Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

Young children judge that violations of ordinary, causal constraints are impossible. Yet children’s religious beliefs typically include the assumption that such violations can occur via divine agency in the form of miracles. We conducted two studies to examine this potential conflict. In Study 1, we invited 5- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school to judge what is and is not possible. Children made their judgments either following a minimal prompt or following a reminder of (...) God’s extraordinary powers. Irrespective of their education, and whether or not they had been reminded of God’s extraordinary powers, children systematically judged violations of ordinary, causal constraints to be impossible. In Study 2, we asked if more extensive reminders of God’s special powers would prompt religious children to say that the impossible can happen. Five- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school were presented with narratives in which the protagonist desired an ordinarily impossible outcome. In half the stories, the protagonist prayed to God for the desired outcome. Irrespective of education and of whether the protagonist prayed, children systematically concluded that the desired outcome would not occur and justified that conclusion by reference to ordinary causal constraints. Nevertheless, in a minority of their replies children did assert that violations of ordinary causality are possible. Overall, irrespective of their religious education, young children judge that events rarely deviate from their natural course; only occasionally do they acknowledge exceptions. (shrink)

Far more than the dialectic philosophy of Socrates, the rhetorical humanist tradition avoids objectivist epistemology, charts a traversable path to practical wisdom, and aptly highlights the importance of aesthetic style. In those and other ways, we argue, it offers a preferable historical basis for today’s philosophical counseling. Advocates of that contemporary practice tend to cite Socrates as its historical progenitor and favor the narrow propositional logic that is ascribed to him. Some practitioners, though, have also grown more attuned to metaphorical (...) and narrative elements in a client’s worldview. We aim to supplement their claims by drawing from principles of classical rhetorical theory, showing a way to rethink the practice of philosophical counseling today. (shrink)

