This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single the... more This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.
This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single the... more This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.
Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, bu... more Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, but his 1973 book Attention and Effort, which claimed that attention can be identified with effort, cemented the association as a research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the paradigm has rarely been questioned and appears to have set the research agenda so that it is self-reinforcing. In this article, we retrace Kahneman’s argument to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The central notion of effort is not clearly defined in the book, so we proceed by constructing the most secure inferences we can from Kahneman’s argument regarding effort: it is cognitive, objective, metabolic expenditure, and it is attention. Continuing, we find from Kahneman’s argument that effort-attention must be a special case of sympathetic dominance of the autonomic nervous system that is also an increase in metabolic activity in the brain that has crossed a threshold of magnitude. We then weigh this conception of effort against evidence in Kahneman’s book and against more recent evidence, finding that it does not warrant the conclusion that effort can be equated with attention. In support of an alternative perspective, we briefly review diverse studies of behavior, physiology, and neuroscience on attention and effort, including meditation and studies of the LC-NE system, where we find evidence for the following: (1) Attention seems to be associated not with the utilization of metabolic resources per se but with the readying of metabolic resources in the form of adaptive gain modulation. This occurs under sympathetic dominance and can be experienced as effortful. (2) Attention can also occur under parasympathetic dominance, in which case it is likely to be experienced as effortless.
We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to current t... more We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to current theories of wisdom transmission can foster wisdom in students in a measurable way. The three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS) was administered to 131 students in five wisdom-promoting introductory philosophy courses and 176 students in seven introductory philosophy and psychology control courses at the beginning and end of the semester. The experimental group was divided in two (“Wisdom 1” and “Wisdom 2”), and each was taught a distinct curriculum consistent with theories of wisdom education. Results of repeated measures MANOVA showed that over the course of the semester average 3D-WS scores decreased in the control classes, stayed the same in the Wisdom 1 classes, and increased in the Wisdom 2 classes. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a wisdom curriculum has been demonstrated to increase wisdom in a traditional higher education setting.
A case is made here for diversifying philosophy with regard to subject matter. First, a generic m... more A case is made here for diversifying philosophy with regard to subject matter. First, a generic model of an innate human tendency toward ethnocentrism is described. Second, the ultimate advantage of diversity in the kinds of problem solving that philosophers do is demonstrated. Third, it is shown how mutliculturalism yields this kind of diversity. Fourth, it is shown how micromotives biased by ethnocentrism in philosophy currently hinder diversification in philosophy. Finally, ways are suggested of overcoming ethnocentric forces in favor of multicultural diversity.
Based on recent findings, we propose a framework for a relationship among attention, effort and o... more Based on recent findings, we propose a framework for a relationship among attention, effort and optimal performance. Optimal performance often refers to an effortless and automatic, flow-like state of performance. Mindfulness regulates the focus of attention to optimal focus on the core component of the action, avoiding too much attention that could be detrimental for elite performance. Balanced attention is a trained state that can optimize any particular attentional activity on the dual-process spectrum.
This article is a data-driven critique of The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), the most instit... more This article is a data-driven critique of The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), the most institutionally influential publication in the field of Anglophone philosophy. The PGR is influential because it is perceived to be of high value. The article demonstrates that the actual value of the PGR, in its current form, is not nearly as high as it is assumed to be and that the PGR is, in fact, detrimental to the profession. The article lists and explains five objections to the methods and methodology of the report. Taken together, the objections demonstrate that the report is severely flawed, failing to provide the information it purports to and damaging the profession overall. Finally, the article explains how several modifications may improve the PGR so that it can more legitimately and equitably play the role it already plays. The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) is an opinion poll that bills itself as a ranking of philosophy graduate programs based on the quality of faculty. Brian Leiter, who earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Michigan and is now a chair professor of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School as well as the director of the University of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values, handpicked his original slate of evaluators and has since asked them to recommend others. The evaluators are given faculty lists from philosophy Ph.D. programs, absent school names, and it is the task of the evaluators to rate each program on a scale of 0–5, instructed as follows: Please give your opinion of the attractiveness of the faculty for a prospective student, taking in to account (and weighted as you deem appropriate) the quality of philosophical work and talent on the faculty, the range of areas the faculty covers, and the availability of the faculty over the next few years. (Leiter 2011c)
At the confluence of the philosophy of education and social/political philosophy lies the questio... more At the confluence of the philosophy of education and social/political philosophy lies the question of how we should educate the next generation of philosophy professors. Part of the question involves how broad such an education should be in order to educate teachers with the ability to, themselves, educate citizens competent to function in a diverse, globalized world. As traditional Western education systems from elementary schools through universities have embraced multicultural sources over the last few decades, philosophy Ph.D. programs have bucked this trend, clinging tightly to traditional Western sources and problems. While this claim will come as no surprise to those working in the field, there is little published evidence or discussion of the tacit rejection of multiculturalism by philosophy Ph.D. programs, and few people outside the field realize how Eurocentric these programs remain. This article provides evidence and discussion of this fact, focusing on the case of Chinese philosophy in American Ph.D. programs.
In the philosophy of action, it is generally understood that action presupposes an agent performi... more In the philosophy of action, it is generally understood that action presupposes an agent performing or guiding the action. Action is also generally understood as distinct form the kind of motion that happens in nature. Together these common perspectives on action rule out both action without agency and natural action. And yet, there are times when action can seem qualitatively both natural and lacking a sense of agency. Recently, David Velleman, referring to work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Zhuangzi, has considered the possibility of agency without agency. In this chapter, I build on Velleman's work and posit the notion of self-organization (which in the natural sciences serves as the basis for many familiar kinds of motion in nature) to also serve as the basis for human behavior. If action is a variety of behavior, conceiving of human behavior as fundamentally an instance of self-organization unifies human action with nature from the beginning and allows us to conceptualize the possibility of human action without presupposing the necessity of agency. I go on to entertain three types of human behavior in which the sense of agency is significantly absent and which progressively qualify as action.
