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. [4] 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. [13] This was the first time that scientists had demonstrated that wisdom could be taught in a formal education setting. [13]
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. [16] 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. [16] 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). [15]
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]
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