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)

This article concerns the related ideas of "presentation" and "representation" with regard to animals and suggests that the prefix "re" indicates a directing agent with its own concerns about the nature and status of animal presence. It further suggests that the representation of animals is perhaps always an expression of human concerns, desires, and imaginings. As with other domesticated nonhuman animals, foxhounds are not present in the world to fulfill their own purposes but there to fulfill these human desires and (...) imaginings and are celebrated as the realization of a complex engagement of humans with the world of animals. The foxhound is central to English foxhunting and is given cultural meaning because of this context.The article offers a close anthropological interpretation of the production of this animal - a complex, cultural creation based on a canine form. (shrink)

Video games are currently available which permit the virtual murder of children. No such games are presently available which permit virtual paedophilia. Does this disparity reflect a morally justifiable position? Focusing solely on different player motivations, I contrast two version of a fictitious game—one permitting the virtual murder of children, the other virtual paedophilia—in order to establish whether the selective prohibition of one activity over the other can be morally justified based on player motivation alone. I conclude that it cannot, (...) for reasons discussed. (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.

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.

This second edition of _Women, Knowledge, and Reality_ continues to exhibit the ways in which feminist philosophers enrich and challenge philosophy. Essays by twenty-five feminist philosophers, seventeen of them new to the second edition, address fundamental issues in philosophical and feminist methods, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, language, religion and mind/body. This second edition expands the perspectives of women of color, of postmodernism and French feminism, and focuses on the most recent controversies in feminist theory and philosophy. The (...) chapters are organized by traditional fields of philosophy, and include introductions which contrast the ideas of feminist thinkers with traditional philosophers. The collected essays illustrate both the depth and breadth of feminist critiques and the range of contemporary feminist theoretical perspectives. (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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

In this paper, I support a hybrid form of expressivism called constructive ecumenical expressivism (CEE) which I have previously used (to attempt) to resolve the gamer’s dilemma. (Young, 2016. Resolving the gamer’s dilemma. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) In support of CEE, I argue that the various other attempts at either resolving, dissolving or resisting the dilemma are consistent with CEE’s moral framework. That is, with its way of explaining what a claim to morality is, with how moral norms are established, with (...) the role intuition is able to play in establishing these norms, and therefore with how the gamer’s dilemma can be resolved. I also demonstrate, more broadly, how CEE advocates robust relativism as a means of justifying the constructed moral norm’s normative credentials, and therefore how one society’s norm can be judged morally superior to another’s. (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)

: This paper explores vicarious responsibility and circumstantial luck from a first-person perspective, drawing on ethnographic research on parenting in Reform Era China. The paper focuses on how informants drew boundaries between what they could and could not control in raising a child who might thrive in a hypercompetitive society. In doing so, the paper engages the question, “What kind of moral agent do we want?” by proposing that we also ask, “What kind of moral agent do we find?” In (...) contrast to the hypothetical figure of a walled-off agent who must be convinced of the duty to take on responsibilities in a circumstance of moral luck, empirical research finds instead a vulnerable agent who has taken on ‘too much’. (shrink)

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)

Enhancer elements are short stretches of nucleotides operationally defined by their cis‐acting ability to increase the transcription of nearby genes. They function relatively independently of position, orientation, and distance. Some show narrow tissue specificity while others permit constitutive expression in many different cell types. Although the first enhancer was described for simian virus 40 (SV40) more than five years ago, its mechanism of action has remained unclear. This review describes some of the models proposed to explain the physical role of (...) enhancers in eukaryotic transcription. (shrink)

The emotional traumas news photographers experience are not often discussed outside the newsroom. Here professional newspaper photographer Garry Bryant offers a personal testimonial on the effects his job has had on him, as well as on the public. The excitement and drama of shooting spot news at accidents and disasters have caused a certain dulling of the senses, but on the other hand have heightened Bryant's awareness of the importance of his work. A variety of Bryant's favorite photos illustrate (...) this article, capturing the range of the human condition. (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)

In both the A?guttara Nik?ya in Pali and the Ekottarika?gamain Chinese translation, the suttas are grouped into eleven nip?tas, from the Ekaka-nip?ta/Eka-nip?ta to the Ek?dasaka-nip?ta – though in the Ekottarika?gama the nip?tas are not labelled as such. This grouping into nip?tas is based on the number of doctrinal items dealt with in the component suttas. In the Ones and Twos, it is often the case that a single original sutta has been subdivided so that its component sections become a series (...) of similarly structured derivative suttas superficially appropriate for inclusion in the Ones or Twos. Moreover, material for this process of subdividing has sometimes been provided by multiplying doctrinal sets with formulaic statements. In most of the remaining nip?tas the phenomena noted in the Ones and Twos are also present, but on a much smaller scale. In view of their Chinese counterparts in the Sa?yukta?gama, some groups of suttas in the A?guttara Nik?ya with sa?yutta-like nature were probably moved from the Sa?yutta Nik?ya to the A?guttara Nik?ya within the Pali tradition. Evidence of a comparable movement into the Ekottarika?gama is also available. The artificial suttas created by subdivision and the original suttas shared by the Ekottarika?gama and the A?guttara Nik?ya largely retained their original places at the beginning of each nip?ta, while the genuine suttas, probably earlier located in the Sa?yukta?gama and Madhyama?gama, were added progressively at the end of the growing nip?ta. (shrink)

In 1931, in the remarks collected as Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes: ‘A thinker is very much like a draughtsman whose aim it is to represent all the interrelations between things.’ At a glance it is clear that this analogy might contribute significantly to a full description of the autobiographical thinker as well. And this conjunction of relations between things and the work of the draughtsman immediately and strongly suggests that the grasping of relations is in a sense visual, or (...) that networks or constellations of relations are the kinds of things brought into focus by seeing in the right way. (shrink)

This paper raises three objections to the argument presented by Ostritsch in The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation, in which the amoralist’s mantra “it’s just a game” is viewed as an illegitimate rebuttal of all moral objections to video games. The first objection focuses on Ostritsch’s ‘strong sense’ of player enjoyment, which I argue is too crude, given the moral work it is meant to be doing. Next, I question the legitimacy of Ostritsch’s claim that certain (...) video games are immoral. I examine what is involved in making this claim and what would be required for a normative position to be established: none of which is addressed by Ostritsch. Finally, I challenge the legitimacy of his claim that players are obliged not to play certain video games in certain ways. I distinguish between immoral and suberogatory actions, arguing that the latter is in fact more applicable to cases Ostritsch has in mind, and that one is not obliged not to engage in these actions. (shrink)

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

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 text shows how the perspectives of earlier traditions persist in modified form, covering poststructuralism, postmodernism, critical theory, feminist ...

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 first book-length study in English explores the long neglected ancient Chinese treatise: the Pheasant Cap Master or He guan zi (3rd century B.C.).

This paper considers what it is about violent video games that leads one reasonably minded person to declare “That is immoral” while another denies it. Three interpretations of video game content are discussed: reductionist, narrow, and broad. It is argued that a broad interpretation is required for a moral objection to be justified. It is further argued that understanding the meaning of moral utterances—like “x is immoral”—is important to an understanding of why there is a lack of moral consensus when (...) it comes to the content of violent video games. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is presented as a means of explaining what it is that we are doing when we make moral pronouncements and why, when it comes to video game content, differing moral attitudes abound. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is also presented as a means of illuminating what would be required for moral consensus to be achieved. (shrink)