One way in which individuals can participate in action to change the society they live in is through the pursuit of an ideal society or “utopia”; however, the content of that utopia is a likely determinant of its motivational impact. Here we examined two predominant prototypes of utopia derived from previous research and theory—the Green and Sci-Fi utopias. When participants were primed with either of these utopias, the Green utopia was perceived to entail a range of other positive characteristics (e.g., warmth, positive emotions) and—provided it was positively evaluated—tended to elicit both motivation and behaviour for social change. In contrast, the Sci-Fi utopia was associated with low motivation, even when it was positively evaluated. Furthermore, the Green utopia was shown to elicit greater perceptions of participative efficacy, which in turn predicted the increase in social change motivation. 相似文献
According to the free energy principle all living systems aim to minimise free energy in their sensory exchanges with the environment. Processes of free energy minimisation are thus ubiquitous in the biological world. Indeed it has been argued that even plants engage in free energy minimisation. Not all living things however feel alive. How then did the feeling of being alive get started? In line with the arguments of the phenomenologists, I will claim that every feeling must be felt by someone. It must have mineness built into it if it is to feel a particular way. The question I take up in this paper asks how mineness might have arisen out of processes of free energy minimisation, given that many systems that keep themselves alive lack mineness. The hypothesis I develop in this paper is that the life of an organism can be seen as an inferential process. Every living system embodies a probability distribution conditioned on a model of the sensory, physiological, and morphological states that are highly probably given the life it leads and the niche it inhabits. I argue for an ecological and enactive interpretation of free energy. I show how once the life of an organism reaches a certain level of complexity mineness emerges as an intrinsic part of the process of life itself.
An increasingly unbridgeable gap exists between the supply and demand of transplantable organs. Human embryonic stem cell technology could solve the organ shortage problem by restoring diseased or damaged tissue across a range of common conditions. However, such technology faces several largely ignored immunological challenges in delivering cell lines to large populations. We address some of these challenges and argue in favor of encouraging contribution or intentional creation of embryos from which widely immunocompatible stem cell lines could be derived. Further, we argue that current immunological constraints in tissue transplantation demand the creation of a global stem cell bank, which may hold particular promise for minority populations and other sub-groups currently marginalized from organ procurement and allocation systems. Finally, we conclude by offering a number of practical and ethically oriented recommendations for constructing a human embryonic stem cell bank that we hope will help solve the ongoing organ shortage problem. 相似文献
The essay examines the three main epiphanic experiences in The Brothers Karamazov and shows how Dostoevskij’s treatment of these experiences may offer a guide to spiritual renewal. The three experiences are Alësha’s vision of the resurrected Zosima and transfigured Christ, Dmitrij’s vision of the suffering babe, and Ivan’s vision of the devil (which serves as a counter example to the first two). By examining the content of each of these visions, as well as the parallels and variations in the scenes leading up to these visions, this essay seeks to explore Dostoevskij’s understanding of transformational revelatory experience. 相似文献
T he Health Belief Model (HBM; Rosenstock, 1966) is the most widely used psychological theory of health‐related behaviours but its applicability to non‐Western, especially Asian, populations has not been systematically studied. The main objective of the current study was to examine the effects of components of the HBM and dispositional optimism on preventive intention in two separate samples of 220 Hong Kong Chinese adults and 340 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents. Two HBM variables, benefits and barriers, were experimentally manipulated for an imaginary flu outbreak and a hypothetical vaccine. Optimism in the two samples was assessed using the Chinese revised Life Orientation Test (Lai et al., 1998). Participants indicated their intention to take the hypothetical vaccine after reading information for each of the treatment combinations defined by the two HBM variables. The order of the presentation of each of the six treatment conditions was counterbalanced. Results of ANOVA showed that the effects of the two HBM variables were similar in the two groups. Higher benefits and lower barriers were associated with stronger behavioural intention to take the vaccine. The two HBM variables interacted significantly in the adolescent but not the adult sample. Among the adolescents, the difference in intention scores between low and high barriers became larger when the benefits of taking the vaccine increased. In addition, optimism had significant effect on preventive intention only among the adolescents. These findings suggest that age may be an important factor moderating the effects of HBM components as well as optimism on preventive intention in Hong Kong Chinese. Implications of these findings to future research among Chinese were discussed. 相似文献
Rodent lesion studies have revealed the existence of two causally dissociable spatial memory systems, localized to the hippocampus and striatum that are preferentially sensitive to environmental boundaries and landmark objects, respectively. Here we test whether these two memory systems are causally dissociable in humans by examining boundary‐ and landmark‐based memory in typical and atypical development. Adults with Williams syndrome (WS)—a developmental disorder with known hippocampal abnormalities—and typical children and adults, performed a navigation task that involved learning locations relative to a boundary or a landmark object. We found that boundary‐based memory was severely impaired in WS compared to typically‐developing mental‐age matched (MA) children and chronological‐age matched (CA) adults, whereas landmark‐based memory was similar in all groups. Furthermore, landmark‐based memory matured earlier in typical development than boundary‐based memory, consistent with the idea that the WS cognitive phenotype arises from developmental arrest of late maturing cognitive systems. Together, these findings provide causal and developmental evidence for dissociable spatial memory systems in humans. 相似文献
Linguistic evidence supports the claim that certain, weak rejections are less specific than assertions. On the basis of this evidence, it has been argued that rejected sentences cannot be premisses and conclusions in inferences. We give examples of inferences with weakly rejected sentences as premisses and conclusions. We then propose a logic of weak rejection which accounts for the relevant phenomena and is motivated by principles of coherence in dialogue. We give a semantics for which this logic is sound and complete, show that it axiomatizes the modal logic KD45 and prove that it still derives classical logic on its asserted fragment. Finally, we defend previous logics of strong rejection as being about the linguistically preferred interpretations of weak rejections. 相似文献