With the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, online sellers faced challenges in managing their online business daily. Aside from it, their work-life balance has been negatively affected as well, considering that they work from home and are responsible for household responsibilities. Thus, this study is conducted during the pandemic and gathered data using a semi-structured interview through Messenger call. It is conducted to explore the lived experiences of online sellers and how they managed their online business and personal life. It (...) also determines the specific challenges they’ve encountered and how they coped with them. Lastly, this study aims to map out how these experiences will benefit online sellers and consumers and explain that online selling can be both sustainable and convenient in terms of earning a good living and meeting their daily needs. Moreover, three major conclusions emerged from this study’s findings: (1) online sellers faced psychological and physical difficulties in managing their online business during the pandemic, (2) online sellers discovered ways on how to cope with the struggles they are facing, and (3) online sellers reflected on their experience to be more effective in the online selling industry. (shrink)

Minkoff et al. (2024) discuss the potential deprivation of medical liberties against pregnant persons following Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Another consideration is how Dobbs may impact physic...

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

This essay provides an analysis of the role of affectivity in Martin Heidegger's writings from the mid to late 1920s. We begin by situating his account of mood within the context of his project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time. We then discuss the role of Befindlichkeit and Stimmung in his account of human existence, explicate the relationship between the former and the latter, and consider the ways in which the former discloses the world. To give a more vivid (...) and comprehensive picture of Heidegger's account of mood, we focus on the experience of anxiety by articulating both its function within fundamental ontology and, relatedly, its revelatory nature. We conclude by considering the place of emotions in Heidegger's thinking from this period. In a companion essay, ‘Affectivity in Heidegger II: Temporality, Boredom, and Beyond’, we complement our present analysis by revisiting the issue of affectivity in terms of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of Being and Time. We also expand our present discussion by considering the fundamental mood of boredom and other specific moods that Heidegger considers within his later thinking. (shrink)

(Draft of Feb 2023, see upcoming issue for Chalmers' reply) In Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, David Chalmers argues, among other things, that: if we are living in a full-scale simulation, we would still enjoy broad swathes of knowledge about non-psychological entities, such as atoms and shrubs; and, our lives might still be deeply meaningful. Chalmers views these claims as at least weakly connected: The former claim helps forestall a concern that if objects in the simulation are (...) not genuine (and so not knowable), then life in the simulation is illusory and therefore, not as valuable as a non-simulated life. Taking up these questions, I argue that in general, the value of social knowledge for a meaningful life dramatically swamps the value of non-social knowledge for a meaningful life. Along the way, I propose a non-additive model of the meaningfulness of life, according to which the overall effect of some potential contributor of value to a life depends in part on what is already in a life. One upshot is that the vindication of non-social knowledge, absent a correlative vindication of social knowledge, contributes either not at all or scarcely at all to the claim that our lives in the simulation might be deeply meaningful. This is so even though the vindication of non-social knowledge does forestall the concern that in the simulation, our lives might be wholly meaningless. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ¿social construction of reality¿ ¿ the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it ¿ and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to (...) person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the linguistic construction of reality. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is often credited as having offered one of the most thorough phenomenological investigations of the nature of boredom. In his 1929–1930 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, he goes to great lengths to distinguish between three different types of boredom and to explicate their respective characters. Within the context of his discussion of one of these types of boredom, profound boredom [tiefe Langweile], Heidegger opposes much of the philosophical and literary tradition on boredom insofar (...) as he articulates how the experience of boredom can be existentially beneficial to us. In this chapter, we undertake a study of the nature of profound boredom with the aim of investigating its place within contemporary psychological and philosophical research on boredom. Although boredom used to be a neglected emotional experience, it is no more. Boredom’s causal antecedents, effects, experiential profile, and neurophysiological correlates have become topics of active study; as a consequence, a proliferation of claims and findings about boredom has ensued. Such a situation provides an opportunity to scrutinize Heidegger’s claims and to try to understand them both on their own terms and in light of our contemporary understanding of boredom. (shrink)

