Graduate students’ failure to graduate is of great concern, with the failure to graduate due to the dissertation being the most influential factor. However, there are many factors that influence the writing of a dissertation, and research on these factors that influence graduate students’ learning through emotion and cognition is still quite rare. A review of past research revealed that the main factor causing graduate students to drop out midway is not completing their thesis, followed by factors including insufficient achievement (...) motivation, lack of learning strategy, and low confidence. The graduation rate of graduate students has been emphasized by the academic community; therefore, this study investigated the correlation between graduate students’ achievement motivation, active learning, and academic confidence in writing research. The study invited graduated students from two universities of science and technology situated in the northern region of Taiwan to complete the questionnaire. In this study, valid data for validation analysis were collected from 173 respondents, and the results showed that achievement motivation positively influenced active learning and that active learning positively influenced academic confidence. From the above findings, it can be seen that to help graduate students from University of Science and Technology to effectively complete their graduate studies, students should develop good motivation to adopt active learning strategies to enhance their academic self-confidence. (shrink)

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is a central theorem in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics by which the evolution of velocity fluctuations of the Brownian particle under a fluctuating environment is intimately related to its dissipative behavior. This can be illuminated in particular by an example of Brownian motion in an ohmic environment where the dissipative effect can be accounted for by the first-order time derivative of the position. Here we explore the dynamics of the Brownian particle coupled to a supraohmic environment by considering (...) the motion of a charged particle interacting with the electromagnetic fluctuations at finite temperature. We also derive particle’s equation of motion, the Langevin equation, by minimizing the corresponding stochastic effective action, which is obtained with the method of Feynman-Vernon influence functional. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is established from first principles. The backreaction on the charge is known in terms of electromagnetic self-force given by a third-order time derivative of the position, leading to the supraohmic dynamics. This self-force can be argued to be insignificant throughout the evolution when the charge barely moves. The stochastic force arising from the supraohmic environment is found to have both positive and negative correlations, and it drives the charge into a fluctuating motion. Although positive force correlations give rise to the growth of the velocity dispersion initially, its growth slows down when correlation turns negative, and finally halts, thus leading to the saturation of the velocity dispersion. The saturation mechanism in a supraohmic environment is found to be distinctly different from that in an ohmic environment. The comparison is discussed. (shrink)

This paper draws on the economics of ethical compliance model to examine the association between ethical reasoning, perceived risk of detection, perceived levels of penalties and Chinese auditors'' ethical behavior in an audit conflict situation. Using 53 Chinese auditors from Shenzen as subjects, and a survey questionnaire, this study found that there is a significant negative association between ethical reasoning and the likelihood of unethical behavior and that this negative association is weaker for auditors who perceive higher risks of detection.

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

Attention is essential to the life of the mind, a central topic in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Traditional debates in philosophy stand to benefit from greater understanding of the phenomenon, whether on the nature of the self, the foundation of knowledge, the natural basis of consciousness, or the origins of action and responsibility. This book is at the crossroads of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, offering a new theoretical stance on the concept of attention and how it intersects (...) with other functions of the mind, such as perception, consciousness, and action. It presents attention as directed by a subject, essential for perception, but not consciousness or action. By taking seriously the existence of a subject it stands against current trends in philosophy and cognitive science. This book offers an account of the subject and its role in attention that will both help motivate a subject-centered account and avoid some of the common criticisms regarding its existence. It engages with work by many philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, including Block, Campbell, Dickie, Husserl, James, Koch, Mack and Rock, Merleau-Ponty, Treisman, and Wu. (shrink)

Wayne Wu argues that attention is necessary for action: since action requires a solution to the ‘Many–Many Problem’, and since only attention can solve the Many–Many Problem, attention is necessary for action. We question the first of these two steps and argue that it is based on an oversimplified distinction between actions and reflexes. We argue for a more complex typology of behaviours where one important category is action that does not require a solution to the Many–Many Problem, and so (...) does not require attention. (shrink)

