In this book, as feminist, Marxist, postcolonial, and queer scholars, we argue that social reproduction is foundational to comprehending urbanization and urban transformations by contributing to the feminist project of writing social reproduction and everyday life into urban theory." Social reproduction is, of course, not just an analytical framing but also an organising call for feminist scholars and our contention is that if we want an urban theory for our time, it needs to be feminist. Feminism is not simply a (...) 'discipline,' 'theory', or 'ideology', but a worldview, a lived praxis that provides a platform for engaged analysis. The book's origins lie in our belief in the necessity of feminist urban knowledge production, a belief further endorsed by our prior critical engagement with the analytical framework of planetary urbanization and our collective ruminations during and post this engagement on the nature of urban theory (Reddy 2018; Ruddick et al. 2018). Not least the considerable response to the theme issue of Society and Space (Peake et al. 2018) showed us that there was an audience desirous of troubling the hegemony of urban theory. Moreover, our approach of working as a team across hierarchies of junior and senior scholars, generations, genders, sexualities, institutions, and disciplines-a praxis we refer to as "the intergenerational social reproductive labor of knowledge production" (Peake et al. 2018, p. 377)-had been fruitful and positive and we wanted it to continue. It was as much a pedagogical experience of reading and writing together, and sharing meals, as it was an exploration of our places within the academy and an intellectual foray into urban theory. And while Roza Tchoukaleyska left for Newfoundland, Elsa Koleth, a new post-doctoral fellow at the City Institute at York University, joined us. (shrink)

For thousands of years voyagers of inner space - spiritual seekers, shamans and mystics - have returned from their inner travels reporting another level of reality that is more real than the one we inhabit in 'waking life'. Others have claimed that under the influence of mysterious substances, known as entheogens, the everyday human mind can be given glimpses of this multidimensional realm of existence that is usually hidden from us by our five basic senses. Using information from the leading (...) edges of modern science, this book presents a startling new hypothesis that these 'inner worlds' are as real, or possibly even more real, than the 'reality' we experience in waking life. The Infinite Mindfield uses as its starting point the widespread historical belief that the pineal gland - the 'third eye' - is a profoundly important organ. It links this to the various myths, originating in ancient Sumer, that 'dragons' or 'serpents' have guided humanity and presents evidence that these beings are symbolic of DNA. It is now known that DNA gives off a form of light known as bioluminescence. This information-rich 'inner light' needs an organ of sight to process it - that organ is the pineal gland. It is through this small organ that we "perceive" the inner worlds of lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, hypnagogic imagery, near-death experiences, astral travel and the kundalini experience. The book ends with the mind-blowing proposition that all living beings are one unitary consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. This book is genuinely revolutionary and will cause both interest and controversy in equal measure. Its science is watertight as is its logic. Be ready to be stunned - you will never have read anything like this before. (shrink)

The importance of providing a positive employee experience has gotten a lot of attention in recent years. However, peak experience, as a highly positive experience, has been studied and applied in the field of human resource management only to a very limited extent. We still know little about how employees’ peak experience happens and what the impact will be. Therefore, based on the affective events theory and the two-factor theory, our research conducted an in-depth (...) exploration of EPE through three studies. In Study 1, we constructed a theoretical model centered on EPE based on and interview data. In Study 2, we developed and validated a scale for measuring triggers of EPE, which is a four-dimensional scale with 16 items. In Study 3, we adopted structural equation modeling to examine the relationship between EPE and its triggers as well as its impacts using data from 424 valid questionnaires. Our research shows that elevation, insight, pride, and connection can trigger EPE; employees are more likely to have proactive behavior and word-of-mouth referrals after they have PE; and the more job-relevant the triggers are, the stronger the association between PE and PB is. Our research provides a reliable and effective measurement tool for scholars to study EPE, broadens the findings of PE and EX, and points out feasible measures for organizations to create EPE. (shrink)

Management and performance are interdisciplinary, spanning diverse fields such as business, industry, government, sports, arts, health and education. In four studies, world-class performers in a variety of fields, for example, management, sports and classical music, have been found to display higher mind–brain development than matched average-performing control groups, including more frequent peak experiences. In this article, we will use a selection of clearly articulated peak experiences reported by these world-class performers to illustrate the subjective or inner nature of (...) optimal performance. Such performance seems to be characterized by inner calmness and happiness amidst dynamic activity, maximum wakefulness, effortlessness and ease of functioning, and a sense of perfection. In order to provide an adequate theoretical framework for understanding peak experiences, we combine Western developmental psychology with the advanced growth range of higher consciousness, as outlined in the ancient Vedic knowledge of India. (shrink)