Résumé Même si les utopies sont potentiellement dangereuses, les visions utopiques nous sont malgré tout indispensables. La perte de l’espoir et de l’utopie signifie la perte de l’humanité. Mais comment empêcher l’utopie de tourner en dystopie? L’utopie pensée en termes de perfection, de pureté et d’exclusivité impose sa version d’une vie meilleure comme la seule et unique. L’utopisme d’opposition par contre ne cherche ni la perfection, ni la suppression des possibilités d’évolution. Son objectif est le progrès et non pas la (...) répression de l’homme. Ce n’est pas l’utopisme qui est défectueux, le problème vient davantage de la conviction qu’une utopie particulière puisse faire advenir la seule façon correcte de vivre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Euthanasia in Utopian LiteratureLyman Tower Sargent (bio)The word euthanasia, meaning a peaceful, gentle, or easy death, has been traced back to Roman times. But the "good" in a good death is obviously open to interpretation. Good for whom? The individual? The family of the individual? The society? And, who decides? The individual? The doctor? The family of the individual? The legal system? These questions are constantly raised throughout (...) the literature with diametrically opposed answers given from the earliest times to the present. And, unfortunately, one word is used for all the positions, with two subcategories, voluntary and involuntary, both of which are perceived as good for someone.Death is universal but whether or not a person should have a choice about when to die or voluntary euthanasia is deeply controversial.1 Inducing such a death, primarily in cases of a painful terminal disease, appears to be largely a nineteenth-century invention while, of course, existing as a concept well before that.2 Also, discussions of voluntary euthanasia raise related issues, suicide, involuntary euthanasia, and how eugenics has determined the criteria for involuntary euthanasia. Also, the fear of someone [End Page 238] being putting to death for the convenience or advantage of the living has been the most prominent issue, and one must wonder if involuntary euthanasia, at least when consent was possible but not given, ever constitutes a "good" death. As simply a peaceful and painless death, the earliest use of the word was by Suetonius in the early first century, where in his life of Augustus he reports Augustus's position on death as that "on hearing that anyone had died swiftly and painlessly, he prayed that he and his might have a like euthanasia, for that was the term he was wont to use."3 In his De Augmentis Scientiarum [Advancement of Learning], Francis Bacon refers to this statement, commenting, "For it is no small fidelity which Augustus Caesar was wont so earnestly to pray for, that same Euthanasia … was not so much like death as like falling into a deep and pleasant sleep." And Bacon continued: "In our times the physicians make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after he is given up, whereas in my judgment, if they would be wanting in their office, and indeed to humanity, they ought to acquire the skill and to bestow the attention whereby the dying may pass more easily out of life. This part I call the inquiry concerning outward Euthanasia, or the easy dying of the body (to distinguish from that Euthanasia which regards the preparation of the soul)."4The most explicit statement, generally ignored for sixty years, was that made in an 1870 speech to the Birmingham Speculative Club by Samuel D. Williams Jr., about whom little is known. Williams proposed:That in all cases of hopeless and painful illness, it should be the recognized duty of the medical attendant, whenever so desired by the patient, to administer chloroform or such other anæsthetic as may by-and-bye supersede chloroform—as to destroy consciousness at once, and put the sufferer to a quick and painless death; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent any possible abuse of such duty; and means being taken to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question, that the remedy was applied at the express wish of the patient.5This was not, though, the usual practice and many doctors saw no need to act. In an 1887 book one doctor contended that "as long as there was proper medical care, there was no need to speed up death to relieve suffering."6 Still, Williams's position is in almost all respects the position taken by advocates [End Page 239] of voluntary euthanasia since then, although it did not get much of an airing again until C. Killick Millard, the Medical Officer of Health of Leicester, gave the Presidential address to the Society of Medical Officers of Health in late 1931. There he said, referring to Bacon, thatthe proposition merely is that individuals, who have attained to years of discretion, and who are suffering from an incurable and fatal disease which usually... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares by William (Bill) MetcalfLyman Tower SargentWilliam (Bill) Metcalf. Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares. Brisbane History Group Studies no. 11. Tingalpa: Boolarong Press, 2022. 297 pp. Australian $30.00 ISBN: 9781922643445.Bill Metcalf, the foremost scholar on Australian intentional communities, has discovered and written about a number of Australian utopias. In Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares he focuses on a subset of Australian (...) utopias, those written by people who lived in Brisbane plus one Brisbane architect who made designs for a future utopian Brisbane. One of the books, A Workingman’s Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel (1892), is well known, particularly in Australia. A second novel, The Adventures of Halek: An Autobiographical Fragment (1882) by John H. Nicholson, will be familiar to some readers. The others will be unfamiliar to most readers both in Australia and in the rest of the world. I learned of many of them through Metcalf ’s previous work and correspondence with him. Given this situation and the fact that a few of the books are only available in Australia, I have said something about all of them.The book begins with “A Brief Overview of Utopianism” (1–6), an introduction suitable for those unfamiliar with the subject, followed by “Overview of Brisbane in the 1880s and 1890s” (7–12), which gives all readers an initial context. The entire book is strong on context, particularly local context. The following nine chapters are on authors or coauthors of utopian texts and one artist. All the chapters begin with substantial biographical information about the authors, as well as their activities and the Brisbane context within which they lived, followed by a presentation and discussion of their utopias. [End Page 158]The first authors mentioned are William and Annie Lane, which immediately raised a question in my mind. The two works discussed, the racist “White or Yellow? A Story of the Race-war of A.D. 1908” by Sketcher (serialized in The Boomerang in 1888), and the socialist A Workingman’s Paradise by John Maurice Miller, have always been identified as written by William Lane—with no mention of Annie. Metcalf suggests, but with minimal discussion, that while “White or Yellow” was by William, Annie was the unacknowledged coauthor, perhaps even author, of A Workingman’s Paradise. So, I asked Metcalf about the attribution and in a substantial email of October 5, 2022, he laid out the argument, which is based in part on the work of a former student, John Kellett, published as “One-Woman-One Vote: Annie Lane, ‘Lucinda Sharpe,’ and the Female Franchise in Late-Nineteenth Century Queensland” (Hecate 30, no. 2 [2004]: 37–52).Lucinda Sharpe was the nom de plume of a weekly contributor to the newspapers published by William Lane. It has been believed that he wrote all the articles. Kellett, however, makes a strong case that Annie, who was a working journalist in Canada when she met William (also a working journalist), was Lucinda Sharpe. In particular, Kellett notes the extreme differences between William’s usual style and that of Lucinda Sharpe and compares it to material known to be written by Annie. Kellett concludes, based on the similarities between Lucinda and Annie and other evidence, that Lucinda was Annie. But Kellett is only concerned with the Lucinda Sharpe works and the way they presented the case for the franchise; he does not mention either of the works that Metcalf discusses.In his email to me, Metcalf expands on Kellett, saying thatWhile researching for this book I re-read The Workingman’s Paradise and again I was struck by how the sentence structure and language differs from William Lane’s usual work. Then I compared it to “Lucinda Sharpe,” and it was similar. I discussed this observation with John Kellett, now retired and living in Armadale, and he agreed. That led me to conclude that Annie Lane probably wrote The Working Man’s Paradise. Perhaps/probably with William’s input. The real giveaway is when William tries to write in a female voice, as in White or Yellow with the Cissie character, it is very stilted, “twee” and demeaning. When... (shrink)

