Search

Introduction: Brain lateralization is associated with human behavior. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effects of brain lateralization on the scores of paranormal beliefs. Methods: The study population included 180 students of Sanandaj universities, Sanandaj City, Iran who were selected with convenience sampling method (100 left-brained males, 6 left-brained females, 56 both left- and right-brained males and 22 both left- and right-brained females). The research tools were the paranormal belief scale developed by Blackmore (1994), as well as the brain lateralization questionnaire (1985). Results: The obtained findings suggested a significant difference between the left-brain and right-brained people in terms of paranormal beliefs. A significant difference was also found between the left-brained males and both left- and right-brained females in terms of paranormal beliefs. Conclusion: The paranormal beliefs of the left-brained cases were different from both left- and right-brained subjects, which can be seen between the left-brained males and both left- and right-brained females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question "what connection is there between our answer to the question of what we are, and the question, what our actions are?" Suppose that actions are reflexive changes of agents. On that supposition, there would be a direct connection between the answers to those two questions. An action of mine will be a reflexive change of me, and what I am will fix the nature of those changes. I hold that supposition to be true and consider reasons in favor of believing it. However, the paper is not primarily aimed at defense of that thesis. It rather concerned with exploring what consequences accepting it has for the competing notions of what we are, given what we ordinarily think actions are, and bringing to light a tension between thinking of actions as reflexive changes of agents in this way, and a kind of causal understanding of actions that is prevalent. What emerges is that we should shift where we start our theorizing: we cannot assume that action theory primarily involves the task of characterizing the relation between an agent and changes caused, rather than a characterization of a particular kind of relation between the agent and herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand coalition building between national and international actors in the context of an emerging subsystem. In applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the case of Uruguay, where a new field of social policy – the National Care System – was introduced in 2015 after a process involving different national actors from academia, civil society, politics, and administration, but also United Nations agencies, the paper explores the role of these international organizations in coalition building, and examines how a dominant coalition of national and international actors shaped the development of the new system. Using interview data and documents, the findings suggest that the involvement of international organizations in the coalition was based on shared beliefs and personal and institutional relationships. While powerful opposing coalitions were absent due to the nascent nature of the subsystem, the dominant coalition was able to influence the policy's introduction based on their beliefs regarding gender equality and rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This white paper is the joint product of nineteen professors of criminal law and procedure who share a common conviction: that the path toward a more just, effective, and reasonable criminal system in the United States is to democratize American criminal justice. In the name of the movement to democratize criminal justice, we herein set forth thirty proposals for democratic criminal justice reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Pynchon's portrayal of technology and the Internet in Bleeding Edge (2013) should be read as an example of the monstrous since it embodies its two key features: the ability to terrorize and transform. The paper shows that the Internet in Bleeding Edge is not only monstrous, as it can devour the life essence of its users, but also transformative, as it shocks them to such an extent that they can reassess their beliefs and can thus address new looming realities in productive ways. The paper shows this finding to be at odds with most research on the role of technology in Pynchon's work and identifies a key benefit of Pynchon's complex portrayal of the Internet in Bleeding Edge, which can enable better handling of the increasing presence of technology in the 21st century and making its presence and the accompanying transformations less terrifying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky "venture" that requires "holding fast" to "objective uncertainty." Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world "exclude doubt" and "nullify uncertainty," but also that uncertainty is "continually present" in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief‐credence dualist. That is, Climacus holds that beliefs and credences (i.e., degrees of belief) are two irreducibly distinct types of mental states. Beliefs are resolutions that close inquiry, thereby excluding doubt and reflecting subjective certainty by disregarding the possibility of error. Credences, by contrast, reflect assessments of evidential probabilities, thereby encoding a recognition of "objective uncertainty" by acknowledging the possibility of error. In addition to solving a vexing interpretive puzzle and showing how Kierkegaard anticipates contemporary views about the nature of belief and credence, this paper demonstrates that Kierkegaard developed a sophisticated account of the nature of belief, doubt, and certainty that merits serious philosophical consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the case of Higgs v Farmor's School, a decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal concerning unlawful discrimination on the basis of the manifestation of protected philosophical beliefs. It discusses the relationship between human rights standards and discrimination law standards in the interpretation of direct discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. While this decision