This paper discusses the inefficacy problem that arises in contexts of “collective harm.‘ These are contexts in which by acting in a certain sort of way, people collectively cause harm, or fail to prevent it, but no individual act of the relevant sort seems to itself make a difference. The inefficacy problem is that if acting in the relevant way won’t make a difference, it’s unclear why it would be wrong. Each individual can argue, “things will be just as bad (...) whether or not I act in this way, so there’s no point in doing otherwise.‘ The goal of this paper is to give an overview of some of the main responses available to the problem and to highlight central issues that arise for each type of response. In the final section, I explain what I take to be the most promising strategy and discuss the form that this strategy should take. (shrink)

In this paper, I highlight an interesting difference between belief on the one hand, and suspended judgment and credence on the other hand. This difference is the following: credences and suspended judgments are suitable to serve as transitional as well as terminal attitudes in our reasoning, whereas beliefs are only appropriate as terminal attitudes. The notion of a transitional attitude is not an established one in the literature, but I argue that introducing it helps us better understand the different roles (...) suspended judgments and credences can play in our reasoning. Transitional and terminal attitudes have interestingly different descriptive and normative properties. I also compare my account of transitional attitudes to other inquiry-guiding attitudes that have recently been characterized in the literature and explain why they are different. (shrink)

Tanney challenges not only the cognitivist approach that has dominated philosophy and the special sciences for fifty years, but metaphysical-empirical approaches to the mind in general. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge advocates a return to the world-involving, circumstance-dependent, normative practices where the rational mind has its home.

A recent hypothesis in empirical brain research on language is that the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between finite-state and more complex phrase-structure grammars, such as context-free and context-sensitive grammars. However, the relevance of this distinction for the study of language as a neurobiological system has been questioned and it has been suggested that a more relevant and partly analogous distinction is that between non-adjacent and adjacent dependencies. Online memory resources are central (...) to the processing of non-adjacent dependencies as information has to be maintained across intervening material. One proposal is that an external memory device in the form of a limited push-down stack is used to process non-adjacent dependencies. We tested this hypothesis in an artificial grammar learning paradigm where subjects acquired non-adjacent dependencies implicitly. Generally, we found no qualitative differences between the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies and adjacent dependencies. This suggests that although the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies requires more exposure to the acquisition material, it utilizes the same mechanisms used for acquiring adjacent dependencies. We challenge the push-down stack model further by testing its processing predictions for nested and crossed multiple non-adjacent dependencies. The push-down stack model is partly supported by the results, and we suggest that stack-like properties are some among many natural properties characterizing the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that implement the online memory resources used in language and structured sequence processing. (shrink)

In this article I address the idea that in Husserl’s eidetic ontology all possibilities are fixed ‘in advance’ so that actual objects and events—despite their contingency—can only ever unfold possibilities that are ‘permitted’ to them by their essences. I show how this view distorts Husserl’s ontology and argue that this distortion stems from a misconstrual of the relations between essences and facts, and between ideal and real possibilities. These ‘local’ misconstruals reflect, I contend, a ‘global’ misunderstanding that mistakes descriptive distinctions (...) for ‘real’ separations, and that remains indebted to a non-Husserlian understanding of the a priori–a posteriori-distinction. In support of this argument, I first lay out the relevant objection to Husserl’s eidetics as I understand it. Then, I clarify the relation between ideal and real possibilities in the context of Husserl’s eidetics as I see it. Finally, I make a general point about the status of Husserl’s ontological differentiations ‘in the midst of life,’ namely in how what they differentiate is effective and (tacitly) manifest ever only as one moment (amongst many) of the complex whole that is a concrete life of consciousness. I end with some remarks on what this might mean for future phenomenological research on the imagination. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Ideal agents are role models whose perfection in some normative domain we try to approximate. But which form should this striving take? It is well known that following ideal rules of practical reasoning can have disastrous results for non-ideal agents. Yet, this issue has not been explored with respect to rules of theoretical reasoning. I show how we can extend Bayesian models of ideally rational agents in order to pose and answer the question of whether non-ideal agents should form new (...) degrees of belief in the same way as their ideal counterparts. I demonstrate that the epistemic and the practical case are parallel: following ideal rules does not always lead to optimal outcomes for non-ideal agents. (shrink)

