In this chapter, we will offer a sketch of the state of the art as concerns existing accounts of virtue acquisition in relation to automaticity. In particular, we will focus on the so-called “skill model,” which we aim to improve by questioning its rather common underlying dualistic picture of the mind. Then we will propose an account of skillful emotions by identifying the features that make them both automatic and embedded in an intelligent practice. Finally, we will show how this (...) view can help the skill model by offering a better description of emotion shaping in virtue acquisition. By doing so, we will contend that emotions contribute autonomously and actively to the skillfulness of the habits in which they are embedded. (shrink)

This chapter argues that emotion recognition is a skill. A skill perspective on emotion recognition draws attention to underappreciated features of this cornerstone of social cognition. Skills have a number of characteristic features. For example, they are improvable, practical, and flexible. Emotion recognition has these features as well. Leading theories of emotion recognition often draw inadequate attention to these features. The chapter advances a theory of emotion recognition that is better suited to this purpose. It proposes that emotion recognition involves (...) scripts. Emotion scripts describe how people are likely to behave in different emotional contexts. Scripts can be improved with the addition of richer social knowledge, they are practical in that they describe and guide social interaction, and they are flexible because they must accommodate the fact that emotions have different behavioral impact depending on the agents involved and the circumstances at play. Learning to recognize emotions through scripts qualifies as a skill. (shrink)

A recent skeptical challenge denies deliberation is essential to virtuous agency: what looks like genuine deliberation is just a post hoc rationalization of a decision already made by automatic mechanisms (Haidt 2001; Doris 2015). Annas’s account of virtue seems well-equipped to respond: by modeling virtue on skills, she can agree that virtuous actions are deliberation-free while insisting that their development requires significant thought. But Annas’s proposal is flawed: it over-intellectualizes deliberation’s developmental role and under-intellectualizes its significance once virtue is acquired. (...) Doing better requires paying attention to a distinctive form of anxiety—one that functions to engage deliberation in the face of decisions that automatic mechanisms alone cannot resolve. (shrink)

On an account of virtue as skill, virtues are acquired in the ways that skills are acquired. In this paper I focus on one implication of that account that is deserving of greater attention, which is that becoming more skillful requires learning from one’s failures, but that turns out to be especially challenging when dealing with moral failures. In skill acquisition, skills are improved by deliberate practice, where you strive to correct past mistakes and learn how to overcome your current (...) limitations. A similar story applies to virtue acquisition, as moral failures will be a part of anyone’s life, and we will all have to learn from these experiences. However, despite the importance of being able to learn from our mistakes, this is very difficult in practice, given that failure of any kind can be distressing, and especially so for moral failure. The distress created by a recognition of moral failure often prompts responses of anger, avoidance, or defensiveness; rather than attempts to make amends and when necessary to work on self-improvement. The most potentially distressing response to moral failure is shame, as it is often associated with defensiveness. It is here where emotion regulation will be important to manage that distress, and I focus on the skill of emotion differentiation. I argue that emotion differentiation is a promising strategy for distinguishing the emotions we may experience in the wake of failure, including shame, and to encourage those emotions that motivate self-improvement. Thus, emotion regulation is important for virtue acquisition. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 2.1, Aristotle draws a now familiar analogy between aretai ('virtues') and technai ('skills'). The apparent basis of this comparison is that both virtue and skill are developed through practice and repetition, specifically by the learner performing the same kinds of actions as the expert: in other words, we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. Aristotle’s claim that “like states arise from like activities” has led some philosophers to challenge the virtue-skill analogy. In particular, Aristotle’s skill analogy is (...) sometimes dismissed because of the role that practical wisdom or phronesis purportedly plays in character virtue. In this paper, I argue that a proper understanding of character virtue, phantasia-based emotions, and Aristotle’s implicit distinction between habituated and strict or full virtue (aretè kuria) grounds his virtue-skill analogy. Character virtue stems from the non-rational orektikon and is developed through the habituation of passionate elements, primarily phantasia and pathé. Pathé are pleasurable or affective perceptions, not judgments or beliefs. Thus, pathé are subject to non-rational habituation. Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is an intellectual virtue stemming from the rational part of the soul. Though practical wisdom is necessary for full virtue (aretè kuria), it is not necessary for the habituated character virtue that Aristotle refers in Book II. Once we understand the phantastic basis of emotions and the distinction between habituated and full virtue, the virtue-skill analogy is apt. I conclude by briefly mentioning two contemporary forms of emotion regulation—cognitive reappraisal and cognitive behavioral therapy—that lend support from empirical psychology to Aristotle’s claim that emotions (pathé) can be habituated. Character virtue is indeed a skill; it is—at least in part—the skill of emotion regulation. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has (...) two main parts, the first negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

This essay considers the eighth century Indian Buddhist monk, Śāntideva’s strategy of using the afflictive mental states for progress towards liberation in his Introduction to the Practice of Awakening. I begin by contrasting two images from the first chapter that represent the power of bodhicitta: the fires destroying the universe at the end of time, and the mercury elixir that transmutes base metals into gold. The first of these, I argue, better illustrates the text’s predominant strategy of destroying the afflictive (...) mental states directly by their antidotes. The second, in contrast, represents an alternative strategy in which afflictive mental states like anger, craving and delusion, are manipulated for liberative gain. I offer several examples of Śāntideva’s use of the kleśas in his text, and argue that they can be understood as a continuation of the logic of skillful means, in which destructive actions, and here destructive mental states, are used to lessen suffering. Finally, I suggest that one reason Śāntideva employs the kleśas in this way is because of his realization that many practitioners early on the bodhisattva path will lack the motivation necessary to successfully pursue the difficult training of the bodhisattva. (shrink)

How is ethical knowledge possible? One of the most promising answers is the moral sense view: we can acquire ethical knowledge through emotional experience. But this view faces a serious problem. Emotions are unreliable guides to ethical truth, frequently failing to fit the ethical status of their objects. This threatens to render the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions too unreliable to yield knowledge. I offer a new solution to this problem, with practical implications for how we approach (...) ethical decision-making. I argue that an agent can have a reliable belief-forming habit despite having unreliable emotions, so long as she is suitably attentive to defeaters. In moderately virtuous agents, unfitting ethical emotions are frequently accompanied by warning signs, such as negative metaemotions, epistemic feelings, moods, and social cues. An agent who cultivates the attentional skill of noticing these signs can prevent many of her unfitting emotions from translating into false beliefs. For a moderately virtuous agent with this skill, the habit of basing ethical beliefs on emotions will be reliable. The upshot is that emotion-based ethical knowledge is possible even for people whose emotions are unreliable, but only if we cultivate the skill of spotting defeaters. (shrink)

