Mood profiling has a long history in the field of sport and exercise. Several novel mood profile clusters were identified and described in the literature recently (Parsons-Smith, Terry, & Machin, 2017). In the present study, we investigated whether the same clusters were evident in an Italian language, sport and exercise context. The Italian Mood Scale (ITAMS; Quartiroli, Terry, & Fogarty, 2017) was administered to 950 Italian-speaking sport participants (659 females, 284 males, 7 unspecified; age range = 16–63 yr., M = (...) 25.03, SD = 7.62) and seeded k-means clustering methodology applied to the responses. Six distinct mood profiles were identified, termed the iceberg, inverse iceberg, inverse Everest, shark fin, surface, and submerged profiles, which closely resembled those reported among English-speaking participants (Parsons-Smith et al., 2017). Significant differences were found in the distribution of specific mood profiles across gender and age groups. Findings supported the cross-cultural generalizability of the six mood profiles and offer new research avenues into their antecedents, correlates and behavioral consequences in Italian-language contexts. (shrink)

Although considerable research indicates that mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance (Cook & Davis, 2006), athletic mental energy (AME) has never been conceptualized and measured. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conceptualize and develop a reliable and valid instrument to assess athletic mental energy. In Study 1, a focus group interview established the initial framework of athletic mental energy. Study 2 used a survey to collect athletes’ experiences of athletic mental energy and (...) develop a scale draft titled “Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES).” In Study 3, we examined the psychometric properties and the underlying structure of AMES via item analysis, internal consistency, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 4, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine AMES’s factorial validity; and examined concurrent and discriminant validity by examining correlations with athletes’ life stress, positive state of mind, and burnout. In study 5, we examined the measurement invariance of the 6-factor, 18-item AMES with Taiwanese and Malaysian samples. Study 6 examined the predictive validity by comparing AMES scores of successful and unsuccessful martial artists. Across these phases, results showed a 6-factor, 18-item AMES had adequate content validity, factorial structure, nomological validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, measurement invariance, and reliability. We suggest future studies may use AMES to examine its relationships with athletes’ cognition, affect, and performance. The application of AMES in sport psychology was also discussed. (shrink)

The voluminous writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein contain some of the most profound reflections of recent times on the nature of the human subject and self-understanding - the human condition, philosophically speaking. Describing Ourselves mines those extensive writings for a conception of the self that stands in striking contrast to its predecessors as well as its more recent alternatives. More specifically, the book offers a detailed discussion of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind as they hold special significance for the (...) understanding and clarification of the distinctive character of self-descriptive or autobiographical language. Garry L. Hagberg undertakes a ground-breaking philosophical investigation of selected autobiographical writings - among the best examples we have of human selves exploring themselves - as they cast new and special light on the critique of mind-body dualism and its undercurrents in particular and on the nature of autobiographical consciousness more generally. The chapters take up in turn the topics of self-consciousness, what Wittgenstein calls 'the inner picture', mental privacy and the picture of metaphysical seclusion, the very idea of our observation of the contents of consciousness, first-person expressive speech, reflexive or self-directed thought and competing pictures of introspection, the nuances of retrospective self-understanding, person-perception and the corollary issues of self-perception (itself an interestingly dangerous phrase), self-defining memory, and the therapeutic conception of philosophical progress as it applies to all of these issues. The cast of characters interwoven throughout this rich discussion include, in addition to Wittgenstein centrally, Augustine, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Iris Murdoch, Donald Davidson, and Stanley Cavell, among others. Throughout, conceptual clarifications concerning mind and language are put to work in the investigation of issues relating to self-description and in novel philosophical readings of autobiographical texts. (shrink)

This book uses rare pathologies to inform questions on topics such as consciousness and rationality. Rather than trying to answer these by inventing far-fetched scenario or 'thought experiments', it is better to utilize a rich but under-used clinical resource.

The morality of virtual representations and the enactment of prohibited activities within single-player gamespace (e.g., murder, rape, paedophilia) continues to be debated and, to date, a consensus is not forthcoming. Various moral arguments have been presented (e.g., virtue theory and utilitarianism) to support the moral prohibition of virtual enactments, but their applicability to gamespace is questioned. In this paper, I adopt a meta-ethical approach to moral utterances about virtual representations, and ask what it means when one declares that a virtual (...) interaction ‘is morally wrong’. In response, I present constructive ecumenical expressivism to (i) explain what moral utterances should be taken to mean, (ii) argue that they mean the same when referring to virtual and non-virtual interactions and (iii), given (ii), explain why consensus with regard to virtual murder, rape and paedophilia is not forthcoming even though such consensus is readily found with regard to their non-virtual equivalents. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the traditional anti-intellectualist claim that a form of knowing how to Φ (e.g., knowing how to play the guitar) exists that entails the ability to Φ (play the guitar), and that this knowledge cannot be reduced to propositions (such as ‘S knows a way _w_ to Φ’, where _w_ is a means of Φing). I also argue that S can know how to Φ in the absence of the ability to Φ, and for this knowledge (...) to be likewise irreducible to propositions. This is made possible when one distinguishes between type and token actions. Moreover, I contend that type and token actions, and one’s ability to engage in them, are differentiated at the level of motor representations. Motor representations provide an alternate means of grading knowledge how to that presented by Carlotta Pavese, insofar as this form of gradable knowledge is likewise irreducible to propositions. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate the role an ethic of care might play in constructing a normative model of ethical practice for journalism. How would practice be changed if the goal of journalism shifted from the traditional epistemological understanding to an ontological-ethical orientation? What would it mean for journalism to think of itself as an institution committed to aiding in the construction of a community defined by the solidarity of its citizens with one another?