Popular uprisings, indignant youth, toppled dictators, oligarchic presidents dismissed, hopes dashed, liberties crushed in prisons, fixed trials, and bloodbaths. How are we to read these images? Could revolt, or what is called “riot” on the Web, be waking humanity from its dream of hyperconnectedness? Or could it just be a trick played on us so that the culture of spectacle can last longer? But what “revolt” are we talking about? Is it even possible?

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is made (...) possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the view that it is possible for two people to rationally hold incompatible attitudes toward some proposition on the basis of one body of evidence. In this paper, I defend a particular version of permissivism – unacknowledged permissivism (UP) – which says that permissivism is true, but that no one can ever rationally believe that she is in a permissive case. I show that counter to what virtually all authors who have discussed UP claim, UP is an (...) attractive view: it is compatible with the intuitive motivations for permissivism and avoids a significant challenge to permissivism: the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

In [3], two different effective versions of Borel embedding are defined. The first, called computable embedding, is based on uniform enumeration reducibility, while the second, called Turing computable embedding, is based on uniform Turing reducibility. While [3] focused mainly on computable embeddings, the present paper considers Turing computable embeddings. Although the two notions are not equivalent, we can show that they behave alike on the mathematically interesting classes chosen for investigation in [3]. We give a “Pull-back Theorem”, saying that if (...) Φ is a Turing computable embedding of K into K’, then for any computable infinitary sentence φ in the language of K’, we can find a computable infinitary sentence φ* in the language of K such that for all. (shrink)

Hohwy et al.’s (2008) model of binocular rivalry (BR) is taken as a classic illustration of predictive coding’s explanatory power. I revisit the account and show that it cannot explain the role of reward in BR. I then consider a more recent version of Bayesian model averaging, which recasts the role of reward in (BR) in terms of optimism bias. If we accept this account, however, then we must reconsider our conception of perception. On this latter view, I argue, organisms (...) engage in what amounts to policy-driven, motivated perception. (shrink)

Leibniz maintains that even though God’s intellect contains all possibles, some of these possibles are not compossible. This incompossibility of some possibles is supposed to explain which collections of possibles are possible worlds and why God does not actualize the collection of all possibles. In order to fully understand how this works, we need to establish what precisely Leibniz takes to be the source of incompossibility, that is, which divine attribute or faculty gives rise to the incompossibility of certain possibles. (...) Different interpretations answer this question in different ways. This chapter explores the role that God’s faculties play on some of the standard interpretations of Leibniz’s notion of incompossibility and argues that we are faced with a dilemma: even though incompossibility must somehow arise from God’s faculties, none of the faculties usually distinguished seems up to the task. To escape this dilemma, we need to revise the traditional understanding of the divine faculties. More specifically, we need to recognize wisdom as an attribute that is distinct from intellect, power, and will and that is the source of incompossibility. (shrink)

An agent exercises instrumental rationality to the degree that she adopts appropriate means to achieving her ends. Adopting appropriate means to achieving one’s ends can, in turn, involve overcoming one’s strongest desires, that is, it can involve exercising synchronic self-control. However, contra prominent approaches, I deny that synchronic self-control is possible. Specifically, I draw on computational models and empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience to describe a naturalistic, multi-system model of the mind. On this model, synchronic self-control is impossible. Must we, (...) then, give up on a meaningful conception of instrumental rationality? No. A multi-system view still permits something like synchronic self-control: an agent can control her very strong desires. Adopting a multi-system model of the mind thus places limitations on our conceptions of instrumental rationality, without requiring that we abandon the notion altogether. (shrink)

