Background: Clinical and experimental findings have suggested that insomnia is associated with altered emotion processing, such as facial emotion recognition and impairments in executive functions. However, the results still appear non-consensual and have recently been presented by a few number of studies. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether patients with Insomnia disorder will present alterations in recognition of facial emotions and that such alterations will be related to Executive Functions and that Insomnia Disorder patients will (...) exhibit a lower Executive Functions performance when compared to normal controls individuals. Method: A total of 11 individuals diagnosed with insomnia disorder and 15 control participants took part in the present cross-sectional study. They completed questionnaires covering socio-demographic data, a sleep and mood evaluation, and a cognitive assessment. Moreover, they underwent a computerized Facial Emotional Recognition test, consisting of facial emotion labeling and facial emotion matching. Results: Individuals with insomnia presented a lower recognition of facial expressions of fear and sadness in comparison to control volunteers. Perceptual Organization Index was found to be statistically significant lower in the insomnia group compared to the control group. There was a statistically significant association between facial recognition emotional and cognitive processes of in executive functions performance, especially in processes related to the inhibitory control, planning capacity, problem solving and cognitive flexibility in insomnia group. Conclusions: Insomnia disorder impairs the facial emotion recognition of the fear and sadness. Insomniacs with impairment in the facial emotion recognition had impaired performance of executive functions. There is a negative impact on processes related to cognitive-emotional capacity than on processes related to social-emotional recognition. Keywords: insomnia, facial emotional recognition, sleep deprivation, cognition, executive functions. (shrink)

Tolerance is not neutrality, nor should tolerance in counselling be equated with a spiritual and emotional vacuum. Tolerance applies to style rather than stance, and a counsellor needs a conception of the ideal — broadly speaking, a moral position. Originally proclaimed against religious and political tyranny, the political ideal of tolerance has in the twentieth century become confused with permissiveness, and is thus sometimes charged with generating many of the ills of modern society, including crime and family breakdown. Counselling has (...) become the universal remedy, replacing punishment and compulsion. The counsellor needs (a) a view of human nature (b) a conception of what is good for those possessing that nature. Constants in the first mean there cannot be too much variation in the second. Society is varied and plural, so the counsellor must be non‐judgemental, but while this means accepting the person, it does not necessarily mean endorsing the conduct. A distinction is drawn between therapeutic and philosophical counselling; the latter considers a problem, where the former focusses on the client, but both may fall short of offering a holistic view. Counselling may also exacerbate some of the problems of modern life by too readily accepting the conditions which cause them. Some ethical problems raised by confidentiality and informed consent are discussed. It is concluded that the counsellor must be tolerant, but not morally ambivalent, nor a relativist. (shrink)

A sign seen in the Philosophy Department of the University of Uppsala reads: A philosopher is one who will deliver a paper on the Hangman's Paradox at a conference on capital punishment. I might take as a supporting example of this tendency to focus on the irrelevant or the inappropriate a real paper to a medico-legal conference on organ transplants which argued that it would be morally justifiable to remove a heart from a healthy would-be heart donor. There are also (...) many amusing and intelligent papers on the ‘survival lottery’—a hypothetical arrangement which would allow individuals to be seized and cannibalised for their organs. These articles are light-hearted exercises in argumentative ingenuity, harmless in themselves, but they are offered in a world in which street children in Brazil are snatched for their kidneys, Chinese political dissidents have their organs seized officially at their place of execution, and poor peasants in Turkey and India sell their own kidneys or those of their relatives, for money. At the same time, the most frequently cited paper on the fraught topic of abortion is one in which pregnancy is compared to the plight of one unwillingly or unintentionally connected to a violinist who temporarily needs the link in order to survive. (shrink)

The present century has witnessed human crimes on an unprecedented scale. It has also seen the decline of ethics as a major element in higher education and as an academic study forming an important aspect of philosophy.

