Test anxiety remains a challenge for students and has considerable physiological and psychological impacts. The routine practice of slow, Device-Guided Breathing is a major component of behavioral treatments for anxiety conditions. This paper addresses the effectiveness of using DGB as a self-treatment clinical tool for test anxiety reduction. This pilot study sample included 21 healthy men and women, all college students, between the ages of 20 and 30. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: DGB practice and wait-list control. At (...) the beginning and the end of 3-weeks DGB training, participants underwent a stress test, followed by measures of blood pressure and reported anxiety. Anxiety reduction in the DGB group as compared to controls was not statistically significant, but showed a large effect size. Accordingly, the clinical outcomes suggested that daily practice of DGB may lead to reduced anxiety. We assume that such reduction may lead to improved test performance. Our results suggest an alternative treatment for test anxiety that may also be relevant for general anxiety, which is likely to increase due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Difficulties understanding speech form one of the most prevalent complaints among older adults. Successful speech perception depends on top-down linguistic and cognitive processes that interact with the bottom-up sensory processing of the incoming acoustic information. The relative roles of these processes in age-related difficulties in speech perception, especially when listening conditions are not ideal, are still unclear. In the current study, we asked whether older adults with a larger working memory capacity process speech more efficiently than peers with lower capacity (...) when speech is presented in noise, with another task performed in tandem. Using the Eye-tracking of Word Identification in Noise Under Memory Increased Load an adapted version of the “visual world” paradigm, 36 older listeners were asked to follow spoken instructions presented in background noise, while retaining digits for later recall under low or high memory load. In critical trials, instructions directed listeners’ gaze to pictures of objects whose names shared onset or offset sounds with the name of a competitor that was displayed on the screen at the same time. We compared listeners with different memory capacities on the time course for spoken word recognition under the two memory loads by testing eye-fixations on a named object, relative to fixations on an object whose name shared phonology with the named object. Results indicated two trends. For older adults with lower working memory capacity, increased memory load did not affect online speech processing, however, it impaired offline word recognition accuracy. The reverse pattern was observed for older adults with higher working memory capacity: increased task difficulty significantly decreases online speech processing efficiency but had no effect on offline word recognition accuracy. Results suggest that in older adults, adaptation to adverse listening conditions is at least partially supported by cognitive reserve. Therefore, additional cognitive capacity may lead to greater resilience of older listeners to adverse listening conditions. The differential effects documented by eye movements and accuracy highlight the importance of using both online and offline measures of speech processing to explore age-related changes in speech perception. (shrink)

Claims concerning processes, claims of the form “xisφing”, have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years in the philosophy of action. However, this interest has frequently limited itself to noting certain formal features such claims have, and has not extended to a discussion of when they are true. This article argues that a claim of the form “xisφing” is true when what is happening withxis such that, if it is not interrupted, a φing will occur. It then applies (...) itself more directly to the case of action, arguing that when “xisφing” describesx's intentional action, it is true iffxis acting from a method she knows to be sufficient to φ, in the sense that if she is not interrupted in carrying out this method, she will φ. I use this criterion to argue that the carbon‐copier example Donald Davidson gives in “Intending” fails to refute Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that an agent who is φing intentionally knows that she is, because the agent in Davidson's example is not intentionally making the copies. (shrink)

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

This paper first offers a standard modal extension of dialetheic logics that respect the normal semantics for negation and conjunction, in an attempt to adequately model absolutism, the thesis that there are true contradictions at metaphysically possible worlds. It is shown, however, that the modal extension has unsavoury consequences for both absolutism and dialetheism. While the logic commits the absolutist to dialetheism, it commits the dialetheist to the impossibility of the actual world. A new modal logic AV is then proposed (...) which avoids these unsavoury consequences by invalidating the interdefinability rules for the modal operators with the use of two valuation relations. However, while using AV carries no significant cost for the absolutist, the same isn't true for the dialetheist. Although using AV allows her to avoid the consequence that the actual world is an impossible world, it does so only on the condition that the dialetheist admits that she cannot give a dialetheic solution to all self-refe.. (shrink)

