Why are some popular musical forms and performers universally reviled by critics and ignored by scholars-despite enjoying large-scale popularity? How has the notion of what makes "good" or "bad" music changed over the years-and what does this tell us about the writers who have assigned these tags to different musical genres? Many composers that are today part of the classical "canon" were greeted initially by bad reviews. Similarly, jazz, country, and pop musics were all once rejected as "bad" by the (...) academy that now has courses on these and many other types of music. This book addresses why this is so through a series of essays on different musical forms and performers. It looks at alternate ways of judging musical performance beyond the critical/academic nexus, and suggests new paths to follow in understanding what makes some music "popular" even if it is judged to be "bad." For anyone who has ever secretly enjoyed ABBA, Kenny G, or disco, Bad Music will be a guilty pleasure! (shrink)

From the beginning of the modern period to the mid-twentieth century most people who wrote on matters of philosophy and psychology assumed that the self is the ego, an inner subject that is the centre of conscious experiencing and an agency of thought and will. However, in the second half of the twentieth century — indeed, beginning even earlier, in the 1920s and 1930s — the notion of the ego became a target of criticism for theorists of widely differing (...) points of view. This critical attention has turned opinion against the notion of the ego in many circles and has raised the issue of its legitimacy. In this paper I address the issue of legitimacy by undertaking a survey of major historical conceptions and criticisms of the ego to see if the notion of the ego might be reconceived in a way that satisfactorily meets critical challenges. The survey begins with Descartes and then works its way forward in time to consider the views of Hume, Kant, Freud, Hartmann, Heidegger, Sartre, object relations theorists, Lacan, postmodernists, and materialists in the philosophy of mind. I state and comment on each of these views. Of necessity, statements of views are highly condensed. The comments assess the views by evaluating each in terms of the others and offer proposals about how particular conceptions of the ego might be reformulated to meet the criticisms discussed. Having completed the historical survey, I gather together proposals from the comments and present a revised conception of the ego that, I believe, is tenable in light of historical criticisms. This revised conception is presented here as a proposal only, a proposal, moreover, that outlines one of perhaps multiple ways in which the ego can be reconceived to meet critical challenges. (shrink)

This article will examine Bellarmine’s first anti–conciliarist work, found in the Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos, emphasizing his theological treatment of the pope’s authority relative to the authority of a council and his repudiation of conciliarism. Bellarmine sees the conciliarists as attacking the divinely instituted Petrine structure of the Church. He does not advocate for an absolute papal monarchy in which there are no ‘constitutional’ limitations on the papacy. For Bellarmine, Christ and his Word, as (...) found in Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, have supreme authority in the Church: one which the magisterium, whether papal or conciliar, must accept in humility and pass on unsullied. Only Christ has a true fullness of power; the pope has a fullness only relative to that of the bishops. Nevertheless, Christ immediately instituted the pope as the supreme head of the Church on earth, and as such, the pope has supreme ecclesiastical power over the whole Church on earth. Lastly, the article examines Bellarmine’s position on papal heresy. (shrink)

Donald M. MacKay believed that freedom of action and human dignity are compatible with a science of behavior. In 1971 he argued this position with B.F. Skinner in a televised debate. After a brief biography of MacKay, several major points from this debate will be reviewed. The discussion serves to emphasize the correspondence rather than competition between levels of analysis, whether the levels are disciplinary (e.g. psychology, neuroscience, physics) or a matter of perspective (inside story, outside story).

Philosophical Dilemmas: A Pro and Con Introduction to the Major Questions, 2/e, is a lucidly written and comprehensive introduction to philosophy featuring sixty brief essays arranged in pairs. Each pair answers one of the standard philosophical questions, such as "Does God exist?" or "Is morality relative?," with affirmative and negative responses. Each essay takes a definite stand and promotes it vigorously, creating a sharp contrast between the two positions and giving each abstract theory a more personal and believable "voice." While (...) the essays often employ traditional arguments of great philosophers, they present the ideas in contemporary language with vivid examples. The accessible style and conflicting answers encourage students to examine the different positions and to think carefully about which essay makes the stronger case. While other textbooks present a series of excerpts and theories without attempting to coordinate them into a larger picture, Philosophical Dilemmas teaches students about the process of thinking philosophically and encourages them to construct their own coherent worldviews. This second edition features new sections on race, gender, euthanasia, and Buddhist philosophy, showing students how philosophy applies to issues that they may encounter in their own lives. The text incorporates numerous pedagogical features including a list of historical parallels, key terms, chapter summaries, a glossary, an introduction to each issue, and critical questions following each essay. Brief sections throughout the book describe numerous critical thinking techniques demonstrated by the essays. An annotated bibliography of historical examples for each issue and useful lists of contemporary sources further enhance the text's utility. An Instructor's Manual, including chapter summaries, writing assignments, and test questions, is available. (shrink)