The diverse and breathtaking intelligence of the human animal is often embodied in skills. People, throughout their lifetimes, acquire and refine a vast number of skills. And there seems to be no upper limit to the creativity and beauty expressed by them. Think, for instance, of Olympic gymnastics: the amount of strength, flexibility, and control required to perform even a simple beam routine amazes, startles, and delights. In addition to the sheer beauty of skill, performances at the pinnacle of expertise (...) often display a kind of brilliance or genius. We observe an intelligence that saturates the body. The unity of physicality and intellect, mind and body, meshed and melded. Apart from sports, people develop a host of other skills, including musical and artistic skills, linguistic and social skills, scientific and medical skills, military and political skills, engineering skills, computer skills, business skills, etc. What's more, skill acquisition and refinement occurs throughout the human lifespan. In the Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise, we introduce and contextualize the various chapters that compose the Handbook. Before providing substantive overviews of each chapter, we also discuss the topic of skill in general and its importance for various areas of philosophy. Chapters are organized into six sections: 1. Skill in the history of philosophy (East & West), 2. Skill in Epistemology, 3. Skill, Intelligence, and Agency, 4. Skill in Perception, Imagination, and Emotion, 5. Skill, Language, and Social Cognition, and 6. Skill and Expertise in Normative Philosophy. (shrink)

Lloyd Jones’s *The Book of Fame*, a novel about the stunningly successful 1905 British tour of the New Zealand rugby team, represents both skilled group action and the difficulty of capturing it in words. The novel’s form is as fluid and deceptive, as adaptable and integrated, as the sweetly shaped play of the team that became known during this tour for the first time as the All Blacks. It treats sport on its own terms as a rich world, a set (...) of bodily skills, and an honest profession in itself. A reading of *The Book of Fame* can contribute to the interdisciplinary study of literature and cognition, exemplifying two-way ‘exchange values’. On the one hand, we gain insights into the nature of skilful group agency, of distinct forms and at distinct timescales, by focussing on the precise forms taken by the All Blacks’ creation of space. Here, we treat The Book of Fame as a brilliant evocation of features of collective thought, movement, and emotion that both everyday and scientific inquiry can easily miss. On the other hand, we also read back into the novel a subtle, fascinated interrogation of the mechanisms by which small groups form, evolve, and act. In this more ambitious mode of analysis, we use independently motivated theoretical concerns to help us see real features of the literary work that might otherwise remain invisible. We focus on the relationship between skilful performance and collective action. These topics fall outside the ambit of much current work by literary theorists using cognitive research, who tend to focus on theory of mind and modularity, metaphor and blending, emotion and empathy, consciousness and concepts, representation and so on. But skilled performance and collective action comprise surprisingly lively research fields across the sciences, from neuropsychology to philosophy of mind and cognitive anthropology. These areas of inquiry may provide even more productive avenues for future work in the interfield of literary and cultural theory and the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obligation, and that the (...) norms that guide social interaction are dynamic, situated, and heterogeneous. It is argued that normativity is intersubjective and negotiable and starts to develop in the first year, emerging as a practical skill that depends on participatory engagement. Three sources of compliance are discussed: emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversation. (shrink)

Philosophy with children often focuses on abstract reasoning skills, but as David Bohm points out the “entire process of mind” consists of our abstract thought as well as our “tacit, concrete process of thought.” Philosophy with children should address the “entire process of mind.” Our tacit, concrete process of thought refers to the process of thought that involves our actions such as the process of thought that goes into riding a bicycle. Bohm contends that we need to develop an awareness (...) or proprioception of thinking as well. When Socrates enters into dialogue with his interlocutors, he shows the limitations of purely abstract thought by leading them to admit that they really “don’t know.” But, of course, they know. We know what bravery is or what love is, even though we can never “explain” these concepts in abstract terms. Life has taught us through experience what these concepts mean and we have developed an understanding of them. We can recognize when a person acts bravely. This is where I see the link between our tacit, concrete process of thought and emotional intelligence. We need emotional intelligence to learn how to be brave, to learn how to love, and be just in the way we act in the world. Knowing what justice is abstractly does not make us act justly. We have to develop awareness of our actions in order to develop the skills necessary to act the part. This is also where emotional intelligence comes in. In the bulletin of the play Romeo and Juliet, director Barry Edelstein wrote the following: “To perform Romeo and Juliet, actors need a series of skills… they must have the emotional and psychological awareness and openness of uncommon depth; they must listen with acuteness, they must possess an imagination of real suppleness and subtlety…” An abstract portrayal would not bring these characters to life. We can surely agree – abstractly – that racism is destructive, but still act racist, without being even slightly aware of it. My contention is that while our abstract sense of racism has evolved, our tacit, concrete knowledge has not, which explains that racism is for the most part still rampant, even though we know abstractly that it is wrong. So how do we educate and develop the awareness of the tacit, concrete knowledge that informs our actions, and develop the emotional intelligence to give a depth of understanding to what we know and believe abstractly. (shrink)

In The Deep History of Ourselves, Joseph LeDoux distinguishes between behavioral and physiological responses caused by the activation of defense circuits, and the emotion of fear. Although the former is found in nearly all bilateral animals, the latter is supposedly a unique human adaptation that requires language, reflective self-awareness, among other cognitive capacities. In this picture, fear is an autonoetic conscious experience that happens when defense circuit activation is integrated into self-awareness and the experience labeled with the “fear” concept. In (...) this commentary I will propose a different view, in which fear is a skillful activity that we coordinate with others as our social interactions unfold in time. If this is true, two important conclusions will follow. Firstly, the relevant brain circuits we should be looking for in our theory of emotions are those involved in affective social learning, social cognition, embodied intersubjectivity, and so on. Secondly, emotions may not be uniquely human, and may be present in any creature with the right kinds of social skills required for affective enactments. Therefore, although LeDoux is right to hold that emotions are not as deep as defense circuits, they are not as shallow as other cognitively sophisticated human capacities. (shrink)

Williams Syndrome provides a striking test case for discourses on disability, because the characteristics associated with Williams Syndrome involve a combination of “abilities” and “disabilities”. For example, Williams Syndrome is associated with disabilities in mathematics and spatial cognition. However, Williams Syndrome individuals also tend to have a unique strength in their expressive language skills, and are socially outgoing and unselfconscious when meeting new people. Children with Williams are said to be typically unafraid of strangers and show a greater interest in (...) contact with adults than with their peers. This apparently keen social knowledge is a counterexample to the discussion of disability among academic philosophers, especially philosophers of the early modern period. Locke infamously used the example of disability to claim that Descartes’ arguments in favor of innate ideas were incorrect. On the contrary, Williams Syndrome may stand as an example of innate social knowledge; something that could benefit current discourse in philosophy, disability theory, and medical ethics. (shrink)