This study compared professional and amateur classical musicians matched for age, gender, and education on reaction times during the Stroop color-word test, brainwaves during an auditory ERP task and during paired reaction-time tasks, responses on the Gibbs Sociomoral Reflection questionnaire, and self-reported frequencies of peak experiences. Professional musicians were characterized by: lower color-word interference effects , faster categorization of rare expected stimuli , and a trend for faster processing of rare unexpected stimuli , higher scores on the Sociomoral Reflection (...) questionnaire, and more frequent peak experiences during rest, tasks, and sleep. Both groups had high values on the Brain Integration Scale. These findings are interpreted in light of a Unified Theory of Performance, which posits that effectiveness in any area is influenced by one’s level of mind-brain development—emotional, cognitive, moral, ego and cortical development—with higher mind-brain development supporting greater effectiveness in any domain. (shrink)

Among the most exciting experiences in our lives are the ones that arouse a magical rapture within us. This may happen when we become engrossed in a musical piece, when dancing becomes ecstatic, when we are passionately in love (or making love) or when we experience an intuitive perception or an altered state of consciousness, get caught by the spell of the infinity of the Universe or the splendor of nature; it can also happen during telepathic contact or in (...) lucid dreams. What I shall try to outline here is a systematic world-view that gives a basis for the interpretation of the special character of those magical actions. A model for the structure of the Universe is shown in which different levels of existence are sequentially telescoped into each other. This model suggests that the different levels of the material and the inner worlds can be in direct connection, thus offering us a new perspective for participating in the process of Creation. (shrink)

In early visits to Lothlorien—which is a loosely Pagan community of environmentalists in Indiana—I was confounded by attempts to categorize either the place or the people. As one of the founders said, “I tend to run from labels so I don't know what I am. It's safer that way.” In this paper I explore four members’ narratives about the emotional high points in their lives, where they often cross the usual boundaries of self and other. At the same time the (...) subjectivity at the core of these experiences is something that is felt and that cannot be dismissed as a discursive construct. Through these narratives I attempt to understand selfhood as a process—experientially inescapable but essentially in flux. I see a strong case for anthropologists moving beyond an overly neat, overly dichotomized view of “Western” and “non-Western” senses of self. (shrink)

Blending existential and occult thought, a highly acclaimed philosopher explains how we can find profound meaning and joy by inducing states of extreme awareness and emotion Throughout history there have been references and examples in literature, art and philosophy of an increased awareness of life while under the influence of extreme emotions. These have become known as Peak Experiences. Soon after Colin Wilson became aware of this phenomenon in the 1960s, he wondered about its history and how its power (...) could be harnessed, and began a forty-year investigation. In Super Consciousness, we see how such luminaries as Yeats, Blake, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Robert Graves were affected by Peak Experiences, and how it has long been noted that we are least insightful when we are at our lowest ebb. By looking in detail through the different areas where this phenomenon has occurred—and by offering anecdotes and examples of how many people in history (as well as himself) were affected—Wilson reveals a pattern of insight with emotions. He ends the book with an instructional section on achieving power consciousness for yourself. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the philosophical foundations of Colin Wilson’s New Existentialism. I will show how Wilson’s writings promoted a phenomenological strategy for understanding states of ecstatic affirmation within so-called ‘peak experiences’. Wilson subsequently attempted to use the life affirming insights bestowed by peak states to establish an ontological ground for values to serve as a foundation for his New Existentialism. Because of its psychological focus however, I argue that Wilson’s New Existentialism contains an ambivalent framework for establishing (...) ontological categories, which leads his thought into theoretical difficulties. More precisely, Wilson’s strategy runs into problems in coherently integrating its explicitly psychological interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality within a broader, and philosophically coherent, phenomenological framework. Wilson’s psychological reading of Husserl’s transcendental reduction, for example, manifests tensions in how it reconciles the empirical basis of acts of transcendence with an essentialist conception of the self as a transcendental ego. The above tensions, I argue, ultimately render the New Existentialism susceptible to criticism from a Husserlian-transcendental perspective. After outlining a Husserlian critique of Wilson’s position, I end the paper by suggesting how some of the central insights of the New Existentialism might help to bridge the gap that persists between pure phenomenological description and metaphysics. (shrink)

