Background: Mental fatigue can impact physical demands and tactical behavior in sport-related contexts. Small-sided games are often used to develop a specific sport-related context. However, the effects of mental fatigue on physical demands and tactical behaviors during soccer SSGs have not been aggregated for systematical assessment.Objective: This systematic review was conducted to compare the effects of mental fatigue vs. control conditions in terms of the total running distance and tactical behavior of soccer players during SSGs.Methods: The data sources utilized were (...) PubMed, PsycINFO, Scielo, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. The study eligibility criteria were established based on PICOS: Population: healthy youth and young adult men soccer players with regular training practice and belonging to teams with regular competitions; Intervention: exposed to mental fatigue-induced protocols only before SSGs; Comparator: control conditions before SSGs; Outcomes: physical demands and tactical behavior ; Study design: counterbalanced cross-over design; and only full-text and original articles written in English.Results: The database search initially identified 111 titles. From those, six articles were eligible for the systematic review and meta-analysis. Results showed no significant effect of fatigue on total running distance and tactical behavior.Conclusions: A non-significant effect of mental fatigue on total running distance and tactical behaviors performed by soccer players during SSGs was found in this systematic review. (shrink)

Background: Small-sided games are an adjusted form of official games that are often used in training scenarios to introduce a specific tactical issue to team sports players. Besides the acute effects of SSGs on players' performance, it is expectable that the consistent use of these drill-based games induces adaptations in the technical execution and tactical behaviors of youth team sports players.Objective: This systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effects of SSG programs on the technical execution and tactical (...) behaviors of young and youth team sports players.Data Sources: The data sources utilized were PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science.Study Eligibility Criteria: Young and youth team sports players (i.e., 17 and <17 SSG training sessions, respectively.Conclusions: This systematic review and meta-analysis revealed a significant beneficial effect of using SSG training programs for enhancing technical execution in young and youth players. The benefits were similar despite the various numbers of training sessions applied. Further studies should add tactical behaviors as one of the outcomes for controlling the effects of SSG training programs. (shrink)

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

Given the complexity of human social life, it is astonishing to observe how quickly children adapt to their social environment. To be accepted by the other members, it is crucial to understand and follow the rules and norms shared by the group. How and from whom do young children learn these social rules? In the experiments, based on the crucial role of affective social learning and dominance hierarchies in simple rule understanding, we showed 15-to-23-month-olds and 3-to-5-year-old children videos where (...) the agents’ body size and affective cues were manipulated. In the dominant rule-maker condition, when a smaller protagonist puts an object in one location, a bigger agent reacts with a positive reaction; on the contrary, when the smaller protagonist puts an object in another location, the bigger agent displays a negative reaction. In the subordinate rule-maker condition, the roles are shifted but the agents differ. Toddlers expect the protagonist to follow the rules (based on anticipatory looks), independent of the dominant status of the rule-making agent. Three-to-five-year-old pre-schoolers overall perform at the chance level but expect the protagonist to disobey a rule in the first trial, and obey the rule in the second trial if the rule-maker is dominant. (shrink)

Cette contribution se propose de caractériser le personnage de Superman au travers du prisme de la série télévisée Smallville. Prioritairement adressée aux adolescents, elle se consacre largement à représenter les rites de passages, qu’ils soient ceux du jeune garçon appelé à devenir un homme parmi les siens, ou ceux du héros en quête de ses origines, devenu une légende inscrite dans l’imaginaire collectif depuis plus de sept décennies. Notre approche s’appuie sur la possibilité d’une lecture de cette série sur deux (...) plans : celui de la biologie imaginée, cerveau imaginé compris ; et celui du cerveau imaginant. Smallville s’offre, de manière quasi immédiate, à une approche mythopoïétique du parcours super-héroïque donné au cours des dix saisons, jouant sur les thématiques de la mémoire, celle des origines comme celle de la génétique imaginée. Elle permet aussi par sa mise en images insistante des capacités spectaculaires du futur Superman, de mieux comprendre dans quel incubateur neural d’ontologies fantastiques le récit puise cette composante génératrice de son célèbre pouvoir de vol aptère, les expériences « hors-du-corps ». Nous avons pu ainsi distinguer dans les « imaginaires du cerveau », aussi clairement que possible, les apports du cerveau imaginant au cerveau imaginé chez notre super-héros. This contribution aims at unveiling—through episodes of television series Smallville —the complementarity of apparently dissociated aspects of Superman character. Primarily targeted at teenagers, rites of passage are pervasive in Smallville, whether for the young boy to become a man, or for the hero to succeed in the quest of his origins—as he became a legend in the collective imagination over more than seven decades. Our approach dwells on the potentiality to read Smallville on two levels: as so-called “naïve” or intuitive biology, including the imagined brain; as the imagining brain, with its neural correlates of imagination, i.e. biology as counter-intuitive as science may be. Smallville lends itself to a mythopoïetic reading, for the life course of our superhero, focussing on his personal memory issues, deeply concerned both with his origins and what is imagined about his own genetics. Smallville allows also, by the dramatic pageantry of Superman supernatural powers by design, to inquire about the neural incubator of such marvel ontologies, over-intuitively gifted, in Superman mainly his airworthiness for wingless flight, like in so-called oneiric out-of-body experiences. Thus in the brain imaginarium we ended with disentangling what of the over-intuitive sensori-motor experience of the imagining brain was tapped into the imagined brain of our superhero. (shrink)