The topic of cruelty features regularly in discussions concerning animals’ moral status. Further, condemnation of cruelty to animals is virtually unanimous. As Regan points out, ‘[i]t would be difficult to find anyone who is in favour of cruelty.’ What is to count as cruelty is therefore important. My aim here is to gain a clearer understanding of one aspect of our moral landscape: cruelty to animals. I will start by analyzing the concept of cruelty in section II. In section III (...) I will examine some implications of this analysis. I will present two arguments for why we should reassess whether modern farming practices are cruel. First, farming practices have changed and our understanding of the concept of cruelty needs to change with them. Second, our application of the concept of cruelty is inconsistent: we would consider many routine practices involving farm animals to be cruel if they involved pets. This inconsistency presents a dilemma: either extending farming practices to pets would not be cruel, or continuing our current farming practices is cruel. In section IV I consider some objections. (shrink)

In this opinionated review, I draw attention to some of the contributions reinforcement learning can make to questions in the philosophy of mind. In particular, I highlight reinforcement learning's foundational emphasis on the role of reward in agent learning, and canvass two ways in which the framework may advance our understanding of perception and motivation.

The fact that humans have a special relationship to each other insofar as they belong in the same species is often taken to be a morally relevant difference between humans and other animals, one which justifies a greater moral status for all humans, regardless of their individual capacities. I give some reasons why this kind of relationship is not an appropriate ground for differential treatment of humans and nonhumans. I then argue that even if relationships do matter morally species membership (...) cannot justify a difference in moral status. This has important implications because it removes one barrier to giving animals greater moral status. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine whether it would be advantageous to introduce knowledge norms instead of the currently assumed rational credence norms into the debate about decision making under normative uncertainty. There is reason to think that this could help us better accommodate cases in which agents are rationally highly confident in false moral views. I show how Moss’ view of probabilistic knowledge can be fruitfully employed to develop a decision theory that delivers plausible verdicts in these (...) cases. I also argue that, for this new view to be better than existing alternatives, it must adopt a particular solution to the new evil demon problem, which asks whether agents and their BIV-counterparts are equally justified. In order to get an attractive decision theory for cases of moral uncertainty, we must reject the claim that agents and their BIV-counterparts are equally justified. Moreover, the resulting view must be supplemented with a moral epistemology that explains how it is possible to be rationally morally uncertain. This is especially challenging if we assume that moral truths are knowable a priori. (shrink)

In his new book "The Importance of Being Rational", Errol Lord aims to give a real definition of the property of rationality in terms of normative reasons. If he can do so, his work is an important step towards a defense of ‘reasons fundamentalism’ – the thesis that all complex normative properties can be analyzed in terms of normative reasons. I focus on his analysis of epistemic rationality, which says that your doxastic attitudes are rational just in case they are (...) correct responses to the objective normative reasons you possess. For some fact to be an objective normative reason to do something that you possess, you have to be in a position to know this fact and be able to competently use it as a reason to do that thing. Lord’s view is thus a knowledge-first view about possessing normative reasons. Throughout the book, Lord conceptualizes belief in the traditional tripartite way – if you take any attitude at all towards a proposition, then you either believe it, or disbelieve it, or you suspend judgment about it. Lord doesn’t discuss cases in which we’re uncertain. Yet, those cases are ubiquitous. I explore how his view can be extended to them. I first discuss whether his strategy for vindicating coherence requirements in terms of normative reasons can be applied to credences. I then ask how Lord can conceive of the doxastic attitudes that encode uncertainty . (shrink)

Can moral theories of the kind Evagrius Ponticus upheld be useful today? Is his ethics one of many other virtue ethical theories or is it something else entirely? I argue that Evagrius’s theory of virtue is an instance of traditional Christian moral theory. Moreover, as a Christian theory, Evagrius’s moral system stands apart from non-Christian moral theories, virtue, consequentialist and deontological. I further maintain that his morality is robust, because it is able to undercut some of the strongest critiques generally (...) made against moral theories: those of inconsistency and selfishness. It is also successful, because it produced fertile cultural movements that continue at present. I conclude, however, that its theistic, kenotic and inverted nature presents a direct challenge to ethical assumptions of today. (shrink)