This article argues that standard causal and functionalist definitions of realization fail to account for the realization of entities that cannot be individuated in causal or functional terms. By modifying such definitions to require that realizers also logically suffice for any historical properties of the entities they realize, one can provide for the realization of entities whose resistance to causal/functional individuation stems from their possession of individuative historical properties. But if qualia cannot be causally or functionally individuated, then qualia can (...) be physically realized only if the thesis that all things are physical or physically realized is insufficient for physicalism. (shrink)

The research aims to identify the organizational excellence in Palestinian universities of Gaza Strip, from the perspective of senior management. The questionnaires were distributed the top senior management in the Palestinian universities, and the study population was (344) employees in senior management in Palestinian universities. A stratified random sample were selected from of employees in the Palestinian universities consist of (182) employees at return rate of (69.2%). SPSS program for analyzing and processing the data was used. The study reached the (...) following results: the senior management agrees largely on the importance of the axis of "Leadership Excellence" and "Excellence service sectors". The senior management agrees moderately about the importance of the axis of the “Knowledge excellence". The study showed that there is a weakness in the employment of scientific research to serve the community, there is weakness in the follow-up of the universities management for the performance of their graduates in the institutions in which they work. Senior management agrees on the importance of the "Organizational Excellence" moderately. The recommendations of study includes: the need to develop principles and fair criteria for the selection of the best candidates for the university and university leaders based on specialization, competence, experience, skills, integrity and not on the basis of favoritism. (shrink)

Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard problem can provide an account of problem reports, (...) and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem. (shrink)

Countries increasingly have been entering bilateral labor agreements as a tool for the regulation and governance of short-term temporary labor migration worldwide. However, these are often confidential legal instruments, and consequently we know relatively little about their actual content and impact, and why countries choose to enter them. This Article complements existing explanations in the literature regarding the reasons why countries enter BLAs and their potential to create and improve migrant workers’ rights. Based on a detailed content analysis of 81 (...) recent BLAs signed largely over the last 20 years, and on a wide literature review and interest analysis, we introduce a “control thesis.” According to the control thesis, the popularity, confidentiality and unenforceability of BLAs can be explained, at least partially, by their ability to promote a key shared interest of sending and receiving countries in controlling and policing the mobility and actions of migrant workers and also, at times, aspects of the illicit migration industry that develops around labor migration. We reach this conclusion, and elaborate on its meaning and the potential it may hold for migrant workers and their advocates, in strategically seeking to use BLAs to improve temporary migrant workers’ rights and protections. (shrink)

This Article examines what form the public/private distinction takes in contemporary legal consciousness. It proposes that while the public/ private distinction is still an important component of contemporary legal consciousness, the content of each sphere, their stability as distinct spheres, and their interaction with each other have significantly changed. This transformation occurred primarily due to the rise of the regulatory state and the increased visibility of the interconnectedness of the spheres due to public ordering of private activity in an age (...) of widespread privatization. The current state of the distinction challenges courts, when these are asked by petitioners to define the proper scope of the spheres and decide on their boundaries. The Article critically examines the Israeli High Court of Justice decision in a prison privatization case, as a case that reflects the mismatch between the traditional understanding of the public/private distinction and a much messier reality in which the private and public spheres keep changing, and intermingling in new ways. (shrink)

The research aims to design a proposed model of learning organizations as an entry point to achieve organizational excellence in the Palestinian universities of Gaza Strip. A random sample of workers were selected from the Palestinian universities consist of (286) employees at recovery rate of (70.3%). The study concluded with a set of results the most important of which: there is a statistically significant relationship between the components of learning organizations and achieving organizational excellence in the Palestinian universities of Gaza (...) Strip from the standpoint of the faculty members. One of the main recommendations of the study: establish the concept of learning organization in leaders and staff of the university through the establishment of specialized courses, and workshops. Turning the status of the university into a learning organization as a strategic objective and the performance of managers are measurement accordingly. Organize visits of the leaders of the university a to the top organizations in this field and to take advantage of their experience and encourage deans and heads of departments to involve their employees in the information on global trends and trends in learning organization through regular meetings. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Hegel’s account of shame as a fundamental affect. Qua spiritual, the human individual strives for self-determination; hence she is ashamed of the fact that, q...