Producing emotional tears is a universal and uniquely human behavior. Until recently, tears have received little serious attention from scientists. Here, we summarize recent theoretical developments and research findings. The evolutionary approach offers a solid ground for the analysis of the functions of tears. This is especially the case for infant crying, which we address in the first part of this contribution. We further elaborate on the antecedents and functions of emotional tears in adults. The main hypothesis that emerges from (...) this overview is that crying evolved as an emotional expression that signals distress and promotes prosocial behaviors in conspecifics. Further, shedding tears may influence the mood of the crier and his/her outlook on life primarily as a consequence of fulfillment of the proposed signaling function of tears. We also describe how cultural phenomena such as ritual weeping nicely fit within this framework, as they often aim to support a request for help to a powerful person or deity and promote social bonding. (shrink)

Because health care professions exist to provide a good for society, ethical questions are inherently part of them. Such professions and their members can be assessed based on how effective they are in developing knowledge and enacting practices that further the health and well‐being of individuals and society. The complexity of contemporary health care environments makes it important to prepare clinicians who can anticipate, recognize, and address problems that arise in practice or that prevent a profession from fulfilling its service (...) goals and obligations. Different health care professions have evolved distinct perspectives about appropriate goals for, and the purposes of, their clinicians, even when the goal of improving health and well‐being for society is shared across professions. While medicine and nursing goals are shared in principle, they differ in the particulars. Given the centrality to nursing of ethical questions, the profession has a collective responsibility to help clinicians at all levels of practice become ethically savvy and to reinforce their moral agency as needed. Both knowledge of nursing ethics and knowledge of the interdisciplinary field of bioethics are critical to nursing work. (shrink)

It is widely presumed that intuitions about thought experiments can help overturn philosophical theories. It is also widely presumed, albeit implicitly, that if thought experiments play any epistemic role in overturning philosophical theories, it is via intuition. In this paper, I argue for a different, neglected epistemic role of philosophical thought experiments, that of improving some reasoner’s appreciation both of what a theory’s predictions consist in and of how those predictions tie to elements of the theory. I call this role (...) theory clarification. I show that theory clarification does not proceed via intuition, and I argue that it is only in conjunction with theory clarification that intuitions about thought experiments can help overturn philosophical theories. I close by sketching how a more radical view might be true, on which thought experiments help justify the rejection of philosophical theories exclusively by clarifying theories, not by any intuitions those thought experiments might generate. (shrink)

This article describes the development of a computerized version of a measure of ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance, the Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test. The REST was based on James Rest's 4-component model of moral development and the professional codes of ethics from school-based professions. The new version, Racial and Ethical Sensitivity Test-Compact Disk, consists of 5 videotaped scenarios followed by an interactive "interview" presented on compact discs. Data from a study with 58 students provides initial validation of the (...) REST-CD. Ethical sensitivity to racial and gender intolerance in schools, as measured by the REST-CD, was moderately related to attitudes toward racial and gender equity issues in society as measured by the Quick Discrimination Index. The results provide evidence for both interrater and internal reliability of the REST-CD scores. This study also tests the hypothesized relationship between REST-CD scores and previous multicultural and ethics course work. Students with multicultural and ethics course experience have scored significantly higher on the REST-CD than students without course work. The paper-and-pencil tests are not significantly related to previous ethics/multicultural course work. In this article, we discuss the implications of the results and directions for future research. (shrink)

It is assumed that bipolarity in happiness and sadness requires mutual exclusion. However, we present psychometric research to show how coendorsements of happiness and sadness do not necessarily constitute evidence against bipolarity. Because individuals have a tendency to endorse emotion terms close to their current state, individuals whose current state is close to the middle of a bipolar continuum would report both happiness and sadness, despite their current state being best represented by a single point. As such, endorsements of happiness (...) and sadness are theoretically expected when individuals’ current state is in the middle of the continuum. Bipolarity however would be violated if endorsements of extreme levels of happiness and sadness can be demonstrated, which has yet to be shown. (shrink)

