The overall goal of clinical ethics consultation is to “improve the quality of healthcare outcomes” (ASBH 2011, 3). I find this focus helps me avoid people pleasing, system allegiance, being swayed...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 104-107 [Access article in PDF] Motivating Aesthetics Cynthia C. Rostankowski Humanities Department San Jose State University The territory of philosophical aesthetics remains a conceptual hinterland in the world of academic disciplines. It is not the only hinterland, but in comparison to other disciplines in arts and letters, few scholars engage in the subject professionally, and many people avoid the territory it (...) occupies as a place to visit, let alone to tarry or reside. Why is this? Usually people do not wish to visit places that are uncomfortable in some way. Frozen wastelands, blazing deserts, war zones, and places with nothing to do or see are usually avoided because they are perceived as unpleasant, dangerous, or boring,and the same is very likely true of their conceptual analogs. In what senses might some people perceive aesthetics as analogous to Siberia, Sudan, or central Kansas? I would like to investigate what it is about aesthetics that causes people to shy away from it more often than to flock to it. I have long been fascinated by the responses of students who express amazement or confusion when exposed to the field of aesthetics as a part of an introductory philosophy class, or of arts educators who do not know what to do with aesthetics since it does not seem quite to fit with the rest of what they do, or the responses of some artists or other arts practitioners who are occasionally disdainful of aesthetics. It would be easy to say that aesthetics has merely had bad press or inadequate exposure in the classroom, but I suspect there is more to it than that. I have experienced many of the situations I have just mentioned, and they have usually surprised and sometimes demoralized [End Page 104] me. They have always motivated me to think harder about my beloved field of interest, to try to reveal its attractions to those who do not find it as appealing and engaging as I do, or as you, my reader does. (I am presuming that one who is reading an essay in a journal about aesthetic education has already found his or her comfort zone in the field.) I will also presume to offer some thoughts about motivating an interest in aesthetics among the aesthetically uninterested — why one might want to do it, and what one might do. Please note, I am not speaking of the aesthetically disinterested 1 ; they too have already found their place in the discipline!It is likely that the problem of aesthetics has to do in part with misunderstandings, and those misunderstandings are multi-layered. If one looks up the word "aesthetic" in the Oxford English Dictionary, one finds the following: (F)rom the Greek for perception...and, being pre-occupied;...pertaining to things perceptible by the senses, things material;..."criticism of taste"...the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception...of or pertaining to the appreciation or criticism of the beautiful...Recent extravagances in the adoption of a sentimental archaism as the ideal of beauty have still further removed aesthetic and its derivatives from their etymological and purely philosophical meaning. There are varied suggestions about the use of the term, including the mention of its removal in contemporary parlance from its original meanings. If one looks up the keyword "aesthetic" on the Internet, one may find the following sites: skin care, plastic surgery, dentistry, exterior and interior design, tattoos, and some art, art theory, and philosophy among other things. An exemplification in practice of what is suggested in the OED. It is clear that the meaning of the word "aesthetic" has become at best imprecise, at worst confusing in common parlance.So, the first misunderstanding regarding aesthetics is the meaning of the term. What is philosophical aesthetics? It is not what some misconstrue as the imposition of value judgments on society. Unfortunately, some presume that because matters of taste or definitions of beauty are considered in the field, someone must be telling someone what they ought to think is pleasing or beautiful. This is not the focus... (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 145-148.

Blair makes a strong case that fluid cognition and psychometric g are not identical constructs. However, he fails to mention the development of the prefrontal cortex, which likely makes the Gf–g distinction different in children than in adults.1 He also incorrectly states that current IQ tests do not measure Gf; we discuss several recent instruments that measure Gf quite well. (Published Online April 5 2006).