Mangas often reflect the attraction of Japanese culture to combine spiritualities and cultural inspirations in a phenomenon of syncretism widely accepted in both fiction and everyday life. Death Note (Ohba & Obata, 2004-2006) provides an effective example of this phenomenon. The story deals with a notebook that fel from the sky and allows anybody who writes in its pages to kill any human. When young student Light Yagami uses the notebook for his own glory, he quickly encounters the Gods (...) of Death (shinigamis) directly linked to this terrible object. The presence of these creatures and occasional glimpses of their world in the story lead us to offer, in this study, a commentary on different spiritual influences, contemporary or traditional, that may have inspired the authors of Death Note. The creative process that follows, in service of their own narrative, undoubtedly contributes to the success of this work, both in Japan and around the world. (shrink)

The punishment of social misconduct is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing high levels of cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimes labelled “universal structure of human morality” or “pure aversion to social betrayal”. Here we present evidence that, contrary to this hypothesis, the propensity to punish a moral norm violator varies among participants with different career trajectories. In anonymous real-life conditions, future teachers punished a talented (...) but immoral young violinist: they voted against her in an important music competition when they had been informed of her previous blatant misconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversion to social betrayal. We suggest that context specificity plays an important role in normative behaviour; people seem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategically advantageous. (shrink)

This study describes the weekly variations of well-being ratings relative to fatigue, stress, delayed-onset muscle soreness, sleep quality, and Hooper questionnaire throughout the season. In addition, the well-being variables for the playing position in different moments of the season were discussed. Twenty-one elite young soccer players U17 took part in this study. From the beginning of the pre-season, well-being status was monitored daily by the HQ method throughout 36 weeks, including four periods: pre-season, early-season, mid-season, and end-season. Players trained (...) at least 3 times per week throughout the season. The main outcome was that, in weeks 33 and 28, the highest [wFatigue: 15.85 ± 3.38 arbitrary units ; wHQ: 48.86 ± 9.23 AU] and the lowest wFatigue and wHQ occurred, respectively, although the lowest level of wDOMS happened in week 28, while the highest wDOMS was observed in week 5. The highest wSleep and wStress were observed in weeks 8 and 34, respectively, while the lowest wSleep and wStress were marked in week 29 coincidentally. In the HQ between every weekday, except recovery day, and the day of the match, considerable highest HQ was only revealed in 2 days after MD in contrast to overall team comparison. In the present study, we observed that the well-being changes between different phases of the season as well as between weeks and days of the week with the MD are significant. These results provide a great point of view for coaches and practitioners about well-being variations over a season in elite youth soccer level. As a result, coaches will be more aware about non-functional overreaching and taking measures to prevent it. (shrink)

This study analysed the effects a values education programme can have on the feelings of self‐realisation, self‐concept and self‐esteem of Romany adolescents in southern Spain. To do this, an experimental group received a values education intervention but a control group did not. The intervention programme was adapted to the Romany culture. The self‐realisation, self‐concept and self‐esteem of both groups were evaluated using the Self‐Concept and Realisation Questionnaire. Statistical analyses showed the existence of significant differences between the experimental and control groups (...) on the variables studied. Based on the results, we suggest that a values education programme like this, that has been culturally adapted, can make a positive impact on the self‐realisation of young people from a marginalised community. (shrink)