Attention has a long history in philosophy, despite its near absence in the twentieth century. This chapter provides an overview of philosophical research on attention. It begins by explaining the concept of "selection from limitation," contrasting it with the more recent "selection for action." It reviews historical texts that discuss attention, focusing on those in the Western canon whose understanding of "attention" aligns with contemporary usage. It then describes the differential treatment of attention in phenomenology and behaviorism in the last (...) century. Finally, it discusses contemporary research by topic: attention, perception, and knowledge; attention and consciousness; attention and action; and attention and the self. It includes work by Allport,Aristotle, Astell, Augustine, Bergson, Berkeley, Block, Bradley, Buddhaghosa, Campbell, Cherry, De Brigard, Dehaene and Naccache, Descartes, Dickie, Du Bois, Ganeri, Hegel, Heidegger, James, Kant, Koch and Tsuchiya, LaBerge, Locke, Mack and Rock, Malebranche, Merleau-Ponty, Mole, Montemayor and Haladjian, Neumann, Pashler, Posner, Prinz, Reid, Rensink, Reynolds and Heeger, Treisman, Watzl, Wittgenstein, Wollstonecraft, and Wu. (shrink)

Jennings and Nanay (this journal, 2016) argue against my claim that action entails attention by providing putative counterexamples to the claim that action entails a Many–Many Problem. This reply demonstrates that they have misunderstood the central notion of a pure reflex on which my argument depends. A simplified form of the argument from pure reflex to the Many–Many Problem as a necessary feature of agency is given, and putative counterexamples of action without attention are addressed. Attention is present in every (...) action. In passing, the reply discusses how we should assess intuitive claims about attention and mental processing, with emphasis on learning and the automatization of attention in its development as a skill. (shrink)

Like many who work on attention, Wu takes William James as an anchor point, concluding, "So, James was right" (274). In fact, this book can be seen as a continuation of James' project -- as with James' "Attention," Wu's book provides an extensive review of current research on attention.[1] In fact, he engages at length with an impressive amount of work in contemporary philosophy and science, mentioning 10 such researchers – Ned Block, John Campbell, Marisa Carrasco, David Chalmers, David Marr, (...) Christopher Mole, Jesse Prinz, Declan Smithies, George Sperling, and Anne Treisman -- more than 30 times each. Readers interested in contemporary research on attention could learn a great deal from these discussions.[2] The book nonetheless falls short of serving as a complete review of research on attention -- a point Wu in fact accepts (9). Two conspicuous absences include historical philosophy and phenomenology, both of which I discuss briefly below. (shrink)

The main questions in philosophical research on attention concern its nature and impact. Regarding its nature, one might ask what sort of thing attention is; regarding its impact, one might ask what sort of thing attention does. While these questions have been asked by philosophers for thousands of years, they have had a resurgence in recent years due to advancements in the cognitive and neural sciences. This chapter will cover some historical context as prelude to a discussion of the contemporary (...) debates, ending with issues that are as of yet still on the horizon. Topics covered include the divide between voluntary/involuntary, endogenous/exogenous, and top-down/bottom-up attention; the Posner cueing task; Treisman and the binding problem; Mack and Rock on inattentional blindness; Grassia, Campbell, and Dickie on attention, perception, and knowledge; the debate between Block, Dehaene, and others on consciousness and attention; Wu on attention and action; and future directions for attention research in predictive processing models, neuroethics, technology, and addiction. (shrink)

This article critically investigates the potential confrontation that exists between mixed reality in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) artworks that are, respectively, based on the concepts of phenomenology and Chinese Qi. My proposal is exemplified by the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan’s Flow of Qi (2007), which uses ultra wide band technology that instantly transforms the data of a pair of participants’ real-time breath into the replication of calligraphy masterworks projected onto the floor in front of the participants. To explore how (...) efficiency of breath constitutes mixed reality in Flow of Qi, I draw a parallel between Qi, which is embodied as breath, and agency whereby, as discussed by Murray and Hansen, the notion of the perception-action relationship is emphasized. However, compared to agency, Qi is characterized as evoking ‘the unity of the cosmos with humanity’ (t’ien-jen ho-yi) because the participants are involved in a process wherein the masters used their brushstrokes to grasp the respiration of the cosmos. Therefore, employing the concepts of Chinese Qi draws out an anthropocosmic vision of mixed reality that links participants with the cosmos and manifests a Qi world-view through digital media. (shrink)

This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemohgical.