In this article, I delineate seven aspects of the process of self-consciousness in order to dem... more In this article, I delineate seven aspects of the process of self-consciousness in order to demonstrate that when any of the aspects is compromised, self-consciousness goes away while consciousness persists. I then suggest that the psychological phenomenon of flow is characterized by a loss of self-consciousness. The seven aspects are: 1) implicit awareness that the person and the self are identical; 2) awareness of an event or circumstance in the world internal or external to the person; 3) awareness that this event or circumstance is not isolated, that something will result from it; 4) inference that a result of the circumstance or event may have an impact on one's person; 5) inference that the impact on one's person may have a normative valence with respect to one's person; 6) inference that the normative valence with respect one's person may be significant to one's person; 7) implicit awareness that any event eventuating in a normative valence that is significant with respect to one's person will also be significant to one's self.
Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action, 2010
Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the s... more Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the strict confines of the laboratory or take cognitively impaired patients as subjects (Parasuraman 1998b; Pashler 1998; Posner 2004; Underwood 1993), it is difficult to be sure that resultant models of attention adequately account for the phenomenon of effortless attention. The problem is not only that effortless attention is resistant to laboratory study (but see Moller, Meier, and Wall, chapter 9, this volume). A further issue is that because the laboratory is the most common way to approach attention, models resulting from such studies are naturally the most widely propagated, these models naturally tend to be biased toward features of attention most amenable to laboratory study, and these models by their implications set the agenda for future study that leads back to the laboratory. In this self-reinforcing system, features of attention not amenable to laboratory study are naturally neglected by researchers. Being that they are neglected, one can surmise that they are not adequately accounted for in current models, and such models, therefore, fail to indicate potentially important areas for future study. In this chapter, I will suggest an alternative model of attention as a heuristic for opening paths to further profitable research. The features of attention emphasized in this model are not new, but the synthesis is novel and sheds some light on issues relevant to the topic of effortless attention. I begin with the five following observations: 1. One naturally pays attention to a task of current interest. 2. There are (at least) two distinct modes of attention—selective and diffuse. 3. Attention is a constantly shifting avenue for the assimilation of information. 4. Information is not forced in from outside but is captured through internal sensitization. 5. Human information processing is fundamentally syntactic. Combining these five observations yields an explanatory model of attention that is not only consistent with the data from the many studies on attention in recent decades but also allows us to investigate the neglected phenomenon of effortless In Brian Bruya (ed.), Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action, 2010
In this Introduction, I identify seven discrete aspects of attention brought to the fore by by co... more In this Introduction, I identify seven discrete aspects of attention brought to the fore by by considering the phenomenon of effortless attention: effort, decision-making, action syntax, agency, automaticity, expertise, and mental training. For each, I provide an overview of recent research, identify challenges to or gaps in current attention theory with respect to it, consider how attention theory can be advanced by including current research, and explain how relevant chapters of this volume offer such advances.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow—the psychological process that describes how people bal... more Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow—the psychological process that describes how people balance skill, interest, and challenge—may hold an important piece of the puzzle of school reform. Flow explains how the mind rises to challenges—how people can become “lost” in an activity that fully engages them, whether it is playing golf on a tough course, cooking a new recipe, playing a complex video game, or doing a Sudoku puzzle. According to flow theory, if the challenge level is too low, participants simply become bored, often dropping out of an activity.
Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy ... more Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy that stretches back to Hellenist philosophy and the metaphysics that gave rise to it. Although that metaphysics has been repudiated in current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the dichotomy still haunts these fields. As such, action is understood as distinct from movement, or motion. In early China, under a very different metaphysical paradigm, no such distinction is made. Instead, a notion of self-caused movement, or spontaneity, is elaborated. In this article a general conception of spontaneity from early Daoism is explained, detailing its constituent aspects. Similar notions appeared from time to time in Western philosophy, and these instances are pursued, exploring how their instantiations differed from Daoist spontaneity and why. Based on these approximate examples of spontaneity and on early Daoist spontaneity, new criteria are postulated for a plausible theory of action that dispenses with presuppositions that eventuate in a freedom/determinism dichotomy, and instead the possibility is offered of a general model of action that can be applied smoothly across current philosophical and cognitive scientific subdisciplines.
In typical monotransitive verbs, such as "to touch," the patient is a passive recipient of acti... more In typical monotransitive verbs, such as "to touch," the patient is a passive recipient of action. In this paper, I discuss a special class of monotransitive verbs in which the patient is not, and cannot be, just a passive recipient of action. These verbs, such as "to educate," hinge on intersubjective experience. This intersubjectivity throws a wrench into classical descriptions of grammatical transitivity, transforming the recipient of action from a passive patient receiving the action into an active agent accepting the action. As such, light is thrown on other "intertransitive" verbs and the experiences they describe, with special attention paid to education.