An annotated bibliography of the utopian scholarship of Lyman Tower Sargent from shortly before he submitted his Ph.D. dissertation to the present day.

The scholarly field of utopian studies has to date focused primarily on three broad varieties of utopianism: literary utopias, utopian social thought, and communal experiments. By comparison, the study of the relationship between utopia and politics has been relatively neglected. In his book Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction, published in 2010, Lyman Tower Sargent observes that at the time of writing there was no general study of the role utopianism plays in political theory. Nor, it may be added with (...) due acknowledgment of partial exceptions such as Barbara Goodwin and Keith Taylor's The Politics of Utopia, is there any extant general study of the role utopianism plays in politics more broadly or... (shrink)

Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität analyses the transcendental relevance of intersubjectivity, and argues that an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy can already be found in phenomenology, especially in Husserl. Husserl eventually came to believe that an analysis of transcendental subjectivity was a conditio sine qua non for a phenomenological philosophy. Drawing on both published and unpublished manuscripts the book examines his reasons for this conviction and delivers a detailed analysis of his radical and complex concept of intersubjectivity, showing that precisely (...) his reflections on transcendental intersubjectivity are capable of clarifying his phenomenological core-concepts, thus making possible a new understanding of his philosophy. Against this background the book then attempts to establish to what extent the phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity can contribute to the current discussions of intersubjectivity. This is achieved through a systematic confrontation with the language-pragmatical positions of Apel and Habermas. Die Abhandlung untersucht die transzendentale Relevanz der Intersubjektivität und zeigt, daß eine intersubjektive Transformation der Transzendentalphilosophie schon innerhalb der Phänomenologie - besonders der Husserlschen - zu finden ist. Husserl gelangte zu der Auffassung, daß eine Analyse und Einbeziehung der transzendentalen Intersubjektivität als conditio sine qua non für eine phänomenologische Philosophie zu betrachten sei. Die Gründe, die Husserl zu dieser Überzeugung führten, werden herausgearbeitet. Dabei weist die Analyse des radikalen und komplexen Begriffs der Intersubjektivität auf, daß erst seine Überlegungen zur transzendentalen Intersubjektivität viele phänomenologische Grundbegriffe ins rechte Licht stellen können und darüber hinaus ein neues Grundverständnis seiner Phänomenologie ermöglichen. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird die Frage, inwieweit die Phänomenologie zur gegenwärtigen Intersubjektivitätsdiskussion beitragen kann, durch eine systematische Auseinandersetzung mit der sprachpragmatischen Intersubjektivitätstheorie von Apel und Habermas beantwortet. (shrink)

