Through the medium of a brass candlestick made in a sixteenth-century German foundry, I discuss the Christian European household’s sensory engagement and spatial control of the Muslim body. I argue that the Europeans’ sensory experience of the turbaned candlestick reflects and reinforces their conceptualization of Islamic culture, which is a blend of fear and fascination. The turbaned candlestick allows us to explore issues rarely discussed in the study of metalwork and the European imagery of ‘the East’. The shape and (...) scale of the candlestick suggest that it could have been treated both as a statuette and as a piece of furniture. The inanimate candlestick would have felt livelier when the user touched its body and felt heat, flame, light and smoke from the candlestick. My analysis of the candlestick suggests that it might have been experienced through a comprehensive play of senses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experiences of an Obese PatientChristine R. BrassIn the middle of an annual pelvic exam, the gynecologist said to me, “You should apply to be on ‘The Biggest Loser.’” I was too stunned and embarrassed to mutter anything more than a [End Page 88] comment that I didn’t think that, being quite introverted, I was a good candidate for a reality TV show. She argued with me about that. I (...) felt blindsided, intensely vulnerable, and dumbstruck—completely unable to respond—and later, when the shock wore off, incandescent with impotent rage.Four years later, I still don’t have words to adequately describe my outrage at this comment. It was only the second time I’d see this medical professional. The first time was the previous year, when she had been filling in for my regular doctor who was on maternity leave. At neither appointment did this physician ask me any questions about my lifestyle, whether or not I saw a primary care physician, or even if I had any concerns that day. She was very brisk, efficient and did not engage in conversation. Such a statement coming from a health care provider, who did not seek to understand or gather more information, surprised and dismayed me.Other incidents where physicians’ statements were not helpful:• Pediatrician: “Well, my wife has had great success with Weight Watchers.”—I was age 12, about 5’5 and weighted about 145 lbs. at that time. If you look at photos of me at the time, you would see I was not overweight.• Orthopedic Surgeon: “If you want her to look better, make her lose weight.”—This was directed to my mother. I was 19, weighed about 200 lbs., and in his office as per his directions to come back in seven years to see if the surgery he had done on my neck needed more attention.• Internist: “How did you get all those stretch marks?”—I was age 24, weighed approximately 220 lbs., and had lost and gained 50 or so pounds several times as a teenager and in college.• Gynecologist: “Lose weight and your periods will be regular.”—I was age 27, weighed 227 lbs. and my periods, which started at age 15, had never been regular.• Another Orthopedic Surgeon: “You don’t have to worry about osteoporosis; everything you do is a weight–bearing exercise.”—I was age 42 and weighed 300 lbs. This was after follow up surgery to remove pins from a broken ankle that had healed and I had asked about whether or not I should have a bone density test.Coming from a genetic heritage of predominately tall, large–boned people, I was tall and proportionally large compared to other girls my age until high school, when the others caught up. I was told I had to “watch my weight” by family members from my pre–teen years. Enforced dieting ensued, with little result because I wasn’t fat. I did not begin to be overweight until my junior and senior years of high school. I was 5’7” when I graduated from high school and weighed 187. By the time I graduated from college, I was no taller but 50 lbs. heavier. Now, nearing my 40th high school reunion, I am 120 lbs heavier than that. During the intervening years, I have done Weight Watchers®, TOPS®, medically–supervised programs (group and individual), and other popular diets, with periodic but temporary success, and hypnosis and aversion therapy, with no success at all.Over the years, I have been insulted, verbally abused, even bullied, because of my weight. I have been treated as though I am invisible, worthless, and stupid—a pariah. As a result, I have felt invisible, worthless, and stupid, even though I know I am none of those things. I have experienced and been treated for clinical depression. The descent into depression began in my late teen years, which was the time when I started gaining excess weight.In 2004, under medical supervision, I lost 70 lbs. over four–month period. I was delighted to finally lose a substantial amount of weight and feel physical lighter. My diabetes medications were significantly reduced, and... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has had a lasting impact on all areas of personal life. However, the political, economic, legal and healthcare system, as well as the education system have also experienced the effects. Universities had to face new challenges and requirements in teaching and examinations as quickly as possible in order to be able to guarantee high-quality education for their students.This study aims to examine how the German-speaking medical faculties of the Umbrella Consortium of Assessment Network have dealt (...) with the challenges but also the opportunities that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic created in medical education and whether digitalisation has been driven forward as a result. In an initial online-survey we focused our questions on the current teaching situation with regard to digitised teaching content, the support or establishment of adequate framework conditions by the medical faculties and IT facilities and also the execution of examinations during the summer semester 2020.Between August and September 2020, a total of 88 examiners, educators, dean of study and/or technical admins from 32 partner faculties took part in the survey. Students were not included in our survey. Most respondents stated that a switch to a digital semester had worked, the use of e-learning increased compared to previous semesters and that most courses could be converted, with the exception of practical courses, which were largely cancelled. The respondents also indicated that most examinations could still be taken, with the exception of practical examination formats, like Objective Structured Clinical Examinations. However, in the case of face-to-face examinations, strict distance and hygiene conditions had to be obeyed or there had to be a switch to distance-online examinations, which raised many open issues such as equal opportunities of students and attempts at deception.In conclusion, we identified several issues regarding the rapid transition to a digital semester due to COVID-19 which were categorised into the following topics: Face-to-face teaching could not take place, know-how of educators, integrity aspects, technical aspects, additional personnel required, additional time and effort required for implementation of digital teaching. Our study shows that a switch to digital teaching and distance online examinations is feasible, but many problems were encountered concerning academic integrity and basic ethical principles still need to be solved. In order to investigate whether above mentioned issued could be solved one year after the transition to a digital semester, we conducted a second survey in which the 32 initially surveyed institutions were questioned again. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439–458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a (...) stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention. (shrink)

