In America, White and affluent middle-school students outperform minority students and those of low socioeconomic status on measures of academic performance. This achievement gap is partly attributable to differences in academic engagement. A promising strategy for engaging students is to elicit an academic possible identity: an image of oneself in the future as an accomplished student. Tests of this strategy’s efficacy show mixed results, however. According to Identity-Based Motivation Theory, this is because a salient possible identity enhances goal engagement when (...) it is perceived to be strongly connected to one’s current identity. Still, the connection between temporally remote identities is an abstract concept that students may have difficulty grasping. According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this connection may be easier to conceptualize metaphorically in terms of a dissimilar concrete experience – in particular, a physical journey between locations. Integrating these theories, prior studies show that priming a journey-metaphoric framing of an academic possible identity increased academic engagement among college students. The current study tested whether this prime would similarly motivate middle-school students in an economically disadvantaged school setting. Results show that students framing their academic possible identity as a destination on a physical path, versus without a provided metaphor, reported higher academic engagement. This finding extends metaphor priming effects to low-income and minority adolescents, a crucial population in educational research, and points to low-cost, theoretically grounded interventions for boosting academic engagement. (shrink)

Gut Reactions is an interdisciplinary defense of the claim that emotions are perceptions of changes in the body.

This monograph treats the important topic of the epistemology of diagrams in Euclidean geometry. Norman argues that diagrams play a genuine justificatory role in traditional Euclidean arguments, and he aims to account for these roles from a modified Kantian perspective. Norman considers himself a semi-Kantian in the following broad sense: he believes that Kant was right that ostensive constructions are necessary in order to follow traditional Euclidean proofs, but he wants to avoid appealing to Kantian a priori intuition as the (...) epistemological background for these constructions.Norman's main argument is limited to the thesis that certain Euclidean arguments—in particular, that of Proposition 1.32, the internal-angle-sum theorem—require inferences from diagrams. Interestingly, Norman is not committed to the view that these arguments are proofs. This becomes clear only quite late in the book, when he distinguishes argument from proofs, remarking that the argument he has been focusing on is not rigorous, and so is not a proof. Norman does not, however, explicitly classify all Euclidean arguments as non-proofs. His view is that diagrammatic reasoning can in principle feature in rigorous proofs, but he is not committed to the thesis that any particular argument, Euclidean or otherwise, provides an example of this. Rather than proofs in particular, Norman is more interested in the general issue of justification in mathematics.The argument has three components. First, Norman argues against competing accounts of Euclidean arguments such as empiricism, and ‘Leibnizianism’—the view that diagrams play only a heuristic role. Second, he provides a more direct, or positive, argument that the way we actually follow the standard argument for 1.32 does appeal to the diagram. This is an appeal to the phenomenology of following the argument. Third, he articulates and defends his semi-Kantian position against some objections.The book has a very careful and …. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are (...) merely expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

The Emotional Construction of Morals is a book about moral judgements – the kinds of mental states we might express by sentences such as, ‘It's bad to flash your neighbors’, or ‘You ought not eat your pets’. There are three basic questions that get addressed: what are the psychological states that constitute such judgements? What kinds of properties do such judgements refer to? And, where do these judgements come from? The first question concerns moral psychology, the second metaethics and the (...) third is best construed as belonging to a domain that has been neglected in analytic value theory: the genealogy of morals. These are all separate branches of ethics, but they are interconnected. The thesis of the book is that moral judgements are emotional attitudes that refer to response-dependent properties, and that these responses have been shaped by cultural history. I call the view Constructive Sentimentalism. The first half of the book deals with sentiments, and the second half with construction. The second half also deals with relativism, because I argue that moral values are constructed differently across cultures and across individuals.Thus described, The Emotional Construction of Morals is a conventional contribution to analytic moral philosophy, taking on some of the core questions in that field and defending positions that have a long philosophical pedigree. Indeed, the theory I defend has roots in Hume and Nietzsche, though it departs from both in various ways. What makes the book somewhat unusual is that it seeks to defend traditional theories by appeal to recent work in psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and related fields. It is an exercise in methodological naturalism and committed to the view that we can answer traditional philosophical questions while treating ethics as a social science. Ethics and naturalism are hard to reconcile because ethics is a normative domain, …. (shrink)

In Furnishing the Mind, Jesse Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism.