We argue that the evolutionary function of reasoning is to allow us to secure more accurate beliefs and more effective intentions through collective deliberation. This sets our view apart both from traditional intellectualist accounts, which take the evolutionary function to be individual deliberation, and from interactionist accounts such as the one proposed by Mercier and Sperber, which agrees that the function of reasoning is collective but holds that it aims to disseminate, rather than come up with, accurate beliefs. We argue (...) that our collectivized intellectualism offers the best explanation of the range of biases that human reasoning is prone to, and that it does better than interactionism at offering a function of reasoning that would have been adaptive for our distant ancestors who first evolved this capacity. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the development of nursing ethics in Slovakia before the year 1989. It points to the fact that it was impossible to speak about nursing ethics as an autonomous field in this period of time. Reflections on nursing ethics were presented within medical ethics, or particularly based on the importance of reflections about the need of philosophy within medicine.

Why does a wine glass break when you drop it, whereas a steel goblet does not? The answer may seem obvious: glass, unlike steel, is fragile. This is an explanation in terms of a power or disposition: the glass breaks because it possesses a particular power, namely fragility. Seemingly simple, such intrinsic dispositions or powers have fascinated philosophers for centuries. A power's central task is explaining why a thing changes in the ways that it does, rather than in other ways: (...) powers should explain why an acorn turns into an oak tree, not a sunflower, or why fire burns wood, and wood can catch fire. -/- This volume examines the twists and turns of the fascinating history of a difficult philosophical concept, focusing on the metaphysical sense of "powers"--that is, the powers that are invoked in the explanation of natural changes and activities. Scholars probe the views of thinkers from antiquity to the present day: Anaxagoras, Plato, the Stoics, Abelard, Anselm, Henry of Ghent, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Shepherd, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and numerous others. In addition, the volume contains four short reflection essays that examine the concept of powers from the perspective of disciplines other than philosophy, namely history of music, West African religions, history of chemistry, and history of art. -/- The history of philosophy brims with controversies surrounding the concept of power, and these controversies have not diminished--particularly as potentialities or powers see a revival in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Hence, telling the history of philosophical theories of powers means exploring the trajectory of a concept whose importance to the past and present of philosophy can hardly be overstated. (shrink)

Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries explores philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that are central to early modern discussions of slavery. Jorati explores a topic that is widely neglected by historians of philosophy: debates about the morality of slavery in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century America and Europe. Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries explores philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that are central to early modern discussions of slavery. It is a companion (...) volume to Jorati's Slavery and Race: Philosophy Debates in the Eighteenth Century (OUP 2023). (shrink)

The mature Leibniz often describes monads as having two types of modifications: perceptions and appetites. But why would monads need appetites? When reading secondary literature about Leibniz, it can easily look as if appetites are superfluous: some scholars describe the inner workings of monads without saying much, if anything, about appetites. Instead, they focus on perceptions and explain the transition to new perceptions by reference to prior perceptions together with the underlying primitive force or law of the series. These interpretations (...) appear to be doing just fine without invoking appetites. And, in fact, there are texts in which Leibniz himself neglects appetites almost completely. Some passages suggest that perceptions cause other perceptions, and other texts indicate that the monads themselves cause perceptions directly. If that is the case, it is not clear what purpose appetites serve; they do not appear to be needed for explaining monadic change. One possible response to the question why monads need appetites is the following. Appetites, according to Leibniz, are monadic tendencies to transition to new perceptions. Perhaps without such tendencies, no change would occur in a monad. On this interpretation, a full explanation of monadic change needs to invoke tendencies, and those in turn are (or include) appetites. I think that this response is partially correct, as I will argue later. Yet, it does not fully explain the function of appetites. How precisely are appetites (viewed as tendencies) supposed to figure into the explanation—do they function as causes of change, and if so, what kinds of causes? Are they efficient, final, or formal causes, or perhaps causes of yet another type? Or might they figure into the explanation in some non-causal way? This paper explores possible answers to the question what role appetites play in the lives of monads. There is not enough time to discuss these answers in much detail or exhaust the logical space, but I will briefly consider the options that strike me as the most promising contenders. These options are: (1) appetites are superfluous; there is no sense in which they explain or cause monadic change; (2) appetites are formal causes; (3) appetites are final causes; (4) appetites are efficient causes; (5) appetites are ultimately the same as perceptions (or aspects of perceptions), and perceptions in turn cause or explain monadic change; and (6) appetites are not causally involved in monadic change, but they are explanatory in a loose, derivative sense. I will argue for a version of the last option. The resulting picture of monadic change is admittedly radical and strange but there are excellent reasons to embrace it. (shrink)

