Though emotion conveys memory benefits, it does not enhance memory equally for all aspects of an experience, nor for all types of emotional events. In this review, I outline the behavioral evidence for arousal's focal enhancements of memory and describe the neural processes that may support those focal enhancements. I also present behavioral evidence to suggest that these focal enhancements occur more often for negative experiences than for positive ones. This result appears to arise because of valence-dependent effects on the (...) neural processes recruited during episodic encoding and retrieval, with negative affect associated with increased engagement of sensory processes, and positive affect leading to enhanced recruitment of conceptual processes. (shrink)

In this work of sweeping erudition, one of our foremost historians of early Christianity considers a variety of theoretical critiques to examine the problems ...

This investigation explores the methodological implications of choosing an unusual example for phenomenological description (here, a bodily awareness practice allowing spontaneous bodily shifts to occur at the leading edge of the living present); for example, the matters themselves are not pregiven, but must first be brought into view. Only after preliminary clarifications not only of the practice concerned, but also of the very notions of the “body” and of “protentionality” is it possible to provide both static and genetic descriptions of (...) the phenomena in question, leading to concluding meditations on the differences between an “integrating” consciousness engaged in a project of knowing and an “improvisational” consciousness open to radical transformation. In the end, however, the Urzeitigung in which what is protended is simply “more time” holds good as the invariant governing the deep structure of both of these styles of consciousness. (shrink)

In my original review (Kensinger, 2009), I proposed that to understand the effects of emotion on memory accuracy, we must look beyond effects of arousal and consider the contribution of valence. In discussing this proposal, the commentators raise a number of excellent points that hone in on the question of when valence does (and does not) account for emotion's effects on memory accuracy. Though future research will be required to resolve this issue more fully, in this brief response, I address (...) some of the concerns outlined by the commentators and suggest a few steps that may help to elucidate the dimensions that should be incorporated in models of emotional memory. (shrink)

"This work is a valuable casebook, specifically for library and information science professionals, that presents numerous case studies that combine theories of ...

Grosz gives a critical overview of Lacan's work from a feminist perspective. Discussing previous attempts to give a feminist reading of his work, she argues for women's autonomy based on an indifference to the Lacanian phallus.

Current work on hooking up—or casual sexual activity on college campuses—takes an individualistic, “battle of the sexes” approach and underestimates the importance of college as a classed location. The authors employ an interactional, intersectional approach using longitudinal ethnographic and interview data on a group of college women’s sexual and romantic careers. They find that heterosexual college women contend with public gender beliefs about women’s sexuality that reinforce male dominance across both hookups and committed relationships. The four-year university, however, also reflects (...) a privileged path to adulthood. The authors show that it is characterized by a classed self-development imperative that discourages relationships but makes hooking up appealing. Experiences of this structural conflict vary. More privileged women struggle to meet gender and class guidelines for sexual behavior, placing them in double binds. Less privileged women find the class beliefs of the university foreign and hostile to their sexual and romantic logics. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of significant issues facing contemporary information professionals. As the world of information continues to grow at unprecedented speed and in unprecedented volume, questions must be faced by information professionals. Will we participate in the worldwide mythology of equal access for all, or will we truly work towards this debatable goal? Will we accept the narrowing of choice for our corresponding increasing diverse clientele? Such questions must be considered in a holistic context and an understanding of (...) the many levels of information inequities is requisite.Beginning with an historical perspective, Buchanan presents Mustapha Masmoudi''s seminal review of forms of information inequities. She then describes qualitative forms of inequities, such as information imperialism and cultural bias embedded in such practices as cataloging and classification. Following, a review of quantitative inequities is presented. Such issues as the growing commoditization of information and information services demand attention from the ethical perspective. And, finally, the Internet and implications surrounding the world-wide dissemination of information is discussed. (shrink)