Ramachandran and Hirstein offer a number of interesting ideas about aesthetic preference. In this commentary I shall focus mainly on their ideas concerning peak shift and prototypicality. The authors give the example of a rat rewarded for responding to a rectangle and not rewarded for responding to a longer triangle . They argue that the rat will respond even more to a more elongated rectangle. In fact, two phenomena are involved here. Peak shift refers to the fact that (...) the rat responds more to a supernormal stimulus . Behavioural contrast refers to the fact that the rat responds more to the S++ than it did to the S+ before discrimination training took place. It does not detract from the authors’ main point, but we would be unlikely to find peak shift in the hypothetical experiment described. Peak shift only occurs when the S+ and the S- are very similar to each other . Let us say that we train a rat to respond to a 1000 Hz tone and not to respond to a 500 Hz tone. No peak shift will be found. We will find peak shift if the S+ is 1000 Hz and the S- is 950 Hz. The conventional explanation for this is that the animal shows generalization. A rat trained simply to respond to a 1000 Hz tone will also respond a bit less to one of 990 Hz, even less to one of 980 Hz, and so on. In discrimination training, our rat would have a strong tendency to respond to a 1000 Hz tone but, because of generalization from the 950 Hz tone, it would also have some tendency not to respond to it. If we subtract the inhibitory gradient around 950 Hz from the excitatory gradient around 1000 Hz, we will end up with maximal responding around, say, 1010 Hz . Intuitively, we would expect the rat to respond more to the S++ but also less vigorously than it had to the S+ before discrimination training was begun. This is because the inhibitory gradient has been subtracted from the excitatory gradient. Surprisingly, we find behavioural contrast; the rat responds more vigorously to the S++ than it had to the S+. Grossberg argues that this is because there is a tendency to keep amount of activation on a layer of cortex constant. (shrink)

Did you ever wonder why you are sometimes too tired to watch a film, and would rather watch some TV show? And then, you might end up watching five or six hours and binge watch an entire season, and yet feel too tired to commit yourself to a single 2-hour film piece. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I will try to investigate whether there are any ontological differences in the form of a film or a television show. (...) Second, I will try to connect the newest neurological and psychological research regarding binging and attention span and see how seriality influences our brains. I will use the recent neurological findings to try to answer the question of why it seems easier to watch the same number of episodes rather than a single movie. Third, I will use David Lynch's and Mark Frost's third season of Twin Peaks as an example illustrating the blurry borders between a television show and a film, while contrasting it to the binge-watching phenomenon. (shrink)

The peak-end rule predicts that retrospective evaluations of affective events heavily depend on their most intense and last moment and imply duration neglect. It was originally proposed for negativ...

This article reviews existing empirical research on the peak-and-end rule. This rule states that people's global evaluations of past affective episodes can be well predicted by the affect experienced during just two moments: the moment of peak affect intensity and the ending. One consequence of the peak-and-end rule is that the duration of affective episodes is largely neglected. Evidence supporting the peak-and-end rule is robust, but qualified. New directions for future work in this emerging area of (...) study are outlined. In particular, the personal meanings associated with specific moments and with specific emotions should be assessed. It is hypothesised that moments rich with self-relevant information will dominate people's global evaluations of past affective episodes. The article concludes with a discussion of ways to measure and optimise objective happiness. (shrink)

Wilderness experiences were celebrated by the Great Romantics, and figures such as Wordsworth and Thoreau emphasized the need to seek direct contact with the non-human world. Later deep ecologists accentuated the way in which wilderness experiences can spark moral epiphanies and lead to action on behalf of the natural environment. In recent years, psychological studies have manifested how the observations made by the Romantics, nature authors and deep ecologists apply to laypeople: contact with the wilderness does tend to lead to (...) epistemological, ontological and normative ‘epiphanies.’ This paper analyses four different umbrella terms with which to make sense of the content of wilderness experiences. First, mystical experience, peak experience and elevation are explored. Although all three offer promising models for explicating the nature of wilderness experiences, they also run the risk of reducing those experiences to sheer experiential hedonism.... (shrink)

