In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates argues that ‘the many’ are confused about the experience they describe as ‘being overcome by pleasure’. They think the cause is ‘something other than ignorance’. He argues it follows from what they believe that the cause is ‘ignorance’ and ‘false belief’. I show that his argument depends on a premise he does not introduce but they should deny: that when someone is overcome by pleasure, the desire stems from a belief. To explain why Plato does not (...) make Socrates introduce this premise, the account I construct is speculative. It starts from the assumption that Plato is thinking through an understanding of human beings and what they must do to live good lives that he takes the historical Socrates to set out. (shrink)

Writers, readers, critics all have strong personal preferences. Roland Barthes was a case in point. Many were the texts he chose to affirm. Others he rejected, while some were left to hover in the margins of his thinking. Still others barely feature at all, among which, conspicuous by their absence, are the novels and plays of Samuel Beckett. This article examines the political, theoretical and affective reasons for Barthes’s apparent indifference to a writer who, despite early hostility on the part (...) of the literary establishment, came to be seen as the abiding embodiment of late modernity. It contrasts Barthes’s limited response to Beckett with that of another leading critic of the period, Maurice Blanchot. (shrink)

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is one of the terms that is used to refer to associatively induced changes in liking. Many controversies have arisen in the literature on EC. Do associatively induced changes in liking actually exist? Does EC depend on awareness of the fact that stimuli are associated? Is EC resistant to extinction? Does attention help or hinder EC? As an introduction to this special issue, we will discuss the extent to which the papers that are published in this issue (...) help to resolve some of the controversies that surround EC. We also speculate about possible boundary conditions of EC and attempt to reconcile conflicting results on the functional properties of EC. (shrink)

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is one of the terms that is used to refer to associatively induced changes in liking. Many controversies have arisen in the literature on EC. Do associatively induced changes in liking actually exist? Does EC depend on awareness of the fact that stimuli are associated? Is EC resistant to extinction? Does attention help or hinder EC? As an introduction to this special issue, we will discuss the extent to which the papers that are published in this issue (...) help to resolve some of the controversies that surround EC. We also speculate about possible boundary conditions of EC and attempt to reconcile conflicting results on the functional properties of EC. (shrink)

The evaluative conditioning effect refers to the change in the liking of a neutral stimulus due to its pairing with another stimulus. We examined whether the extinction rate of the EC effect is moderated by feature-specific attention allocation. In two experiments, CSs were abstract Gabor patches varying along two orthogonal, perceptual dimensions. During the acquisition phase, one of these dimensions was predictive of the valence of the USs. During the extinction phase, CSs were presented alone and participants were asked to (...) categorise the CSs either according to their valence, the perceptual dimension that was task-relevant during the acquisition phase, or a perceptual dimension that was task-irrelevant during the acquisition phase. As predicted, explicit valence measures revealed a linear increase in the extinction rate of the EC effect as participants were encouraged to assign attention to non-evaluative stimulus information during the extinction phase. In Experiment 1, Affect Misattribution Paradigm data mimicked this pattern of results, although the effect just missed conventional levels of significance. In Experiment 2, the AMP data revealed an increase of the EC effect if attention was focused on evaluative stimulus information. Potential mechanisms to explain these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Kant, in The Critique of Judgment, distinguishes liking from approval by describing the former as peculiar to each person and the latter as universalizable. Everyone should be content with his own likes and dislikes; one should not demand that others agree. The adjective that corresponds with one's likes is "pleasant." Thus, if someone should say, "Brahms' 'Haydn Variations' are pleasant," one would accept the correction, "You mean that the 'Variations' are pleasant to you." But if one approves of a work (...) of art, if one finds it beautiful, then one demands that other persons agree, and one blames them if they judge otherwise. According to Kant, if an object of art is beautiful, then everyone ought to believe it to be so. The adjective that corresponds with approval is "beautiful." Thus, if someone said, "Titian's 'The Virgin with the Rabbit' is beautiful," he should not accept the statement, "You mean that it is beautiful to you." To call something "beautiful to me" Kant finds "laughable." If one calls something "beautiful" then one supposes that there should be the same satisfaction in everyone. (shrink)

