Browsing by Subject "Philosophy"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Can text messages make people kinder?
    (Oxford UP, 2014) Konrath, Sara H.
    Empathic character is a set of interrelated dispositions, skills, motivations, emotions, and behaviors that involve a habitual responsiveness to others’ needs. It is linked to higher prosocial behavior, lower aggression, and better health. There is much research demonstrating both its consistency within people over time and its malleability in response to environmental and situational cues, including face-to-face interventions. In this paper I examine whether it is possible to increase empathic character using a mobile-based program. A large body of research in public health has used text messages to improve physical health outcomes and behaviors, but no research has examined whether text messages can be used to change traits. We conducted a study (N=90) in which participants received 6 daily empathy-building text messages for a 2 week period, versus a control group. We found that those in the empathy group showed some evidence of increased empathic character compared to control participants. The chapter ends by discussing implications of this work for a deeper understanding of empathic character, and some future directions of this research.
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    Christian Personalism and Human Rights Prior to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Philosophical and Theological Exploration
    (2024-12) Williams, Andrew Lloyd; King, David P.; Badertscher, Katherine; Haberski, Raymond J.; Steensland, Brian
    The high tide of modern transnational institution-building occurred in the immediate aftermath of two profound crises: the Great Depression and World War II. No document better captures the aspirations for a post-war era of greater human welfare than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR elevated the rights of individual humans above the doctrine of state-sovereignty and embodied the burgeoning view that states have a responsibility to secure the welfare and rights of all persons. A “new” school of human rights historiography has shown that Christian personalists were among the few advocates of “human rights” in this period. Moreover, Jacques Maritain and Charles Malik, prominent Christian personalists, were directly involved in United Nations efforts to codify universal human rights. Yet new-school historiography has over-corrected for “classical” historiography’s penchant to rely heavily on arcane philosophical and theological developments dating centuries and even millennia into the past. New-school historiography deracinates Christian personalism form its nineteenth century forebearers: philosophical personalism, phenomenology, existentialism, and neo-classicism. It also underplays the orthogonal character of a movement that aspired to create a third way between established polarities. The very term “personalism” connotes a middle position between individualism and collectivism: individual human beings have inviolable dignity and are inherently relational. As such, the current picture of the advent of human rights discourse in the mid-twentieth century is incomplete. By connecting Christian personalism to its nineteenth-century philosophical roots and contextualizing its views of the relationship between the individual and the state in the crisis milieu of the transwar era, I fill an important gap in the history of “human rights” discourse in the buildup to the UDHR.
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    Emerson's Philosophy: A Process of Becoming through Personal and Public Tragedy
    (2019-08) Simonson, Amy L.; Schultz, Jane E.; Rebein, Robert; Graber, Samuel
    This thesis explores Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophical becoming throughout decades of reflection and experience, particularly regarding death and slavery. Emerson was a buoyant writer and speaker, but the death of his five-year-old son and protégé, Waldo, challenged the father’s belief in Nature’s goodness and the reality of maintaining a tenaciously optimistic outlook. As he was grieving in the mid-1840s, slavery was threatening the Union, and Emerson was compelled to turn his attention to the subject of human bondage. He began his career indifferent to the plight of slaves, but as legislation about the issue brought it closer to his personal sphere, he was gradually yet firmly gripped by the tragedy of human bondage. These simultaneously existing spheres of sorrow – Waldo’s death and slavery – joined in refining Emerson’s personal philosophy toward greater utilitarian and humanitarian conduct. His letters, journals, essays, and lectures reflect the inward changes caused by outward events, and the conclusions herein are supported by modern grief studies as well as numerous philosophers, literary specialists, and historians.
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    LEARNING TO BE HUMAN: THE IMPLICATIONS OF CONFUCIAN PERCEPTIONS ON ENDS AND MEANS FOR THE PRACTICE OF MODERN ADULT EDUCATION
    (2005-10-13T19:50:24Z) Sun, Qi
    Modern adult education philosophies during the 20th century have many perceptions on ends and means. Efforts to create means to reach personal, business, and social needs, resolving various kinds of problems have become the ends of most formal schooling, including adult education. Consequently, we are losing our mind in understanding what the ultimate end is. Moreover, the traditional wisdom emphasized on quality of true human beings is often overlooked. Confucian perceptions on end and means, from a perennial perspective, invite us to reconsider the ends and means issue of modern adult education. They help us consciously understand how a global society is now ruled by predatory corporations and dominated by a "technocratic" or "instrumental" rationality (Welton, 1995). They assist us to reunify and reconstruct the broken selves and worlds. As such, regression to Confucius' learning to be human is a way to progress toward an effective result for a global civilization and the adult education movement of the third millenium.
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    Tolkien and the machine
    (The Conversation US, Inc., 2015-01-06) Gunderman, Richard; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine