Drawing on the empirical premise that attention makes objects look more intense, Ned Block has argued for mental paint, a phenomenal residue that cannot be reduced to what is perceived or represented. If sound, Block's argument would undermine direct realism and representationism, two widely held views about the nature of conscious perception. We argue that Block's argument fails because the empirical premise it is based upon is false. Attending to an object alters its salience, but not its perceived intensity. We (...) also argue that salience should be equated with mental primer, a close cousin of mental paint that reintroduces difficulties for direct realism and representationism. The upshot is that direct realism and representationism are still in trouble, but not for the reason that Block thinks. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

Bildung, a German pedagogical term with the sense of ‘educating oneself’, refers to some of the most complex human activities. It is constitutive for human existence, because it is related to the characteristic of meaning. Because of the great relevance of Bildung for people, education is essential for furthering it. The two purposes of this contribution are: i. to examine the structure of one main process component of Bildung, namely the process of designing an image (Bild) of the changes to (...) be furthered in the educand, and ii. to explain this process component of Bildung. This process is theoretically structured as a subject‐object transformation, and the attempt is made to explain this from an idealistic perspective. Building upon this foundation, the article shows how the process of designing an image for Bildung can be furthered educationally. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

Anxiety patients over-generalize fear, possibly because of an incapacity to discriminate threat and safety signals. Discrimination trainings are promising approaches for reducing such fear over-generalization. Here we investigated the efficacy of a fear-relevant vs. a fear-irrelevant discrimination training on fear generalization and whether the effects are increased with feedback during training. Eighty participants underwent two fear acquisition blocks, during which one face, but not another face, was associated with a female scream. During two generalization blocks, both CSs plus four morphs (...) were presented. Between these generalization blocks, half of the participants underwent a fear-relevant discrimination training with or without feedback and the other half a fear-irrelevant discrimination training with or without feedback. US expectancy, arousal, valence ratings, and skin conductance responses indicated successful fear acquisition. Importantly, fear-relevant vs. fear-irrelevant discrimination trainings and feedback vs. no feedback reduced generalization as reflected in US expectancy ratings independently from one another. No effects of training condition were found for arousal and valence ratings or SCR. In summary, this is a first indication that fear-relevant discrimination training and feedback can improve the discrimination between threat and safety signals in healthy individuals, at least for learning-related evaluations, but not evaluations of valence or arousal. (shrink)

In the past decade donor commitments to health have increased by 200 percent. Correspondingly, there has been a swell of new players in the global health landscape. The unprecedented, global response to a single disease, HIV/AIDS, has been responsible for a substantial portion of this boon. Numerous health success have followed this windfall of funding and attention, yet the food, fuel, and economic crises of 2008 have shown the vulnerabilities of health and development initiatives focused on short term wins and (...) reliant on a constant flow of foreign funding. For too long, the international community has responded to global health and development challenges with emergency solutions that often reflect the donor's priorities, values, and political leanings, rather than funding durable health systems that can withstand crises. Progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals has stalled in many countries. Disease specific initiatives have weakened health systems and limited efforts to improve maternal and child health. As we enter this era of scarce resources, there is a need to return to the foundations of the Alma Ata Declaration signed thirty years ago with the goal of providing universal access to primary healthcare. The global health community must now objectively evaluate how we can most effectively respond to the crises of 2008 and take advantage of this moment of extraordinary attention for global health and translate it into long term, sustainable health improvements for all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Living with Blindness and Fibromyalgia while Occupying AgingKatherine SchneiderI’m blind from birth and in middle age developed fibromyalgia. I’ve retired from a thirty year career as a clinical psychologist and am working on my third book tentatively titled “Occupying Aging: Delights, Disabilities and Daily Life.” My relationship with medical professionals includes gratitude (without good care I would not be alive) and also frustration for assumptions often made about my (...) abilities. I write from the perspectives of an impatient patient, woman living in the United States, former provider of mental health services, person with both invisible and visible disabilities, and boomer moving into the world of the aged. My stories are mine of course, but when I swap medical stories with blind friends, similar happenings abound.When my mom fell down the stairs at a friend’s house, five months pregnant with me, she was told to go to bed for the next four months to save the pregnancy. Thus began the impact of health care professionals on me. I was born a month premature and spent my first month in an incubator. In 1949 it wasn’t known that the enriched oxygen atmosphere in an incubator would cause blindness. At least one lawsuit was filed against physicians and a hospital by a person blinded in this way. A large out–of–court settlement was received. The way I look at it, the health care community did the best they knew and without enough oxygen, I would have died.Early in my life, my parents took me to several ophthalmologists to see what could be done for my vision. Family folklore has it that I could smell a hospital as we entered and would begin howling. These early traumatic experiences may have led to my current healthy lifestyle so I don’t have to go to doctors much now. By about age five, it was clear that nothing could be done about my vision. For the next twenty years my forays into the health care system were for tonsillitis, sprains, and the usual childhood ills.In my early twenties, I developed acute glaucoma in one eye—caused, I’m convinced, by birth control pills. In seeking treatment for this condition, I encountered the first truly insensitive physician I’d met, who said, “Your eyes aren’t doing you any good; let’s take them out.” I was horrified! They were my eyes. I was attached to them, psychologically as well as physically. It turned out that a simple operation relieved the pressure and allowed me to keep my eyes. True, they are not the best looking big brown eyes around, but they did come with the package.Life with blindness seemed quite straightforward until my early forties, when I developed extreme fatigue and pain all over. I was worried. I knew a blind woman who had developed multiple sclerosis and I admired her, but I did not want to walk in her brave footsteps. Then a college student came to see me with the same symptoms and said that she had recently been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I am often very empathetic with people’s concerns, but this time she complimented me by saying, “You’re great! You seem to know just how I feel.” I sagely counseled her about portioning out her energy carefully, prioritizing, using short cuts, and taking elevators when possible. Being an adult [End Page 216] student used to overachieving, she did not like what I was saying, but said she’d try to follow my advice because she could no longer do it all.What finally broke through my own denial was the day coiling up a hose and dragging it to the basement for the winter took me an hour. It left me totally exhausted and I figured that even being middle aged couldn’t account for feeling that awful.After a thorough physical and plenty of blood work to rule out Lyme disease and multiple sclerosis, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and placed on low doses of antidepressants to help me sleep through the night. The medication worked and I began to feel like myself again. My battle to accept that... (shrink)