Drawing together the ideas, practices, and techniques associated with the subject, this book puts them in historical context and demonstrates their relevance to ...

Jacques Rancière's theory of democracy shares a great deal with Derrida's. Both view democracy as founded on paradox, define it as the irruption of alterity and, most notably, explain the disjuncti...

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Drawing on the philosophy of existentialism, this thought-provoking Research Agenda questions and encourages deeper ethical thinking about organizational practices during this time of existential crisis. Rather than relying on prescriptive normative ethical theories, it advocates for ethical concerns to be addressed through (...) intersubjective encounters. Chapters engage with diverse philosophical perspectives and illuminate their key ideas through literature, visual arts, and music, bringing forth situated truths that will resonate with and incite the reader to think and act critically to avoid perpetuating dehumanization, precarity, and mindlessness. The Research Agenda will ultimately inspire leaders and scholars to expand, rethink, practice, sustain, and transform organizations towards a future of flourishing for all stakeholders. Integrating qualitative hermeneutics with existential philosophy, this discerning Research Agenda will offer students and scholars of organization studies, business ethics and leadership a unique perspective on organizational ethics. (shrink)

According to non-cognitivism, moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. This paper presents an empirical argument against this view. We begin by showing that non-cognitivism entails the prediction that after some reflection competent ordinary speakers’ semantic intuitions favor that moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. At first sight, this prediction may seem to have been confirmed by previous research on folk metaethics. However, a number of methodological worries (...) lead us to doubt this interpretation. We, therefore, conducted a psychological study that alleviates these worries as far as possible. It turned out that competent ordinary speakers’ reflective semantic intuitions dominantly fail to favor that moral sentences do not aim to represent how things morally are. This challenge to non-cognitivism is defended and supplemented by considering deflationary theories of moral truth and middle ground theories in the cognitivism/non-cognitivism debate. (shrink)