Epiphanies is a philosophical exploration of epiphanies, peak experiences, 'wow moments', or ecstasies as they are sometimes called. What are epiphanies, and why do so many people so frequently experience them? Are they just transient phenomena in our brains, or are they the revelations of objective value that they very often seem to be? What do they tell us about the world, and about ourselves? How, if at all, do epiphanies fit in with our moral systems and our (...) theories of how to live? And how do epiphanic experiences fit in with the rest of our lives? These are Sophie Grace Chappell's questions in this ground-breaking new study of an area of inquiry that has always been right under our noses, but remains surprisingly under-explored in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

To better reflect the precise clustering results of the data samples with different shapes and densities for affinity propagation clustering algorithm, an improved integrated clustering learning strategy based on three-stage affinity propagation algorithm with density peak optimization theory was proposed in this paper. DPKT-AP combined the ideology of integrated clustering with the AP algorithm, by introducing the density peak theory and k-means algorithm to carry on the three-stage clustering process. In the first stage, the clustering center point was (...) selected by density peak clustering. Because the clustering center was surrounded by the nearest neighbor point with lower local density and had a relatively large distance from other points with higher density, it could help the k-means algorithm in the second stage avoiding the local optimal situation. In the second stage, the k-means algorithm was used to cluster the data samples to form several relatively small spherical subgroups, and each of subgroups had a local density maximum point, which is called the center point of the subgroup. In the third stage, DPKT-AP used the AP algorithm to merge and cluster the spherical subgroups. Experiments on UCI data sets and synthetic data sets showed that DPKT-AP improved the clustering performance and accuracy for the algorithm. (shrink)

This article discusses the results of a practice-as-research intensive project carried out in August 2019, which in turn applies the doctoral research of scholar-practitioners Jorge Crecis and Lucía Piquero. The project delved into ideas about embodied cognition to support a practice-led theoretical understanding of the experience of emotional import and peak performative states in theatre dance performances. A series of creative sessions were recorded and analyzed, and then presented to an audience at the end of each day. The (...) experience of the audience is also collected through questionnaires and open discussion, to develop a multi-perspectival understanding of the experience of emotion in performance. The main pursuit of the project was to understand and develop tools in relation to the dancers’ awareness of their own sensorimotor patterns, in relation to peak performance and understandings of emotion in performance. The article develops a conceptual framework through the theoretical notions of embodied cognition, enactive perception, and sensorimotor patterns. This allows for analysis based on the experiences of the participants, and for an integration of views which then develops into a discussion of the dancers’ awareness of their sensorimotor patterns. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach was a formidable figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy of science. Educated in Germany, he was influential in establishing the so-called Berlin Circle, a companion group to the Vienna Circle founded by his colleague Rudolph Carnap. The movement they founded—usually known as "logical positivism," although it is more precisely known as "scientific philosophy" or "logical empiricism"—was a form of epistemology that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths. Reichenbach, like other young philosophers of the exact sciences of his generation, was deeply impressed (...) by the far-reaching changes in physics brought about by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Reichenbach responded to scientific advances by doing fundamental work in space-time theories, in quantum mechanics, in statistical mechanics, and in the development of probability theory—making him the most important philosopher of physics in the first generation of logical empiricism. Forced from his academic position by the Nazi race laws in 1933, Reichenbach wrote _Experience and Prediction_ at the University of Istanbul, where had had fled, expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. In the two decades following World War II, during the explosion of scientific advances in North America, logical positivism was the reigning theory of the philosophy of science and Reichenbach was at the peak of his career. But, inevitably, support for logical positivism began to wane as it became obvious that the justification of scientific theories could not be entirely resolved by relying on strictly formal, technical processes. The growth of the discipline of the history of philosophy of science, which has created an audience of scholars eager for seminal classics in scientific philosophy, and the evidence supporting a historicist paradigm within logical positivism are two important reasons to make _Experience and Prediction_ available once again. "Hans Reichenbach's_ Experience and Prediction_ is one of the most important books in twentieth-century philosophy of science. Its author was, along with Rudolf Carnap, one of the two principal ambassadors to North America of the exciting new European philosophical movement known here under the names 'Logical Positivism' and 'Scientific Philosophy.' In 1938, when the book was published, Reichenbach was an exile from his native Germany, teaching in Istanbul, Turkey, and about to emigrate to the United States to take up a prestigious position at UCLA. He wrote_ Experience and Prediction_ in English as his calling card to his new American colleagues. More than any other single book,_ Experience and Prediction_ set the agenda for the new discipline of the philosophy of science that was to emerge after World War II as, perhaps, the most exciting new area in North American philosophy. Many of the problems still at the focus of discussion were given their classic formulations in this book. Long out of print,_ Experience and Prediction_ appears here in a new edition accompanied by a splendid historical introduction by the noted young philosopher and historian of the philosophy of science, Alan Richardson. A jewel of a book may once again be appreciated in its proper setting." —Don A. Howard, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