This study investigated the interaction between sampling behavior and preference formation underlying subjective decision making for like and dislike decisions. Two-alternative forced-choice tasks were used with closely-matched musical excerpts and the participants were free to listen and re-listen, i.e. to sample and resample each excerpt, until they reached a decision. We predicted that for decisions involving resampling, a sampling bias would be observed before the moment of conscious decision for the like decision only. The results indeed showed a gradually increasing (...) sampling bias favouring the choice before the moment of overt response for like decisions. Such a bias was absent for dislike decisions. Furthermore, the participants reported stronger relative preferences for like decisions as compared to dislike decisions. This study demonstrated distinct differences in preference formation between like and dislike decisions, both in the implicit orienting/sampling processes prior to the conscious decision and in the subjective evaluation afterwards. (shrink)

Neuromarketing is an emerging research field for prospective businesses on consumer’s preference. Consumer’s preference prediction based on electroencephalography can reliably predict likes or dislikes of a product. However, the current EEG prediction and classification accuracy have yet to reach ideal level. In addition, it is still unclear how different brain region information and different features such as power spectral density, brain asymmetry, differential entropy, and Hjorth parameters affect the prediction accuracy. Our study shows that by taking footwear products as an (...) example, the recognition accuracy of product likes or dislikes reaches 94.22%. Compared with other brain regions, the features of the frontal and occipital brain region obtained a higher prediction accuracy, but the fusion of the features of the whole brain region could improve the prediction accuracy of likes or dislikes even further. Future work would be done to correlate the EEG-based like or dislike prediction results with product sales and self-reports. (shrink)

It is widely held that it is only contingent that the sensation of pain is disliked, and that when pain is not disliked, it is not intrinsically bad. This conjunction of claims has often been taken to support a subjectivist view of pain’s badness on which pain is bad simply because it is the object of a negative attitude and not because of what it feels like. In this paper, I argue that accepting this conjunction of claims does not commit (...) us to this subjectivist view. They are compatible with an objectivist view of pain’s badness, and with thinking that this badness is due to its phenomenal quality. Indeed, I argue that once the full range of options is in view, the most plausible account of pain is incompatible with subjectivism about value. (shrink)

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart’s emotional expression). Thus, interacting with a disliked partner can decrease emotional mimicry, which in turn can further decrease liking. This perpetuating circle has not been investigated in the context of mental health stigma yet. The present study tested the influence of the label “schizophrenia” on liking, interpersonal closeness, and emotional mimicry. In an online experiment (n = 201), participants recruited from the general population saw several (...) videos of actors displaying emotional expressions. Actors were described with one of four labels: “schizophrenia”, “healthy”, “diabetes”, and a negative adjective (e.g. “hot-tempered”). Emotional mimicry was measured using OpenFace 2.2. Liking and interpersonal closeness were assessed with questionnaires. Overall, compared to other labels, participants reported less liking and interpersonal closeness to the actor with the schizophrenia label. However, no effect on emotional mimicry was found. The decreased liking of the schizophrenia actors was explained by a lack of knowledge about schizophrenia and the explicit stigma of schizophrenia. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. (shrink)

As we begin to witness a new phase in the integration of digital social media platforms with educational institutions, we ought to ask how learning exchanges may be altered as a result. Looking to transformations in knowledge exchanges outside of formal education, we find that these technologies have already modified the ways in which communities engage with each other. Gerlitz and Helmond explain that the Like Economy built into all major social media platforms flattens exchanges between users to engagement metrics. (...) With online communities increasingly isolated from each other thanks to inscrutable recommendation algorithms, the most frequent cross-community exchanges manifest in outbursts of rage, producing a so-called ‘Dislike Society’. Practitioners would rather briefly unite to tear down other ways of living than to build new ones. Within the Dislike Society, any form of knowledge that could shape new communities is lost to the governance of algorithms in what Bernard Stiegler calls ‘proletarianisation’. To re-apply knowledge to the improvement of life, as suggested by Whitehead, the attention of learners needs to be shaped in response to new technological conditions. This is best achieved within the educational institutions that now face a reorganisation by the same companies that brought us the Dislike Society. (shrink)

For most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and “inclusive” (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that (...) unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities.These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality? (shrink)

