The prospective study follows college students after the 9/11 attacks. Based on evidence and trauma-related theories, and guided by reports on positive and negative reactions and meaning-related actions among Americans after 9/11, we explored the seemingly contradictory, yet meaning-related pathways to posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms , indicating the sense of deep interconnectedness and deep conflict. The final model showed that 9/11 emotional turmoil triggered processes of assimilation, as indicated in pathways between prayer coping and perceived spiritual and (...) social support, and of accommodation, as indicated in the pathway of spiritual struggle. Both pathways were directly associated with PTG in the follow-up. Perceived spiritual and social support contributed to lower levels of PTSD symptoms, whereas spiritual struggle had an opposite impact on symptoms; both effects were mediated through optimism but in opposite directions. The study suggests the interplay of complex crisis-related phenomena following meaning-laden collective trauma that presented existential challenges, involving coping, optimism, deep conflict, and deep interconnectedness. (shrink)
Reasoning about what other people know is an important cognitive ability, known as epistemic reasoning, which has fascinated psychologists, economists, and logicians. In this paper, we propose a computational model of humans’ epistemic reasoning, including higher-order epistemic reasoning—reasoning about what one person knows about another person’s knowledge—that we test in an experiment using a deductive card game called “Aces and Eights”. Our starting point is the model of perfect higher-order epistemic reasoners given by the framework of dynamic epistemic logic. We (...) modify this idealized model with bounds on the level of feasible epistemic reasoning and stochastic update of a player’s space of possibilities in response to new information. These modifications are crucial for explaining the variation in human performance across different participants and different games in the experiment. Our results demonstrate how research on epistemic logic and cognitive models can inform each other. (shrink)
Faith has been shown to serve a protective role in the mental health of African Americans and European Americans. However, little research has examined whether any association exists in Asian Americans. Using the National Latino and Asian American Study dataset, we examined the effect of religious attendance on the mental health of Asian Americans in the United States. The present study focused on Chinese Americans because they are the largest Asian American group. The results revealed that almost 80% of the (...) respondents were foreign-born and that their English proficiency had a positive association with their self-rated mental health. Being male correlated significantly to higher levels of mental health self-rating. After controlling for known predictive variables, such as demographics, cultural and immigration variables, more frequent religious attendance significantly predicted higher self-rating of mental health. These findings suggest that faith may have a unique protective role in Chinese Americans’ mental health. (shrink)
BackgroundThe Public Health Service Increased Risk designation identified organ donors at increased risk of transmitting hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and human immunodeficiency virus. Despite clear data demonstrating a low absolute risk of disease transmission from these donors, patients are hesitant to consent to receiving organs from these donors. We hypothesize that patients who consent to receiving offers from these donors have decreased time to transplant and decreased waitlist mortality.MethodsWe performed a single-center retrospective review of all-comers waitlisted for liver transplant from (...) 2013 to 2019. The three competing risk events were analyzed. 1603 patients were included, of which 1244 consented to offers from increased risk donors.ResultsCompared to those who did not consent, those who did had 2.3 times the rate of transplant, with a median time to transplant of 11 months versus 14 months, as well as a 44% decrease in the rate of death on the waitlist. All findings remained significant after controlling for the recipient age, race, gender, blood type, and MELD. Of those who did not consent, 63/359 received a transplant, all of which were from standard criteria donors, and of those who did consent, 615/1244 received a transplant, of which 183/615 were from increased risk donors.ConclusionsThe findings of decreased rates of transplantation and increased risk of death on the waiting list by patients who were unwilling to accept risks of viral transmission of 1/300–1/1000 in the worst case scenarios suggests that this consent process may be harmful especially when involving “trigger” words such as HIV. The rigor of the consent process for the use of these organs was recently changed but a broader discussion about informed consent in similar situations is important. (shrink)
The changing milieu of research—increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative—prompts greater emphasis on cultural context and upon partnership with international scholars and diverse community groups. Ethics training, however, tends to ignore the cross-cultural challenges of making ethical choices. This paper confronts those challenges by presenting a new curricular model developed by an international team. It examines ethics across a very broad range of situations, using case studies and employing the perspectives of social science, humanities and the sciences. The course has been (...) developed and taught in a highly collaborative way, involving researchers and students at Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Brown University. The article presents the curricular modules of the course, learning outcomes, an assessment framework developed for the project, and a discussion of evaluation findings. (shrink)
In recent analytic metaphysics, the view that ‘ordinary inanimate objects such as sticks and stones, tables and chairs, simply do not exist’ has been defended by some noteworthy writers. Thomasson opposes such revisionary ontology in favour of an ontology that is conservative with respect to common sense. The book is written in a straightforward, methodical and down-to-earth style. It is also relatively non-specialized, enabling the author and her readers to approach problems that are often dealt with in isolation in a (...) more unified way.Thomasson's arguments are mainly counter-attacks on six ‘eliminativist’ arguments against ordinary objects. A causal redundancy argument espoused by Trenton Merricks holds that to suppose that there are ordinary objects is to suppose that these objects have distinctive causal powers. However, the casual efficacy of a baseball, for example, is exhausted by that of some suitably arranged …. (shrink)