Toward the end of the twentieth century, Highland Maya intellectuals and activists in Guatemala began to argue for the recognition of indigenous customary law, rooted in traditional Maya moral and ritual discourse. Such law is often in tension with the Western notion of rights that undergirds national and international treatises regarding indigenous peoples. This essay identifies three distinct but mutually engaged pairs of moral concepts—hot/cold, left/right, and favorable/not favorable—articulated through K'iche' Maya quotidian and ceremonial practices and speech. It also identifies (...) the extent to which they do not necessarily align with Western notions of good and bad. These three pairs of moral terms, specifically as conserved through the high-register of Maya discourse used by traditional ceremonial specialists, illustrate a normative means by which Highland Maya discern understandings of justice, and ground their advocacy for restorative justice. (shrink)

Prolific journalist, historian, political columnist, and practicing Catholic Wills (now 76) writes an intensely opinionated re-evaluation of leaders and celebrities he has encountered, among them Studs Terkel, Beverly Sills, William Buckley, Richard Nixon, and more.

What does unethical behavior look like in everyday professional practice, and how might it become the accepted norm? Examinations of unethical behavior often focus on failures of individual morality or on psychological blind spots, yet unethical behaviors are generated and performed through social interactions across professional practices rather than by individual actors alone. This shifts the focus of behavioral ethics research beyond the laboratory exploring motivation and cognition and into the organizations and professions where unethical behavior is motivated, justified, enabled (...) and supported in specific social contexts. For instance, when pharmaceutical firms fund academic research, how do the funding arrangements intersect with individual behaviors that are typical in academic research? In turn, how do academic-industry interactions affect scientific norms, particularly those involving compliance with rules, regulations, and ethical codes of conduct? A social organization approach to ethics allows us not only to examine ethics in practice, but also to tease apart unethical behaviors that might operate on an unreflective level and become accepted as “just the way it is.”. (shrink)

This paper advances a social organization approach to examining unethical behavior. While unethical behaviors may stem in part from failures in individual morality or psychological blind spots, they are both generated and performed through social interactions among individuals and groups. To illustrate the value of a social organization approach, a case study of a medical school professor's first experience with pharmaceutical-company-sponsored research is provided in order to examine how funding arrangements can constrain research integrity. The case illustrates three significant ways (...) that institutional corruption can occur in the research process. First, conflicts of norms between pharmaceutical companies, universities, and affiliated teaching hospitals can result in compromises and self-censorship. Second, normal behavior is shaped through routine interactions. Unethical behaviors can be (or can become) normal behaviors when they are produced and reproduced through a network of social interactions. Third, funding arrangements can create networks of dependency that structurally distort the independence of the academic researcher in favor of the funder's interests. More broadly, the case study demonstrates how the social organization approach deepens our understanding of the practice of ethics. (shrink)

The distinguishing feature of enactivist cognitive science is arguably its commitment to non-reductionism and its philosophical allegiance to first-person approaches, like phenomenology. The guiding theme of this article is that a theoretically mature enactivism is bound to be humanistic in its articulation, and only by becoming more humanistic can enactivism more fully embody the non-reductionist spirit that lay at its foundation. Our explanatory task is thus to bring forth such an articulation by advancing an enactivist theory of human personality. To (...) this end, we synthesize core concepts from cognitive science, personality theory, and phenomenological philosophy in order to develop an Enactivist Big-5 Theory of personality. According to EB5T, personality traits are dispositional tendencies for how we come to optimally grip our distinctly human worlds. Individual differences in personality are therefore reflective of stylistic differences in optimal gripping tendencies between human beings. EB5T affords a non-reductionist understanding of the immanent teleology of the autopoietically embodied human mind as a kind of full-scale optimal gripping process that is achieved along five major dimensions of personality. To the degree that these dimensions are universal, therefore, we argue that our theory offers a viable path forward in advancing enactivist cognitive science beyond the life of a cell and into the mind of a person, a longstanding hope and ambition held by proponents of the enactive approach. (shrink)

This book examines what, if anything, makes a depiction of fictional immorality—such as the murder, torture, or sexual assault of a fictional character—an example of immoral fiction, and therefore something that should be morally criticized and possibly prohibited.

