Time processing is a multifaceted skill crucial for managing different aspects of life. In the current work, we explored the relationship between interoception and time processing by examining research on clinical models. We investigated whether time processing deficits are associated with dysfunction of the interoceptive system and/or insular cortex activity, which is crucial in decoding internal body signaling. Furthermore, we explored whether insular activation predicts the subjective experience of time (that is, the subjective duration of a target stimulus to be (...) timed). Overall, our work suggests that alteration of the interoceptive system could be a common psychophysiological hallmark of mental disorders affected by time processing deficits. (shrink)

The investigation of how humans perceive and respond to emotional signals conveyed by the human body has been for a long time secondary compared with the investigation of facial expressions and emotional scenes recognition. The aims of this behavioral study were to assess the ability to process emotional body postures and to test whether motor response is mainly driven by the emotional content of the picture or if it is influenced by motor resonance. Emotional body postures and scenes (IAPS) divided (...) into three clusters (fear, happiness, and neutral) were shown to 25 healthy subjects (13 males, mean age ± SD: 22.3 ± 1.8 years) in a three-alternative forced choice task. Subjects were asked to recognize the emotional content of the pictures by pressing one of three keys as fast as possible in order to estimate response times (RTs). The rating of valence and arousal was also performed. We found shorter RTs for fearful body postures as compared with happy and neutral postures. In contrast, no differences across emotional categories were found for the IAPS stimuli. Analysis on valence and arousal and the subsequent item analysis showed an excellent reliability of the two sets of images used in the experiment. Our results show that fearful body postures are rapidly recognized and processed, probably thanks to the automatic activation of a series of central nervous system structures orchestrating the defensive threat reactions, strengthening and supporting previous neurophysiological and behavioral findings in body language processing. (shrink)

We recently demonstrated, by means of short latency afferent inhibition (SAI), that before an imagined movement, during the reaction time (RT), SAI decreases only in the movement-related muscle (sensorimotor modulation) and that a correlation exists between sensorimotor modulation and motor imagery (MI) ability. Excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) on M1 could enhance the MI outcome; however, mechanisms of action are not completely known. Here, we assessed if a-tDCS on M1 prior to an MI task could affect sensorimotor modulation. (...) Participants imagined abducting the index or little finger in response to an acoustic signal. SAI was evaluated from the first dorsal interosseus after the “go” signal, before the expected electromyographic (EMG) activity. Participants received 20-min 1.5 mA a-tDCS or sham-tDCS on M1 on two different days, in random order. Results showed that a-tDCS on M1 increases the sensorimotor modulation consisting of a weakening of SAI after the Go signal with respect to sham-tDCS, in the movement-related muscle right before the beginning of MI. These results suggest that a-tDCS on M1 further potentiate those circuits responsible for sensorimotor modulation in the RT phase of MI. Increased sensorimotor modulation during MI may be one of the mechanisms involved in MI improvement after a-tDCS over M1. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 59-61.