Empathy can be characterized as a vicarious emotion that one person experiences when reflecting on the emotion of another. So characterized, empathy is sometimes regarded as a precondition on moral judgment. This seems to have been Hume's view. I review various ways in which empathy might be regarded as a precondition and argue against each of them: empathy is not a component, a necessary cause, a reliable epistemic guide, a foundation for justification, or the motivating force behind our moral judgments. (...) In fact, empathy is prone to biases that render it potentially harmful. Another construct—concern—fares somewhat better, but it is also of limited use. I argue that, instead of empathy, moral judgments involve emotions such as anger, disgust, guilt, and admiration. These, not empathy, provide the sentimental foundation for morality. (shrink)

Managers conduct open market repurchases for many different reasons, including to distribute excess cash. However, the most widely discussed explanation for OMRs is the “signaling theory:” that managers announce OMRs to signal that the stock is underpriced. The first purpose of this paper is to show that the signaling theory is theoretically problematic—in part because it assumes managers deliberately sacrifice their own wealth to increase that of shareholders—as well as inconsistent with much of the empirical evidence. The second purpose of (...) the paper is to put forward an alternative explanation for managers’ use of OMRs: the managerial-opportunism theory. This theory, which assumes that managers seek to maximize their own wealth, predicts that managers announce OMRs both when the stock is underpriced and when it is not. When the stock is underpriced, managers may announce and conduct an OMR to transfer value to themselves and other remaining shareholders. When managers wish to sell a large portion of their shares, they announce an OMR to boost the stock price before selling their shares. The paper shows that managerial opportunism is not only a more plausible motive for OMRs than is signaling, it is also more consistent with the empirical data. The paper concludes by describing some testable predictions of the theory. (shrink)

The present article examines how people’s belief in an afterlife, as well as closely related supernatural beliefs, may open an empirical backdoor to our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition. Recent findings and logic from the cognitive sciences contribute to a novel theory of existential psychology, one that is grounded in the tenets of Darwinian natural selection. Many of the predominant questions of existential psychology strike at the heart of cognitive science. They involve: causal attribution (why is mortal (...) behavior represented as being causally related to one’s afterlife? how are dead agents envisaged as communicating messages to the living?), moral judgment (why are certain social behaviors, i.e., transgressions, believed to have ultimate repercussions after death or to reap the punishment of disgruntled ancestors?), theory of mind (how can we know what it is “like” to be dead? what social-cognitive strategies do people use to reason about the minds of the dead?), concept acquisition (how does a common-sense dualism interact with a formalized socio-religious indoctrination in childhood? how are supernatural properties of the dead conceptualized by young minds?), and teleological reasoning (why do people so often see their lives as being designed for a purpose that must be accomplished before they perish? how do various life events affect people’s interpretation of this purpose?), among others. The central thesis of the present article is that an organized cognitive “system” dedicated to forming illusory representations of (1) psychological immortality, (2) the intelligent design of the self, and (3) the symbolic meaning of natural events evolved in response to the unique selective pressures of the human social environment. (shrink)

A timely and uniquely compelling plea for the importance of nurture in the ongoing nature-nurture debate. In this era of genome projects and brain scans, it is all too easy to overestimate the role of biology in human psychology. But in this passionate corrective to the idea that DNA is destiny, Jesse Prinz focuses on the most extraordinary aspect of human nature: that nurture can supplement and supplant nature, allowing our minds to be profoundly influenced by experience and culture. (...) Drawing on cutting-edge research in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, Prinz shatters the myth of human uniformity and reveals how our differing cultures and life experiences make each of us unique. Along the way he shows that we can’t blame mental illness or addiction on our genes, and that societal factors shape gender differences in cognitive ability and sexual behavior. A much-needed contribution to the nature-nurture debate, Beyond Human Nature shows us that it is only through the lens of nurture that the spectrum of human diversity becomes fully and brilliantly visible. (shrink)

We investigated whether (a) people positively reevaluate the characters of recently dead others and (b) supernatural primes concerning an ambient dead agent serve to curb selfish intentions. In Study 1, participants made trait attributions to three strangers depicted in photographs; one week later, they returned to do the same but were informed that one of the strangers had died over the weekend. Participants rated the decedent target more favorably after learning of his death whereas ratings for the control targets remained (...) unchanged between sessions. This effect was especially pronounced for traits dealing with the decedent’s prosocial tendencies (e.g., ethical, kind). In Study 2, a content analysis of obituaries revealed a similar emphasis on decedents’ prosocial attributes over other personality dimensions (e.g., achievement-relatedness, social skills). Finally, in Study 3, participants who were told of an alleged ghost in the laboratory were less likely to cheat on a competitive task than those who did not receive this supernatural prime. The findings are interpreted as evidence suggestive of adaptive design. (shrink)