A product harm crisis undermines a firm’s reputation as well as its managers’ career outlook. To shake off the stigmatization resulting from the PHC and regain a firm’s legitimacy among stakeholders, managers usually face an ethical dilemma as they choose to be transparent about the crisis’ financial implications or to obfuscate them to neutralize the negative impact of the PHC. We find evidence that managers engage in income-increasing earnings management when their firms experience PHCs. Moreover, while income-increasing earnings management in (...) PHCs reduces the likelihood of customer loss and CEO forced turnover in the short run, such behavior can be deemed opportunistic and unethical as it carries long-run negative consequences in terms of a higher likelihood of accounting restatement and weaker future operating performance. Finally, managers in firms that are subject to stricter external monitoring and managers in firms with proactive ethical policies are less likely to engage in upward earnings management in PHCs. (shrink)

Liking and respect are postulated as two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes. Liking-disliking is an idiosyncratic response which depends mostly on how target persons influence interests and well-being of the attitude holder and is accompanied by beliefs in their communal traits. Respect-disrespect is a socially shared response which depends mostly on the social status of target persons and is accompanied by beliefs in their agency. This Self-interest /status Model of differences between liking and respect was tested in two studies. It was (...) predicted and found that respect responses are socially shared to higher extent than liking responses. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty occurs at alarming rates in higher education. In the present study, we examined predictors of academic cheating behaviors, and beliefs in the acceptability of cheating, in disliked courses at two large universities, using structural equation modeling. Perceived mastery and extrinsic goal structures were related to beliefs about cheating but not cheating behaviors. Beliefs in the acceptability of cheating were more likely to be endorsed in math and science courses. College students were more likely to cheat and to believe (...) in the acceptability of cheating when they reported a high need for sensation. (shrink)

School liking is an important factor in student engagement, well-being, and academic achievement, but it is also potentially influenced by factors external to the individual, such as school culture, teacher support, and approaches to discipline. The present study employed a survey methodology to investigate the associations between school liking and disliking, teacher and school connectedness, and experiences of exclusionary discipline from the perspective of students themselves. Participants included 1,002 students from three secondary schools serving disadvantaged communities. Results indicated clear differences (...) between students who like and dislike school in terms of their preferred school activities and school disciplinary history, with students who disliked school experiencing overall lower school connectedness. Moreover, students who disliked school experienced less positive relationships with their teachers, and this was even more pronounced for students who had been previously suspended. The findings reveal key differences between students who do and do not like school, differences that may be masked by typical research approaches. This research indicates the need for more nuanced, student-informed approaches to inclusive school reform. (shrink)

