Savulescu/Enhancing Human Capacities, 2014

Many chapters in this volume review current and future possibilities for enhancing human physical ability, cognition, mood, and lifespan. These possibilities raise the ethical question of whether we should enhance normal human capacities in these ways. We are not likely to agree on answers to this question without a clear and shared understanding of the concept of enhancement. The aim of this chapter is to offer such an account of enhancement. We begin by reviewing a number of suggested accounts of enhancement, and point to their shortcomings. We identify two key senses of "enhancement": functional enhancement, the enhancement of some capacity or power (e.g. vision, intelligence, health) and human enhancement, the enhancement of a human being's life. The latter notion, we suggest, is the notion of enhancement most relevant to ethical debate. We argue that it is best understood in welfarist terms. We will then illustrate this welfarist approach to enhancement by applying it to the case of cognitive enhancement. Although there is much debate about the ethical implications of new technologies, only a few authors have attempted to provide an explicit definition of enhancement. Often discussion focuses on a particular application such as muscle strength, memory or lifespan, or a definition of enhancement is implicitly assumed. However, without an adequate shared understanding of what is meant by "enhancement," we are not likely to resolve these debates and reach sound ethical conclusions. In the literature there is a great deal of uncertainty and confusion about the term "enhancement." Erik Parens (1998) states that: . . . some participants think the term enhancement is so freighted with erroneous assumptions and so ripe for abuse that we ought not even to use it. My sense is that if we didn't use enhancement, we would end up with another term with similar problems. Enhancing Human Capacities, edited by Julian Savulescu, Ruud ter Meulen and Guy Kahane.

A Modern Guide to Wellbeing Research, 2021

We are producing this volume at a productive and pivotal time for wellbeing researchers and practitioners. There has been burgeoning interest in wellbeing measurement and analysis, and decades of investment in wellbeing research promises to provide policy makers with data, evidence and blueprints needed to secure more sustainable futures, placing the 'happiness' of people and planet at centre stage. As a focus on personal, national and global wellbeing becomes central to policy and industry alike, wellbeing research plays an ever more important role. Knowledge, understanding and evidence of the necessary conditions for supporting wellbeing, shaping our collective goals and prioritising action are needed. At the same time, our experiences of global catastrophes; the threat of global terror, the global financial crisis of 2008, increase awareness of the gravity and urgency of the climate crisis, the rise of mental ill-health, and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 reinforce the scale and accumulation of challenges we collectively face. These crises are of course experienced differently across the globe. For many, crisis and insecurity has long been a fact of life. But for others, they bring into sharp relief the fragile nature of our everyday security and our economic systems. They open up a new lens on the adequacy of public health and welfare infrastructures, the resilience of communities, and the ways in which we relate to the environment. Governments worldwide have struggled to cope, to organise, to collaborate and to lead. It is in this context that in 2018 at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UEA that the Global Happiness Council launched the first Global Happiness Policy Report, asserting that for governments to pursue happiness 'is the world's best and perhaps only hope to avoid global catastrophe' (Sachs, 2018, 4). Moments of crisis can also act as a reminder that the way in which we have often come to subordinate social relationships to economic ones is problematic. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular brought public debate on welfare, anxiety, social isolation, need and inequalities, and on kindness and actions of care to the fore. These debates have long histories which remain far from resolved.

Health, Culture and Society

In this paper we propose a feature selection method identifying important features in the semivarying coefficient model. One important issue in semivarying coefficient model is how to estimate the parametric and nonparametric components. Another issue is how to identify important features in the varying and the constant effects. We propose a feature selection method able to address this issue using generalized cross validation functions of the varying coefficient least squares support vector regression (LS-SVR) and the linear LS-SVR. Numerical studies indicate that the proposed method is quite effective in identifying important features in the varying and the constant effects in the semivarying coefficient model.

DergiPark (Istanbul University), 2023

Routledge eBooks, 2024

for organising the workshops and making us so welcome. All those who attended the pilot courses and whose advice and reactions helped shape this manual. Those who kindly carried out the research with young people on which some of the activities are based. Johnson and Johnson, whose generous financial support has helped support the development of this manual.

2015

To provide an overview of the phenomena of recovered memories and false memories of past traumas and to provide illustrations with clinical vignettes as well as historical observations. The questions concerning the recovery of memories of trauma do not readily reduce to simple dichotomies. Whatever the terminology applied, be it repression, dissociation or forgetting, humans have a capacity to not consciously know about aspects of their traumas for extended periods of time. The nature of memory is reconstructive. Memory is not a digital recording that provides for a totally accurate replay. Multiple factors including the age at which traumas occurred, the relationships to the person responsible or the nature and extent of the traumas influence what will be accessible to memory. In regard to those patients who describe recovered memories, it is important that clinicians take an individualistic approach and remain open-minded. They should not feel pressure to validate or reject the claim; rather, they should respect and empower patients.

