Mindwandering is associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Among the latter, negative mood and negative cognitions have been reported. However, the underlying mechanisms linking mindwandering to negative mood and cognition are still unclear. We hypothesized that MW could either directly enhance negative thinking or indirectly heighten the accessibility of negative thoughts. In an undergraduate sample we measured emotional thoughts during the Sustained Attention on Response Task which induces MW, and accessibility of negative cognitions by means of the Scrambled Sentences (...) Task after the task. We also measured depressive symptoms and rumination. Results show that in individuals with elevated levels of depressive symptoms MW during SART predicts higher accessibility of negative thoughts after the task, rather than negative thinking during the task. These findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of MW and provide insight into the relationship between task-involvement and affect. (shrink)

This article discusses adult conversion in the Russian Baptist community as the unlearning of old sinful ways of living. Russian Baptists see conversion as an act of repentance, surrendering to Christ, and becoming born again, and as a life-long process of growing in faith. Based on an ethnographic study of the Baptist community in north-western and central Russia, the article discusses the glocal nature of the Russian Baptist community that attracts the kind of people that convert to this faith and (...) the circumstances of their conversion. Russian Baptist conversion is viewed as an act and a process, and conversion is seen as an ethical choice and an unlearning of the old ways of living. (shrink)

Global development, diffusion and implementation of the human-centredness paradigm can be performed at best when supported by a study of our mental activity. By analysing our mental operations, we can understand how human needs, interests, values and creativity take form, what each consists of, how it is possible to expand, modify and generate them. The proposed model of mental activity is based on attentional movement. The new opportunities, both ethical and social, offered by such a study are presented.

A paper on how to adapt your probabilisitc beliefs when learning a conditional.

In this text, I intend to follow Franklin Leopoldo e Silva’s reflections on the Teaching of Philosophy in Secondary Schools. Along the way, I try to show the central role that Franklin Leopoldo e Silva attributes to the History of Philosophy in order to understand the Teaching of Philosophy, with regard to both the function and the content of this teaching, and how this ensures the fundamental role for the critical power of Philosophy in the formation of high school students.

The article analyzes the effectiveness of quantum theories of mental experience in relation to two ontological problems - the problem of the existence of consciousness in the material world and the problem of the interaction of consciousness and body. A critical analysis of the quantum theories of consciousness by Penrose-Hameroff, M. Tegmark, G. Stapp, M. Fischer and M.B. Mensky shows that they fail to fully explain how complex physical systems generate mental experience without violating the principle of causal closure of (...) the physical world and the principle of epistemological completeness of physics. Quantum mechanics provides specific processes that are the physical basis of the psyche, but do not explain the phenomenal aspect of subjective reality. Nevertheless, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives an understanding of how the interaction of consciousness and body within the scientific picture of the world can be carried out without violating the law of energy conservation. It is shown that the quantum theories of consciousness currently being developed have a predominantly panprotopsychic character, which faces a problem due to the fact that the protomental property of physical systems must be expressed quantitatively and correspond to the value included in the physical equations. As a result, it is concluded that in order to develop quantum theories of consciousness more effectively, it is necessary to give an emergent character, not jumping from the quantum level to the psychic, but explaining the mechanism of the emergence of systemic properties during the sequential transition between different ontological regions of existence, including physical, chemical, biological, neurophysiological and psychic. (shrink)

This position paper advocates combining formal epistemology and the new paradigm psychology of reasoning in the studies of conditionals and reasoning with uncertainty. The new paradigm psychology of reasoning is characterized by the use of probability theory as a rationality framework instead of classical logic, used by more traditional approaches to the psychology of reasoning. This paper presents a new interdisciplinary research program which involves both formal and experimental work. To illustrate the program, the paper discusses recent work on the (...) paradoxes of the material conditional, nonmonotonic reasoning, and Adams’ Thesis. It also identifies the issue of updating on conditionals as an area which seems to call for a combined formal and empirical approach. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 2 Seiten: 115-127.

The author compares the outlook of the early twentieth-century Russian literary and artistic avant-garde with the anticapitalist critique of the early Marx, with special reference to the concepts of defamiliarization and alienation.

The business case for Corporate Social Responsibility is a powerful driver for mainstreaming socially responsible behavior in corporate practice. This is because managers’ proclivity to assume responsibility is positively correlated with their expectations that CSR pays off. However, there is the danger that managers might be tempted to focus primarily on those CSR activities that allow to link the associated costs and benefits ex ante reliably which, in turn, is a precondition for a perceived business case. Unfortunately, the perceived business (...) case for CSR activities that prevent irresponsible behavior is rather weak. In contrast, CSR in terms of the voluntary engagement for society is quite promising for the perceived business case. In consequence, a business case–driven approach to CSR might foster “cherry picking” behavior, in the sense that managers might tend to reduce CSR to “doing good” and put less efforts on CSR in terms of “avoiding bad” which, in turn, increases the risk of irresponsible business practices. (shrink)

As cognitive enhancement research advances, important ethical questions regarding individual autonomy and freedom are raised. Advocates of cognitive enhancement frequently adopt a procedural approach to autonomy, arguing that enhancers improve an individual’s reasoning capabilities, which are quintessential to being an autonomous agent. On the other hand, critics adopt a more nuanced approach by considering matters of authenticity and self-identity, which go beyond the mere assessment of one’s reasoning capacities. Both positions, nevertheless, require further philosophical scrutiny. In this paper, we investigate (...) the ethics of cognitive enhancement through the lenses of political and philosophical arguments about autonomy and freedom. In so doing, we contend that a substantive, relational account of individual autonomy offers a more holistic understanding of the ethical concerns of cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