Happy people often fail to elaborate on persuasive arguments, while people in sad moods tend to scrutinise messages in greater detail. According to some motivational accounts, however, happy people will elaborate a message if they believe it might maintain their positive mood. The present research extends this reasoning by demonstrating that happy people will elaborate arguments from message presenters that convey positive hedonic attributes (i.e., source likeability). In a pilot study, we show that happy people believe persuasive messages from a (...) likeable source will be mood maintaining. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that these expectancies have important message-processing implications. In Study 1, sad participants elaborated arguments from both likeable and dislikeable sources, while happy participants only elaborated arguments from a likeable source. Consistent with motivational explanation of these effects, in Study 2, happy participants elaborated arguments from a likeable source when not distracted, but used likeability as a heuristic when distracted with a cognitive-load manipulation. Implications of these results for understanding the effects of mood on processing strategy, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Sidgwick's seminal textThe Methods of Ethicsleft off with an unresolved problem that Sidgwick referred to as the dualism of practical reason. The problem is that employing Sidgwick's methodology of rational intuitionism appears to show that there are reasons to favour both egoism and utilitarianism. Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer offer a solution in the form of an evolutionary debunking argument: the appeal of egoism is explainable in terms of evolutionary theory. I argue that like rational prudence, rational benevolence is (...) subject to debunking arguments and so problematic, but also – and more importantly – that debunking arguments are irrelevant in the debate over the dualism of practical reason on the view of reason and rational intuitionism that Lazari-Radek and Singer embrace. Either both egoism and utilitarianism are debunked, or neither are. If I am right, Sidgwick's dualism is left standing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hazel E. Barnes BEAUVOIR AND SARTRE: THE FORMS OF FAREWELL There ARE MANY forms of farewell. The formal interview may be one of them, an autobiography another, the biography written by a relative or close friend of the deceased a third. In The Words Sartre bade farewell to his childhood. He thought he was saying goodbye to literature at the same time, though this adieu turned out to be (...) more in the nature of au revoir or even à bientôt. In an extended interview on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and in a three-hour documentary film, Sartre commented on the events ofhis life, his writings, his hopes and aspirations, his political judgments. Each of these was a summing up, and a selfappraisal, a final statement, too, inasmuch as Sartre's ill health and near blindness made it clear to him that he would not be writing anymore. Simone de Beauvoir obviously drew up some kind of final reckoning in the last volume of her autobiography, Tout comptefait {Account Closed). All of these are farewells of a sort, official valedictories. They have been much discussed, and I will not dwell on them here. Two other works bearing Beauvoir^ name are farewells in a different sense. They are preparations for leave-taking and records of remembrance for the bereaved. They have been combined in a volume published in late 1981, a year and a half after Sartre's death. The first of these is La Cérémonie des adieux (The Ceremony ofFarewells).? This is an account of the decade preceding Sartre's death. The title is itself a recollection of a poignant moment, as Beauvoir explains: "Then this is the ceremony of farewells!' Sartre said to me as we were leaving each other for a month at the beginning of one summer. I had a presentiment of the meaning these words would one day assume. The ceremony lasted ten years. It is these ten years that I recount in this book." The record is annalistic, the same kind of detailed year-by-year account of events and her reactions to them 21 22Philosophy and Literature mat Beauvoir employed in the first three volumes of her autobiography. But there her stated intention was to keep herselfas the center offocus and to speak of Sartre only insofar as his existence was intertwined with her own. In the preface to The Ceremony of Farewells she states that she has recorded these ten years as she had lived them, but that the book is devoted wholly to Sartre. Ifshe has spoken also ofherself, it is because "the witness is a part of what he witnesses." The book is dedicated "To those who loved Sartre, love him, will love him." Indeed, it has been written for them by one who is of them. The second work is Entretiens avecJean-Paul Sartre, a collection of interviews she herself conducted with Sartre in the summer of 1974. These have been subjected to superficial editing but by no means reworked into literature. Beauvoir wanted to give to readers the opportunity "to follow the meanders of his thought and to hear his living voice." Here she uses the method adopted in the fourth volume ofher autobiography, where she grouped her reminiscences by topics. Sartre responds at length to her questions on a vast variety ofsubjects, ranging from food likes and dislikes to his changing concepts of freedom, from sexual preferences to politics; there are comments on schoolboy fights with Merleau-Ponty, and later arguments with Camus, thoughts on literature, on death, on God. A reviewer has remarked that these interviews represent "a worthwhile approximation to the autobiography [Sartre] never wrote."2 Thus we have a work that falls in between biography and autobiography, because of the author's close involvement with her subject, and we have a set of autobiographical interviews. In both Beauvoir is recorder and commentator, Sartre central subject and actor. The two may serve for mutual corroboration and correction. Together diey express Beauvoir^ and Sartre's farewell to each other and his farewell to life. I will begin with the Interviews and focus my discussion on a few selected items which seem to me especially... (shrink)

We present five studies investigating the effects of approach and avoidance behaviours when individuals do not enact them but, instead, learn that others have performed them. In Experiment 1, when participants read that a fictitious character (model) had approached a previously unknown product, they ascribed to this model a liking for the object. In contrast, they ascribed to the model a disliking for the avoided product. In Experiment 2, this result emerged, with a smaller effect size, even when it was (...) clear that the behaviours followed specific instructions from a third party. The model had been a mere executor instead of behaving autonomously. Finally, in Experiments 3, 4, and 5, we showed, with direct and indirect measures of attitudes, that reading that the model had approached vs avoided products was sufficient to create preferences in the participant for the approached one, regardless of whether it was explained that the model was a mere executor. This research highlights the largely unexplored effects of vicarious approach/avoidance behaviours. Theoretical and practical implications and possible developments of this line of research are discussed. (shrink)

Allah knows what is best for us. Read this book to know what He expects from us and what He likes and dislikes. Allah and Me is a book which discusses some Islamic virtues which we should practice in our daily life in order to live according to Allah's will and become candidates for Paradise. A Muslim does everything for Allah. Every Little Talk in this book includes some questions to make children think, especially about their own behaviour in context (...) of the virtue discussed in that Talk. Each Talk ends with some Quranic verses and Hadith quotes to stress and highlight the Islamic teaching discussed in that Talk. (shrink)