Theoretical accounts of development exhibit several internal tensions and face multiple challenges. They span from the problem of the identification of the temporal boundaries of development (beginning and end) to the characterization of the distinctive type of change involved compared to other biological processes. They include questions such as the role to ascribe to the environment or what types of biological systems can undergo development and whether they should include colonies or even ecosystems. In this chapter we discuss these conceptual (...) issues, and we argue that adopting an organizational approach may help solve or clarify them. -/- While development is usually identified with the achievement of an adult form with the capability to reproduce and therefore maintain a lineage, adopting the organizational approach may provide a different strategy, which focuses also on the maintenance of the current organization of the organism. By doing so an organizational approach favors a switch in perspective which consists in analyzing how organisms maintain their viability at each moment of development rather than considering them as going through intermediate stages of a process directed toward a specific goal state. This developmental dimension of biological organization has yet to be given a general and detailed analysis within the organizational theoretical perspective, apart from some preliminary attempts. How a biological organization is maintained through a series of radical organizational changes and what these changes are issues that still require clarification. In this chapter we offer the beginnings of such an analysis of developmental transitions, understood as changes in functionality brought forth by regulatory mechanisms in the context of the continued maintenance of organizational viability at every step. (shrink)

This manuscript introduces I-Three Learning Model (ITLM) intervention to build competency among scholastically backward children by facilitating easy input, processing and output of information. Child receives information through sensory pathways, learning ability is the capacity of the children to collect, process, retain and retrieve information. Children are unique in mental maturity and learning ability. The reasoning is influenced by the auditory, visual, kinaesthetic and tactile inputs. The competency of children with poor social and emotional skills, learning adjustment and academic (...) performance can be improved by enriching their abilities connected to attention, self-learning, logical thinking, reasoning, adjustment, confidence, comprehension and problem-solving. This manuscript is both descriptive and exploratory in nature. On the basis of standard Psychological Assessment, a child studying in the eight standard aged 14 years is identified to be poor in social and emotional skills, learning adjustment and academic performance. This case study is carried to derive the findings of these objectives and establishes that ITLM intervention has certainly improved the capacity of receiving, processing and retrieving information in the children and recommends for the usage of a model for building competency of scholastically backward students. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

English is essential as an effective communication tool in both local and international contexts. In addition to being used in schools, it is also a teaching tool in colleges and universities. ESL (English as a Second Language) classes are now required in all educational institutions and can't be skipped. When learning a second language, anyone must be physically, mentally, and emotionally involved to communicate and understand what is being said. This systematic review employed qualitative documentary research and adopted content analysis. (...) Following a random selection of reliable and legitimate sources, purposive sampling was used to conduct a content analysis of the selected papers. For this systematic review, sources from EBSCO, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect were used. The findings reveal that English-language obstacles in this article include English learners' writing, speaking, listening, reading, translation, and interpretation skills. The conclusion focuses on English learning obstacles and their improvement through teaching methods and educational technology adoption. The recommendation is to look into quantitative and qualitative research for further study. (shrink)

UNRWA’s Mediation Process is a key element in the organization’s efforts to strengthen its internal justice system. The research aims to study the reality of mediator competencies, emotional intelligence and case characteristics variables, (UNRWA) Gaza. The research also aims at identifying the differences between respondents as attributed to their professional and personal traits of age, gender, educational level, distribution of department, dispute resolution experience and representation party. The researchers adopted mixed data collection methods; quantitative and qualitative. For qualitative, a (...) semi-structured interview was conducted with (9) officials including management, staff unions and expert external mediators. (63) Questionnaires were distributed to a systematic random sample population; (56) were received, with a response rate 88.9%. The results proved that there are no significant differences among respondents attributed to personal and professional traits of age, academic background, gender, department, years’ of experience, educational degree and representation party. The research has presented some recommendations concerning the factors affecting the mediation outcomes of workplace disputes resolution. The recommendations include: UNRWA should adopt mediation as a method to resolve disputes at workplace instead of following litigation before the courts, as many organizations today increasingly started to adopt mediation as a method to resolve disputes at workplace. This will help decreasing the high cost, non-flexibility, and threatening features of disputes and conflicts resolution before courts, as well as enhance the relationship between disputant parties. Mediators are essentially recommended to attend regular training such as guiding negotiation processes, employing group sessions properly, overcoming obstacles, summarizing & analytical skills and selecting emotional words and phrases, it is also important to encourage the mediation experts' training workshops and meetings. Regular training sessions will not only improve skills and abilities, but will also imply variety and flexibility. This leads to having competent qualified mediators who are able to resolve organization’s workplace disputes in a way, which satisfies the need of disputants. (shrink)

Jean Piaget's theory of human mental development mirrors many issues related to human. According to this theory, one's view of himself, nature/universe and God is changing. According to this theory, which is basically divided into four main periods and subtitles, the thinking skill of man changes according to age, physical development, education and society. These differences affect the way individuals obtain information. Individuals who acquire knowledge with an emotional intuition before the age of seven acquire information through an inductive (...) way, in other words, through concrete intuition, through concrete processes, experimentation and observation, in parallel with the development of the brain and senses. At the age of eleven and after which intellectual reasoning develops, information becomes abstract and information is obtained through abstract intuition based on theories, hypotheses and assumptions. In the love experience of Rumi, a mystical thinker, knowledge is obtained only with emotional intuition, and it is claimed that the only way to obtain information is love-based emotional intuition. In this love-based emotional intuition, the ways of obtaining concrete/experimental and abstract/rational knowledge requiring high level mental skills are rejected and these methods are said to be 'devil’s work'. In this study, Rumi's approach to human, universe and God in this one-sided and emotional way is criticized and its inconsistency is revealed. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the many arguments and controversies concerning abortion. While it argues for ethical and legal positions on the issues, it focuses on how to think about the issues, not just what to think about them. It is an ideal resource to improve your understanding of what people think, why they think that and whether their (and your) arguments are good or bad, and why. It's ideal for classroom use, discussion groups, organizational learning, and personal reading. -/- (...) From the Preface -/- To many people, abortion is an issue for which discussions and debates are frustrating and fruitless: it seems like no progress will ever be made towards any understanding, much less resolution or even compromise. -/- Judgments like these, however, are premature because some basic techniques from critical thinking, such as carefully defining words and testing definitions, stating the full structure of arguments so each step of the reasoning can be examined, and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of different explanations can help us make progress towards these goals. -/- When emotions run high, we sometimes need to step back and use a passion for calm, cool, critical thinking. This helps us better understand the positions and arguments of people who see things differently from us, as well as our own positions and arguments. And we can use critical thinking skills help to try to figure out which positions are best, in terms of being supported by good arguments: after all, we might have much to learn from other people, sometimes that our own views should change, for the better. -/- Here we use basic critical thinking skills to argue that abortion is typically not morally wrong. We begin with less morally-controversial claims: adults, children and babies are wrong to kill and wrong to kill, fundamentally, because they, we, are conscious, aware and have feelings. We argue that since early fetuses entirely lack these characteristics, they are not inherently wrong to kill and so most abortions are not morally wrong, since most abortions are done early in pregnancy, before consciousness and feeling develop in the fetus. -/- Furthermore, since the right to life is not the right to someone else’s body, fetuses might not have the right to the pregnant woman’s body—which she has the right to—and so she has the right to not allow the fetus use of her body. This further justifies abortion, at least, until technology allows for the removal of fetuses to other wombs. Since morally permissible actions should be legal, abortions should be legal: it is an injustice to criminalizing actions that are not wrong. -/- In the course of arguing for these claims, we: 1. discuss how to best define abortion; 2. dismiss many common “question-begging” arguments that merely assume their conclusions, instead of giving genuine reasons for them; 3. refute some often-heard “everyday arguments” about abortion, on all sides; explain why the most influential philosophical arguments against abortion are unsuccessful; 4. provide some positive arguments that at least early abortions are not wrong; 5. briefly discuss the ethics and legality of later abortions, and more. -/- This essay is not a “how to win an argument” piece or a tract or any kind of apologetics. It is not designed to help anyone “win” debates: everybody “wins” on this issue when we calmly and respectfully engage arguments with care, charity, honesty and humility. This book is merely a reasoned, systematic introduction to the issues that we hope models these skills and virtues. Its discussion should not be taken as absolute “proof” of anything: much more needs to be understood and carefully discussed—always. (shrink)

