Globally, chronic disease and conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Why, then, are public health efforts and programs aimed at preventing chronic disease so difficult to implement and maintain? Also, why is primary care—the key medical specialty for helping persons with chronic disease manage their illnesses—in decline? Public health suffers from its often being socially controversial, personally intrusive, irritating to many powerful corporate interests, and structurally designed to be largely (...) invisible and, as a result, taken for granted. Primary care struggles from low reimbursements, relative to specialists, excessive paperwork and time demands that are unattractive to medical students. Our paper concludes with a discussion of why the need for more aggressive public health and redesigned primary care is great, will grow substantially in the near future, and yet will continue to struggle with funding and public popularity. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

We discuss two problems for a general scientific understanding of language, sequences and synergies: how language is an intricately sequenced behavior and how language is manifested as a multidimensionally structured behavior. Though both are central in our understanding, we observe that the former tends to be studied more than the latter. We consider very general conditions that hold in human brain evolution and its computational implications, and identify multimodal and multiscale organization as two key characteristics of emerging cognitive function in (...) our species. This suggests that human brains, and cognitive function specifically, became more adept at integrating diverse information sources and operating at multiple levels for linguistic performance. We argue that framing language evolution, learning, and use in terms of synergies suggests new research questions, and it may be a fruitful direction for new developments in theory and modeling of language as an integrated system. (shrink)

Corballis's explanation for right-handedness in humans relies heavily on the gestural protolanguage hypothesis, which he argues for by a series of “intuition pumps.” Scrutinizing the mirror system hypothesis and modern gesture as components of the argument, we find that they do not provide the desired evidence of a gestural precursor to speech.

I argue for a possible Buddhist theory of free will that combines Frankfurt's hierarchical analysis of meta-volitional/volitional accord with elements of the Buddhist eightfold path that prescribe that Buddhist aspirants cultivate meta-volitional wills that promote the mental freedom that culminates in enlightenment, as well as a causal/functional analysis of how Buddhist meditative methodology not only plausibly makes that possible, but in ways that may be applied to undermine Galen Strawson's impossibility argument, along with most of the other major arguments for (...) free will skepticism. (shrink)

There is a definite challenge in the air regarding the pivotal notion of internal representation. This challenge is explicit in, e.g., van Gelder, 1995; Beer, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Wheeler, 1994; and elsewhere. We think it is a challenge that can be met and that (importantly) can be met by arguing from within a general framework that accepts many of the basic premises of the work (in new robotics and in dynamical systems theory) that motivates such scepticism in the (...) first place. Our strategy will be as follows. We begin (Section 1) by offering an account (an example and something close to a definition) of what we shall term Minimal Robust Representationalism (MRR). Sections 2 & 3 address some likely worries and questions about this notion. We end (Section 4) by making explicit the conditions under which, on our account, a science (e.g., robot- ics) may claim to be addressing cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

This special issue is a refreshing contrast to the intuitively influential notion of language as an internal system. This internal approach to language is going strong in some segments of the cognitive sciences. As an assumption, internalism drives much empirical work on language, and it is the basis of prominent theories of language – its nature (e.g. an internalised computational system), its evolution (e.g. a single still-unknown mutation), and its function (e.g. thinking, not communication). -/- Radical fundamentalist versions of these (...) theories are no longer in the main stream, however, despite the attention they may garner by forceful exposition (e.g. Chomsky 2011a). A fuller canvassing of the cognitive sciences – obviously outside the scope of the current presentation – would probably reveal that most researchers, even those who study aspects of language isolated in individual participants, would allow for an intrinsic social characteristic to language. I would go so far as to guess that they would place this social character on explanatory par with other structural or information-processing features that are studied in the lab. And despite what is averred by Chomsky (2011a), this social character in human cognition has been proposed in many domains, from vision (Balcetis & Lassiter 2010) to memory (Barnier et al. 2008). Humans are intrinsically social in a way that distinguishes them from any other primate species, and this sociality seems to be weaved into many cognitive processes (Castiello et al. 2010; Tomasello 2009). -/- But “social” is not the same thing as “distributed,” by the content of this issue. The latter may subsume the former. The distributed approach discussed in this special issue is not “simply” social – it does not just propose an added static feature of any synchronic language context (as noted in Jennings & Thompson this issue). The approach instead regards this social characteristic as just one part of a broader dynamic distributed process that constitutes language, through different kinds of inter-individual coordination at many levels of spatial and temporal scale (Cowley this issue; Fusaroli & Tylén this issue). (shrink)

A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it.