BackgroundOrgan transplantation represents the most effective and acceptable therapy for end-stage organ failure. However, its frequent practice often leads to a shortage of organs worldwide. To solve this dilemma, some countries, such as Portugal, have switched from an opt-in to an opt-out system, which has raised concerns about respect for individual autonomy. We aimed to evaluate whether young university students are aware of this opt-out system so that they can make informed, autonomous and conscious decisions, as well as to (...) identify the factors that determine a positive attitude toward post-mortem organ donation.MethodsAn observational, cross-sectional study was developed and a questionnaire was administered to first-year students from six faculties of the University of Porto.ResultsOf the 841 participants, 60% were unaware that Portugal had adopted an opt-out system. Among the informed individuals, their main sources of information included social media, internet, and family. Furthermore, only 48% of all participants agreed with the current opt-out system. Female sex (p = 0.049; OR 1.393), knowledge of the law (p < 0.001; OR 4.749) and family being the primary source of information (p < 0.001; OR 2.855) were independent factors associated with a positive attitude toward post-mortem organ donation law.ConclusionsThere is a significant lack of knowledge among young university students regarding the presumed post-mortem organ donation law and how it works. Female sex, having family as a primary source of information and being aware of the presumed post-mortem organ donation law are the strongest independent factors that determine a positive attitude toward the opt-out system. (shrink)

Background: Monitoring the daily change in resting heart rate variability can provide information regarding training adaptation and recovery status of the autonomic nervous system during training camps. However, it remains unclear whether postural stabilization is essential for valid and reliable ultra-short-term recordings in short-term overseas training camps.Design: Observational and longitudinal study.Purpose: This study aimed to investigate ultra-short-term heart rate variability recordings under stabilization or post-stabilization periods in four overseas training camps.Participant: Twenty-seven U-20 male national team futsal players voluntarily participated in (...) this study.Method: Resting HRV was evaluated for 10 min during the early morning of each training camp. The natural logarithm of the root mean square of successive normal-to-normal interval differences was used for comparisons. Time segments of HRV were divided into two periods with three measures within each: the first 30-s, the first 60-s, and the 5-min standard during stabilization; the first 30-s, the first 60-s, and the 5-min standard after stabilization.Result: The results demonstrated trivial to small ES, very large to nearly perfect ICC, and narrow range of SEM when all time segments of HRVUST were compared to the 1st_5 min and 2nd_5 min HRV. Furthermore, the magnitude of the correlation coefficients ranged from very high to nearly perfect for all the time segments. The HRVUST posted excellent agreement in all time segments with/without postural stabilization. Trivial to small levels of effect size in all time segments of LnRMSSDmean and LnRMSSDcv across overseas training camps was identified.Conclusion: The first 30 or 60-s LnRMSSD recordings can be used to evaluate daily cardiac-autonomic function during overseas training camps in futsal players. The process for stabilization seems to be unnecessary for measuring the morning resting LnRMSSD in overseas training camps among young adult futsal players. (shrink)

It is not intended as some sort of revelation on my part that Greenberg's cultural theory was originally Marxist in its stresses and, indeed in its attitude to what constituted explanation in such matters. I point out the Marxist and historical mode of proceeding as emphatically as I do partly because it may make my own procedure later in this paper seem a little less arbitrary. For I shall fall to arguing in the end with these essay's Marxism and their (...) history, and I want it understood that I think that to do so is to take issue with their strengths and their main drift.But I have to admit there are difficulties here. The essays in question ["Avant-Garde and Kitsch" and "Towards a Newer Lacoön"] are quite brief. They are, I think, extremely well written: it was not for nothing the Partisan Review described Clement Greenberg, when he first contributed to the journal early in 1939, as "a young writer who works in the New York customs house"—fine, redolent avant-garde pedigree, that! The language of these articles is forceful and easy, always straightforward, blessedly free from Marxist conundrums. Yet the price paid for such lucidity, here as so often, is a degree of inexplicitness—certain amount of elegant skirting round the difficult issues, where one might otherwise be obliged to call out the ponderous armory of Marx's concepts and somewhat spoil the low of the prose from one firm statement to another. The Marxism, in other words, is quite largely implicit; it is stated on occasion, with brittle and pugnacious finality, as the essay's frame of reference, but it remains to the reader to determine just how it works in the history and theory presented—what that history and theory depend on, in the way of Marxist assumptions about class and capital or even abase and superstructure. That is what I intend to do in this paper: to interpret and extrapolate from the texts, even at the risk of making their Marxism declare itself more stridently than the "young writer" seems to have wished. And I should admit straight away that there are several point in what follows where I am genuinely uncertain as to whether I am diverging from Greenberg's argument or explaining it more fully. This does not worry me overmuch, as long as we are alerted to the special danger in this case, dealing with such transparent yet guarded prose, and as long as we can agree that the project in general—pressing home a Marxist reading of texts which situate themselves within the Marxist tradition—is a reasonable one.22. This carelessness distinguishes the present paper from two recent studies of Greenberg's early writings, Serge Guilbaut's "The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America," October 15 , and Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock's "Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed," Art History 3 I am indebted to both these essays and am sure that their strictures on the superficiality—not to say the opportunism–of Greenberg's Marxism are largely right. But I am nonetheless interested in the challenge offered to most Marxist, and non-Marxist, accounts of modern history by what I take to be a justified though extreme, pessimism as t the nature of established culture since 1870. That pessimism is characteristic, I suppose, of what Marxists call an ultraleftist point of view. I believe, as I say, that a version of some such view is correct and would therefore with to treat Greenberg's theory as if it were a decently elaborated Marxism of an ultraleftist kind, on which issues in certain mistaken views but which need not so issue and which might still provide, cleansed of those errors, a good vantage for a history of our culture.T. J. Clark, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is the author of The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. His book on impressionist painting and Paris is forthcoming. (shrink)