Through examination of a case study of Liberian refugee participation in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, this article highlights concerns about the lack of opportunity for refugee participation in peacebuilding generally. The experience of the authors working with refugees in the Buduburam Settlement near Accra, Ghana, demonstrates the overwhelming desire of refugees to participate in the processes that directly impact their lives, as well as the future of their home and host countries. The article concludes with the suggestion (...) that the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work with refugees can serve as a model of how refugee participation can be enhanced in similar processes in the future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 73-75 [Access article in PDF] Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Sonia Kruks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 200. $35.00 h.c. 0-8014-3387-8; $16.95 pbk. 0-8014-8417-0. Sonia Kruks' latest book, Retrieving Experience, is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the relevance of feminist philosophy in a period of relative political quietism. It also offers timely (...) reminders of historical continuities between phenomenological and postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and political engagement. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon, and the later Sartre, Kruks proposes to "explore women's embodied experiences" and to "ask whether they might not offer some means to help build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from one another" (6). The book approaches this task by means of two secondary issues. First, should feminist thought be oriented by phenomenological or postmodernist theoretical strategies? Second, can women's embodied experience be the conceptual basis for political and epistemological practices that avoid the pitfalls of "identity politics" or an "epistemology of provenance"? The answer to both questions comes through the notion of praxis developed in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. By thinking of embodiment as praxis or work, a strategy implicit in Beauvoir's idea that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Kruks seeks to resolve the ethical affront of finding one's individuality reduced to the "generality" of a collective—the ethical affront to which feminists of various generations and theoretical persuasions must respond.Retrieving Experience explores the significance of recognition as a political norm. Identifying Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew as a pivotal work in the history of identitarian theorizing, she situates recent appeals for race- and gender-based political mobilization in the United States with respect to the dialectical relationship between the Look, shame, and recognition existentialists observed in situations of anti-Semitic and colonial domination during and immediately after the Second World War. Legitimating knowledge gained under oppressive conditions formed an important element of African, Southeast Asian, and ultimately African-American and feminist resistance to cultural imperialism. However, Kruks warns, discourses of "recognition" risk placing the blame for group domination on individuals' face-to-face interactions while concealing the role of state and economic institutions in enabling social disdain to systematically damage a group's quality of life. Moreover, they suggest that the experience of subjugation alone justifies knowledge claims or counts, without further elaboration, as an act of political engagement. Kruks argues that knowers and actors need to identify conceptual and practical mediations enabling individual interactions, experiences, and strategies to prompt the recognition and transformation of [End Page 73] group situations. Sartre's notion of praxis, she suggests, explains how an individual can participate in a collectivity while acting autonomously or acquiescing to subjection.The most important passages in Retrieving Experience examine the affective aspects of the decision to take up a political identity or engage in political action. Going beyond Sartre's account of mediations, Kruks suggests that the sensory and emotional qualities of embodiment are themselves mediators, the products of praxis as well as its vehicles. Since any act of social knowledge involves the emotions, affect plays an important role in the process whereby individuals from different cultural, economic, and bodily situations learn about and shape one another's' environment through the act of knowledge. Individuals, then, may have a moral responsibility to learn about others in a way that gives them "sympathetic bodies." Drawing on Maria Lugones' social epistemology, Kruks argues that "world-traveling" or existing simultaneously in several communities or sets of power relations is a bodily act, but also a fully cultural, ethical act rather than a natural way of being. One is not born, but becomes, an embodied knower. Understanding female embodiment as a kind of work or "world-traveling" praxis enables feminist solidarity—"respectful recognition" to replace a historically implausible "sisterhood" or a distinct epistemological perspective as a regulative ideal for feminist politics.But how far can the... (shrink)

This paper proposes a new relational account of concepts and shows how it is particularly well suited to characterizing normative concepts. The key advantage of our ‘connectedness’ model is that it explains how subjects can share the same normative concepts despite radical divergences in the descriptive or motivational commitments they associate with them. The connectedness model builds social and historical facts into the foundations of concept identity. This aspect of the model, we suggest, reshapes normative epistemology and provides new resources (...) for a vindication of realism in ethics. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the shifting definitions of the terms lesbian and postmodern, the lesbian in contemporary fiction and Hollywood film, and the pitfalls and rewards of the recent lesbian theory.

The human brain is in great part what it is because of the functional and structural properties of the 100 billion interconnected neurons that form it. These make it the body’s most complex organ, and the one we most associate with concepts of selfhood and identity. The assumption held by many supporters of human enhancement, transhumanism, and technological posthumanity seems to be that the human brain can be continuously improved, as if it were another one of our machines. In this (...) paper, I focus on some of the ethical issues that we should keep in mind when thinking about memory enhancement interventions. I start with an overview of one of the most precious capacities of the brain, namely memory. Then I analyze the different kinds of memory interventions that exist or are under research. Finally, I point out the issues that we should not forget when we consider enhancing our memories. In this regard, my argument is not against memory enhancement interventions; rather, it concentrates on the need to “keep in mind” what kind of enhancements we want. We should consider whether we want the kind of “enhancements” that will end up making us lose synapse connections, or the kind that promote more use of them. (shrink)

Do we mentally simulate olfactory information? We investigated mental simulation of odors and sounds in two experiments. Participants retained a word while they smelled an odor or heard a sound, then rated odor/sound intensity and recalled the word. Later odor/sound recognition was also tested, and pleasantness and familiarity judgments were collected. Word recall was slower when the sound and sound-word mismatched. Sound recognition was higher when sounds were paired with a match or near-match word. This indicates sound-words are mentally simulated. (...) However, using the same paradigm no memory effects were observed for odor. Instead it appears odor-words only affect lexical-semantic representations, demonstrated by higher ratings of odor intensity and pleasantness when an odor was paired with a match or near-match word. These results suggest fundamental differences in how odor and sound-words are represented. (shrink)

