Enhancement and Identity

2014 ◽  
pp. 241-256
Author(s):  
Samuel G. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Advances in human enhancement technologies raise the prospect that people's identities may be altered so radically by enhancement that they will be essentially a different person after enhancement. To illustrate, some scholars of enhancement claim that individuals are unlikely to “survive” enhancement, in the sense that they continue to exist as one and the same person. Yet, others claim that enhancement is dehumanizing. Common to these claims is the assumption that enhancement affects a discontinuity between an individual's pre- and post-enhancement selves. Although extant analyses of the relationship between enhancement and identity have yielded many useful insights into the possible effects of human enhancement technologies on identity, progress in our understanding is marred by conceptual imprecision, the use of excessively thin conceptions of identity, and the conflation of distinct senses of identity. With respect to the latter, the conflation of numerical and narrative identity is particularly problematic. However, although these senses of identity are distinct, the fact that they are conflated is nevertheless informative about how people untutored in the metaphysics of identity—that is, the vast majority of people—reason about the effects of enhancement on identity. In this chapter, the authors draw on psychological research into self-continuity and dehumanization, respectively, to offer insights into why numerical and narrative identity are conflated, and they argue that future analyses of the relationship between enhancement and identity must be more deeply grounded in psychological and neuroscientific research than has been evidenced to date.

Mapping Human Enhancement Rhetoric

2019 ◽  
pp. 1822-1845
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Performance Measurement ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Enhancement Technology ◽  
Complex Mapping ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Technology Users ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

This chapter raises ethical questions about the relationship between HET and the discourse of human enhancement technologies. Specifically, it explores some problems in mapping human enhancement rhetoric. In the first section, human enhancement rhetoric is defined. Questions are raised about the rhetorical act of re-defining “human enhancement” as a problem of self-descriptive narrative and performance measurement. In section two, various approaches and terms for mapping are presented as a way of underscoring the slippery qualities of human enhancement as a dynamic, expanding discourse. Section three explains the changing ethical positions for enhancement technology users through the concepts of “over claim,” “reacting to technology,” and “ethos.” In section four, boundary changes for HET users are discussed as a complex mapping of shifting concepts, discourse, and communities. In conclusion, the transition from human enhancement to transhuman enhancement is emphasized with suggestions for future research.

Mapping Human Enhancement Rhetoric

2014 ◽  
pp. 30-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Performance Measurement ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Enhancement Technology ◽  
Complex Mapping ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Technology Users ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

This chapter raises ethical questions about the relationship between HET and the discourse of human enhancement technologies. Specifically, it explores some problems in mapping human enhancement rhetoric. In the first section, human enhancement rhetoric is defined. Questions are raised about the rhetorical act of re-defining “human enhancement” as a problem of self-descriptive narrative and performance measurement. In section two, various approaches and terms for mapping are presented as a way of underscoring the slippery qualities of human enhancement as a dynamic, expanding discourse. Section three explains the changing ethical positions for enhancement technology users through the concepts of “over claim,” “reacting to technology,” and “ethos.” In section four, boundary changes for HET users are discussed as a complex mapping of shifting concepts, discourse, and communities. In conclusion, the transition from human enhancement to transhuman enhancement is emphasized with suggestions for future research.

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

scholarly journals Pain, Culture and Pedagogy: A Preliminary Investigation of Attitudes Towards “Reasonable” Pain Tolerance in the Grassroots Reproduction of a Culture of Risk

2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412098809
Author(s):  
Paul K. Miller ◽  
Sophie Van Der Zee ◽  
David Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Pain Perception ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Pain Tolerance ◽  
Total N ◽  
Sporting Culture ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Relationship

In recent years a considerable body of psychological research has explored the relationship between membership of socio-cultural groups and personal pain perception. Rather less systematic attention has, however, been accorded to how such group membership(s) might influence individual attitudes towards the pain of others. In this paper, immersion in the culture of competitive sport, widely regarded as being exaggeratedly tolerant of risky behaviours around pain, is taken as a case-in-point with students of Physical Education (PE) in tertiary education as the key focus. PE students are highly-immersed in competitive sporting culture both academically and (typically) practically, and also represent a key nexus of cross-generational transmission regarding the norms of sport itself. Their attitudes towards the pain that others should reasonably tolerate during a range of activities, sporting and otherwise, were evaluated through a direct comparison with those of peers much less immersed in competitive sporting culture. In total, N=301 (144 PE, 157 non-PE) undergraduate students in the UK responded to a vignette-based survey. Therein, all participants were required to rate the pain (on a standard 0-10 scale) at which a standardised “other” should desist engagement with a set of five defined sporting and non-sporting tasks, each with weak and strong task severities. Results indicated that PE students were significantly more likely to expect others to persevere through higher levels of pain than their non-PE peers, but only during the sport-related tasks – an effect further magnified when task severity was high. In other tasks, there was no significant difference between groups, or valence of the effect was actually reversed. It is argued that the findings underscore some extant knowledge about the relationship between acculturated attitudes to pain, while also having practical implications for understanding sport-based pedagogy, and its potentially problematic role in the ongoing reproduction of a “culture of risk.”