There is usually great concern over the use of psychiatric patients for clinical research, as it raises the ethical and legal issues of human dignity and autonomy. In this paper the authors describe and evaluate a follow-up neurobiological study of patients who had been discharged from a psychiatric research ward at least ten months earlier. It is pointed out that such studies are rare and that the writers were provided with the unique opportunity to examine attitudinal and motivational dimensions involved (...) in the patients' agreement to participate in the study. (shrink)

For much of his adult life, Nietzsche wrote notes on philosophical subjects in small notebooks that he carried around with him. After his breakdown and subsequent death, his sister supervised the publication of some of these notes under the title The Will to Power, and that collection, which is textually inaccurate and substantively misleading, has dominated the English-speaking discussion of Nietzsche's later thought. The present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings from Nietzsche's late (...) notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by Rüdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Campaigners against corruption advocate transparency as a fundamental condition for its prevention. Trans-parency in itself is not the most important thing: it is the accountability that it makes possible. Transparency itself is, in fact, a metaphor based on the ability of light to pass through a solid, but transparent, medium and reveal what is on the other side. In practice it allows the revelation of what otherwise might have been concealed, and it is applied in a social context to the (...) revelation of human activity in which there is a valid public interest. It can be applied to all of those who hold power and responsibility, whether that is political or economic. More accurate definition of the term, including distinctions between open governance, procedural transparency, radical transparency, and systemic or total transparency is important. Various ways in which an observer can make use of transparency to scrutinise the activity of others, including freedom of information laws, accounting and audit systems, and the protection of public interest disclosure also need to be distinguished from each other. (shrink)

For much of his adult life, Nietzsche wrote notes on philosophical subjects in small notebooks that he carried around with him. After his breakdown and subsequent death, his sister supervised the publication of some of these notes under the title The Will to Power, and that collection, which is textually inaccurate and substantively misleading, has dominated the English-speaking discussion of Nietzsche's later thought. The present volume offers, for the first time, accurate translations of a selection of writings from Nietzsche's late (...) notebooks, dating from his last productive years between 1885 and 1889. Many of them have never before been published in English. They are translated by Kate Sturge from reliable texts in the Colli-Montinari edition, and they are edited by Rüdiger Bittner, whose introduction places them in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