The concept of the postsecular is a challenge to systematic theological thought, as it points to some context where the opposition between the religious and the secular, or between theism and atheism, is weakened or even surpassed. In this perspective, the postsecular is not about the visibility of religion in the public sphere, but about the way in which we interpret ourselves in the world in order to find orientation and fulfillment. In a postsecular context, religious perspectives and secularist outlooks (...) are no longer opposed of necessity, but draw on a common religious and secular heritage. In this article, Richard Kearney’s Anatheism and Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Deconstruction of Christianity are presented as exemplifications of postsecular thought that may open up new perspectives to systematic theology. In different ways, Kearney and Nancy reflect on a transcendent dimension in our experience or in the world, which is beyond the secular. Yet they distinguish themselves due to a religious transcendence-oriented approach and a secularist world-oriented approach, which shows that the opposition between the religious and the secular may be weakened, but the demarcations between the two still have their impact. (shrink)

The problem with “Europeans want Peace” is that they do not oppose genocidal war. They have not learned the lesson of the 1930s (that timely intervention—with American support that was sadly lacking but would end up coming anyway—could have stopped Hitler and saved millions of lives in Europe), or the lesson of Auschwitz (that genocidal crimes may warrant such intervention). Nor do they see that the“European sovereign state” they refer to, i.e., Yugoslavia, was actually a disintegrating communist federation, whose constituent (...) units have the right to choose whether to re-federate or go off on their own (like Slovenia), or that…. (shrink)

Cross-cultural interviewing can pose challenges for journalists, given potential differences in language, word choice, volume, body posture, and group dynamics. This article explores some of the complexities of cross-cultural interviews with the dual aim of heightening awareness of ethical considerations for journalists who conduct them and of discussing ethical principles that may help in guiding their work. This article attempts to move the discussion of cross-cultural interviews beyond traditional Western ethics. Eastern moral philosophy and ideals of trust and human relations (...) similar to, but predating the work of contemporary Western communitarians are considered. The authors' ethnographic study of MLB's “Nippon Summer”—the influx of Japanese players in 2007—and analysis of articles resulting from press coverage of those players serve as a framework for discussing ethical considerations at play in cross-cultural journalism, when, for example, West writes East. (shrink)

By taking seriously the state of moral estrangement, we may learn something about the conditions of moral participation. Yet analytic discussions of this topic (for instance, by Hare and Nagel) have frequently been handicapped by an inadequate understanding of the intentionality of emotion. In the work of Albert Camus, we find a superior appreciation of the sense in which the individual’s revolt against prevailing values could be a justified response to objective conditions. Although a sense of the absurd is itself (...) a hindrance to moral agency, it provides us with some insight into our subjective capacity for wholehearted involvement in the world. (shrink)

We introduce a new metric for interdisciplinarity, based on co-author publication history. A published article that has co-authors with quite different publication histories can be deemed relatively “interdisciplinary,” in that the article reflects a convergence of previous research in distinct sets of publication outlets. In recent work, we have shown that this interdisciplinarity metric can predict citations. Here, we show that the journal Cognitive Science tends to contain collaborations that are relatively high on this interdisciplinarity metric, at about the 80th (...) percentile of all journals across both social and natural sciences. Following on Goldstone and Leydesdorff, we describe how scientometric tools provide a valuable means of assessing the role of cognitive science in broader scientific work, and also as a tool to investigate teamwork and distributed cognition. We describe how data-driven metrics of this kind may facilitate this exploration without relying upon rapidly changing discipline and topic keywords associated with publications. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that an analysis of the mind-control skills exhibited by Buddhist meditation experts may be used to formulate a theory of mental freedom, Buddhist Soft Compatibilism, that includes not only freedom of the will but the freedoms of emotion, attention, perception, the self, and all voluntary phenomena. BSC is compatible with determinism, indeterminism, the various Buddhist conceptions of causation, and the Buddhist conception of the self.The structure of my essay is as follows. First, I review the (...) major terms, positions, and arguments in the Western debate on free will, contrasting the strongest pessimistic and optimistic views, framing the... (shrink)