Well-Being and Death addresses philosophical questions about death and the good life: what makes a life go well? Is death bad for the one who dies? How is this possible if we go out of existence when we die? Is it worse to die as an infant or as a young adult? Is it bad for animals and fetuses to die? Can the dead be harmed? Is there any way to make death less bad for us? Ben Bradley defends the (...) following views: pleasure, rather than achievement or the satisfaction of desire, is what makes life go well; death is generally bad for its victim, in virtue of depriving the victim of more of a good life; death is bad for its victim at times after death, in particular at all those times at which the victim would have been living well; death is worse the earlier it occurs, and hence it is worse to die as an infant than as an adult; death is usually bad for animals and fetuses, in just the same way it is bad for adult humans; things that happen after someone has died cannot harm that person; the only sensible way to make death less bad is to live so long that no more good life is possible. (shrink)

En el presente estudio analizaremos la expresión del conflicto en el lenguaje, donde la lucha palabra-letra impregna la teoría agónica del lenguaje y marca la trascendencia sobre la relación historia-intrahistoria. Asimismo, presentaremos la dimensión creadora del lenguaje, relevante desde el Unamuno contemplativo, y el papel desempeñado por el diálo go a la hora de expresar los dos poíos del conflicto, agónico y contem plativo.

Islamic ethics; Muslims; conduct of life; religious life; Islam.

Theories of phenomenal intentionality have been claimed to resolve certain worries about the indeterminacy of mental content that rival, externalist theories face. Thus far, however, such claims have been largely programmatic. This paper aims to improve on prior arguments in favor of phenomenal intentionality by using attention and Gestalt principles as specific examples of factors that influence the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in ways that thereby help determine perceptual content. Some reasons are then offered for rejecting an alternative interpretation (...) of these examples, according to which the phenomenal effects of attention and Gestalt principles play no role in the determination of perceptual content. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of marital love as a complex recognitive relation, which I articulate by juxtaposing it against other recognitive relations that figure in Hegel's theory of modern civil society (i.e., respect and esteem). Drawing on Hegel's early writings, I argue that, if love is to provide its unique sort of recognition, it must obtain between “living beings who are equal in power”—a peculiar form of equality that I name (drawing on Stanley Cavell's work) “dynamic equality.” I conclude (...) that it is by Hegel's own lights that we should reject his notorious conception of the sexual difference. However, I also offer reasons why, from Hegel's early 19th century perspective, he could consider the following two conditions as compatible: (1) equality within marriage and (2) sexual hierarchy outside marriage, namely, in civil society. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century optics naturalizes the eye while estranging the mind from objects. A mere screen, on which rests a blurry array of light stains, the eye no longer furnishes the observer with genuine re-presentations of visible objects. The intellect is thus compelled to decipher flat images of no inherent epistemic value, accidental effects of a purely causal process, as vague, reversed reflections of wholly independent objects. Reflecting on and trespassing the boundaries between natural and artificial, orderly and disorderly, this optical paradox (...) is a Baroque phenomenon; and it is the origin of Descartes’ celebrated doubt---whether we know anything at all. (shrink)