Humankind is facing many existential global problems that require international and transgenerational efforts to be solved. Preparing our next generation with sufficient knowledge and skills to deal with such problems is imperative. Fortunately, the digital environment provides foundational conditions for children’s and adolescents’ exploration and self-learning, which might help them cultivate the necessary knowledge and skills for future survival. We conducted the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 2069 students from 54 Vietnamese elementary, secondary, and high schools (...) to test this presumption. The results showed that students with higher digital literacy are more curious and have better knowledge regarding global issues (i.e., climate change, disease, overpopulation, aging, etc.). Students’ curiosity also mediates the relationship between digital literacy and global issues knowledge. Based on these findings, we argue that digital explorative space is essential for digital natives’ education for survival, individually (i.e., for future employment requirements) and socially (i.e., for making informed decisions and creating innovations that can be helpful to society). Children’s and adolescents’ exposure to digital explorative space should be promoted to improve their digital literacy rather than prohibition. During the exploration, emotional intelligence is critical in mitigating existential risks, or threats, to digital natives to navigate and overcome chaotic processes occurring in unchartered waters in the virtual world. (shrink)

We explain metacognition as a management of cognitive resources that does not necessitate algorithmic strategies or metarepresentation. When pragmatic, world-directed actions cannot reduce the distance to the goal, agents engage in epistemic action directed at cognition. Such actions often are physical and involve other people, and so are open to observation. Taking a dynamic systems approach to development, we suggest that implicit and perceptual metacognition emerges from dyadic reciprocal interaction. Early intersubjectivity allows infants to internalize and construct rudimentary strategies for (...) monitoring and control of their own and others’ cognitions by emotion and attention. The functions of initiating, maintaining, and achieving turns make proto-conversation a productive platform for developing metacognition. It enables caregiver and infant to create shared routines for epistemic actions that permit training of metacognitive skills. The adult is of double epistemic use to the infant – as a teacher that comments on and corrects the infant’s efforts, and as the infant’s cognitive resource in its own right. (shrink)

Thinking is overrated: golfers perform best when distracted and under pressure; firefighters make the right calls without a clue as to why; and you are yourself ill advised to look at your steps as you go down the stairs, or to try and remember your pin number before typing it in. Just do it, mindlessly. Both empirical psychologists and the common man have long worked out that thinking is often a bad idea, but philosophers still hang on to an intellectualist (...) picture of human action. This book challenges that picture and calls on philosophers to wake up to the power of mindlessness: it is our habits, skills and conventions that help us cope with a world way too diverse for us to hope to always reinterpret it. The book presents the empirical evidence that has been accumulating over the last few decades and offers a philosophical analysis of mindless phenomena such as habits, skilled activity, automatic actions, emotional and spontaneous reactions and social conventions, arguing that traditional philosophical theories of action should be revised to do justice to this forgotten but important part of our lives: when we act mindlessly, we are free and fully rational even though we neither deliberate nor are aware of what we are doing. (shrink)

We explore the question of whether machines can infer information about our psychological traits or mental states by observing samples of our behaviour gathered from our online activities. Ongoing technical advances across a range of research communities indicate that machines are now able to access this information, but the extent to which this is possible and the consequent implications have not been well explored. We begin by highlighting the urgency of asking this question, and then explore its conceptual underpinnings, in (...) order to help emphasise the relevant issues. To answer the question, we review a large number of empirical studies, in which samples of behaviour are used to automatically infer a range of psychological constructs, including affect and emotions, aptitudes and skills, attitudes and orientations (e.g. values and sexual orientation), personality, and disorders and conditions (e.g. depression and addiction). We also present a general perspective that can bring these disparate studies together and allow us to think clearly about their philosophical and ethical implications, such as issues related to consent, privacy, and the use of persuasive technologies for controlling human behaviour. (shrink)

Job burnout, organizational commitment, and work environment continue to be important areas of research to be studied in the realm of company employment and employee retention. Job burnout is the state of physical and emotional exhaustion and perceiving one’s profession as dull or overwhelming. Meanwhile, organizational commitment refers to the company’s attitude towards the organization and their employees, encompassing loyalty, moral responsibility, and their willingness to work. And lastly, work environment provides opportunities for employees to establish connections, develop skills, (...) and maximize their full potential in performing tasks. For the current study, researchers utilized descriptive-correlational research design to investigate the influence of Work Environment towards the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO agents in selected companies in Bulacan, Philippines. Hence, Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire (DPQ), Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), and the Three-Dimensional Model of Organizational Commitment Scale (ACS, NCS, CCS) were employed to properly assess the study's objectives. Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was performed to analyze the collected data. Based on the analysis, findings show that work environment has no significant influence on the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO Agents. Furthermore, the results of this study were thoroughly evaluated, leading to an in-depth discussion. Based on the findings, recommendations were made to benefit the stakeholders of the study and contributeto the existing body of knowledge. (shrink)

Against the Artists. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and the Man of Art. -/- This essay explores the concepts of "art" (gei) and "man of art" (geinin) in Tanizaki's works. These two notions belong to an ancient Japanese aesthetic tradition. The concept of 'gei' means "realization", "skill", but also "technique" and "ability". Traditional stage performances such as 'nō', 'kyōgen', 'bunraku', 'kabuki', are typical examples of 'gei'. On the other hand the concept of 'geinin' implies three pivotal aspects: 1) a strict and harsh aesthetic (...) education; 2) an environment suitable to develop the man of art's sensitivity; 3) a long process of emotional maturation. This perspective, according to this paper, sheds light on the peculiar Japanese aesthetic "difference" in relation to the concepts of art and artist developed - on the contrary - in Western tradition. (shrink)

