What is an academic emotion? Insights from Filipino bilingual students’ emotion words associated with learning

We explored Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions by studying the words they use to describe their emotional experiences associated with learning. Two main theoretical frames were used as reference in the analysis: Clore, Ortony, & Foss’ (1978) taxonomy of emotion words, and Pekrun’s (2006) dimensions of academic emotions. We asked Filipino learners to describe the positive and negative emotions that they associate with their learning experiences using an open ended questionnaire. The 676 students used 1337 words which were classified into root word categories; 38 categories which were mentioned by at least 1% of the participants were included in the analysis. The interpretive analysis suggested that Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions includes appraisals of cognitive and even physical conditions, beyond the typical affective conditions assumed in theories of emotions and academic emotions. Moreover, Filipino learners’ concepts of academic emotions include a wider range of emotion concepts, and may require additional characteristic dimensions, compared to what is being studied in current academic emotions research.     

What is an expert?

Experts play an important role in society, but there has been little investigation about the nature of expertise. I argue that there are two kinds of experts: those whose expertise is a function of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (performative expertise). Epistemic expertise is the capacity to provide strong justifications for a range of propositions in a domain, while performative expertise is the capacity to perform a skill well according to the rules and virtues of a practice. Both epistemic and performative experts may legitimately disagree with one another, and the two senses are conceptually and logically distinct.     

Is guilt an emotion?

Abstract

When unequivocal examples of emotion adjectives occur in the linguistic context of “being” (e.g. being angry) they can be seen to refer to emotions as readily as when they occur in the linguistic context of “feeling” (e.g. feeling angry). This is not true of poor 'or non-examples of emotion words. A psycholinguistic analysis of this phenomenon is proposed, in the light of which it is suggested that words such as “abandoned” and “guilty” do not refer to emotions. The possibility that the word “guilty” has a distinct emotional sense meaning “feeling guilty” is discussed, and the implications of this proposal for theories of emotions are examined. Also discussed are the implications of the inclusion of poor or non-examples of emotions in lists of “basic” emotions. Data are presented indicating that many of the states that emotion theorists have included as emotions, and in some cases as “basic” emotions, are not generally rated as such, and that they fail to exhibit the patterns using the feel-be test that characterise unequivocal examples. It is suggested that a problem in delimiting the domain of theories of emotions may reside in a confusion between emotions on the one hand, and their typical causes and concomitants on the other.     

What is an Empirical Analysis of Causation?

Philosophical accounts of causation have traditionally been framed as attempts to analyze the concept of a cause. In recent years, however, a number of philosophers have proposed instead that causation be empirically reduced to some relation uncovered by the natural sciences: e.g., a relation of energy transfer. This paper argues that the project of empirical analysis lacks a clearly defined methodology, leaving it uncertain how such views are to be evaluated. It proposes several possible accounts of empirical analysis and argues that the most promising approach would treat it as a contingent identity discovered by identifying the relation (or relations) that most nearly approximate the inferential role of causal concepts in a psychological theory of causal judgment.     

What is spiritual? What is spiritual suffering?

The author offers definitions for "spiritual" and for "spiritual suffering," suggesting that human spiritual needs include Love, Faith, Hope, Virtue, and Beauty. Spiritual suffering is experienced when these needs are unfulfilled. Spiritual care involves assisting in the fulfillment of these needs. He considers the constant movement between spiritual needs and fulfillments, encouraging use of fluid (not static) assessment methods using "spiritual spectra." As a model, this outline of basic spiritual needs may serve as the foundation for many current spiritual assessment tools.     

Is the startle reaction an emotion?

In this study, we examined startle reactions in which the subjects did and did not know when a blank pistol would be fired. In addition, we asked subjects to suppress their startle response and to simulate a startle when there was no gunshot. Detailed measurement of facial muscular actions supported most of the findings reported by Landis and Hunt (1939), but our findings suggested that startle be considered a reflex not an emotion. The findings are considered in terms of current disagreements about exactly what constitutes an emotion, including the argument between Zajonc (1980) and Lazarus (1984) about the role of appraisal.     

Is moral elevation an approach-oriented emotion?