This paper presents an empirical solution to the puzzle of weakness of will. Specifically, it presents a theory of action, grounded in contemporary cognitive neuroscientific accounts of decision making, that explains the phenomenon of weakness of will without resulting in a puzzle.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Particularity, Presence, Art Teaching, and LearningJulia Kellman (bio)The Awful, the Particular, and the TranscendentYears ago in a life drawing class during graduate school, for who knows what reason, I chose to focus my drawing on the model's head and not on her entire form. She was wearing an enormous and elaborate black velvet hat with yards of veiling and several large red silk roses. The combination of textures, shadows, (...) colors, forms, and the suggestion of a story, of meaning beyond the exercise itself, drew me in I think. Using an entire large sheet of tan-colored drawing paper, soft vine charcoal, and a kneaded rubber eraser I began to draw, moving from the impossible hat to the model's high cheekbones, deep-set shadowed eyes, soft cheeks, and curved neck. Somewhere between the top of the paper (the crown of her hat) and the woman's face, however, my hand, my self, the drawing, the young woman, and the hat merged by some means outside my control. I was the act of drawing. I was the charcoal, the curved cheek, the dark eyes, the wonderful hat. There were no boundaries among us. No distances. The drawing, it seemed, drew me at the same time that it revealed an image of the model and her black velvet hat on the paper and tied me to the woman seated before me. I was exalted, transported, amazed.Now, as I think back to that drawing, I understand it as my first clear art experience of doing, not thinking, being, not observing that all artists encounter on their best days. It was, in another way of considering, my initial encounter with the fact that "the imaginative faculty, especially as engaged in the art process is one of the strongest and clearest ways in which we can learn within the qualitative, immediate present, within kairotic as opposed to chronic time, or within the eternal present,"1 as the art educator Kenneth [End Page 51] Beittel explains. Or, put another way, it was my experience with the fact that, as the writer Lawrence Weschler suggests in his biography of the artist Robert Irwin, "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees."2 Or, as the sculptor Anne Truitt explains, drawing can be "a direct channel between one's [my] experience and one's [my] hand."3This transformation from a distinct see-er and seen to a single entity sharing both time and space, from a distant relationship to intimacy, from a world of the generalized to the place of the particular brings us to the intertwined themes of this article: the importance of the awesome transcendent particularity of the singular—person, creature, place, object, plant, or moment in art and, similarly, religious contemplation and the likeness and/or overlap of artistic engagement with spiritual experience.In order for us to examine the artist in the midst of creating, and to explore our theme of art's relationship to the awful (think of the older usage meaning "full of awe" here) particularity of thisness as John Dun Sotus4 describes the perfection of the particular and specific, as well as to explore the relationship of art making, art learning, art teaching, and spiritual experience, exemplars are necessary. Our first exemplar is Gordie, a member of the art class I teach at a local hospital. He, as much as anyone, exemplifies artistic engagement with the current moment, its thisness in fact, and he illustrates the art maker's/learner's engagement with pure doing in the act of creating an image. Our second exemplar, the filmmaker, writer, and painter Derek Jarman,5 exemplifies by his lifetime of creative accomplishment an artist in the most literal manner. And even in the last years of his life—as sculptor, gardener, landscape designer, writer, and creator of a place of great beauty—he illuminates in both his words and in his garden his engagement with the present moment, with particularity, and with the spiritual quality that permeates his world.Gordie's Tale: Art and FlowersGordie accompanied his friend Roger to the first art class to be held at the hospital for people with... (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of intuitions in philosophy. It consists of an introduction, Chapter 1, and three main parts. In the first part, Chapter 2, I defend an account of intuitions as appearance states according to which intuitions cannot be reduced to beliefs or belief-like states. I argue that an account of intuitions as appearance states can explain some crucial phenomena with respect to intuitions better than popular accounts in the current debate over the (...) ontology of intuitions. The second part, Chapters 3 to 5, is a reply to Timothy Williamson’s view on the epistemology and methodology of intuitions. The practice of appealing to the fact that we have an intuition as evidence from thought experiments has recently been criticised by experimental philosophers. Williamson argues that since thought experiments reliably lead to knowledge of the content of our intuition, we can avoid this criticism and the resulting sceptical threat by appealing to the content of the intuition. I agree that thought experiments usually lead to knowledge of the content of our intuition. However, I show that appealing to the fact that we have an intuition is a common and useful practice. I defend the view that for methodological reasons, we ought to appeal to the fact that we have an intuition as initial evidence from thought experiments. The third part, Chapter 6, is devoted to a paradigm method involving intuitions: the method of reflective equilibrium. Some philosophers have recently claimed that it is trivial and could even accommodate scepticism about the reliability of intuitions. I argue that reflective equilibrium is not compatible with such scepticism. While it is compatible with the view I defend in the second part of the thesis, more specific methodological claims have to be made. (shrink)