[E.H. Gombrich wrote on May 13, 1975:] . . . I recently was invited to talk about "Art" at the Institution for Education of our University. There was a well-intentioned teacher there who put forward the view that we had no right whatever to influence the likes and dislikes of our pupils because every generation had a different outlook and we could not possibly tell what theirs would be. It is the same extreme relativism, which has invaded our art schools (...) and resulted in the doctrine that art could not possibly be taught because only what has been done already can be taught, and since art is creativity it is not possible to teach it. Q.E.D.—I recently asked my history finalists what "Quod erat demonstrandum" means and they did not know. . . . [Quentin Bell responded on May 15, 1975:] . . . Your teacher at the Institute, is he really a relativist? Isn't he a kind of religious zealot? I used to teach school children. With me there was a much better teacher . One day she came into the room where I had been teaching and found a series of the most surprising and beautiful water colours. "What are these?" said she. I explained that they were copies of Raphael made by eleven and twelve year old children. I would have gone on to explain how interested I was by their resemblance, not to Raphael but rather to Simone Martini, for they had all the shapes beautifully right but none of the internal drawing or the sentiment, but I was checked by her look of horror. "You've made them copy from Raphael?" she said. Her expression was exactly that of someone who had been casually informed that that I had committed a series of indecent assaults upon the brats. And in fact in subsequent conversation it appeared that this was very nearly what she did feel. For her, what she called "self expression" was as precious as virginity. E.H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His books include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, Norm and Form, Symbolic Images, The Heritage of Apelles, and In Search of Cultural History. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960, a Commander of the British Empire in 1966, and was knighted in 1972. He is also a trustee of the British Museum and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Notes and Exchanges" ,"Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye" , and, with Quentin Bell, "Canons and Values in the Visual Arts: A Correspondence" . Quentin Bell is professor of the history and theory of art, Sussex University. He has written Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Of Human Finery, Ruskin, Victorian Artists and Bloomsbury. Other contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Art Critic and the Art Historian" , "Notes and Exchanges" , and "Bloomsbury and 'the Vulgar Passions'". (shrink)

J. L. Austin was one of the more influential British philosophers of his time, due to his rigorous thought, extraordinary personality, and innovative philosophical method. According to John Searle, he was both passionately loved and hated by his contemporaries. Like Socrates, he seemed to destroy all philosophical orthodoxy without presenting an alternative, equally comforting, orthodoxy. -/- Austin is best known for two major contributions to contemporary philosophy: first, his ‘linguistic phenomenology’, a peculiar method of philosophical analysis of the concepts and (...) ways of expression of everyday language; and second, speech act theory, the idea that every use of language carries a performative dimension (in the well-known slogan, “to say something is to do something”). Speech act theory has had consequences and import in research fields as diverse as philosophy of language, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, linguistics, artificial intelligence and feminist philosophy. -/- This article describes Austin’s linguistic method and his speech act theory, and it describes the original contributions he made to epistemology and philosophy of action. It closes by focusing on two main developments of speech act theory─the dispute between conventionalism and intentionalism, and the debate on free speech, pornography, and censorship. (shrink)

The paper begins with a well-known objection to the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires. The objection holds that since desires are based on reasons (first premise), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second premise), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first premise of the argument by David Sobel. Sobel invokes a counterexample: hedonic desires, i.e. the likings and (...) dislikings of our present conscious states. The aim of the paper is to defend the premise by bringing the alleged counterexample under its scope. I first point out that reference to hedonic desires as a counterexample presupposes a particular understanding of pleasure, which we might call desire-based. In response, following Sobel, I draw up two alternative accounts, the phenomenological and the tracking views of pleasure. Although Sobel raises several objections to both accounts, I argue in detail that the phenomenological view is not as implausible as he claims it to be, whereas the tracking view, on its best version advocated by Thomas Scanlon, is an instance of the phenomenological view and is therefore also defensible. (shrink)