The Vocabulary of Critical Thinkingtakes an innovative, practical, and accessible approach to teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills. With the underlying notion that a good way to practice fundamental reasoning skills is to learn to name them, the text explores one hundred and eight words that are important to know and employ within any discipline. These words are about comparing, generalizing, explaining, inferring, judging sources, evaluating, referring, assuming and creating - actions used to assess relationships and arguments - and the (...) words are grouped according to these and other concepts essential to critical thinking. Featuring five or more words and an introduction on how they are related, each chapter is organized into three parts. Part I includes definitions of the words, brief examples of their use, and matching exercises. To further contextualize the words, Part II, Understanding the Meaning, provides numerous real-world examples, with commentary, of the words in use. Finally, Part III, providing practice of the associated critical thinking skills. Questions also appear throughout the chapters to encourage reflection and to highlight important points. Thirty-five photographs and illustrations additionally enrich the text. The book is an ideal text for critical thinking and reasoning courses as well as a variety of courses that prepare students to succeed. (shrink)

Researchers have begun to explore animals' capacities for uncertainty monitoring and metacognition. This exploration could extend the study of animal self-awareness and establish the relationship of self-awareness to other-awareness. It could sharpen descriptions of metacognition in the human literature and suggest the earliest roots of metacognition in human development. We summarize research on uncertainty monitoring by humans, monkeys, and a dolphin within perceptual and metamemory tasks. We extend phylogenetically the search for metacognitive capacities by considering studies that have tested less (...) cognitively sophisticated species. By using the same uncertainty-monitoring paradigms across species, it should be possible to map the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition and illuminate the emergence of mind. We provide a unifying formal description of animals' performances and examine the optimality of their decisional strategies. Finally, we interpret animals' and humans' nearly identical performances psychologically. Low-level, stimulus-based accounts cannot explain the phenomena. The results suggest granting animals a higher-level decision-making process that involves criterion setting using controlled cognitive processes. This conclusion raises the difficult question of animal consciousness. The results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human conscious cognition. Remaining questions are whether animals also have the phenomenal features that are the feeling/knowing states of human conscious cognition, and whether the present paradigms can be extended to demonstrate that they do. Thus, the comparative study of metacognition potentially grounds the systematic study of animal consciousness. Key Words: cognition; comparative cognition; consciousness; memory monitoring; metacognition; metamemory; self-awareness; uncertainty; uncertainty monitoring. (shrink)

Individuals with a balanced time perspective, which includes good thoughts about the past, awareness of present constraints and adaptive planning for a positive future, are more likely to report optimal wellbeing. However, people who have had traumas such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are likely to have less balanced time perspectives and lower overall wellbeing when compared to those with fewer or no ACEs. Time perspective can be improved viatime-travel narrativesthat support people in feeling connected to a wise and loving (...) future version of themselves, an approach that has until now only been provided in counseling contexts. Our team used an iterative inclusive design process to shape a scalable time-travel narrative tool – a responsive and progressive web application calledTime Machine.Among other functionalities, Time Machine allowed people to record and listen to messages as if they were from and to their past and future selves. Using pre-planned as well aspost-hocanalyses, we analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from 96 paid design partners (participants) who were taken through a 26-day pilot study of the technology. Among other effects, the results revealed: (1) high engagement throughout the design process, (2) improvements in self-reported time perspective and overall wellbeing scores that were greater for those using Time Machine during an optional-use period, (3) twice as much improvement in overall wellbeing scores for design partners with high ACEs (16%) versus low ACEs (8%), and (4) feelings of unconditional love apparently mediating the relationship between scores on time perspective and overall wellbeing measures. We discuss the limitations of these results as well as implications for the future role of spiritually informed scalable time-travel narrative technologies in healthcare and wellness. (shrink)