The vivid, dramatic images of distant stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have come to define how we visualize the cosmos. In their immediacy and vibrancy, photographs from the Hubble show what future generations of space travelers might see should they venture beyond our solar system. But their brilliant hues and precise details are not simply products of the telescope's unprecedented orbital location and technologically advanced optical system. Rather, they result from a series of deliberate decisions made (...) by the astronomers who convert raw data from the Hubble into spectacular pictures by assigning colors, adjusting contrast, and actively composing the images, balancing the desire for an aesthetically pleasing representation with the need for a scientifically valid one. In Picturing the Cosmos, Elizabeth A. Kessler examines the Hubble's deep space images, highlighting the remarkable resemblance they bear to nineteenth-century paintings and photographs of the American West and their invocation of the visual language of the sublime. Drawing on art history and the history of science, as well as interviews with astronomers who work on the Hubble Heritage Project, Kessler traces the ways that the sublime, with its inherent tension between reason and imagination, not only forms the appearance of the images, but also operates on other levels. The sublime informs the dual expression—numeric and pictorial—of digital data and underpins the relevance of the frontier for a new era of exploration performed by our instruments rather than our bodies. Through their engagement with the sublime the Hubble images are a complex act of translation that encourages an experience of the universe as simultaneously beyond humanity's grasp and within the reach of our knowledge. Strikingly illustrated with full-color images, this book reveals the scientific, aesthetic, and cultural significance of the Hubble pictures, offering a nuanced understanding of how they shape our ideas—and dreams—about the cosmos and our places within it. (shrink)

A central problem in the cognitive sciences is identifying the link between consciousness and neural computation. The key features of consciousness—including the emergence of representative information content and the initiation of volitional action—are correlated with neural activity in the cerebral cortex, but not computational processes in spinal reflex circuits or classical computing architecture. To take a new approach toward considering the problem of consciousness, it may be worth re‐examining some outstanding puzzles in neuroscience, focusing on differences between the cerebral cortex (...) and spinal reflex circuits. First, the mammalian cerebral cortex exhibits exascale computational power, a feature that is not strictly correlated with the number of binary computational units; second, individual computational units engage in noisy coding, allowing random electrical events to gate signaling outcomes; third, this noisy coding results in the synchronous firing of statistically random populations of cells across the neural network, at a range of nested frequencies; fourth, the system grows into a more ordered state over time, as it encodes the predictive value gained through observation; and finally, the cerebral cortex is extraordinarily energy efficient, with very little free energy lost to entropy during the work of information processing. Here, I argue that each of these five key features suggest the mammalian brain engages in probabilistic computation. Indeed, by modeling the physical mechanisms of probabilistic computation, we may find a better way to explain the unique emergent features arising from cortical neural networks. (shrink)

Growing opioid misuse in the United States has resulted in more children living with an adult with an opioid use history. Although an abundance of research has demonstrated a link between opioid misuse and negative parenting behaviors, few intervention efforts have been made to target this underserved population. The Family Check-Up has been tested in more than 25 years of research, across multiple settings, and is an evidence-based program for reducing risk behavior, enhancing parenting skills, and preventing the onset of (...) substance use. It is designed to motivate parents to engage in positive parenting practices and to change problematic parenting and has been tested across a variety of ages including early childhood and adolescence. It is highlighted in NIDA’s Principles of Substance Use Prevention for Early Childhood: A research-based guide as one of only three effective selective prevention programs for substance abuse among families with young children. Recently, we developed an online version of the FCU that has now been adapted for early childhood and families with opioid use histories. The online platform and telehealth model allow for wide-scale dissemination, ease of training with community providers, and increased public health reach for families in remote, rural areas. This is particularly important when targeting families with opioid misuse and addiction because there are high rates of addiction in remote areas, yet few services available. In this article, we describe the FCU Online and review new content in the model that targets a population of young adult parents with substance abuse histories, including opioid use. New modules include content focused on harm reduction for this high-risk population of parents, such as safety in the home, substance use while parenting, and managing conflict with partners and friends. (shrink)

Two recent works in phenomenology of space address unusual themes. Ballanfat’s L’espace vide is concerned with a primal spatialization yielding an Open that is irreducible to a three-dimensional container for objects, while DuFour’s Husserl and Spatiality describes a layered space of ritual whose sensuous immediacy is infused with intercorporeal, interaffective, inter­generational, and geo-historical moments. Both books demonstrate that the phenomenological tradition can deal with complex topics and unfamiliar styles of experience, and both indicate the ethical import of their findings.

