Indoor plants can positively impact physical and mental health in daily life. However, the benefits of viewing indoor plants may be enhanced if the plants emit a fragrant aroma. In this crossover-design study, we measured the physiological and psychological effects of fragrant and non-fragrant Primula plants on 50 female college students, and explored whether aroma stimulation had additive benefits for this group. Non-fragrant Primula malacoides Franch was used as a control stimulus, and Primula forbesii Franch, which has a floral fragrance, (...) was used as an experimental stimulus. We measured blood pressure, pulse rate, and electroencephalogram to evaluate physiological responses, and used a mood state profile and the semantic differential method to evaluate psychological responses. We found that mean blood pressure and pulse rate decreased significantly after the experiment in both conditions. EEGs showed that the mean values of high alpha waves, high beta waves, and relaxation scores were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. The average scores on each subscale of the psychological questionnaire improved after the experiment in both conditions, and the vitality subscale and total emotional state scores were significantly better in the experimental vs. control condition. The results of the SD method showed that the sense of relaxation and comfort were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. Compared with the non-fragrant Primula, the fragrant Primula induced relatively better physiological and psychological effects. (shrink)

Retailers like to use different colors to present the sale price and original price when they are presenting a promotion price. How does the inconsistent color presentation of the prices influence consumers’ purchase likelihood? The extant research does not consider this question. This article will address this question. Drawing on incongruence theory and the persuasion knowledge model, this article proposes that when the color of the sale price is inconsistent with that of the original price, consumers show less preference for (...) the sale price. The reason is that consumers perceive the price as being less trustworthy, which leads to a lower purchase likelihood. Furthermore, this effect is affected by the brand awareness of products. Specifically, when products are less-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a lower purchase likelihood. In contrast, when products are well-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a high purchase likelihood. In this article, four studies are used to verify these hypotheses, and implications of theory and practice of the present research are discussed. (shrink)

Optimization for vertical vibration performance of a rail-train coupling system is investigated in this paper with the introduction of inerters for both primary and secondary suspensions. A model of a typical Chinese passenger train that travels on a traditional rail with track, sleepers, and ballast is simulated. The goal is to improve the ride quality for the train and vibration attenuation for the rail system in response to track irregularities. Optimizations for only inertance and all suspension parameters are carried out (...) by the particle swarm algorithm. Performance benefits for both the train and the rail system are demonstrated and suspension layouts with inerters connected in parallel and series are compared with the traditional one in both time domain and frequency domain. (shrink)

Previous studies on the follow-up effect of serendipity mostly focused on the positive effects and less on the negative effects. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products. To verify all hypotheses in this article, we used online and offline survey data in China. Three experimental results showed that serendipity contains a certain degree of uncertainty, which will cause consumers’ perceived risk and decrease the purchase intention of (...) unexpected products. Perceived risk plays a mediating role in the effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products. Moreover, regulatory focus moderates the effect of serendipity on purchase intention of unexpected products. Specifically, for prevention-focused individuals, the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products is strengthened. For promotion-focused individuals, the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products is weakened. This article augments the understanding of the negative effects of serendipity and provides theoretical guidance and support for the management practice of marketers. (shrink)

Previous research has mostly focused on Internet use behaviors, such as usage time of the Internet or social media after individuals experienced offline social exclusion. However, the extant literature has ignored online response behaviors, such as online review responses to social exclusion. To address this gap, drawing on self-protection and self-serving bias, we proposed three hypotheses that examine the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews, which are verified by two studies using different simulating scenarios with 464 participants. The (...) results show that when individuals are socially excluded offline, regardless of where the exclusion comes from, they will be more likely to give negative online reviews. In addition, brand awareness moderates the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews. Specifically, if the brand is less known, compared with social inclusion, offline social exclusion will lead individuals to give more negative online reviews; conversely, for well-known brands, no significant difference exists in the online reviews between social exclusion and inclusion. (shrink)

We show that the automorphism group of Hall's universal locally finite group has ample generics, that is, it admits comeager diagonal conjugacy classes in all dimensions. Consequently, it has the small index property, is not the union of a countable chain of non‐open subgroups, and has the automatic continuity property. Also, we discuss some algebraic and topological properties of the automorphism group of Hall's universal group. For example, we show that every generic automorphism of Hall's universal group is conjugate to (...) all of its powers, and hence has roots of all orders. (shrink)

本书把最新反映邓小平哲学思想特色的论述分为:解放思想,实事求是,照辩证法办事,改革是解放和发展生产力的必由之路,面向世界,吸收人类文明成果等10部分加以编辑。.