Our likes and dislikes--our senses and sensibilities--did not fall ready-made from the sky, argues internationally acclaimed author John D. Barrow. We know we enjoy a beautiful painting or a passionate symphony, but what we don't necessarily understand is that these experiences conjure up latent instincts laid down and perpetuated over millions of years. Now, in The Artful Universe, Barrow explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe, challenging the commonly held view that our (...) sense of beauty is entirely free and unfettered. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe, its environments and its astronomical appearance, have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? Who created the cornucopia of constellations in the night sky? And why? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in Nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Barrow reconsiders the question of whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, showing that the benefits (and even the likelihood) that might follow from the discovery of life on other worlds could be very different from what we might have been led to expect. Remarkably, we find that some of the properties of the Universe that are essential for the existence of any form of life play a key role in determining psychological and religious responses to the Cosmos. Drawing on a wide variety of examples, from the theological questions raised by St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis to the relationship between the pure math of Pythagoras and the music of the Beatles, The Artful Universe covers new ground and enters a wide-ranging debate about the meaning and significance of the links between art and science. It will change our view of the creation of art and the way we see the world in which we live. (shrink)

The present study is a correlational field study because the purpose of this study is to ascertain the nature of relationship between Anasakti and adjustment. Anasakti, the concept of Bhagavad Gita, refers to an intense though disinterested action, performed with a spirit of passion, without nurturing concerns regarding success or failure, loss or gain, likes or dislikes. The present study is conducted on 291 Hindu graduate adults in the age range of 45–65 years. Incidental-cum-purposive sampling technique is used for data (...) collection. A positive correlation is found between Anasakti and adjustment. The study reveals that if Anasakti increases then adjustment level also increases. (shrink)

Human beings are not general problem solvers. Their mental architecture is modular and the microfoundations for the social sciences have to take that into consideration. Modularity means that there are hardwired and softwired functionally specific subroutines, such as face recognition and habits that make the individual particularly sensitive to a narrow range of information from both inside and outside. Goals are the most important creators of modules that contain both hard- and softwired submodules. Goals determine what we attend to, what (...) information we are sensitive to, what information we neglect, what chunks of knowledge and what concepts are being activated at a given moment, what we like and dislike, what criteria for goal achievement are being applied, etc. Overarching goals govern large classes of submodules, and therefore the social sciences have to deal especially with these overarching goals. Three such overarching goals are identified: hedonic, gain, and normative goals. At every given moment one of them is focal (a goal-frame) and self-regulation is the process by which humans balance the dominance of goal-frames. In turn, self-regulation (here seen as the heart of ‘social rationality’), depends much on social circumstances that are open to sociological investigation. (shrink)

Confucianism defined benevolence with “feelings” and “ love.” “Feelings” in Confucianism can be mainly divided into three categories: feelings in general, love for one’s relatives, and compassion. The seven kinds of feeling in which people respond to things can be summarized as “likes and dislikes.” The mind responds to things through feelings; based on the mind of benevolence and righteousness or feelings of compassion, the expression of feelings can conform to the principle of the mean and reach the integration of (...) self and others, and of self and external things. The “relations between the seven kinds of feelings and the Four Commencements,” however, was not developed into a theoretical idea in Confucianism. After Confucius, the relationship between the universality of natural sympathies and the gradation of love for relatives gradually became an important subject in Confucian ideas of benevolence and love. By “refuting Yang Zhu and Mozi,” Mencius systematically expounded on this issue. Love had two ends: self- love and natural sympathies, between which existed the love for relatives. These two ends were not the two extremes of Yang’s self-interest and Mozi’s universal love. Love for relatives not only implied a gradation, but also contained universality and transcendence that came from self- love. Love for relatives, natural sympathies and self- love had a kind of tension and connectivity between two dynamic ends. The Confucian idea of benevolence and love hence demonstrated differences and interconnectivity. An accurate understanding of such “feelings” and “ love ” is important for us to grasp Confucian thoughts on benevolence and its realization. (shrink)

In this article, the authors study the problem of balance of trust and mistrust associated with the turbulence of modern society, redundancy, and heterogeneity of information and communication flows creating a contradictory picture of the world. Social networks are considered as one of the basic modern information resources creating previously unavailable opportunities for communication, interaction, information sharing, and commonality construction. Social networks users broadcast the experience of constructing communications in real daily life in the Internet community forming circles of ‘friends‘, (...) building a chain of weak social ties; but the problem of trusting ‘friends‘ remains not solved in global space. A survey of users of social networks, conducted as part of this study, demonstrates conflicting findings. The opinions of ‘friends‘ does not always have an impact on the degree of trusting events, information, groups, likes, and dislikes to other users. Users often trust strangers and less familiar people. The social networks demonstrates the demand for uniting ‘brige-building‘ trust. However, the trust remains extremely narrow throughout, leading to fragmentation and alienation of individuals from each other in an attempt to find their safe niche. Distrust of narrow and wide radius leads to far-reaching consequences and greater uncertainty in society, not creating the preconditions for openness and the vision of the future. (shrink)

