Mindfulness, derived from Buddhist psychology and philosophy, has gained broad popularity in the last decades, due importantly to scientific interest and findings. Yet Buddhist mindfulness developed in Asian pre-scientific culture and religion, and is predicated upon long-term cultivation of introspective awareness of lived experience, not highly accessible to empirical study. Further complicating the ‘science' of mindfulness, mindfulness's very definition is multifaceted, resistant to dismantling and requires substantial amounts of personal practice to gain expertise. Most scientists investigating mindfulness have not achieved (...) a high level of this expertise. Here I address how mindfulness is currently being invented as a scientific fact or object of inquiry. The intrinsic porosity of subjective and objective factors influencing the investigation of mindfulness is highlighted: the evolving body of ‘scientific' experts, instruments used to measure mindfulness, the alliances of funders and other supporters of mindfulness research, and the public representation of the related findings. (shrink)

In this article, I examine violence as constitutive of mobility for the feminine diasporic subject through an examination of women migrant workers from Nepal. I frame this project with two distinct theoretical approaches to understanding violence. First, I draw upon Catharine MacKinnon's provocative question ‘Are women human?’ to elucidate points of disjuncture between individual women migrants and state policy that dehumanises them. Second, I address some of the gaps in MacKinnon's work by turning to Judith Butler's theory of violence as (...) primarily embodied in the corporeal subject. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with returned women migrant workers, I examine three moments in the migration process that demonstrate how violence operates ubiquitously in and through circuits of mobility. I conclude that by putting Butler's and Mackinnon's approaches to violence in dialogue and examining the Nepali case through a dialectic framework, intriguing possibilities for approaching migration and its problematics are revealed. (shrink)

The guiding theme of these essays by aesthetician, musician, and Santayana scholar Morris Grossman is the importance of preserving the tension between what can be unified and what is disorganized, random, and miscellaneous. Grossman described this as the tension between art and morality: Art arrests a sense of change and yields moments of unguarded enjoyment and peace; but soon, shifting circumstances compel evaluation, decision, and action. According to Grossman, the best art preserves the tension between the aesthetic (...) consummation of experience and the press of morality understood as the business of navigating conflicts, making choices, and meeting needs. This concern was intimately related to his reading of George Santayana. The best philosophy, like the best art, preserves the tension between what can be ordered and what resists assimilation, and Grossman read Santayana as exemplifying this virtue in his embrace of multiple perspectives. Other scholars have noted the multiplicity or irony in Santayana's work, but Grossman was unique in taking such a style to be a substantive part of Santayana's philosophizing. (shrink)

A translation of a dialogue between Evelyne Grossman and Jacob Rogozinski on Artaud, Deleuze, and the status of the ego.

How a Post-Materialist Social Order Can Solve the Challenges of Modern Life and Insure Our Survival.

The Guest Editorial On Wolverines and Epistemological Totalitarianism by Etzel Cardeña (JSE 24(3), Fall 2011) is little more than a rant, in which invective, ridicule, and mockery take the place of reasoned argumentation. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a good rant, especially when one agrees with the overall perspective, and I actually found myself in agreement with much of what the author had to say. Most of Cardeña’s anger is directed at those Materialist philosophers and psychologists who happily pontificate (...) against the possibility of psi while remaining studiously ignorant of the data that parapsychological research has uncovered. I think everyone who comes to parapsychology with an open mind at some point experiences the same frustration that Cardeña expresses toward Materialist idealogues, whose conclusions and opinions have been formed a priori and appear to be impervious to empirical data. But he seems equally upset with those who are “pro-psi,” lamenting "the epistemological absolutism that pervades both the strident anti-psi and pro-psi proponents from what I consider a healthy abeyance from fully committing to a closed position in science or in other aspects of life." (Cardeña, p. 539). (shrink)

1. Metaphysics -- 2. The mind -- 3. Desire and emotion -- 4. Freedom from bondage -- 5. Transcendence.

The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal Is Bringing Science and Spirit Together by Charles T. Tart. Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple Personality by Logi Gunnarsson. Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena by Hereward Carrington. Can the Mind Survive beyond Death? In Pursuit of Scientific Evidence by Satwant K. Pasricha. Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation by Rupert Sheldrake. A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation by Rupert Sheldrake. “Why AI Is a Dangerous Dream,” (...) Opinion, Interview with Noel Sharkey by Nic Fleming. (shrink)