Two studies were designed to test whether moral elevation should be conceptualized as an approach-oriented emotion. The studies examined the relationship between moral elevation and the behavioral activation and inhibition systems. Study 1 (N = 80) showed that individual differences in moral elevation were associated with individual differences in behavioral activation but not inhibition. Study 2 (N = 78) showed that an elevation-inducing video promoted equally high levels of approach orientation as an anger-inducing video and significantly higher levels of approach orientation than a control video. Furthermore, the elevation-inducing stimulus (vs. the control condition) significantly promoted prosocial motivation and this effect was sequentially mediated by feelings of moral elevation followed by an approach-oriented state. Overall the results show unambiguous support for the proposal that moral elevation is an approach-oriented emotion. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed.     

What if there is an ethical dimension in psychoanalysis?

The implications of an ethical dimension in psychoanalysis are explored, together with the questions whether and in what sense analysis has anything to contribute to ethical reflection, and whether and in what sense ethical considerations can play a role in analytic theory and process. As regards theory, analytic construction of an ethical agent would require a refocusing of structural and dynamic considerations in order to provide an integrative source of decision-making capacity to serve as the responsible agent in ethical deliberation, choice, and action. Suggestions are made for formulating the nature of the ethical agent in terms of a theory of motivation rather than of drive, and in terms of an integrative theory of the self. To the extent that analysis involves ethical considerations, the way lies open for dialogue and mutually enriching contributions of analysis to ethics and vice versa. Various aspects of the analytic perspective are explored that in themselves carry ethical implications or can be enriched by ethical reflection. Beyond theoretical considerations, the interaction between ethical factors and genetic, structural, and dynamic issues in clinical psychoanalysis loom as matters for future exploration.     

What is Testimony?

C.A.J. Coady, in his book Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), offers conditions on an assertion that p to count as testimony. He claims that the assertion that p must be by a competent speaker directed to an audience in need of evidence and it must be evidence that p . I offer examples to show that Coady's conditions are too strong. Testimony need not be evidence; the speaker need not be competent; and, the statement need not be relevant or directed to someone in need of evidence. I give alternative conditions. Coady was led into the stronger conditions by investigating testimony as it occurs in legal contexts, where special steps are taken to ensure that testimony provides the jury or the judge with evidence by a competent speaker that is relevant to the disputed question of the guilt or innocence of the defendant.     

What is Antiphilosophy?

In certain philosophical quarters, a new metaphilosophical position is being discussed—antiphilosophy. Such a position seems to maintain that there is no distinction between philosophy and sophistry, reason and rhetoric, arguing and emoting. This paper examines antiphilosophy. Specifically, it aims to address three interrelated questions: Is antiphilosophy a possible metaphilosophical position? If it is, what characterizes it? And what ramifications would it have? The paper argues that antiphilosophy is possible and is best construed as an attempt to reconstruct philosophical discourse on noncognitive lines. Explicitly, “to assert” and the belief propositional attitude is replaced by “to convince” and a pro‐attitude desire to rhetorically talk someone into something. The paper examines one possible form such a position could take as well as various ramifications of it.     

What is hope?

According to the standard account, to hope for an outcome is to desire it and to believe that its realization is possible, though not inevitable. This account, however, faces certain difficulties: It cannot explain how people can display differing strengths in hope; it cannot distinguish hope from despair; and it cannot explain substantial hopes. This paper proposes an account of hope that can meet these deficiencies. Briefly, it argues that in addition to possessing the relevant belief–desire structure as allowed in the standard account, a hopeful person must also be able to see a way in which the desired outcome can come about and to see such a way to the outcome as a genuine possibility.     

What is Said?

It is sometimes argued that certain sentences of natural language fail to express truth conditional contents. Standard examples include e.g. Tipper is ready and Steel is strong enough. In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of truth conditional meaning (what is said) using the notion of a question under discussion. This account (i) explains why these types of sentences are not, in fact, semantically underdetermined (yet seem truth conditionally incomplete), (ii) provides a principled analysis of the process by which natural language sentences (in general) can come to have enriched meanings in context, and (iii) shows why various alternative views, e.g. so‐called Radical Contextualism, Moderate Contextualism, and Semantic Minimalism, are partially right in their respective analyses of the problem, but also all ultimately wrong. Our analysis achieves this result using a standard truth conditional and compositional semantics and without making any assumptions about enriched logical forms, i.e. logical forms containing phonologically null expressions.