Despite his status as one of the most prominent Chinese intellectuals living outside of China, Li... more Despite his status as one of the most prominent Chinese intellectuals living outside of China, Li Zehou remains an unapologetic Marxist. He also lays enthusiastic claim to his Chinese philosophical heritage. This seemingly paradoxical tryst of ideologies is becoming increasingly common in China, in no small part through the influence of this philosopher-without portfolio. Li is no grandstander, however-it was his 500 page tome on Kant, A Critique of the Critical Philosophy, that first caught the public's attention in 1979 and quickly became the talk of intellectual circles. According to Li, the key to his now expansive oeuvre is his theory of aesthetics. After being largely unknown to non-sinophobe aestheticians, Li's ideas are gradually being translated into English, but very little has been done on his aesthetics. In the first of three sections of this paper, I introduce the reader to Kant's aesthetics through Li's eyes, in which he develops an implicit notion of aesthetic freedom as political vehicle through the notions of subjectiv-ity, universalization, and the unity of the cognitive faculties. In the second section, I introduce Marx's notions of "human nature as practice" and "freedom as practice", as outlined in his early manuscripts. I conclude that Marx's politics take free practice as the highest expression of humanity, which is finally, ideally, self-legislating. In the final section, I present Li's interpretation of Marx as a remedy for Kant, introducing some of Li's specialized vocabulary and demonstrating his final synthesis of Kant and Marx in a notion of aesthetic freedom that presupposes political freedom.
Aesthetics & Chaos: Investigating a Creative Complicity, 2002
Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our childre... more Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our children, we govern our polities--all with the aim of reducing disorder, of temporarily reversing the entropy that inevitably asserts itself in our lives. Going all the way back to Hesiod, we see chaos as a cosmogonic state of utter confusion inevitably reigned in by laws of regularity, in a transition from fearful unpredictability to calm stability. In contrast to a similar early Chinese notion of chaotic disorder (luan), early Daoists posit a type of chaos that is to be cultivated rather than feared. This chaos is a primal disorder, akin to Hesiod's, but rather than threatening disruption, it is replete with creative potential and through spontaneous action yields orderly processes that proceed from the concretion of things to their dissolution and back, in a complex web of relations. This processional activity, although taken in one sense as cosmogonic, in a more important sense is immanent at every moment of activity. This article identifies terms of chaos, such as dun dun 沌 沌, hundun 渾 沌, and xingming 涬 溟 in Laozi and Zhuangzi and examines the passages in which they occur. Analyzing these passages brings us to a better understanding of "chaos" in a Chinese sense and to a familiarity with related terms in its semantic field, such as xuan 玄 (dark, mysterious), miao 妙 (subtle/profound), wei 微 (minute/inchoate), xiao 小 (small/minute), and pu 樸 (uncarved block). We see that the Daoist ideal is to return to a chaotic inchoateness by melding with the cosmos and there finding a repository of creative potential. This notion of chaos as the inchoate is used a springboard into understanding the origins of Daoist spontaneity.
In this article, I explore the relationship between desire and emotion in Descartes, Zhu Xi, an... more In this article, I explore the relationship between desire and emotion in Descartes, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming with the aim of demonstrating 1) that Zhu Xi, by keying on the detriments of selfishness, represents an improvement over the more sweeping Cartesian suggestion to control desires in general; and 2) that Wang Yangming, in turn, represents an improvement over Zhu Xi by providing a more sophisticated hermeneutic of the cosmology of desire.
In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emoti... more In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here.
This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single the... more This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.
This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single the... more This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.
Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, bu... more Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, but his 1973 book Attention and Effort, which claimed that attention can be identified with effort, cemented the association as a research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the paradigm has rarely been questioned and appears to have set the research agenda so that it is self-reinforcing. In this article, we retrace Kahneman’s argument to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The central notion of effort is not clearly defined in the book, so we proceed by constructing the most secure inferences we can from Kahneman’s argument regarding effort: it is cognitive, objective, metabolic expenditure, and it is attention. Continuing, we find from Kahneman’s argument that effort-attention must be a special case of sympathetic dominance of the autonomic nervous system that is also an increase in metabolic activity in the brain that has crossed a threshold of magnitude. We then weigh this conception of effort against evidence in Kahneman’s book and against more recent evidence, finding that it does not warrant the conclusion that effort can be equated with attention. In support of an alternative perspective, we briefly review diverse studies of behavior, physiology, and neuroscience on attention and effort, including meditation and studies of the LC-NE system, where we find evidence for the following: (1) Attention seems to be associated not with the utilization of metabolic resources per se but with the readying of metabolic resources in the form of adaptive gain modulation. This occurs under sympathetic dominance and can be experienced as effortful. (2) Attention can also occur under parasympathetic dominance, in which case it is likely to be experienced as effortless.
We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to current t... more We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to current theories of wisdom transmission can foster wisdom in students in a measurable way. The three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS) was administered to 131 students in five wisdom-promoting introductory philosophy courses and 176 students in seven introductory philosophy and psychology control courses at the beginning and end of the semester. The experimental group was divided in two (“Wisdom 1” and “Wisdom 2”), and each was taught a distinct curriculum consistent with theories of wisdom education. Results of repeated measures MANOVA showed that over the course of the semester average 3D-WS scores decreased in the control classes, stayed the same in the Wisdom 1 classes, and increased in the Wisdom 2 classes. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a wisdom curriculum has been demonstrated to increase wisdom in a traditional higher education setting.
A case is made here for diversifying philosophy with regard to subject matter. First, a generic m... more A case is made here for diversifying philosophy with regard to subject matter. First, a generic model of an innate human tendency toward ethnocentrism is described. Second, the ultimate advantage of diversity in the kinds of problem solving that philosophers do is demonstrated. Third, it is shown how mutliculturalism yields this kind of diversity. Fourth, it is shown how micromotives biased by ethnocentrism in philosophy currently hinder diversification in philosophy. Finally, ways are suggested of overcoming ethnocentric forces in favor of multicultural diversity.
Based on recent findings, we propose a framework for a relationship among attention, effort and o... more Based on recent findings, we propose a framework for a relationship among attention, effort and optimal performance. Optimal performance often refers to an effortless and automatic, flow-like state of performance. Mindfulness regulates the focus of attention to optimal focus on the core component of the action, avoiding too much attention that could be detrimental for elite performance. Balanced attention is a trained state that can optimize any particular attentional activity on the dual-process spectrum.