This paper investigates the connection between temporal attitudes (attitudes characterised by a concern (or lack thereof) about future and past events), beliefs about temporal ontology (beliefs about the existence of future and past events) and temporal preferences (preferences regarding where in time events are located). Our aim is to probe the connection between these preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, in order to better evaluate the normative status of these preferences. We investigate the hypothesis that there is a three-way association between (a) (...) being present-biased (that is, preferring that positive events are located in the present, and negative events are located in the non-present), (b) believing that past and future events do not exist and (c) tending to have present-focused rather than non-present-focused temporal attitudes. We find no such association. This suggests that insofar as temporal preferences and temporal attitudes are connected to the ways we represent time, they are not connected to the ways we represent temporal ontology; rather, they are more likely connected to the ways we represent relative movement in, or of, time. This has important consequences for, first, explaining why we exhibit these preferences and, second, for their normative evaluation. (shrink)

Usually, the B-theory of time is taken to involve the claim that time does not, in reality, pass; after all, on the B-theory, nothing really becomes present and then more and more past, times do not come into existence successively, and which facts obtain does not change. For this reason, many B-theorists have recently tried to explain away one or more aspect(s) of experience that they and their opponents take to constitute an experience of time as passing. In this paper, (...) I examine three prominent proposals of this kind and argue that, though intriguing, the proposals undermine, to some extent, the assumption that there is an element of experience that B-theorists need to take to be illusory. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have suggested that the B-theory includes a notion of passage, by virtue of including succession. Here, I provide further support for that claim by showing that uncontroversial elements of the B-theory straightforwardly ground a veridical sense of passage. First, I argue that the B-theory predicts that subjects of experience have a sense of passivity with respect to time that they do not have with respect to space, which they are right to have, even according to the B-theory. I (...) then ask what else might be involved in our experience of time as passing that is not yet vindicated by the B-theoretic conception. I examine a recent B-theoretic explanation of our ‘illusory’ sense of passage, by Robin Le Poidevin, and argue that it explains away too much: our perception of succession poses no more of a problem on the B-theory than it does on other theories of time. Finally, I respond to an objection by Oreste Fiocco that a causal account of our sense of passage cannot succeed, because it leaves out the ‘phenomenological novelty’ of each moment. (shrink)

Does time seem to pass, even though it doesn’t, really? Many philosophers think the answer is ‘Yes’—at least when ‘time’s passing’ is understood in a particular way. They take time’s passing to be a process by which each time in turn acquires a special status, such as the status of being the only time that exists, or being the only time that is present. This chapter suggests that, on the contrary, all we perceive is temporal succession, one thing after another, (...) a notion to which modern physics is not inhospitable. The contents of perception are best described in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’, rather than ‘past’, ‘present, and ‘future’. (shrink)

In his recent book ‘Experiencing time’, Simon Prosser discusses a wide variety of topics relating to temporal experience, in a way that is accessible both to those steeped in the philosophy of mind, and to those more familiar with the philosophy of time. He forcefully argues for the conclusion that the B-theorist of time can account for the temporal appearances. In this article, I offer a chapter by chapter response.

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed facts, but (...) also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the part of ontology involving the rival positions of presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory. While this much is clear, it’s surprisingly difficult to elucidate the substance of the disagreement between presentists and eternalists. Certain events happened that are not happening now; what is it to disagree about whether these events exist? In spite of widespread suspicion concerning the status and methods of analytic metaphysics, skeptics’ doubts about this debate have not generally been heeded, neither by (...) metaphysicians, nor by philosophers of physics. This paper revisits the question in the light of prominent elucidation attempts from both camps. The upshot is that skeptics were right to be puzzled. The paper then explores a possible re-interpretation of positions in temporal ontology that links it to normative views about how we should live as temporal beings. (shrink)