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious, and as mere associations between groups and traits, which lack intentional content, e.g., we associate “black” and “athletic” in much the same way we associate “salt” and “pepper.” However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. Moreover, evidence suggests that implicit biases are not “dumb” semantic associations, but instead reflect our skillful, norm-sensitive, and embodied engagement with (...) social reality. This essay draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic methods and concepts to better understand what social-psychological research has begun to reveal about the conscious access individuals have to their own racial attitudes, as well as the intentional contents of the attitudes themselves. -/- First, I argue that implicit racial biases form part of the “background” of social experience. That is, while they exert a pervasive influence on our perceptions, judgments, and actions, they are frequently felt but not noticed, or noticed but misinterpreted. Second, I argue that our unreflective racial attitudes are neither mere associations nor fully articulated, propositionally structured beliefs or emotions. Their intentional contents are fundamentally indeterminate. For example, when a white person experiences a “gut feeling” of discomfort during an interaction with a black person, there is a question about the meaning or nature of that discomfort. Is it a fear of black people? Is it anxiety about appearing racist? There is, I argue, no general, determinate answer to such questions. The contents of our unreflective racial attitudes are fundamentally vague and open-ended, although I explain how they nevertheless take on particular shapes and implications—that is, their content can become determinate—depending on context, social meaning, and structural power relations. (If, for example, a perceived authority figure, such as a politician, parent, or scientist, encourages you to believe that your uncomfortable gut feeling is a justified fear of other social groups, then that is what your gut feeling is likely to become.). (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the field of empirically informed metaethics, which combines the rigorous conceptual clarity of traditional metaethics with a careful review of empirical evidence. More specifically, this work stands at the intersection of moral psychology, moral epistemology, and philosophy of action. The study comprises six chapters on three distinct (although related) topics. Each chapter is structured as an independent paper and addresses a specific open question in the literature. The first part concerns the psychological features and (...) cognitive function of moral intuition. Chapter 1 (“Moral intuition, strength, and metacognition”) is focused on the concept of intuitive strength, which is one of the defining features of moral intuition. I provide a metacognitive account of intuitive strength and show why such a view is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual accounts. Then, in Chapter 2 (“Dual process reflective equilibrium”), I will discuss the interplay between intuition and reflection in moral reasoning. I will contend that the influential “default-interventionist” model of reasoning, theorized by Greene, is insufficiently supported by the evidence. In light of some recent studies, I outline an account of moral reasoning in which intuition and reflection are not in conflict but cooperate to reach a reflective goal. I call this model dual process reflective equilibrium. The aim of the first part is descriptive, i.e., it argues for an accurate understanding of moral intuition and reasoning in light of the available empirical evidence. In contrast, the second part addresses a normative question: is a subject epistemically justified in forming a belief on the basis of a moral intuition? Skeptics of moral intuition argue that accepting moral intuitions should be the exception rather than the rule to the extent that epistemically defective processes determine the content of moral intuitions. Chapter 3 (“Moral intuitionism and the reliability challenge”) introduces the recent empirical challenges to the reliability of moral intuitions and elaborates a promising strategy for defending intuitionism. In short, I consider whether subjects can track the reliability of their intuitions with their confidence. In Chapter 4 (“The argument from limited cognitive resources”), I evaluate a different strategy to defend moral intuitionism. Specifically, I develop an argument according to which accepting moral intuitions is legitimate because it is the most rational option that a subject has, given her limited resources. The third and final part of the dissertation concerns the role of moral intuitions in action. The influence of automatic processes on moral conduct raises different challenges to moral philosophy. The first challenge is to explain how a subject can be motivated by certain values without the mental effort of deliberation. Chapter 5 (“Caring, moral motivation, and automatic conduct”) tackles this issue. Chapter 6 (“Moral sensitivity as skillful automaticity”) aims to explain how moral agents can be sensitive to good reasons through automatic mental processes. (shrink)

Objectives: To explore individuals’ perception of the personal, family and societal educational needs following a spinal cord injury. Methods: Sixty-one patients who sustained a traumatic SCI between March 2015 and June 2016 referred to Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Research Center were included in a cross sectional study and completed an online survey containing open-and closed-ended questions, in Iran. Participants’ responses were analyzed i using a qualitative approach with a thematic analysis. Results: Following a thematic analysis of the patient’s perceived (...) educational needs, 3 themes and 14 subthemes were identified. The 3 themes included personal, family, and societal educational perceived needs. Within personal educational needs, there were 7 subthemes which included personal independence and transportation, financial independence, life skills modification, knowledge about SCI, prevention of SCI complications, relationships and sexual function, and psychological adjustments. Among family educational needs, the 3 subthemes were caregiver skills and communication, first aid and emergency skills, and emotional and psychological support. For societal educational needs, the 4 subthemes described were social integration, interpersonal communication skills, SCI awareness and injury prevention, sympathize while avoiding pity. Conclusion: According to our findings, people with SCI have various needs that need to be addressed. Educational support should be a part of a comprehensive rehabilitation program and geared towards addressing the patients’ personal and family needs, while educating the community about SCI in order to allow for reintegration into society. (shrink)

The article analyzes methodological and practical approaches of psychological counseling for adult clients. General psychological problems of this age group are generalized; the concept of restoration of balance between the image of the world and the image of the “I” of clients as the main internal mechanism of mental equilibrium is substantiated; the aspects of professional training of a psychologist to advisory practice with adults are considered. -/- The urgent problem of psychological counseling for adult clients is to help them (...) to solve such problems as negative behaviors, disadaptation, loss of the meaning of life, addictive behavior, depression, etc. Psychological help should be carried out in the direction of qualitative transformations of the image of the world and the image of “I”, which envisage the expansion of knowledge about the world, its positive emotional experience, the realism of ideological beliefs. The general trend in the development of the worldview is the lack of realism in the image of the world, which affects the formation of a false system of values, the development of distorted moral ideas, and as a consequence, problems of health, self-realization, professional adaptation, and behavior deviations. -/- The purpose of the article is to substantiate the methodology and methods of psychological counseling for clients of the adult age group. Specialization of practical activity of a psychologist with this age category requires special knowledge, skills, and skills from a specialist that qualitatively differ from the provision of psychological services to other age groups (children, adolescents, etc.). The success of solving the psychological problems of clients entirely depends on the introduction of the correct, in other words, “more objective”, realistic methodology of counseling. The task of the article is to describe specific aspects of advisory psychological counseling for adults. -/- Summarizing the issue of adult counseling, we note that this type of activity requires from a psychologist to continuously improve the theoretical knowledge and practical skills, as well as to rethink the life experience. The presence of only one of the components of this activity provokes unprofessionality – it often manifests as the behavior in the style of a teacher, a teacher of higher education, in which there is a somewhat superficial, authoritarian attitude to students. Consequently, effective counseling for adult clients is stimulated by professional introspection and qualification in order to avoid professional deviation. Therefore, it is advisable for a psychologist to gain experience with clients (patients) of the adult age group to practice in a counseling center under the guidance of a specialist, and if this is a medical institution – a doctor or therapist. (shrink)