Confucianism defined benevolence with “feelings” and “love.” “Feelings” in Confucianism can be mainly divided into three categories: feelings in general, love for one’s relatives, and compassion. The seven kinds of feeling in which people respond to things can be summarized as “likes and dislikes.” The mind responds to things through feelings; based on the mind of benevolence and righteousness or feelings of compassion, the expression of feelings can conform to the principle of the mean and reach the integration of self (...) and others, and of self and external things. The “relations between the seven kinds of feelings and the Four Commencements,” however, was not developed into a theoretical idea in Confucianism. After Confucius, the relationship between the universality of natural sympathies and the gradation of love for relatives gradually became an important subject in Confucian ideas of benevolence and love. By “refuting Yang Zhu and Mozi,” Mencius systematically expounded on this issue. Love had two ends: self-love and natural sympathies, between which existed the love for relatives. These two ends were not the two extremes of Yang’s self-interest and Mozi’s universal love. Love for relatives not only implied a gradation, but also contained universality and transcendence that came from self-love. Love for relatives, natural sympathies and self-love had a kind of tension and connectivity between two dynamic ends. The Confucian idea of benevolence and love hence demonstrated differences and interconnectivity. An accurate understanding of such “feelings” and “love” is important for us to grasp Confucian thoughts on benevolence and its realization. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses Edmund Husserl's concept of the ‘life-world’, found in his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. We argue that Husserl's phenomenology fails to consider the social and material arrangements that allow subjectivity to emerge in our shared world. We begin by outlining the concept as formulated in Husserl’s Crisis. We then entertain Husserl’s critique by his most famous student, Martin Heidegger. We suggest a reformulation of intersubjectivity, along the lines of Heidegger’s mitdasein, accounts for subjectivity as (...) it emerges in the shared world. Next, we introduce ethnomethodology, pioneered by Harold Garfinkel, which gives sociological support to this argument. Through the ethnomethodological disability studies of A.B. Robillard, we argue that the life-world is not always as democratic as Husserl's philosophy may suggest. This shows the necessity of disability politics. We end by asking what a phenomenology sensitive to this fact might look like, in terms of both disability studies and phenomenological philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Depression is associated with a bias toward negative interpretations of social situations and resistance to integrating evidence consistent with positive interpretations. These features could contribute to social isolation by generating negative expected value for future social interactions. The present study examined potential associations between depressive symptoms and positive (i.e. trust and liking) and negative (i.e. distrust and disliking) social impression formation of individuals who previously appeared in positive or negative contexts. Participants (N = 213) completed the Interpretation Inflexibility Task and (...) were subsequently asked to provide social impression ratings of characters from each scenario type of the task (i.e. positive and negative) as well as characters not previously encountered. In examining social impression formation, higher severity of depressive symptoms was associated with higher negative social impression ratings regardless of scenario outcome, as well as lower positive social impression ratings, but only for characters who previously appeared in positive contexts. Those higher in depression also rated novel characters as significantly more unlikeable and untrustworthy and to an equivalent degree as the characters previously encountered. These findings suggest a role of negative interpretation bias and inflexibility in contributing to negative evaluations of potential social interaction partners in depression. (shrink)

More and more these days it is asked whether aesthetics is still possible. A question that, given the context and phrasing, seems to direct us towards its answer. Conferences and meetings, books and journal specials examine the issue of aesthetics, talk about rediscovery or return of aesthetics. Well known philosophers and aestheticians underscore the need to reconsider the foundations of aesthetics and set new directions for aesthetics today (Berleant, 2004) or attempt to expand aesthetics beyond aesthetics–like Welsch, for example who (...) tries to extend aesthetics beyond art to society and the life-world (Welsch, 1997). Others underline the need to revisit the aesthetic experience (Shusterman, 1999; Iseminger, 2002, Fenner, 1996) and examine the relevance or irrelevance of the aesthetic with art (Carroll, 2001). It seems that it is strongly recommended to turn to aesthetics on the condition however to carefully re-approach the meaning and import of the term in the present situation. The aesthetic that Passmore condemned as “dreary”(Passmore, 1954), the one Sparshott considered a formless conception, vague and loose in application (Sparshott, 1982), the same that Danto emphatically argues that has nothing to do with the definition of art or arts in general (Danto, 1981) returns to claim its rightful place in the fields of philosophy and critical theory (Levine, 1994, Michaud, 1999), as well as artistic creation. And one cannot but wonder: what does this return mean? What was the degree of aesthetics decline that we need to discuss about recovery or for new implementations of aesthetics? (shrink)

