Would metaphors used in the context of psychotherapy by people who experience various forms of anxiety disorders differ from those used by people who experience stress? We investigated this question with the help of the Motivation & Sedimentation Model (MSM), a theory of meaning-making developed within the synthetic new discipline of cognitive semiotics. The analysis of a sample of ten transcripts of psychotherapy sessions concerning the topic of anxiety, and a comparable sample concerning stress, showed a significantly stronger proportion of (...) conventionalized metaphors in the stress sample, and a marginally significant difference in the number of innovative metaphors in the anxiety sample. These results suggest that lived experience of an anxiety disorder or another form of maladaptive anxiety affects metaphorical meaning-making, and manifests itself in spontaneous metaphor use. Furthermore, as a result of the conceptual and the empirical investigations of the topic, we propose novel theoretical and operational definitions of the notion of metaphoricity. (shrink)

The article by Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argues that there are inconsistencies in our ethical frameworks regarding the use of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and polygenic scores for identifyi...

There is increased recognition of the importance of well-designed scholarship on how immigration status and policies impact migrants in the United States, including those who are unauthorized. Some researchers have looked to community-based and participatory methods to develop trust, place migrants’ voices at the forefront, and engage collaboratively in using research as a tool for social change. This article reviews three ethical ambiguities that emerged in the process of a series of participatory action research projects with migrants in the United (...) States, many of whom were unauthorized. Specifically, three themes are discussed: the tension between the human desire to respond to injustices, and the challenges of doing so in ways that recognize one’s privilege and power as an outsider and supports the migrants’ agency and autonomy; the complex definition, explanation, and dimensions of “risk”; and the complexity of using a methodology that prioritizes participants’ collective identity and community in the context of regulations that are designed primarily to protect individuals. (shrink)

Portion sizes of meals have been becoming progressively larger which contributes to the onset of obesity. So far, little research has been done on the influence of body weight on portion size preferences. Therefore, we assessed whether Body Mass Index, as well as other selected factors, contribute to the estimation of food portions weight and the subjective perception of portion sizes. Through online questionnaires, the participants were asked to estimate the weight of pictured foods in the first study. In the (...) second study, the participants indicated how the depicted varying portion sizes of different meals relate to their actual consumed real-life portion sizes. A total of 725 and 436 individuals were included in the statistical analysis in the first and second study, respectively. BMI and gender had a small effect on the capacity to estimate the weight of foods. The main predictor for portion size choices was the factor gender with men estimating ideal portion sizes as larger than women. Further, age and hunger together with external and restrictive eating behaviors were among the deciding factors for portion size choices. As expected, externally motivated eaters chose bigger portions while restrictive individual smaller ones. Gender- and age-related differences in portion size preferences likely reflect distinct energy requirements. The individuals with a higher BMI do not differ strongly from other BMI groups in their portion-related preferences. Therefore, other factors such as meal frequency, snacking, or a lifestyle, may contribute more to the onset, development, and maintenance of overweight. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser were primarily media communication theorists and new media philosophers. Both thinkers were deeply concerned with electronic and digital technologies and the impact of technology on human society. Likewise, both thinkers were critical and probably cynical about these developments, however, they believed in the notion that one has to fully understand technology to be able to use and discuss positive models of these new technologies for a better future. Independently, McLuhan and Flusser became interested in the (...) role of the artist in this new digital society, and Flusser in particular elaborated on the means of artistic production. Both theorists delved into collaborative projects with artists; and they produced films and other artistic output over their lifetimes. In our essay we highlight this particular interest and focus on the artist and modes of artistic perception. McLuhan’s understanding of the artist as society’s safety antenna was, indeed, personified by both men. (shrink)

