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

We argue that stereotypes associated with concepts like he-said–she-said, conspiracy theory, sexual harassment, and those expressed by paradigmatic slurs provide “normative inference tickets”: conceptual permissions to automatic, largely unreflective normative conclusions. These “mental shortcuts” are underwritten by associated stereotypes. Because stereotypes admit of exceptions, normative inference tickets are highly flexible and productive, but also liable to create serious epistemic and moral harms. Epistemically, many are unreliable, yielding false beliefs which resist counterexample; morally, many perpetuate bigotry and oppression. Still, some normative (...) inference tickets, like some activated by sexual harassment, constitute genuine moral and hermeneutical advances. For example, our framework helps explain Miranda Fricker’s notion of “hermeneutical lacunae”: what early victims of “sexual harassment” — as well as their harassers — lacked before the term was coined was a communal normative inference ticket — one that could take us, collectively, from “this is happening” to “this is wrong.”. (shrink)

The inoffensive title of Section 1.4.7 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, ‘Conclusion of this Book’, belies the convoluted treatment of scepticism contained within. It is notoriously difficult to decipher Hume’s considered response to scepticism in this section, or whether he even has one. In recent years, however, one line of interpretation has gained popularity in the literature. The ‘usefulness and agreeableness reading’ (henceforth U&A) interprets Hume as arguing in THN 1.4.7 that our beliefs and/or epistemic policies are justified via (...) their usefulness and agreeableness to the self and others; proponents include Ardal (in Livingston & King (eds.) Hume: a re-evaluation, 1976), Kail (in: Frasca-Spada & Kail (eds.) Impressions of Hume, 2005), McCormick (Hume Stud 31:1, 2005), Owen (Hume’s reason, 1999), and Ridge (Hume Stud 29:2, 2003), while Schafer (Philosophers, forthcoming) also defends an interpretation along these lines. In this paper, I will argue that although U&A has textual merit, it struggles to maintain a substantive distinction between epistemic and moral justification—a distinction that Hume insists on. I then attempt to carve out the logical space for there being a distinctly epistemic notion of justification founded on usefulness and agreeableness. However, I find that such an account is problematic for two reasons: first, it cannot take advantage of the textual support for U&A; secondly, it is incompatible with other features of the text. (shrink)

My goal in what follows is to argue that Astell endorses what I call the admonisher conception of a friend. For I will argue that, according to Astell, a sufficient condition for whether someone is our friend is that they admonish us in her technical sense. So anyone who admonishes us in this sense—be they Mother Teresa, the sinner sitting in confession, or our professional rival—is a friend to us. Put simply, an Astellian friend is an admonisher. The paper is (...) divided into four sections. Having motivated my reading in section one, section two develops and defends my thesis that admonishment is a sufficient condition for someone to be our Astellian friend. With Astell’s admonisher conception on the table, the balance of the paper shows how Astell might have persuaded us to accept her severe-sounding view by sketching the goods that she thinks flow from having an admonisher as a friend. Section three thus contends that, on Astell’s view, there is a class of deep truths about who we are that only our admonishing friends can reliably access; section four sketches how admonishment enhances our moral reasoning skills on Astell’s picture. Published on 2022-12-12 11:42:32. (shrink)

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

Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — and (...) thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry. (shrink)

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

While philosophers generally accept some version of the principle ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, recent work in experimental philosophy and cognitive science provides evidence against a presupposition or a conceptual entailment from ‘ought’ to ‘can’. Here, we review some of this evidence, its effect on particular formulations of the principle, and future directions for cognitive scientists and philosophers.

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

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

Although scholars have given much attention to Leibniz’s view of space, they have given far less attention to his view of place. This neglect is regrettable because Leibniz holds that place is more fundamental than space. What is more, I argue that Leibniz’s view of place is novel, strange and yet, appealing. To have a Leibnizian place is to have a point of view. And nothing more. Because this reading is likely to sound counterintuitive, the first half of the paper (...) motivates my reading by arguing that point of view plays a foundational role for Leibniz. Consequently, it would be reasonable for Leibniz to identify place with something so foundational. Having provided Leibnizian reasons for identifying place with point of view, I then argue that Leibniz identifies place with point of view by analyzing some neglected texts. I close by considering a worry from the Clarke Correspondence. (shrink)

This article advances the thesis that our values and beliefs about engineering critically impact the teaching of engineering ethics, and our representations and assumptions about engineering are, accordingly, ethical questions we must consider. To illustrate how in broader sociohistorical contexts, different understandings of engineering have shaped expectations of ethics, we provide a historical and contemporary review of the literature. Examining the significance of our thesis for teaching practice, we discuss three case studies of our teaching and critically reflect on how (...) our representation of engineering limited the breadth and depth of ethics. Considering that instruction seemingly unrelated to ethics, in fact, influences how engineering ethics is understood and taught, our conclusion calls for critical examination of our beliefs about engineering. This entails, among others, up-to-date knowledge about the changing values of our rapidly-developing engineering fields and how they raise social, ethical questions of engineering relevant specifically to our teaching situation. (shrink)

