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Introduction: Brain lateralization is associated with human behavior. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effects of brain lateralization on the scores of paranormal beliefs. Methods: The study population included 180 students of Sanandaj universities, Sanandaj City, Iran who were selected with convenience sampling method (100 left-brained males, 6 left-brained females, 56 both left- and right-brained males and 22 both left- and right-brained females). The research tools were the paranormal belief scale developed by Blackmore (1994), as well as the brain lateralization questionnaire (1985). Results: The obtained findings suggested a significant difference between the left-brain and right-brained people in terms of paranormal beliefs. A significant difference was also found between the left-brained males and both left- and right-brained females in terms of paranormal beliefs. Conclusion: The paranormal beliefs of the left-brained cases were different from both left- and right-brained subjects, which can be seen between the left-brained males and both left- and right-brained females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gierycz argues provocatively in his paper that the identity of the European Union as reflected in its motto, "United in Diversity," has been "derived" from the model offered by the Roman Catholic Church. His argument, however, is flawed in a number of key respects. Among other things, he ignores entirely the fact that the Catholic Church did not invent the wheel in this respect but modeled itself in turn on the earlier example of the Roman Empire. The impression he leaves of the ways in which the Church went about imposing its version of "unity in diversity" on the local cultures over which it came to exercise dominion, moreover, is highly misleading. A third problem is that he treats the terms "Catholic Church" and "Christian thought" as if they were interchangeable when their references are obviously not necessarily identical. There are also deep problems with Gierycz's attempt to establish that Church-based moral norms are superior to those reflected in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights because, as he seeks to convince us, the former are grounded on the "rock" of "absolute" values while the latter are built upon the "sand" of shifting sociological opinion. These flaws diminish the value of what could have been an important contribution to our understanding of the extent to which the European Union should look to the experience of the Church in seeking to establish its own identity as a supranational institution "united in diversity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This white paper is the joint product of nineteen professors of criminal law and procedure who share a common conviction: that the path toward a more just, effective, and reasonable criminal system in the United States is to democratize American criminal justice. In the name of the movement to democratize criminal justice, we herein set forth thirty proposals for democratic criminal justice reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the response to the objections raised by Christopher Miles Coope on the book entitled "The Spiritual Dimension." It provides a refutation to Coope's arguments and explains the "non-partisan" strategy of the book, which Coope systematically misunderstands. It also exposes some of the serious problems with Coope's own preference for a harshly exclusivist form of Christianity. It discusses the issues connected with religious beliefs including layers of meaning in religious language, emotional involvement against detachment in the assessment of religious claims, the problem of evil, human autonomy and divine authority, divine action in the world, apophatic theology and transcendence, and the doctrine of afterlife.

Two theories that attempt to explain the relationship between false belief understanding and inhibition skills were investigated: (1) theory of mind development improves self-control, and (2) executive control is necessary for developing a theory of mind. A microgenetic approach was adopted, with a group of 21 children completing a battery of inhibition and false belief understanding tasks every four weeks for six phases of testing. The results showed that the majority of children were able to perform well on a test of executive inhibition before having a good understanding of false beliefs, thus supporting theory (2). The results also illustrated that while the children's inhibition skills developed relatively gradually, their understanding of false beliefs progressed from a consistent lack of understanding through a period of unstable performance, during which some children failed tests that they had previously passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pornography consumption remains a common media behavior despite the ever-increasing proliferation of digital media options. A recent meta-analysis found evidence that higher rates of pornography consumption are associated with heightened perceptions of pornography's realism, but the potential downstream effects of perceiving pornography as realistic have yet to receive a meta-analytic treatment. The present paper describes our efforts to conduct such a meta-analysis. To our surprise, there was a dearth of literature available. And yet, the extant research base suggests that perceived pornography realism may be associated with a number of sociologically, relationally, and personally impactful sexual beliefs and behaviors. Discussion centers on how interested scholars can move this important line of sexuality and culture research forward in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the three doubt-belief theory of inquiry. Psychology of inquiry; Requirements for the genuineness of doubt based from Charles Sanders Peirce's writings on doubt and belief; Analysis of feigned heistancy.

Presents the different perspectives on important issues discussed in archaeological inquiry. Distinction between core beliefs and models; Assumption of the application of model from classical economics to an archaeological problems; Requirement of a recursive relationship between ideas and observations in learning the process of doing archaeology.