In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in the (...) broader sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Instead, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and allow her to elaborate her work for her audience. (shrink)
In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in the (...) broader sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Instead, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and allow her to elaborate her work for her audience. (shrink)
This is a major study of Kierkegaard and love. Amy Laura Hall explores Kierkegaard's description of love's treachery, difficulty, and hope, reading his Works of Love as a text that both deciphers and complicates the central books in his pseudonymous canon: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Either/Or, and Stages on Life's Way. In all of these works, the characters are, as in real life, complex and incomplete, and the conclusions are perplexing. Hall argues that a spiritual void brings each text into (...) being, and her interpretation is as much about faith as about love. In a style that is both scholarly and lyrical, she intimates answers to some of the puzzles, making a poetic contribution to ethics and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)
Integrity is often conceived as a heroic ideal: the person of integrity sticks to what they believe is right, regardless of the consequences. In this article, I defend a conception of ordinary integrity, for people who either do not desire or are unable to be moral martyrs. Drawing on the writings of seventeenth century thinker Huang Zongxi, I propose refocussing attention away from an abstract ideal of integrity, to instead consider the institutional conditions whereby it is made safe not (...) to be servile. (shrink)
Huang, Chun-chieh, Konfuzianismus: Kontinuität und Entwicklung: Studien zur chinesischen Geistesgeschichte (Confucianism: Continuity and Development: Studies in Chinese Intellectual History), Edited and translated by Stephan Schmidt Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11712-010-9191-0 Authors Heiner Roetz, Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University, 44780 Bochum, Germany Journal Dao Online ISSN 1569-7274 Print ISSN 1540-3009 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 4.
Religious beliefs have often been taken either as absolutely foundational to all others or as ultimately founded on something else. This essay starts with an endorsement of the contemporary critique of foundationalism but sets its task as to search for the foundation of religious belief after foundationalism. In its third and main part, it argues for a Wittgensteinian reflective equilibrium as such a foundation. In this reflective equilibrium, religious beliefs are no more and no less foundational to, or founded by, (...) other beliefs and practices. To appreciate this perspective better, I argue,in the first part, that Kai Neilsen's charge of Wittgenstein as a fideist is not accurate, and, in the second part, that D. Z. Phillips's fideistic contentions are unWittgensteinian. (shrink)
In this postmodern era, God-talk is facing serious challenges. Is it still possible to have a meaningful concept of God after the demise of metaphysical realism? How can we make sense of the idea of absolute transcendence in a secularized world? In what sense can we still believe something as divine revelation when foundationalism is no longer taken for granted? While some believe that we can go about our old theological business as usual, others have entirely given up on the (...) hope of any intelligible theology. It is my hunch, however, that there are ways of doing theology that can take our postmodern conditions into serious account. In this article, I shall argue that, however anachronistic it might seem, Hegel's God-talk, seen through the lens of Heidegger's understanding of Being, provides one such possibility. (shrink)
Yong Huang has recently claimed that after the demise of foundationalism, philosophy and theology can turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein's non-foundationalist or coherentist religious epistemology where, it is said, religious beliefs are justified by a 'reflective equilibrium' with other kinds of beliefs, with action, and with different 'forms of life'. I argue that there are very good reasons to reject this reading of Wittgenstein: not only unsupported, it is seriously mistaken. Once the epistemological terms of the debate are properly understood, (...) the evidence indicates that Wittgenstein's view of religious beliefs is a form of foundationalism, not coherentism. (shrink)
The most widely debated conception of democracy in recent years is deliberative democracy--the idea that citizens or their representatives owe each other mutually acceptable reasons for the laws they enact. Two prominent voices in the ongoing discussion are Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. In Why Deliberative Democracy?, they move the debate forward beyond their influential book, Democracy and Disagreement.What exactly is deliberative democracy? Why is it more defensible than its rivals? By offering clear answers to these timely questions, Gutmann and (...) Thompson illuminate the theory and practice of justifying public policies in contemporary democracies. They not only develop their theory of deliberative democracy in new directions but also apply it to new practical problems. They discuss bioethics, health care, truth commissions, educational policy, and decisions to declare war. In "What Deliberative Democracy Means," which opens this collection of essays, they provide the most accessible exposition of deliberative democracy to date. They show how deliberative democracy should play an important role even in the debates about military intervention abroad.Why Deliberative Democracy? contributes to our understanding of how democratic citizens and their representatives can make justifiable decisions for their society in the face of the fundamental disagreements that are inevitable in diverse societies. Gutmann and Thompson provide a balanced and fair-minded approach that will benefit anyone intent on giving reason and reciprocity a more prominent place in politics than power and special interests. (shrink)
