It has been claimed that a broad attentional breadth buffers the impact of negative stimuli on human perception and cognition. Here we identify issues with the research on which this claim is based, and then rigorously test the claim. To induce narrow versus broad attentional breadth participants attended to the local versus global elements of Navon stimuli, and to investigate the impact of emotionally salient stimuli on performance we measured the effect of task-irrelevant stimuli of varying emotional salience (negative, neutral, (...) or positive) on task performance. Across a series of experiments, we found that the Navon stimuli were effective in inducing different attentional breadths, and that both negative and positive task-irrelevant stimuli slowed responses relative to neutral stimuli, but that the magnitude of this emotion-induced slowing was invariant to whether attentional breadth was broad or narrow. This indicates that a broad attentional breadth did not buffer against the effect of either negative or positive emotionally salient stimuli. These results challenge the claim the broadening attentional breadth protects against the impact of emotionally salient stimuli. (shrink)

Post-foundational politics and democracy -- Agonism and democracy -- A typology of agonistic democracy -- Agonistic democracy and the question of institutions -- Agonistic democracy and the limits of popular participation -- Populism, representation, and the popular will -- Political liberalism, contingency and agonistic pluralism -- Liberalism, agonism, and democracy.

We perceive colour, shape, sound and touch 'bound together' in a single experience. The following arguments about this binding phenomenon are raised: (1) The individual signals passing from neurone to neurone are not bound together, whether as elements of information or physically. (2) Within a single cell, binding in terms of bringing together of information is potentially feasible. A physical substrate may also be available. (3) It is therefore proposed that a bound conscious experience must be a property of an (...) individual cell, not of a group of cells. Since it is unlikely that one specific neurone is conscious, it is suggested that every neurone has a version of our consciousness, or at least some form of sentience. However absurd this may seem it appears to be consistent with the available evidence; arguably the only explanation that is. It probably does not alter the way we should expect to experience the world, but may help to explain the ways we seem to differ from digital computers and some of the paradoxes seen in mental illness. It predicts non-digital features of intracellular computation, for which there is already evidence, and which should be open to further experimental exploration. The arguments given may well prove flawed or the conclusion biologically or physically untenable, but the idea is raised for discussion not least because a formal demonstration that it is invalid may help to identify more fruitful avenues. (shrink)

Today most of us are awash with choices. The cornucopia of material goods available to those of us in the developed world can turn each of us into a kid in a candy store; but our delight at picking the prize is undercut by our regret at lost opportunities. And what's the criterion for choosing anything -- material, spiritual, the path taken or not taken -- when we have lost our faith in everything? In The Era of Choice Edward (...) Rosenthal argues that choice, and having to make choices, has become the most important influence in both our personal lives and our cultural expression. Choice, he claims, has transformed how we live, how we think, and who we are.This transformation began in the nineteenth century, catalyzed by the growing prosperity of the Industrial Age and a diminishing faith in moral and scientific absolutes. The multiplicity of choices forces us to form oppositions; this, says Rosenthal, has spawned a keen interest in dualism, dilemmas, contradictions, and paradoxes. In response, we have developed mechanisms to hedge, compromise, and to synthesize. Rosenthal looks at the scientific and philosophical theories and cultural movements that choice has influenced -- from physics to postmodernism, from Disney trailers to multiculturalism. He also reveals the effect of choice on the personal level, where we grapple with decisions that range from which wine to have with dinner to whether to marry or divorce, as we hurtle through lives of instant gratification, accelerated consumption, trend, change, and speed. But we have discovered, writes Rosenthal, that sometimes, we can have our cake and eat it, too. (shrink)

In the majority of academic institutions nursing and medical students receive a traditional education, the content of which tends to be specific to their future roles as health care professionals. In essence, each curriculum design is independent of each course. Over the last decade, however, interest has been accumulating in relation to interprofessional and multiprofessional learning at student level. With the view that learning together during their student training would not only encourage and strengthen future collaboration in practice settings but (...) also enhance patient care, the University of Dundee decided to run a pilot study to explore shared teaching in ethics between medical and nursing students. This article presents a report on the reasons for selecting health care ethics as a precursor for shared teaching, the educational tool used for the sessions, and the results of student and facilitator evaluation of the short course. Overall, despite problems such as poor attendance by some students, and facilitation and timetable difficulties, most of the feedback from students and facilitators has been positive. In essence the ‘idea’ has gone from strength to strength and there are now three levels of shared teaching in ethics between nursing and medical students, with plans to include further sessions with students from other disciplines. Within the text, ‘health care ethics’ will be referred to as ‘ethics’; nursing students/nurses encompasses midwifery students/midwives. (shrink)

This paper addresses a central metaphysical issue that has not been recognized: what kind of entity is a syllogism? I argue that the syllogism cannot be merely a mental entity. Some counterpart must exist in nature. A careful examination of the Posterior Analytics’s distinction between the syllogism of the fact and the syllogism of the reasoned fact shows that we must set aside contemporary logic to appreciate Aristotle’s logic, enables us to understand the validity of the scientific syllogism through its (...) content rather than its form, and explains the priority of the scientific syllogism over other valid syllogisms. The opening chapters of Posterior Analytics II help us to distinguish the entities that scientific syllogism must include as its terms; namely, a genus, an essential nature, and essential attributes of the genus. Often, the attributes are found in closely linked sequences. By exploring why there are such sequences and how they are linked, the paper argues that sequences of genus, nature, and sequential attributes are the basis in nature for the process of reasoning that we call the syllogism: we come to grasp the syllogism over time but the sequences to which it refers exist together in things. So understood, the syllogism, like knowledge of forms and truths, exists in us and in the world. (shrink)

This book is part of a larger study of the problem of the one and the many in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Although this portion can be read and understood on its own, some remarks about the contents of the two sister volumes will be helpful.

We investigated how people design interventions to affect the outcomes of causal systems. We propose that the abstract structural properties of a causal system, in addition to people's content and mechanism knowledge, influence decisions about how to intervene. In Experiment 1, participants preferred to intervene at specific locations in a causal chain regardless of which content variables occupied those positions. In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to intervene on root causes versus immediate causes when they were presented with a (...) long-term goal versus a short-term goal. These results show that the structural properties of a causal system can guide the design of interventions. (shrink)