This paper presents a modified approach to subject-matter didactics, in which the focus is not on the content itself, but on the students' view of the content. The introduction deals with an overview of subject-matter didactics and the notion of beliefs used in this paper. The main portion of the paper deals with presenting the concepts of a book and a seminar based on the student-centered subject-matter didactics approach. For the first qualitative evaluation, selected reflections of students are analyzed. Finally, initial findings are summarized and an outlook is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: contents and strategies related to sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being introduced in academic curricula, and the organization of the university environment is evolving to adopt sustainable practices. One of the main aims of this evolution is to raise students' awareness of sustainability and to encourage them to develop attitudes, knowledge and competencies for acting as future responsible citizens. This implies the need to examine and understand students' attitudes and beliefs towards sustainability. (2) Method: a systematic literature review has been performed to examine the most recent studies focused on university students' beliefs and attitudes towards sustainable development. Three educational online databases were searched for identified research papers, and in the end, 20 papers have been included in the analysis. (3) Results: in recent years there has been a growing interest in the topic of university students' assessment of sustainability beliefs and attitudes. Assessment was frequently limited to the environmental dimension of sustainability, placing the economic, social and educational dimensions in the background. Most of the assessing tools have been developed as quantitative questionnaires. (4) Conclusions: understanding the attitudes and perceptions of university students about sustainability issues is an essential task for helping higher education institutions to effectively infuse the contents and principles of sustainable development into their environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the concept of H. C. Triandis about race as determinant of social distance. This asserts that Triandis perception concerning race as a more important determinant of social distance rather than belief, is quite contrary on the findings of the study undertaken. Triandis evaluation which is undertaken on different races is questioned due to the different philosophy employed into each subject. The author further contends that on the basis of his study which is published in his book "The Open and Closed Mind," belief outweighs race to be the basis of social discrimination and not the other way around.

This paper explores the meaning of home from multiple regions and the factors that influence the definition of home from multi-ethnic perspectives. A hypothesis derived that each ethnicity of a household practises cultural values and that reconfiguring physical spaces provides greater knowledge of their definition of home. This study employed a systematic review to gather the most relevant papers in the existing literature from the year 2000 to 2023, to address the gaps in knowledge in conceptualising the meaning of home in multi-ethnic settings. The findings respond to the hypothesis of this paper, that each household practises privacy and social boundaries in line with their belief systems and that reconfiguring physical space is part of homemaking tactics. This study outcome contributes to the development of a new conceptual framework that clarifies a comprehensive cause-effect relationship between key variables, ethnicity as the social aspect, built space as the physical aspect and practice as the personal or psychological aspect, resulting in a greater understanding of the meaning of home in multiethnic settings from three scenarios; the home as socio-spatial, psycho-spatial and emotive space entity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question "what connection is there between our answer to the question of what we are, and the question, what our actions are?" Suppose that actions are reflexive changes of agents. On that supposition, there would be a direct connection between the answers to those two questions. An action of mine will be a reflexive change of me, and what I am will fix the nature of those changes. I hold that supposition to be true and consider reasons in favor of believing it. However, the paper is not primarily aimed at defense of that thesis. It rather concerned with exploring what consequences accepting it has for the competing notions of what we are, given what we ordinarily think actions are, and bringing to light a tension between thinking of actions as reflexive changes of agents in this way, and a kind of causal understanding of actions that is prevalent. What emerges is that we should shift where we start our theorizing: we cannot assume that action theory primarily involves the task of characterizing the relation between an agent and changes caused, rather than a characterization of a particular kind of relation between the agent and herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand coalition building between national and international actors in the context of an emerging subsystem. In applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the case of Uruguay, where a new field of social policy – the National Care System – was introduced in 2015 after a process involving different national actors from academia, civil society, politics, and administration, but also United Nations agencies, the paper explores the role of these international organizations in coalition building, and examines how a dominant coalition of national and international actors shaped the development of the new system. Using interview data and documents, the findings suggest that the involvement of international organizations in the coalition was based on shared beliefs and personal and institutional relationships. While powerful opposing coalitions were absent due to the nascent nature of the subsystem, the dominant coalition was able to influence the policy's introduction based on their beliefs regarding gender equality and rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional settlements are often associated with residences that still hold