goes a long way towards providing guidance on how this interaction is to be parsed out in the context of discrimination law, it nevertheless leaves certain important questions open. Finally, the paper argues that much of the discussion of proportionality around the censorship of protected belief manifestation is misconstrued. It is commonly accepted without question that the legitimate aim pursued by censorship is the protection of the rights of others. Yet in the cases dealing with manifestation such as this, there is an extremely remote threat to rights, if one exists at all. The expression of views that some take offense to is not a human rights violation. Rather, censorship of such views is better described as aimed at the protection of morals; the enforcement of speech codes or workplace standards in order to maintain a particular ethos or atmosphere of professionalism. There is then an interesting question which arises: would the choice of justification grounded in protecting morals over the rights of others affect the intensity of the proportionality assessment? There is a plausible argument that attempts to justify infringement on the exercise of fundamental rights by reference to a desire to impose a moral code, unconnected to the rights of others, would attach more intensive scrutiny. If this is true, it is incumbent upon courts not to accept at face value that employment speech codes are necessary to protect the rights of others, certainly not without more searching analysis of which rights in particular are claimed to be infringed by a failure to mandate speech. This is of particular salience given that courts have repeatedly stressed that the right to freedom of expression includes the right to say things that are offensive, shocking or even disturbing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australian presents a holistic view of early childhood education that recognises the dimensions of learning and development as being interwoven and interrelated. Spiritual development, spiritual wellbeing and spiritual identity are outlined in this document as essential components of early childhood education. However, enacting a spiritual pedagogy can be challenging for many early childhood teachers. Using an auto-ethnographical approach, this paper explores my journey as a teacher in realising my own epistemological stance, which draws on Bruner's phenomenon of 'self' as a framework for understanding children's being as it is positioned within the context of spirituality. Autoethnography allowed analysis of my lived experience, to provide an avenue for others to consider their own experiences in similar ways. The findings from this paper can support other early years educators to recognise ways that spirituality is already incorporated into their pedagogical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the expression of mistaken beliefs – as in for example the boy mistakenly believes that the turtle is dead (whereas in fact it is alive) – in the Indigenous languages of Australia. It is shown that some mode of expressing this meaning is attested in around 40% of the languages in a selection of 149 language varieties. In over 90% of the languages showing some mode of expressing the target meaning, it is – or can be – achieved through grammatical morphemes or constructions more or less dedicated to the expression of mistaken beliefs. These include particles, enclitics and various types of complement construction involving verbs of thinking, that frequently also convey meanings of saying, doing and hearing, rarely that specify the thought as mistaken. In just four or five languages, however, the meaning is attested only as a pragmatic implicature of a general statement of belief. To the extent possible given the limitations of the sources, the paper examines the range of meanings and uses of the morphemes/constructions expressing mistaken beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pornography consumption remains a common media behavior despite the ever-increasing proliferation of digital media options. A recent meta-analysis found evidence that higher rates of pornography consumption are associated with heightened perceptions of pornography's realism, but the potential downstream effects of perceiving pornography as realistic have yet to receive a meta-analytic treatment. The present paper describes our efforts to conduct such a meta-analysis. To our surprise, there was a dearth of literature available. And yet, the extant research base suggests that perceived pornography realism may be associated with a number of sociologically, relationally, and personally impactful sexual beliefs and behaviors. Discussion centers on how interested scholars can move this important line of sexuality and culture research forward in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although abortion policy is often discussed as a black-and-white conflict characterized by polarization and a lack of compromise, this study explores the validity of such a presupposition by asking how advocates articulate their belief systems about abortion policy and in what ways—if at all—are those beliefs shared within and across coalitions and create fissures within and between coalitions? Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we interviewed advocates, representing both pro-abortion-access and anti-abortion-access perspectives, about their beliefs, coalition allies, and opponents in Colorado. The result reveals nuanced belief systems that address competing conceptions of morality, gender, and life with a tendency toward deep core beliefs. This paper contributes to the ACF literature by highlighting a policy issue not often raised by ACF scholars, bridging morality policy and abortion policy literature with more mainstream policy process research, and surpassing simple "pro-life vs. pro-choice" dichotomies to reveal complex belief systems about abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault's critical project. It is well known that Foucault's genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles "aspectival captivity," that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the subject's freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of "What Is Critique?," Foucault states that critique is tasked