Trait emotional intelligence (“trait EI”) concerns our perceptions of our emotional abilities, that is, how good we believe we are in terms of understanding, regulating, and expressing emotions in order to adapt to our environment and maintain well-being. In this article, we present succinct summaries of selected findings from research on (a) the location of trait EI in personality factor space, (b) the biological underpinnings of the construct, (c) indicative applications in the areas of clinical, health, social, educational, organizational, and (...) developmental psychology, and (d) trait EI training. Findings to date suggest that individual differences in trait EI are a consistent predictor of human behavior across the life span. (shrink)

Next SectionIntensification of poverty and degradation of health infrastructure over recent decades in countries most affected by HIV/AIDS present formidable challenges to clinical research. This paper addresses the overall standard of health care (SOC) that should be provided to research participants in developing countries, rather than the narrow definition of SOC that has characterised the international debate on standards of health care. It argues that contributing to sustainable improvements in health by progressively ratcheting the standard of care upwards for research (...) participants and their communities is an ethical obligation of those in resource-rich countries who sponsor and implement research in poorer ones. (shrink)

The paper addresses the possibility of providing a meta-justification of what appears to be crucial epistemic desiderata involved in the method of reflective equilibrium. I argue that although the method of reflective equilibrium appears to be widely in use in moral theorising, the prospects of providing a meta-justification of crucial epistemic desiderata are rather bleak. Nor is the requirement that a meta-justification be provided obviously misguided. In addition, I briefly note some of the implications of these results for our use (...) of the method of reflective equilibrium and for the best interpretation of the method. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to describe and reflect upon the concrete particulars of one academician's work as an expert ethics witness. The commentary on my practices and the narrative descriptions of three cases are offered as evidence for the thesis that it is possible to act honorably within a role that some have considered to be inherently illicit. Practical measures are described for avoiding some of the best known pitfalls. The discussion concludes with a listing of the distinctive (...) competencies and understandings that are useful in serving as an expert ethics witness. (shrink)

This book provides a defence of epistemological relativism against its most powerful opponents.

Narrative theories currently dominate our understanding of how selfhood is constituted and concretely individuated throughout personal history. Despite this success, the narrative perspective has recently been exposed to a range of critiques. Whilst these critiques have been effective in pointing out the shortcomings of narrative theories of selfhood, they have been less willing and able to suggest alternative ways of understanding personal history. In this article, I assess the criticisms and argue that an adequate phenomenology of personal history must also (...) go beyond narrative. Drawing on a distinction between history and narrative, I outline an account of historical becoming through a process of sedimentation and a rich notion of what I call historical selfhood on an embodied level. Five embodied existentials are suggested, sketching a preliminary understanding of how selves are concretely individuated on a pre-narrative level. (shrink)

The lepidopteral imaginary that animates Nabokov's relationship to translation can be understood in light of Deleuze and Guattari's notions of ‘apparatus of capture’ and ‘rhizomatic becomings’. On the one hand, Nabokov's scientific fascination with butterflies frames his radically literal approach to translation. The scientific dissection of texts and butterflies ‘captures’ an original and singular content as it flutters, reducing it to the homogenised content of a target source. On the other hand, in Speak, Memory's engagement with ‘multiple metamorphoses, familiar to (...) butterflies’, Nabokov as both literary artist and autobiographical personage becomes-butterfly with translation itself, entering into affective intensities with butterflies that include lepidopteral relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness. (shrink)

Linguistic Approach to Buddhist Thought. Genjun H. Sasaki. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1986. x, 194 pp. Rs. 125.

Therigatha-atthakatha. W. Pruitt. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1998. vii, 414 pp. £17.00 ISBN 0 86013 352 5.

The debate about the moral status of the embryo has gained new impetus because of the advances in reproductive technology that have made early human embryo experimentation a possibility, and because of the public concern that this arouses. Several philosophical arguments claiming that fertilisation is the event that accords moral status to the embryo were initially formulated in the context of the abortion debate. Were they formulated with sufficient precision to account for the scientific facts as we now understand them? (...) Or do these arguments need modification? Aspects of three arguments for moral status being acquired at fertilisation are examined in relation to current scientific knowledge, highlighting the reasons why such arguments, at present, seem to provide an inadequate basis for the determination of moral status. (shrink)