Over the last decade, attention has crawled from out of the shadows into the philosophical limelight with several important books and widely read articles. Carolyn Dicey Jennings has been a key player in the attention revolution, actively publishing in the area and promoting awareness. This book was much anticipated by insiders and does not disappoint. It is in no way redundant with respect to other recent monographs, covering both a different range of material and developing novel positions throughout. The book (...) might have been called The Attending Self, since Jennings defines attention as mental prioritization controlled by the self. This invocation of the self is among her central innovations, and may prove to be the main source of controversy. I will highlight points of contention here, but want to emphasize at the outset that the book is essential reading for anyone interested in attention. Jennings also contributes to a range of other debates, which will help a broader audience appreciate the importance this topic.After a brief introduction, Jennings provides “a philosophical landscape” of attention (chap. 2), tracing the concept through history. This is an invaluable achievement that will be welcomed by both newcomers and veterans. Jennings exhibits enormous breadth, covering areas that contemporary philosophers of mind tend to neglect: medieval philosophy, Buddhist thought, and phenomenology, to name a few. We also get perspectives on attention from core figures in the Western canon, such as Descartes, Locke, and Kant, as well as thinkers who gave the topic a more political inflection: Mary Wollstonecraft and W. E. B. DuBois. Jennings surveys contemporary literature as well, locating recent work in these older lineages. Some authors get more treatment later in the book (e.g., William James and Wayne Wu). Overall, Jennings provides the best overview of this history I have seen. She proves that attention is not a new topic, but one with deep roots and one that can inform current debates; Jennings draws on these roots throughout. I would love to see a companion piece surveying scientific theories, including “gain control” and “biased competition,” which get little airtime in the book. Some recent philosophical theories are under-explored as well, including Chris Mole’s concept of cognitive unison (Jennings discusses other aspects of his view), Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian’s exploration of attention’s diversity (we get a touch of this), and my own proposal that attention is a gateway to working memory (not mentioned here). That said, no extant survey is more complete.Chapter 3 begins with the empirical claim that attention is regulated by slow brainwaves, and then takes up two issues. The first is mental causation. Endorsing moderate emergentism, Jennings argues that slow brain waves are causally efficacious even though they are not reducible to lower-level processes. (The metaphysics and neuroscience are presented accessibly, aided by three appendixes.) Second, Jennings argues that these slow brain waves indicate that attention is controlled by the self. As someone who was never moved by the mental causation problem—I don’t think overdetermination threatens efficacy—I would have welcomed more development of this second issue. For one thing, in linking attention to subjective control, Jennings eschews the idea that there can be purely “bottom-up” attention driven by stimulus features alone. This goes against the orthodoxy in attention science, and makes it hard for her to accommodate phenomena such as “pop-out,” or the commonsense idea that attention can be “captured” by a sudden flash or loud sound. For another thing, I wanted to hear more on why Jennings relates slow brain waves to the self. Does this include the slow waves that occur during deep sleep? Is there even such a thing as the self? Is there one self or many? How do slow brain waves reflect our interests, projects, values, self-conceptions, autobiographical narratives, or social identities? Does the social self invoked by Wollstonecraft and DuBois gain a foothold here? The whole chapter campaigns against metaphysical reductionism, but arrives at a perspective on the self that will strike some readers as highly reductive.In the fourth chapter, Jennings sheds further light on her conjecture that attention involves the self by advancing the thesis that attention endows sensory information with meaning. On the face of it, this may sound implausible. Object recognition, reading, and many other meaning-involving processes can take place outside of attention and outside of consciousness. But Jennings has a richer notion of “meaning” in mind. She develops the idea of “subject unity,” which is imposition of structure on perception that reflects the interests of the perceiving subject. This, she claims, is what brings perception into the space of reasons. Along the way, she has interesting observations about binding, feature integration, and demonstrative reference. The material is highly original, and Jennings’s postulation of interest-based perceptual organization is compelling. At the same time, one might wonder whether interests are really relegated to the ambit of attentional control. Consider the cocktail party effect, wherein one’s own name captures attention. This implies a preattentive filter that reflects our interests. Emotionally charged words, facial expressions, and dangerous objects also work this way, and social biases can operate preattentively as well. If these reflect