Tematem artykułu jest manifest jako gatunek dominujący w awangardzie historycznej, jak i w neoawangardzie austriackiej. Ten ostatni, radykalny ruch sztuki austriackiej lat sześćdziesiątych, dotychczas postrzegany w kategoriach jego osiągnięć w zakresie sztuki performance i body art, analizowany jest przeze mnie w kategoriach literackich na przykładzie manifestu jako środka autoprezentacji, obecnego na skalę masową po raz pierwszy w awangardzie lat dwudziestych. Istotą poruszanego przeze mnie problemu jest kontynuacja tradycji samookreślenia się awangardy w formie manifestu, jak również przemiany, jakie dokonały się w (...) strukturze tekstów tego typu w okresie swoistego renesansu awangardy w latach sześćdziesiątych. Ograniczam się przy tym do zakreślenia jednego z głównych rysów manifestu - jego kontestacyjnej krytyki skierowanej zarówno przeciwko skostniałym formom sztuki, jak i przeciwko państwu i społeczeństwu, narzucającym sztuce granice i sposoby jej oddziaływania. Manifesty dadaistyczne stanowią tutaj tło dla analizy manifestów akcjonistycznych, które, według postawionej przeze mnie tezy, mogą być rozumiane jako radykalna modyfikacja tego gatunku w neoawangardzie, która w swej ostatecznej formie prowadzi do zaniechania manifestu jako przekazu literackiego i do odwołania się do demonstracji celów artystycznych w sposób pozawerbalny - poprzez akcjonizm. W analizie manifestów obu awangard podkreślam krytyczne podejście ich autorów do gatunku jako takiego, jak i do jego korzeni wywodzących się z dziedzin pozaartystycznych. (shrink)

Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that “ought” implies “can,” which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that an agent ought to keep a promise (...) that he is unable to keep, but only when he is to blame for the inability. Experiment 2 shows that such “ought” judgments correlate with judgments of blame, rather than with judgments of the agent’s ability. Experiment 3 replicates these findings for moral “ought” judgments and finds that they do not hold for nonmoral “ought” judgments, such as what someone ought to do to fulfill their desires. These results together show that folk moral judgments do not conform to a widely assumed philosophical principle that “ought” implies “can.” Instead, judgments of blame play a modulatory role in some judgments of obligation. (shrink)

This article aims to discuss the aesthetic autonomy as a model for social emancipation. It starts from the contemporary challenges for the defense of aesthetic autonomy, using autonomy for criticizing discourses that seems to sustain a possible conciliation between life and art that not take into account the problems resulting from the connection between culture and capitalistic production.

Public deliberation has increasingly become the gold standard for citizens’ participation in the governance of science and technology, with a growing body of research suggesting that deliberative p...

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Festschrift für Professorin Joanna Jabłkowska stehen Fragen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem kulturwissenschaftlichen ethical turn in der rezenten literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung diskutiert werden. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Ethik und Literatur wird sowohl theoretisch erfasst als auch in zahlreichen Einzelanalysen literarischer Werke diskutiert. Die literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektive wird ergänzt durch philosophische und politische Betrachtungsweisen.

Appearing here in English for the first time, Vladimir Jankélévitch's _Henri Bergson_ is one of the two great commentaries written on Henri Bergson. Gilles Deleuze's _Bergsonism_ renewed interest in the great French philosopher but failed to consider Bergson's experiential and religious perspectives. Here Jankélévitch covers all aspects of Bergson's thought, emphasizing the concepts of time and duration, memory, evolution, simplicity, love, and joy. A friend of Bergson's, Jankélévitch first published this book in 1931 and revised it in 1959 to (...) treat Bergson's later works. This unabridged translation of the 1959 edition includes an editor's introduction, which contextualizes and outlines Jankélévitch's reading of Bergson, additional essays on Bergson by Jankélévitch, and Bergson's letters to Jankélévitch. (shrink)

The recent Canadian lawsuit on patent infringement, filed by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, has engendered a significant public debate on whether patenting genes should be legal in Canada. In part, this public debate has involved the use of social networking sites, such as Twitter. This case provides an opportunity to examine how Twitter was used in the context of this gene patent controversy.

Though traditional accounts of moral development focus on the development of rational and deliberate thinking, recent work in developmental affective neuroscience suggests that moral cognition is tightly related to affective and emotional processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies show age-related changes in response to empathy-eliciting stimuli, with a gradual shift from the monitoring of somatovisceral responses in young children mediated by the amygdala, insula and medial aspect of the orbitofrontal cortex, to the executive control and evaluation of emotion processing implemented (...) by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in older participants. These data indicate that the development of moral reasoning involves the increasing integration of empathic emotion-related somatovisceral responses with more complex social-reasoning abilities. (shrink)

Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering—how mental states change over time—have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that also includes creative thought and dreaming. This dynamic framework can shed new (...) light on mental disorders that are marked by alterations in spontaneous thought, including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe psychological and philosophical literature exploring the role of social influence in moral judgments suggests that conformity in moral judgments is common and, in many cases, seems to b...