Purpose: This paper is a brief introduction to enactive cognitive science: a description of some of the main research concerns; some examples of how such concerns have been realized in actual research; some of its research methods and proposed explanatory mechanisms and models; some of the potential as both a theoretical and applied science; and several of the major open research questions. Findings: Enactive cognitive science is an approach to the study of mind that seeks to explain how the structures (...) and mechanisms of autonomous cognitive systems can arise and participate in the generation and maintenance of viable perceiver-dependent worlds -- rather than more conventional cognitivist efforts, such as the attempt to explain cognition in terms of the ``recovery'' of (pre-given, timeless) features of The (objectively-existing and accessible) World. As such, enactive cognitive science is resonant with radical constructivism. Research implications: As with other scientific efforts conducted within a constructivist orientation, enactive cognitive science is broadly ``conventional'' in its scientific methodology. That is, there is a strong emphasis on testable hypotheses, empirical observation, supportable mechanisms and models, rigorous experimental methods, acceptable criteria of validation, and the like. Nonetheless, this approach to cognitive science does also raise a number of specific questions about the scope of amenable phenomena (e.g., meaning, consciousness, etc.) -- and it also raises questions of whether such a perspective requires an expansion of what is typically considered within the purview of scientific method (e.g., the role of the observer/scientist). (shrink)

Certain segments of science are becoming increasingly commercialized. This article discusses the commercialization of academic science and its impact on various aspects of science. It also aims to provide an introduction to the articles in this special issue. I briefly describe the major factors that led to this phenomenon, situate it in the context of the changing social regime of science and give a thumbnail sketch of its costs and benefits. I close with a general discussion of how the topic (...) of commercialization of academic science is relevant to science education. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

In the current climate of dramatic advances in the neurosciences, it has been widely assumed that the diagnosis of mental disorder is a matter exclusively for value-free science. Starting from a detailed case history, this paper describes how, to the contrary, values come into the diagnosis of mental disorders, directly through the criteria at the heart of psychiatry's most scientifically grounded classification, the American Psychiatric Association's DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Various possible interpretations of the prominence of values in psychiatric (...) diagnosis are outlined. Drawing on work in the Oxford analytic tradition of philosophy, it is shown that, properly understood, the prominence of psychiatric diagnostic values reflects the necessary engagement of psychiatry with the diversity of individual human values. This interpretation opens up psychiatric diagnostic assessment to the resources of a new skills-based approach to working with complex and conflicting values (also derived from analytic philosophy) called 'values-based practice.' Developments in values-based practice in training, policy and research in mental health are briefly outlined. The paper concludes with an indication of how the integration of values-based with evidence-based approaches provides the basis for psychiatric practice in the twenty-first century that is both science-based and person-centred. (shrink)

This paper spells out the attention schema theory of consciousness in terms of the predictive processing framework. As it stands, the attention schema theory lacks a plausible computational formalization that could be used for developing possible mechanistic models of how it is realized in the brain. The predictive processing framework, on the other hand, fails to provide a plausible explanation of the subjective quality or the phenomenal aspect of conscious experience. The aim of this work is to apply the formal (...) tools of predictive processing to outline a possible model of cognition that details a plausible way in which organisms may acquire or construct the kinds of schemas postulated by the attention schema theory. This is done in terms of Bayesian control models, which tend to favour representing information in a frugal or 'sparse' manner that strips away detail in precisely the way that the attention schema requires. Once integrated, these two accounts can offer a plausible explanation of the supposedly irreducible and mysterious 'feel' of conscious experience, in terms of the frugal manner in which perceptual mechanisms are represented by the attention schema. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dogs and MonstersObservations on the Evacuation of Afghanistan and the Intersection of Human Rights and the AnthropoceneK. M. Ferebee (bio)On August 28, 2021, former Royal Marine and charity worker Pen Farthing was evacuated from Afghanistan with almost two hundred dogs and cats that his Kabul animal charity, Nowzad Dogs, had rescued. The role of the British government in this evacuation remains hotly contested: At the time, the British Ministry (...) of Defence tweeted (Fig. 1) that Farthing's escape had been assisted by the British military, but Farthing later disputed this claim and argued that his rescue was not the result of high-level intervention in the British government. In January 2022 controversy erupted around the emergence of documents suggesting that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had lied to Parliament about the personal role that he played in just such an intervention. Notably, Nowzad's Afghan staff members were not evacuated alongside Farthing and the animals, though they would eventually escape to Pakistan. Following Farthing's escape, the British government failed to evacuate hundreds of British citizens and residents (Merriman and Ghouri), as well as many more Afghans who had worked on behalf of British forces. The Nowzad Dogs evacuation became a site of symbolic struggle over Britain's respect (or lack thereof) for human rights. "What a story to tell the world: Britain values dogs more than Afghan people," the headline of an opinion piece in the Guardian (Hinsliff) read.The story of Nowzad Dogs is interesting to me not only as a tale of human-nonhuman relations, but also because I was, at the time it occurred, volunteering within the Afghan aid community to assist relatives of a friend, British Afghans who had been visiting Kabul when the government [End Page 52] collapsed. The family repeatedly asked for assistance from the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—assistance that never appeared. Ultimately, due to the generosity of donors and the coordination of a volunteer team, the family was able to flee to Pakistan, where they boarded a commercial flight to London. This case was a particularly stark and powerful illustration of the negotiations of rights and value that took place during and following the evacuation. It seemed nonsensical, in August 2021, to suppose that British citizens, including British children (the family I worked with included a six- and an eleven-year-old who were British citizens), would be abandoned while Afghan dogs had their rights prioritized. As I hope to demonstrate here, however, such an incident becomes comprehensible and even logical when it is understood as part of a specifically Anthropocene manifestation of subjectivity.Upendra Baxi suggests that 1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) marks a broad shift from the era of "modern" (42) human rights (which began with the American and French Revolutions) to the era of "contemporary" (42) human rights. His periodization links these eras in human rights to shifts in the ideology of capitalism and empire. The "modern" era of human rights, he writes, "signals a whole variety of ideological 'justifications' for colonization and world domination" and "provides a register of major development in industrial capitalism" (42), while the "contemporary" era of human rights "is based on the premise of radical self-determination" (46). Such a periodization also brings human rights into close alignment with the Anthropocene, which is rooted in the capitalist-colonial Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, yet often dated most concretely to the circa-1950 shift that some (such as J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke) label the "Great Acceleration." Indeed, one could reasonably appropriate Baxi's terms and speak of "modern" and "contemporary" Anthropocenes mapped identically onto the global timeline.I propose to use the 2021 Afghan evacuation as a site from which to explore how human rights and the Anthropocene have together coproduced certain forms of subjectivity that are essential for the continued smooth functioning of world-ecological capitalism. These new forms of subjectivity are necessary to sustain the important fiction of individual [End Page 53] agency and value and conceal the ways in which the Anthropocene moment renders this fiction meaningless. Ultimately, I paint a picture of an Anthropocene without any human agency at all. I want... (shrink)