Some naturalists feel an affinity with some religions, or with a particular religion. They may have previously belonged to it, and/or been raised in it, and/or be close to people who belong to it, and/or simply feel attracted to its practices, texts and traditions. This raises the question of whether and to what extent a naturalist can lead the life of a religious believer. The sparse literature on this topic focuses on religious fictionalism. I also frame the debate in these (...) terms. I ask what religious fictionalism might amount to, reject some possible versions of it and endorse a different one. I then examine the existing proposals, by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Lipton, Andrew Eshleman and Howard Wettstein, and show that even on my version of religious fictionalism, much of what has been described by these authors is still possible. (shrink)

Present-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive events to be located in the present rather than the non-present, and for negative events to be located in the non-present rather than the present. Very little attention has been given to present-bias in the contemporary literature on time biases. This may be because it is often assumed that present-bias is not a distinctive psychological kind; that what explains people’s being present-biased is just what explains them displaying various other time-biases. (...) According to this view, there is no need to investigate present-bias independently of investigating these other biases, since present-bias is really just a manifestation of these other biases. We call this the manifestation thesis. We take up the question of whether the manifestation thesis is true, and argue that it is not. Thus, by failing to investigate present-bias in its own right we are failing fully to understand the spectrum of ways in which people display time biases. In turn, we suggest, this may have implications for the ways we evaluate whether present-bias is rationally permissible. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some aspects of the relation between temporal experience and the A versus B debate. To begin with, I provide an overview of the A versus B debate and, following Baron et al. (2015), distinguish between two B-theoretic responses to the A- theoretic argument from experience, veridicalism and illusionism. I then argue for veridicalism over illusionism, by examining our (putative) experiences as of presentness and as of time passing. I close with some remarks on the relation between veridicalism (...) and a deflationary view of the A versus B debate. I suggest that the deflationary view can provide further support for veridicalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to make sense of the growing block view using Kit Fine’s three-fold classification of A-theoretic views of time. I begin by motivating the endeavor of making sense of the growing block view by examining John Earman’s project in ‘Reassessing the prospects for a growing block model of the universe’. Next, I review Fine’s reconstruction of McTaggart’s argument and its accompanying three-fold classification of A-theoretic views. I then consider three interpretations of Earman’s growing block model: the (...) hybrid growing block, the purely tensed growing block, and Michael Tooley’s growing block. I argue for three claims. First, Finean ‘standard’ versions of these views are less congenial to the growing blocker than ‘non-standard’ ones. Second, the hybrid view is problematic on either version. And third, ‘non-standard’ versions are not fully intelligible. I provide further support for the first and third of these claims and explain why I take them to support a minimal account of passage as succession, which undercuts some of the motivation for Earman’s project. Lastly, I answer three objections. (shrink)

The God of Western religion is said to be eternal. But what does that mean? Is God somehow beyond time, living a life that does not involve one thing after another? Or is God's relationship to time much more like ours, so that God's eternality just consists in there being no time at which God doesn't exist? Even for non-believers, these issues have interesting implications for the relation between historical and scientific findings on the one hand, and religion on the (...) other. This Element introduces the reader to the requisite metaphysical background, and then examines reasons for and against thinking of God as timeless. (shrink)

This paper presents a new cosmological argument based on considerations about grounding. I argue that, by assuming three plausible principles about grounding, we can construct a cosmological argument for the existence of a unique ungrounded being that ultimately grounds everything else. At the end of the paper I consider two possible objections, and offer my replies to them.

In order to explore the mechanism of consumer responses to corporate social responsibility, this paper constructs a research framework including CSR, consumer–company identification, consumer responses, and fit, and tests the framework using a scene-questionnaire survey. Empirical results demonstrate that CSR not only has positive influence on consumer purchase intention, recommend intention, and loyalty directly, but also has indirect positive influence on consumer purchase intention and recommend intention through CCI. The influencing process of CSR on CCI is moderated by fit and (...) the moderating direction is different owing to product types. For the products whose association preference is positive, fit can positively moderate the relationship between CSR and CCI, while for products whose association preference is negative, the moderating role will be negative. (shrink)

In the discussion of global ethics, philosophical ethics risks losing its distinct theoretical horizons. This predicament arises primarily from philosophy's failure to anchor its own object and to provide a rational basis for global justice from within its current confined theoretical paradigm. Against this background, this paper will first prioritize global co-existence as the primary concern of global ethics, then propose ontological co-existence justice as its foundational principle, and finally argue that the normative validity of co-existence justice is predicated on (...) the nations fulfilling the critical requirements of modern civilization, namely, the advancement of individual freedom. (shrink)