This paper develops an empirically motivated theory of visual consciousness. It begins by outlining neuropsychological support for Jackendoff's (1987) hypothesis that visual consciousness involves mental representations at an intermediate level of processing. It then supplements that hypothesis with the further requirement that attention, which can come under the direction of high level representations, is also necessary for consciousness. The resulting theory is shown to have a number of philosophical consequences. If correct, higher-order thought accounts, the multiple drafts account, and the (...) widely held belief that sensation precedes perception will all be found wanting. The theory will also be used to illustrate and defend a methodology that fills the gulf between functionalists who ignore the brain and neural reductionists who repudiate functionalism. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Christopher Moore’s excellent paper, “Questioning Aristotle’s Radical Account of Σωφροσύνη.” I expand upon some of the themes in the four suggestions Moore makes in his “Four Possible Defenses” of Aristotle that I take to be the most fruitful avenues of research. I then argue that pursuing these avenues will show that Aristotle’s thinking in the Nicomachean Ethics about σωφροσύνη—and virtues in general—cannot be understood by looking only at the early books. I argue that his (...) deeper analysis of virtue and φρόνησις in book VI demand a revaluation of the apparent finality of his comments in book III. Specifically, I argue that the Nicomachean Ethics as a whole is constructed as a dialectical advancement that points to a progressively deepening understanding of the relationship between the discussion of the individual virtues in the early books and the discussion of φρόνησις in book VI must be developed in order to understand Aristotle’s conception of any individual virtue. (shrink)

Precision cell signaling activities of reactive electrophilic species (RES) are arguably among the most poorly‐understood means to transmit biological messages. Latest research implicates native RES to be a chemically‐distinct subset of endogenous redox signals that influence cell decision making through non‐enzyme‐assisted modifications of specific proteins. Yet, fundamental questions remain regarding the role of RES as bona fide second messengers. Here, we lay out three sets of criteria we feel need to be met for RES to be considered as true cellular (...) signals that directly mediate information transfer by modifying “first‐responding” sensor proteins. We critically assess the available evidence and define the extent to which each criterion has been fulfilled. Finally, we offer some ideas on the future trajectories of the electrophile signaling field taking inspiration from work that has been done to understand canonical signaling mediators. (shrink)

Positing that education is a movement from one way of being to another more desirable one, An Intense Calling argues that ethics should be the prime focus for the field of education. The book locates ethics, education, and justice in human subjectivity and describes education as a necessary practice for ethical reflexivity, change, and becoming (ethically) different. It also situates ethics as something that exceeds subjectivity thereby engaging ethics as a material phenomenon through topics such as aesthetics and solidarity with (...) non-humans. Jesse Bazzul explores various concepts in the book including power, biopolitics, the commons, subjectivity, and materiality and draws from over twenty years of experience teaching in different countries including Canada, Ireland, the United States, China, and Ukraine. Taking a wide-ranging philosophical approach, the book entangles ethics, urgent political issues, and pressing educational contexts of the twenty-first century. In doing so, An Intense Calling maintains that ethics is the core of education because education involves finding better ways of living and being in the world. (shrink)

Char et al. aspire to provide “a systematic approach to identifying … ethical concerns” around machine learning healthcare applications, which includes artificial intelligence and...

Once upon a time, people thought that all perception was conscious. Indeed, it was widely believed that all mental states are conscious, so the problem of explaining consciousness collapses into the problem of explaining mentality. But things have changed. Most people now believe that a lot goes on unconsciously. Indeed, some people believe that mental states that are not perceptual in nature are never conscious. That’s a matter of controversy. Less controversial is the claim that perceptual states are conscious some (...) of the time, but not all of the time. This raises a question. When are perceptual states conscious? A theory of consciousness is, in large part, an answer to that question. In this chapter, I will offer a few critical remarks on one answer that has been popular in philosophy, and then I will offer a defense of another answer that has emerged out of cognitive science. To avoid undue suspense, the answer that I favor is that perceptual states become conscious when and only when the perceiver is attending. (shrink)