Introduction: the objective of the investigation is to analyse the informational operating-mode of the brain and to extract conclusions on the structure of the informational system of the human body and consciousness. Analysis: the mechanisms and processes of the transmission of information in the body both by electrical and non-electrical ways are analysed in order to unify the informational concepts and to identify the specific essential requirements supporting the life. It is shown that the electrical transmission can be described by (...) typical YES/NO (all or nothing) binary units as defined by the information science, while the inter and intra cell communication, including within the synaptic junction, by mechanisms of embodiment/disembodiment of information. The virtual received or operated information can be integrated in the cells as matter-related information, with a maximum level of integration as genetically codified info. Therefore, in terms of information, the human appears as a reactive system changing information with the environment and between inner informational subsystems which are: the centre of acquisition and storing of information (acquired data), the centre of decision and command (decision), the info-emotional system (emotions), the maintenance informational system (matter absorption/desorption/distribution), the genetic transmission system (reproduction) and info-genetic generator (genetically assisted body evolution). The dedicated areas and components of the brain are correlated with such systems and their functions are specified. Result: the corresponding cognitive centres projected into consciousness are defined and described according to their specific functions. The cognitive centres, suggestively named to appropriately include their main characteristics are detected at the conscious level respectively as: memory, decisional operation (attitude), emotional state, power/energy status and health, associativity and offspring formation, inherited predispositions, skills and mentality. The near-death and religious experiences can be explained by an Info-Connection pole. Conclusion: consciousness could be fully described and understood in informational terms. (shrink)

Introduction: The objective of this investigation is to analyse the informational circuits of the brain connections with the body from neurologic and neuroscience point of view, on the basis of the concepts of information promoted by the Informational Model of Consciousness. Analysis: Distinguishing between the virtual and matter-related information promoted by the Informational Model of Consciousness, the main specific features of consciousness are analyzed from the informational perspective, showing that the informational architecture of consciousness consists in seven groups of specific (...) activities, defined as cognitive centres, each of them with specific distinct tasks, but correlated each other: centre of acquisition and storing of information (memory), centre of decision and command (decision), centre of the emotional states (emotions), centre of the body maintenance (power and health), centre of the genetic elaboration/transmission (reproduction) and the info-genetic generator, inherited from the parents (predispositions, talents and skills). A special centre, dedicated to the connectivity with some extra-power properties of the mind is also introduced, assuring an intimate supra-sensitive detection of the world to explain the associated phenomena of the near-death experiences. Result: The activity of all these centres should be supported neurologically by the brain neuro-connectivity to the body and to external and internal info-signals. On the basis of the informational analysis, the neuro-connections of the brain regions associated to the main characteristics of the cognitive centres are highlighted, showing the anatomic and neuro-functional relation between the distinct components of the brain and the specific operating body regions. These connections describe in terms of information the brain-body neuro-activities as informational specific circuits, composed by the info-operational subsystems managed by the brain, and sensors, transducer and execution elements. Conclusion: The components and connections mind-body stipulated by the Informational Model of Consciousness are supported by the neurologic/neuroscience evidence. (shrink)

The notion of habit used in neuroscience is an inheritance from a particular theoretical origin, whose main source is William James. Thus, habits have been characterized as rigid, automatic, unconscious, and opposed to goal-directed actions. This analysis leaves unexplained several aspects of human behavior and cognition where habits are of great importance. We intend to demonstrate the utility that another philosophical conception of habit, the Aristotelian, may have for neuroscientific research. We first summarize the current notion of habit in neuroscience, (...) its philosophical inspiration and the problems that arise from it, mostly centered on the sharp distinction between goal-directed actions and habitual behavior. We then introduce the Aristotelian view and we compare it with that of William James. For Aristotle, a habit is an acquired disposition to perform certain types of action. If this disposition involves an enhanced cognitive control of actions, it can be considered a “habit-as-learning”. The current view of habit in neuroscience, which lacks cognitive control and we term “habit-as-routine”, is also covered by the Aristotelian conception. He classifies habits into three categories: (1) theoretical, or the retention of learning understood as “knowing that x is so”; (2) behavioral, through which the agent achieves a rational control of emotion-permeated behavior (“knowing how to behave”); and (3) technical or learned skills (“knowing how to make or to do”). Finally, we propose new areas of research where this “novel” conception of habit could serve as a framework concept, from the cognitive enrichment of actions to the role of habits in pathological conditions. In all, this contribution may shed light on the understanding of habits as an important feature of human action. Habits, viewed as a cognitive enrichment of behavior, are a crucial resource for understanding human learning and behavioral plasticity. (shrink)

This article presents an ethical analysis and critique of personalized service in the tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST) that is both Catholic and Personalist. It tackles the ethical issues involved when service delivery is personalized, issues that affect both the consumers and the service providers. It focuses on nonprofessional services that are offered by low-skilled blue-collar workers through corporations that are organized to produce efficient service to a high volume of consumers. Customer service involves intersubjectivity, that is, interaction between (...) two persons as subjects. Ethics in the service context is not only about treating consumers in a just manner; the threats to the personhood of the service providers are also significant, for their work cannot be separated from their very being. By focusing on the ethical issues of emotional labor and consumerism of human service, the study will argue that the human interaction in personalized service runs the risk of alienating us from our authentic selves and from each other. If the objective of personalized service is to create authentic human relationship in the service encounter, the latter can arise even in a nonpersonalized service. We do not have to personalize our actions in order to create genuine human interaction. Instead, what we must do is to treat each other as persons. (shrink)

Though Jana Mohr Lone refers to children’s striving to wonder, to question, to figure out how the world works and where they fit as the “philosophical self,” like its parent discipline, it could be argued that the philosophical self is actually the “parent self,”—the wellspring of all the other aspects of personhood that we traditionally parse out, e.g., the intellectual, moral, social, and emotional selves. If that is the case, then to be blind to “The Philosophical Child,” the latter (...) being the title of Jana Mohr Lone’s book, is, in a sense then, to be blind to the child. Thus, though Mohr Lone says that the subject of her book is to assist parents in supporting the development of children’s philosophical selves, that claim may mask the gift that this lovely book can bring to the parent-child relationship if it is interpreted as helping children to become “smarty pants” in the sense of acquiring esoteric skills to excel in the ivory-tower discipline of academic philosophy. This is not the focus of this book. This is not an invitation to learn about the history of philosophy— about what some wise, usually white, usually men said about the fundamental questions that intrigue all humans. This is not an invitation to memorize and thus to sit in awe of what others think —as is too often the case in university classrooms. This book, rather, is a guide to how to actually philosophize—how to use questions to energetically and courageously make progress toward finding answers that one, through reflection, comes to believe are the best, given the reasons and evidence available. And to the degree that we and our children are successful, we give ourselves and our children the gift of continuously learning to become ever wiser. (shrink)

