Brian Bruya Explained

Brian Bruya
Birth Date:22 December 1966
Birth Place:Spokane, WA
Alias:柏嘯虎, 柏啸虎
Notable Works:Ziran, Effortless Attention, The Philosophical Challenge from China
Collaborators:Monika Ardelt, Yiyuan Tang
Relatives:Craig Bruya (brother), Denise Fong (sister)

Brian Bruya (born 22 December 1966) is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Michigan University,[1] and an author of books and articles in the fields of comparative philosophy, cognitive science, and educational psychology.[2] [3] Bruya is known for his work in the study of "effortless attention",[4] [5] and showing that it is possible to foster wisdom in a formal educational setting.[6] He is also a translator[7] and has published translations of a number of popular comic books on Chinese philosophy, which have been featured in The New York Times.[8]

Education

Bruya earned a B. A. (Philosophy; Chinese Language & Literature) from the University of Washington in 1992. He went on to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, earning an M. A. (Philosophy) in 1999 and Ph.D. (Philosophy) in 2004.

Scholarship

Effortless Attention

Bruya discovered that although the topic of effortless attention had been a topic of research in behavioral psychology for several decades, it had been neglected in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.[9] Bruya attributed that neglect to the dominant attention paradigm introduced by Daniel Kahneman in his 1972 book Attention and Effort, in which Kahneman equates attention with effort, thereby precluding the theoretic possibility of effortless attention. Bruya's book Effortless Attention[10] was the first attempt to apply the methods of cognitive neuroscience to the topic of effortless attention. That work has since been followed up by a number of research programs, including Corinna Peifer and Stefan Engeser's Advances in Flow Research.[11] The term "effortless attention" was subsequently introduced into the American Psychological Association's Dictionary of Psychology. Bruya and Yi-Yuan Tang's 2018 article "Is Attention Really Effort?" marshals empirical evidence to refute Kahneman's position.[12]

Wisdom

Bruya and sociologist Monika Ardelt surmised that wisdom could be treated as a character strength (which is open to short-term modification) rather than the usual way of treating it as a personality trait (which is not open to short-term modification).[13] Using Ardelt's 3-D Wisdom scale,[14] Bruya and Ardelt measured students' wisdom at the beginning and end of the semester, and found that student wisdom could be made to increase over the course of a semester. This was the first time that scientists had demonstrated that wisdom could be taught in a formal education setting.

Ziran 自然

Bruya says that his theory of effortless attention derives from his research in early Chinese, especially Daoist, theories of spontaneous (self-caused) human action.[15] He posits that whereas traditional European theories of action separate the human being from nature, early Chinese theories view the human being as fundamentally natural.[16] Noticing that in European theories the Latin term sponte (and its European language derivatives) sometimes harbors mutually contradictory meanings (spontaneous as free and spontaneous as determined), he coined the term "paradox of spontaneity" to describe the philosophical problem, and noted that European philosophers consistently appealed to the concept of God to resolve the paradox. Bruya suggests that the Chinese tradition avoided the paradox by never drawing the free vs. determined distinction and were able to theorize human spontaneity without reference to God. Bruya has applied the Chinese idea of spontaneous (self-caused) human action to philosophy of action, cognitive neuroscience, and aesthetics (especially with respect to a theory of improvisation).

Academic Philosophy

Bruya is an outspoken critic of the lack of Asian philosophy in American Philosophy Ph.D. programs. In a series of articles, he claims both structural problems and problems that could stem from ethnocentrism prevent Ph.D. programs from integrating Asian philosophical traditions into existing programs.[17] [18] [19]

Translation

Bruya is the translator of C. C Tsai's critically acclaimed comic book adaptations of Chinese philosophical classics, such as the Zhuangzi, the Dao De Jing, the Analects of Confucius, and Sunzi's Art of War.[20] In addition to academic articles on art history and philosophy, he also translated (with co-translator Ma Aiju 马爱菊) Zhao Pu's 赵普 Simple Treasures 掇珍集, a collection of personal essays on uses of traditional art in China today.[21]