The idea of a philosophical Other as comparativists have often historically used it to signify radical alterity, although sometimes a remedy and correction for the erroneous generalizations which originate from a presupposition of human sameness, merely shifts the center of philosophy's unchallenged assumptions in at least two ways. First, the notion of a philosophical Other avoids an explicit characterization of how one recognizes that one is philosophizing in the sphere of this Other and of what "otherness" is philosophically interesting. Second, (...) the notion of a philosophical Other is unable to capture and describe the dynamic, ever-changing relations that serve to demarcate philosophical traditions or spatio-temporal webs of thinkers in the first place. For the sake of the comparative project of exposing the comparativist's own culturally-embedded assumptions, comparative methodology should allow for the possibility of analyzing more than one place where similarities and differences can present themselves at the same time. In short, comparativists would serve their own interests better if they began to approach their projects in recognition of a complex, limitless, and dynamic array of sameness and difference, instead of with premature assumptions of radical alterity. (shrink)

The relationship between intuition and ethical decision-making has been researched extensively during the past two decades. This study aimed at exploring empirically observable associations between intuition and the moral intensity of ethical decision-making processes. A scenario-based quantitative approach was used to collect data from 157 practising professional spirit mediums. It was found that only collective universal intuition had a significant positive association with the moral intensity of ethical decision-making processes. Personal experience intuition and collective archetype intuition were not significantly associated (...) with moral intensity. This may explain why previous studies were unable to gauge the effects of intuition on ethical decision-making. The results suggest that a pure mind can improve one’s ability to make decisions. Thus, decision-makers would benefit by being more attuned to their sense of morality. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the association between business greening and its competitiveness has been confirmed, the effects of green IT capital on the relationship between business greening and competitiveness have largely not been investigated by researchers. To address this gap in the research, this study aims to introduce and define the new concept of green IT capital to bridge the gap for business greening. The results of a sample survey of 148 companies from the top 1,000 manufacturers in Taiwan confirmed (...) that the degree of business greening has significant positive effects on business investment in green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital as well as business competitiveness. In addition, the three dimensions of green IT capital positively relate to business competitiveness. In mediating effect, green IT relational capital partially mediates the links between the degree of business greening and business competitiveness. (shrink)

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

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

In his political report to the Eleventh CCP Congress, our wise leader Chairman Hua pointed out that the "gang of four, a clique of counterrevolutionary plotters operating under the cloak of Marxist theories, was tampering with Marxist philosophy and political economy and scientific socialism." Chairman Hua called on us to carry through the great struggle against the "gang of four" and to rectify the confused line, thinking and theories caused by the "gang of four." With respect to political economy, the (...) "gang of four" undermined socialist production under the pretext of opposing the "emphasis on productive forces" and undermined socialist production relations using the excuse of criticizing "bourgeois rights." In this article, I am going to offer some criticisms of the fallacies spread by the "gang of four" concerning bourgeois rights. (shrink)

Preparative and analytical methods developed by separation scientists have played an important role in the history of molecular biology. One such early method is gel electrophoresis, a technique that uses various types of gel as its supporting medium to separate charged molecules based on size and other properties. Historians of science, however, have only recently begun to pay closer attention to this material epistemological dimension of biomolecular science. This paper substantiates the historiographical thread that explores the relationship between modern laboratory (...) practice and the production of scientific knowledge. It traces the historical development of gel electrophoresis from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, with careful attention to the interplay between technical developments and disciplinary shifts, especially the rise of molecular biology in this time-frame. Claiming that the early 1950s marked a decisive shift in the evolution of electrophoretic methods from moving boundary to zone electrophoresis, I reconstruct various trajectories in which scientists such as Oliver Smithies sought out the most desirable solid supporting medium for electrophoretic instrumentation. Biomolecular knowledge, I argue, emerged in part from this process of seeking the most appropriate supporting medium that allowed for discrete molecular separation and visualization. The early 1950s, therefore, marked not only an important turning point in the history of separation science, but also a transformative moment in the history of the life sciences as the growth of molecular biology depended in part on the epistemological access to the molecular realm available through these evolving technologies. (shrink)

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

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 323-338, October 2022. This essay uses the experience of building a new public humanities program to explore approaches for revitalizing the field. While public humanities scholars have recently focused much of their attention on the “public” part of the public humanities, in the day-to-day institutional context the lack of attention on the “humanities” part can lead to problematic consequences for demonstrating their value. By exploring how the humanities are both (...) lost and found in the different pieces of our nascent program, we argue that the best way to build lasting interdisciplinary and campus-community bridges—and assert the humanities’ vitality—is to rebalance so that we’re placing just as much on emphasis on the practice of the humanities as on the engagement of the public. (shrink)

Local development enhances the economic capacity and quality of life of the residents and, in particular, attracts tourism to the area. The co-creative value of the residents and the tourists can improve the consensus of the residents on the sustainable development of the place. This study focuses on the factors influencing the co-creation of value between residents and visitors in the Tamsui area near Taipei. The research hypothesis is based on the components of local attachment, economic benefits brought by tourists, (...) environmental costs, social and cultural welfare of the place, life satisfaction of the residents, and the value of co-creation between residents and tourists. A total of 430 questionnaires were collected through a questionnaire survey and statistical data were analyzed using a structural equation model, including descriptive statistical analysis, measurement reliability and validity verification, model fit, and structural model analysis to validate the research hypotheses. The study found that place attachment positively and significantly affects the economic benefits, environmental costs, and socio-cultural welfare of residents about tourists. Resident satisfaction is positively and significantly affected by the environmental costs from visitors and by socio-cultural welfare, but there is no significant impact from economic benefits. Finally, based on the findings of the study, practical recommendations were made for enhancing co-creation value between Tamsui residents and visitors, including enhancing residents’ feelings of place attachment and construction of local social culture and welfare. For the residents of Tamsui, unlike the local government and enterprises, need to be able to create value with tourists in order to have a friendly relationship with them and develop regional tourism in a sustainable manner. (shrink)