This article is a data-driven critique of The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), the most instit... more This article is a data-driven critique of The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), the most institutionally influential publication in the field of Anglophone philosophy. The PGR is influential because it is perceived to be of high value. The article demonstrates that the actual value of the PGR, in its current form, is not nearly as high as it is assumed to be and that the PGR is, in fact, detrimental to the profession. The article lists and explains five objections to the methods and methodology of the report. Taken together, the objections demonstrate that the report is severely flawed, failing to provide the information it purports to and damaging the profession overall. Finally, the article explains how several modifications may improve the PGR so that it can more legitimately and equitably play the role it already plays. The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) is an opinion poll that bills itself as a ranking of philosophy graduate programs based on the quality of faculty. Brian Leiter, who earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Michigan and is now a chair professor of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School as well as the director of the University of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values, handpicked his original slate of evaluators and has since asked them to recommend others. The evaluators are given faculty lists from philosophy Ph.D. programs, absent school names, and it is the task of the evaluators to rate each program on a scale of 0–5, instructed as follows: Please give your opinion of the attractiveness of the faculty for a prospective student, taking in to account (and weighted as you deem appropriate) the quality of philosophical work and talent on the faculty, the range of areas the faculty covers, and the availability of the faculty over the next few years. (Leiter 2011c)
At the confluence of the philosophy of education and social/political philosophy lies the questio... more At the confluence of the philosophy of education and social/political philosophy lies the question of how we should educate the next generation of philosophy professors. Part of the question involves how broad such an education should be in order to educate teachers with the ability to, themselves, educate citizens competent to function in a diverse, globalized world. As traditional Western education systems from elementary schools through universities have embraced multicultural sources over the last few decades, philosophy Ph.D. programs have bucked this trend, clinging tightly to traditional Western sources and problems. While this claim will come as no surprise to those working in the field, there is little published evidence or discussion of the tacit rejection of multiculturalism by philosophy Ph.D. programs, and few people outside the field realize how Eurocentric these programs remain. This article provides evidence and discussion of this fact, focusing on the case of Chinese philosophy in American Ph.D. programs.
In the philosophy of action, it is generally understood that action presupposes an agent performi... more In the philosophy of action, it is generally understood that action presupposes an agent performing or guiding the action. Action is also generally understood as distinct form the kind of motion that happens in nature. Together these common perspectives on action rule out both action without agency and natural action. And yet, there are times when action can seem qualitatively both natural and lacking a sense of agency. Recently, David Velleman, referring to work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Zhuangzi, has considered the possibility of agency without agency. In this chapter, I build on Velleman's work and posit the notion of self-organization (which in the natural sciences serves as the basis for many familiar kinds of motion in nature) to also serve as the basis for human behavior. If action is a variety of behavior, conceiving of human behavior as fundamentally an instance of self-organization unifies human action with nature from the beginning and allows us to conceptualize the possibility of human action without presupposing the necessity of agency. I go on to entertain three types of human behavior in which the sense of agency is significantly absent and which progressively qualify as action.
In this article, I delineate seven aspects of the process of self-consciousness in order to dem... more In this article, I delineate seven aspects of the process of self-consciousness in order to demonstrate that when any of the aspects is compromised, self-consciousness goes away while consciousness persists. I then suggest that the psychological phenomenon of flow is characterized by a loss of self-consciousness. The seven aspects are: 1) implicit awareness that the person and the self are identical; 2) awareness of an event or circumstance in the world internal or external to the person; 3) awareness that this event or circumstance is not isolated, that something will result from it; 4) inference that a result of the circumstance or event may have an impact on one's person; 5) inference that the impact on one's person may have a normative valence with respect to one's person; 6) inference that the normative valence with respect one's person may be significant to one's person; 7) implicit awareness that any event eventuating in a normative valence that is significant with respect to one's person will also be significant to one's self.
Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action, 2010
Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the s... more Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the strict confines of the laboratory or take cognitively impaired patients as subjects (Parasuraman 1998b; Pashler 1998; Posner 2004; Underwood 1993), it is difficult to be sure that resultant models of attention adequately account for the phenomenon of effortless attention. The problem is not only that effortless attention is resistant to laboratory study (but see Moller, Meier, and Wall, chapter 9, this volume). A further issue is that because the laboratory is the most common way to approach attention, models resulting from such studies are naturally the most widely propagated, these models naturally tend to be biased toward features of attention most amenable to laboratory study, and these models by their implications set the agenda for future study that leads back to the laboratory. In this self-reinforcing system, features of attention not amenable to laboratory study are naturally neglected by researchers. Being that they are neglected, one can surmise that they are not adequately accounted for in current models, and such models, therefore, fail to indicate potentially important areas for future study. In this chapter, I will suggest an alternative model of attention as a heuristic for opening paths to further profitable research. The features of attention emphasized in this model are not new, but the synthesis is novel and sheds some light on issues relevant to the topic of effortless attention. I begin with the five following observations: 1. One naturally pays attention to a task of current interest. 2. There are (at least) two distinct modes of attention—selective and diffuse. 3. Attention is a constantly shifting avenue for the assimilation of information. 4. Information is not forced in from outside but is captured through internal sensitization. 5. Human information processing is fundamentally syntactic. Combining these five observations yields an explanatory model of attention that is not only consistent with the data from the many studies on attention in recent decades but also allows us to investigate the neglected phenomenon of effortless In Brian Bruya (ed.), Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action, 2010
In this Introduction, I identify seven discrete aspects of attention brought to the fore by by co... more In this Introduction, I identify seven discrete aspects of attention brought to the fore by by considering the phenomenon of effortless attention: effort, decision-making, action syntax, agency, automaticity, expertise, and mental training. For each, I provide an overview of recent research, identify challenges to or gaps in current attention theory with respect to it, consider how attention theory can be advanced by including current research, and explain how relevant chapters of this volume offer such advances.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow—the psychological process that describes how people bal... more Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow—the psychological process that describes how people balance skill, interest, and challenge—may hold an important piece of the puzzle of school reform. Flow explains how the mind rises to challenges—how people can become “lost” in an activity that fully engages them, whether it is playing golf on a tough course, cooking a new recipe, playing a complex video game, or doing a Sudoku puzzle. According to flow theory, if the challenge level is too low, participants simply become bored, often dropping out of an activity.
Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy ... more Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy that stretches back to Hellenist philosophy and the metaphysics that gave rise to it. Although that metaphysics has been repudiated in current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the dichotomy still haunts these fields. As such, action is understood as distinct from movement, or motion. In early China, under a very different metaphysical paradigm, no such distinction is made. Instead, a notion of self-caused movement, or spontaneity, is elaborated. In this article a general conception of spontaneity from early Daoism is explained, detailing its constituent aspects. Similar notions appeared from time to time in Western philosophy, and these instances are pursued, exploring how their instantiations differed from Daoist spontaneity and why. Based on these approximate examples of spontaneity and on early Daoist spontaneity, new criteria are postulated for a plausible theory of action that dispenses with presuppositions that eventuate in a freedom/determinism dichotomy, and instead the possibility is offered of a general model of action that can be applied smoothly across current philosophical and cognitive scientific subdisciplines.
In typical monotransitive verbs, such as "to touch," the patient is a passive recipient of acti... more In typical monotransitive verbs, such as "to touch," the patient is a passive recipient of action. In this paper, I discuss a special class of monotransitive verbs in which the patient is not, and cannot be, just a passive recipient of action. These verbs, such as "to educate," hinge on intersubjective experience. This intersubjectivity throws a wrench into classical descriptions of grammatical transitivity, transforming the recipient of action from a passive patient receiving the action into an active agent accepting the action. As such, light is thrown on other "intertransitive" verbs and the experiences they describe, with special attention paid to education.
Despite his status as one of the most prominent Chinese intellectuals living outside of China, Li... more Despite his status as one of the most prominent Chinese intellectuals living outside of China, Li Zehou remains an unapologetic Marxist. He also lays enthusiastic claim to his Chinese philosophical heritage. This seemingly paradoxical tryst of ideologies is becoming increasingly common in China, in no small part through the influence of this philosopher-without portfolio. Li is no grandstander, however-it was his 500 page tome on Kant, A Critique of the Critical Philosophy, that first caught the public's attention in 1979 and quickly became the talk of intellectual circles. According to Li, the key to his now expansive oeuvre is his theory of aesthetics. After being largely unknown to non-sinophobe aestheticians, Li's ideas are gradually being translated into English, but very little has been done on his aesthetics. In the first of three sections of this paper, I introduce the reader to Kant's aesthetics through Li's eyes, in which he develops an implicit notion of aesthetic freedom as political vehicle through the notions of subjectiv-ity, universalization, and the unity of the cognitive faculties. In the second section, I introduce Marx's notions of "human nature as practice" and "freedom as practice", as outlined in his early manuscripts. I conclude that Marx's politics take free practice as the highest expression of humanity, which is finally, ideally, self-legislating. In the final section, I present Li's interpretation of Marx as a remedy for Kant, introducing some of Li's specialized vocabulary and demonstrating his final synthesis of Kant and Marx in a notion of aesthetic freedom that presupposes political freedom.
Aesthetics & Chaos: Investigating a Creative Complicity, 2002
Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our childre... more Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our children, we govern our polities--all with the aim of reducing disorder, of temporarily reversing the entropy that inevitably asserts itself in our lives. Going all the way back to Hesiod, we see chaos as a cosmogonic state of utter confusion inevitably reigned in by laws of regularity, in a transition from fearful unpredictability to calm stability. In contrast to a similar early Chinese notion of chaotic disorder (luan), early Daoists posit a type of chaos that is to be cultivated rather than feared. This chaos is a primal disorder, akin to Hesiod's, but rather than threatening disruption, it is replete with creative potential and through spontaneous action yields orderly processes that proceed from the concretion of things to their dissolution and back, in a complex web of relations. This processional activity, although taken in one sense as cosmogonic, in a more important sense is immanent at every moment of activity. This article identifies terms of chaos, such as dun dun 沌 沌, hundun 渾 沌, and xingming 涬 溟 in Laozi and Zhuangzi and examines the passages in which they occur. Analyzing these passages brings us to a better understanding of "chaos" in a Chinese sense and to a familiarity with related terms in its semantic field, such as xuan 玄 (dark, mysterious), miao 妙 (subtle/profound), wei 微 (minute/inchoate), xiao 小 (small/minute), and pu 樸 (uncarved block). We see that the Daoist ideal is to return to a chaotic inchoateness by melding with the cosmos and there finding a repository of creative potential. This notion of chaos as the inchoate is used a springboard into understanding the origins of Daoist spontaneity.
In this article, I explore the relationship between desire and emotion in Descartes, Zhu Xi, an... more In this article, I explore the relationship between desire and emotion in Descartes, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming with the aim of demonstrating 1) that Zhu Xi, by keying on the detriments of selfishness, represents an improvement over the more sweeping Cartesian suggestion to control desires in general; and 2) that Wang Yangming, in turn, represents an improvement over Zhu Xi by providing a more sophisticated hermeneutic of the cosmology of desire.