This book is a philosophical exploration of disorientation and its significance for action. Disorientations are human experiences of losing one's bearings, such that life is disrupted and it is not clear how to go on. In the face of life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented. These and other disorientations are not rare. Although disorientations can be common and powerful parts of individuals' lives, they remain uncharacterized by Western philosophers, (...) and overlooked by ethicists.Disorientations can paralyze, overwhelm, embitter, and misdirect moral agents, and moral philosophy and motivational psychology have important insights to offer into why this is. More perplexing are the ways disorientations may prompt improved moral action.Ami Harbin draws on first person accounts, philosophical texts, and qualitative and quantitative research to show that in some cases of disorientation, individuals gain new forms of awareness of political complexity and social norms, and new habits of relating to others and an unpredictable moral landscape. She then argues for the moral and political promise of these gains. A major contention of the book is that disorientations have 'non-resolutionary effects': they can help us act without first helping us resolve what to do. In exploring these possibilities, Disorientation and Moral Life contributes to philosophy of emotions, moral philosophy, and political thought from a distinctly feminist perspective. It makes the case for seeing disorientations as having the power to motivate profound and long-term shifts in moral and political action. A feminist re-envisioning of moral psychology provides the framework for understanding how they do so. (shrink)
Biomedical moral enhancement, or BME for short, aims to improve people’s moral behaviors through augmenting, via biomedical means, their virtuous dispositions such as sympathy, honesty, courage, or generosity. Recently, it has been challenged, on particularist grounds, however, that the manifestations of the virtuous dispositions can be morally wrong. For instance, being generous in terrorist financing is one such case. If so, biomedical moral enhancement, by enhancing people’s virtues, might turn out to be counterproductive in terms of people’s moral behaviors. In (...) this paper, we argue, via a comparison with moral education, that the case for the practice of biomedical moral enhancement is not weakened by the particularists’ stress on the variable moral statuses of the manifestations of our virtues. The real challenge from the particularists, we argue, lies elsewhere. It is that practical wisdom, being essentially context-sensitive, cannot be enhanced via biomedical means. On the basis of this, we further argue that BME ought to be used with great caution, for it may wrongly enhance, for instance, a terrorist financier’s generosity, a robber’s courage, or an undercover detective’s honesty. Finally, we sketch how boundaries can be set on the use of BME, and address some potential objections to our position. (shrink)
This challenging study places fiction squarely at the centre of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how (...) other cultural and social objects are established on the basis of the independent physical world and the mental states of human beings. (shrink)
This paper approaches Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness from a mereological perspective. Taking as inspiration Bergson’s idea that pure durée is a multiplicity of interpenetration, I will show, from within Husserlian phenomenology, that the absolute flow can indeed be described as a whole of interpenetrating parts. This mereological perspective will inform my re-consideration of the much-discussed issue of Husserl’s self-criticism concerning the schema of content and apprehension. It will also reveal a fundamental similarity between Husserl’s conception of the absolute flow and (...) Sartre’s conception of lived temporality. This paper consists of four sections. Section 2 presents the basic elements of Husserl’s mereology. Section 3 introduces the difficulty encountered by Husserl’s early account of time that makes use of the schema. I will examine Barry Dainton’s criticism of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness against the background of the older debate between Meinong and Stern, a debate that has informed Husserl’s own account. Section 4 distinguishes two common criticisms of the schema from Husserl’s own self-criticism, which is in turn divided into two steps. It is shown how the second step of this self-criticism implies the interpenetration of the absolute flow and responds to Dainton’s criticism. Finally, Sect. 5 concludes with some comparative remarks. I will show how Husserl’s notion of absolute flow, as mereologically interpreted, anticipates Sartre’s conception of consciousness as self-transcendence, as well as how it accommodates the apparently conflicting mereological intuitions of Aristotle and Bergson. (shrink)
Imagination is celebrated as our vehicle for escape from the mundane here and now. It transports us to distant lands of magic and make-believe, and provides us with diversions during boring meetings or long bus rides. Yet the focus on imagination as a means of escape from the real world minimizes the fact that imagination seems also to furnish us with knowledge about it. Imagination seems an essential component in our endeavor to learn about the world in which we live--whether (...) we're planning for the future, aiming to understand other people, or figuring out whether two puzzle pieces fit together. But how can the same mental power that allows us to escape the world as it currently is also inform us about the world as it currently is? Ten original essays grapple with this neglected question; in doing so, they present a diverse array of positions ranging from cautious optimism to deep-seated pessimism. Blending perspectives from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics, Knowledge Through Imagination sheds new light on the epistemic role of imagination. (shrink)
This volume features in-depth philosophical analyses of major Japanese Confucian philosophers as well as themes and topics addressed in their writings. Its main historical focus is the early-modern period (1600-1868), when much original Confucian philosophizing occurred. Written by scholars from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, and China and eclectic in methodology and disciplinary approach, this anthology seeks to advance new multidimensional studies of Japanese Confucian philosophy for English language readers. It presents essays that focus on Japanese Confucianism, while (...) including topics related to Buddhism, Shintō, Nativism, and even Andō Shōeki (1703-1762), one of the most vehement critics of Confucianism in all of East Asia. The book builds on the premise that Japanese Confucian philosophy consists in the ongoing engagement in critical, self-reflective discussions of and speculative theorizing about ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, political theory, and spiritual problems, as well as aesthetics, cosmology, and ontology. (shrink)
While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School--Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst--have persistently defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures (...) critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resouce we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future. (shrink)