our interests, then meaning may arise outside attention.Jennings’s fifth chapter explores the relationship between attention and consciousness. Some authors have argued that attention is necessary and sufficient for consciousness. Jennings focuses primarily on the necessity claim. She does not systematically review the empirical literature here, but she addresses some of the key findings, and effectively rebuts studies that allege to find consciousness outside attention. She does not rest her case there, however. Instead, she identifies a new class of examples that purport to establish the possibility of consciousness without attention. Her central example she calls “conscious entrainment,” which is what we experience when engaged in habitual or skilled activities. Other possible examples touched on in the chapter include hypervigilance in individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), passive movie watching, dreaming, and “attentional neglect.” These states all involve intense focus, Jennings admits, but not attention. To some readers this may sound contradictory. Isn’t focus a kind of attention? Don’t these states of absorption involve stimulus selection and enhancement of relevant features, suppression of distractors, and other hallmarks of attention? Jennings says none of this is tantamount to attention. Recall that she thinks attention is controlled by the self. In these cases, we are invited to imagine that the self takes a passive role: control is either ceded to the world (movie watching) or to previously mastered routines (skills and habits). Thus, Jennings’s claim that there is no attention in these cases hangs on her contentious thesis that attention requires a controlling self. One might also push back by arguing that, in some of Jennings’s allegedly selfless examples, the self remains involved. Skilled activities and hypervigilance, for example, can reflect personal interests.Skills and hypervigilance get more airtime in chapter 6. There, Jennings turns to questions of responsibility—a neglected topic in attention research. The chapter begins with a manslaughter trial in which the teenage plaintiff was given a light sentence because the judge evidently believed that the teen’s ADHD compromised his ability to control his actions. The example may be a bit triggering for people who have a personal relationship with this diagnosis, but, putting that aside, Jennings uses it to introduce the important concept of attention-based control. With reduced control, Jennings argues, comes reduced responsibility. I am inclined to see ADHD as involving dysregulation of attention (difficulty disengaging and dividing attention, for example) rather than diminished attention, but that can still be characterized as an issue with control of attention; therefore ADHD still illustrates Jennings’s point that there is a link between responsibility and control of attention. This, it turns out, is only half of her story. Having argued for this link, one might expect Jennings to follow Wayne Wu, who contends that attention is necessary for action, and hence for responsibility. She does not. Instead, she says argues that responsibility can also arise in cases of “strategic automaticity.” This brings us back to skills. When skills are deployed, action is governed by learned pairings between stimuli and responses. The choice to exercise a skill requires attention, so attention is needed for being a responsible agent, but once a skill kicks in, attention is no longer required, and one can be held responsible for actions performed skillfully—thus attention is not required for responsibility tout court. Jennings addresses an opposing view (defended by Wu, Ellen Fridland, and Barbara Montero), according to which skills involve “automatic attention” rather than no attention. Jennings worries that this move will collapse the distinction between attention and other kinds of selection and filtering that occur throughout the nervous system, including the retina. She says that the attentional interpretation of skilled action is at odds with the lack of top-down reweighing of sensory inputs, regulated by lateral frontal cortex. These objections to automatic attention warrant response. My own view is that attention involves broadcasting to working memory, so retinal filtering is ruled out. Jennings’s insistence on top-down reweighing will not move those who believe attention can be purely bottom-up. For all that, I side with Jennings in wanting to allow for responsibility without attentional control. I think we can be responsible for implicit biases, for example. I also think attentional control is insufficient for responsibility, as when we act under duress.Jennings offers fresh perspective on the nature of attention, and its role in meaningful perception, consciousness, action, and responsibility. Each chapter can be read separately, but they hang together well, and each reflects her thesis that attention is essentially linked to the self. Though I am skeptical of that strong claim, we would do well to follow Jennings in regarding attention as interest-laden interface between mind and world. I look forward to a sequel in which attention is related to richer conceptions of identity, and where the political consequences of this link are actively explored. Meanwhile, one can hardly fault Jennings for covering too little. She tackles a remarkable range of topics, from metaphysics to ethics. Her arguments throughout demand response, repay careful study, and propel the field forward. (shrink)