The meaning of beauty.--Aesthetic experience.--Creator and creation.--Criticism and creation.--Taste.--Theory and practice.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artforum, Andy Warhol, and the Art of Living:What Art Educators Can Learn from the Recent History of American Art WritingDavid Carrier (bio)When around 1980 I began writing art criticism, Artforum was much concerned with historical analysis.1 When presenting the work of younger painters and sculptors, it seemed natural to explain artists' accomplishments by identifying precedents for their work. Much of my criticism published in the 1980s presented post-formalist accounts (...) of abstract painting. Seeking precedents for the painting I admired, I looked to the history of art. But such pleas for the value of tradition were doomed. Commentators preaching the values of tradition lost out to the writers emphasizing a break with the past. Much of interest for art education can be learned by studying the history of this very influential, small circulation journal.Only in retrospect did the urgency of this felt need for a break with the past become apparent. The history of responses to Abstract Expressionism suggested a different way of thinking about moments of change. HaroldRosenberg's conception of "action painting" implied that Pollock broke dramatically with the past. Clement Greenberg, by contrast, in a famous phrase said: "I do not think it exaggerated to say that Pollock's 1946-1950 manner really took up Analytic Cubism from the point at which Picasso and Braquehad left it...in their collages of 1912 and 1913."2 Greenberg's counter-intuitive analysis, asking us to see very different looking paintings as essentially similar, had prevailed. So it was not unreasonable to expect that after Greenberg, concern with tradition would remain important. But that was not what happened.Demand for a break with the past often carries political overtones. Historians debate whether the French Revolution broke with the past, or merely developed trends of the old regime. The idea of a complete break with tradition can seem attractive, but of course such dramatic ways of thinking underestimate real continuities. Struggle among post-Greenbergian artwriters to define a new critical paradigm mimics conflicts among artists to define the [End Page 1] leading post-Abstract Expressionist tradition. Once a critical paradigm has been established, debate may proceed peacefully. But when defining a period style is at issue, the stakes are high, and so conflicts are ferocious. Of course, struggle is always accompanied also by co-operation, but failing to grasp the real role of conflict leads to all-too-pious visions of what is possible.Greenberg developedthe most influential critical approach, and so when his way of thinking was rejected, a radically different approach was of most interest. Here we are dealing with what Harold Bloom famously called the anxiety of influence. Just as the most interesting painting after Abstract Expressionism deconstructed that tradition, so in criticism no ways of thinking too similar to Greenberg's stood a chance of being important. I think it interesting to reconstruct the process rationally in which an individual obtains such power. A totem, Freud explains, is "an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan."3 The communion bread and wine are just bread and wine, but for the believer they become Christ's body and blood. Rationally speaking, a representational painting is just pigment on canvas; and a minimalist sculpture, just shaped metal. But in what Arthur Danto calls the "transfiguration of the commonplace," "a work of art...has qualities to attend to which its untransfigured counterpart lacks...We are dealing with an altogether different order of things."4 Greenberg became a totem. He was not just an important writer whose arguments entitled him to reasonable respect. The mere mention of his name invoked irrational fears.Greenberg was obsessed with tradition. Abstract Expressionism was rooted in early modernism, so that the era from Manet through Pollock defined a period style. Greenberg's historiography may seem inescapable. How can a young painter be understood except by seeking precedents for her achievement? Cannot the now famous artists who emerged in the 1980s be understood in these terms? Barbara Kruger comes out of John Heartfield and dada... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sick with PassionAlfred LouchOpera: Desire, Disease, Death, by Linda and Michael Hutcheon; xvi & 294 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, $40.00.IDriving east from the Auvergne you may chance upon La Chaise-Dieu, a charming village where a very acceptable cafe confronts the fortress-like Abbatiale de St Robert across the village square. The church itself is an imposing monument to the ephemeral glory of the Avignon Pope Clement (...) VI, but its most extraordinary feature is a fresco in the aisle to the left of the choir. Called the Danse Macabre, it depicts death as a sequence of skeletons, each of which beckons, pleads with, consoles, or compels its many victims—young and old, rich and poor, exalted or mean—toward their inevitable end. At times the skeleton’s posture is sinister and threatening, at others, as with children, it seems to turn away, as if to shield them from its fearful aspect. The skeletons seem to catch the movement of a single dancer as they select one partner after another, taking the life of each in a graceful though ghastly movement.The fresco depicts the Black Death—art inspired by disease and contagion. But even if you were as innocent of history as the typical American tourists you would confront in the fresco the undeniable image of death, and the caprice of its visitation, a thought contrasting strangely with the enduring granite of the church. Your experience may be enriched by history and lead you to moralize on the contrast [End Page 155] between the pomp and grandeur of the papal builder and the fresco’s depiction of the vanity of human wishes. But it would be a jarring note if some know-it-all in the company of viewers were to lecture for all to hear on the transmission and symptoms of pasteurella pestis. That is another story, and an interesting one, but not here and now.And so it is, if not so abrasively, with a recent book by Linda and Michael Hutcheon on desire, disease, and death in opera. They hope to shed new light, by combining literary analysis and the medical theory of disease and contagion, on the themes and purposes of opera, or certain operas anyway. Somehow the passages on mycobacterium tuberculosis, treponema pallidum, and vibrio cholerae, together with graphic descriptions of the symptoms caused by these micro-organisms, and an accompanying photograph of syphilitic gummæ seem intrusive, just as talk about the etiology and the pathology of the plague strikes a discordant note as we look upon the Danse Macabre in wonder and fear. The Hutcheons, a husband and wife team who practice, respectively, medicine and literary criticism, tell the reader they are opera lovers. I hope their affection is not prompted only by infection.But why shouldn’t medicine and its history be relevant to literary, artistic, or musical creation? Think here of a question Wittgenstein asks in Zettel (paragraph 610): “Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concept of causality then it is high time it was upset.” He did not mean to say that it would not be surprising if someone talked and acted and looked like a person but turned out to have an empty skull. But he did mean surely that talk about human projects and emotions is complete as it stands; what is going on in the neurons and what busy microbes are doing are other stories. Literature is about human projects, the skill or clumsiness with which they are pursued, the responses to success and failure, achievement and frustration. Opera, which, ever since someone had the idea of putting story to song, raided literary invention for its subject matter, is the same. Heroes and villains may of course be expected to be vulnerable to the various vicissitudes of life. Diseases may lay them low, as well as passing trains. But disease enters their stories to delay or frustrate or put period to their projects, not as new characters on the stage. If you read about the death of Ivan Illych and come away dissatisfied because Tolstoy failed to identify the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 99-104 [Access