Works

Books

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

Translations

Book

Journal Articles

Comic Books

Honors and Awards

External Links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Brian J. Bruya. Eastern Michigan University. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20191226000907/https://www.emich.edu/history-philosophy/philosophy/faculty/b-bruya.php . 2019-12-26 .
  2. Web site: Brian Bruya. The MIT Press. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20180415235159/https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/brian-bruya . 2018-04-15 .
  3. Web site: Brian Bruya.
  4. Web site: Effortless Attention. APA Dictionary of Psychology. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20191226000907/https://dictionary.apa.org/effortless-attention . 2019-12-26 .
  5. Web site: Effortless Attention. The MIT Press. en. 2020-01-04.
  6. Wisdom Can Be Taught. December 2018. Learning and Instruction. 58 . 106–114 . 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2018.05.001 . Bruya . Brian . Ardelt . Monika .
  7. Web site: Brian Bruya. Princeton University Press. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20191226002415/https://press.princeton.edu/our-authors/bruya-brian . 2019-12-26 .
  8. News: The Art of Drawing the 'Art of War'. Ismay. John. July 5, 2018. The New York Times Magazine.
  9. Book: Effortless attention: a new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action . 2010 . The MIT Press . 978-0-262-51395-1 . Bruya . Brian . A Bradford book . Cambridge, Mass..
  10. Book: Effortless attention: a new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action . 2010 . The MIT Press . 978-0-262-01384-0 . Bruya . Brian . Cambridge, Mass . 429473415.
  11. Book: Advances in flow research . 2021 . Springer . 978-3-030-53468-4 . Peifer . Corinna . Second . Cham . Engeser . Stefan.
  12. Bruya . Brian . Tang . Yi-Yuan . 2018-09-06 . Is Attention Really Effort? Revisiting Daniel Kahneman's Influential 1973 Book Attention and Effort . Frontiers in Psychology . 9 . 1133 . 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01133 . free . 1664-1078 . 6136270 . 30237773.
  13. Bruya . Brian . Ardelt . Monika . December 2018 . Wisdom can be taught: A proof-of-concept study for fostering wisdom in the classroom . Learning and Instruction . en . 58 . 106–114 . 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2018.05.001.
  14. Ardelt . Monika . May 2003 . Empirical Assessment of a Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale . Research on Aging . en . 25 . 3 . 275–324 . 10.1177/0164027503025003004 . 0164-0275.
  15. Book: Bruya, Brian . Ziran: the philosophy of spontaneous self-causation . 2022 . SUNY Press . 978-1-4384-8831-8 . SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture . Albany . on1265456425.
  16. Bruya . Brian J. . 2010 . The Rehabilitation of Spontaneity: A New Approach in Philosophy of Action . Philosophy East and West . 60 . 2 . 207–250 . 10.1353/pew.0.0102 . 1529-1898.
  17. Bruya . Brian . September 2015 . The Tacit Rejection of Multiculturalism in American Philosophy Ph.D. Programs: The Case of Chinese Philosophy . Dao . en . 14 . 3 . 369–389 . 10.1007/s11712-015-9441-2 . 1540-3009.
  18. Bruya . Brian . October 2015 . Appearance and Reality in The Philosophical Gourmet Report: Why the Discrepancy Matters to the Profession of Philosophy . Metaphilosophy . en . 46 . 4–5 . 657–690 . 10.1111/meta.12161 . 0026-1068.
  19. Bruya . Brian . 2017 . Ethnocentrism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Philosophy . Philosophy East and West . 67 . 4 . 991–1018 . 10.1353/pew.2017.0086 . 1529-1898.
  20. Web site: The Illustrated Library of Chinese Classics Princeton University Press . 2024-07-08 . press.princeton.edu . en.
  21. Book: Zhao, Pu . Simple Treasures . 2019 . Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局 . 9789888572465 . Hong Kong . Bruya . Brian . Ma . Aiju.
  22. Book: The philosophical challenge from China . 2015 . MIT Press . 978-0-262-02843-1 . Bruya . Brian . Cambridge, MA.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Brian Bruya".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.