Gratitude, Ressentiment, and Citizenship Education

Patricia White (Stud Philos Educ 18:43–52, 1999) argues that the virtue gratitude is essential to a flourishing democracy because it helps foster universal and reciprocal amity between citizens. Citizens who participate in this reciprocal relationship ought to be encouraged to recognize that “much that people do does in fact help to make communal civic life less brutish, pleasanter and more flourishing.” This is the case even when the majority of citizens do not intentionally seek to make civic life better for others. Were citizens to recognize the appropriateness of gratitude in these situations, the bonds of our democratic communities would be strengthened. In this paper, I examine White’s argument more carefully, arguing that it fails to address adequately the difficulties that arise when we attempt to encourage the virtue of gratitude in our students. To address these difficulties, I turn to an unlikely source for democratic inspiration: Friedrich Nietzsche. In spite of his well-known anti-democratic sentiments, Nietzsche offers democratic citizens insights into the social value of gratitude. I argue that Nietzsche’s ideas resolve the educational difficulties in White’s argument and viably establish gratitude as an important democratic virtue that ought to be cultivated.     

On Heller,Mönks,and Passow's International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent

The authors tested the hypothesis that a broad or narrow scope of perceptual attention engenders an analogously broad or narrow focus of conceptual attention, which in turn bolsters or undermines creative generation. In the first two experiments, participants completed visual tasks that forced them to focus perceptual attention on a comparatively broad or narrow visual area. As predicted, broad, compared to narrow initial focusing of perceptual attention subsequently led to generation of more original uses for a brick (Experiment 1) and generation of more unusual category exemplars (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, participants were merely asked to contract their frontalis versus corrugator muscles, producing rudimentary peripheral feedback associated with broad versus narrow perceptual focus. As predicted, frontalis contraction, relative to corrugator contraction, led to the production of more original uses for a pair of scissors. Together, these three experiments provided converging initial support for our attentional priming hypothesis, suggesting that situationally induced variations in the scope of perceptual attention (and simple cues associated with such variations) may correspondingly expand or constrict the focus of conceptual attention within the semantic network, thereby improving or diminishing creativity.     

Poor Sleep as a Risk Factor for Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Adolescent Girls

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between poor sleep and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), and to test the hypothesis that poor sleep is a risk factor for the development of NSSI in young adolescents. Questionnaire data were used from a 2-wave longitudinal study of a community sample of 881 young Swedish adolescents. The results showed that 7 % of the girls reported poor sleep (never or seldom sleeping well), and 20–26 % of the girls reported repeated NSSI (at least 5 instances). Poor sleep was associated prospectively with NSSI among girls, but not among boys. Of girls who responded that they seldom or never slept well at T1, 77 % reported repeated NSSI 1 year later. Poor sleep at T1 was found to predict the incidence of new cases of repeated NSSI in girls at T2, independently of their degree of psychopathology. No similar relationship between poor sleep and NSSI was found in boys. The present results suggest that screening for poor sleep in adolescents may serve to identify a subgroup of girls at risk for developing NSSI. It is concluded that poor sleep in young girls should be taken seriously, even in the absence of other self-reported psychological problems, and that interventions targeted at sleep disturbances may be important for prevention.     

Wither away individuals

In this paper we deal with the problem of identity and individuality in quantum mechanics. We analyze three definitions of the concept of an individual and propose to check their merits in relation to the theory. In order to achieve our goals our approach also ties those definitions of individuality to two distinct kinds of naturalism in ontology: a strong version, according to which quantum mechanics must somehow authorize in a positive fashion the ontological concepts being dealt with, and a weak naturalism, according to which quantum mechanics must be only compatible with those ontological concepts. We conclude that strong naturalism is incompatible with the three concepts of individuality in quantum mechanics, and we argue that weak naturalism is not completely motivated, so that the best position to be assumed, in the end, is that the entities are simply not individuals. That is, in its craving to be compatible with strong naturalism, individuality ends up evaporating and we are left with non-individuals.     

Nie Wieder: Group‐Based Emotions for In‐Group Wrongdoing Affect Attitudes toward Unrelated Minorities

This article focuses on the effects of group‐based emotions for in‐group wrongdoing on attitudes towards seemingly unrelated groups. Two forms of shame are distinguished from one another and from guilt and linked to positive and negative attitudes towards an unrelated minority. In Study 1 (N = 203), Germans' feelings of moral shame—arising from the belief that the in‐group's Nazi past violates an important moral value—are associated with increased support for Turks living in Germany. Image shame—arising from a threatened social image—is associated with increased social distance. In Study 2 (N = 301), Britons' emotions regarding atrocities committed by in‐group members during the war in Iraq have similar links with attitudes towards Pakistani immigrants. We extend the findings of Study 1 by demonstrating that the effects are mediated by a sense of moral obligation and observed more strongly when the unrelated group is perceived as similar to the harmed group. Guilt was unrelated to any outcome variable across both studies. Theoretical and practical implications about the nature of group‐based emotions and their potential for affecting wider intergroup relations are discussed.     

THE FRESHMAN OBJECTION TO EXPRESSIVISM AND WHAT TO MAKE OF IT

Cognitivism is the view that the primary function of moral judgements is to express beliefs that purport to say how things are; expressivism is the contrasting view that their primary function is to express some desire-like state of mind. I shall consider what I call the freshman objection to expressivism. It is pretty uncontroversial that this objection rests on simple misunderstandings. There are nevertheless interesting metaethical lessons to learn from the fact that the freshman objection is prevalent among undergraduates and non-philosophers. It leaves for expressivists two awkward explanatory tasks. Number one is that of explaining why natural selection – which, by expressivism's own lights, favoured moral thought and talk because of their socially useful regulative and coordinating functions – did not favour a stance that would make moral thought and talk more effective in fulfilling these functions. Number two is that of explaining how moral thought and talk survive in cultural evolution, despite the prevalence of the freshman objection and related worries. I conclude that expressivism as a theory of actual moral discourse rather than a revisionist theory is either false or committed to an implausible error theory, according to which ordinary speakers are systematically mistaken about what they are up to when they make moral judgements.     

Graduate Student Selection: Graduate record examination,socioeconomic status,and undergraduate grade point average as predictors of study success in a western European University

Graduate students' mobility has increased within Europe. Yet, empirical evidence on the validity of standardized admission tests in Europe is still scarce. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the incremental validity of the GRE® revised general test above undergraduate grade point average (U‐GPA) by focusing on a multinational sample of master students (N = 282) enrolled at a Dutch university. Results indicated that the Analytical Writing part of the GRE predicts graduate grade point average above and beyond U‐GPA. Furthermore, the results suggest that the relationship is independent of students' socioeconomic status as indexed by parental education. Implications for graduate student selection in a European context are discussed.