Community detection is one of the key research directions in complex network studies. We propose a community detection algorithm based on a density peak clustering model and multiple attribute decision-making strategy, TOPSIS. First, the two-dimensional dataset, which is transformed from the network by taking the density and distance as the attributes of nodes, is clustered by using the DBSCAN algorithm, and outliers are determined and taken as the key nodes. Then, the initial community frameworks are formed and expanded by (...) adding the most similar node of the community as its new member. In this process, we use TOPSIS to cohesively integrate four kinds of similarities to calculate an index, and use it as a criterion to select the most similar node. Then, we allocate the nonkey nodes that are not covered in the expanded communities. Finally, some communities are merged to obtain a stable partition in two ways. This paper designs some experiments for the algorithm on some real networks and some synthetic networks, and the proposed method is compared with some popular algorithms. The experimental results testify for the effectiveness and show the accuracy of our algorithm. (shrink)

"The Inner Dimension" examines the philosophical significance of a remarkable family of experiences central to Eastern philosophical and meditation traditions, and reported by creative geniuses in the West from Plato through Einstein. Empirical research on ordinary people practicing traditional Eastern meditation techniques now indicates that these otherwise rarely encountered experiences actually reflect widely accessible universal potentials of ordinary human awareness. The "Inner Dimension" responds to this research by exploring the significance of these experiences for a wide range of philosophical issues (...) - self, knowledge, mind-and-matter, creativity, values, and human potential - as articulated by major Western philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Wittgenstein. Its analyses and approach throughout are straightforwardly empirical and non-metaphysical. Its implications, however, are revolutionary. (shrink)

Having functional expected emotions regarding one’s future life as a teacher is important for student teachers to maintain their motivation to choose a career as a teacher. However, humans show several biases when judging their emotional experiences. One famous bias is the so-called peak-end effect which describes the phenomenon that overall affective judgments do not reflect the average of the involved emotional experiences but the most intense and the most recent of the involved emotional experiences. Regarding student teachers’ expected (...) positive emotions, such a bias would be functional since their motivation to become a teacher is enhanced. However, regarding student teachers’ expected negative emotions, such a bias would be dysfunctional since their motivation to become a teacher would be decreased. The aim of the present preregistered study was to examine whether student teachers’ expected future teaching-related emotions show a peak-end effect. Student teachers viewed 14 common events that could part of a typical everyday routine of a teacher and rated their expected emotional pleasure and discomfort for each of the events. Afterward, they were asked to rate their overall expected emotional pleasure and discomfort when looking at their future professional life as a whole. Results showed that expected pleasure was much larger than expected discomfort regarding both overall, peak, and average ratings. No peak-end effect was observed for overall expected discomfort which reflected the average expected discomfort across events. By contrast, overall expected pleasure was biased toward expected peak pleasure experiences. These findings indicate that student teachers judge their expected overall affect in a functional way: realistically when dealing with negative emotions but through rose-colored glasses when dealing with positive emotions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe retrospective evaluation of an event tends to be based on how the experience felt during the most intense moment and the last moment. Two experiments tested whether this so-called peak-end effect influences how primary school students are affected by peer assessments. In both experiments, children assessed two classmates on their behaviour in school and then received two manipulated assessments. In Experiment 1, one assessment consisted of four negative ratings and the other of four negative ratings with an (...) extra moderately negative rating added to the end. In Experiment 2, one assessment consisted of four positive ratings, and the other added an extra moderately positive rating to the end. Consistent with the peak-end effect, the extended assessment in Experiment 1 and the short assessment in Experiment 2 were remembered as more pleasant and less difficult to deal with, which shaped children’s peer assessment preferences and prospective choices of which assessm... (shrink)