In light of the interrelation between motor and cognitive development and the predictive value of the former for the latter, the secular decline observed in motor coordination ability as early as preschool urges identification of interventions that may jointly impact motor and cognitive efficiency. The aim of this study was twofold. It (1) explored the outcomes of enriched physical education, centered on deliberate play and cognitively challenging variability of practice, on motor coordination and cognitive processing; (2) examined whether motor coordination (...) outcomes mediate intervention effects on children’s cognition, while controlling for moderation by lifestyle factors as outdoor play habits and weight status. Four hundred and sixty children aged 5-10 years participated in a 6-month group randomized intervention in physical education, with or without playful coordinative and cognitive enrichment. The weight status and spontaneous outdoor play habits of children (parental report of outdoor play) were evaluated at baseline. Before and after the intervention, motor developmental level (Movement Assessment Battery for Children) was evaluated in all children, who were then assessed either with a test of working memory (Random Number Generation task), or with a test of attention (from the Cognitive Assessment System, CAS). Children assigned to the ‘enriched’ intervention showed more pronounced improvements in all motor coordination assessments (manual dexterity, ball skills, static/dynamic balance). The beneficial effect on ball skills was amplified by the level of spontaneous outdoor play and weight status. Among indices of executive function and attention, only that of inhibition showed a differential effect of intervention type. Moderated mediation showed that the better outcome of the enriched physical education on ball skills mediated the better inhibition outcome, but only when the enrichment intervention was paralleled by a medium-to-high level of outdoor play. Results suggest that specifically tailored physical activity games provide a unique form of enrichment that impacts children’s cognitive development through motor coordination improvement, particularly object control skills, which are linked to children’s physical activity habits later in life. Outdoor play appears to offer the natural ground for the stimulation by designed physical activity games to take root in children’s mind. (shrink)

Although a substantial number of papers is published on the topic of consciousness, there is still little consensus on what its nature is and how the physical and phenomenal worlds are connected. Most published research establishes a causal relation between the brain and the mind, but it lacks a cogent theory of how this relation comes to be. In contrast, this paper uses a set of thought experiments grounded in quantum information theory to derive a framework for resolving the hard (...) problem of consciousness. Despite the common tendency to treat the problem purely philosophically, in this paper, consciousness and qualia are analyzed through established formal theory deriving conclusions regarding their relation which provide counter-arguments for the commonly held dualist view. Through the informational monism framework, a case is made for a fundamentally phenomenal nature of information. (shrink)

In this article we are offering a method of analysis and formalization of the Epicurean objection to the Skeptics from the Adversus mathematicos VIII, 337, 6-9. We emphasize the importance of this objection for understanding Sextus Empiricus’ response to it, continuously discussed by the historians of philosophy. The Epicureans argue that the Skeptics cannot criticize their proof, because when the Skeptics are criticizing their proof, they think something different from the original proof, so that the original proof remains untouchable by (...) any criticism. We explain in which sense the holistic assumption used by Sextus Empiricus and some philosophers before him can be used in the Epicurean objection to the Skeptics. In the final formalization we show that Epicureans’ argument can be interpreted as logically correct and deduced from sound premises. In the course of arguing for this thesis we are using the technical means of contemporary epistemic logic. (shrink)

We give a negative solution to the problem, posed by A. Chagrov and M. Zakharyaschev, of whether every quasi-normal propositional modal logic can be axiomatized by an independent set of axioms, with the inference rules of Substitution and Modus Ponens.

Neste artigo procura-se responder ao desafio da leitura de Heidegger no que concerne à possibilidade de uma relação entre ontologia e ética.O autor investiga a possibilidade da colocação do problema de tal relação,privilegiando a noção heideggeriana de liberdade.

This article addresses the role of auditory-related verbs in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Pierre Schaeffer in order to shed light on a broader tendency in French thought. Through a comparative reading of the ways in which Nancy, in Listening, and Schaeffer, in Treatise on Musical Objects, mobilize verbs such as écouter and entendre, I connect the issue of language to debates about descriptive and prescriptive approaches towards listening. Drawing on the Dictionary of Untranslatables, I argue that Nancy's and (...) Schaeffer's engagements with listening can be mapped onto historical modes of framing politics and ethics, which are also characterized by descriptive and prescriptive approaches. By showing how theories of listening connect to political and ethical debates, this study discusses the ideological instrumentalization of listening as opposed to more descriptive and exploratory forms of engagement in the auditory and the faculty of the ear. (shrink)

We introduce a general representation of unary hyperintensional modalities and study various hyperintensional modal logics based on the representation. It is shown that the major approaches to hyperintensionality known from the literature, that is state-based, syntactic and structuralist approaches, all correspond to special cases of the general framework. Completeness results pertaining to our hyperintensional modal logics are established.

Ifeel that Iam apartof, but separatefrom an 'out there' world. 2. Ifeel that my perception of the world mingles with feelings of past experience. 3. My experienceof the world is selective and purposeful. 4. I am thinking ahead allthe timeintrying ...