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

This paper explores the interrelations between a wide variety of strategies being deployed to take away the political power of the fossil fuel industry. This paper explains why challenging the political power of the industry is a crucial part of work to address the climate crisis. It explains the logics underlying a variety of strategies to challenge that political power. It explores the ways these disparate strategies, even when not coordinated, can undermine the variety of “pillars of support” which prop (...) up the industry’s political power. Activists are working on multiple fronts to undermine the fossil fuel industry’s political power. As a participant in this movement myself, I wrote this paper as a way of clarifying the strategic objectives of our movement. I hope that those outside the movement will find its approach to challenging entrenched destructive political agents helpful for understanding this and other struggles. (shrink)

Picking up where Peggy McKintosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” left off, this essay looks further into the ways that racial privilege manifests itself in the lives of white Americans. It explores some of the reasons that white privilege is hard for whites to see and it explores the question of how white people can act responsibly given the unavoidable realities of racial privilege.

Two distinct doctrines of the will operate in Nietzsche. On one, each person has a will that grows out of their engagement with life. This view can be the basis for a feminist epistemology. On the other, the will must be stimulated through the creation of unattainable goals and games of seduction. This view of the will is misogynist, as it posits a self that must constitute for itself a dominated and silenced other.

The Psychology of Creative Writing takes a scholarly, psychological look at multiple aspects of creative writing, including the creative writer as a person, the text itself, the creative process, the writer's development, the link between creative writing and mental illness, the personality traits of comedy and screen writers, and how to teach creative writing. This book will appeal to psychologists interested in creativity, writers who want to understand more about the magic behind their talents, and educated laypeople who enjoy reading, (...) writing, or both. From scholars to bloggers to artists, The Psychology of Creative Writing has something for everyone. (shrink)

Using data from a randomized field experiment within a Deliberative Poll, this paper examines deliberation’s effects on both policy attitudes and the extent to which ordinal rankings of policy options approach single-peakedness (a help in avoiding cyclical majorities). The setting was New Haven, Connecticut, and its surrounding towns; the issues were airport expansion and revenue sharing – the former highly salient, the latter not at all. Half the participants deliberated revenue sharing, then the airport; the other half the reverse. This (...) split-half design helps distinguish the effects of the formal on-site deliberations from those of other aspects of the treatment. As expected, the highly salient airport issue saw only a slight effect, while much less salient revenue-sharing issue saw a much larger one. (shrink)

Historical narratives can satisfy basic individual psychological needs. However, an over-reliance on a group's past can marginalize those who think differently – thus, homogenizing the culture and stifling creativity. By revising narratives to balance the power of collective narratives with the richness of individuality, we foster groups that encourage varied identities.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an abrupt change in routines and livelihoods all around the world. This public health crisis amplified a number of systemic inequalities that led to populations needing to grapple with universally difficult truths. Yet some individuals, firms, and countries displayed resilient and creative responses in coping with pressing demands on healthcare and basic sanity. Past work has suggested that engaging in creative acts can be an adaptive response to a changing environment. Therefore, the purpose of this (...) paper is to describe how entities at the personal, community, and national levels cultivated and expressed creativity in an effort to make meaning during COVID-19. By overlaying the Four C model of creativity on such responses, we aim to (a) to connect mini, little, Pro, and Big creative behaviors with our attempts to make meaning of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and (b) to suggest how engaging in creative expression can be used to guard against the adverse consequences of this outbreak. Acknowledging that this time has been and continues to be distressing and filled with uncertainty, we propose some ways of making sense of current events by applying original thinking across domains. Further, we propose how engaging in creativity can serve to buffer against the negative effects of living through the pandemic. (shrink)

We consider the motivation for the principle of bottom-up priority and its consequence for information flow in Merge. The relationship between the bottom-up priority rule and inhibitory effects is also discussed, along with data that demonstrate inhibitory influences in phoneme monitoring.

Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom is a groundbreaking collection of essays by leading scholars, who examine and respond to the tension that many educators face in valuing student creativity but believing that they cannot support it given the curricular constraints of the classroom. Is it possible for teachers to nurture creative development and expression without drifting into curricular chaos? Do curricular constraints necessarily lead to choosing conformity over creativity? This book combines the perspectives of top educators and psychologists to generate (...) practical advice for considering and addressing the challenges of supporting creativity within the classroom. It is unique in its balance of practical recommendations for nurturing creativity and thoughtful appreciation of curricular constraints. This approach helps ensure that the insights and advice found in this collection will take root in educators' practice, rather than being construed as yet another demand placed on their overflowing plate of responsibilities. (shrink)

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like (...) automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

The unbridled positivity toward curiosity and creativity may be excessive. Both aid species survival through exploration and advancement. These beneficial effects are well documented. What remains is to understand their optimal levels and contexts for maximal achievement, health, and well-being. Every beneficial element to individuals and groups carries the potential for harm – curiosity and creativity included.

Singles are an understudied yet growing segment of the adult population. The current study aims to expand the lens of relationship science by examining the well-being of unpartnered, single adults using latent profile analysis. We recruited singles closely matched to the United States census for an exploratory cross-sectional survey using five variables that strongly predict well-being. All five variables significantly predicted life satisfaction for the full sample. Latent profile analyses detected 10 groups of singles. Half of the profiles were happy (...) and half of the profiles were unhappy. Each profile had its own unique patterns relating to personal relationships, self-esteem, and personality traits. The happiest profile had the best relationships, self-esteem, and personality, while the unhappiest profile had the worst relationships, self-esteem, and personality. The profiles in between these two extremes had more nuanced patterns. For example, one relatively happy profile in the middle had high friendship satisfaction but low family satisfaction, while an adjacent profile showed the opposite pattern. Overall, singles who had positive relationships—both with themselves and others—were happiest. (shrink)

Creativity is of rising interest to scholars and laypeople alike. Creativity in the arts, however, is very different from creativity in science, business, sports, cooking, or teaching. This book brings together top experts in the field from around the world to discuss creativity across many different domains. Each chapter includes clear definitions, intriguing research, potential measures, and suggestions for development or future directions. After a broad discussion of creativity across different domains, subsequent chapters look deeper into those individual domains to (...) explore how creativity varies when expressed in different ways. Ultimately, the book offers a future-looking perspective integrating the different variations of creativity across domains. (shrink)

The research programs of empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics have reflected deep concerns about viewers' sensitivities to artworks' historical contexts by investigating the impact of two factors on art perception: viewers' developmental (and educational) histories and the contextual histories of artworks. These considerations are consistent with data demonstrating that art perception is underwritten by dynamically reconfigured and evolutionarily adapted neural and psychological mechanisms.

Book reviewed in this article: Ethics and Critical Care Medicine. John C. Moskop and Loretta Kopelman, eds. Dordrecht: D. Reidel “Ethical Moments in Critical Care Medicine,” symposium issue of Critical Care Clinics. James P. Orlowski and George A. Kanoti, eds.

Students display resistance, including academic dishonesty, at all educational levels. In the present study, we qualitatively examined the extent and incidence of academic misbehaviors by 101 US college students. Using a combination of self-reported closed- and open-ended questions, we developed a multi-faceted understanding of how students perceived their own classroom misbehaviors to avoid work as being original, clever, deceptive, and unethical. Questions pertaining to possible prevention, impact on grade, and repetition of the misbehavior were also included. Further, environmental contributors of (...) such behavior were explored, inclusive of the teacher, curriculum, larger school/institutional reasons, peers, and out-of-school issues. Thematic analyses identified distinct themes related to each factor, with poor time management emerging as a salient antecedent across factors. The present study also reviews and provides strategies to improve time management among students to mitigate future instances of academic misbehavior. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have documented the racial disparities of mass incarceration. In this paper we argue that, although retributivism and deterrence theory appear to be race-neutral, in the contemporary U.S. context these seemingly contrary theories function jointly to rationalize racial inequities in the criminal justice system. When people of color are culturally associated with criminality, they are perceived as both irresponsible and hyperresponsible, a paradox that reflects their status as what Charles Mills calls subpersons. Following from this paradox, criminality (...) is understood as an atemporal characteristic of people of color, such that they are conceived as pre-criminals, criminals, or post-criminals. In Frantz Fanon’s account, overdetermination expresses this exclusion of people of color from full agency by capturing them within a rigid, immutable essence, which then controls the social meaning of their actions. The backward-looking quality of retribution and the forward-looking quality of deterrence then treat people of color as more deserving of punishment (and more severe punishment) and as threats to the social order who have to be restrained. We should read the racialization of mass incarceration as a symptom of how precariously people of color participate in the social contract and as reflections of how theories of punishment have been racially deployed. (shrink)