Ethics is an attempt to guide human conduct and it is also an attempt to help man in leading good life by applying moral principles. Ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics is related to issues of propriety, rightness and wrongness. What is right is ethical and what is wrong is unethical. Value is an important conception (...) in ethical discussion. Values relate to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and abstract than norms. In certain cultures norms reflect the values of respect and support of friends and family. Different cultures reflect different values. Over the last three decades, traditional-age college students have shown an increased interest in personal well-being and a decreased interest in the welfare of others. Recently, the department of personnel and training has decided to change the pattern of the Civil Services Examination by stressing more on general studies and aptitude skills. A notification has been issued is this regard. From this year the Civil Services (Mains) will also have a separate paper on “ethics, integrity and aptitude”. The notification for the 2013 exam said the “paper (on ethics, integrity and aptitude) will include questions to test the candidate’s attitude and approach to issues relating to integrity, probity in public life and his problem-solving approach to various issues and conflicts in dealing with society”. There are six major sections (i) Ethics and Human Interfaith, (ii) Attitude, (iii) Emotional Intelligence, (iv) Contributions of Moral thinkers and philosophers of India and World, (v) Public/Civil Service Values and Ethics in Public Administration and (vi) Probity in Governance. In this paper an attempt is made to describe the values needed in public service sector and ethical principles might use in public administration and related to the V section of this syllabus. (shrink)

Academic misconduct is a prominent issue at postsecondary institutions. This issue includes the act of plagiarism, which has received considerable attention on campuses. There is a growing body of research examining why students engage in plagiarism, and what they know about plagiarism, but little of this research is guided by a theoretical framework. Although all students may be tempted to plagiarize, students in teacher education programs represent a unique population because they are concerned with developing their own academic performance alongside (...) the skills necessary to manage situations of academic misconduct as future teachers. Therefore, our first aim was to examine preservice teachers’ beliefs about plagiarism. Then, following the principles of Attribution Theory, our second aim was to investigate how beliefs of controllability related to acts of plagiarism impacted participants views on responsibility, emotions, help giving, and reporting. We used a within-person repeated measures design with three levels of controllability manipulated through hypothetical scenarios of plagiarism to collect data from 201 preservice teachers. Overall, preservice teachers had strong beliefs about plagiarism. Moreover, when scenarios included students who engaged in plagiarism that was controllable, participants were more likely to view the student as responsible, feel anger towards them, support punishment, and recommend reporting the student, than when the act of plagiarism was not seen as controllable. We provide recommendations for instructors and administrators for supporting students and highlight limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Gloria Anzaldúa’s own philosophical concept of la facultad captures a form of active, embodied, epistemic agency. I further argue that when an agent uses la facultad, they acquire a novel form of knowledge, one that is only accessible through this capacity. In Section II, I define la facultad as consisting in the active integration of conscious self-awareness, bodily experiences, motor skills, and sensory information with the rational mind to engage with and navigate the world. (...) As such, the actions we choose to are not solely determined by reasoning or mere mental states but are fundamentally shaped by the dynamic interplay between our bodies, sensory perceptions, emotions, and the situational context in which we find ourselves. In Section III, I elaborate on the epistemological contribution of la facultad. Finally, in Section IV, I conclude with some questions for further research. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that there is an essential difference between social intelligence and creative intelligence, and that they have their foundation in human sexuality. For sex differences, we refer to the vast psychological, neurological, and cognitive science research where problem-solving, verbal skills, logical reasoning, and other topics are dealt with. Intelligence tests suggest that, on average, neither sex has more general intelligence than the other. Though people are equals in general intelligence, they are different in special forms of (...) intelligence such as social intelligence and creative intelligence, the former dominant in women, the latter dominant in men. The dominance of creative intelligence in men needs to be explained. The focus of our research is on the strictly anthropological aspects, and consequently our explanation for this fact is based on the male-female polarity in the mating systems. Sexual dimorphism does not only regard bodily differences but implies different forms of sex life. Sex researchers distinguish between two levels of sexual intercourse: procreative sex and recreational sex, and to these we would add “creative sex.” On all three levels, there is a behavioral difference between men and women, including the subjective experience. These differences are as well attributed to culture as genetically founded in nature. Sexual reproduction is only possible if females cooperate. Their biological inheritance makes females play a decisive role in mate choice. Recreational sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction results from female extended sexual activity. Creative sex, on the contrary, is a specifically male performance of sexuality. We identify creative sex with eroticism. Eroticism evolved through the transformation of the sexual drive into a mental state of expectation and fantasizing. Hence, sex differences (that nowadays are covered up by cultural egalitarianism) continue to be the evolutionary origin of the difference between social and creative intelligence. (shrink)

An underexplored aspect of moral experience is the experience of apprehending other people as mattering, grasping the significance of whether their interests are set back or enhanced. I refer to these as value-apprehensional experiences. I argue, partly on the basis of data regarding moral cognition in psychopaths, that experiencing other people's value is one way that we attain adequate systematic comprehension of morality, understanding that others' welfare is the point behind rules against harming them. I then turn to a positive (...) account of what capacities we should expect to facilitate value-apprehensional experiences. I suggest we should look to the capacity to care emotionally about others: roughly, to feel emotions congruent with someone else's well-being, for her sake. I argue that this 'emotional caring' is better suited to explain value-apprehensional experience than other constructs, including empathy. The broader hypothesis this raises is that emotional caring enables and improves our value-apprehensional abilities. To the extent that is true, I argue, we should consider caring people to have more trustworthy moral intuitions than others, especially if they are not just competent, but skilled at caring about others. Emotions are, of course, biased in various ways, so I suggest attention-refocusing strategies for mitigating these biases. These are epitomized by an unaffiliated caring perspective, one removed from affiliation with any of a morally relevant situation's protagonists, but informed through emotional caring about the the interests of each. Finally, I turn to special value-apprehensional experiences that we have in intense, reciprocal relationships of caring with individuals who are special to us. I argue that, if we accept that general v-a experiences reveal people's moral significance, we have even more reason to think that special v-a experiences reveal the special moral significance not only of the parties in the relationship, but of their participation in the relationship, for both their sakes. That is, there are moral reasons to devote caring attention to special others, even if we could otherwise do objectively more good. Emotional cares reveal not only values within everyone but reasons to devote ourselves to the individuals we care about. (shrink)