This paper articulates two constraints on an acceptable account of meaning: (i) accessibility: sameness of meaning affords an immediate appearance of de jure co-reference, (ii) flexibility: sameness of meaning tolerates open-ended variation in speakers' substantive understanding of the reference. Traditional accounts of meaning have trouble simultaneously satisfying both constraints. I suggest that relationally individuated meanings provide a promising way of avoiding this tension. On relational accounts, we bootstrap our way to de jure co-reference: the subjective appearance of de jure co-reference (...) helps make it the case that two token representations really do co-refer. (shrink)

The research presented in this paper focuses on business ethical values inChina, a country in which the process of institutional transformation has left cultural values in a state of flux. A survey was conducted in China and the U.S. by using five business scenarios. Survey results show similarities between the Chinese and American decision choices for three out of five scenarios. However, the results reveal significant differences in rationales, even forsimilar decisions. The implications of similarities and differences between the U.S. (...) and Chinese samples are discussed. (shrink)

Patient and citizen participation is now regarded as central to the promotion of sustainable health and health care. Involvement efforts create and encounter many diverse ethical challenges that have the potential to enhance or undermine their success. This article examines different expressions of patient and citizen participation and the support health ethics offers. It is contended that despite its prominence and the link between patient empowerment and autonomy, traditional bioethics is insufficient to guide participation efforts. In addition, the turn to (...) a “social paradigm” of ethics in examinations of biotechnologies and public health does not provide an account of values that is commensurable with the pervasive autonomy paradigm. This exacerbates rather than eases tensions for patients and citizens endeavoring to engage with health. Citizen and patient participation must have a significant influence on the way we do health ethics if its potential is to be fulfilled. (shrink)

This study shows how Goethe's Die pilgernde Torin, Kleist's Die Marquise von O..., Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and James' Daisy Miller can appeal to the reader who identifies a message friendly towards woman and her plight, whether the message was the author's intention or not.

This article discusses whether, from Hannah Arendt’s point of view, the being-in-common of singularities can be conceived in terms of mutual recognition. Although it is shown that Arendt’s theory of action involves the idea that the identity of singularities is relational, it is also stressed that it is a fluid identity, thrown into contingency. Therefore, it is not a more solid self consciousness what individuals achieve when they open themselves to each other and when they recognize themselves in their difference. (...) What they achieve is to be exposed to the fact of coexistence, to an experience of plurality in which others are more than just a mirror in which they recognize and affirm themselves. (shrink)

This paper examines whether realists can explain co-reference without appealing to subjects’ ideal convergence in judgment. This question is particularly pressing in the normative domain, since deep disagreement about the applicability of normative predicates suggests that different speakers may not pick out the same property when they use normative terms. Normative realists, we believe, have not been sufficiently aware of the difficulties involved in providing a theory of reference-determination. Our aim in this paper is to clarify the nature of this (...) reference-fixing task and the challenges that arise for a non-convergentist normative realist. Our focal point will be Richard Boyd’s externalist account, which has been a model for non-convergentist theories of reference in metaethics. A close examination of Boyd’s account of reference and the ways it could be developed or supplemented, we’ll argue, suggests that explaining co-reference without convergence in the normative domain is a more challenging problem than many realists have supposed. (shrink)

This paper sketches a right-maker account of normative practical reasons along functionalist lines. The approach is contrasted with other similar accounts, in particular John Broome's analysis of reasons as explanations of oughts.

The aim of this article is to contribute to understanding the changing role of government in promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR). Over the last decade, governments have joined other stakeholders in assuming a relevant role as drivers of CSR, working together with intergovernmental organizations and recognizing that public policies are key in encouraging a greater sense of CSR. This paper focuses on the analysis of the new strategies adopted by governments in order to promote, and encourage businesses to adopt, CSR (...) values and strategies. The research is based on the analysis of an explanatory framework, related to the development of a relational analytical framework, which tries to analyze the vision, values, strategies and roles adopted by governments, and the integration of new partnerships that governments establish in the CSR area with the private sector and social organizations. The research compares CSR initiatives and public policies in three European countries: Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom, and focuses on governmental drivers and responses. The preliminary results demonstrate that governments are incorporating a common statement and discourse on CSR, working in partnership with the private and social sectors. For governments, CSR implies the need to manage a complex set of relationships in order to develop a win–win situation between business and social organizations. However, the research also focuses on the differences between the three governments when applying CSR public policies. These divergences are based on the previous cultural and political framework, such as the welfare state typology, the organizational structures and the business and social and cultural background in each country. (shrink)