article in PDF] New York Art, Pittsburgh Art, Art 1 David Carrier Champney Family Professor Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Art I. New York Art A fully developed artworld requires not only artists, but also a support system — schools to teach the artists, commercial galleries to display art, and the connected artmarket; public museums and their curators to (...) make that art available to the public; and also, last and least, artwriters to interpret and evaluate the art. This has been true for a long time in America and Europe. I speak of artwriters as "last and least" just because we are important only in some artworlds. In the seventeenth century Poussin depended upon commentary of intellectuals, but his contemporaries Rembrandt and Vermeer did not. In this country, New York is such an artworld and so, perhaps, is Los Angeles. These are the places where young artists go to establish themselves, and so they are the places where the most original new art tends to be made. Artists outside of those centers then imitate the art made there.Artworld centers tend to be large business centers because they require major museums and many collectors. Each component of this system is dependent upon the others. Unless they have collectors, artists cannot support themselves without doing other jobs; unless there are museums, there is no public space in which art can be seen. Unless there are artwriters, there is no way to articulate shared experience of this art. This artworld is a product of modernist bourgeois democracy. Premodern cultures did not have public museums. Nowadays information is disseminated quickly, but the role of centers as places where new art is made, seen, and discussed remains essential. Our novel electronic technologies have not changed this situation.A collecting culture requires not just wealth, but also a special sort of sensibility. In fact, the number of serious collectors anywhere is surprisingly small, as one can see in Los Angeles, which has a great deal of wealth, but a surprisingly thin gallery system. Like collectors, artwriters too are odd sorts of creatures. I usually identify myself as a New York-based critic, because that is where I see most of the shows I review. Artforum, the Burlington Magazine, and Tema Celeste, the journals I now work for have a real interest in exhibitions at the Carnegie and the Warhol, in Pittsburgh, but no concern with shows like this one. Partly the problem is that reviewing space is very hard to come by, but also the difficulty is that it is difficult to make sense of a review discussing artists who are known only locally. Even were I to identify [End Page 99] someone local as a wonderful original talent, it would be very difficult for readers who have never seen her art to evaluate that claim.In Pittsburgh we certainly have good artists, and there are several universities with art departments. But here, as elsewhere in the cities I know, the artmarket is focused on New York; and there is, so far as I can see, only modest critical support for artists. Major collectors here, as elsewhere in America, look to New York, which has a critical mass of galleries, museums, and critics. The Carnegie too, tends to look to New York when planning its shows. The curators travel widely, but most of the art they show, whether American or from elsewhere, is displayed in New York galleries. If one adopts this way of thinking about an artworld, then art made in Pittsburgh inevitably will be judged as "provincial." There are a few major artists, and many derivative ones; and those major ones, the innovators, are in the artworld centers.This is the model Vasari adopts, it is Clement Greenberg's model, and it is the basic model driving the present day artworld. To describe Pittsburgh artists as provincial, then, is to identify the sociological structure of this, a typical local artworld. There is a lot of adventure and intelligence in Pittsburgh art, but inevitably to the critic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overcoming Greed:An Eastern Christian Perspective1Valerie A. KarrasAs an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I have chosen to approach the topic of "overcoming greed" from an Eastern Christian perspective, relying particularly on the writings of some of the early theologians of the Greek East. It is not coincidental either that laissez-faire capitalism arose in the Western Christian world, or that the first strongholds of communism developed in Eastern European, traditionally Orthodox, countries. (...) Both phenomena speak to an intrinsic difference in the way in which human beings are conceived as relating to the world and to each other, both personally and communally.The traditional Eastern Christian model of the human person as not simply caretaker of creation, but fundamentally as a mediator uniting all aspects of creation in humanity's own nature,2 has led historically to a general lack of interest in exploiting creation (in fact, the worst environmental problems in the Orthodox world occurred in countries after they came under totalitarian communist domination). Similarly, the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on the relational, and even communal, nature of salvation created an environment hostile to the individualist, exploitative model upon which modern Western economics has been founded (this has been rapidly changing in post-communist Eastern European countries and Russia, however).The Eastern Church identifies this phenomenon of exploitative and abusive relationships toward nature and other persons as a consequence of the fallen condition of humanity, that is, humanity as it currently exists, in a state where our natural communion with God has been ruptured. In this context, Christianity in general and Eastern Christianity in particular recognize greed as one of the passions (equivalent to what Buddhism describes as "cravings") that are part of our fallen human nature, a consequence of our separation from God. Some of the passions are primarily physical in nature, others emotional or psychic, but in fact virtually all passions are a combination of the two.Greed, a passion of both soul and body that is endemic to our current existence, is typical of this understanding. There are two aspects to the vice of greed: (1) the emotional or spiritual dimension, that is, the acquisitive lust that usually betokens either a deep-seated insecurity or, worse, a desire for power and control; and (2) the [End Page 47] external, physical manifestations of greed in the actual acquisition of things, often to the detriment or exploitation of others. Eastern Christian writings attempt to work on both dimensions of the passion of greed, especially the spiritual, while often distinguishing between greed (a moral vice) and wealth (an amoral condition).This article will focus on two early church theologians, Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom. In particular, it will focus on their biblical exegeses of two pertinent New Testament passages: Jesus' conversation with a young righteous scholar of the Mosaic Law and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, respectively. Finally, I will suggest that, for Orthodox Christians, an important key to overcoming greed is disciplined asceticism, to be practiced by all persons and not simply by monks and nuns. Asceticism—the exercise of control over the passions through fasting, prayer, chastity (understood differently for married and unmarried persons), and almsgiving—is the vehicle by which to cultivate an attitude of apatheia or passionlessness, the Christian equivalent of the Buddhist ideal of detachment.Clement was a philosopher-theologian who headed the great Christian catechetical school in Alexandria in the late second century C.E. In his treatise Who IstheRich ManWhoWill Be Saved? 3 Clement mused on the spiritual and soteriological dimensions of greed by reflecting on Jesus' encounter with the wealthy young "lawyer," that is, scholar of the Mosaic Law, who questioned Jesus on how to acquire eternal life. In his response, the young man showed himself righteous in his adherence to the demands of the law, but ultimately unwilling to commit all of himself by giving away his property, even though Jesus said that it was the price to inherit eternal life.Clement pondered whether it were therefore possible for anyone wealthy to be saved, given Jesus' declaration that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man... (shrink)