with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this "double movement" organizes Foucault's critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above‐mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth‐telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth‐telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth‐telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique's methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re‐evaluating Foucault's critical project as a whole. By showing that truth‐telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault's critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my 1993 IJPS paper it was suggested that postmodernist verdicts on 'the death of philosophy' relied on a rejection of any 'substantive' or 'metaphysical' notion of truth. The present paper relates these verdicts to Wittgenstein's alleged 'philosophical quietism'. In both cases, for example, there is a rejection of 'depth'. Various characterisations of Wittgenstein's position are questioned, including the idea that his quietism consists in showing the impossibility of sceptical challenges to our 'hinge' propositions and beliefs. It is then argued, however, that recognition of the groundlessness of beliefs (and practices), far from curing 'vertigo' or 'Angst', is apt to inspire it. In a final section, I propose that the 'metaphysical horror' at the impossibility of articulating grounds for our beliefs can be allayed only by the thought that these answer to a reality that cannot be articulated and must therefore remain a mystery. One role for philosophy might be to cultivate a sense of this mystery and trace its implications for how we should live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Aristotelian practical wisdom (phronēsis) is a state of conviction (pistis) in the goodness of our goals based on proper grounds. This state of conviction can only be achieved if rational arguments and principles agree with how things appear to us. Since, for Aristotle, passions influence appearances, they can support or undermine our conviction in the goodness of ends. For this reason, we cannot be practically wise without virtuous dispositions to experience appropriate passions. Along the way, I argue that this reading allows us to explain the shortcomings of self‐controlled and akratic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense , humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. We argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person's other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, 'rational' is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes a 'reply and alternative' to two papers that appeared in a 2021 Special Issue of British Educational Research Journal. Both articles drew on theories of populism as a political logic to explain recent trends in England's education policy. I begin by highlighting how the contributors mobilise 'populist' political logics within their own 'anti‐populist' discourse. I then argue that the theory of epistemic communities, borrowed from the field of public policy analysis, offers an alternative interpretation of the dynamics described in (and exemplified by) the two articles. This alternative interpretation foregrounds the values, beliefs and policy enterprises of two rival communities that seek to influence education policy through the supply of expertise. I argue that attending to how these communities function helps explain how a new group of policy entrepreneurs has come to constitute an increasingly influential 'counter‐epistemic community' and established a mutually beneficial trade in legitimacy with English policy makers. To date, the theory of epistemic communities has been under‐utilised in the study of education policy, but applying the theory to education policy in England provides new insights into how these communities function when the nature of expertise is contested. England's educational policy context also exemplifies the importance of 'fit' between policy makers and experts' beliefs, and the role of policy makers in assembling and curating communities of experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living in a time of earth systems breakdown. Humankind and other life on our planet are on the brink, most likely the brink of collapse in some form. The task before us as educators is great since this is a time of multiple and complex crises. However, humanity seems paralysed, unable to face the immensity and urgency of the combined challenges before us. At its heart, this paper considers Simone Weil's proposals regarding rootlessness in light of the present global crises and seeks to address her assertion that education is part of the problem. A religious education which can be concerned not only with matters of the world, but with human connectedness in and to the world is sought. It is proposed that an approach to teaching drawn from Weil, might be able to bring something restorative to education in the public sphere for these times. A practical example of this is included in the closing section. This is one which brings children to attend to, and discern from, what it is to live a religious way of life conceptualised in relation to existence and not only as belief and practice, raising questions for future research consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wounds teach us what we were vulnerable to and what vulnerabilities we may yet bear. But wounds are often met with doubt and disbelief, suggesting that their lessons may be hard to learn. Through an analysis of advocacy movements to believe victims of sexual assault set in conversation with Caravaggio's Incredulity of Thomas, this paper argues for an understanding of vulnerability as part of a process of learning from wounds that is sometimes marked by emotional incredulity, an expression of doubt or denial of what one knows to be true because of the way its realization feels. Emotional incredulity in these circumstances is not a denial of vulnerability that pretends to mastery, but one that expresses the challenge of learning, together, how much we do not know of ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two aims. One is to draw a distinction between two types of trust. The other is to argue for its