Globalization is often seen as the final stage in the transition towards a market economy. It is argued that a side-effect of globalization is cultural homogeneity and loss of life world, or ‘McDonaldization’. McDonaldization represents the rationalization of society in the quest for extreme efficiency. More recently, Meštrović has argued that the rationalization of emotions has also occurred and that Western societies are entering a postemotional phase. In postemotional societies there has been a separation of emotion from action. The result (...) is synthetic, manufactured emotions manipulated and standardized for mass consumption. In this paper I explore what it means to nurse in a ‘postemotional society’ and what impact this dulling of the emotions has had on a profession that locates ‘care’ as its central defining concept. My aim is to generate critical discussion of the shape and direction of contemporary society and the role of nursing within it. (shrink)

Instead of treating art as a unique creation that requires reason and refined taste to appreciate, Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially architecture, music, and painting-is born from the disruptive forces of sexual selection. She approaches art as a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire, and in doing so, finds that the meaning of art comes from the intensities and sensations it inspires, not just its intention and aesthetic. By regarding our most cultured human accomplishments as (...) the result of the excessive, nonfunctional forces of sexual attraction and seduction, Grosz encourages us to see art as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling living bodies to experience and transform the universe. Art can be understood as a way for bodies to augment themselves and their capacity for perception and affection-a way to grow and evolve through sensation. Through this framework, which knits together the theories of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jakob von Uexküll, we are able to grasp art's deep animal lineage. Grosz argues that art is not tied to the predictable and known but to new futures not contained in the present. Its animal affiliations ensure that art is intensely political and charged with the creation of new worlds and new forms of living. According to Grosz, art is the way in which life experiments with materiality, or nature, in order to bring about change. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility the same in all contexts? Is it acceptable for our practices of holding responsible to ignore the reality of trauma, inequality, and oppression? Hundreds of philosophers, drawing on P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment,” have argued for accounts of moral responsibility that would, at least implicitly, answer these questions in the affirmative. Yet these affirmative answers are not, I shall argue, Strawson’s view. Strawson argues for a real-world approach to moral responsibility, a facet of his (...) work that should be acknowledged. That facet should also be extended, using insights from feminist philosophers, philosophers of race, and social and political philosophers. The reinterpretation of Strawson I discuss here makes better sense of moral responsibility, and also supports the improvement of our practices in assigning moral responsibility. We can’t understand the nature and limits of our moral demands—demands on ourselves and others—while ignoring the actual conditions in which those demands are deployed. (shrink)

A revisiting and distillation of themes, questions, and results of the book’s chapters, with a description of possible alternative pathways through the volume. Open problems and suggestions for further research are also offered, laying out a vision of the field as a whole, and calling for future research, especially into topics relating to qualitative vs. quantitative uses of big data, the concept of “media”, issues in the history of philosophy and digital humanities, normative questions concerning social justice, race, gender, and (...) disability, religion, human transformation, virtual and non-virtual reality, collective and individual experience, self-consciousness, personal identity, human enhancement through digital means, privacy, speech-act theory, documentality, history, and the intersection of research into psychological and social cognition. (shrink)

This essay expounds on Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s recent book, Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side, Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway, and advocates placing narrow limitations on hate speech posted to social media websites. The Internet is a limitless platform for information and data sharing. It is, in addition, however, a low-cost, high-speed dissemination mechanism that facilitates the spreading of hate speech including violent and virtual threats. Indictment and prosecution for social media posts that transgress from opinion to inciteful hate (...) speech are appropriate in limited circumstances. This article uses various real-world examples to explore when limitations on Internet-based hate speech are appropriate. In October 2015, twenty thousand Israelis joined a civil lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Supreme Court for the State of New York. Led by the civil rights organization, Shurat HaDin, the suit alleges Facebook allows Palestinian extremists to openly recruit and train terrorists to plan violent attacks calling for the murder of Israeli Jews through their Facebook pages. The suit raises important questions, amongst them: When should the government initiate similar suits to impose criminal sanctions for targeted hate speech posted to Facebook? What constitute effective restrictions on social media that also balance society’s need for robust dialogue and free communication, subject to limitations reflecting a need for order and respect among people? Our essay progresses in four stages. First, we examine philosophical origins of free speech and the historical foundations of free speech in the United States. Second, we provide an overview of American free speech jurisprudence. Third, we address particular jurisprudence that provides a framework for imposing limitations on free speech in the context of social media. American history and jurisprudence embrace free speech as a grounding principle of democracy, yet simultaneously subject speech to limitations. Finally, through a comparative exploration of real-world examples, we address the narrow instance when limitations on inciteful and targeted hate speech are appropriate. (shrink)

This paper makes an argument for greater consideration of negativity in queer engagements with biological or natural systems. Focusing on one particular paper by Karen Barad – “Nature’s Queer Performativity ” – I argue that this work tends to under-read the negativity and confusion that queer entails, and so it renders nature, and the politics we might extract from it, more palatable than perhaps they should be. What interests me is that Barad’s argument about nature’s queer performativity begins and ends (...) with sodomy. While it has been a highly cathected site of analysis for some early and influential work in queer theory, sodomy has been little discussed in feminist and queer science studies where Barad’s work has been so influential. I argue that sodomy spoils any identitarian queer politics that attempt to depathologize or reaffirm the natural world. (shrink)

In _Between Gaia and Ground_ Elizabeth A. Povinelli theorizes the climatic, environmental, viral, and social catastrophe present as an ancestral catastrophe through which that Indigenous and colonized peoples have been suffering for centuries. In this way, the violence and philosophies the West relies on now threaten the West itself. Engaging with the work of Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari, Césaire, and Arendt, Povinelli highlights four axioms of existence—the entanglement of existence, the unequal distribution of power, the collapse of the event (...) as essential to political thought, and the legacies of racial and colonial histories. She traces these axioms' inspiration in anticolonial struggles against the dispossession and extraction that have ruined the lived conditions for many on the planet. By examining the dynamic and unfolding forms of late liberal violence, Povinelli attends to a vital set of questions about changing environmental conditions, the legacies of violence, and the limits of inherited Western social theory. _Between Gaia and Ground_ also includes a glossary of the keywords and concepts that Povinelli has developed throughout her work. (shrink)

The Ninth International Conference on Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry was held in Milwaukee, WI. Four papers originally presented at that conference are included in this issue of Computers and Society. The selected papers examine a wide range of information/computer-ethics-related issues, and taken together, they show great diversity in the field of information/computer ethics. We are continually negotiating with ethics, law, and policy in our technology-driven activities in the interconnected global arena. As we consider the themes within and among the papers (...) here, we encourage readers to think deeply about fundamental principles such as trust, accountability, anonymity, and human rights. Each of these papers takes us back, philosophically, to seminal and long-standing principles of ethics, broadly speaking, and then, brings us forward, to significant and contemporary challenges in ethics. The authors each weave narratives about our place and space as individuals, as members of cultural collectives, and evolving socio-political-technical norms around us, governing us, defining us. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism theory aims to describe, explain, and evaluate the ways in which producers and consumers use the market to support social and environmental values. The literature draws insights from empirical studies of sectors that largely take place on the legal market, such as textiles and agri-food. This paper takes a first step toward theorizing ethical consumerism in semi-legal sectors where market activities occur legally and illegally. How does extant theory extend to sectors such as sex work, cigarettes, and recreational (...) drugs? This study draws on the case of recreational cannabis (marijuana) in Portland, OR (USA). Data from 33 interviews, structured fieldwork at 64 dispensaries, and the US Census Bureau American Community Survey are analyzed using qualitative, quantitative, and spatial methods. The findings are compared to 12 suggestions that emerge from the literature on fair trade, organics, alternative agriculture, and political consumerism. I argue that not all ethical consumerism theory extends to semi-legal sectors. Cannabis closely resembles theoretical expectations in terms of supply/demand, prioritization of ethical issues, and pervasiveness of false claims, but differs in terms of who organizes, which types of strategies are pursued, and how ethical products are framed. The differences stem from several pervasive stigmas about cannabis. I also argue that the stigmas that set cannabis apart from other (more legal sectors) and present challenges to ethical consumerism in cannabis are directly related to the War on Drugs. These insights suggest that prohibition (and its lingering effects) can inhibit the emergence of ethical consumerism. (shrink)