Ismael’s self-reference view is an intriguing addition to the philosophy of time landscape. This commentary offers an interpretation of the view. I argue for two claims. The first is that for Ismael, the explanans (namely self-reference + the thermodynamic gradient) is partly fulfilling the role of giving meaning to a key part of the explanandum (namely Agents’ sense of the future as coming into being). That is, Ismael is partly (re-)interpreting ‘Becoming’ as denoting self-reference. The second is that the self-reference (...) view centrally builds on Ismael’s previous work on tenseless, relativity-friendly passage and the idea that Heraclitians and Parmenideans are both right. In closing, I briefly comment on an unsolved challenge for the view. (shrink)

The language of principlism seems to have emerged as the predominant guiding framework in teaching, research and even legislation within contemporary Chinese bioethics. This essay reveals the dissonance between the individualistic orientation of this theoretical language and the familist features of Chinese clinical practice by considering the principle of respect for autonomy and its discordance with the Confucian tradition of virtue ethics and medical rituals. Several representative clinical cases in mainland China are presented to illustrate the incongruity between the current (...) state of Confucian medical rituals and the language game of the principle of respect for autonomy. While there is a recognized need in contemporary Chinese medical practice to promote patient involvement in decision-making in the cases of terminal illness, we argue that this approach should be implemented in alignment with Confucian virtue ethics and medical rituals. Resolving the linguistic discordance between Chinese bioethics and principlism should not entail a shift towards principlism. (shrink)

What, if anything, makes death bad for the deceased themselves? Deprivationists hold that death is bad for the deceased iff it deprives them of intrinsic goods they would have enjoyed had they lived longer. This view faces the problem that birth too seems to deprive one of goods one would have enjoyed had one been born earlier, so that it too should be bad for one. There are two main approaches to the problem. In this paper, I explore the second (...) approach, by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, and suggest that it can be developed so as to meet deprivationists’ needs. On the resulting view, metaphysical differences between the future and the past give rise to a corresponding axiological difference in the intrinsic value of future and past experiences. As experiences move into the past, they lose their intrinsic value for the person. (shrink)

Hodroj, Latham, and Miller use X-phi methods to investigate why people tend to represent time as dynamic (i.e., as (robustly) passing), even though, as deflationists maintain, they do not perceive time as passing. More specifically, what the authors investigate is the hypothesis that people believe time is dynamic because they believe the future is objectively open (moving open future hypothesis, MOFH); they find no evidence for the relevant associations. They conclude that a different (temporally aperspectival replacement, TARH) hypothesis based on (...) non-X-phi proposals by Hoerl (Hoerl, 2018) and Sattig (Sattig, 2019a, 2019b) is worth investigating further by X-phi methods. The authors’ empirical methodology in this and other papers is especially welcome given widespread suspicion of purely a priori methods (those of “armchair” or “free-range” metaphysics). Yet, it is not always obvious how best to interpret these kinds of findings. In this reply, I express some worries about the paper’s framing regarding its empirical findings, including their relation to the debate about temporal perception. I also consider whether the responses recorded in these surveys are best interpreted as indicating that people stably (even tacitly) represent time in ways articulated by metaphysicians. I take it to be another facet of the value of X-phi work on time that it raises these interpretative (and related metametaphysical) issues, whose relevance to disputes over proper methodology in the philosophy of time is easy to overlook. (shrink)