I describe a suite of reinforcement learning environments in which artificial agents learn to value and respond to moral content and contexts. I illustrate the core principles of the framework by characterizing one such environment, or “gridworld,” in which an agent learns to trade-off between monetary profit and fair dealing, as applied in a standard behavioral economic paradigm. I then highlight the core technical and philosophical advantages of the learning approach for modeling moral cognition, and for addressing the so-called value (...) alignment problem in AI. (shrink)

Jonathan Beever and Nicolae Morar’s article “The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in Biomedicine” and its accompanying commentaries in the American Journal of Bioethics—though insightful, innovative, and provocative—overlook key interlocutors necessary for any discussion of whether the mid-twentieth-century biomedical principle of autonomy should be revised or revoked. The conversation sparked by “The Porosity of Autonomy” will remain both incomplete and politically untenable so long as there is no meaningful engagement with persons/communities who appeal to the (...) principle of patient autonomy in order to articulate and challenge the conditions of their oppression. (shrink)

The COPE Inventory is the most frequently used measure of coping; yet previous studies examining its factor structure yielded mixed results. The purpose of the current study, therefore, was to validate the factor structure of the COPE Inventory in a representative sample of over 2,000 adults in Slovakia. Our second goal was to evaluate the external validity of the COPE inventory, which has not been done before. Firstly, we performed the exploratory factor analysis with half of the sample. Subsequently, we (...) performed the confirmatory factor analysis with the second half of the sample. Both factor analyses with 15 factor solutions showed excellent fit with the data. Additionally, we performed a hierarchical factor analysis with fifteen first-order factors and three second-order factors which showed good fit with the data. Moreover, the COPE Inventory’s external validity was evaluated using consensual qualitative research analysis on data collected by in-depth interviews. Categories of coping created using CQR corresponded with all COPE first-order factors. Moreover, we identified two additional first-order factors that were not present in the COPE Inventory: self-care and care for others. Our study shows that the Slovak translation of the COPE Inventory is a reliable, externally valid, and well-structured instrument for measuring coping in the Slovak population. (shrink)