customary and cultural values that are closely related to the beliefs or religions of a particular community rooted in a particular place beyond historical determinations. Such is the case of the traditional settlement of the Ata Krowe community in Romanduru Village, Sikka Regency, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. The Ata Krowe community speaks the Sikka language and lives in the mountains. This research examines the characteristics of the settlement of the Ata Krowe community in Romanduru village. It employs a cultural landscape approach. Findings show that the Ata Krowe community in Romanduru village has a centralized settlement concept and consists of several components including watu mahang, wisung wangar, wua mahe, and Ai Tali. The paper concludes that, as an old village, Romanduru village has a distinctive residential pattern: a sedentary concept based on the presence of springs. The existence of Romanduru village is inseparable from the existence of the Buang Baling clan, which is a tribe/clan that opened the land first and is honored as Tana Pu'an. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over practices of physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and other end-of-life questions is still ongoing in many countries around the world. At least, as of 2024, only 15 countries had varyingly legalised it under very specific, regulated conditions, while many more still view it as an extremely complex issue that, amongst other things, conflicts with their deeply held religious beliefs. Premised on their belief in the image of God as the source of human life, most monotheistic religions, but Christians in particular believe in the preservation of human life to its natural end. However, the unquestionable reality of this traditionally-held Christian belief does not preclude the rare reality where terminally ill Christians themselves, upon suffering excruciating pain, begin either to desire some form of a hastened death overtly or covertly. Under such conditions, however, pastoral therapists in particular lack the aptitude to openly initiate practical dialogues with patients, be it in the spirit of Ubuntu or to concretise the Christian position. That being said, the purpose of this article is to prepare Christian pastoral therapists in particular and the counselling profession in general to openly handle cases where agonising human suffering leads to suicidal thoughts or actions. In order to achieve this, the paper, through the use of literature reviews and desktop studies, draws on literature encompassing specific biblical instances in which not only physical suffering, but also mental suffering somehow led to suicidal events. The African concept of Ubuntu is then integrated into Christian humanism to promote pastoral therapeutic dialogue which may enrich Christian self-knowledge about the sacredness of human life, despite the urge of suicide or euthanasia. As per Christian humanism framework, Christian self-knowledge is inspired by the excruciating suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. All things considered, pastoral therapy is endowed with the ability to present the image of God in human suffering while rejecting the urge for euthanasia or suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qur'ān translations are forms of traditional or rational tafāsīr [exegeses]. Laleh Bakhtiar, an Iranian-American who converted from Christianity to Islam, applied a rational approach in her Qur'ān translation. Extensive research has surveyed Bakhtiar's feminist perspectives (Kidwai, 2018) and her reliance on dictionaries (Hassen, 2012). However, the investigation of the influence of her Sufī views on her translation has not been previously addressed. This paper is an empirical account of the impact of Bakhtiar's Sufī belief in futuwwa on her translation choices. To achieve this goal, Bakhtiar's translations of the verses that include the term فَتًى fatā [a young man] and its derivatives are analytically compared to Sufī and Shiʿī translations to analyse Bakhtiar's choices and highlight her adaptation of allegorical hermeneutics. The underpinning approach of this paper is a combination of Gerard Genette's paratexts (1997) and Hussein Abdul-Raof's criteria of the Sufī approach to Qur'ānic exegesis (2012). The main finding is that by adopting al-bāṭin [esoteric] meaning and rejecting aẓ-ẓahir [exoteric] meaning, Bakhtiar goes far away from orthodox Islamic traditions in her interpretation of the Qur'ān. Moreover, through applying the concept futuwwa to men and women, she deconstructs the patriarchal framework, in which the virtue of futuwwa exists, and expands the connotative meaning of this aspect, which results in sending radical messages completely different from those in the source text. Future researchers can broaden the scope of the analysis and examine a plethora of contemporary Qur'ān translations to explore the effect of the translators' beliefs on their interpretations of the Qur'ān. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the speed with which investors learn about managers' skills by examining how quickly investor and managers' beliefs converge. After showing our measure proxies for the change in the dispersion of beliefs, we find that hedge fund investors learn as fast as suggested by Bayes' rule. However, we find mutual fund investors learn more slowly than suggested by Bayes' rule. Mutual fund investors' slow learning is not due to the use of different performance measures, institutional frictions, or lack of sophistication, but could be due to a low payoff from learning. Our results indicate learning speed depends on financial participants' incentives. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Ippolito and Farkas (Linguist Philos, 45(4):943–984, 2022b) (I &F) question the premise that Italian future is epistemic necessity; in this brief response we want to show that there is no empirical motivation for abandoning it once we employ a more flexible framework of modality such as the one advanced in Giannakidou and Mari (Linguist Philos 41(6): 623–664, 2018) (G &M) which posits a ranking meta-evaluation in the modal structure that explains the empirical objections raised by I &F. We show that the core of the account in I &F shares the main ingredients with G &M and that, unlike what I &F propose, Italian future is not pure credence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, our beliefs can non-derivatively wrong others. A recent criticism of this view claims that proponents of the doxastic wronging thesis have no principled grounds for denying that credences can likewise non-derivatively wrong, so they must countenance pervasive conflicts between morality and epistemic rationality. This paper defends the thesis of doxastic wronging from this objection by arguing that belief bears distinctive relationships to inquiry and blame that can explain why beliefs, but not credences, can non-derivatively wrong. First, forming a belief (but not updating one's credence) closes inquiry, and suspending judgment (but not updating one's credence) opens inquiry. Consequently, beliefs can distinctively wrong others by prematurely closing inquiry or inappropriately opening inquiry. Second, beliefs (but not credences) can constitute blame. Unfittingly blaming someone can wrong them, and hence beliefs which constitute unfitting blame can distinctively wrong. In addition to defending the claim that only beliefs can non-derivatively wrong, this paper gestures towards an ethics of belief which attends to the relationship between belief and attitudes such as inquiry, faith, trust, and blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show that Curry's recent defence of the interpretivist approach to beliefs is unsuccessful. Curry tries to argue that his version of interpretivism, which is based on the model-theoretic approach to folk-psychological attributions, is well-suited to resisting the epistemological argument that is directed at interpretivism. In this paper, I argue that even if Curry's defence is successful in this case, his theory does not have enough resources to solve the metaphysical problems of interpretivism. In particular, I argue that the model-theoretic version of interpretivism that Curry espouses does not explain the claim that beliefs are constituted by the process of attribution, which is central to the interpretivist project. In the final parts of the paper, I discuss the issue of the relation between interpretivism and other forms of the broadly superficial/deflationary approach to beliefs, especially dispositionalism. I contend that if one wants to adopt a superficial/deflationary approach, it is best not to adopt interpretivism as it is an unnecessarily complex and problematic version of this broad view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is considerable agreement that mainstream organization and management theory (OMT) has been undergirded by religious faith and beliefs, we nevertheless lack a well-developed understanding of how contemporary scholars' faiths may serve to inform OMT. In this paper we differentiate between faith and belief, describe the idea of organization and management theoria (OMTia), and then develop a process model that describes how faith informs OMTia, which in turn informs OMT. The paper presents two illustrative first-person accounts of the process model in practice, one from a Buddhist perspective and the other from a Christian perspective. We conclude with implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media work is a culture-making activity affecting the ways people understand the world and, therefore, workers in the media industries have a critical role in shaping collective memories, traditions, and belief systems. While studies regarding the characteristics impacting the nature of work in the media industries have significantly been increasing over the last years, the literature in this area remains highly fragmented. This paper begins to address that shortcoming by conducting an in-depth review of 36 scholarly papers in influential journals published from 2006 to 2020 to provide a comprehensive view of the literature and its approaches. This study elaborates on the concept of media work by organizing previous efforts into five subthemes, including commonalities, contested terrain, gendered profession, emerging practices, and influencing factors. Previous research has emphasized that media workers' subjective experiences need to be explored further and more in-depth; however, if we wish to depict a more holistic but realistic picture, those experiences should be contextualized and thus linked with the specific organizational configurations and macro structures in which media work is embedded. The present review depicts how work in the media may take different meanings when addressing it through various theoretical frameworks. Our study can enrich future studies regarding the nature of media work by providing a fine-grained foundation in which researchers could understand how their given research problem(s) would be connected with the other issues that potentially impact their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Pynchon's portrayal of technology and the Internet in Bleeding Edge (2013) should be read as an example of the monstrous since it embodies its two key features: the ability to terrorize and transform. The paper shows that the Internet in Bleeding Edge is not only monstrous, as it can devour the life essence of its users, but also transformative, as it shocks them to such an extent that they can reassess their beliefs and can thus address new looming realities in productive ways. The paper shows this finding to be at odds with most research on the role of technology in Pynchon's work and identifies a key benefit of Pynchon's complex portrayal of the Internet in Bleeding Edge, which can enable better handling of the increasing presence of technology in the 21st century and making its presence and the accompanying transformations less terrifying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimistic beliefs have been criticized by philosophers as being irrational or epistemically deficient. This paper argues for the possibility of a rational optimism. We propose a novel four-fold taxonomy of optimistic beliefs and argue that people may hold optimistic beliefs rationally for at least two of the four types (resourced optimism and agentive optimism). These forms of rational optimism are grounded in facts about one's resources and agency and may be epistemically justified under certain conditions. We argue that the fourth type of optimism in our taxonomy (perspectival optimism) is not subject to epistemic scrutiny in the same way. It is better evaluated on practical and moral grounds. This paper advances the discussion of optimism within both the philosophical and psychological literatures by providing a compelling and philosophically rich taxonomy of optimism that clarifies the sometimes-competing forms of optimism identified by psychologists. This advances the field by putting forward cases of epistemically justified optimism, in contrast with unrealistic optimism, that is sometimes justified for its instrumental or adaptive characteristics, and also by highlighting a form of optimism, perspectival optimism, that is not being considered in the mainstream optimism literature in psychology. The paper concludes by suggesting several avenues for future empirical and philosophical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky "venture" that requires "holding fast" to "objective uncertainty." Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world "exclude doubt" and "nullify uncertainty," but also that uncertainty is "continually present" in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief‐credence dualist. That is, Climacus holds that beliefs and credences (i.e., degrees of belief) are two irreducibly distinct types of mental states. Beliefs are resolutions that close inquiry, thereby excluding doubt and reflecting subjective certainty by disregarding the possibility of error. Credences, by contrast, reflect assessments of evidential probabilities, thereby encoding a recognition of "objective uncertainty" by acknowledging the possibility of error. In addition to solving a vexing interpretive puzzle and showing how Kierkegaard anticipates contemporary views about the nature of belief and credence, this paper demonstrates that Kierkegaard developed a sophisticated account of the nature of belief, doubt, and certainty that merits serious philosophical consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the case of Higgs v Farmor's School, a decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal concerning unlawful discrimination on the basis of the manifestation of protected philosophical beliefs. It discusses the relationship between human rights standards and discrimination law standards in the interpretation of direct discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. While this decision goes a long way towards providing guidance on how this interaction is to be parsed out in the context of discrimination law, it nevertheless leaves certain important questions open. Finally, the paper argues that much of the discussion of proportionality around the censorship of protected belief manifestation is misconstrued. It is commonly accepted without question that the legitimate aim pursued by censorship is the protection of the rights of others. Yet in the cases dealing with manifestation such as this, there is an extremely remote threat to rights, if one exists at all. The expression of views that some take offense to is not a human rights violation. Rather, censorship of such views is better described as aimed at the protection of morals; the enforcement of speech codes or workplace standards in order to maintain a particular ethos or atmosphere of professionalism. There is then an interesting question which arises: would the choice of justification grounded in protecting morals over the rights of others affect the intensity of the proportionality assessment? There is a plausible argument that attempts to justify infringement on the exercise of fundamental rights by reference to a desire to impose a moral code, unconnected to the rights of others, would attach more intensive scrutiny. If this is true, it is incumbent upon courts not to accept at face value that employment speech codes are necessary to protect the rights of others, certainly not without more searching analysis of which rights in particular are claimed to be infringed by a failure to mandate speech. This is of particular salience given that courts have repeatedly stressed that the right to freedom of expression includes the right to say things that are offensive, shocking or even disturbing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst teaching about the nature of science (NOS) is a significant goal of science education, there remains debate about specifying the NOS and appropriate pedagogies and approaches to researching the NOS. A neglected, but conceptually and practically significant, problem is the proliferation of NOS-related learning goals such as NOS beliefs, views, understandings and knowledge. In this theoretical paper, we argue that such goals are often poorly defined, and different goals cohere with different pedagogical and research strategies. We propose a novel three-part taxonomy of NOS learning goals (as NOS beliefs, knowledge and understandings) and contend that different approaches are appropriate for teaching and assessing NOS beliefs, views and knowledge. An NOS belief refers to a positive attitudinal stance towards some proposition that lacks justificatory support or cannot easily be judged true or false. NOS knowledge indicates justified true beliefs related to the NOS. NOS understanding denotes a grasping of how a collection of NOS knowledge is related. The goals vary by the extent to which they can be judged true or false and the degree of justification they require. For NOS beliefs, a range of stances is acceptable; NOS knowledge must be a true and justified belief; in the case of NOS understanding, teaching and assessment should focus on the appreciation of relationships between justified true beliefs. The novel taxonomy brings needed clarity to a confused aspect of NOS research and may lead to the development of NOS pedagogies and assessment tools more precisely targeted to well-defined learning goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australian presents a holistic view of early childhood education that recognises the dimensions of learning and development as being interwoven and interrelated. Spiritual development, spiritual wellbeing and spiritual identity are outlined in this document as essential components of early childhood education. However, enacting a spiritual pedagogy can be challenging for many early childhood teachers. Using an auto-ethnographical approach, this paper explores my journey as a teacher in realising my own epistemological stance, which draws on Bruner's phenomenon of 'self' as a framework for understanding children's being