applicability in academic discourse on educational policies. One of the two types of trust is ethical trust that rests on beliefs about others' ethical virtues. The other is institutional trust that typically depends on law enforcement and economic incentives. Ideas about a social order based primarily on institutional trust have haunted political thought since the time of Thomas Hobbes. Such ideas may seem realistic if we focus on business relations, where conformity to contractual terms suffices to meet the needs of all concerned. Intimate relationships rely more on ethical trust. In the first half of the paper the difference between these two types of trust is explained. In the final sections it is argued that successful schoolwork depends on ethical trust and that measures to make schools more reliable in the institutional sense, through supervision and accountability, need to be applied with caution. Such measures can undermine ethical trust because they, at least implicitly, question the moral integrity of teachers and school-heads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, our beliefs can non-derivatively wrong others. A recent criticism of this view claims that proponents of the doxastic wronging thesis have no principled grounds for denying that credences can likewise non-derivatively wrong, so they must countenance pervasive conflicts between morality and epistemic rationality. This paper defends the thesis of doxastic wronging from this objection by arguing that belief bears distinctive relationships to inquiry and blame that can explain why beliefs, but not credences, can non-derivatively wrong. First, forming a belief (but not updating one's credence) closes inquiry, and suspending judgment (but not updating one's credence) opens inquiry. Consequently, beliefs can distinctively wrong others by prematurely closing inquiry or inappropriately opening inquiry. Second, beliefs (but not credences) can constitute blame. Unfittingly blaming someone can wrong them, and hence beliefs which constitute unfitting blame can distinctively wrong. In addition to defending the claim that only beliefs can non-derivatively wrong, this paper gestures towards an ethics of belief which attends to the relationship between belief and attitudes such as inquiry, faith, trust, and blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper substantiates a distinction, built out of Gricean resources, between two kinds of communicative act: showing and telling. Where telling that p proceeds by recruiting an addressee's capacity to recognize trustworthy informants, showing does not. Instead, showing proceeds by presenting an addressee with a consideration that provides reason to believe that p (other than the reason provided by an informant's credibility), and so recruits their capacity to respond to those reasons. With this account in place, the paper defends an account of one way in which authors can show their readers that certain moral states of affairs obtain both inside, and outside of, their fictions. It is argued, moreover, that this kind of showing gives addressees access to more than just reasons for moral belief–it also gives them access to the sorts of reasons that enable agents to increase their moral understanding. In virtue of these latter capacities, the showing identified is a way of communicating about morality that is markedly different from the sort of moral testimony that many philosophers have been increasingly interested in of late. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the second on life in a northern Icelandic valley in the later 1970s, early 1980s, and subsequently. While the first concerned women's work, food and clothing, this paper focuses on the farming cycle, the men's work on farms and on the central uplands; and on the social life and seasonal customs that reflected the farming year. Further papers will concern folk beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various philosophers authors have argued—on the basis of powerful examples—that we can have compelling moral or practical reasons to believe, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. This paper explores an alternative story, which still aims to respect widely shared intuitions about the motivating examples. Specifically, the paper proposes that what is at stake in these cases is not belief, but rather acceptance—an attitude classically characterized as taking a proposition as a premise in practical deliberation and action. I suggest that acceptance's theoretical usefulness in the ethics of belief has been hidden by its psychological obscurity. I thus aim to develop an empirically adequate and mechanistically specific psychological profile of acceptance. I characterize acceptance as centrally involving a cognitive gating function, in which we prevent a target belief state from having its characteristic downstream effects on reasoning, cognition, and action, and restructure those downstream processes. I then argue that there is substantial empirical support for the existence of the cognitive mechanisms needed to instantiate this view, coming from the science of emotion regulation. I argue that acceptance involves deploying the same mechanisms used in emotional response modulation to belief states: acceptance is doxastic response modulation. I then propose that having a better understanding of the psychological profile of acceptance leaves us better positioned to appreciate its potential usefulness for making progress on various puzzles within the ethics of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the response to the objections raised by Christopher Miles Coope on the book entitled "The Spiritual Dimension." It provides a refutation to Coope's arguments and explains the "non-partisan" strategy of the book, which Coope systematically misunderstands. It also exposes some of the serious problems with Coope's own preference for a harshly exclusivist form of Christianity. It discusses the issues connected with religious beliefs including layers of meaning in religious language, emotional involvement against detachment in the assessment of religious claims, the problem of evil, human autonomy and divine authority, divine action in the world, apophatic theology and transcendence, and the doctrine of afterlife.

