The Dharma of Ethics, the Ethics of Dharma: Quizzing the Ideals of Hinduism

This paper is divided into six parts. The first presents a rudimentary definition of ethics based on Western philosophical theories, particularly their concern for articulating universal moral principles. The second examines the assumptions anchoring Western moral philosophies, and raises the question: are the philosophical presuppositions of modern Western philosophy consistent with the presuppositions of Hinduism? It concludes that the two are not entirely in agreement, particularly on the issue of personal and social identity. The third section locates areas in Hinduism that discursively concur with the concerns of Western ethicists, and explores the limits of the semblance. The fourth identifies problematic areas, and raises the question: should the idea of universal ethics be abandoned for Hinduism? The fifth section concludes that such abandonment would be hasty, and initiates a searching look into the Hindu epics for concepts that, while not identical with may still be parallel to some Western notions of ethics. The sixth looks at the content of normative Hindu morality, and generalizes on the basis of this content about the nature of “Hindu ethics”.     

Making a life worth living: neural correlates of well-being

Despite the vast literature that has implicated asymmetric activation of the prefrontal cortex in approach-withdrawal motivation and emotion, no published reports have directly explored the neural correlates of well-being. Eighty-four right-handed adults (ages 57-60) completed self-report measures of eudaimonic well-being, hedonic well-being, and positive affect prior to resting electroencephalography. As hypothesized, greater left than right superior frontal activation was associated with higher levels of both forms of well-being. Hemisphere-specific analyses documented the importance of goal-directed approach tendencies beyond those captured by approach-related positive affect for eudaimonic but not for hedonic well-being. Appropriately engaging sources of appetitive motivation, characteristic of higher left than right baseline levels of prefrontal activation, may encourage the experience of well-being.     

The Truth of Dharma and the Dharma of Truth: Reflections on Hinduism as a Dharmic Faith

International Journal of Hindu Studies - This article discusses what it might mean to characterize traditional Hinduism as a dharmic faith in relation to the concepts of truth (satyam) and its...     

Training experts: individuation without naming is worth it

There is growing evidence that individuation experience is necessary for development of expert object discrimination that transfers to new exemplars. Individuation training in human studies has primarily used label association tasks where labels are learned at both the individual and more abstract (basic) level, and expertise criterion requires that individual-level judgments become as fast as basic-level judgments. However, there are training situations when the use of labels is not practical (e.g., with animals or some clinical populations). Moreover, labeling itself can facilitate object discrimination, thus it is unclear what role labels play in the acquisition of expertise in such training paradigms. Here, participants completed an online game that did not require labels in which they interacted with novel objects (Greebles) or control objects (Yufos). Games either required individuation or categorization. We then assessed the impact of this exposure on an abridged Greeble training paradigm. As expected, participants who played Yufo games or Greeble categorization games showed a significant basic-level advantage for Greebles in the abridged training paradigm, typical of novices. However, participants who played the Greeble identity game showed a reduced basic-level advantage, suggesting that individuation without labels may be sufficient to acquire perceptual expertise.     

Influence of positive affect on the subjective utility of gains and losses: it is just not worth the risk

A modification of the procedure originally used by Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel (1956) to measure subjective utility was used to study the influence of positive affect on individuals' perceived value (utility) functions. Results indicated, as expected, that persons in whom positive affect had been induced showed a more negative subjective utility for losses than did controls. This indicates that losses seem worse to people who are feeling happy than to those in a control condition. The subjective utility functions of the two groups did not differ as much, however, when people were considering potential gain. Thus, at least in the situation tested in this study, potential gains did not seem to be more appealing (nor less so) for affect subjects than they did for controls. These findings are discussed in relation to theoretical issues in decision making and work suggesting that positive affect can promote increased sensitivity to losses in situations of potential meaningful loss.     

A thousand pleasures are not worth a single pain: The compensation argument for Schopenhauer's pessimism

Pessimism is, roughly, the view that life is not worth living. In chapter 46 of the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer provides an oft‐neglected argument for this view. The argument is that a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living. The now standard interpretation of this argument (endorsed by Kuno Fischer and Christopher Janaway) proceeds from the claim that the value—or rather valuelessness—of life's goods makes compensation impossible. But this interpretation is neither philosophically attractive nor faithful to the text. In this article, I develop and defend an alternative interpretation (suggested by Wilhelm Windelband and Mark Migotti) according to which it is instead the actual temporal arrangement of life's goods and evils that makes compensation impossible.     