In the target article, Kirby (2014) explores conditions under which gestational surrogacy in developing countries (in this case India) may (or may not) be considered as exploitative. The author pro...

This paper discusses two proposals to the US President’s Council on Bioethics that try to overcome the issue of killing embryos in embryonic stem cell research and argues that neither of them can hold good as a compromise solution. The author argues that the groups of people for which the compromises are intended neither need nor want the two compromises, the US government and other governments of countries with restrictive regulation on ES cell research have not provided a clear and (...) sound justification to take into account minority views on the protection of human life to such a considerable extent as to constrain the freedom of research in the area of stem cell research, and the best way to deal with these issues is to accept that many people and most governments adopt a gradualist and variable viewpoint on the human embryo which implies that embryos can be sacrificed for good reasons and to try to find other, less constraining, ways to take into account minority views on the embryo. Finally, another more efficient and time and money sparing compromise will be proposed for those who accept IVF, a majority in most societies.STEM CELL RESEARCHStem cells are widely believed to represent one of the greatest promises for medicine and biomedical research in the coming century with hopes raised for treatments for common diseases and conditions, including neurological disease or injury, diabetes, and myocardial infarct. At present there are three main lines of stem cell research, namely on stem cells originating from early in vitro embryos, left over from infertility treatment, or especially created for research through in vitro fertilisation or cell nuclear transfer cells), on cord blood derived stem cells, and on stem cells from more developed tissues or organs from foetuses …. (shrink)

Aristotle claims man is a political animal and that the polis exists by nature. Taking literally his analogy between the legislator and the craftsman, Aristotle's critics contend that he 'blunders' because the polis is artificial, devised by a legislator/founder and imposed on a people. We defend Aristotle's claims by showing, first, how Aristotle's claim that man is by nature an animal possessing logos -- speech/reason -- grounds his account of the natural development of the polis out of the earliest partnerships (...) (which the critics concede are natural); second, that the person who first brought people together in a polis may well have done so without realizing the scope of his actions; and, finally, that the developmental process is clearly one of praxis (action), not poisis (making, the imposition of a form on matter). Aristotle's claims are evidenced by the Homeric hero Philoctetes, whom one critic takes to disprove Aristotle's theses. (shrink)

The ever-growing acceptance and use of assisted human reproduction techniques has caused demand for “donated” sperm and eggs to outstrip supply. Medical professionals and others argue that monetary reward is the only way to recruit sufficient numbers of “donors”. Is this a clash between pragmatics and policy/ethics? Where monetary payments are the norm, alternative recruitment strategies used successfully elsewhere may not have been considered, nor the negative consequences of commercialism on all participants thought through. Considerations leading some countries to ban (...) the buying and selling of sperm, eggs and embryos are outlined and a case made that the collective welfare of all involved parties be the primary consideration in this, at times heated, debate. (shrink)