Traditionally, Buddhist philosophy has seemingly rejected the autonomous self. In Western philosophy, free will and the philosophy of action are established areas of research. This book presents a comprehensive analytical review of extant scholarship on perspectives on free will. It studies and refutes the most powerful Western and Buddhist philosophical objections to free will and explores the possibility that a form of agency may in fact exist within Buddhism. Providing a detailed explanation of how Buddhist meditation increases self-regulative mind-control abilities, (...) the author argues that the Buddhist path is designed to produce meditation virtuosos exhibiting mind-control abilities far exceeding the free-will advocate's ability to 'do otherwise' or have their choices be 'up to' them. Based on the empirically-supported mind-control cultivated by these meditation virtuosos, the book proposes the principle of, 'Buddhist Soft Compatibilism', a theory of 'freedom of the mind' that entails freedoms of the will, attention, emotion and action, compatible with both determinism and indeterminism. Buddhism, Meditation and Free Will will be of interest to Buddhist and Western philosophers and academics interested in comparative philosophy, free will, philosophy of action, metaphysics, ethics and Religious Studies. (shrink)

[1] Michael Gareth Justin Evans was born in London on May 12 th, 1946, to his parents Gwaldus and Justin Evans. He had an older brother Huw, an older sister Myfawny, and a younger sister Elaine. As a young student, Evans was both highly intelligent and careless. The final report from his form master at Granton Primary School says that "Gareth is so vigorous and impatient to get his work finished that he is subject to error. A delightful boy!".

Consequentialism has been challenged on the grounds that it is too demanding. I will respond to the problem of demandingness differently from previous accounts. In the first part of the paper, I argue that consequentialism requires us to distinguish the justification of an act \ from the justification of an act \, where \ is an act of praise or blame. In the second part of the paper, I confront the problem of demandingness. I do not attempt to rule out (...) the objection; instead, I argue that if certain plausible empirical claims about moral motivation are true, we morally ought not to blame people for failing to meet certain very demanding obligations. With this theory, we create a space in consequentialism for intuitions questioning the plausibility of demanding obligations. I conclude the paper by showing that separate justifications for \ and \ may also give us a theoretical niche for intuitions about supererogation. (shrink)

We re-examine the geometry lesson in the Meno, focusing on the interaction between interlocutors in the practice of recollection. We appeal to an analogy with interactive memory to suggest how Plato could think that inquiry could be successful even when participants have no awareness of what would satisfy their inquiry. This exposes a feature of recollection that needs no metaphysical assumptions, and which emphasises interaction. This feature, which has escaped the notice of philosophers, is more fundamental to the Meno than (...) a theory of innate ideas. Such a theory may be superimposed on the view about interactive memory we describe for the Meno, but to focus on Plato’s epistemological theory without first understanding what he has to say about the social dimensions of memory is putting the cart before the horse. (shrink)

Increasing attention is being paid to spirituality in nursing practice. Much of the literature on spiritual care uses the nursing process to describe this aspect of care. However, the use of the nursing process in the area of spirituality may be problematic, depending upon the understandings of the nature and intent of this process. Is it primarily a descriptive process meant to make visible the nursing actions to provide spiritual support, or is it a prescriptive process meant to guide nursing (...) actions for intervening in the spirituality of patients? A prescriptive nursing process approach implies influencing, and in some cases reframing, the spirituality of patients and thereby extends beyond general notions of spiritual support. In this paper we discuss four problematic assumptions that form the basis for a prescriptive approach to spiritual care. We conclude that this approach extends the nursing role beyond appropriate professional boundaries, making it ethically problematic. (shrink)