The world of emotions is not two-dimensional

For more than half a century, emotion researchers have attempted to establish the dimensional space that most economically accounts for similarities and differences in emotional experience. Today, many researchers focus exclusively on two-dimensional models involving valence and arousal. Adopting a theoretically based approach, we show for three languages that four dimensions are needed to satisfactorily represent similarities and differences in the meaning of emotion words. In order of importance, these dimensions are evaluation-pleasantness, potency-control, activation-arousal, and unpredictability. They were identified on the basis of the applicability of 144 features representing the six components of emotions: (a) appraisals of events, (b) psychophysiological changes, (c) motor expressions, (d) action tendencies, (e) subjective experiences, and (f) emotion regulation.     

Division I men and women athletes do not differ on perceptions of worth

Historically, especially prior to the increased interest in women's athletics with the passage of Title IX in 1972, there have been negative perceptions of women as athletes. If these social perceptions still hold in part today, as is indirectly suggested by unequal press coverage and less basic support for women athletes, one might predict that collegiate female athletes would rate themselves lower on self-esteem and worth than collegiate male athletes. 176 Division I male (n = 90) and female (n = 86) athletes rated their perceptions of self on the Worth Index which measures basic human worth, personal security, performance, and physical self; these are divided into intrinsic (unconditional worth) measures and behavior or performance (conditional worth) measures. There were no significant sex differences in the ratings of any aspect of perceived worth, in contrast to prior results among non-athletes. In spite of less support given to women athletes, perhaps the long-term high-intensity competition that is required to reach Division I status tends to eliminate sex differences in self-worth.     

The origins and the worth of theism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The SNARC effect is not a unitary phenomenon

Models of the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect—faster responses to small numbers using left effectors, and the converse for large numbers—diverge substantially in localizing the root cause of this effect along the numbers’ processing chain. One class of models ascribes the cause of the SNARC effect to the inherently spatial nature of the semantic representation of numerical magnitude. A different class of models ascribes the effect’s cause to the processing dynamics taking place during response selection. To disentangle these opposing views, we devised a paradigm combining magnitude comparison and stimulus–response switching in order to monitor modulations of the SNARC effect while concurrently tapping both semantic and response-related processing stages. We observed that the SNARC effect varied nonlinearly as a function of both manipulated factors, a result that can hardly be reconciled with a unitary cause of the SNARC effect.     

The attentional blink is not a unitary phenomenon

Identification of the second of two targets is impaired if it is presented less than about 500 ms after the first. Three models of this second-target deficit, known as attentional blink (AB), were compared:resource-depletion, bottleneck, and temporary loss of control (TLC). Five experiments, in which three sequential targets were inserted in a stream of distractors, showed that identification accuracy for the leading target depended on an attentional switch whose magnitude varied with distractor–target similarity. In contrast, accuracy for the trailing target depended on similarity between the target and the trailing mask. These results strongly suggest that the AB is not a unitary phenomenon. Resource-depletion was ruled out as a viable account. The effect of attentional switching was handled naturally by the TLC model, while bottleneck models offered the best account of the effect of backward masking.     

The stimulus prefix is not irrelevant and is redundant in different ways

The present study examined the stimulus prefix effect of immediate recall under conditions in which the prefix element was defined explicitly as being an irrelevant item that should be ignored, or, alternatively, as an item to be remembered and recalled. Memory was poorer in the latter case. Also examined were the effects of three types of redundancy relation between the prefix and target elements; one of these, interstring redundancy (same prefix precedes each target string), was found to improve recall in a relative sense, and another, conceptual redundancy (prefix and target items belong to the same conceptual category), was found to degrade it. Thus, that part of the conventional stimulus prefix effect attributable to redundancy, per se, can be viewed as a composite of at least two opposing factors. Finally, the independent variables of the present study were interpreted to impose different information-processing requirements on the subject, and an account of these requirements was offered.     

Self-promotion is not ingratiating

Pairs of subjects participated in two unstructured conversations spaced one week apart. In the second session, one subject of the pair was asked to participate either as an ingratiator or as a self-promoter. Naive target subjects clearly distinguished between presenters attempting to appear likable or competent. As verified by observer subjects, ingratiators used reactive verbal and nonverbal behaviors, whereas promoters used proactive behaviors. Preparation time did not produce differential behavioral tactics. The results are discussed in terms of the use of conversational resources to produce the attributions of likability and competence.