Charles Taber and Milton Lodge provide compelling evidence that people's minds may be closed to information that is inconsistent with their prior beliefs. This type of inconsistency has often been termed “irrational.” However, recent research suggests that being open or closed minded is not an unchanging variable but depends on one's goals, including one's need for closure, which vary from person to person and situation to situation. In this vein, as Taber and Lodge suggest, those who have more political information (...) may, after having been open minded enough to acquire the information, become closed minded by virtue of having acquired it. At the same time, being more open minded to inaccurate information might lead one in the wrong direction; hence, open mindedness does not necessarily enhance the accuracy of one's judgments or the quality of one's decisions. We may need to rethink the concept of an enlightened, well-informed electorate, to the extent that it assumes the unqualified benefits of open mindedness. (shrink)

One of the most complex areas of Foucault's work is his relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis. Foucault consistently argued for the historical specificities of the two principal human objects of psychoanalysis – madness and sexuality. He now stands starkly removed from Freudian thought, which cannot countenance ethnographic or cultural versions of madness or sexuality. Foucault welcomed the extra‐psychoanalytic potentials of the Freudian unconscious for undermining existentialist and phenomenological accounts of the subject and knowledge. Foucault in fact celebrated the political divergences of (...) psychoanalysis as one of its strengths. The critique of desire is really the climax of Foucault's efforts to develop an alternative Nietzschean genealogy of the modern subject as a historical and cultural reality – a domain that had hitherto excluded sexual identity, while the Freudian and feminist traditions had perhaps seen only sexuality and not the wider political domains. (shrink)

The increased incidence of morbidity and mortality due to Clostridium difficile infection, had led to the emergence of fecal microbial transplantation (FMT) as a highly successful treatment. From this, a 32 strain stool substitute has been derived, and successfully tested in a pilot human study. These approaches could revolutionize not only medical care of infectious diseases, but potentially many other conditions linked to the human microbiome. But a second revolution may be needed in order for regulatory agencies, society and medical (...) practitioners to accept and utilize these interventions, monitor their long term effects, have a degree of control over their use, or at a minimum provide guidelines for donors and recipients. (shrink)

Criminologists have long acknowledged the link between a number of cognitive deficits, including low intelligence and impulsivity, and crime. A new wave of research has demonstrated that pharmacological intervention can restore or improve cognitive function, particularly executive function, and restore neural plasticity. Such restoration and improvement can allow for easier acquisition of new skills and as a result, presents significant possibilities for the criminal justice system. For example, studies have shown that supplements of Omega-3, a fatty acid commonly found in (...) food such as tuna, can decrease frequency of violent incidents in an incarcerated population. Research has also begun to explore the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to reduce impulsivity in some violent offenders. However, there are significant legal and ethical implications when moving from dietary supplements to prescription pharmaceuticals and medical devices for cognitive intervention. This paper will explore the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of pharmacological intervention on prisoners as an effort to reduce crime and recidivism. (shrink)

Given the nature of the discipline, it might be assumed that clinical psychology is an ethical profession, within which effective ethical decision-making is integral. How then, does this ethical decision-making occur? This paper describes a systematic review of empirical research addressing this question. The paucity of evidence related to this question meant that the scope was broadened to include other professions who deliver talking therapies. This review could support reflective practice about what may be taken into account when making ethical (...) decisions and highlight areas for future research. Using academic search databases, original research articles were identified from peer-reviewed journals. Articles using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods were included. Two theoretical models of aspects of ethical decision-making were identified. Areas of agreement and debate are described in relation to factors linked to the professional, which impacted ethical decision-making. Factors relating to ethical dilemmas, which impacted ethical decision-making, are discussed. Articles were appraised by two independent raters, using quality assessment criteria, which suggested areas of methodological strengths and weaknesses. Comparison and synthesis of results revealed that the research did not generally pertain to current clinical practice of talking therapies or the particular socio-political context of the UK healthcare system. There was limited research into ethical decision-making amongst specific professions, including clinical psychology. Generalisability was limited due to methodological issues, indicating avenues for future research. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard is a pivotal figure in contemporary cultural theory. Without doubt one of the foremost European thinkers of the last fifty years, his work has provoked debate and controversy across a number of disciplines, yet his significance has so far been largely ignored by feminist theorists.