The small, the tiny, and the infinitesimal have been the object of both fascination and vilification for millenia. One of the most vitriolic reviews in mathematics was that written by Errett Bishop about Keisler’s book Elementary Calculus: an Infinitesimal Approach. In this skit we investigate both the argument itself, and some of its roots in Bishop George Berkeley’s criticism of Leibnizian and Newtonian Calculus. We also explore some of the consequences to students for whom the infinitesimal approach is congenial. The (...) casual mathematical reader may be satisfied to read the text of the five act play, whereas the others may wish to delve into the 130 footnotes, some of which contain elucidation of the mathematics or comments on the history. (shrink)

O encontro do herói Odisseu com o ciclope Polifemo na Odisséia de Homero em dado momento saiu do terreno do mito e chegou até o da história. Polifemo tornou-se uma figura do mundo primitivo, em que reina violência, antropofagia, irracionalidade, paixão e música. O problema do valor da vida primitiva na antiguidade clássica conduzia a dois pólos antagônicos de interpretação. De um lado, a perspectiva progressista que via na história a saída de um estado primitivo e selvagem através da técnica. (...) De outro lado, a perspectiva decadentista, segundo a qual os primeiros homens viveram no melhor dos mundos, na idade de ouro. O expediente de síntese dessas concepções opostas resulta num retrato ambíguo do mundo selvagem e primitivo. O presente artigo pretende situar alguns autores dentro dessa problemática. Protágoras, Eurípides e Crítias compartilhariam o quadro da vida ciclópica de Homero. Teócrito, Ovídio e bem mais tarde Góngora, por outro lado, estariam inseridos na tradição da idade de ouro, que vem desde Hesíodo. Por fim, alguns autores preferem destacar as ambigüidades da vida selvagem e primitiva, tal seria o caso de Platão, Montaigne e Vico. (shrink)

As Dag Normann has recently shown, the fully abstract model for PCF of hereditarily-sequential functionals is not ω-complete . This is also applicable to a potentially wider class of models such as the recently constructed by the author fully abstract model for PCF+=PCF+pif . Here we will present an outline of a general approach to this kind of ‘natural’ domains which, although being non-dcpos, allow considering ‘naturally’ continuous functions . There is also an appropriate version of ‘naturally’ algebraic and ‘naturally’ (...) bounded complete ‘natural’ domains which serves as the non-dcpo analogue of the well-known concept of Scott domains, or equivalently, the complete f-spaces of Ershov. It is shown that this special version of ‘natural’ domains, if considered under ‘natural’ Scott topology, exactly corresponds to the class of f-spaces, not necessarily complete. (shrink)

We prove that if I is a partially ordered set in a countable transitive model M of ZFC then M can be extended by a generic sequence of reals a i , i ∈ I, such that ℵ M 1 is preserved and every a i is Sacks generic over $\mathfrak{M}[\langle \mathbf{a}_j: j . The structure of the degrees of M-constructibility of reals in the extension is investigated. As applications of the methods involved, we define a cardinal invariant to distinguish (...) product and iterated Sacks extensions, and give a short proof of a theorem (by Budinas) that in ω 2 -iterated Sacks extension of L the Burgess selection principle for analytic equivalence relations holds. (shrink)

In this paper we prove the following theorem: Any one-dimensional definably connected group G over an o-minimal structure is, as an abstract group, isomorphic to either pPp∞δ or δ.

This is an introductory survey of the emerging theory of two new classes of (discrete, countable) groups, called hyperlinear and sofic groups. They can be characterized as subgroups of metric ultraproducts of families of, respectively, unitary groups U (n) and symmetric groups $S_{n},\ n\in {\Bbb N}$ . Hyperlinear groups come from theory of operator algebras (Connes' Embedding Problem), while sofic groups, introduced by Gromov, are motivated by a problem of symbolic dynamics (Gottschalk's Surjunctivity Conjecture). Open questions are numerous, in particular (...) it is still unknown if every group is hyperlinear and/or sofic. (shrink)