The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from a systematic phenomenological programme developed over several millennia to investigate subjective experience. Enthusiasm for ?mindfulness? in Western psychological and other science has resulted in proliferation of definitions, operationalizations and self-report inventories that purport to measure mindful awareness as a trait. This paper addresses a number of seemingly intractable issues regarding current attempts to characterize mindfulness and also highlights a number of vulnerabilities in this domain that (...) may lead to denaturing, distortion, dilution or reification of Buddhist constructs related to mindfulness. Enriching positivist Western psychological paradigms with a detailed and complex Buddhist phenomenology of the mind may require greater study and long-term direct practice of insight meditation than is currently common among psychologists and other scientists. Pursuit of such an approach would seem a necessary precondition for attempts to characterize and quantify mindfulness. (shrink)

We consider connections between number sense—the ability to judge number—and the interpretation of natural language quantifiers. In particular, we present empirical evidence concerning the neuroanatomical underpinnings of number sense and quantifier interpretation. We show, further, that impairment of number sense in patients can result in the impairment of the ability to interpret sentences containing quantifiers. This result demonstrates that number sense supports some aspects of the language faculty.

All humans experience itch in the course of their life. Even a discussion on the topic of itch or seeing people scratch can evoke the desire to scratch. These events are coined ‘contagious itch’ and are very common. We and others have shown that videos showing people scratching and pictures of affected skin or insects can induce itch in healthy persons and chronic itch patients. In our studies, patients with atopic dermatitis were more susceptible to visual itch cues than healthy. (...) Also, personality traits like agreeableness and public self-consciousness were associated with induced scratching in skin patients, while neuroticism correlated with induced itch in healthy subjects. The underlying course of contagious itch is not yet fully understood. It is hypothesized that there are human mirror neurons that are active when we imitate actions and/or negative affect. Until now, there has been only limited data on the mechanisms of brain activation in contagious itch though. We have barely begun to understand the underlying physiological reactions and the triggering factors of this phenomenon. We summarize what we currently know about contagious itch and provide some suggestions what future research should focus on. (shrink)

McMillan et al. (2005) measured brain activity.

In the game theory literature, Garrett Hardin’s famous allegory of the “tragedy of the commons” has been modeled as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, labeled the Herder Problem (or, sometimes, the Commons Dilemma). This brief paper argues that important differences in the institutional structures of the standard Prisoner’s Dilemma and Herder Problem render the two games different in kind. Specifically, institutional impediments to communication and cooperation that ensure a dominant strategy of defection in the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma are absent (...) in the Herder Problem. Their absence does not ensure that players will achieve a welfare-enhancing, cooperative solution to the Herders Problem, but does create far more opportunity for players to alter the expected payoffs through cooperative arrangements. In a properly modeled Herder Problem—along the lines of an assurance game—defection would not always be the dominant strategy. Consequently, the Herder Problem is not in the nature of a Prisoner’s Dilemma. (shrink)

Several philosophers of science have claimed that the conceptual difficulties of quantum mechanics can be resolved by appealing to a particular interpretation of probability theory. For example, Popper bases his treatment of quantum mechanics on the propensity interpretation of probability, and Margenau bases his treatment of quantum mechanics on the frequency interpretation of probability. The purpose of this paper is (i) to consider and reject such claims, and (ii) to discuss the question of whether the ψ -function refers to an (...) individual system or to an ensemble of systems. (shrink)

The Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement is an ideological force in health research and health policy which asks for allegiance to two types of methodological doctrine. The first is the highly quotable motherhood statement: for example, that we should make conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence (paraphrasing Sackett). The second type of doctrine, vastly more specific and in practice more important, is the detailed methodology of design and analysis of experiments. This type of detailed methodological doctrine tends to (...) be simplified by commentators but followed to the letter by practitioners. A number of interestingly dumb claims have become entrenched in prominent versions of these more specific methodological doctrines. I look at just a couple of example claims, namely: Any randomised controlled trial (RCT) gives us better evidence than any other study. Confidence intervals are always useful summaries of at least part of the evidence an experiment gives us about a hypothesis. To offer a positive doctrine which might move us past the current conflict of micro-theories of evidence, I propose a mild methodological pluralism: in any local context in which none of a variety of scientific methodologies is clearly and uncontentiously right, researchers should not be discouraged from using any methodology for which they can provide a good argument. (shrink)

Clp ATPase chaperone proteins are found in procaryotes and eucaryotes. Recently, ClpC of Bacillus subtilis was found to be part of a regulatory switch(1). ClpC, in combination with the MecA and ComS proteins, regulates the activity of a transcription factor, ComK, which is necessary for the development of genetic competence (the ability to bind and take up exogenous DNA). The complex of ClpC:MecA:ComK renders ComK inactive. Interaction between ComS and the ternary complex releases active ComK. This regulatory switch controls ComK (...) activity in response to cell density signals that affect production of ComS. Regulated interaction between Clp ATPases and target proteins might prove to be widespread. (shrink)