Music impacting on speech processing is vividly evidenced in most reports involving professional musicians, while the question of whether the facilitative effects of music are limited to experts or may extend to amateurs remains to be resolved. Previous research has suggested that analogous to language experience, musicianship also modulates lexical tone perception but the influence of amateur musical experience in adulthood is poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about how acoustic information and phonological information of lexical tones are (...) processed by amateur musicians. This study aimed to provide neural evidence of cortical plasticity by examining categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese adults with amateur musical experience relative to the non-musician counterparts. Fifteen adult Chinese amateur musicians and an equal number of non-musicians participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. Their mismatch negativities (MMNs) to lexical tones from Mandarin Tone 2–Tone 4 continuum and non-speech tone analogs were measured. It was hypothesized that amateur musicians would exhibit different MMNs to their non-musician counterparts in processing two aspects of information in lexical tones. Results showed that the MMN mean amplitude evoked by within-category deviants was significantly larger for amateur musicians than non-musicians regardless of speech or non-speech condition. This implies the strengthened processing of acoustic information by adult amateur musicians without the need of focused attention, as the detection of subtle acoustic nuances of pitch was measurably improved. In addition, the MMN peak latency elicited by across-category deviants was significantly shorter than that by within-category deviants for both groups, indicative of the earlier processing of phonological information than acoustic information of lexical tones at the pre-attentive stage. The results mentioned above suggest that cortical plasticity can still be induced in adulthood, hence non-musicians should be defined more strictly than before. Besides, the current study enlarges the population demonstrating the beneficial effects of musical experience on perceptual and cognitive functions, namely, the effects of enhanced speech processing from music are not confined to a small group of experts but extend to a large population of amateurs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Roland Littlewood (bio)Keywordsreligion, innovation, psychosis, culture, diagnosisThis is an ambiguous though clinically valuable paper. Jackson and Fulford suggest that the distinction between their two categories, spiritual experience and mental illness, is conventional, yet their emphasis on issues of correct practice from the medical perspective threatens to return both into distinct ontological categories, albeit with a shared phenomenology. I do not understand why (...) any single instance must either be pathological or spiritual, except through clinical and clerical demands for clarity and order.Mental illness and spirituality are not two distinct natural phenomena “out there,” existing independently of human volition. They are both social—cultural if one prefers—ascriptions. Neither has some substantive core whose elucidation through psychophysiological, phenomenological or ultrahuman procedures could enable us to define its essence and thus differentiate it from the other. Neither experience is a self-evident datum. Both are easily susceptible to critiques, either that they do not exist as natural categories, or else that they should more properly be described as something else—as the workings out of social exclusion in the case of mental illness, as cosmological understanding or mass hysteria in the case of spirituality. Neither, I would suggest, can be specified by physiology or ultrahuman interventions respectively, but rather through shared cultural meanings which in turn are experientially validated by the biosocial phenomena themselves. It is not that we need to exclude the possibility of concurrences in brain states, but rather that these cannot specify the meaning and experience of the phenomena.Note that I emphasize “experienced through cultural meanings,” not “influenced by” culture: I do not accept that psychophysiology can have any existence independent of the social world through which it occurs. The psychiatrists’ form/content distinction, an optimistic proxy for nature/culture (Birnbaum 1923; Schneider 1928) may remain a convenient heuristic device, but it has a curious, perhaps doubtful, intellectual history (see the Endnote following).Cross-cultural comparisons argue that local idioms which we might approximate to current Western notions of mental illness and religion are quite varied. And the validity of particular instances of both “spiritual experience” and “psychopathology” may be contested in any society. While the social consequences of a pattern may determine the approbation accorded to a pattern such that patterns recalling chronic schizophrenia [End Page 67] are regarded as a deficit (and here I agree with James [1902] and the two authors), they are not necessarily aligned to categories of physical illness, but may be seen as a spiritual failure or obstruction. Unsuccessful or inappropriate shamanic practice among Amerindian and circumpolar societies is the classic instance (Eliade 1964). Within Western societies, demonic possession may be read by doctors as mental illness. (It is just as much a “spiritual experience”: why introduce the religionist’s distinctions between different types of ultrahuman agency? Compare Maslow on “peak” experiences. The terms “spiritual” and “religious world view” are naturalized idioms of late Christianity rather than cross-culturally valid terms [Tambiah 1990].) But also the converse (Koch 1972). And this depends on our professional interests. Clearly, psychiatrists prefer to perceive the world in a psychopathological idiom, while religious enthusiasts and clergy may favor divine intercession or demonic possession; and a Christian psychiatry not surprisingly may claim to act as arbiter (Sims 1991). Any specific instance may be perceived differently by individuals in accordance with their interests and affiliations.The paper’s terminology—“spiritual psychotic experience,” “genuine spiritual experience”—is confusing in that it does imply realist, not conventional claims (cf. Endnote 1, Jackson and Fulford). It is not necessary. A less laden idiom—such as “statistically or normatively unusual brain states and their experiential correlates” (Littlewood 1993, 257)—may be just too unwieldy for repetition, but I would propose that at this level of detail we need rather four categories depending or not on concordance with (i) something close to psychiatry’s recognition of a major mental illness, and (ii) something like an anthropological notion of religious or spiritual experience (cf. Littlewood 1991):[Table 1]PsychosisReligious ExperiencePresentAbsentPresentABAbsentCDSo Jackson and Fulford’s three cases fall into group “A” if the PSE was scored... (shrink)