Movements of the Mind is about what it is to be an agent. Focusing on mental agency, it integrates multiple approaches, from philosophical analysis of the metaphysics of agency to the activity of neurons in the brain. Philosophical and empirical work are combined to generate concrete explanations of key features of the mind. The book should be relevant and accessible to philosophers and scientists interested in mind and agency.

Attention has become an important focal point of recent work in ethics and epistemology, yet philosophers continue to be noncommittal about what attention is. In this paper, I defend attention as selection for action in a weak form, namely that selection for action is sufficient for attention. I show that selection for action in this form is part of how we, the folk, experience it and how the cognitive scientist studies it. That is, selection for action pulls empirical and folk-psychology (...) together. Accordingly, philosophers who take seriously either source have reason to work with selection for action as their starting conception of attention. This conception provides a way to bridge empirical and philosophical concerns where attention is central. The theoretical advantages of selection for action have been obscured by the common opinion that it is easily refuted. I defend the position against many of the published objections and then deploy it to provide a foundation for the intuitive, but inchoate idea of attention being more or less, focusing on recent work in the ethics of attention. (shrink)

​I use network models to simulate social learning situations in which the dominant group ignores or devalues testimony from the marginalized group. I find that the marginalized group ends up with several epistemic advantages due to testimonial ignoration and devaluation. The results provide one possible explanation for a key claim of standpoint epistemology, the inversion thesis, by casting it as a consequence of another key claim of the theory, the unidirectional failure of testimonial reciprocity. Moreover, the results complicate the understanding (...) and application of previously discovered network epistemology effects, notably the Zollman effect (Zollman 2007, 2010). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics and Economies of Inquiry: Certeau, Theory, and the Art of PracticeTony Schirato (bio) and Jen Webb (bio)In this paper we will look at what Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, calls “Theories of the Art of Practice.” Certeau is perhaps best known as a theorist of the ways in which everyday practices inhabit the institutions and sites of power and official culture, while not being in (...) any sense recuperable or explicable to these “proper places.” In “Theories of the Art of Practice” he concerns himself not with cultural practices themselves but, rather, with the specific relationship between theoretical discourse and the object of that discourse. In order to do this he takes as examples certain cultural theorists—most obviously Foucault and Bourdieu—whose work is strongly underpinned by an emphasis on the relation between discourse and practice. He offers a detailed consideration and critique of their theories of practice and the tactics those theorists use to escape the theory/practice dichotomy.In the first two paragraphs of “Theories of the Art of Practice,” Certeau identifies the two points which, taken together, constitute the broad narrative of this section of Practice. The first relates to the theoretical basis from which we can approach practice. “Everyday practices,” he writes:depend on a vast ensemble which is difficult to delimit but which we may provisionally designate as an ensemble of procedures. The latter are schemas of operations and of technical manipulations. On the basis of some recent and fundamental analyses (those of Foucault, Bourdieu, Vernant and Détienne, and others) it is possible, if not to define them, at least to clarify their functioning relative to discourse (or to “ideology,” as Foucault puts it), to the acquired (Bourdieu’s habitus), and to the form of time we call an occasion (the kairos discussed by Vernant and Détienne). These are different ways of locating a technicity of a certain type and at the same time situating the study of this technicity with respect to current trends in research.[43]An important issue here is Certeau’s critique of the extent to which each theorist applies a specific technicity (Foucault’s disciplinary procedures, Bourdieu’s habitus) in an attempt to delimit the field, to reduce the multiplicity of practice—or the theorizing of practice—to a singularity. As he points out in his essay on Nicholas of Cusa [“The Gaze” 6], such “ways of proceeding are subject to a common problematics,” because they inscribe a particular way of thinking and seeing and, in that process, risk excluding other ways of understanding. However, Cusa’s praxis: [End Page 86]does not presuppose a language proper to theory, an autonomous metalanguage that would provide a distinct linguistic space for speculation.... A task related to each singularity liberates, as it were, and develops... the “impulsion” which is integral to each and which is revealed to be infinite by the very impossibility of finding a hierarchical unity among singularities.[“The Gaze” 7]What Certeau looks for in the work of Bourdieu and Foucault is the moment, or the “impulsion,” which allows a theoretical engagement with practice. If practice can’t be called up, defined, or finally explicated, what can be done is to plot the relationships between power and its structures, logics, places, and discourse and the objects of power (practices) it seeks to identify and regulate. This allows us to identify both how power seeks to exclude the heterogeneity that is practice and the ways in which practice, despite these acts of exclusion and regulation, leaves its mark on official places (discourses, institutions, the objective structures of cultural fields). What Certeau does is to explore how others (Foucault and Bourdieu in particular, Vernant and Détienne) have explored this terrain.The second move Certeau makes is to contextualize those theories of practice, not so much as metadiscourses or generalized maps but as practices themselves, specific to a time and place and informed both by their theoretical antecedents and by the politics, logics, and discourses of the field(s) within which they operate. This allows Certeau to exemplify both how bodies of theory (as well as intellectual fields) come about and develop and... (shrink)

The increasingly pervasive practice of veiling among Muslim women has stimulated a great deal of scholarly investigation and debate. This study brings empirical evidence to bear on current debates about the meaning of the veil in Islam. This article first examines the conflicting meanings of the veil among Muslim religious elites and Islamic feminists. Although the dominant gender discourse among Muslim elites strongly favors this cultural practice, an antiveiling discourse promulgated by Islamic feminists has gained ground within recent years. This (...) study then examines how these discursive disputes affect gender identity negotiation among veiled and unveiled Muslim women living in Austin, Texas. Interviews with these women highlight how their gender identities reproduce and reformulate existing Muslim gender discourses. Special attention is paid to the subjective disparities and points of congruence between both groups of respondents. This study concludes by suggesting avenues for future research on the intersection of gender, religion, and cultural difference. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that visual attention is cognitively penetrated by intention. I present a detailed account of attention and its neural basis, drawing on a recent computational model of neural modulation during attention: divisive normalization. I argue that intention shifts computations during divisive normalization. The epistemic consequences of attentional bias are discussed.