In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emoti... more In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here.
Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philo... more Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers, and set the standard for similar explorations today. In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in essays that extend his legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. Essays also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the essays in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher.
This collection of new articles brings together major scholars working at the intersection of tra... more This collection of new articles brings together major scholars working at the intersection of traditional Chinese philosophy and mainstream analytic philosophy. For some 2,500 years, China's best minds have pondered the human condition, and yet their ideas are almost entirely ignored by mainstream philosophers and philosophy programs. The proposed volume is intended to take a step in remedying that situation by directing sinological resources to current topics in philosophy and doing so in a manner that speaks to practicing philosophers. Contributions draw on a variety of sources across the Chinese tradition, from early Daoists and Confucians, to mid-imperial Buddhists and Neo-Confucians, right up to 20th Century philosophers. Some of the contemporary or recent philosophers whose works are discussed or challenged in this volume include Susan Wolf, Simon Blackburn, Jesse Prinz, Shaun Gallagher, Nel Noddings, John Rawls, Peter Singer, Stephen Buckle, Elizabeth Anscombe, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Graham Priest, Gilbert Ryle, W. V. Quine, Ernest Sosa, Harry Frankfurt, and David Velleman.
This is the first book to explore the cognitive science of effortless attention and action. Atten... more This is the first book to explore the cognitive science of effortless attention and action. Attention and action are generally understood to require effort, and the expectation is that under normal circumstances effort increases to meet rising demand. Sometimes, however, attention and action seem to flow effortlessly despite high demand. Effortless attention and action have been documented across a range of normal activities--from rock climbing to chess playing--and yet fundamental questions about the cognitive science of effortlessness have gone largely unasked. -/- This book draws from the disciplines of cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, behavioral psychology, genetics, philosophy, and cross-cultural studies. Starting from the premise that the phenomena of effortless attention and action provide an opportunity to test current models of attention and action, leading researchers from around the world examine topics including effort as a cognitive resource, the role of effort in decision making, the neurophysiology of effortless attention and action, the role of automaticity in effortless action, expert performance in effortless action, and the neurophysiology and benefits of attentional training. -/- Contributors: Joshua M. Ackerman, James H. Austin, John A. Bargh, Roy F. Baumeister, Sian L. Beilock, Chris Blais, Matthew M. Botvinick, Brian Bruya, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Marci S. DeCaro, Arne Dietrich, Yuri Dormashev, László Harmat, Bernhard Hommel, Rebecca Lewthwaite, Örjan de Manzano, Joseph T. McGuire, Brian P. Meier, Arlen C. Moller, Jeanne Nakamura, Evgeny N. Osin, Michael I. Posner, Mary K. Rothbart, M. R. Rueda, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Edward Slingerland, Oliver Stoll, Yiyuan Tang, Töres Theorell, Fredrik Ullén, Robert D. Wall, Gabriele Wulf.
The Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, 2011
In this special section of the journal, authors were selected who had published work in English o... more In this special section of the journal, authors were selected who had published work in English on the relevance of empirical science to issues in Chinese philosophy. Their work was translated into Chinese for a Chinese readership. The pieces selected were David Wong's "Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi," (from Liu and Ivanhoe, Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi), Edward Slingerland's "Toward and Empirically Responsible Ethics: Cognitive Science, Virtue Ethics, and Effortless Attention in Early Chinese Thought" (from Bruya, Effortless Attention), Brian Bruya's "The Cognitive Science of Wu Wei" (see below), and Hagop Sarkissian's "Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral Philosophy" (Philosopher's Imprint, vol. 10, no. 9).
The articles in this special issue of JoDI discuss the special issues faced by digital libraries ... more The articles in this special issue of JoDI discuss the special issues faced by digital libraries working in the Chinese script. Christian Wittern presents an overview of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) project, including details of his work producing XML texts and an insightful section on the difficulties that prevent the production of an 'ideal' version of the CBETA texts. The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT) project has put an enormous amount of effort into producing a sterling set of critical primary resources. Che Wah Ho's overview includes discussions of challenges maintaining accuracy and of producing distinct databases from source media as diverse as oracle bones, bronzes, and excavated bamboo strips. Michel Mohr, of the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism, discusses his work attempting to provide unique identifiers for Zen texts and personages, working in several languages spanning more than 13 centuries. Mohr's analysis of the need for ISBN-like numbers for pre-modern works applies as well to textual traditions in all languages, and his provocative coda on classification challenges XML and other types of electronic classification as belonging to an outdated, pre-electronic mode of thinking. Charles Muller developed a influential dictionary of pre-modern Chinese terms. He and collaborator Michael Beddow offer their views on the task of converting Muller's database into XML and running it in XSLT, utilizing XLink and XPointer technologies.
Qing. The author might have devoted a little more space to narratives in the clas-sical language,... more Qing. The author might have devoted a little more space to narratives in the clas-sical language, including translations. This is a book of admirable scholarship, in which the discussions testify to the author's versatility. Apart from illuminating the Shuihu zhuan, the book offers ...
Conceived by a Chinese warrior-philosopher some 2,500 years ago, The Art of War speaks to those a... more Conceived by a Chinese warrior-philosopher some 2,500 years ago, The Art of War speaks to those aspiring to rise through the ranks and help build successful countries. How can that goal best be achieved, and what is the role of warfare, if any, in the process? What are the powers and limits of the general in command? How can you win without going to war? Sunzi's answers to these and other questions are brought to life as never before by Tsai's brilliant cartoons, which show Sunzi fighting on dangerous ground, launching a surprise attack, spying on his enemies, and much more.