We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art has to ideally have three components. The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that they do; What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals and proposes a list of ‘Eight laws of artistic experience’ (...) -- a set of heuristics that artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate the visual areas of the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square, it will respond even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the prototype. We suggest that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of art. Example: An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively accentuates those feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure; a Boucher, a Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in ‘colour space’ rather than form space. Even abstract art may employ ‘supernormal’ stimuli to excite form areas in the brain more strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle. The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to extract correlations in different domains , and discovering and linking multiple features into unitary clusters -- objects -- is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when object-like entities are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are sent back to earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to look for additional evidence for the object . Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules. This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and sketches, the savant syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others, constituting a total of ‘eight laws of aesthetic experience’. (shrink)

The spread of COVID-19 in Italy resulted in the implementation of a lockdown that obligated the first time the general populace to remain at home for approximately two months. This lockdown interrupted citizens’ professional and educational activities, in addition to closing shops, offices and educational institutions. The resulting changes in people’s daily routines and activities induced unexpected changes in their thoughts, feelings and attitudes, in addition to altering their life perceptions. Consequently, the present study explores how young adults perceived their (...) lives under lockdown during the final week of March 2020, when the reported number of daily coronavirus infections reached its peak in Italy. The research was carried out among 293 university students (234 women and 59 men) with an average age of 20.85 years old (SD = 3.23). The researchers asked participants to describe the emotions, thoughts and experiences that characterized their time under lockdown. The study analyzed specific narratives related to time and space using grounded theory methodology, which was applied using Atlas 8 software, leading to the creation of 68 codes. The study organized these codes into three specific categories: confined in the present, confined in the past, and striving toward one’s goals. Finally, the researchers also created a core-category labeled “continuity of being.” The results showed that the closure of open spaces caused a division in participants’ perceptions of time continuity, with many viewing themselves as feeling fragmented and as living the present in a static and fixed way. Additionally, participants also saw the present as being discontinuous from the past, while, simultaneously, projecting toward the future and the changes it might bring. Finally, this study examined further implications surrounding individual projecting among young people in greater depth. (shrink)

The paper seeks to argue that the feeling of being part of a larger whole, considered to be a major feature of spiritual experience in some traditions, amounts to a change in the way the self is pre-reflectively understood. Further, the paper argues that some recent developments in the study of cognition support the case for such a revision in self-conception, and this can be used to build up a secular understanding of spirituality. The paper proceeds by making use (...) of Abraham Maslow's account of peak experience along with some accounts of both ancient and contemporary forms of spirituality to argue that the feeling of being part of a larger whole amounts to a significant shift from the separative self-conception implicit in everyday behavior. Subsequently, it is argued that some extant theories on cognition point at the illusory nature of separative self-conception. (shrink)

The rapidly increasing number of cases of Zika virus and limited understanding of its congenital sequelae (e.g., microcephaly) led to stories of fear and uncertainty across social media and other mass communication networks. In this study, we used techniques generic to netnography, a form of ethnography, using Internet‐based computer‐mediated communications as a source of data to understand the experience and perceptions of families with infants diagnosed with Zika‐related microcephaly. We screened 27 YouTube™ videos published online between October 2015 and (...) July 2016, during which the Zika epidemic started, peaked, and declined. We identified three themes: (a) experiencing the news of a diagnosis of Zika‐associated microcephaly; (b) experiencing feelings and expectations of the ‘imperfect’ child; and (c) seeking to understand microcephaly to care for the child. We found that families experienced distressing feelings of shock, sadness, hopelessness, and pain, while dealing with emerging and sometimes conflicting information being transmitted by news outlets, uncertainty about the child's health, and healthcare providers’ lack of clarity to guide the family members. The ‘unknown’ factor of ZIKA was an additional stressful factor in the experience of the families. (shrink)