Against claims that cognitive science of religion undercuts belief in God, many defenders of theistic belief have invoked the Religious Reasons Reply: science cannot undercut belief in God if one has good independent reasons to believe. However, it is unclear whether this response helps salvage the god beliefs of most people. This paper considers four questions: (1) What reasons do Christians have for believing in God? (2) What kinds of beliefs about God can the reasons support? (3) Are the reasons rationalizations? (4) Can cognitive science undercut the reasons? Many Christians invoke everyday religious experiences (EREs)—such as experiences of divine presence, guidance, and communication—as reasons to believe. Unlike another popular reason to believe in God (the appearance of design and beauty in nature), EREs can support beliefs about a relational God who is present to me, who guides my life, and who speaks to me. EREs are not rationalizations since they seem to cause and sustain such beliefs. Nonetheless, EREs like experiences of hearing God speak are problematic reasons to believe. 'Soft' voice-hearing experiences are easily undercut. 'Hard' experiences of an external, audible voice are probably underpinned by similar cognitive processes as audio-verbal hallucinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least some of your beliefs are commitments. When you believe that P as a commitment, your stance on P is such that you believe it on the basis of your considered judgement. Sometimes, you also believe that you believe P. Such self‐beliefs can also be commissive in a sense, as when they are reflective endorsements of your lower‐order commissive beliefs. In this paper I argue that one's commissive self‐beliefs ontologically constitute one's lower‐order commissive beliefs because one's commissive self‐beliefs instantiate the same inferential dispositions that are constitutive of one's lower‐order commissive beliefs. Constitutive relations between commissive self‐beliefs and first‐order commissive beliefs are maximally epistemically secure because they do not result from any epistemic procedure by which one must try (and possibly fail) to detect one's first‐order commissive beliefs. This maximal epistemic security suffices to warrant one's commissive self‐beliefs, such that one possesses commissive self‐knowledge of an especially privileged sort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that grieving a profound loss is a transformative experience, specifically an unchosen transformative experience, understood as an event‐based transformation not chosen by the agent. Grief transforms the self (i) cognitively, by forcing the agent to alter a large set of beliefs and desires, (ii) phenomenologically, by altering their experience in a diffuse or global manner, (iii) normatively, by requiring the agent to revise their practical identity, and (iv) existentially, by confronting the agent with a structuring condition of their life. Grief is a disruption to one's identity that an agent addresses by making sense of the world after the loss, remaking the practical significance of various situations in their lives through their activity. Transformative grief is both an "activity" and a "revelation" (Callard, 2020): Some parts of the grieving process are active (the agent must actively work to become a new kind of person), while others are irreducibly passive (the agent passively undergoes them). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques Stephen Mulhall's reading of Cavell's response to skepticism. In the first half of the article, I argue that Mulhall is mistaken in two respects: he elides differences Cavell notes between external world and other minds skepticism as well as conflates empathetic projection and acknowledgment. In the second half of the article, I argue for a novel reading of Cavell's account of acknowledgment, which addresses the concerns I raise for Mulhall. The paper closes by considering and responding to a worry that one's efforts at acknowledgment are more complicated projections of one's self onto the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), as developed by Albert Ellis, is based on the idea that Cognitive, Affective (Emotional) and Behavioral processes can be manipulated to reduce the effects of irrational beliefs and goals, which one sets upon themselves. Ellis' hypothesis moves from understanding how one's thoughts contribute to emotional and behavioral disturbances, while the Tantric traditions employ the understanding that the physical and mental disturbances originate from the imbalance in the emotions. Rasa Sadhana, as Peter Marchand notes ... is a tantric method of fasting on one's