Diese Untersuchung beschaftigt sich mit den Bedingungen der Moglichkeit sinnvoller religioser Rede auf dem Hintergrund der Uberlegungen Wittgensteins. Scheinen zunachst - dem eindimensionalen Sprachparadigma seiner Fruhphilosophie entsprechend - keine solchen Bedingungen benennbar, so ergeben sich durch das mehrdimensionale Sprachparadigma der Spatphilosophie ganz neue Moglichkeiten. Jetzt sind nicht nur die Bedingungen der Moglichkeit sinnvollen religiosen Redens auf neue Weise wieder gegeben, sondern auch konkrete Aussagen uber die Art und Weise theologischen Redens mit gesetzt. Demnach verbieten sich bestimmte, vor allem vermittlungstheologische Denkweisen, (...) weil sie auf Vorstellungen beruhen, die nach Wittgenstein nicht mehr haltbar sind. Als eine Aufgabe von Theologie wird nun die Darstellung der Selbstvergewisserung der eigenen so genannten grammatischen Satze deutlich. Aus dieser Perspektive heraus wird skizziert, wie die Symboltheorie Paul Tillichs weiter entwickelt werden musste, um die fundamentaltheologischen Implikationen der Philosophie Wittgensteins aufzunehmen.". (shrink)

How can we distinguish between danger, risk and residual risk? The classic answer hereto is based on the epistemological model of induction: induction is the principle that leads courts to make the decisions they do. In the terms of this concept, risks are interpreted as probabilities. This approach has law application depend on the judge’s individual decisions in a specific case. It is, however, possible to find a different set of criteria in order to differentiate between danger, risk and residual (...) risk: A deductive approach combined with the „assessment of theories“ in comparative terms enables us to apply law without having to resort to individual decisions or value judgements. In this context, Karl Popper’s „theory of corroboration“ offers a new perspective on legal reasoning under conditions of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper presents the development andvalidation of new measurement tools to exploreself-efficacy toward service and toward civicparticipation. We developed and administereda survey to 851 students in an AACSB-accreditedcollege of business at a comprehensive publicuniversity located in the Midwest. Traditionalscale development methodologies plusconfirmatory factor analysis and simultaneousfactor analysis in several populations wereused to analyze both a primary sample and aholdback sample. Results strongly support thevalidity and reliability of the surveyinstrument. Future use for the instrumentincludes verification of the effectiveness ofpedagogies designed to (...) increase self-efficacytoward service and motivation for civicparticipation in business students. (shrink)