In philosophy, metaethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being ethical theory and applied ethics. Metaethics has received considerable attention from academic philosophers in the last few decades.

While normative ethics addresses such questions as “What should one do?”, thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others, metaethics addresses questions such as “What is goodness?” and “How can we tell what is good from what is bad?”, seeking to understand the nature of ethical properties and evaluations.

Some theorists argue that a metaphysical account of morality is necessary for the proper evaluation of actual moral theories and for making practical moral decisions, however others make the reverse claim that only by importing ideas of moral intuition on how to act can we arrive at an accurate account of the metaphysics of morals.

A second area of metaethics involves the psychological basis of our moral judgments and conduct, particularly understanding what motivates us to be moral. We might explore this subject by asking the simple question, “Why be moral?” Even if one is aware of basic moral standards, this does not necessarily mean that one will be psychologically compelled to act on them. Some answers to the question “Why be moral?” are to avoid punishment, to gain praise, to attain happiness, to be dignified, or to fit in with society.

The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are phenomena that do not obey normal principles. First explicitly noted by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick in The Methods of Ethics, the paradox of hedonism points out that pleasure cannot be acquired directly, it can only be acquired indirectly.

As an example, suppose John likes to collect stamps. According to most models of behavior, it is believed that John likes collecting stamps because he gets pleasure from collecting stamps. Stamp collecting is an avenue towards acquiring pleasure. However, if you tell John this, he will likely disagree. He does get pleasure from collecting stamps, but this is not the process that explains why he collects stamps. It is not as though he says, “I must collect stamps so I can obtain pleasure”. Collecting stamps is not just a means toward pleasure. He just likes collecting stamps.

This paradox is often spun around backwards, to illustrate that pleasure and happiness cannot be reverse-engineered. If for example you heard that collecting stamps was very pleasurable, and began a stamp collection as a means towards this happiness, it would inevitably be in vain. To achieve happiness, you must not seek happiness directly, you must motivate yourself towards things unrelated to happiness, like the collection of stamps. The hedonistic paradox would mean that if one sets the goal to please oneself too highly then the mechanism would in fact jam itself.

Politician William Bennett has stated, “Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you’ll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.”

The MILD technique (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) is a technique developed by Stephen LaBerge used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming or to remember to look for dream signs when one is in a dream.

One easy-to-apply method is to count yours or other people’s fingers during the day, making sure it is done diligently and reaches the expected number. If this is done frequently when awake, similar behavior may continue into the dream, where by some discrepancy from reality, the dreamer would realize he or she is dreaming and the dream could become lucid.

Another method is to look at text (such as a digital clock, or a road sign), turn away, and then look back. If the person is dreaming, the text may change to something else. The dreamer would then realize he or she is dreaming and the dream could become lucid.

A key element in MILD is reviewing in memory the dream from which one has just awoken. When a point is reached in the dream at which an obvious dream sign occurred, individuals performing this technique depart from actual memory and instead imagine they became aware they were dreaming. Upon returning to sleep, these individuals will often find themselves back in the same or similar dreams, sometimes even encountering similar dream signs. This is a situation that can improve the odds they will remember their intention to question whether or not they are dreaming, and thereby achieve lucidity.

The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to encourage a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep and waking up five to six hours later, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming while staying awake for an hour, and going back to sleep while practicing the MILD method. This technique has had a 60% success rate in research. This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a lengthier lucid dream.

A Ouija board is a flat board marked with letters, numbers, and other symbols, theoretically used to communicate with spirits. It uses a planchette or movable indicator to indicate the spirit’s message by spelling it out on the board during a seance. The fingers of the seance participants are placed on the planchette, which then moves about the board to spell out messages.

Users subconsciously direct the path of the triangle to produce a word that is in that person’s subconscious thought process. This subconscious behavior is known as ideomotor action, a term coined by William Carpenter in 1882. It is also known as automatism. Some people may be convinced that the powers of the ouija board are real because they are unaware that they are in fact moving the piece and therefore assume that the piece must be moving due to some other spiritual force.

The subconscious thought process may produce an answer that is different from what the user expected in their conscious thought process, thus perpetuating the idea that the board has mystical powers. One experiment was conducted using unbiased participants. Questions were asked of the late William Frawley with very strong answers. The participants were then blindfolded and the board was turned 180 degrees without their knowledge. With continued questioning, the planchette then traveled to bare areas of the board where the participants believed the Yes and No marks were located.

The first historical mention of a Ouija board is found in China around 1100 B.C., with a divination method known as fuji or planchette writing. Other sources claim that according to a Greek historical account of the philosopher Pythagoras, in 540 B.C. his sect would conduct seances at a mystic table, moving on wheels, moved towards signs, which the philosopher and his pupil, Philolaus, interpreted to the audience as being revelations supposedly from an unseen world.

