bring to the fore philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of teleological explanations by addressing two technical objections raised by Cartesians to non-mechanistic derivations of the laws of optics. The second section argues that, by drawing on laws such as (...) the MDPP, Leibniz is able to introduce a thin notion of teleology that gives him the resources to respond to the most pressing charges of his day against teleological explanations within natural philosophy. Finally, the third section argues that contemporary philosophers have been overly hasty in their dismissal of Leibniz's account of natural teleology, and indeed that their own generally thin conceptions of teleology have left them with few well-motivated resources for resisting his elegant position. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 54, Issue 5, Page 1278-1305, October 2020.

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke sit together in the canon of political thought but are rarely treated in common historical accounts. This book narrates their intertwined careers during the Restoration period, when the two men found themselves in close proximity and entangled in many of the same political conflicts. Bringing new source material to bear, In the Shadow of Leviathan establishes the influence of Hobbesian thought over Locke, particularly in relation to the preeminent question of religious toleration. Excavating Hobbes's now (...) forgotten case for a prudent, politique toleration gifted by sovereign power, Jeffrey R. Collins argues that modern, liberal thinking about toleration was transformed by Locke's gradual emancipation from this Hobbesian mode of thought. This book investigates those landmark events - the civil war, Restoration, the popish plot, the Revolution of 1688 - which eventually forced Locke to confront the limits of politique toleration, and to devise an account of religious freedom as an inalienable right. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The debate over Green and Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory sustains their contention that rational choice theory has not produced novel, empirically sustainable findings about politics?if one accepts their definition of empirically sustainable findings. Green and Shapiro show that rational choice research often resembles the empirically vacuous practices in which economists engage under the aegis of instrumentalism. Yet Green and Shapiro's insistence that theoretical constructs should produce accurate predictions may inadvertently lead to instrumentalism. Some of Green and Shapiro's critics (...) hint at a better approach, which would eschew predictive testing in favor of testing the applicability of the theory to particular cases. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the nature, varieties, causes and meanings of comebacks related to sport. I argue that comebacks have an axiological dimension, and that the best comebacks involve personal growth. I attempt to show that a major reason that comebacks connected to sport are often inspiring is that we are all in need of a comeback at some point in our lives. When improbable comebacks occur in the world of sport, they expand our sense of possibility.

The Tulis thesis becomes even more powerful when the constitutional revolution he describes is put in its Progressive‐Era context. The public had long demanded social reforms designed to curb or replace laissez‐faire capitalism, which was seen as antithetical to the interests of ordinary working people. But popular demands for social reform went largely unmet until the 1910s. Democratizing political reforms, such as the rhetorical presidency, were designed to facilitate “change” by finally giving the public the power to enact social reforms. (...) The resulting political order has created systemic pressure for policy demagoguery in place of rational deliberation. Mass political mobilization seems to be better achieved by contests of grand principle that pit the well‐meaning supporters of obviously needed reforms against “villains and conspirators,” than by technical discussions of the possibly counterproductive effects of those reforms. (shrink)

Business ethicists have written much about ethical issues in employment. Except for a handful of articles on the very high pay of chief executive officers and the very low pay of workers in overseas sweatshops, however, little has been written about the ethics of compensation. This is prima facie strange. Workers care about their pay, and they think about it in normative terms. This article's purpose is to consider whether business ethicists' neglect of the normative aspects of compensation is justified. (...) I examine several possible justifications for neglecting compensation and show that they fail. What remains is a case for thinking that it is worthy of normative analysis. (shrink)

It is shown in this article that the two sides of an equation in the medieval Arabic algebra are aggregations of the algebraic “numbers” (powers) with no operations present. Unlike an expression such as our 3x + 4, the Arabic polynomial “three things and four dirhams” is merely a collection of seven objects of two different types. Ideally, the two sides of an equation were polynomials so the Arabic algebraists preferred to work out all operations of the enunciation to a (...) problem before stating an equation. Some difficult problems which involve square roots and divisions cannot be handled nicely by this basic method, so we do find square roots of polynomials and expressions of the form “A divided by B” in some equations. But rather than initiate a reconsideration of the notion of equation, these developments were used only for particularly complex problems. Also, the algebraic notation practiced in the Maghreb in the later middle ages was developed with the “aggregations” interpretation in mind, so it had no noticeable impact on the concept of polynomial. Arabic algebraists continued to solve problems by working operations before setting up an equation to the end of the medieval period. (shrink)

Fukuyama's argument that we have recently reached ?The End of History?; is defended against writers who fail to appreciate the Hegelian meaning of Fukuyama's ?Endism,?; but is criticized for using simplistic dichotomies that evade the economic and ideological convergence of East and West. Against Fukuyama, the economic critique of socialism, revisionist scholarship on early Soviet economic history, and the history of the libertarian ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx are deployed to show that history ?ended?; years ago: the creeds (...) of the First and Second Worlds sprang from common assumptions; and even before Eastern European reform movements, both sides of the Iron Curtain had moved to economies that are neither capitalist nor socialist. (shrink)

Feminist legal scholarship has questioned the usefulness of non-consent as a criterion for rape. Under conditions of generalized sexual oppression, consent may not be an adequate for absence of coercion. I defend this argument and propose that rape law reform can be usefully informed by state protection of workers in the capitalist labor market, where it is assumed that the parties occupy an unequal bargaining position.

The price of Bitcoin is once more soaring. From early October 2020 to early January 2021, the price of a single Bitcoin token went from roughly $10,000 to nearly $65,000, reinspiring the hopes of the crypto-faithful in the inevitability of a future beyond centralized banking and leaving the rest to dread the jargon of computational libertarianism. The speculative betting driving this recent price action, however, belies a more rudimentary and overlooked shift in the digital economy signaled by cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin (...) in particular. Unlike an earlier industrial logic that sought to reduce heat loss and improve efficiency to maximize surplus value, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system shifts the basis of value production from efficiency to inefficiency. Moreover, it does so by using a cryptographic algorithm whose purpose is to destroy the meaning of its inputs. Through an exploration of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work technics and its inversion of traditional models of value extraction, the text argues that Bitcoin reveals a profound transformation in the nature of surplus represented by computational capitalism. (shrink)

Achieving a high quality of life is dependent upon how individuals face adversity. Positive psychological interventions are well-suited to support coping efforts; however, experimental research is limited. The purpose of the current research was to examine whether different savoring interventions could increase important coping resources in response to a social-evaluative hassle. We completed an experimental mixed subject design study with a university student sample. All participants completed a hassle induction task and were then randomly assigned into different intervention groups. Positive (...) emotion ratings were collected at three points in time. Results revealed a significant time x intervention interaction effect, such that individuals in the savoring the moment intervention reported higher levels of positive emotions compared to individuals assigned to the true control group, guided imagery control group, and savoring through reminiscence intervention. Such findings represent a significant extension to savoring theory and offer support for savoring the moment exercises as a primary prevention strategy to bolster effective responses to social-evaluative hassles. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

This paper is a rejoinder to papers by Sabina Lovibond, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Sumner B. Twiss, G. Scott Davis, M. Cathleen Kaveny, and John Kelsay on the author's recent book "Democracy and Tradition". The argument covers a host of topics, ranging from epistemology and methodology to human rights, the common law, and Islamic ethics.