Science or Art? How Aesthetic Standards Grease the Way Through the Publication Bottleneck but Undermine Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 562-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Giner-Sorolla
Keyword(s):  
Information Sharing ◽  
False Positive ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Journal Publication ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Methodological Rigor ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Positive Results

The current crisis in psychological research involves issues of fraud, replication, publication bias, and false positive results. I argue that this crisis follows the failure of widely adopted solutions to psychology’s similar crisis of the 1970s. The untouched root cause is an information-economic one: Too many studies divided by too few publication outlets equals a bottleneck. Articles cannot pass through just by showing theoretical meaning and methodological rigor; their results must appear to support the hypothesis perfectly. Consequently, psychologists must master the art of presenting perfect-looking results just to survive in the profession. This favors aesthetic criteria of presentation in a way that harms science’s search for truth. Shallow standards of statistical perfection distort analyses and undermine the accuracy of cumulative data; narrative expectations encourage dishonesty about the relationship between results and hypotheses; criteria of novelty suppress replication attempts. Concerns about truth in research are emerging in other sciences and may eventually descend on our heads in the form of difficult and insensitive regulations. I suggest a more palatable solution: to open the bottleneck, putting structures in place to reward broader forms of information sharing beyond the exquisite art of present-day journal publication.

scholarly journals Environmental and psychological research on sandpits as children's play equipment, children's play, and the importance of sandpits in children's development and cultural creation

Impact ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Kasama
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Women's College ◽  
Children's Play ◽  
Developmental Growth ◽  
Children’S Play ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Sandpits are commonly found in playgrounds but in a world full of high-tech entertainment is their role in the developmental growth of young children undervalued? Professor Hiroyuki Kasama, Doshisha Women's College, Japan, is exploring the impact of sandpits on children, including the role they can play in deepening the relationship between parent and child. Sandpits first came about in Europe in the mid-19th century but have recently become unfavourable to many parents who consider them to be 'dirty' play. However, playing with sand yields important benefits, including the use of natural materials and the fact it provides a valuable sensory experience that enables children to build on emotional, social and athletic skills. Kasama is investigating the important potential of sandpits as well as working on childcare and education programmes that use sandpits for learning. Kasama is keen to improve the sandpit environment by standardising the type of sand used in order to make play more effective and observing the suitability of the sand by observing children's play and the reactions of their caregivers. Kasama and the team have also supervised the installation of indoor sandpits that can be used year-round. Ultimately, by clarifying the significance and necessity of playing with sand and discovering its potential, Kasama is aiming to provide children with effective environments that promote growth and development.

scholarly journals FOMO, Brands and Consumers – about the Reactions of Polish Internet Users to the Activities of Brands in Social Media (Based on CAWI Representative Research)

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Jupowicz-Ginalska
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Marketing Communication ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Interdisciplinary Character ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Fear of Missing Out is mainly a subject of psychological research; however, due to its specific nature, it gains an interdisciplinary character. Thanks to this, it can also be analysed from the perspective of media or business. This paper focuses on the threads of the relationship between FOMO and marketing communication online. It realizes the following objectives: it presents the scale of FOMO in Poland; it analyses the phenomenon in the context of consumers’ reactions to basic brand activity on social and it shows differences between the answers given by all the respondents and those with high FOMO. In order to clarify the scope of the research work, four research questions are answered: how do social media users react to the use of particular features of social platforms by brands? What form of posts coming from brands are preferred by Polish Internet users? What is the attitude of the respondents towards advertisements posted on social media portals? Does FOMO influence the answers in any way? The research was based on the nationwide, representative sample of Internet users aged 15+ (N=1060). The tool was the CAWI questionnaire.

scholarly journals The Relationship of Spiritual Coping with Resilience and Perceived Stress: Validation of the Dutch Spiritual Coping Questionnaire

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-108
Author(s):  
Lilian Jans-Beken
Keyword(s):  
Religious Coping ◽  
Perceived Stress ◽  
Scale Validation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Spiritual Coping ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Resilience Scale ◽  
Negative Religious Coping ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of this study is to translate and validate the Spiritual Coping Questionnaire in Dutch (SCQ-nl), compare this questionnaire with a religious coping questionnaire, and assess the levels of religious and spiritual coping in association to resilience and perceived stress because these are important determinants in mental health issues. The Dutch-speaking respondents (N = 651, Mage = 45, SDage = 14, range = 18-80) answered the SCQ, Brief RCOPE, Perceived Stress Scale, and Brief Resilience Scale. Validation of the SCQ shows it to be a reliable and valid questionnaire for assessing positive and negative spiritual coping in Dutch-speaking individuals. Although the positive and negative religious coping scales are associated with positive and negative spiritual coping questionnaires, religious coping was not predictive of perceived stress or resilience. Multiple regression analyses demonstrate positive spiritual coping to be associated with lower perceived stress and higher resilience levels and negative spiritual coping to be associated with higher perceived stress and lower resilience levels in Dutch-speaking individuals. The outcome of this study is that the SCQ-nl is a valid and reliable measure for assessing positive and negative spiritual coping in scientific psychological research and descriptively in clinical practice.

Centre/ing decolonial feminist psychology in Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shose Kessi ◽  
Floretta Boonzaier
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Feminist Psychology ◽  
Critical Knowledge ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Psychology as a discipline has historically served the interests of dominant groups in society. By contrast, contemporary trends in psychological work have emerged as a direct result of the impact of violent histories of slavery, genocide and colonisation. Hence, we propose that psychology, particularly in its social forms, as a discipline centred on the relationship between mind and society, is well placed to produce the critical knowledge and tools for imagining and promoting just and equitable social relationships and social structures. Starting with an overview of the historical assumptions of the discipline that served to legitimate systems of slavery, colonisation and apartheid, this article then introduces a framework for centring decolonial, feminist ways of doing psychological work with a focus on the particularities of the African context. We argue that a decolonial feminist approach to psychology curricula and psychological research is necessary for the discipline to remain relevant in contemporary African contexts.

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