ABSTRACT There are three kinds of bonds between human beings: biological and natural; legal and artificial; social and voluntary. Marriage can be seen as an artificial and legal means of shifting the loose bonding of the third category of relationship into the deep and inescapable bonding of the first. The desire to create bonds of this type is widespread, but non‐bonding, too, has been recommended either as good in itself—a way of achieving peace of mind or personal emancipation through wider (...) relationships—or as necessary self‐denial for some higher cause. In the latter case, the bonds of family are seen as a positive good, a view shared, though for different reasons, by religious and political conservatives and by revisionist feminists. In contrast to this, three philosophical conceptions which would favour unbonding, or detachment from emotional ties, are categorised here as (a) the Stoic, (b) the Existentialist and (c) the Feminist. Within the Feminist ideal, it is radical, rather than liberal or socialist feminism that has most in common with Stoic or Existentialist ideals. These ideals are considered, together with various alternatives to marriage, and are judged not to override the need for deep personal bonds between human beings. These personal bonds of love and commitment are compared with the alternative bonds of religion and politics and it is concluded that, whatever forms they take, personal bonds have fundamental moral priority in the lives of human beings. (shrink)

Brenda Almond examines different countries' policies and ways of attempting to deal with AIDS, focusing on their positions in regard to rights.

This article examines the question of the existence of non-Adamic persons-both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial-in early modern Europe. More particularly it looks at how the existence of non-Adamites seriously called into question the credibility of the central themes of the Christian story of the creation, fall and redemption in Jesus Christ in early modern Europe. It analyses the impact on the Christian view of history caused by the discovery of the inhabitants of the New World, speculations about the polygenetic origins of (...) the human race, and discussions about the plurality of worlds. It concludes with some reflections on the monogenetic and polygenetic accounts of the origin of humans in a post-Darwinian context. (shrink)

Designed to bring the concepts and methods of philosophy to bear on practical concerns, the essays in this volume discuss the environment, personal relationships, war, terrorism and violence, social justice and medicine. Contributors emphasize the metaphysical and ethical dimensions.

Brenda Almond throws down a timely challenge to liberal consensus about personal relationships. She maintains that the traditional family is fragmenting in Western societies, causing serious social problems. She urges that we reconsider our attitudes to sex and reproduction in order to strengthen our most important social institution, the family.

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals, Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the (...) importance of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. (shrink)

Introduction -- Leibniz, historicism, and the plague of Islam -- Kant, Islam, and the preservation of boundaries -- Herder's Arab fantasies -- Keeping the Turks out of islam : Goethe's Ottoman plan -- Friedrich Schlegel and the emptying of Islam -- Hegel and the disappearance of Islam -- Marx the Moor -- Nietzsche's peace with Islam.

In this paper, I shall be concerned to show: that Winch believes that there can be different conceptions of ‘agreement with reality’; that Wittgenstein agrees with this, but emphasizes the difficulty of understanding such conceptions; that Winch realizes this difficulty, and yet still tries to gain understanding of primitive social institutions in terms of their sense of the significance of human life, in terms of the limiting notions of birth, death and sexual relations; that such a notion of the significance (...) of human life cannot be made sense of without an understanding of the concept of agreement with reality which undergirds it; that Winch's position is internally incoherent. (shrink)

Healthcare workers who are on the front line of coronavirus disease 2019 and are also undergoing shift schedules face long work hours with few pauses, experience desynchronization of their circadian rhythm, and an imbalance between work hours effort and reward in saving lives, resulting in an impact on work capacity, aggravated by the lack of personal protective equipment, few resources and precarious infrastructure, and fear of contracting the virus and contaminating family members. Some consequences are sleep deprivation, chronic insomnia, stress-related (...) sleep disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These sleep alterations critically affect mental health, precipitating or perpetuating anxiety, stress, and depression, resulting in the inability to regulate positive and negative emotions. Pre-existing sleep disorders are an important risk factor for the development and maintenance of PSTD when individuals are exposed to an important stressor such as a COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, how an individual regulates the emotion associated with worries during daytime functioning impacts nighttime sleep, precipitating and perpetuating difficulties in sleeping. All of these changes in sleep and emotional regulation also alter the immune system. Sleep deprivation is commonly associated with chronic inflammatory diseases, due to the desynchronizations in circadian rhythms, causing possible psychophysiological disorders and impaired neuroimmune-endocrine homeostasis. From this perspective, we clarify in this article how sleep disorders affect the immune system and emotional regulation, explaining their phenomenological and neurobiological mechanisms, and discussing elements of cognitive and behavioral coping for health professionals to adopt and manage a healthier sleep pattern in the COVID-19 outbreak. (shrink)