A marvelously rich introduction to a timeless classic, this book also features a foreword by Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on military strategy, which illuminates how The Art of War has influenced Western strategic thought. In addition, Sunzi's original Chinese text is artfully presented in narrow sidebars on each page, enriching the books for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the self-contained English-language cartoons. The text is skillfully translated by Brian Bruya, who also provides an introduction.
Tsai's expressive drawings bring Confucius and his students to life as no other edition of the An... more Tsai's expressive drawings bring Confucius and his students to life as no other edition of the Analects does. See Confucius engage his students over the question of how to become a leader worth following in a society of high culture, upward mobility, and vicious warfare. Which virtues should be cultivated, what makes for a harmonious society, and what are the important things in life? Unconcerned with religious belief but a staunch advocate of tradition, Confucius emphasizes the power of society to create sensitive, respectful, and moral individuals. In many ways, Confucius speaks directly to modern concerns--about how we can value those around us, educate the next generation, and create a world in which people are motivated to do the right thing.
A marvelous introduction to a timeless classic, this book also features an illuminating foreword by Michael Puett, coauthor of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life. In addition, Confucius's original Chinese text is artfully presented in narrow sidebars on each page, enriching the books for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the self-contained English-language cartoons. The text is skillfully translated by Brian Bruya, who also provides an introduction.
EMOTION IN PRE-QIN RUIST MORAL THEORY: AN EXPLANATION OF "DAO BEGINS IN QING" ... Tang ... more EMOTION IN PRE-QIN RUIST MORAL THEORY: AN EXPLANATION OF "DAO BEGINS IN QING" ... Tang Yijie Department of Philosophy, Peking University Translated by Brian Bruya and Hai-ming Wen Department of Philosophy, University of Hawai'i
During a period of political and social upheaval in China, the unconventional insights of the gre... more During a period of political and social upheaval in China, the unconventional insights of the great Daoist Zhuangzi (369?-286? B.C.) pointed to a way of living naturally. Inspired by his fascination with the wisdom of this sage, the immensely popular Taiwanese cartoonist Tsai Chih Chung created a bestselling Chinese comic book. Tsai had his cartoon characters enact the key parables of Zhuangzi (pronounced jwawngdz), and he rendered Zhuangzi's most enlightening sayings into modern Chinese. Through Tsai's enthusiasm and skill, the earliest and core parts of the Zhuangzi were thus made accessible to millions of Chinese-speaking people with no other real chance of appreciating this major Daoist text. Translated into English by Brian Bruya, the comic book is now available to a Western audience. The classical Chinese text of the selections of the Zhuangzi is reproduced in the margins throughout. Evoked by the translation and the playful cartoons is the spontaneity that Zhuangzi favors as an attitude toward life: abandon presuppositions, intellectual debates, and ambitions, he suggests, and listen to the "music of nature." With the writings attributed to Laozi, the Zhuangzi contributed to an alternative philosophical ideal that matched Confucianism in its impact on Chinese culture. Over the centuries this classical Daoism influenced many aspects of Chinese life, including painting, literature, and the martial arts. It had a particularly strong effect on Chan Buddhism (Japanese Zen). For this book, Donald Munro has written an afterword that places Daoism and the Zhuangzi in historical and cultural context.
EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, 2003
There are four major digital library projects in East Asia thatpublish digital versions of parts ... more There are four major digital library projects in East Asia thatpublish digital versions of parts of the vast pre-modern Chinesecorpus on the World Wide Web. All of these are targeted atprofessional sinologists, with no accommodation for the user who isnot expertly proficient in Chinese. As a result, anyone interestedin seriously engaging Chinese thought must either set aside a fewyears to learn Classical Chinese or remain beholden to thesinologist for both information and interpretation. At ShuhaiWenyuan, a project funded by the National Science Foundation'sDigital Libraries Initiative (Phase II), we strive to capitalize onthe advantages of digitization to allow the non-sinologist entryinto the conceptual world of ancient Chinese thought.Begun in October of 2000, Shuhai Wenyuan will offer a set ofChinese classics, English translations of these classics, ahyperlinked lexicon, a grammar, a philosophical resource, and asearch engine for rapidly viewing the full contexts of importantterms in a variety a texts. The aim is access--most immediately forscholars and students to be able to read Classical Chinese textswith enough resources that they will be able to reach their ownconclusions about interpretation and then employ the texts inoriginal scholarly pursuits; and in the longer term for teachers tobe able to provide courses in Chinese Philosophy, either online orin the classroom, without having to be concerned about theavailability of appropriate resources.There are four salient features of Shuhai Wenyuan that we willpresent in our poster:SOFTWARE: As a project developed by humanists rather thancomputer scientists, and as a project intended to be replicated byother humanists, Shuhai Wenyuan employs powerful off-the-shelfdatabase software called 4D. We will demonstrate how this resultsin streamlined and cost-effective administration and modularreplicability without compromising design flexibility,expandability, or data integrity.WORKTABLE: Our user interface employs frames to replicate thescholar's worktable on which one may have open several books atonce for simultaneous perusal. We will demonstrate how side-by-sidetextual viewing enhances the research usability and how theWorktable can be customized by individual users in a variety ofways.TOOLS: A portion of the Worktable is devoted to textual viewingand another to viewing research tools, specifically, a grammar, anencyclopedic lexicon, and a search engine. We will demonstrate howeach of these tools is easily put to work using hyperlinks betweenthe texts and tools and among tools.PHILOSOPHY: One of the most difficult parts of working withforeign language texts is that philosophically-laden terms losetheir conceptual contexts in translation and acquire misleadingconceptual contexts in the target language, so that a term such astian in Chinese inevitably becomes Heaven in English, capitalizedand with built-in Judeo-Christian connotations of an omnipotent,anthropomorphic deity and the promise of salvation.One of the most significant features of Shuhai Wenyuan is our workorganizing and presenting secondary literature on key philosophicalterms. If one were to research the term tian in an analog library,it would take days of paging through book and periodical indexes tofind significant treatments of it in the secondary literature. Weare bringing these resources into our own library, digitizing them,and culling the relevant passages for inclusion under individualentries in the lexicon. The textual tools and texts themselves,when combined with our philosophical resource, allow the novicereader of Chinese thought unprecedented access to this importantbody of texts. Instead of providing the reader with a singlelimited interpretation of a text, we offer users the entireconceptual universe of Chinese thought at their fingertips,allowing them to work creatively from it.