Sexual self-determination is considered a fundamental human right by most of us living in Western societies. While we must abide by laws regarding consent and coercion, in general we expect to be able to engage in sexual behaviour whenever, and with whomever, we choose. For older people with dementia living in residential aged care facilities (RACFs), however, the issue becomes more complex. Staff often struggle to balance residents' rights with their duty of care, and negative attitudes towards older people's sexuality (...) can lead to residents' sexual expression being overlooked, ignored, or even discouraged. In particular, questions as to whether residents with dementia are able to consent to sexual activity or physically intimate relationships pose a challenge to RACF staff, and current legislation does little to assist them. This paper will address these issues, and will argue that, while every effort should be made to ensure that no resident comes to harm, RACFs must respect the rights of residents with dementia to make decisions about their sexuality, intimacy and physical relationships. (shrink)

Millions of people in our world are in need of assistance: from the global poor, to refugees, from the victims of natural disasters, to those of violent crimes. What are our responsibilities towards them? Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland’s answer is plausible and straightforward: we have enforceable duties to assist others in need whenever we can do so ‘at relatively moderate cost to ourselves, and others’. Barry and Øverland defend this answer on the ground that it best fits our intuitions (...) in a variety of hypothetical rescue scenarios. I argue that, although Barry and Øverland’s view is intuitively appealing, appeal to intuitive cases is insufficient to vindicate it satisfactorily. Intuitive cases alone do not allow us to establish: (i) what costs count as moderate and (ii) whether assistance-based responsibilities are, in fact, enforceable. These considerations suggest that Barry and Øverland’s defence of their preferred answer to the assistance question may be incomplete. (shrink)

Computer mediated communication, in particular email, is of particular importance in the Higher Education sector. In this paper, research at one Higher Education Institution on the ethical use of email is presented. Focus groups were used to gather data on the impact of email, on current patterns of use, and on perceptions of ethical use. Using the analogy of a new motorway, which everyone is expected to use but for which there are no established rules of behaviour or etiquette, the (...) research demonstrates that some ethical guidelines for the acceptable use of email are necessary. It is argued that there needs to be a greater understanding of individual responsibility for computer mediated communication in the higher education sector. (shrink)

According to some technology enthusiasts our technological developments appear to be accelerating at an exponential rate. A common vision of such enthusiasts is that the accelerating pace of science and technology development will enable us to transform the world in more profound and significant ways than at any other time in our history. More importantly, some of these technology enthusiasts have gone beyond having technological-driven visions about the future to be actively engaged in a diverse set of activities aimed at (...) shaping the future they envision. These are not just people with visions about the future, they are visioneers. (shrink)

Context: I extend the enactive account of loving in romantic relationships that I developed with Hanne De Jaegher to the love of nature. Problem: I challenge a universal conceptualization of love of nature that does not account for the differences that are inherent to nature. As an alternative, I offer a situated account of loving a place as participatory sense-making. However, a question arises: How is it possible to communicate with the other-than-human? Method: I use panpsychist and enactive conceptual tools (...) to better define this situated approach to the love of nature and to reply to the research question. In particular, I focus on Mathews’s “becoming native” and the generative tensions that unfold in a dialectic of encounter when a common language is not shared. Results: The fundamental difference experienced in encountering the other-than-human is generative for building up the human-Earth connection if we let each other be listened to. I describe the ethical dimension that permeates this type of “enactive listening” at the core of a situated account of love of nature. Implications: Love of nature is of paramount importance in our current climate crisis characterized by environmental anxiety, despair, and anger. A situated love of nature emphasizes the importance of community-based local interventions to preserve the Earth. Love, thus understood as a fundamental moral and political power, is a catalyst for environmental activism. Constructivist content: My article links to participatory sense-making as defined by De Jaegher and Di Paolo, and De Jaegher’s loving epistemology. It offers a broader understanding of participatory sense-making that includes the other-than-human. It also introduces the new concept of “enactive listening.”. (shrink)

In our globalized and interconnected world, companies are increasingly donating substantial amounts to good causes around the globe. Many companies choose to donate “at home” while others give to causes in faraway places where recipients are in dire need of support. Interestingly, past research on corporate donations has neglected the question of whether consumers differentially reward companies for geographically varying allocations of donation budgets. Through a mixed methods approach, this paper remedies this gap by developing and empirically testing a conceptual (...) framework of consumers’ preferences for geographically varying allocations of corporate donation budgets. In a first step, two preliminary field studies involving real donations explored customers’ preferences for donation allocations varying in geographical focus. A qualitative focus group study then investigated underlying rationales to inform the research and led to the development of hypotheses. Subsequently a large-scale between-subjects scenario experiment tested the predictions. Overall, results indicate that, in contrast with current managerial practice, customers prefer companies that split donations equally between domestic and foreign recipients or even donate only abroad. (shrink)