This research examines the influence of social status, gender and family structure on parental values. Data are taken from the General Social Survey of six years in which parental value questions in standard form appeared. Logistic regression models are estimated for seven values representing three types of parental values: conformity, gender roles and self-direction. Results indicate that while social status has a positive effect on the preference of self-direction values and a negative effect on the valuation of conformity and traditional (...) gender roles, gender and family structure are also consistently related to characteristics parents consider important for children. Compared to men, women are more likely to endorse self-direction and less likely to value conformity and traditional gender roles in children. Women in single-parent families are also more likely than women in two-parent families to value conformity and gender roles. Discussions of the findings and directions for future research are provided. (shrink)

While the presence or absence of consciousness plays the central role in the moral/ethical decisions when dealing with patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC), recently it is criticized as not adequate due to number of reasons, among which are the lack of the uniform definition of consciousness and consequently uncertainty of diagnostic criteria for it, as well as irrelevance of some forms of consciousness for determining a patient’s interests and wishes. In her article, Dr. Specker Sullivan reexamined the meaning of (...) consciousness in the DOC taxonomy and proposed to go away from the routinely used clinical definition of consciousness as “wakeful awareness”, and adopt the meaning that is common in the Eastern tradition which is a form of “pure experience” (Specker Sullivan 2018). She further argued that understanding consciousness as a “pure experience” is ethically relevant for DOC patients. This suggestion is original, novel and important since it preserves the importance of the notion of consciousness for the clinical practice while simultaneously offering an additional ethical tool for the moral decisions in medicine. At the same time, without placing such Eastern notion in the Western tradition it is difficult to see how pure experience could be usefully operationalized to make sense in the clinical practice with DOC patients. It is so because pure experience is a subjective phenomenon which is completely inaccessible in noncommunicative DOC patients and also it does not express behaviorally (Monti et al 2010), therefore some objective-like operationalization is needed. This is why the fusion of Eastern and Western traditions is required to gain the full potential of Dr. Specker Sullivan’s suggestion. We propose that such fusion could be achieved on the basis of the Operational Architectonics (OA) theory of brain-mind functioning (Fingelkurts et al. 2010; 2013a) which suits ideally the purpose due its compatibility with both Western and Eastern traditions of consciousness. (shrink)

Stimuli that resemble humans, but are not perfectly human-like, are disliked compared to distinctly human and nonhuman stimuli. Accounts of this “Uncanny Valley” effect often focus on how changes in human resemblance can evoke different emotional responses. We present an alternate account based on the novel hypothesis that the Uncanny Valley is not directly related to ‘human-likeness’ per se, but instead reflects a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs when inhibition is triggered to resolve conflict between competing stimulus-related (...) representations. We consider existing support for this inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and further assess its feasibility through tests of two corresponding predictions that arise from the link between conflict-resolving inhibition and aversive response: 1) that the pronounced disliking of Uncanny-type stimuli will occur for any image that strongly activates multiple competing stimulus representations, even in the absence of any human-likeness, and 2) that the negative peak of an ‘Uncanny Valley’ should occur at the point of greatest stimulus-related conflict and not (in the presence of human-likeness) always closer to the ‘human’ end of a perceptual continuum. We measured affective responses to a set of line drawings representing nonhuman animal-animal morphs, in which each continuum midpoint was a bistable image (Exp. 1), as well as to sets of human-robot and human-animal computer-generated morphs (Exp. 2). Affective trends depicting classic Uncanny Valley functions occurred for all continua, including the nonhuman stimuli. Images at continua midpoints elicited significantly more negative affect than images at endpoints, even when the continua included a human endpoint. This illustrates the feasibility of the inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and the need for further research into the possibility that the strong dislike of Uncanny-type stimuli reflects the negative affective consequences of cognitive inhibition. (shrink)