Students display resistance in the classroom in numerous ways, often in the form of academic misconduct. Some argue that resistance can reflect cleverness and creativity, rather than apathy. This investigation aimed to develop a psychometric tool to examine classroom resistance as well as identify individual and situational determinants of the same. Data from 853 participants was collected on measures of resistance behaviors in educational contexts and their environmental contributors, creativity, personality, and deception. Further, participants indicated their frequency of resistance across (...) two time periods: kindergarten through middle school, and high school through college. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a robust three-factor structure for the Classroom Resistance Scale, comprising Test-Oriented Cheating, Blatant Academic Dishonesty, and Unethical Shortcuts. The person-situation analysis indicated that students who engaged in resistance shared some consistent characteristics: they were more likely to be closed to new experiences, unimaginative, more extraverted, and highly influenced by their peers. Moreover, the frequency of classroom resistance increased in higher grades as compared to lower ones. Implications of spillover effects of academic dishonesty into the workplace are discussed, in addition to suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Requiring that a woman who is seeking an abortion be given the opportunity to view an ultrasound of her fetus has spread from anti-abortion “pregnancy resource centers” to state laws. Proponents of these laws claim that having access to the ultrasound image is necessary for a woman to make a medically informed decision. In this paper, we argue that ultrasound examinations frame fetuses visually and linguistically as persons and interpellate pregnant women as mothers, with all of the cultural meaning invested (...) in those two normative concepts. Presenting these judgments as medical information is misleading. Because women are being subjected to these cultural expectations unknowingly, mandatory ultrasound laws in fact undermine women’s autonomy. Fully informed consent would include a critical engagement with social norms around femininity and a recognition that such laws are meant to advance the state’s interest in preserving potential life. (shrink)

Light effects on the activity of several genes have recently been exploited in studies of plant gene expression. We discuss here some examples involving nuclear genes of higher plants, with emphasis on responses mediated by the phytochrome system. Recent work has revealed considerable diversity in the responses of different genes, indicating that several different regulatory programs are probably involved. A start has been made in studies of nuclear events associated with the changes in expression. Transcriptional regulation almost certainly occurs, although (...) many details remain to be studied and effects on mRNA processing and turnover have not been ruled out. Recent in vitro mutagenesis and gene transfer experiments with the gene for the small subunit of RuBP carboxylase indicate that sequences involved in regulating the level of expression in the light are located 5′ to the gene within about 1 kb of the start of transcription. (shrink)

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited expertise (...) in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Creativity and Morality summarizes and integrates research on creativity used to achieve bad or immoral ends. The book includes the use of deception, novel ideas to commit wrongdoings across contexts, including in organizations, the classroom and terrorism. Morality is discussed from an individual perspective and relative to broader sociocultural norms that allow people to believe actions are justified. Chapters explore this research from an interdisciplinary perspective, including from psychology, philosophy, media studies, aesthetics and ethics. Summarizes research on creativity used for (...) immoral purposes Identifies individual and sociocultural perspectives on morality Explores creativity in business, education, design and criminal behavior Includes research from psychology, philosophy, ethics, and more. (shrink)