as it is positioned within the context of spirituality. Autoethnography allowed analysis of my lived experience, to provide an avenue for others to consider their own experiences in similar ways. The findings from this paper can support other early years educators to recognise ways that spirituality is already incorporated into their pedagogical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the expression of mistaken beliefs – as in for example the boy mistakenly believes that the turtle is dead (whereas in fact it is alive) – in the Indigenous languages of Australia. It is shown that some mode of expressing this meaning is attested in around 40% of the languages in a selection of 149 language varieties. In over 90% of the languages showing some mode of expressing the target meaning, it is – or can be – achieved through grammatical morphemes or constructions more or less dedicated to the expression of mistaken beliefs. These include particles, enclitics and various types of complement construction involving verbs of thinking, that frequently also convey meanings of saying, doing and hearing, rarely that specify the thought as mistaken. In just four or five languages, however, the meaning is attested only as a pragmatic implicature of a general statement of belief. To the extent possible given the limitations of the sources, the paper examines the range of meanings and uses of the morphemes/constructions expressing mistaken beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper highlights the role of idioms in Boris Johnson's speeches on the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The total sample of phraseological turns identified during the analysis of the speeches of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, dedicated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, includes 30 phraseological units. The main pragmatic function of the public speech is persuasion directed at influencing the listener or reader and shaping his views. Emotional information prevails in public speeches and relies on a wide range of language means reflecting it. Phraseological units belong to these means and their usage has its peculiarities. Since phraseological unit is one of the modes of reflecting thoughts, it is a clue to understanding speaker's values, ideas, intentions and beliefs. Johnson resorts to core usage of phraseological units, including biblical expressions, as well as violation of an idiom presented by the replacements, extension of the base form (by means of evaluative insertions), inversion of the base form and phraseological allusions. As the analysis of the data showed Boris Johnson's texts are dominated by neologisms, metaphorical comparisons, personifications, metaphors, epithets, hyperboles which are well-documented tropes in political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Study was confined to measure purchase criteria and purchase process in consumer durable especially in emerging market like India keeping religiosity as a factor. Religion has not been very important area of consumer study Design/ Methodology/ Approach: It was based on secondary data .It was to develop a model which can explain the purchase process of consumer durables keeping religion in the back ground. Findings: This study is an attempt to link religion and its belief with consumer durable purchase criteria. Religiosity and its intensity could influence the purchase behavior. This needs to be measured and main factor analysis will throw better information. Originality: This study has been done for the first time where religiosity in understanding consumer purchase behavior has been studied [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the second on life in a northern Icelandic valley in the later 1970s, early 1980s, and subsequently. While the first concerned women's work, food and clothing, this paper focuses on the farming cycle, the men's work on farms and on the central uplands; and on the social life and seasonal customs that reflected the farming year. Further papers will concern folk beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper substantiates a distinction, built out of Gricean resources, between two kinds of communicative act: showing and telling. Where telling that p proceeds by recruiting an addressee's capacity to recognize trustworthy informants, showing does not. Instead, showing proceeds by presenting an addressee with a consideration that provides reason to believe that p (other than the reason provided by an informant's credibility), and so recruits their capacity to respond to those reasons. With this account in place, the paper defends an account of one way in which authors can show their readers that certain moral states of affairs obtain both inside, and outside of, their fictions. It is argued, moreover, that this kind of showing gives addressees access to more than just reasons for moral belief–it also gives them access to the sorts of reasons that enable agents to increase their moral understanding. In virtue of these latter capacities, the showing identified is a way of communicating about morality that is markedly different from the sort of moral testimony that many philosophers have been increasingly interested in of late. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various philosophers authors have argued—on the basis of powerful examples—that we can have compelling moral or practical reasons to believe, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. This paper explores an alternative story, which still aims to respect widely shared intuitions about the motivating examples. Specifically, the paper proposes that what is at stake in these cases is not belief, but rather acceptance—an attitude classically characterized as taking a proposition as a premise in practical deliberation and action. I suggest that acceptance's theoretical usefulness in the ethics of belief has been hidden by its psychological obscurity. I thus aim to develop an empirically adequate and mechanistically specific psychological profile of acceptance. I characterize acceptance as centrally involving a cognitive gating function, in which we prevent a target belief state from having its characteristic downstream effects on reasoning, cognition, and action, and restructure those downstream processes. I then argue that there is substantial empirical support for the existence