While Chinese societies often appear centralized and traditional, presumably impeding technology and innovation, these values may simply reflect the negative-leaning poles of Confucianism. This study proposes a Confucian work ethic dimension that stresses justified tradition. In combination with Western innovative cultures, this Chinese style might facilitate learning about knowledge and morality in an interaction seemingly unique to the Chinese science and technology sector. Specifically, contrary to the Western style that tolerates conflict to achieve harmony, Confucian work ethics -an Eastern way (...) -prefer to respect hierarchy to attain harmony. Samples from the multinational corporations in Shanghai and privately owned enterprises in Hsinchu of Taiwan represent two levels of Westernization. The findings reveal that the two types of cultures almost equally influence the facilitation of learning about morality, whereas the Western way more effectively teaches about professional knowledge and the Eastern way more effectively teaches general knowledge. In addition, though the samples from both locations enjoy positive advantages from their combined cultures, Shanghai appears more Westernized than Taiwan, and Taiwan benefits more from Confucian work ethics and a higher level of quality learning, particularly with regard to morality. This result may suggest the benefits of Confucius' ideas, if they are not used excessively to emphasize the negative aspects. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to understand the current state of learners' use of social media in entrepreneurship courses and explore uses and gratifications on social media in entrepreneurship courses from the learners' perspective. The respondents must have participated in government or private entrepreneurship courses and joined the online group of those courses. Respondents are not college students, but more entrepreneurs, and their multi-attribute makes the research results and explanatory more abundant. The methods used are in-depth interviews and questionnaires, (...) a total of 458 valid data was collected. The results of the survey revealed four gratification factors namely trust, profit, learning, and social in online entrepreneurial groups. It is also found that the structures of the four gratification factors vary in three social media (Line, Facebook, and WeChat). In terms of the trust factor, there are significant differences among the three social media. and the score of ''trust'' outranks other factors. Most of the entrepreneurs' business is "networking business", and the business unit is mostly "micro". In short, the two gratification factors of trust and profit can be seen as specific gratifications for online entrepreneurial groups, especially the trust factor, which deserves more attention in the further research of online entrepreneurial courses on social media. (shrink)

Background: Neurofeedback training has recently been proposed as a valuable technique for cognitive enhancement and psychiatric amelioration. However, effect of NFT of alpha activity on memory is controversial. The current study analyzed previous works in terms of randomized and blinded analyses, training paradigms, and participant characteristics to validate the efficacy of alpha NFT on memory in a healthy population.Objectives: A systematic meta-analysis of studies with randomized controlled trials was performed to explore the effect of alpha NFT on working memory and (...) episodic memory in a healthy population.Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library from January 1, 1999, to November 30, 2019. Previous studies were evaluated with the Cochrane risk of bias. A meta-analysis calculating absolute weighted standardized mean difference using random-effects models was employed. Heterogeneity was estimated using I2 statistics. Funnel plots and Egger's test were performed to evaluate the quality of evidence.Results: Sixteen studies with 217 healthy participants in the control group and 210 participants in the alpha group met the eligibility criteria. Alpha NFT studies with WM measures presented little publication bias, and 5 of 7 domains in the Cochrane RoB exhibited a low risk of bias. The overall effect size from 14 WM studies was 0.56. Six EM studies exhibited an effect size of 0.77.Conclusion: Meta-analysis results suggest that alpha NFT seems to have a positive effect on the WM and EM of healthy participants. Future efforts should focus on the neurophysiological mechanisms of alpha NFT in memory. (shrink)

Milner and Goodale's influential account of the primate cortical visual streams involves a division of consciousness between them, for it is the ventral stream that has the responsibility for visual consciousness. Hence, the dorsal visual stream is a ‘zombie’ stream. In this article, I argue that certain information carried by the dorsal stream likely plays a central role in the egocentric spatial content of experience, especially the experience of visual spatial constancy. Thus, the dorsal stream contributes to a pervasive feature (...) of consciousness. (shrink)

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su & Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) and investigated a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the (...) U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. (shrink)