The moral domain is broader than the empathy and justice concerns assessed by existing measures of moral competence, and it is not just a subset of the values assessed by value inventories. To fill the need for reliable and theoretically grounded measurement of the full range of moral concerns, we developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire on the basis of a theoretical model of 5 universally available sets of moral intuitions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. We present evidence for the (...) internal and external validity of the scale and the model, and in doing so we present new findings about morality: Comparative model fitting of confirmatory factor analyses provides empirical justification for a 5-factor structure of moral concerns; convergent/discriminant validity evidence suggests that moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant; and we establish pragmatic validity of the measure in providing new knowledge and research opportunities concerning demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions. These analyses provide evidence for the usefulness of Moral Foundations Theory in simultaneously increasing the scope and sharpening the resolution of psychological views of morality. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a normative domain. We evaluate artworks as better or worse, good or bad, great or grim. I will refer to a positive appraisal of an artwork as an aesthetic appreciation of that work, and I refer to a negative appraisal as aesthetic depreciation. (I will often drop the word “aesthetic.”) There has been considerable amount of work on what makes an artwork worthy of appreciation, and less, it seems, on the nature of appreciation itself. These two topics are (...) related, of course, because they nature of appreciation may bear on what things are worthy of that response, or at least on what things are likely to elicit it. So I will have some things to say about the latter. But I want to focus in this discussion on appreciation itself. When we praise a work of art, when we say it has aesthetic value, what does our praise consist in? This is a question about aesthetic psychology. I am interested in what kind of mental state appreciation is. What kind of state are we expressing when we say a work of art is “good”? This question has parallels in other areas of value theory. In ethics, most notably, there has been much attention lavished on the question of what people express when they refer to an action as “morally good.” One popular class of theories, associated with the British moralists and their followers, posits a link between moral valuation and emotion. To call an act morally good is to express an emotion toward that act. I think this approach to morality is right on target (Prinz, 2007). Here I want to argue that an emotional account of aesthetic valuation is equally promising. There are important differences between the two domains, but both have an affective foundation. I suspect that valuing of all kinds involves the emotions. Here I will inquire into the role of emotions in aesthetic valuing. I will not claim that artworks express emotions or even that they necessarily evoke emotions.. (shrink)

Excerpt: In the lecture What Pragmatism Means, William James gives us what became one of the most famous examples of strengths of the pragmatic method. Instead of beginning with an argument, he provides a story. In this story, James and several of his friends are on a camping trip when a “ferocious metaphysical dispute” arises concerning the movements of a squirrelii. A squirrel, the story goes, clings the one side of a tree-trunk, and on the other side a man tries (...) to catch a glimpse of it, by rapidly chasing it around the tree. However, the squirrel moves just as fast as the man does, always keeping the tree between itself and his pursuer – and the man never sees the squirrel. So, why does James call it a “ferocious metaphysical dispute”? The campers ask: while we can concede that the man has circled completely around the tree, has he gone around the squirrel? Some of the campers say yes, others no, and an argument ensues over who is correct. (shrink)

À travers quels langages, outils et pratiques pouvons-nous comprendre la destruction écologique et la violence racialisée en tant que processus unifié à l’œuvre dans la production du monde? Comment pouvons-nous, à la fois, habiter et interrompre cette conjoncture catastrophique? Qui sommes-nous pour cela, d’ailleurs? Je m’inspire de la provocation de Christina Sharpe (2016) en faveur du « travail de sillage » pour étudier ces questions dans le contexte du monde océanique. En travaillant à travers différents genres et en puisant dans (...) diverses sources, j’expérimente des thèmes de perte, de sensation, d’échelle, d’incertitude, de persistance et de temps, pour chercher un récit qui pourrait suggérer un avenir différent au milieu d’une catastrophe en cours. (shrink)

In this essay, we recommend Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s short story “Remedies” (2019) for inclusion on health humanities syllabi based on our experiences teaching it at two undergraduate institutions. The story is drawn from Sabrina & Corina, Fajardo-Anstine’s award-winning book of short stories about Chicana and Indigenous women in Colorado, but is available for free online, making it highly accessible for students. “Remedies” is narrated by Clarisa, who turns to her great-grandmother Estrella for the traditional knowledge that ultimately cures her family’s recurrent (...) outbreaks of lice. As a health narrative that centers familial and cultural healing practices, “Remedies” offers a much needed counterpart to the biomedical frameworks that tend to dominate health humanities syllabi and curricula. At the same time that it illuminates the physical and emotional efficacy of such practices, “Remedies” rejects a binary that pits them against biomedicine, offering a complex portrait of how various members of a family integrate traditional and biomedical approaches to health. We discuss how themes related to familial and cultural healing practices are developed in the story and introduce our approach to initiating productive conversations about the relationship between traditional healing and biomedicine in our classrooms. (shrink)