Jointly coordinated affective activities are fundamental for social relationships. This study investigates a naturally occurring interaction between two women who produced reciprocal emotional stances towards similar past experiences. Adopting a microanalytic approach, we describe how the participants re-enact their past experiences through different but aligning synchronized gestures. This embodied dialogue evolves into affective flooding, in which participants co-produce their body memories of pulling down window blinds to block out sunshine. We show how the participants live this moment intercorporeally and how (...) multiple timescales are tied together in gesture, which is both an incarnation of body history and a novel expression of it. Thus, collaborative gesturing is a resource for experiencing together emotions re-enacted from body memories. Contributing to our understanding of the intercorporeality of human action, we provide an empirical investigation into how emotions and multiple timescales are nested in cooperative gestures. Data are in Finnish with English translations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Save The Music”?Toward Culturally Relevant, Joyful, and Sustainable School MusicJulia Eklund KozaIf historical sources are reliable indicators, music educators have never felt confident that music's place in the U.S. public school curriculum is secure. Proponents have been developing exhaustive rationales for the existence of school music from the moment that the subject was introduced into the public schools, attempting to convince an apparently skeptical public of the merits of (...) school music, and trying to pull endangered programs—usually their own—out of the fire. Today, as has been the case in the past, rescue and salvation discourses and initiatives abound. Moving music to a more secure place in the curriculum was cited as a rationale for the development of national music standards in 1994.1 In recent years saving the music has become a favorite project of major corporations, especially as privatization of public schooling has gained momentum. For example, in 1998 one of the National Association for Music Education's (MENC) corporate partners credited the school/partnership that promoted the Disney movie, Mr. Holland's Opus, with saving school music.2 The corporate-sponsored initiative "VH1 Save the Music" claims not only to help flailing school music programs but also, through the donation of musical instruments to schools, to rescue children as well—more than 250,0000 of them since 1997.3 [End Page 23]Because music outside of school seems to be thriving and probably will never be in need of rescue—although specific styles, genres, and practices may be in their twilight—"the music" to which "VH1 Save the Music" refers presumably is school music. As a music educator who perennially is called upon to "save the music," I will take a brief look at the object of salvation, the salvific discourses that surround it, and some of the systems of reasoning that construct it. I propose modifications in these systems of reasoning, which may lead to more culturally relevant, joyful, and sustainable school music.School Music: An Alchemized Constellation of Systems of Reasoning and PracticesTo conceptualize school music as an entity is both problematic and useful. On the one hand, doing so assumes the existence of an exteriority from which it can be clearly differentiated, that is, outside-of-school music, and yet these culturally constructed categories are leaky. The fact that the American Federation of Musicians joined forces with MENC to establish guidelines, which attempt to prevent school performing groups from encroaching on the turf of unionized professional musicians, indicates that the line of distinction between school music and its exteriority sometimes has been blurred.4Furthermore, when VH1 refers to it as "the music," school music seems to be not only clearly defined but also static and monolithic. I argue, however, that it consists of a whole constellation of systems of reasoning as well as the varied practices resulting from these systems. Differences between the various elements in this constellation may be as numerous as commonalities. School music in the U.S. is diverse in the sense that it encompasses a variety of sub-categories or sub-cultures (for example, elementary general music, secondary instrumental music, and so on), each with somewhat distinct systems of reasoning and practices. When suggesting that school music should be saved, we are faced with the complex question of whether all of these sub-categories, their systems of reasoning, and their consequent practices are to be objects of salvation.In addition to having to address the variety within school music, any mapping of relationships between school music and it exteriority should take into account the variety and dynamism of the musical world outside of school. This exteriority consists of a multiplicity of sub-cultures, each with a set of governing practices that may or may not be shared.On the other hand, astonishing within-category similarity exists, which supports the view that school music is an entity. In addition, some commonalities may not only unite all of the sub-categories but also may be shared with non-music school subjects, as well. One such commonality is the inescapable influence of a process of change educational theorist Thomas Popkewitz calls [End Page 24] "alchemy... (shrink)