At the September 1992 Birth of Bioethics conference observing the 30th anniversary of the Seattle kidney dialysis program, Warren Reich discussed the “bilocated” birth of the term bioethics. He showed that the term bioethics was coined in Michigan by Van Rensselaer Potter and that the term was also apparently conceived of independently at about the same time in 1970–1971 in Washington, D.C., by Andre Hellegers and Sargent Shriver. Potter's work, like many similar works in the early 1970s, was concerned (...) with the growing global biological crisis of human overpopulation, the destruction of species, and how to respond to these. He prefaced his book Bioethics with a “Bioethical Creed for Individuals,” outlining duties to respond to this crisis in a meaningful and scientific way. Hellegers and Shriver used the neologism to name the new Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics. The Center was to study concerns somewhat different from Potter's: the technological revolution in healthcare and its impact on reproduction, investigator-patient relations, and medical ethics. (shrink)

Screening programmes are becoming increasingly popular since prevention is considered 'better than cure'. While earlier diagnosis may result in more effective treatment for some, there will be consequent harm for others due to anxiety, stigma, side-effects etc. A screening test cannot guarantee the detection of all 'abnormal' cases, therefore there will be false reassurance for some. A proper consideration of the potential benefit and harm arising from screening may lead to the conclusion that the programme should not be offered. A (...) modified utilitarian approach may be used for allocation of scarce resources in health care. Ethics has an important role in this evaluation. (shrink)

Screen-based virtual worlds have been described as fundamentally disembodying. Contrary to this, the aim of this article is to provide a phenomenological analysis of bodily presence in one case of screen-based virtuality. By integrating phenomenology with qualitative research methodologies, I explore esports practitioners’ experiences of bodily presence in League of Legends (LoL). Here, descriptions from real-life esports practitioners are analyzed within the phenomenological framework of ‘incorporation’. My analysis shows that the practitioners’ experience and engage with their virtual world not just (...) by incorporating their physical gaming equipment, but also through incorporation of virtual abilities and tools specific to the game world. Having shown that the LoL practitioner’s body spans both physical and virtual space without leaving the body behind, I situate these results within the discussion of virtual presence in video games. I claim that the practitioners’ sense of presence can be accounted for by situating the integrated physical and virtual tools and abilities within the phenomenological framework of the ‘nullpoint’, understood as a bodily field of activity shaped by our incorporated skills and tools. (shrink)

This volume commemorates the centenary of Logical Investigations by subjecting the work to a comprehensive critical analysis. It contains new contributions by leading scholars addressing some of the most central analyses to be found in the book.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527-Criticism and interpretation ; Political science-Translating.

The concept of quantum principle is introduced as a principle whose formulation is based on specific quantum ideas and notions. We consider three such principles, viz, those of quantizability, local gauge symmetry, and supersymmetry, and their role in the development of the quantum field theory (QFT). Concerning the first of these, we analyze the formal aspects and physical contents of the renormalization procedure in QFT and its relation to ultraviolet divergences and the renorm group. The quantizability principle is formulated as (...) an existence condition of a self-consistent quantum version with a given mechanism of the field interaction. It is shown that the consecutive (from a historical point of view) use of these quantum principles puts still larger limitations on possible forms of field interactions. (shrink)

Tacitus writes that, by insisting that legionary legates who had not so far held the praetorship should immediately proceed to that office, Asinius Gallus ‘altius penetrare et arcana imperii temptari’. In C.Q. N.S. xvi , 327, I suggested that this demand of Gallus’ was probably probing dangerously deeply into and perhaps threatening to wreck the carefully worked-out imperial promotions system, the working of which has been examined by Birley. It is the purpose of this note to look at a number (...) of examples of such irregularity, which, though not as early as the debate during the course of which Gallus made his suggestion, do at least illustrate the process later in the Julio-Claudian era. (shrink)

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)