This essay will move toward a phenomenology of “more” in ten steps. 1st, situates the investigation within the tradition of Husserlian phenomenological practice, then 2nd draws upon Husserl’s own experience of doing phenomenology. 3rd considers some initial aspects of the structure of the lived experience of “more” and 4th is about the number series, while 5th addresses the primal experience of time, space, and movement. 6th focuses on the phenomenological notion of horizons, then 7th turns to the related question of (...) transcendence. 8th takes a critical look at a particular conceptual model sometime used in thinking about the experience of “more”; 9th briefly brings out one of the ethical implications of this critique; and finally, 10th highlights some of the ways in which the research documented here is itself still incomplete and demands “more”.Este ensayo se moverá hacia una fenomenología de "más" en diez pasos. El prime-ro, sitúa la investigación dentro de la tradición de la práctica fenomenológica husserliana; luego, el segundo se basa en la propia experiencia de Husserl de hacer fenomenología; el tercero considera algunos aspectos iniciales de la estructura de la experiencia vivida de "más" y el cuarto es sobre la serie numérica, mientras que el quinto aborda la experiencia primordial de tiempo, espacio y movimiento. El sexto se centra en la noción fenomenológica de horizontes; después el séptimo pasa a la cuestión relacionada con la trascendencia. El octavo echa una mirada crítica a un modelo conceptual particular usado en algún momento para pensar sobre la experiencia de "más"; el noveno destaca brevemente una de las implicaciones éticas de esta crítica;y, finalmente, el décimo resalta algunas de las formas en las que la investigación aquí documentada todavía está incompleta y exige "más". (shrink)

A new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.

The Community FoodBank of NJ was a $100 million charitable organization that distributed over 44 million pounds of food each year through its partner organizations like food pantries, soup kitchens and the like. Its mission was to “fight hunger and poverty in New Jersey [USA] by assisting those in need and seeking long term solutions.” In a time of governmental cutbacks and shrinking private donations, the nonprofit sought new sources of revenue. One idea was to leverage perishable bakery donations and (...) an in-house commercial kitchen, by creating and marketing an up-scale bagel crisp. After product development and market testing, the resulting business plan won a “Break the Gala Addiction” cash prize from the Prudential Foundation to further the social entrepreneurship effort. Now the organization needs to decide if it should use its scarce resources to scale the business internally—to maximize job creation, leverage existing facilities and capture all the revenue, or if it should outsource production and distribution for a percentage of sales so that it can focus on other efforts more tightly aligned to its mission. Students are encouraged to use ethical frameworks to think through the nonprofit’s dilemma. (shrink)

This article examines the US student debt crisis through a queer, feminist lens attuned to matters of the material. Examining the discourse of ‘failed’ and/or forestalled millennial adulthood, I argue that the student debt crisis is a product of neoliberal, racial capitalism, and its profit resides in its financialisation. Drawing on queer and feminist theories regarding time and futurity and current research on student debt, I examine the configurations and effects of what I term the ‘student-debt-as-hetero-failure discourse’, which renders the (...) crisis of student debt legible through a heteronormative life narrative, and obscures the racialised, gendered realities of student debt. The student-debt-as-hetero-failure discourse illustrates how under racial capitalism, heteronormative temporality is structurally conditioned via race. Examining US media coverage, I assert that the reprosexually oriented student-debt-as-hetero-failure discourse legitimises new financial products that enable debtors to sustain and reproduce themselves via more debt. (shrink)

Tigard (2019) suggests that the medical community would benefit from continuing to promote notions of individual responsibility and blame in healthcare settings. In particular, he contends that blame will promote systematic improvement, both on the individual and institutional levels, by increasing the likelihood that the blameworthy party will ‘own up’ to his or her mistake and apologise. While we agree that communicating regret and offering a genuine apology are critical steps to take when addressing patient harm, the idea that medical (...) professionals should continue to ‘take the blame’ for medical errors flies in the face of existing science and threatens to do more harm than good. We contrast Dr Tigard’s approach with the current literature on blame to promote an alternative strategy that may help to create lasting change in the face of unfortunate error. (shrink)