of the cognitive mechanisms needed to instantiate this view, coming from the science of emotion regulation. I argue that acceptance involves deploying the same mechanisms used in emotional response modulation to belief states: acceptance is doxastic response modulation. I then propose that having a better understanding of the psychological profile of acceptance leaves us better positioned to appreciate its potential usefulness for making progress on various puzzles within the ethics of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of papers, Schwitzgebel has attempted to revive the dispositionalist account of belief by tweaking it a little and claiming a previously unconsidered advantage over representationalism. The tweaks are to include phenomenal and cognitive responses, in addition to overt behaviour, in the manifestations of a given belief; and to soften the account of dispositions by allowing for dispositional stereotypes. The alleged advantage is that dispositionalism can deal with what Schwitzgebel calls cases of in‐between belief, whereas representationalism cannot. In this paper we argue that Schwitzgebel's attempted improvements do not succeed and that, as an account of belief, dispositionalism is seen to be unsatisfactory. The case for this verdict also enables the representationalist position to be enhanced by drawing attention to the diversity of formats in which beliefs are stored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an empirical study examining action research papers submitted by a group (n = 81) of out-of-field mathematics teachers as part of a professional development programme in Ireland. Utilising document analysis, the papers were qualitatively analysed for evidence of teachers' beliefs and practices with respect to the teaching and learning of mathematics. In particular, demonstration of direct transmission and constructivist beliefs and practices was explored. The authors draw on Valsiner's zone theory in conceptualising the 'teacher-as-learner' in this out-of-field context and it provided a means for analysing teachers' development in terms of their beliefs and practices. Findings indicate a prevalence of direct transmission or traditional teaching practices prior to the out-of-field teachers' action research, with some inconsistency with professed constructivist beliefs. There was evidence of a majority shift towards constructivist beliefs and practices post action research for a myriad of reasons, including increased pedagogical confidence in mathematics and the successful experience of constructivist approaches. Findings also highlight the role of reflective self-study in facilitating the creation of productive tensions, as well as the importance of the teachers' interpretation of their zone of free movement in resolving complex issues and enabling out-of-field teachers' development of constructivist beliefs and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Joseph Edkins's failed attempt to correct the theology of Hong Xiuquan during his trip to Nanjing in March and April 1861. Through his debates with individual rebels and his written exchange with Hong, Edkins learned that the Taipings were unwilling to accept 'orthodox' teachings and scriptural interpretations that conflicted with their established belief system. Challenging exclusionary and pathologising discourses, the paper shows that Hong's response to Edkins's efforts was rooted not in his 'irrational' modes of thinking, but in his desire to preserve both his revelation-based worldview and the personal authority that it legitimised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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You care about what others believe about you. What others believe about you determines whether you have a good reputation, whether you have the respect of your peers, and whether your friends genuinely like you. Your caring about others' beliefs makes sense, because others' beliefs bear directly upon your level of well-being. Your beliefs can influence others' well-being, as much as their beliefs can influence yours. How your beliefs influence another's well-being is a different matter from whether your beliefs are supported by the evidence. Sometimes you can benefit another person by regulating your beliefs in response to considerations of her well-being, not (only) of the evidence. Usually, you do not have strong reasons to regulate your beliefs in response to considerations of the interests of others. But it can be different when the person in question is your friend. Within some perfectly good friendships, the support that each friend provides for the other extends as far as their being willing to regulate their beliefs with the goal of benefiting the other, even if that makes it less likely that their beliefs will be supported by the evidence. Within our friendships, we then have reasons for belief that do not arise directly from, and sometimes compete with, reasons provided by evidence. This claim conflicts with the widespread Aristotelian view that good friendship is oriented to virtue. But it fits with a more plausible view about friendship, on which the function of friendship is to help us cope with the fact that we are not fully virtuous, and to serve needs that we have because we are not fully virtuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault's critical project. It is well known that Foucault's genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles "aspectival captivity," that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the subject's freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of "What Is Critique?," Foucault states that critique is tasked with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this "double movement" organizes Foucault's critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above‐mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth‐telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth‐telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth‐telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique's methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re‐evaluating Foucault's critical project as a whole. By showing that truth‐telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault's critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), as developed by Albert Ellis, is based on the