I argue that if the claims Buddhist philosophy makes about meditation virtuosos are plausible, then Buddhism may rebut most of the strongest arguments for free will skepticism found in Western analytic philosophy, including the hard incompatiblist's argument (which combines the arguments for hard determinism, such as the consequence argument, with those for hard indeterminism, such as the randomness argument), Pereboom's manipulation argument, and Galen Strawson's impossibility argument. The main idea is that the meditation virtuoso can cultivate a level of mind (...) control that is impervious to the causal origins of her mental states, on the basis of which ability an account of free will may be erected, consistent with the claim that Buddhist enlightenment consists in some sort of radical conception of the ultimately impersonal nature of the agent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 207-215 [Access article in PDF] Notes and Fragments Poetics of Sentimentality Rick Anthony Furtak IN HIS MAJOR WORK, The Passions, Robert Solomon argues that emotions are judgments. 1 Through a series of persuasive examples, he shows that emotions are best understood as mental states which involve certain beliefs about the world. This means that every emotion has an object: if I am angry (...) at John for stealing my car, the object of my anger is the fact (or what I take to be a fact) that my car has been stolen by John. If I find out that this is not the case, that my car has not even left the garage, then my anger should vanish along with its justification. 2 The key point here is that anger, like any other emotion, may be reasonable or inappropriate depending on the situation. If there is nothing to be angry about, then it would be irrational for me to cultivate anger simply because I enjoy having this particular emotion. In general, emotional responses are cognitively flawed whenever they are at odds with the properties of their objects. If we want our judgments to be realistic and not delusional, then we must avoid this kind of error.It is curious, then, that Solomon has written an essay in which he categorically declares that "there is nothing wrong with sentimentality." 3 For it would appear that his theory of emotion provides precisely the terms needed in order to specify what is wrong with it. If emotions are judgments, then "sentimentality" ought to be an important critical term to designate the habit of having emotions that involve either impaired or mistaken judgment. Nevertheless, Solomon is willing to defend any and every episode of tender emotion, of the kind associated with the [End Page 207] death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (S, p. 240). He suggests that the more we can muster up this sort of response to literature or life, the better. What he seeks to encourage, in other words, is what Hume would call "delicacy" of (aesthetic) taste and of (ethical) passion. 4 But while Hume acknowledges that sensitivity to beauty and to ugliness are two sides of the same coin, such that anyone who is susceptible to lively enjoyments is also liable to undergo pungent sorrows, Solomon wants to promote only the tender aspect of emotion.On the principle of passionate maximization, it is good if I can be tenderly affected by a poem—any poem! The problem with such crass emotion-stoking is that it precludes the possibility of distinguishing between, for instance, the two stanzas below. Both are by Wilfred Owen: the first was written in 1914 and the second in 1918. 5 I O meet it is and passing sweet To live in peace with others, But sweeter still and far more meet To die in war for brothers. II Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Only if emotions did not involve rational judgment could a person's passionate response to these two stanzas be a matter of indifference. But it seems that, on the contrary, an essential component of understanding them is recognizing that they express irreconcilable cognitive attitudes. The tone of the 1918 stanza is strikingly different from that of the earlier one, even though they share roughly the same topic. The latter stanza is stark and ominous, and filled with vivid detail; the one from 1914 is sweet and vague. Clearly, we might describe the earlier of the two as "sentimental"—the question is, what kind of judgment does [End Page 208] it involve? I suggest that its insipid jingles endorse the view that war is a delightful opportunity to nurture brotherhood and gain... (shrink)

This article investigates the effects of Machiavellianism (MACH) on sales performance. Results indicate that those who possess high Machiavellian traits are more productive but received lower overall managerial ratings. Findings suggest that Machiavellianism may in certain circumstances, be somewhat advantageous for long-term sales performance.

In a matter of mere milliseconds, conversational partners can transform their expectations about the world in a way that accords with another person's perspective. At the same time, in similar situations, the exact opposite also appears to be true. Rather than being at odds, these findings suggest that there are multiple contextual and processing constraints that may guide when and how people consider perspective. These constraints are shaped by a host of factors, including the availability of social and environmental cues, (...) and intrinsic biases and cognitive abilities. To explain how these might be integrated in a new way forward, we turn to an adaptive account of interpersonal interaction. This account draws from basic principles of dynamical systems, principles that we argue are already expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, within a broad landscape of existing research. We then showcase an initial attempt to develop a computational framework to instantiate some of these principles. This framework, consisting of what we argue to be important mechanistic insights rendered by neural network models, is based on a promising and long-standing approach that has yet to take hold in the current domain. We argue that by bridging this gap, new insights into other theoretical accounts, such as the connections between memory and common ground information, might be revealed. (shrink)