This book examines a series of common metaphors in the works of Derrida and the Sufism of Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be of the most influential figures in Islamic thought. The author addresses the significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam and Derrida and also provides a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi.

First, two aspects of the partiality issue are identified: (1) Is it right/reasonable for professionals to favour their clients interests over either those of other individuals or those of society in general? (2) Are special non-universalisable obligations attached to certain professional roles?Second, some comments are made on the notions of partiality and reasonableness. On partiality, the assumption that only two positions are possible – a detached universalism or a partialist egoism – is challenged and it is suggested that partiality, e.g. (...) to family members, lies between these two positions, being neither a form of egoism, nor of impersonal detachment. On reasonableness, it is pointed out that reasonable is an ambiguous concept, eliding the notions of the morally right and the rational. (shrink)

This timely collection of introductory essays provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to, and survey of, the major moral debates of today. Wide coverage and introduction to the main issues and arguments of applied ethics Each chapter specially commissioned to introduce newcomers Comprehensive notes and reading guides.

ABSTRACT Conventions on human rights give priority to parents in education but modern states tend to make uniform provision, tending towards a monopoly position. Education itself is not incompatible with liberty but is a condition of it. A three-sided conflict exists, however, between the state, parents and professionals as to who should represent the interests of children. Liberty is best preserved if the conflict is resolved in favour of parents, for only parental decision-making guarantees educational variety and change. In addition, (...) the parental relationship itself generates rights, including one derived from the broader political right to cultural and religious freedom. (shrink)

Conventions on human rights give priority to parents in education but modern states tend to make uniform provision, tending towards a monopoly position. Education itself is not incompatible with liberty but is a condition of it. A three-sided conflict exists, however, between the state, parents and professionals as to who should represent the interests of children. Liberty is best preserved if the conflict is resolved in favour of parents, for only parental decision-making guarantees educational variety and change. In addition, the (...) parental relationship itself generates rights, including one derived from the broader political right to cultural and religious freedom. (shrink)

After an initial consideration of the three main positions discernible within the current literature on the question of the relationship between mystical experience and its interpretation, attention is focused on a new model of this relationship. by utilizing wittgenstein's notion of "seeing-as" in conjunction with a more complex theory of the nexus between experience and interpretation, it is argued that there are varieties of mystical experience. on the other hand, it is maintained that there is a limiting case of mystical (...) experience, the essence of which is its undifferentiated or contentless nature. it is suggested that the contemplative method, while producing a variety of content-filled mystical experiences, nonetheless is most conducive to the attainment of this "pure" contentless mystical state. (shrink)

: The status of Ibn 'Arabi and Derrida as thinkers is examined: their disagreements with rational/metaphysical thought on the basis of différance and what Ibn 'Arabi calls al-haqq or the Real. Advantage is taken of the fact that both writers speak of emancipatory projects in their work-the freeing of writing from the shackles of logocentric thought and of the unthinkably Divine (the Real) from the constructs of philosophers and theologians. Just as Ibn 'Arabi believes that no thinker can provide ''a (...) definition of the Real [al haqq],'' Derrida insists that no thinker can escape the history of metaphysics. In the work of both, the reaffirmation of something vital, inconstant, and elusive that defeats all attempts to discuss it plays a common role and evolves according to a common structure. If différance and the Real do seem uncannily analogous-sharing, for example, features like namelessness, radical otherness, intangibility/invisibility/unthinkability, and atemporality, not to mention their paradoxically generative functions-there are also a number of significant differences. (shrink)