emotions. It helps one to overcome negative emotions so as to pursue better physical, mental and spiritual health. This paper explores the possibility of Rasa Sadhana as an intermediary step in RET to understand one's emotions in a better light, in helping the individual avoid the consequences of the negative emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophy is often discounted as impractical and inequitably labelled as unpragmatic, but we cannot deny that it is the underpinning sustenance of all aspects of life. Everyone bases all their actions on their belief system which in turn formulates their identity, sense of morals and duties. Today, when we witness that the world is in a state of utter unrest, it will be helpful to seek remedy from Indian Philosophy along with its cultural traditions which aim at the holistic development of an individual and promotes universal brotherhood. India's spiritual wisdom is a source of guidance for anyone who wants to reach a mentally calm and spiritually satisfied state, which will not waver by the perplexities of life. The issues / objectives which shall be addressed in this paper are as follows: 1. How Philosophical Counselling is important and should be given in nascent stage of one's life, when the young minds are cultivated and taught the meaning of life. 2. What is the purpose of life and how can one achieve it? 3. Reflection on duties towards oneself and the others. 4. What is the influence of ego (ahamkāra) in self-reflection? 5. Analysis on the formation of one's belief-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historic environment—comprising a palimpsest of landscapes, buildings and objects—carries meaning and plays a crucial role in giving people a sense of place, identity and belonging. It represents a repository of ever-accumulating collective and individually held values—shared perceptions, experiences, life histories, beliefs and traditions. These social or private values are mostly ascribed by people to familiar places within this environment based on the ontological security which this everyday heritage provides. However, these values are notoriously hard to capture and categorize. This makes it difficult to incorporate them into heritage-management strategies, which typically rely on objective, fact-based datasets. In this paper, we present a new methodology to capture those elusive values, by combining Topic Modelling with the principles of Grounded Theory. Results show that our novel approach is viable and replicable and that these important values can be effectively and meaningfully integrated, thus creating more inclusive approaches to heritage management than exist currently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two theories that attempt to explain the relationship between false belief understanding and inhibition skills were investigated: (1) theory of mind development improves self-control, and (2) executive control is necessary for developing a theory of mind. A microgenetic approach was adopted, with a group of 21 children completing a battery of inhibition and false belief understanding tasks every four weeks for six phases of testing. The results showed that the majority of children were able to perform well on a test of executive inhibition before having a good understanding of false beliefs, thus supporting theory (2). The results also illustrated that while the children's inhibition skills developed relatively gradually, their understanding of false beliefs progressed from a consistent lack of understanding through a period of unstable performance, during which some children failed tests that they had previously passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new insight on the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) in the theory of epistemic democracy. This theorem states that democratic decision-making leads us to correct outcomes under certain assumptions. One key assumption is the 'independence condition', which requires that voters form their beliefs independently when they vote. This paper examines the role of an opinion leader as an informational source, which potentially violates independence. We demonstrate that voters' beliefs may be correlated in the presence of the leader, and that the CJT can fail if the leader's opinions are reliable. This leads us to the following paradoxical observation: for epistemic democracy, good leaders may be bad, while bad leaders may be good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the three doubt-belief theory of inquiry. Psychology of inquiry; Requirements for the genuineness of doubt based from Charles Sanders Peirce's writings on doubt and belief; Analysis of feigned heistancy.