There are several theories about the origin of the term Ouija. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the origin is unknown, but mentions three possibilities. According to one of these, the word is derived from the French oui and the German ja, both meaning yes. An alternative story suggests that the name was revealed to inventor Charles Kennard during a Ouija seance and was claimed to be an Ancient Egyptian word meaning good luck. It has also been suggested that the word was inspired by the name of the Moroccan city Oujda.

Dreamworking differs from classical dream interpretation in that the aim of dreamwork is to explore the various images and emotions that a dream presents and evokes, while not attempting to come up with a single, unique dream meaning. In this way the dream remains “alive” whereas if it has been assigned a specific meaning, it is “finished”. Dreamworkers take the position that a dream may have a variety of meanings, depending on the levels that are being explored.

A tenet of dreamwork is that each person has his or her own dream language. Any given place, person, object or symbol can differ in its meaning from dreamer to dreamer and also from time to time in the dreamer’s ongoing life situation. Thus someone helping a dreamer get closer to her or his dream through dreamwork adopts an attitude of “not knowing” as far as possible.

When doing dreamwork it is best to wait until all the questions have been asked and the answers carefully listened to before the dreamworker (or dreamworkers if it is done in a group setting) offers any suggestions about what the dream might mean. In fact, it is best if a dreamworker prefaces any interpretation by saying, “if this were my dream, it might mean …”

In this way, dreamers are not obliged to agree with what is said and may use their own judgment in deciding which comments appear valid or provide insight. If the dreamwork is done in a group, there may well be several things that are said by participants that seem valid to the dreamer but it can also happen that nothing does. Appreciation of the validity or insightfulness of a comment from a dreamwork session can come later, sometimes days after the end of the session.

Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature — by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social leadership within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources. Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the term.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of improving performance in current and future projects.

Musical collaboration occurs when musicians in different places or groups work on the same album or song. Collaboration between musicians, especially with regards to jazz, is often heralded as the epitome of complex collaborative practice. Special software has been written to facilitate musical collaboration over the Internet. Websites have also been created to enable creative music collaboration over the Internet.

Due to the complexity of today’s business environment, collaboration in technology encompasses a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to work together including social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, web sharing, audio conferencing, video, and telephony. Broadly defined, any technology that facilitates linking of two or more humans to work together can be considered a collaborative tool. Wikipedia, Blogs, even Twitter are collaborative tools. Many large companies are developing enterprise collaboration strategies and standardizing on a collaboration platform to allow their employees, customers and partners to intelligently connect and interact.

Deviancy amplification spiral is a media hype phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events. According to theory, the spiral starts with some deviant act. Usually the deviance is criminal but it can also involve lawful acts considered morally repugnant by most of society. The mass media report what they consider to be newsworthy, but the new focus on the issue uncovers hidden or borderline examples which themselves would not have been newsworthy except inasmuch as they confirm the “pattern”.

Reported cases of such deviance are often presented as just “the ones we know about” or “the tip of the iceberg,” an assertion that is nearly impossible to disprove immediately. For a variety of reasons, what is not frightening and would help the public keep a rational perspective (such as statistics showing that the behavior or event is actually less common or harmful than generally believed) tends to be ignored.

As a result, minor problems begin to look serious and rare events begin to seem common. Members of the public are motivated to keep informed on these events. The resulting publicity has potential to increase deviant behavior by glamorizing it or making it seem common or acceptable.

In the next stage, supporters of the theory contend, public concern about crime typically forces the police and the whole law enforcement system to focus more resources on dealing with the specific deviancy than it warrants. Judges and magistrates are under public pressure to deal out harsher sentences. Politicians pass new laws to deal with the perceived threat. All this tends to convince the public that any fear was justified while the media continue to profit by reporting police and other law enforcement activity, which further perpetuates the spiral.

The theory does not contend that moral panics always include the deviancy amplification spiral. In modern times, however, media involvement is usual in any moral panic, making the spiral fairly common.

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires, and knowledge, to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own. It is a theory insofar as the mind is not directly observable. The presumption that others have a mind is termed a “theory of mind” because each human can only prove the existence of his or her own mind through introspection, and one has no direct access to others’ minds.

It is typically assumed that others have minds by analogy with one’s own, and based on the reciprocal nature of social interaction, the functional use of language, and understanding of others’ emotions and actions. Having a theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of others’ behavior.

Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans, but one requiring social and other experience over many years to bring to fruition. Different people may develop more, or less, effective theories of mind. Empathy is a related concept, meaning experientially recognizing and understanding the states of mind, including beliefs, desires and particularly emotions of others, often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes.”

Research on theory of mind in a number of different populations has grown rapidly in the almost 30 years since Premack and Woodruff’s paper Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?, as have the theories of theory of mind. The emerging field of social neuroscience has also begun to address this debate, by imaging humans while performing tasks demanding the understanding of an intention, belief, or other mental state.