In the Ethics,1 Spinoza presents a rigorous naturalistic view of man and nature. Man is a part of nature, a subject of the same domain—not a domain separate from it, nor a domain within that of nature. Man cannot act against nature or in an unnatural way; in comparison with any other part or creature of nature, man is not special, more important or qualitatively different. All general laws of nature apply equally to animals, inanimate objects, humans, God, the mind, (...) and the affects. Nature can be explicated based on necessary causes, and there are no extra-natural factors that affect it or anything in it: no supernatural power or metaphysical principles create or regulate it, and no separate methods of explanation .. (shrink)

The article proposes a phenomenological journey through three concepts of uncertainty – those of Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Jan Patočka. The discussion focuses on the meaning of certainty and uncertainty and on the mutual relations between the two according to each philosopher. Adopting an embodied philosophical-poetic perspective enables the dialectical relations prevailing between these three conceptions to emerge, clarifying that, despite their differences, they share a deep attachment to the transcendent dimension of human existence. This dimension is described as (...) “uncertain certainty,” implying attention to the quiver of absolute meaning dwelling within and beyond the movement of humans and the lifeworld. (shrink)

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

The following describes the concept of apoliticism, distinguishing it from indifference, which is also considered a negative attitude toward politics. Whereas apoliticism is the rejection of the official political institutions, possibly with the plan of an alternative system, the indifferent rejects politics altogether and is politically disinterested. If reflective negativism rejects politics as mechanism, the indifferent rejects it as a pursuit. I also distinguish between the extra-political, as the condition of being outside of any environment in which free deliberation and (...) public engagement is possible, and the supra-political condition, as blurring the line between public political activities and rites prescribed by the state on the one hand and the private sphere of the individual on the other hand. If different, both are forms of political poverty. These concepts may serve as means for a more nuanced understanding of the structure of apolitical attitudes. (shrink)

An important aspect of the debate between the A-theory and the B-theory of time relates to the supposed implications of each for some of the most basic human attitudes and stances. The asymmetry in our attitudes towards past and future events in our life (pleasant and unpleasant), and towards the temporal limits of our existence, that is, toward birth and death, is supposedly considered differently by the two theories. I argue that our attitudes are neither justified nor discredited by anything (...) which is in debate between the A-Theory and the B-theory, and therefore that neither theory of time is supported by the asymmetry in our attitudes. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to resuscitate the perennially unfashionable distinctive feeling theory of pleasure (and pain), according to which for an experience to be pleasant (or unpleasant) is just for it to involve or contain a distinctive kind of feeling. I do this in two ways. First, by offering powerful new arguments against its two chief rivals: attitude theories, on the one hand, and the phenomenological theories of Roger Crisp, Shelly Kagan, and Aaron Smuts, on the other. Second, by (...) showing how it can answer two important objections that have been made to it. First, the famous worry that there is no felt similarity to all pleasant (or unpleasant) experiences (sometimes called ‘the heterogeneity objection’). Second, what I call ‘Findlay’s objection’, the claim that it cannot explain the nature of our attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

A partir de l'idée de “ folie ” chez S. Paul , Fr. Le Gal explore le thème de “ la folie sainte de Dieu ” qui n'est autre que la révélation de son amour fou pour l'homme. Examinant tout d'abord la polysémie du terme, sa réflexion porte en première partie sur Jésus-Christ comme “ homme de la dérision et Dieu à la folie ”, examinant au passage la parabole comme lieu de l' “ ironie christique ”. Dans la seconde (...) partie, c'est Paul qui révèle le contenu à la fois christologique, théologique et spirituel de la folie dans la tension entre la scandale de la croix et le risque pour l'apôtre et le croyant de n'être pas reçus. C'est pourtant là que se manifestera la “ folie sainte ”.Beginning with the idea of 'folly " in St. Paul , Fr Le Gal explores the theme of "the holy folly of God " that is nothing other than the revelation of his mad love for man. Examining first of all the polysemy of the term, his reflection in the first part is on Jesus Christ as "man of derision and God of folly ", examining in passing the parable as the area of "christic irony ". In the second part, it is Paul who reveals, at the same time, the christological, theological, and spiritual content of folly in the tension between the scandal of the cross and the risk for the apostle and the believer not to be accepted. It is there, nevertheless, that the "holy folly " manifests itself. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today's emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in (...) Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism. (shrink)

What is it for a life to be meaningful? In this article, I defend what I call Consequentialism about Meaning in Life, the view that one's life is meaningful at time t just in case one's surviving at t would be good in some way, and one's life was meaningful considered as a whole just in case the world was made better in some way for one's having existed.