DaB fUr die Entwicklung der Phanomenologie Husserls nicht zuletzt auch,wissenschaftstheoretische' Motive ausschlaggebend waren, ist hinreichend bekannt. Umso mehr verwundert es, daB die Husserl-Rezeption sich diese Motive nur selten zueigen gemacht hat. Zwar sind in einer Reihe von Einzel­ wissenschaften, wie in der Literaturwissenschaft, der Sozialwissenschaft und besonders auch der Psychologie, phanomenologische Motive wirksam gewor­ den. Versuche einer ausdriicklichen wissenschaftskritischen Anwendung der Husserlschen Philosophie auf einzelwissenschaftliehe Theorien jedoch, wie sie z.B. Alfred Schiitz in seinem friihen Werk zur phanomenologischen Grundlegung der "verstehenden (...) Soziologie"l ansatzweise unternommen hat, sind rar. Freilich ging auch Husserl hier nieht eben mit gutem Beispiel voran. Auch er selbst hat seine wissenschaftstheoretische Programmatik nirgends einer ernsthaften Bewahrungsprobe unterzogen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung will diese Frage einer wissenschaftstheore­ tischen Anwendbarkeit der transzendentalen Phiinomenologie paradigmatisch im Hinblick auf die Problemstellungen der Geschiehtswissenschaft iiberprii­ fen. Was also kann die Phanomenologie fUr die Historik leisten? DaB sieh fiir eine solche Absieht gerade die geschichtstheoretischen Perspektiven in Hus­ serls Werk anbieten, hat vor allem zwei Griinde. (shrink)

This article sets out a manifesto for the development of an international values-based practice fully engaged with the diversity of cultural values and implemented through the resources of the international movement in philosophy and psychiatry. Anticipated by mid-twentieth century ordinary language philosophy of the “Oxford School,” the last three decades have witnessed a remarkable flowering of cross-disciplinary work between philosophy and psychiatry. The article indicates the scope and scale of this work and then describes the emergence of contemporary values-based practice (...) as its philosophy-into-practice cutting edge. Values-based practice although originating in philosophy and psychiatry is currently being developed mainly in areas of bodily medicine such as surgery. As such, it has been criticized for focusing, as contemporary health care has largely focused, on the individual at the expense of cultural values. Hence arises the need for extending values-based practice internationally. The resources available from international philosophy and psychiatry for so extending values-based practice are outlined and some of the challenges are indicated. The article concludes with the hope that psychiatry in supporting the development of international values-based practice will by the same token take poll position in the development of contemporary science-led clinical care. (shrink)

Some breeding technology applications are claimed to improve animal welfare: this includes potential applications of genomics and genome editing to improve animals’ resistance to environmental stress, to genetically alter features which in current practice are changed invasively, or to reduce animals’ capacity for suffering. Such applications challenge how breeding technologies are evaluated, which paradigmatically proceeds from a welfare perspective. Whether animal welfare will indeed improve may be unanswerable until proposed applications have been developed and tested sufficiently and until agreement is (...) reached on how to conceptualize animal welfare. Moreover, even if breeding technologies do improve animal welfare, they might be objected to on other ethical grounds. Ethical perspectives on earlier animal biotechnologies are relevant for today’s breeding technologies and their proposed applications, but may need reinterpretation. The current paper applies the concept of telos, which previously figured mainly in debates on classical genetic engineering, to genomic selection and genome editing aimed at improving animal welfare. It critiques current accounts of telos and offers an alternative conceptualization that applies to recently proposed applications of breeding technologies. This account rejects both removing the desire to pursue characteristic activities and altering animal bodies in ways that compromise their ability to perform such activities, but conditionally allows increasing robustness against environmental stress. Our account of telos enriches ethical debate on these breeding technology applications by insisting on the connection between the good life, an animal’s constitution, and its activities, thus countering reductive conceptions of welfare. (shrink)

The Catalogue of Palm Leaf Manuscripts kept in the Otani University Library. Otani University Library, Kyoto 1995. lxxxi, 778 pp. No price given.

This essay is an introduction to systematic nonsectarian psychology of religion—its nature and scope, and its history. Among major issues, the study of motivation for being religious and stages of religious development are discussed, as well as counseling and psychotherapy. I summarize current trends.

This study analyzed 16 potential ethics-related problems associated with use and abuse of video news releases (VNRs) by public relations practitioners and electronic journalists. Causes and possible solutions to the problems were suggested and model ethics code guidelines were developed. Moral rules, moral ideals, theories of ethics, public relations theories, and electronic journalism theories were used to provide a general foundation for the analysis. A more specific foundation was provided by guidelines from a variety of media codes of ethics.