Shared belief systems are generally assumed to forge policy networks. Empirical evidence whether and to what extend shared policy core beliefs create ally networks and under which circumstances shared policy core beliefs are not necessary to form these networks, however, is limited. Based on a novel inferential network approach in combination with mediation analysis, this study investigates the role of belief systems as a link between interest group type and policy preference congruence, ultimately leading to ally networks in the European Union. In order to measure the intervening effect of policy core beliefs, automated text analysis is used. Our results suggest that shared policy core beliefs are a strong mediator for members of the same interest group. In addition, "strange bedfellow" networks between NGOs and businesses do, in fact, lack belief congruence and emerge on issues with low potential for intergroup conflict. This paper makes a contribution to our understanding of ally network formation and adds to the emerging line of research which combines quantitative text with inferential network analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attractive picture of the world is that some features are metaphysically fundamental and others are derivative, with the derivative features grounded in the fundamental features. But how do we have justified beliefs about which features are fundamental? What is the epistemology of fundamentality? I sketch a response in this paper. The guiding idea is that the same properties cause the same experiences. I argue that a probabilistic connection between epistemic fundamentality and metaphysical fundamentality is sufficient for justified beliefs about the metaphysically fundamental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue against recent modifications of the Knowledge Condition on intentional action that weaken the condition. My contention is that the condition is best understood in the context of Anscombe's Intention and, when so understood, can be maintained in its strongest form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has suggested that corrective fact-checking has inconsistent effects on beliefs about online misinformation claims. This study attempts to explain this inconsistency using three contingent factors--claim-source credibility, fact-checker credibility, and attitude strength--which respectively relate to three key parties in the fact-checking process: the source of a misleading claim, the fact-checker, and the user evaluating the fact-check. I hypothesize the interplay between these factors, which is tested using two online experiments on COVID-19-related misinformation with over 900 participants. Multilevel analysis of pretest-posttest, repeated measures data supports the hypothesized moderating effects and offers additional insights about how these effects vary between earlier versus later phases of misinformation cycles. The paper concludes with a discussion of contributions to research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is seemingly in tension with another equally attractive thesis, namely, the token‐identity thesis; the thesis according to which every mental state token is identical with some or other token physical state. In this paper, we show that these seemingly incontrovertible essentialist intuitions are in fact compatible with "token physicalism" regarding the mental. Given a suitably plentitudinous ontology of objects, we argue that there are physical things with which our token mental states can be identified. This is preferable to existing views that give up the essentiality claims or simply reject the token‐identity thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been made about the ways that implicit biases and other apparently unreflective attitudes can affect our actions and judgments in ways that negatively affect our ability to do right. What has been discussed less is that these attitudes negatively affect our freedom. In this paper, I argue that implicit biases pose a problem for free will. My analysis focuses on the compatibilist notion of free will according to which acting freely consists in acting in accordance with our reflectively endorsed beliefs and desires. Though bias presents a problem for free action, I argue that there are steps agents can take to regain their freedom. One such strategy is for agents to cultivate better self‐knowledge of the ways that their freedom depends on the relationship between their conscious and unconscious attitudes, and the way these work together to inform action and judgment. This knowledge can act as an important catalyst for agents to seek out and implement short‐ and long‐term strategies for reducing the influence of bias, and I offer four proposals along these lines. The upshot is that though bias is a powerful influence on our actions, we need not resign ourselves to its negative effects for freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive and multi-disciplinary public health approaches are necessary to prevent sexual re-offending. However, criminal justice solutions continue to dominate and the arrangement in England and Wales is no exception. The introduction of the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) in 2003 brought together the work of the police, prison and probation services in order to manage violent and sexual offenders. This paper focuses specifically on the work of the specialist police officers who are tasked under MAPPA with the Management of Sexual or Violent Offenders (MOSOVO) and whether or not they can assist desistance in those who have been convicted of a sexual offence. We argue that the risk-based, highly politicized model of public protection that MOSOVO staff operate within creates tensions more likely to hinder than facilitate desistance. As indicated by findings in an independent review of the police's management of registered sex offenders (2023), successful