The graphical presentation of experimental data in the physical sciences has several advantages which today are too familiar to require very detailed enumeration. Its greatest strength lies in the clarity and succinctness with which it displays the information contained in tabulated results: for the experimenter a graph provides a rough and immediate check on the accuracy and suitability of the methods he is using, and for the reader of a scientific report it may convey in a few seconds information that (...) could only be gleaned from a table of measurements by hours of close study. There are occasions whereonlythe analysis of experimental graphs will provide the information we require, but usually the actual analysis of results is carried out nowadays by computational methods. The use of graphs is therefore not so much a necessary part of scientific procedure as an extremely useful one, and one that is often taken very much for granted. (shrink)

Altruism and the medical profession have been linked throughout the history of medicine. Students are drawn to the calling of medicine because of altruistic values, dedication to service, and the desire to alleviate suffering and promote healing. Despite a dedication to these values, altruism in medicine is threatened by empathy erosion that develops in the clinical years of medical school and an increasing rate of medical student burnout. Currently, there are two widespread movements in medicine aimed at addressing the dual (...) loss of altruism and physician and student burnout—professionalism and wellness. Despite widespread recognition of the problems and programs aimed at improving them, there has been little headway, and even calls to abandon altruism in the modern marketplace of medicine. What is needed is not an abandonment of a fundamental, defining value of the profession, but a re-evaluation of the meaning of altruism in medicine and a framework that allows for students and physicians to provide altruistic care for a sustainable, rewarding career in the healing profession. This paper proposes the Enlightened Self-Interest in Altruism model as an ethical framework to allow medical students to synergize the interests of the self with those they serve in a mutually beneficial relationship to improve patient care and the healthcare system at large. The ESIA model acknowledges that egoism and altruism are intertwined, dynamic motivators of behavior. In the enlightened self-interest approach, the interests of the group are also the interests of the self. The physician–patient relationship is a dyad in which egoism and altruism may converge in an enlightened way that acknowledges that the interests of one are the interests of the whole. This is a paradigm shift from the historical view of egoism and altruism as opposing motivations. This paper will present the threats to altruism, explore the interface of egoism and altruism in a clinical vignette, and then present the ESIA framework as an educational approach to aligning the interests of providers and patients to prevent burnout and promote altruism. (shrink)

In 2010, Connecticut implemented an offence prohibiting minors from engaging in sexting. This legislation was part of a range of reforms across the United States aiming to better tailor the criminal law’s response to youth sexting by distinguishing sexting from child abuse material. Drawing from submissions to the Connecticut General Assembly’s Sexting Bill, media reports and recent ‘sexting’ cases, this article adopts a feminist perspective and examines the justifications for and implications of this sexting statute. It argues that while aiming (...) to create a distinction between child abuse material and sexting through a ‘lesser’ offence, these paternalistic reforms are informed by some of the same logics shaping child pornography/child abuse material law. Therefore, this statute is situated on a continuum of paternalistic legislation which utilises the constitutive expressive function of the criminal law to register anxieties about young people’s sexual and technological practices. As a result, this statute conflates victims and perpetrators of image based sexual abuses and fails to meet its deterrent and protective aims. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

The notion of ‘illocutionary silencing’ has been given a key role in defining the harms of pornography by several feminist philosophers. Though the literature on silencing focuses almost exclusively on the speech act of sexual refusal, oddly enough, it lacks a thorough analysis of that very act. My first aim is to fill this theoretical gap. I claim that refusals are “second-turn illocutions”: they cannot be accomplished in absence of a previous interrogative (or open) call by the hearer. Furthermore, I (...) maintain that refusals constitute authoritative illocutions only when preceded by requests for permission. The secondary goal of my paper is to assess Mary Kate McGowan’s (2009) account of silencing as authority denial. Despite its virtues, I argue that ultimately it should be rejected on two grounds: (i) it entails an objectification of female sexuality; (ii) if sexual advances are requests for permission (as McGowan implies), a man who asks a woman for sex cannot fail to ratify her authority over her own body. I conclude by sketching an alternative explanation for the failure of women’s refusals, according to which women may be unable to refuse sex for their interlocutors’ advances are intended as imperative (or closed) calls. (shrink)