Jeffrey Alexander argues that despite Bourdieu’s considerable achievements ultimately his work is reductionist and determinist. He further argues that though Bourdieu is a middle range theorist he is implicitly realist in his meta-theoretical assumptions. This article accepts these conclusions but argues that Bourdieu’s meta-theoretical realism is a virtue rather than a vice and that the manner in which he is a reductionist and determinist necessitate a re-thinking of what is meant by these notions. Alexander uses Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to (...) demon-strate a fundamental contradiction in Bourdieu’s theorising. According to him habitus presents us with the oxymoron of unconscious strategisation. This article uses a discussion of habitus in order to demonstrate that in its relationship with the concept of field it instead produces a practical resolution of long standing theoretical problems concerning structural determination and human agency. It is also argued that these problems are resolved at the meta-theoretical level in the form of critical realist ontology and that it is Alexander’s misunderstandings on this level which cause him to fail to appreciate the significance of Bourdieu’s achievements. (shrink)

Hegel and Empire: From Postcolonialism to Globalism. By Habib M.A.R.

David Horner has recently offered a medieval argument for an Anglophilic pronunciation of the name of St. Augustine. I claim his disputatious account fails, both on an account of interlinguistic phonological equivalence, and on a Kripkean-style rigid-designator theory of reference. It turns out, surprisingly, that Floridians are closer to the truth about the correct pronunciation of the medieval saint’s name than are Englishmen.

What comes after "postmodernism"?

This paper revisits the controversy surrounding Bhaskar's ‘spiritualisation’ of critical realism, formally introduced with the publication of From East to West. It describes the principal divisions amongst realists with respect to the five moments of CR theoretical development signified by Bhaskar in terms of his own publications. The article critiques some of his later arguments, such as that for reincarnation; but it also locates and identifies a much earlier error as being consistent with, and fundamental to, the later ideas that (...) so many realists had problems with. The principal error is to be found in the concept of ontological truth. (shrink)

Our paper reports and discusses issues relating to subjective wellbeing in selected countries in ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), a regional organization that coordinates and promotes the economic, social and cultural interests of member countries in Southeast Asia. Comparisons will be made across the five founding members of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand using data from the 2004, 2006 and 2007 AsiaBarometer Surveys. The indicators of subjective wellbeing used are perceptions of happiness, enjoyment, and achievement. (...) We also examined the impact of selected demographic and non-demographic variables on these indicators. (shrink)

Preface: A different kind of meditation -- Part I: Introductory -- A polemical clearing of the ground : Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins' lack of scruple : the unimpressive face of atheism -- Why we need to rethink religion -- Part II: The outside -- Shifting focus from the "outsider" to the "outside" -- Thought from the outside : Lawrence, Levinas and Derrida : at the firing line and into the unknown -- Thought from the outside : Abraham and Isaac : (...) hospitality, the messianic turn and the religious suspension of the ethical -- Balancing as we go : slave or noble, Abrahamic or Hellenic? -- Conclusion : "Driv[ing] on to the edge of the unknown and beyond". (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers, and debates in feminist philosophy. Fifty-six entries, written by an international team of contributors specifically for the _Companion_, are organized into five sections: Engaging the Past Mind, Body, and World Knowledge, Language, and Science Intersections Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. The volume provides a mutually enriching representation of the several philosophical traditions that contribute to feminist philosophy, including the analytic and continental traditions. (...) It also foregrounds issues of global concern and scope; shows how feminist theory meshes with rich theoretical approaches that start from transgender identities, race and ethnicity, sexuality, disabilities, and other axes of identity and oppression; and highlights the interdisciplinarity of feminist philosophy and the ways that it both critiques and contributes to the whole range of subfields within philosophy. (shrink)

This paper considers whether proposition – “x is not immoral but it is in poor taste” – is morally contradictory when considered from the standpoint of constructive ecumenical expressivism. According to CEE, pronouncements about poor taste and immorality have the following in common: they each convey a negative attitude towards x and intimate that x ought not to be done. Given this, P1 is vulnerable to a charge of contradiction, as it intimates that x is both something and not something (...) that ought not to be done. To avoid the putative contradiction, it is argued that an accusation of poor taste amounts to a negative attitude towards the treatment of a morally pertinent matter, thereby making the former parasitic on the latter. A morally relevant means of distinguishing between poor taste and immorality is therefore provided that endorses the expressivist tradition, and provides an account of societal norms. (shrink)

This paper revisits the controversy surrounding Bhaskar's ‘spiritualisation’ of critical realism, formally introduced with the publication of From East to West. It describes the principal divisions amongst realists with respect to the five moments of CR theoretical development signified by Bhaskar in terms of his own publications. The article critiques some of his later arguments, such as that for reincarnation; but it also locates and identifies a much earlier error as being consistent with, and fundamental to, the later ideas that (...) so many realists had problems with. The principal error is to be found in the concept of ontological truth. (shrink)