What can we know? How should we live? What is there? Philosophers famously diverge in the answers they give to these and other philosophical questions. It is widely presumed that a lack of convergence on these questions suggests that philosophy is not progressing at all, is not progressing fast enough, or is not progressing as fast as other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Call the view that ideal philosophical progress is marked by at least some degree of convergence on (...) the core philosophical questions the pro-convergence thesis. I will argue that there is reason to reject the pro-convergence thesis in favor of the anti-convergence thesis, the view that significant viewpoint convergence is at odds with the aims of a philosophically ideal community. The argument centers on a thought experiment about two different philosophical communities. (shrink)

This book focuses in an in-depth way on the particular problems faced by nurses in various advanced practice roles across the life-span and in front-line care. It is comprehensive textbook broken out into three sections: philosophical foundation, ethics, and specialty focus.

Providing in-utero treatments to target specific conditions in the fetus is a relatively new approach in perinatal care, with the vast majority of these treatments being used off-label. The high degree of off-label medication use in the perinatal and neonatal settings raises concern for the safety of both the fetuses and expectant mothers. This report presents two examples of intra-amniotic drug administration based on reported clinical cases. From the ethical framework of medical principlism, we examine the competing ethical duties of (...) autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence in this setting. We then lay out three fundamental ethical principles for obtaining informed consent and maximizing clinical benefit. (shrink)

Phenomenology, perhaps more than any other single movement in philosophy, has been key in bringing emotions to the foreground of philosophical consideration. This is in large part due to the ways in which emotions, according to phenomenological analyses, are revealing of basic structures of human existence. Indeed, it is partly and, according to some phenomenologists, even primarily through our emotions that the world is disclosed to us, that we become present to and make sense of ourselves, and that we relate (...) to and engage with others. A phenomenological study of emotions is thus meant not only to help us to understand ourselves, but also to allow us to see and to make sense of the meaningfulness of our worldly and social existence.Within the last few decades, the emotions have re-emerged more generally as a topic of great philosophical interest and importance. Philosophers, along with psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists have engaged in inter- and intra-disciplina .. (shrink)

Photographs of violence carry an implicit critique of the social order from which they emerge. This necessitates the systemic management of their affect. Recognition of the experience carried by these signals has the potential to catalyse and contribute to emancipatory thought and action. The apparatus of epistemic control – characterized here as the Archive – has evolved to neutralize their affective potential. Certain artworks that reconfigure photographs of violence illuminate the nature of this neutralizing mechanism. They mimic and subvert the (...) forms of representational archivization and suggest a counter-Archive – a repository of traumatic representation which serves to release affective trauma from its epistemic suppression. One example of this counter-archival practice is – War Primer 2. A body of work from 2011 by artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, which uses Bertolt Brecht’s Kreigsfibel or War Primer (1955) as a point of departure for examining the representation of twenty-first century violence. (shrink)

Much of the political and public debate about faith-based schooling is conducted at the level of generalised assertion and counterassertion, with little reference to educational scholarship or research. There is a tendency in these debates to draw upon historical images of faith schooling (idealised and critical); to use ideological advocacy (both for and against) and to deploy strong claims about the effects of faith-based schooling upon personal and intellectual autonomy and the wider consequences of such schooling for social harmony, race (...) relations and the common good of society. This paper will attempt to review some of these controversies in the light of recent educational and research studies. Particular attention will be given to research investigations of Catholic schooling systems in various cultural and political contexts, studies which are largely unknown outside the Catholic community. In addition to reviewing educational studies of faith-based schooling, the paper will offer critical appraisal of the main arguments in the debate and it will also outline a possible research agenda for future inquiry in this sector of educational studies. (shrink)