The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses (...) for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain’s so-called voluntary motor areas. (shrink)

The problem of free will is among the most fascinating and disputed questions throughout the history of philosophy and psychology. Traditionally limited to philosophical and theological debate, in the last decades it has become a matter of scientific investigation. The theoretical and methodological advances in neuroscience allowed very complex psychological functions related to free will (conscious intentions, decision-making, and agency) to be investigated. In parallel, neuroscience is gaining momentum in the media, and various scientific findings are claimed to provide evidence (...) that free will is nothing more than an illusion. Why do neuroscientific findings have such a strong impact on our notion of free will? Does it really matter what neuroscience tells us about free will? Here we critically examine studies in experimental philosophy, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience that attempt to provide an empirical answer to these questions. This overview of the literature demonstrates that inducing disbelief in free will has an impact on folk psychology, social behavior and intentional action. (shrink)

Ideomotor theory of human action control proposes that activation of a motor representation can occur either through internally-intended or externally-perceived actions. Critically, sometimes these alternatives of eliciting a motor response may be conflicting, for example, when intending one action and perceiving another, necessitating the recruitment of enhanced action-control to avoid motor mimicry. Based on previous neuroimaging evidence, suggesting that reduced mimicry is associated with self-related processing, we aimed to experimentally enhance these action-control mechanisms during motor contagion by inducing self-focus. In (...) two within-subjects experiments, participants had to enforce their action intention against an external motor contagion tendency under heightened and normal self-focus. During high self-focus participants showed reduced motor mimicry, induced either by mirror self-observation or self-referential judgments. This indicates that a self-focus provoking situation can enhance online action-control mechanisms, needed to resist unintentional motor contagion tendencies and thereby enables a modulation of automatic mirroring responses. (shrink)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada made it clear that understanding the historical, social, cultural, and political landscape that shapes the relationships between Indigenous peoples and social institutions, including the health care system, is crucial to achieving social justice. How to translate this recognition into more equitable health policy and practice remains a challenge. In particular, there is limited understanding of ways to respond to situations in which conventional practices mandated by the state and regulated by its legal apparatus (...) come into direct conflict with the values and autonomy of Indigenous individuals, communities, and nations. In this paper, we consider two cases of conflict between Indigenous and biomedical perspectives to clarify some of the competing values. We argue for the importance of person‐ and people‐centered approaches to health care. These value conflicts must be understood at multiple levels to clarify their personal, social, cultural, and political dimensions. Taking into account the divergence between epistemic cultures and communities allows us to understand the multiple narratives deployed in decision‐making processes in clinical, community, and juridical contexts. Recognizing the knowledge claims of Indigenous peoples in health care can help clinicians avoid reinforcing the divides created by the structural and institutional legacy of colonialism. This analysis also provides ways to adjudicate conflicts in health care decision‐making by disentangling cultural, political, medical, and pragmatic issues to allow for respectful dialogue. Insofar as the engagement with cultural pluralism in health care rights is conducted with reciprocal recognition, the medical community and Indigenous peoples can address together the difficult question of how to integrate different epistemic cultures in the health care system. (shrink)

Believing in free will may arise from a biological need for control. People induced to disbelieve in free will show impulsive and antisocial tendencies, suggesting a reduction of the willingness to exert self-control. We investigated whether undermining free will affects two aspects of self-control: intentional inhibition and perceived self-control. We exposed participants either to anti-free will or to neutral messages. The two groups then performed a task that required self-control to inhibit a prepotent response. No-free will participants showed less intentional (...) inhibitions than controls, suggesting a reduction of self-control. We assessed perceived self-control by asking participants whether the response resulted from a deliberate intention or from an impulsive reaction. Perceived self-control was lower in the no-free will group than in control group. Our findings show that undermining free will can degrade self-control and provide insights into how disbelieving in free will leads to antisocial tendencies. (shrink)