Life in the Flesh, 2008

This chapter discusses Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's philosophical reflections on mind and body. It first considers Leibniz's distinction between substance and aggregate, referring to the former as a being that must have true unity (what he calls unum per se) and to the latter as simply a collection of other beings. It then describes Leibniz's extension of the term "substance" to monads and other things such as animals and living beings. It also examines Leibniz's views about the union of mind and body, whether mind and body interact, and how interaction is related to union. More specifically, it asks whether mind and body together constitute an unum per se and analyzes Leibniz's account of the per se unity of mind-body composites. In addition, the chapter explores the problem of soul-body union as opposed to mind-body union and concludes by discussing Leibniz's explanation of soul-body interaction using a system of pre-established harmony.

2016

Background: Education plays an important role on a personal level because it is related to personal control, a healthy lifestyle, greater income, employment, interpersonal relations, and social support . Self-regulation is the procedure implemented by an individual striving to reach a goal and consists of two inter-related strategies: (1) the identification of the desired out-come and the appraisal of procedures to reach the desired goal (i.e., assessment), and (2) the selection between available approaches to reach the goal and the commitment to the chosen approaches until the goal is reached (i.e., locomotion) . Self-regulation plays an essential role in academic achievement (Kruglanski et al 1994. Psychological well-being is a multi-faceted concept composed of six different intra-personal characteristics that describe the fully functional individual . These factors are: positive relationships with others, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, autonomy, purpose in life, and personal growth. We aimed to study the relationship between academic achievement and self-regulation and psychological wellbeing in Swedish high school pupils. Method: Participants were 160 Swedish high school pupils (111 boys and 49 girls) with an age mean of 17.74 (sd = 1.29). We used the Assessment and Locomotion Scales to measure self-regulation and Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Scales short version (Clark et al., 2001) to measure well-being. Academic achievement was operationalized through pupils' final grades in Swedish, Mathematics, English, and Physical Education. The courses take place during either one or two semesters and the grading scale ranges from F = fail to A = pass with distinction. Results: Final grades in Swedish were positively related to two psychological well-being scales: self-acceptance and personal growth; and to the self-regulation strategy of assessment. Final grades in Mathematics were positively related to three psychological well-being scales: self-acceptance, autonomy, and personal growth; and also to assessment. Final grades in English were positively related to one psychological well-being scale: personal growth; and also to assessment. Final grades in Physical Education were positively related to four psychological well-being scales: environmental mastery, self-acceptance, autonomy, and personal growth; and also to the self-regulation strategy of locomotion. Conclusions: A profile consisting of assessment orientation combined with self-acceptance and personal growth leads to the best study results. This understanding is important when supporting pupils in achieving the best possible results in school and thus lay the formation for a continued successful life.

arXiv (Cornell University), 2024

1) Background. European social policies have traditionally focused on the material conditions and indicators of well-being and on the foundations of social justice characteristic of the welfare state paradigm. The system of social organisation that ensures a satisfactory standard of living through the provision of social services in areas likely to condition well-being has not sufficiently valued subjective indicators of well-being, making it pertinent to develop international systems of subjective indicators for evaluating well-being. (2) Objectives and research question. The main objective of this systematic and narrative review of the literature is to substantiate the scientific understanding of the concept of well-being, identifying both the indicators assumed by the literature and by international and national organisations, as well as the relationship with social policy decisions and governance parameters that encourage, affect, and determine well-being. The question this article seeks to answer is this: what can we learn from scientific literature, international guidelines and the cases analysed in the works consulted about the multidimensional relationships established between well-being and governance? (3) Method. A systematic and narrative literature review was carried out following the PRISMA protocol criteria (search method, screening procedures, document inclusion and exclusion criteria), using the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases, as well as national and international scientific production, articles, research reports, conference proceedings and books, by authors and reference organisations. For bibliometric analysis we used Vosviewer (Rstudio/Bibliometrix software). (4) Results. The results suggest that: (i) a country's political system, as well as its formal institutions, affect the population's well-being, and the use of well-being indicators in defining public policies is pertinent; (ii) the way political systems are organised can significantly influence citizens' ability to participate in the decision-making process and, consequently, positively affect their well-being; (iii) the use of well-being indicators in politics can fit into a contemporary vision of the role of the state, constituting a promising development that could enable it to fulfil its role in a way that is closer to the interests and real needs of citizens. (5) Conclusion. This research recognises the importance of using a set of subjective indicators of well-being in addition to income, which are the result of various configurations drawn from the multidimensional relationships that are established between living conditions and well-being.

Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, 2020

The important role nature plays in the promotion and maintenance of people's health and wellbeing can be described as "eco-healing." Exposure to nature can contribute to the whole person on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. A synergistic relationship is established between the individual touched by the healing influence of nature who in turn can take protective action to preserve natural environments (Bakken 2018).