“April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire… ” So, begins T.S. Eliot’s iconic poem, “The Wasteland,” challenging the memory of Chaucer’s April from Canterbury Tales, as being a delightful month to go on pilgrimage. Platonic teachings emphasize that you don’t create, you just remember. Might the inverse might also be true, “You don’t remember, you just create.” As the oneirocritic, Robert Bosnak, contends, you do not actually remember your dreams. You remember (...) your memory you recreate the dream in this time. Since the challenges of post-modernism, this is no longer a far-fetched idea. The eminent historian of immigration, Deborah Dash Moore, defines history in this regard, as “a search for a plausible narrative.” “History” is not a record of what happened, but rather, is a record of what we believe happened, or what we want to believe happened. This brings to the fore Foucault’s documenting the relationship of knowledge to power, as well as Freud’s assertion that material which is unacceptable to the ego, is disguised, in order to make them palatable. This places the notion of memory in a different light. There are incidents that occurred fifty years ago that seem as if they occurred five minutes ago. The depth psychologist and champion of the imagination, James Hillman, referred to this process as “soul-making.” Back to T.S. Eliot: when he studied Sanskrit at Harvard, he was certainly aware that the Sanskrit word for memory, smara (from which smrti “that which is remembered,” is derived) is also an epithet for Kama Deva, the Indian Cupid. Hence, the mixing of memory and desire. Perhaps, in this light, the study of history, which is a form of collective memory, is also a form of mass therapy, an effort to process the collective past. Hegel and Marx both believed classical India to be an inferior civilization because it had “no history,” but collections of mythologies. Maybe classical India, however, held an awareness that all memory is myth, a word which in its early Greek form literally translates as “plot.” Jesus declares (in the Gospel story) “Let the dead bury the dead.” As the Jesus narrative exemplifies, however, burying the dead is no easy task. Perhaps our ongoing, ever-morphing narratives, allow us an oblique opportunity to connect with and process our pain. And in this theatre of memory, the goal may not be to accumulate or catalogue what has been spoken (itihasa), but look a good miller, to process the grain into its essence: from what has passed, and is passing, and is to come, into what always is. Perhaps, the pilgrimage of the mind, on its endless perigination of story, is meant to ultimately take us to love, but that may be unspeakable. Keywords: memory, desire, narrative, history, myth, power. (shrink)

This article introduces the Special Issue and its focus on research in language evolution with emphasis on theory as well as computational and robotic modeling. A key theme is based on the growth of evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo. The Special Issue consists of 13 articles organized in two sections: A) Theoretical foundations and B) Modeling and simulation studies. All the papers are interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing work in biological and linguistic foundations for the study of language evolution as well (...) as a variety of computational and robotic modeling efforts shedding light on how language may be developed and may have evolved. (shrink)

People coordinate body postures and gaze patterns during conversation. We review literature showing that (1) action embodies cognition, (2) postural coordination emerges spontaneously when two people converse, (3) gaze patterns influence postural coordination, (4) gaze coordination is a function of common ground knowledge and visual information that conversants believe they share, and (5) gaze coordination is causally related to mutual understanding. We then consider how coordination, generally, can be understood as temporarily coupled neuromuscular components that function as a collective unit (...) known as a coordinative structure in the motor control literature. We speculate that the coordination of gaze and body sway found in conversation may be understood as a cross‐person coordinative structure that embodies the goals of the joint action system. (shrink)

The experience of reading varies markedly between differing texts which may be, for example, primarily informative, musical, or moving.We asked whether these differences would correspond to widespread contrasts in brain activity. Using fMRI, we examined brain activation in expert participants reading passages of prose and poetry. Both prose and poetry activated previously identified reading areas. Their emotional power was related to activity in regions linked to the emotional response to music. 'Literariness'was related to activity in a predominantly left-sided set of (...) regions. Self-selected poetry activated the classical reading areas weakly, the inferior parietal lobes strongly, probably because these passages were known 'by heart'. Experimenter- chosen poetry activated brain regions that have recently been associated with introspection. The experience of reading contrasting texts is associated with differing patterns of brain activation, the emotional response to literature shares ground with the response to music, and regions of the right hemisphere are engaged by poetry. (shrink)

Drawing upon neuroscientific research, Schroeder argues that there is biological evidence in favor of his philosophical conclusions. Specifically, the brain areas that show activity correlated with feelings of pleasure are distinguishable from those that seem to be associated with the consciousness of possible reward; and, in theory, these latter areas “could exist” in an organic being that lacked the capacity for behavior. At this point, the partly theoretical basis of Schroeder’s scientific claims might worry a reader who has doubts about (...) the whole program of neurophilosophy: after all, to what degree can empirical findings help us to understand a complex mental phenomenon such as desire? This question, which begs to be asked, is given an oblique answer in Three Faces of Desire when the reader is assured that what Schroeder is advocating is neither an identity theory, in which desire would be equated with certain neuronal events, nor a reductive project which aims to replace philosophical discussion of desire and other mental phenomena with the language of quantitative measurement. Like many other contemporary philosophers of mind, Schroeder accepts that mental functions are “multiply realizable” : that is, no matter how a process may be realized in the embodied human mind, it still could be instantiated differently, in another kind of living organism. (shrink)