Formulated as a common conceptual ground for all democracies, Popper's notion of the open society sprang from the mid-20th century context that demonstrated democracy's vulnerability to hijacking through its own electoral mechanisms. Popper's concept may accordingly be considered as a resource for combatting the populist appeal to majority decision and its threat of diminishing individual and minority rights. I examine the affirmative and critical aspects of such a consideration. On the affirmative side, the open-society concept allows room for both majority (...) decision and the rights of individuals and minorities, as well as for particular group identities and class demands, showing that they may all cooperate to facilitate the growth of liberty, knowledge and the quality of life. Democratic institutions are justified from the grounds of this concept. Populism's equation of democracy with majority decision is, thus, incompatible with democracy's essence: decision by majority exists to cater to the vision that justifies that mode of decision making itself and cannot stay legitimate if it scuttles that vision. The more critical interpretation focuses on a detail of the open society's projected development. Popper tasks democracy's institutions with assuring conditions for progress through the expansion of knowledge. Popper expects the same process to modify the civic sphere's scope and content, as political bodies will be increasingly exposed to the expanding insights of scholarship and science. This anticipation involves grading the agents engaged in these two respective spheres, as well as looking forward to the ascendancy of one of them. Accordingly, the open-society concept might validate claims that, when seeking to confine the scope of majority decision through an emphasis on rights and law, constitutionalist and liberal approaches to democracy are subtly elitist. (shrink)

I argue that extant accounts of harm all fail to account for important desiderata, and that we should therefore jettison the concept when doing moral philosophy.

The aim of this study was to identify the obstacles facing the application of knowledge management and its impact on performance at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei from the point of view of employees and to detect the differences between the average views of the study sample on the subject of the study according to some variables such as (gender, nature of work, Education Level, specialization, years of experience). The study followed the descriptive analytical method and the questionnaire as a tool for (...) study. It was distributed to 74 employees. After the questionnaire was distributed, the data was collected and coded and entered into the computer and processed statistically using the SPSS program. The study found that the percentage of approval of the obstacles to the application of knowledge management at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei differed between few and large, and the relative weight of the axis was complete (68.2). The degree of awareness of the workers of the reality of performance excellence at the University of Palestine Technical-Kadoorei was between medium and very large. There is an impact of the constraints of the application of knowledge management on performance excellence at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorei. In light of the results of the previous study, the researchers recommended that the importance of knowledge management should be taken into account in order to raise the university's reputation and reputation at home and abroad and improve its services to students and the local community. And to promote the exchange of experiences and knowledge with local, regional and international universities in order to enhance the knowledge and preserve it and provide modern and sophisticated scientific techniques and use them in administrative and academic work at the university. (shrink)

Kuhle Wampe 1is an extraordinary cultural product by thecollective that was deeply involved in the formation of Weimar cinema.2Members of thiscollective were Slatan Dudov, who participated in Fritz Lang’s production of Metropolis, Hanns Eisler, who composed music for Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of aGreat City , while Ernst Ottwald was adistinguished novelist and a screenwriter. Bertolt Brecht did not have major experience infilm production,3although he collaborated with Karl Valentin in the preparation of film The Mysteries of a Hairdresser's Shop . (...) At that time,Brecht was developing his ‘materialist aesthetics’ in trying to conceptualise the answer tothe question: what is political art? (shrink)