desistance journeys are found in people who are supported by formal agents who actively promote hope and optimism and convey a belief that the person attempting desistance can change. In conclusion, we recommend that MOSOVO staff be willing and resourced to help individuals with sexual convictions develop a non-offending lifestyle and identity and support them in achieving this goal, which requires the provision of comprehensive support beyond risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to expressivists, normative language expresses desire‐like states of mind. According to noncognitivists, normative beliefs have a desire‐like functional role. What is the relation between these two doctrines? It is widely assumed that expressivism commits you to noncognitivism, and vice versa. This paper opposes that assumption. I advance a view that combines a noncognitivist psychology with a descriptivist semantics for normative language. While this might seem like an ungainly hybrid, I argue that it has important advantages over more familiar metaethical positions. The noncognitivist aspect of the theory captures all of the explanatory benefits standardly associated with expressivism. At the same time, the descriptivist element allows us to avoid the semantic headaches for expressivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It's widely held that a lack of intellectual humility is part of the reason why flagrantly unjustified beliefs proliferate. In this paper, I argue that an excess of humility also plays a role in allowing for the spread of misinformation. Citing experimental evidence, I show that inducing intellectual humility causes people inappropriately to lower their confidence in beliefs that are actually justified for them. In these cases, they manifest epistemic humility in ways that make them epistemically worse off. I argue that epistemic humility may fail to promote better beliefs because it functions for us against the background of our individualistic theory of responsible epistemic agency: until we reject such theories, intellectual humility is as much a problem as a solution to epistemic ills. Virtue epistemology is inadequate as a response to unjustified beliefs if it does not look beyond the virtues to our background beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Veritists maintain that true belief and only true belief is of fundamental epistemic value. They very often go on to derive epistemic norms based on considerations about what promotes this value. A standard objection is that many truths are pointless: there is no value in believing them. In response, veritists often distinguish between significant and insignificant truths, holding that the former are much more valuable (perhaps even incomparably more valuable) than the latter. But critics cry foul: veritists who say this give up on their claim that it is true belief per se that is of fundamental epistemic value. In this paper I evaluate this dispute by comparing it to the well known dispute over J.S. Mill's doctrine of higher and lower pleasures. I conclude that the veritist can escape the objection, but that the escape route breeds a new, and different problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers—as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (Philosophical Review 129(4):501–536, 2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several motivations for resisting it. First, I argue that the norms of inquiry are most plausibly seen as practical, not as distinctively epistemic. Second, I argue that a zetetically-grounded epistemology is unable to properly account for the rationality of belief. It fails to account for cases where intuitively irrational beliefs promote inquiry, or where intuitively rational beliefs are zetetically useless or counterproductive to inquiry. The main upshot is this: there must be a source of epistemic normativity that isn't ultimately zetetic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose that the grounded types analytical method (GTAM) is a systematic and useful means of typology construction for qualitative studies. GTAM arose within European social sciences in response to a need to schematize qualitative typology and to explicate qualitative types more precisely. GTAM is applicable to a variety of qualitative situations. I illustrate in this paper GTAM's applicability through my study of school choice in the Paris suburbs. I argue then for its inclusion in the qualitative study of U.S. primary and secondary school choice because it is a credible form of analysis that would provide a new lens for viewing how behaviours and beliefs enter into choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the different perspectives on important issues discussed in archaeological inquiry. Distinction between core beliefs and models; Assumption of the application of model from classical economics to an archaeological problems; Requirement of a recursive relationship between ideas and observations in learning the process of doing archaeology.

The paper aims at identifying similarities and differences between two different ways of using the word "true", on the one hand when it is used to refer to a property of what we say or believe, here called "words' truth", on the other when it is used to refer to a feature of things in general (as when we say "he is a true friend"), here called "things' truth". I will point out how such similarities and differences may be usefully described starting from the feature of truth called "transparency" which is often considered as exclusively pertaining to words' truth. The upshot of the paper will be that Aquinas was right in considering the two kinds of truth as species of the unique genus "adaequatio rei et intellectus", but that this conclusion can be reached without any commitment to the ideology (in the Quinean sense) of the correspondence theory of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]