idea that Cognitive, Affective (Emotional) and Behavioral processes can be manipulated to reduce the effects of irrational beliefs and goals, which one sets upon themselves. Ellis' hypothesis moves from understanding how one's thoughts contribute to emotional and behavioral disturbances, while the Tantric traditions employ the understanding that the physical and mental disturbances originate from the imbalance in the emotions. Rasa Sadhana, as Peter Marchand notes ... is a tantric method of fasting on one's emotions. It helps one to overcome negative emotions so as to pursue better physical, mental and spiritual health. This paper explores the possibility of Rasa Sadhana as an intermediary step in RET to understand one's emotions in a better light, in helping the individual avoid the consequences of the negative emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophy is often discounted as impractical and inequitably labelled as unpragmatic, but we cannot deny that it is the underpinning sustenance of all aspects of life. Everyone bases all their actions on their belief system which in turn formulates their identity, sense of morals and duties. Today, when we witness that the world is in a state of utter unrest, it will be helpful to seek remedy from Indian Philosophy along with its cultural traditions which aim at the holistic development of an individual and promotes universal brotherhood. India's spiritual wisdom is a source of guidance for anyone who wants to reach a mentally calm and spiritually satisfied state, which will not waver by the perplexities of life. The issues / objectives which shall be addressed in this paper are as follows: 1. How Philosophical Counselling is important and should be given in nascent stage of one's life, when the young minds are cultivated and taught the meaning of life. 2. What is the purpose of life and how can one achieve it? 3. Reflection on duties towards oneself and the others. 4. What is the influence of ego (ahamkāra) in self-reflection? 5. Analysis on the formation of one's belief-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my 1993 IJPS paper it was suggested that postmodernist verdicts on 'the death of philosophy' relied on a rejection of any 'substantive' or 'metaphysical' notion of truth. The present paper relates these verdicts to Wittgenstein's alleged 'philosophical quietism'. In both cases, for example, there is a rejection of 'depth'. Various characterisations of Wittgenstein's position are questioned, including the idea that his quietism consists in showing the impossibility of sceptical challenges to our 'hinge' propositions and beliefs. It is then argued, however, that recognition of the groundlessness of beliefs (and practices), far from curing 'vertigo' or 'Angst', is apt to inspire it. In a final section, I propose that the 'metaphysical horror' at the impossibility of articulating grounds for our beliefs can be allayed only by the thought that these answer to a reality that cannot be articulated and must therefore remain a mystery. One role for philosophy might be to cultivate a sense of this mystery and trace its implications for how we should live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Lanier Williams III, or better known by his Pen name, Tennessee Williams, was one of the most prominent American playwrights during the 20th century. Having written over 25 major plays throughout his lifetime, perhaps what stands out the most in those plays is the unclouded depiction of the contemporary American coming to terms with a society that was witnessing its belief systems eroding away during a time characterised by mass violence of the world wars, cold wars, and stood at the brink of what we call 'modernisation'. This paper attempts to explicate a further understanding of the inspiration and sources that drove Tennessee's characterisation in his critically acclaimed play titled A Streetcar Named Desire, wherein the representation of his cultural and psychological outlook has been subjected to multifaceted interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I would like to present G.E. Moore's view on scepticism and certainty with reference to his papers "Defence of common sense", "Proof of an external world", and "Certainty". Following Moore's "Proof of an External World" the distinction between empirical objects and private objects has been highlighted in section I. It has been pointed out that according to Moore, no example of private objects in place of "these are my two hands" could have successfully refuted scepticism; and that Moore does follow Kant's definition of external objects in order to prove the existence of the external world. In section II, two points have been emphasized: i) the example of these are my two hands is not a frivolous activity, and ii) Moore does recognize the point of Descartes' dream argument at least to the extent that he does recognize that knowing that P is different from Proving that P. In section III, Moore's attribution of certainty to empirical propositions has been highlighted by responding to the remarks made by Wittgenstein and Malcolm against Moore. In Section IV, following Moore's certainty, a logical explanation of Moore's thesis that contingent propositions can be certain has been carried out. In addition to that an explanation of how Moore has weakened the dream argument by finding it incoherent. Finally, it has been concluded that Moore is successful in his refutation of scepticism on the basis of common sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new insight on the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) in the theory of epistemic democracy. This theorem states that democratic decision-making leads us to correct outcomes under certain assumptions. One key assumption is the 'independence condition', which requires that voters form their beliefs independently when they vote. This paper examines the role of an opinion leader as an informational source, which potentially violates independence. We demonstrate that voters' beliefs may be correlated in the presence of the leader, and that the CJT can fail if the leader's opinions are reliable. This leads us to the following paradoxical observation: for epistemic democracy, good leaders may be bad, while bad leaders may be good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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