In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "em... more In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in ear...
Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philo... more Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers, and set the standard for similar explorations today. In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in essays that extend his legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. Essays also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the essays in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher.
Abstract We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to ... more Abstract We undertook a short-term longitudinal study to test whether a set of methods common to current theories of wisdom transmission can foster wisdom in students in a measurable way. The three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS) was administered to 131 students in five wisdom-promoting introductory philosophy courses and 176 students in seven introductory philosophy and psychology control courses at the beginning and end of the semester. The experimental group was divided in two (“Wisdom 1” and “Wisdom 2”), and each was taught a distinct curriculum consistent with theories of wisdom education. Results of repeated measures MANOVA showed that over the course of the semester average 3D-WS scores decreased in the control classes, stayed the same in the Wisdom 1 classes, and increased in the Wisdom 2 classes. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a wisdom curriculum has been demonstrated to increase wisdom in a traditional higher education setting.
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Articles by Brian Bruya
“无为”这个常见的人类行为。早期中国典籍中对“无为”的含蓄描述,亦同时可以令我们更 明白当代认知心理学在理论上、预设上的限制,以及可行的出路。本文将沿着上述的两个方向发挥。文章的第一部分,根据 《庄子》里与“无 为 ”行为有关的主要篇章,为“无为”的内容分类。“无为”可分为 “完整性 ”(wholeness) 和“流畅性”(fluency) 两大范 畴,当中“完整性”可细分作“集中”(collection) 和 “排除”(shedding), “流畅性”则可细分作 “回应性”(responsiveness) 和 “轻易”(ease)。 本文的 主要预设是,《庄子》里描述的“无为 ”(甚至是其他典籍里的相关描述)是一种不受文化制约的人类行为。订立一套准确的分类方法,有助我们借此审视当代心 理学和认知科学的 文献中, 曾述及的类似行为。本文继而在已订立的分类方法上,与齐 克森米哈里(Csikszentmihalyi) 的“自 成目的体验 ”(autotelic experience) 观念相互比较,而“自 成目的体验 ” 观 念乃可通 向当代认知科学研究的桥梁。本文第三部分引用了不少 科学研究,以解释“无为”行为的各个面向。最后,本文对汉学研究如何可为推动认知科学和当代哲学发展作出贡献, 提出了建议。
“无为”这个常见的人类行为。早期中国典籍中对“无为”的含蓄描述,亦同时可以令我们更 明白当代认知心理学在理论上、预设上的限制,以及可行的出路。本文将沿着上述的两个方向发挥。文章的第一部分,根据 《庄子》里与“无 为 ”行为有关的主要篇章,为“无为”的内容分类。“无为”可分为 “完整性 ”(wholeness) 和“流畅性”(fluency) 两大范 畴,当中“完整性”可细分作“集中”(collection) 和 “排除”(shedding), “流畅性”则可细分作 “回应性”(responsiveness) 和 “轻易”(ease)。 本文的 主要预设是,《庄子》里描述的“无为 ”(甚至是其他典籍里的相关描述)是一种不受文化制约的人类行为。订立一套准确的分类方法,有助我们借此审视当代心 理学和认知科学的 文献中, 曾述及的类似行为。本文继而在已订立的分类方法上,与齐 克森米哈里(Csikszentmihalyi) 的“自 成目的体验 ”(autotelic experience) 观念相互比较,而“自 成目的体验 ” 观 念乃可通 向当代认知科学研究的桥梁。本文第三部分引用了不少 科学研究,以解释“无为”行为的各个面向。最后,本文对汉学研究如何可为推动认知科学和当代哲学发展作出贡献, 提出了建议。
Visit the book's webpage:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/philosophical-challenge-china
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https://www.worldcat.org/title/philosophical-challenge-from-china/oclc/892794495&referer=brief_results
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http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00048402.2015.1126622
http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1142&context=comparativephilosophy
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Visit the book's webpage:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/effortless-attention
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http://www.worldcat.org/title/effortless-attention-a-new-perspective-in-the-cognitive-science-of-attention-and-action/oclc/646069518
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http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6051
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/662445
http://www.scienceonreligion.org/index.php/bookreviews/172-bruyas-effortless-attention
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View the table of contents: http://phil.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/rccpc/wp-content/uploads/vol9_contents.pdf
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Read this special issue: https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/issue/view/14
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A marvelously rich introduction to a timeless classic, this book also features a foreword by Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on military strategy, which illuminates how The Art of War has influenced Western strategic thought. In addition, Sunzi's original Chinese text is artfully presented in narrow sidebars on each page, enriching the books for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the self-contained English-language cartoons. The text is skillfully translated by Brian Bruya, who also provides an introduction.
A marvelous introduction to a timeless classic, this book also features an illuminating foreword by Michael Puett, coauthor of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life. In addition, Confucius's original Chinese text is artfully presented in narrow sidebars on each page, enriching the books for readers and students of Chinese without distracting from the self-contained English-language cartoons. The text is skillfully translated by Brian Bruya, who also provides an introduction.
Visit the book's webpage: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5094.html