This article continues the efforts of Gert Biesta and Jim Hordern to address the nature and organisation of educational studies as highlighted in a recent special issue titled ‘Educational studies today and for the future: threats, hopes, and collaborations’ in BJES (Volume 7, No. 5, 2023). The aim is to articulate a distinctive voice or language within the study of education, addressing contemporary challenges in the field. Invoking German Pädagogik and American educationalist Schwab’s theory of the Practical, this article makes (...) a case for pedagogy as a distinctive discipline of education that has its own ways of thinking and theorising, centred on questions as to the purpose of education and the nature of educational practice. Furthermore, it asserts that pedagogy is a ‘practical’ discipline centred on understanding and developing educational practice. Conceived in this way, pedagogy can serve as a core and unifying component in educational studies, integrating the foundation disciplines and other subjects into the study of practice. It also functions as the ‘crowning’ discipline that organises foundation disciplines and related sources toward the professional education of teachers. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Das Projekt einer philosophischen Umgestaltung des Daoismus begleitet mich schon seit langem als vorläufige Idee. In der 1995er Ausgabe der Philosophical Dynamics Nr. 4 veröffentlichte ich einen kurzen Artikel mit dem Titel Ein vorläufiger Überblick über die Umgestaltung der daoistischen Philosophie, der später als Vortrags Transkript in meine Vierzehn Vorlesungen über die Methodologie der Geschichte der Philosophie aufgenommen wurde. 邓晓芒: 道家哲学改造德临时纲要, 收入《哲学史方法论十四讲》, 重庆大学出版社, 2015 年, 第 246–283 页 [Deng Xiaomang: Siebte Vorlesung: Ein vorläufiger Überblick über die Transformation der (...) daoistischen Philosophie, in: Vierzehn Vorlesungen über die Methodologie der Geschichte der Philosophie, Chongqing: Verlag der Universität Chongqing, 2015, S. 246–283.]. Im Prozess der Kritik der traditionellen chinesischen Philosophie durch den Vergleich chinesischer und westlicher Kulturtraditionen kam ich auf die Idee, dass, wenn wir westliche Elemente in unsere traditionelle chinesische Kultur aufnehmen und ein neues Gedankengebäude errichten wollen, dieses Projekt als ein gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt dienen kann. Während der moderne Neukonfuzianismus auf der „kreativen Transformation“ der Tradition des Konfuzianismus basiert, beruht meine Wiedergeburt der traditionellen chinesischen Kultur auf der Kritik am Konfuzianismus und der Umgestaltung der daoistischen Philosophie. Vor zwanzig Jahren jedoch befand sich dieses Projekt noch im Stadium einer Skizze und ich hatte keine Zeit, sie zu entwickeln, also nannte ich sie einen „vorläufigen Entwurf“. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz möchte ich diese Fragestellung auf den historischen Spuren der daoistischen Philosophie weiter vertiefen. (shrink)

This article is a response to Clifford Williams’s claim that the debate between A- and B theories of time is misconceived because these theories do not differ. I provide some missing support for Williams’s claim that the B-theory includes transition, by arguing that representative B-theoretic explanations for why we experience time as passing (even though it does not) are inherently unstable. I then argue that, contra Williams, it does not follow that there is nothing at stake in the A- versus (...) B debate. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In ‘Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?’, Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin’s understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn’t be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as unwarranted. I (...) examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn’t isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin’s idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are ‘eternally real’. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin’s remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul. (shrink)

This article introduces the reader to contemporary philosophical research on God and time, without presupposing any familiarity with either philosophy of religion or philosophy of time. To start with, aspects of the topic are compared to some structurally similar ideas in secular philosophical thought about time and ethics. The article then introduces timeless versus temporal conceptions of eternity and discusses positions intending to combine elements of both. There is a brief interlude on relevant background in temporal metaphysics regarding A- and (...) B-theories. The final two sections then examine recent developments in the timeless and temporal camps, with a particular emphasis on the role that temporal metaphysics is playing in discussions of the timeless approach. (shrink)

A proposition can be false but still true about a certain subject matter: e.g., the proposition that snow is white and expensive is false, yet still true about the color of snow. This paper investigates how this idea of ‘truth about a subject matter’ should be analyzed. I begin with the Simple Conjunction Theory, which explains the case by decomposing a false proposition into a true conjunct about the subject matter and a false conjunct irrelevant to it. While intuitive, this (...) theory fails to account for non-conjunctive propositions. I then examine the Lewis-Yablo Theory, which invokes possible-world partitions to analyze subject matters. I show that this framework generalizes the Simple Conjunction Theory and accommodates non-conjunctive cases, but it also faces a counterexample. To resolve this, I propose modifications based on closeness relations among possible worlds. The resulting account preserves the explanatory motivations of the earlier theories while avoiding their difficulties. (shrink)