Small family businesses have generally been shown to exhibit significant concern for social responsibility, especially at the community level. Despite the reported heterogeneity of family firms in their preferences for and participation in social responsibility, the drivers of such differences are not agreed upon in the literature. We draw from enlightened self-interest and social capital theories by exploring their complementary and competing implications for the effect of duration and community satisfaction on participation in community-oriented social responsibility. Additionally, drawing on the (...) association between gender and self-construal and evidence that gender shapes helping and giving behaviors, we assess the moderating role of the gender of the firm manager in these relationships. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 279 family businesses and find support that gender moderates the relationship between community duration and satisfaction and measures of CSR. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Glimpse Beauty and Awaken Meaning:Scholarly Learning as Aesthetic ExperienceAnna NeumannIntroductionIn this article, I portray university professors' scholarly learning as a location for aesthetic experience. To do so, I explore the intellectual and creative narratives of individuals who, with tenure newly in hand, position themselves to engage with beauty and to pursue its meanings, expressed distinctively through the subjects, creations, and questions of scholarly disciplines and professional fields. (...) In interviews, scholars — professors with tenure in major research universities — described the sparks of beauty they experience in their scholarly work. For many, such moments of beauty, and often of deep engrossment, had recurred through life. Yet these were truly "moments": brief, bounded, hard to evoke, and by no means continuous, assured, or predictable. They were hard won. Many of the professors I interviewed referred to persistent struggles to craft scholarly agendas, communities, collaborations, and work lives that might invite the aesthetic glimmer, however brief. Many drew for insight and inspiration on childhood memories of beauty to guide their intellectual and creative pursuits in adulthood. They hitched present-day desires for moments of passionate thought to vivid memories — what they saw and felt in their earliest, often out-of-school encounters with an aesthetic they would pursue through their lives. Even now, in tenured university professorships, they relied on these deeply imprinted images to light their intellectual ways.1I also claim that scholars may experience aesthetic moments as deeply emotional and personal. This is not something I inferred; this is something the professors I interviewed said to me — directly, repeatedly, with emotion. [End Page 68] Yet I am something of an organizational realist, and the social sciences strand of my conscience impels me to pepper these scholars' accounts of recurrent beauty in their lives with less than beauteous recognition of a hard academic fact: that within the normative structure of academe, the personal (and emotional) meanings infusing professors' scholarly learning get short shrift. Public academic talk about the personal meanings of one's work, or the emotional content of study, is largely taboo. The press for institutional survival, social legitimacy, and financial and political gain typically call for presentations of scholarship as objective and outwardly directed, negating the personal origins of research in researchers' lives.2 Scholarly learning as an aesthetic awareness — as moments of fused insight and emotion, as dazzling sensations of coming to know, as frustration over ideas that unravel or that will not gel — is often lost in translation between the personal life from which it derives and the modern profession, career, and organization within which it is housed and enacted.I worry that this lost awareness of scholarly learning, occurring in large scale, forces questions about its social worth. Yet to persist, scholarly learning requires substantial social legitimation, appreciation, and support. I suggest further that this state of affairs calls for response: that to garner societal understanding for and support of scholarly learning as a setting for pursuits of beauty and as the communal mission of higher education, we must learn to talk out loud, and in educative ways, about it. However, we, as scholars and learners ourselves, must understand, first, what it is that we are defending and then represent its worth to publics who may learn to care about it. We must first define among ourselves what scholarly learning means, what it takes to engage it, and what it entails — cognitively, professionally, aesthetically, and emotionally. My aim in this paper is to advance this collegial conversation by addressing its possibly most contentious element: its beauty, its emotion, its personal meanings in scholars' lives.3Roots of the StudyGiven that we have no well-honed public-professional vocabulary for speaking coherently about professors' scholarly learning and aesthetic experience, I devote this article to defining and exploring these terms. In earlier writing on this topic, I used the psychology of peak experience, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to frame professors' representations of passionate thought in scholarship.4 In this article, I seek to advance the concept of passionate thought as scholarly experience by exploring its aesthetic contents, namely its concerns with beauty. I begin by presenting the roots of the exploration — in... (shrink)