The story of the »Rich Young Man« is one of the most popular biblical texts in the Christian ethical discussion on property and wealth. But looking at the tradition history of this story, we see very different views on the topic, already in the synoptic gospels. Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, giving a detailed exegesis of the Markan version, presents an »economic« interpretation. Thus, the early history of exegesis shows that »simple answers« are (...) not helpful. (shrink)

The pulse-taking scene in Laurence Sterne’s 1768 Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is representative of the fiction. The episode, in which Yorick palpates the wrist of a Parisian grisette or shopgirl, engages with both literal and figurative matters of the heart. Scholars have long speculated about what Sterne may have meant when he described Sentimental Journey as a “work of redemption.” None has connected Yorick’s discourse of sensibility to a contemporary Catholic controversy of which, circumstantial evidence suggests, Sterne may (...) have been aware. This controversy could well have informed the Anglican Sterne’s equivocal rapprochement with Catholic practice. In 1765, Pope Clement XIII approved some measure of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He thus gave credence to the visions of the nun Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, which occurred between 1673 and 1675. After the second Jacobite uprising, in the late 1740s, the young Sterne had joined with his rabidly anti-Papist uncle Jacques to prosecute the nuns of Micklegate Bar outside York, who occupied one of only two convents left in England. In Sentimental Journey, which develops its own tragicomic theory of the Sacred Heart, Sterne may make eccentric amends for his former zealotry. (shrink)

1. Sexual Brains and Body Politics 2. Hormones and Hardwiring 3. Making Sense of Brain Organization Studies 4. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Brain Organization 5. Working Backward from “Distinct‘ Groups 6. Masculine and Feminine Sexuality 7. Sexual Orienteering 8. Sex-Typed Interests 9. Taking Context Seriously 10. Trading Essence for Potential.

Moral judgments, whether delivered in ordinary experience or in the courtroom, depend on our ability to infer intentions. We forgive unintentional or accidental harms and condemn failed attempts to harm. Prior work demonstrates that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex deliver abnormal judgments in response to moral dilemmas and that these patients are especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events, as opposed to real or actual outcomes. We therefore predicted that VMPC patients would deliver (...) abnormal moral judgments of harmful intentions in the absence of harmful outcomes, as in failed attempts to harm. This prediction was confirmed in the current study: VMPC patients judged attempted harms, including attempted murder, as more morally permissible relative to controls. These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment. (shrink)

People disagree about whether “moral facts” are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In Experiment 2, online (...) participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior. (shrink)