The study of school leadership is in danger of being reduced to a set of technical and management considerations. School leadership is not simply about management. It is about moral values, educational values and professional principles. There is an urgent need to place the study of school leadership in broader social, cultural, political and historical contexts in particular societies. This paper attempts to do this in relation to English schooling.

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ‘social construction of reality’ – the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it – and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to (...) person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the _linguistic _construction of reality. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ‘social construction of reality’ – the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it – and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to (...) person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the _linguistic _construction of reality. (shrink)

Joint attention (JA) is hypothesized to have a close relationship with developing theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. We tested the co-occurrence of ToM and JA in social interactions between adults with no reported history of psychiatric illness or neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants engaged in an experimental task that encouraged nonverbal communication, including JA, and also ToM activity. We adapted an in-lab variant of experience sampling methods (Bryant, Coffey, Povinelli, & Pruett, 2013) to measure ToM during JA based on participants’ subjective reports (...) of their thoughts while performing the task. This experiment successfully elicited instances of JA in 17/20 dyads. We compared participants’ thought contents during episodes of JA and non-JA. Our results suggest that, in adults, JA and ToM may occur independently. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 1, Page 64-83, January 2022. Automated, wearable cameras can benefit health-related research by capturing accurate and objective information about individuals’ daily experiences. However, wearable cameras present unique privacy- and confidentiality-related risks due to the possibility of the images capturing identifying or sensitive information from participants and third parties. Although best practice guidelines for ethical research with wearable cameras have been published, limited information exists on the risks of studies using wearable cameras. The aim of this (...) literature review was to survey risks related to using wearable cameras, and precautions taken to reduce those risks, as reported in empirical research. Forty-five publications, comprising 36 independent studies, were reviewed, and findings revealed that participants’ primary concerns with using wearable cameras included physical inconvenience and discomfort in certain situations. None of the studies reviewed reported any serious adverse events. Although it is possible that reported findings do not include all risks experienced by participants in research with wearable cameras, our findings suggest a low level of risk to participants. However, it is important that investigators adopt recommended precautions, which can promote autonomy and reduce risks, including participant discomfort. (shrink)

It seems trivial to identify sound sequences as music or speech, particularly when the sequences come from different sound sources, such as an orchestra and a human voice. Can we also easily distinguish these categories when the sequence comes from the same sound source? On the basis of which acoustic features? We investigated these questions by examining listeners’ classification of sound sequences performed by an instrument intertwining both speech and music: the dùndún talking drum. The dùndún is commonly used in (...) south-west Nigeria as a musical instrument but is also perfectly fit for linguistic usage in what has been described as speech surrogates in Africa. One hundred seven participants from diverse geographical locations (15 different mother tongues represented) took part in an online experiment. Fifty-one participants reported being familiar with the dùndún talking drum, 55% of those being speakers of Yorùbá. During the experiment, participants listened to 30 dùndún samples of about 7s long, performed either as music or Yorùbá speech surrogate (n= 15 each) by a professional musician, and were asked to classify each sample as music or speech-like. The classification task revealed the ability of the listeners to identify the samples as intended by the performer, particularly when they were familiar with the dùndún, though even unfamiliar participants performed above chance. A logistic regression predicting participants’ classification of the samples from several acoustic features confirmed the perceptual relevance of intensity, pitch, timbre, and timing measures and their interaction with listener familiarity. In all, this study provides empirical evidence supporting the discriminating role of acoustic features and the modulatory role of familiarity in teasing apart speech and music. (shrink)