The consequence argument aims to show that if determinism is true, such that all our actions are the necessary consequences of the remote past and the laws of nature, then no one could have done anything other than what she has in fact done. However, a recent challenge invokes a formal framework of ‘levels’ to argue that this argument actually commits a category mistake, since it is not legitimate to claim that determinism at the physical level precludes alternative possibilities at (...) the agential level. Nevertheless, in this paper, I argue that the consequence argument can still be validly constructed even within a formal framework of levels, provided that we accept the plausible principle that anything is possible at the agential level only if it is physically realizable. (shrink)

Emotions are believed to converge both through emotional mimicry and social appraisal. The present study compared contagion of anger and happiness. In Experiment 1, participants viewed dynamic angry and happy faces, with facial electromyography recorded from the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii as emotional mimicry. Self-reported emotional experiences were analyzed as emotional contagion. Experiment 2 manipulated social appraisal as the gaze of expression toward the target. The results showed that there was emotional contagion for angry and happy expressions both in (...) Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Experiment 1 indicated an overt mimicry pattern for happy faces, but not for angry faces. Experiment 2 found an influence of social appraisal on angry contagion but not on happy diffusion. The two experiments suggest that the underlying processes of emotional mimicry and social appraisal are differentially relevant for different emotional contagion, with happiness processing following a mimicry-based path to emotional contagion, and anger processing requiring social appraisal. (shrink)

Background: Interpretation flexibility allows individuals to update their interpretations of ambiguous information as new evidence becomes available. Attention allocation to novel information underlies interpretation flexibility. This study examined links between interpretation flexibility and attentional allocation to newly revealed information using eye-tracking metrics of fixation bias and fixation flexibility. Method: Participants (N = 90) viewed ambiguous images that were progressively unblurred while their visual attention to specific screen areas was monitored using eye-tracking. The number of fixations and total dwell time on (...) blurred and unblurred sections of valenced images were examined. Results: Participants showed greater attentional allocation to newly revealed information in negative versus positive scenarios, evidenced by longer dwell time across all stages and more frequent looks to the novel region at the fully unblurred stage. Fixation flexibility was also reduced for negative images, indicating less reallocation of gaze as additional information became available. However, fixation bias and fixation flexibility did not significantly correlate with interpretation flexibility. Conclusion: Together, these findings suggest more rigid attentional patterns when the emerging context involves negative emotional content, while attentional and interpretational flexibility operate as separable processes. Future research should integrate additional cognitive and neural measures to better understand attentional biases and fixations. (shrink)

Craig Callender’s What Makes Time Special? (OUP 2017) advocates and practices an innovative, thoroughly interdisciplinary approach to philosophical questions about time and temporal features of our lives. Grappling with it is of intrinsic philosophical interest; it is also part of responding to the methodological invitation the book issues to philosophers of time. This paper is motivated by the wish to clarify WMTS’s philosophical underpinnings. The main claim of the paper is that WMTS relies on an ambiguity between rejecting the A-theory (...) versus B-theory debate, and endorsing a position within that debate. This ambiguity leads to a somewhat unstable position on how a key feature of manifest time, namely our sense of time as flowing, arises from physical time. The paper ends with a suggestion for how to resolve the ambiguity, in a way that is in line with the gist of Callender’s overall vision for the field. (shrink)

Many metaphysical controversies can be understood as debates over whether some alleged entities are metaphysically possible. No doubt, with regard to these matters, we may have opinions or theories, commonsensical or sophisticated. But do we have knowledge of them? Can we really know that something is metaphysically possible, and if so, how? Several different answers have been offered in the literature, intending to illustrate how we may have knowledge of metaphysical modality. In this paper, I concentrate on a proposal by (...) Timothy Williamson. On this account, our alleged knowledge of metaphysical modality is justified by and grounded in our capacity to handle ordinary mundane counterfactual conditionals. However, I argue that Williamson’s account fails, mainly because the modality involved in ordinary mundane counterfactuals is causal, and thus our capacity to handle them still falls short of giving us any knowledge of metaphysical modality. In the end of the paper, I also provide my own answer to the question. My answer is a sceptical one: we do not really have knowledge of metaphysical modality. But such ignorance is harmless, or so I argue. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Cross‐Cultural Perspectives on Human Rights Democratic Participation in the Cultural Context Development as a Process of Self‐Enhancement from Within Conclusion.