This essay investigates how Juan de Segovia used the Qur’ān in his engagement with Islam. The essay has three principal aims. First, it identifies certain distinctive aspects of Segovia’s use of the Qur’ān. Second, it examines his treatment of sacraments and soteriology in the Qur’ān. Third, it considers Segovia’s use of the Qur’ān in light of David Bertaina’s recent analysis of Christians and the Qur’ān. It is argued that, just as Segovia read the Qur’ān in various ways, he also used (...) or cited the Qur’ān in various ways, for various ends and even for various audiences. (shrink)

“We shouldn’t be scared of philosophy. Ideas are always in charge, we might as well get self-conscious about what they are.”.

This essay provides an overview of what is known about atheists in North America. It begins with estimates of the total number of atheists in North America, including Central America, Caribbean nations, Mexico, Canada, and the US. Demographic characteristics of atheists in Canada, Mexico, and the US based on the World Values Survey are also examined. What life is like for atheists in the US, including the discrimination they experience and the issues they must address in developing an atheist identity (...) in a predominantly religious country, are also detailed. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of the "creativity of language" that he maintains is an essential part of the mental representation that makes the acquisition of languages possible. I argue that Chomsky's problems in articulating an acceptable concept of creativity is symptomatic of greater problems embedded in his idea of an "innateness hypothesis." An examination of the historical development of Chomsky's views on the nature of language shows that conclusions with regard to the creativity of language (...) remain either quite speculative or else untenable. This result establishes some agreement with Chomsky on the idea that cognitive capacities are largely structure determined. However, I argue against his idea that creativity is itself a part of those structures. In conclusion, I argue that creativity is an aspect of autonomy. In view of the integrative role of autonomy with respect cognitive capacities in general, we must conclude that creativity does not belong to the biological domain that Chomsky has characterized. (shrink)

There are two major perspectives on the origin of emotions. According to one, emotions are the products of natural selection. They are evolved adaptations, best understood using the explanatory tools of evolutionary psychology. According to the other, emotions are socially constructed, and they vary across cultural boundaries. There is evidence supporting both perspectives. In light of this, some have argued both approaches are right. The standard strategy for compromise is to say that some emotions are evolved and others are constructed. (...) The evolved emotions are sometimes given the label “basic,” and there is considerable agreement about a handful of emotions in this category. My goal here is to challenge all of these perspectives. I don’t think we should adopt a globally evolutionary approach, nor indulge the radical view that emotions derive entirely from us. I am equally dissatisfied with approaches that attempt to please Darwinians and constructivists by dividing emotions into two separate classes. I will defend another kind of ecumenicalism. Every emotion that we have a name for is the product of both nature and nurture. Emotions are evolved and constructed. The dichotomy between the two approaches cannot be maintained. This thesis will require making some claims that would be regarded as surprising to many emotion researchers. First, while there is a difference between basic emotions and nonbasic emotions, it is not a structural difference. All emotions are fundamentally alike. Second, the standard list of basic emotions, though by many to be universal across cultures, are not basic after all. We don’t have names for the basic emotions. All emotions that we talk about are culturally informed. And finally, this concession to constructivism does not imply that emotions are cognitive in any sense. Emotions are perceptual and embodied. They are gut reactions, and they are not unique to our species.. (shrink)

Dependencies are identified in two recently proposed first-order axiom systems for plane hyperbolic geometry. Since the dependencies do not specifically concern hyperbolic geometry, our results yield two simpler axiom systems for absolute geometry.

Power enthusiasts are engaged in two projects: developing a decent metaphysical account of powers, and applying that account in order to make progress on various other philosophical issues, ranging from narrowly related topics such as causality to further removed ones such as free will, reasoning, or perception. I argue that an intermediate step may be taken, one that explores ‘varieties of power’ while still staying within the realm of, of ‘pure’ powers metaphysics. Taking this intermediate step provides a much more (...) interesting basis for those involved in project, ‘applied’ powers metaphysics. I articulate four such varieties of power by exploring various dimensions in which the explanatory profile of a power can be extended. I then briefly survey how these relate to various further metaphysical issues. (shrink)