Background: The complexity of diagnostic presentations of an inpatient psychiatry population requires an integrative approach to health and well-being. In this sense, the primary need of this research aims at developing clinical strategies and healthier coping skills for anger, anxiety, and depression; promoting self-esteem, healthier sleep, and anxiety reduction; as well as enhancing mood and emotional–behavioral regulation via exercise and nutrition education. Objectives: The primary objective is to promote exercise, fitness, and physical health in inpatient psychiatry patients. The secondary (...) objective includes therapeutic management of depressive symptoms and patient-centered approach to mania, angry outbursts, and generalized disruptive behavior. The tertiary objective is promoting research in the psychophysiological effectors of exercise and nutrition education in combination with psychotherapy. Method: Monitoring self-reported changes in mood and general well-being via administration of surveys and questionnaires pre- and postexercise sessions. Results: The research yielded positive outcomes in all areas investigated, suggesting the positive effects of exercise and mind–body strategies in the context of psychotherapy in inpatient psychiatry. Conclusion: Physical exercise may be a helpful way to reduce mental health disorders in the context of inpatient psychiatry by targeting anxiety, depression, anger, psychomotor agitation, and muscle tension and addressing stressors and triggers and to develop a more balanced and integrated sense of self. (shrink)

Despite the effort educators put into developing in students the critical writing and thinking skills needed to compose effective arguments, undergraduate college students are often accused of churning out essays lacking in creative and critical thought, arguments too obviously formulated and with sides too sharply drawn. Theories abound as to why these deficiencies are rampant. Some blame students’ immature cognitive and emotional development for these lacks. Others put the blame of lackadaisical output on the assigning of shopworn writing subjects, (...) assigned topics such as on American laws and attitudes about capital punishment and abortion. Although these factors might contribute to faulty written output in some cases, the prevailing hindrance is our very pedagogy, a system in which students are rewarded for composing the very type of argument we wish to avoid — the eristic, in which the goal is not truth seeking, but successfully disputing another’s argument. Certainly the eristic argument is the intended solution in cases when a clear‑cut outcome is needed, such as in legal battles and political campaigns when there can only be one winner. However, teaching mainly or exclusively the eristic, as is done in most composition classrooms today, halts the advancement of these higher‑order inquiry skills we try developing in our students. (shrink)

In the theatre, one individual, the artistic director, is saddled with the responsibility of tapping, sieving and blending the skills, talents and vocation of all the other artists into a complete artistic, visual and auditory whole. This is an enormous task which requires ingenuity, creativity and hard-work. All the effort, time, energy and money spent in this endeavour will come to nought if at the end, there is no audience to appreciate the work of all the artists who laboured towards (...) the production. Therefore, the whole idea behind any theatre activity is the presentation to an audience of a unified theatrical effect which has the capacity of arousing them both emotionally and intellectually . It has been observed that the place of the audience in the entire theatre structure and in the making of any theatre cannot be ignored particularly, as the theatre’s major and only target is the audience . The above trend may provoke one into asking what an audience is or what constitutes an audience whom the various artists work for. (shrink)

We often talk of people as being more or less imaginative than one another – as being better or worse at imagining – and we also compare various feats of imagination to one another in terms of how easy or hard they are. Facts such as these might be taken to suggest that imagination is often implicitly understood as a skill. This implicit understanding, however, has rarely (if ever) been made explicit in the philosophical literature. Such is the task of (...) this chapter. I first attempt to flesh out several conditions for an activity to count as a skill. I then attempt to show how imagination can meet such conditions. The chapter concludes with an attempt to answer various worries that might be raised to the claim that imagination should be thought of as a skill. (shrink)

Entry in Routledge handbook of skill and expertise. Discusses social perception, perceptual expertise, knowing what things look like, and a bit about about aesthetics at the end.

Which role do concepts play in a person's actions? Do concepts underwrite the very idea of agency in somebody's acting? Or is the appeal to concepts in action a problematic form of over-intellectualization which obstructs a proper picture of genuine agency? Within the large and complicated terrain of these questions, the debate about know-how has been of special interest in recent years. In this paper, I shall try to spell out what know-how can tell us about the role of concepts (...) in action. I will argue that the fact that people possess and exercise know-how is indeed suited to deliver a number of important insights as to where and how concepts play a role in action. But I shall argue that these insights are limited in that they fail to cover the whole realm of relevant phenomena. (shrink)

How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice (Archer & Mills 2019; Mills 2019; Srinivasan 2018; Whitney 2018). In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism (Archer & Matheson 2022). This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account (...) of the forms that emotional imperialism can take. We will do so by drawing inspiration from William Reddy’s concept of an emotional regime and investigating ways in which colonial powers of the 18th to 20th Centuries sought to impose their emotional regimes on their colonial subjects. Second, we will offer more expansive accounts of both emotional imperialism and affective injustice that can accommodate these additional forms of emotional imperialism. (shrink)

After discussing de Sousa's view of emotion in akrasia, I suggest that emotions be viewed as nonconceptual perceptions of value (see Tappolet 2000). It follows that they can render intelligible actions which are contrary to one's better judgment. An emotion can make one's action intelligible even when that action is opposed by one's all-things-considered judgment. Moreover, an akratic action prompted by an emotion may be more rational than following one's better judgement, for it may be the judgement and not the (...) perception which is in error. By contrast, "cool" akrasia is genuinely puzzling; it is not clear whether it exists. (shrink)

The classical Chinese philosophical tradition (ca. 6th to 3rd centuries BCE) contains rich discussion of skill and expertise. Various texts exalt skilled exemplars (whether historical persons or fictional figures) who guide and inspire those seeking virtuosity within a particular dao (guiding teaching or way of life). These texts share a preoccupation with flourishing, or uncovering and articulating the constituents of an exemplary life. Some core features thought requisite to leading such a life included spontaneity, naturalness, and effortless ease. However, there (...) was also significant disagreement during this ‘Warring States’ or ‘Hundred Schools’ period on which skills were valuable, how one should cultivate them, and who exactly ought to serve as exemplars. In this chapter, I discuss two prominent types of expertise and their attendant skills. The first is expertise at a particular craft, occupation, or dao, which finds its most poignant celebration in the early Daoist anthology Zhuangzi. Interest in crafts or skilled occupations was likely motivated by a perceived (or implied) analogy with living a good life more generally. The second concerns ethical expertise, a prominent and widely held ideal within the Ruist (Confucian) and Mohist schools. Both maintain that ethical expertise consists of an ability to apply past models or precedents to current cases, though they diverge on what those models are and how to properly apply them. The aim is to provide non-specialists an overview of this literature in Daoism, Confucianism, and Mohism, while also providing suggestions about further research. (shrink)