An emerging perspective on human cognition and performance sees it as a kind of self-organizing phenomenon involving dynamic coordination across the body, brain and environment. Measuring this coordination faces a major challenge. Time series obtained from such cognitive, behavioral, and physiological coordination are often complicated in terms of non-stationarity and non-linearity, and in terms of continuous vs. categorical scales. Researchers have proposed several analytical tools and frameworks. One method designed to overcome these complexities is recurrence quantification analysis, developed in the (...) study of non-linear dynamics. It has been applied in various domains, including linguistic data or motion data. However, most previous studies have applied recurrence methods individually to categorical or continuous data. To understand how complex coordination works, an integration of these types of behavior is needed. We aimed to integrate these methods to investigate the relationship between language and motion directly. To do so, we added temporal information to categorical data, and applied joint recurrence analysis methods to visualize and quantify speech-motion coordination coupling during a rap performance. We illustrate how new dynamic methods may capture this coordination in a small case-study design on this expert rap performance. We describe a case study suggesting this kind of dynamic analysis holds promise, and end by discussing the theoretical implications of studying complex performances of this kind as a dynamic, coordinated phenomenon. (shrink)

The tremendous growth in nursing literature about spirituality has garnered proportionately little critique. Part of the reason may be that the broad generalizing claims typical of this literature have not been sufficiently explicated so that their particular implications for a practice discipline could be evaluated. Further, conceptualizations that attempt to encompass all possible views are difficult to challenge outside of a particular location. However, once one assumes a particular location in relation to spirituality, then the question becomes how one resolves (...) the tension between what are essentially theological or philosophical commitments and professional commitments. In this study, we discuss the tension between these perspectives using the idea of a responsible nursing response to spiritual pluralism. We then problematize three claims about spirituality in nursing discourse based upon our location as scholars influenced by Christian theological understandings: (i) the claim that all individuals are spiritual; (ii) the claim that human spirituality can be assessed and evaluated; and (iii) the claim that spirituality is a proper domain of nursing’s concern and intervention. We conclude by suggesting that the widely shared values of social justice, compassion and human dignity may well serve as a grounding for the critique of spiritual discourses in nursing across particularized positions. (shrink)

Seminary students remain unstudied in the research literature despite their eminent role in caring for the wellbeing of congregants. This study aimed to conduct baseline analysis of their family of origin health, psychological health, and physiological heath by utilizing the Biobehavioral Family Model as a conceptual framework for understanding the associations between these constructs. Statistical analysis utilizing structural equation modeling provided support that the BBFM was a sound model for assessing the relationships between these constructs within a seminary sample. Additionally, (...) seminarians were found to have higher rates of anxiety and depression when compared to the general population. Together, findings indicate that clinical care for seminarians may be best if implemented from a global systemic perspective. (shrink)

Rising energy costs, increasing herd sizes, and other structural changes affecting the New York dairy industry may make farmers receptive to new energy production technologies. Anaerobic digestion represents a possible benefit to farmers by reducing odor while producing methane for electricity. However, current digester designs are for herd sizes of 300 or more cows, with significant economies of scale, so smaller operators may have little interest in the technology. Moreover, without a favorable policy environment and reliable grant programs, the initial (...) investments required for digester installation might deter operators. One solution to these issues may be community digesters, which are centrally located facilities that accept manure from multiple farms. Data from a survey of New York dairy farmers were used to assess farmers’ interest in community digesters. In general, interest was associated with power generation outcomes and reservations about organic farming practices; advocates might encourage their use among smaller conventional farm operators looking for new sources of profit and diversification. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

The purpose of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue that we can still learn from his polemical conception of philosophy.

This chapter explores to what extent some core ideas of predictive processing can be applied to the phenomenology of time consciousness. The focus is on the experienced continuity of consciously perceived, temporally extended phenomena (such as enduring processes and successions of events). The main claim is that the hierarchy of representations posited by hierarchical predictive processing models can contribute to a deepened understanding of the continuity of consciousness. Computationally, such models show that sequences of events can be represented as states (...) of a hierarchy of dynamical systems. Phenomenologically, they suggest a more fine-grained analysis of the perceptual contents of the specious present, in terms of a hierarchy of temporal wholes. Visual perception of static scenes not only contains perceived objects and regions but also spatial gist; similarly, auditory perception of temporal sequences, such as melodies, involves not only perceiving individual notes but also slightly more abstract features (temporal gist), which have longer temporal durations (e.g., emotional character or rhythm). Further investigations into these elusive contents of conscious perception may be facilitated by findings regarding its neural underpinnings. Predictive processing models suggest that sensorimotor areas may influence these contents. (shrink)

This chapter analyses Soren Kierkegaard's thoughts and opinions about ancient Greek philosophy. It examines the significance of Kierkegaard's references to Greek philosophy in his writings and suggests that his use of classical thought was part of his effort to define his own intellectual project. The chapter investigates how Greek philosophy influenced Kierkegaard's works and views about ethics, existential thought, Socratic faith, love, and virtue, and also considers what Kierkegaard believed was the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy.

In entertaining stories of teachers, children, parents and principals Ackerly shows leadership in action and defines the elements of educational cultures, how culture is the delivery system for education, and how individuals can be leaders and create the culture of whatever group they are in.

The Philosophy of Matter is a journey in thinking through the material fate of the earth itself; its surfaces and undercurrrents, ecologies, environments and irreparable cracks. With figures such as Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres as philosophical guides and writings on New Materialism, Posthumanism and Affect Theory as intellectual context, Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy: subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living. This rethink is (...) a work of imagination and meditation in order to conceive of "another earth for another people". It is a homage to courageous thinking that dares to question the religious, capitalist and humanist realities of the day. A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope. (shrink)

In the first volume to place Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy in the context of contemporary fascism, international contributors uncover and reflect upon the anti- and non-fascist ethics situated in their framework and that of the scholarship that followed after. The 'new philosophy' that Deleuze and Guattari propose to us is engaged and situated and it asks us to map urgent issues, not by opposing ourselves to it, but by mapping how it is part of the everyday, and of ourselves. The (...) global rise of fascism today demands a rigid and careful analysis. The concepts and themes that Deleuze (and Guattari) handed to us in their extensive oeuvre can be of immense help in capturing its micropolitics and macropolitics. All of the contributions in this volume have a keen eye on the practices of fascism today, meaning that they all show us, very much in line with Deleuze's thinking, how fascism works. The book is organized in three parts. The first part (21st century fascisms) focuses on the global threats technologies and algorithmic realities; the second part (situated fascisms) holds analyses of fascisms at work in different parts of the contemporary world; the third part deals with patriarchal fascism and offers concrete case-studies of sexualized and genderized modes of oppression. (shrink)

The Biopolitics of Punishment marks a new chapter in the long-standing debate between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The essays collected in this volume chart the undertheorized dialogue between the two philosophers on questions of life, death, punishment, power, and resistance.

Learn the tips and tricks used by a top photographer in the digital photography industry in Rick Sammon's Top Digital Photography Secrets. Filled with beautiful photographs and the techniques Rick Sammon used to capture them, this book offers you motivation to capture stunning photographs and the tools and tricks you need to capture them. With more than 100 techniques for use behind the camera, this book will improve the camera skills of both amateur and experienced photographers. Additionally, this (...) book includes a chapter on post-production secrets, and a Rick Sammon DVD Guide lighting, camera, and digital photography basics. In this 1-hour DVD, Rick shows you how to get great photos using a variety of lighting sources, camera-specific techniques, and basic rules of photography. (shrink)

Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) and Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013) are fantasy films that use the device of practical immortality in order to raise important philosophical questions about what constitutes a good life and to explore the nature of romantic love. Groundhog Day provides fairly conventional answers about how to live a good life by focusing on issues of spiritual redemption, selflessness, and developing one’s human potential. In contrast, Lovers provides a dark portrayal of a civilization on (...) the brink of extinction but offers a glimmer of hope for the future. The lifestyle and values of married vampires Adam and Eve represent an alternative vision of the core values needed to sustain a better world: greater reliance on human imagination, maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world, creating and appreciating works of art and living in harmony with the natural world. Both films also offer a perspective on the importance of romantic love in living a good life. Although these perspectives often diverge from one another, they do overlap in some interesting ways. The style of film criticism used in this paper is inspired by the film philosophy of Stanley Cavell. (shrink)