Poetry is a process. While people typically refer to poems as textual objects, our experience of poetry is inherently embodied and enacted, meaning that we experience poems as events that we contextualize as gestalt representations. We experience metaphors, too, as processes, which arise from experiential gestalts, that extend gestalt structures and lay the conceptual foundation for our experience of the world. This article argues that, like metaphors, poetic gestalts can be mapped onto other experiences to help people navigate their worlds. (...) While this kind of poetic thought has largely been considered by scholars to have existed only since the emergence of the modern human mind sometime in the last 60,000 years, the author suggests that poetic thought likely arose prior to modern cognition, and may have in fact given rise to it. A crucial aspect of the embodied and enactive approach to poetry outlined in the article is that people’s experience of poetry is fundamentally contextual and emotional. Furthermore, because emotions are a primary source of meaning, our emotional responses to poetry make it a useful tool for extending our own conceptual apparatuses, enhancing emotional intelligence, and for generating shared values. (shrink)

Qualitative-consciousness arises at the sensory level of olfactory processing and pervades our experience of smells to the extent that qualitative character is maintained whenever we are aware of undergoing an olfactory experience. Building upon the distinction between Access and Phenomenal Consciousness the paper offers a nuanced distinction between Awareness and Qualitative-consciousness that is applicable to olfaction in a manner that is conceptual precise and empirically viable. Mounting empirical research is offered substantiating the applicability of the distinction to olfaction and showing (...) that olfactory qualitative-consciousness can occur without awareness, but any olfactory state that we are aware of being in is always qualitative. Evidence that olfactory sensory states have a qualitatively character in the absence of awareness derives from research on mate selection, the selection of social preference for social interaction and acquaintances, as well as the role of olfactory deficits in causing affective disorders. Furthermore, the conservation of secondary processing measures of olfactory valence during olfactory imagery experiments provides verification that olfactory awareness is always qualitatively conscious—all olfactory consciousness smells phenomenal. (shrink)

What is the relation between monetary policy and inequalities in income and wealth? This question has received insufficient attention, especially in light of the unconventional policies introduced since the 2008 financial crisis. The article analyzes three ways in which the concern central banks show for inequalities in their official statements remains incomplete and underdeveloped. First, central banks tend to care about inequality for instrumental reasons only. When they do assign intrinsic value to containing inequalities, they shy away from trade-offs with (...) the standard objectives of monetary policy that such a position entails. Second, central banks play down the causal impact monetary policy has on inequalities. When they do acknowledge it, they defend their actions by claiming that it is an unintended side effect, that it is temporary, and/or that any alternative policy would fare even worse. The article appeals to the doctrine of double effect to criticize these arguments. Third, even if one accepts that inequalities should be contained and that today’s monetary policies exacerbate them, is it both desirable and feasible to make containing inequalities part of the mandate of central banks? The article analyzes and rejects three attempts on the part of central banks to answer this question negatively. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, the questionnaire was one means of taking the case study into the multitudes. This article engages with Forrester’s idea of thinking in cases as a means of interrogating questionnaire-based research in early American psychology. Questionnaire research was explicitly framed by psychologists as a practice involving both natural historical and statistical forms of scientific reasoning. At the same time, questionnaire projects failed to successfully enact the latter aspiration in terms of synthesizing masses of collected data into (...) a coherent whole. Difficulties in managing the scores of descriptive information questionnaires generated ensured the continuing presence of individuals in the results of this research, as the individual case was excerpted and discussed alongside a cast of others. As a consequence, questionnaire research embodied an amalgam of case, natural historical, and statistical thinking. Ultimately, large-scale data collection undertaken with questionnaires failed in its aim to construct composite exemplars or ‘types’ of particular kinds of individuals; to produce the singular from the multitudes. (shrink)

To fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease, more than 3 billion people in the world have been confined indoors. Although lockdown is an efficient solution, it has had various psychological consequences that have not yet been fully measured. During the lockdown period in France, we conducted two surveys on two large panels of participants to examine how the lockdown disrupted their relationship with time and what this change in their experiences of time means. Numerous questions were asked about (...) the experience of time but also the nature of life during the lockdown: the emotions felt, boredom, the activities performed, sleep quality, and the daily rhythm. The participants also completed a series of self-reported scales used to assess depression, anxiety, and impulsivity. The results showed that time seemed to pass more slowly during the lockdown compared to before. This feeling of a slowing down of time has little to do with living conditions during the lockdown and individual psychological characteristics. The main predictor of this time experience was boredom and partly mediated by the lack of activity. The feeling of being less happy and the presence of sleep disturbance also explained this specific experience of time albeit to a lesser extent. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous. This essay begins by defending the view that this claim is empirical. It goes on to review the empirical literature and finds that this literature supports the claim philosophers have made. Three mechanisms are identified whereby reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous: empathy is increased when readers enter imaginatively into the lives of fictional characters; reading literary fiction promotes self-reflection; and readers mimic the prosocial behaviour of fictional (...) characters. The paper concludes with a caution: there is a danger that readers could mimic antisocial behaviour displayed in literary fiction. If they do, reading some literary fiction could make readers less virtuous. (shrink)