This chapter contains sections titled: Chemical Revelations? The Veil of Maya and the Reducing Valve The Insane Root The Peacock in the Mirror.

Studies have reported high rates of childhood maltreatment among individuals with drug addiction problems; however, investigation about the potentially protective factors to mitigate the effects of maltreatment experiences on motivation to engage in addiction treatment has received less attention. This study aims at exploring the mediating effects of forgiveness and self-efficacy on the association between childhood maltreatment and treatment motivation among drug addicts. A total of 360 male drug addicts were recruited from three mandatory inpatient rehabilitation centers (...) in Malaysia. Participants completed a package of self-report questionnaires including measures of childhood maltreatment experiences, forgiveness, self-efficacy, and motivation for treatment. The analysis conducted using the structural equation model revealed that childhood maltreatment significantly predicted lower treatment motivation, while forgiveness and self-efficacy played a fully mediating role regarding the effect of childhood maltreatment on treatment motivation. In conclusion, these findings suggest that combining the element of forgiveness and self-efficacy in treatment programs appears to benefit the drug addicts with childhood maltreatment history. (shrink)

"We often find that the state of not-knowing can be a precursor to moments of rich discovery which possess a dynamic, transformative power that exceeds any prior expectation." From the Introduction In daily life, when we see, hear or touch something that we don't recognise, we are instantly at our most alert. In that condition of 'not-knowing' we are in a state of alive, lithe awareness: asking questions, inviting input, open to learning, looking for significance and meaning... These essays, most (...) by practising psychotherapists, some of them Buddhists, take as their starting point the idea that not-knowing is fundamental to conscious reflection and the desire to know must always arise in the first instance from the self-awareness of not-knowing. Read in any order, on waking, before sleeping or when in doubt... they will be of interest to anyone who has ever sat in either chair in a psychotherapist's or counsellor's room - as well as anyone troubled or intrigued by what it takes to live comfortably and well in a condition of not knowing all (or even any) of the answers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 263-265 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Monk Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Monk. By David G. Hackett. New York: Continuum, 1996. 157 pp. Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life. By Robert E. Kennedy. New York: Continuum, 1997. (...) 144 pp. Two very different books recently published by Continuum seem to complement each other in unexpected ways. Father Kennedy, Catholic Zen Teacher, Jesuit Priest, openly shares with us his own journey into unknowing and self-emptying. As he notes in his preface, "what I looked for in Zen was not a new faith, but a new way of being Catholic that grew out of my own lived experience..." (p. 13). David Hackett, now an associate professor of religion, freely shares his youthful search for genuine spiritual experience. His book is drawn from correspondence from the 1970s with Father Thomas Keating and the monks of the St. Joseph's Abbey during his two-year stay in Japan. Hackett says in his Prologue, "I became a Catholic through Zen meditation..." (p. 17). In both cases, rather than threaten or diminish their Christian faith, Zen practice served as a wonderful "can-opener," prying off lids of rigid ideas and concepts, allowing the depth of the spirit to be more deeply experienced.Part I of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit, addressed primarily to the Christian reader, offers an excellent introduction into Buddhism, Zen, and the essential elements of practice. In this section Kennedy has reflected the questions Christians have asked during the years he taught at the Zen Community of New York. His teacher there, Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Roshi, clarifies in the foreword Father Kennedy's position as a lay Zen Teacher who remains a Catholic priest. Kennedy weaves a consistent thread of Christian contemplative teachings side by side with the Zen teachings, making very visible the fact that Zen reminds us, as do Eckhart, Merton, and many other contemplatives, that the highest point of our Christian mysticism is reached not in the experience that I know God or that I love God--not in any I-Thou experience--but in the experience that God lives in us (p. 36).The book has been structured according to the four stages of human growth: knowledge, love, purification, and union. These stages have been likened to the stages of alchemy: lead, quicksilver, sulphur, and gold--these four elements provide Kennedy with his titles for the four parts of his book. This very structure makes clear that the goal of both Christian mysticism and Zen practice is transformation of being. With a firm foundation of knowledge and teachings from both traditions, then it is time to actually enter the fire of practice itself. I am reminded of the stages of practice outlined in the ancient Chinese Zen ox-herding pictures. The herdsman sets out with some knowledge, longing for his True Nature. He sees traces--footprints in the sand--and a deep yearning, the quicksilver of desire and inspiration, begins to ache in his heart. As he begins to see and experience his own True Nature, he must pass through the fire of struggle, surrender, deep letting go, until finally both herdsman [End Page 263] and ox disappear, self-emptying is complete in Union. There are no shortcuts. Jesus and Buddha both have invited us to practice radical poverty. Kennedy states, "The poverty of not clinging, not projecting, not finding shelter, and not seeking parallel lives, can lead us to the deepest intimacy of all" (p. 114).Kennedy received his early formative Zen training under Koun Yamada Roshi, a beloved and deeply appreciated teacher, in Kamakura. His Roshi offered a style of practice which utilized the koan (rationally unsolvable question or paradox) to provoke the student into a direct experience rather than an explanation or idea about it. Kennedy Sensei has shared his insight into many... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 135-141 [Access article in PDF] On Delusions of Sense:A Response to Coetzee and Sass Rupert Read Keywords schizophrenia, Wittgenstein, Schreber, Faulkner, Benjy, grammar, madness, Cogito The great writings on and of severe mental affliction—those for instance of Schreber, 'Renee', Donna Williams, Artaud, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country, Kafka's "Description of a struggle," and even (I (...) would add) key parts of The Lord of the Rings—present us with something deeply enigmatic. They have, we might say, a strong grammar, a grammar—a mode of hanging together, and (in this case) of linguistically seeming to make a sense that is not our sense and that we cannot make sense of—... they have a grammar all of their own, and all of its own, a grammar that resists and rejects interpretation even as it sometimes seems to offer interpretations. 1It was Wittgenstein's view that to make mental illness unpuzzling was a mistake, or (better, perhaps) a mythologically problematic move. Wittgenstein's aim in his philosophizing was to understand what was enigmatic when it could be understood without unwisely turning it into something altogether unpuzzling... and then to acknowledge that there are some things that may remain forever puzzling, without committing oneself to the metaphysically disastrous claim that the reason they are endlessly puzzling is that they lie outside the boundaries of human life, language, or reason, as though we could peek outside those alleged boundaries to see what was there, but never truly say anything about it.There simply may be places where our understanding—phenomenological understanding, understanding of what it is like—gives out, and not because it is (or we are) merely human. For instance, perhaps one cannot capture some mental illness by intellection alone, or even perhaps at all. Perhaps the best understanding one can have of mental illness is purely negative (in a sense at least as strong as that involved in negative theology, wherein God is only defined by what it is not).Louis Sass (2003) writes I am not sure whether or not Read would accept that a philosophical position can be understandable despite its containing deep, internal logical tensions (perhaps he would not). If such understanding is possible, however, it does seem to open the way for a similar understanding of conditions like that of Schreber. (p. 127) Unfortunately, however, it is indeed not possible—that is, this notion is merely a fantasy—by my lights. Philosophical positions, all of which turn out to contain such inexorable tensions, cannot be understood: they are mirages. Solipsism, as a position, is not any better (or worse) off [End Page 135] than (say) (Metaphysical) Realism. They are both mirages, just different aspects of the same nothing. 2 Considered as positions, they are in the end literally—when one understands their logic—one and the same nothing. Wittgenstein already made this quite clear in his Tractatus. Perhaps in contrast to Sass, there is then nothing special about solipsism: it is just one mode of presentation rather than another of the illusion that there can be philosophical positions.Sass claims that in saying this kind of thing I am committed to ruling out that some mental illness can be understood or can even exist, on abstract intellectual grounds. I am not. I am simply wishing to leave open the possibility that there may be things that some people utter or seem to experience which intellection gives us little or no assistance with. If Sass wishes to deny this, then I suggest that it is he and not I who is the absolutist intellectualist here, in insisting that rewriting something deeply strange in a weaker grammar is furthering our grasp of it.My suggestion concerning Faulkner's presentation of Benjy, in my original paper, was that it is a mythological mistake to think that Faulkner provides us with the tools for giving an unpuzzling rendition of what had perhaps appeared to be "another country," inaccessible to us. Rather, Faulkner's representation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritual Experience and PsychopathologyMike Jackson and K. W. M. Fulford (bio)AbstractA recent study of the relationship between spiritual experience and psychopathology (reported in detail elsewhere) suggested that psychotic phenomena could occur in the context of spiritual experiences rather than mental illness. In the present paper, this finding is illustrated with three detailed case histories. Its implications are then explored for psychopathology, for psychiatric classification, and for our (...) understanding of the concept of mental illness. It is argued that pathological and spiritual psychotic phenomena cannot be distinguished by 1) form and content alone (as in traditional psychopathology), 2) by their relationship either with other symptoms or with pathological causes (as in psychiatric classification), or 3) by reference to the descriptive criteria of mental illness implied by the “medical” model. The distinction is shown to depend, rather, on the way in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned. This in turn is shown to have implications for diagnosis (it shows the need for clinicians to attend to the values and beliefs of individual patients), for treatment (it points to a cognitive problem-solving model), and for research in psychopathology (especially as related to the emerging sciences of dynamic brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience).Keywordsfirst rank symptoms, schizophrenia, delusion, hallucination, thought disorder, religious experience, mystical experienceIntroductionThis paper explores some of the conceptual and practical implications of the finding that phenomena which in a medical context would probably be diagnosed as psychotic symptoms, may occur in the context of non-pathological, and indeed essentially benign, spiritual experiences.The existence of non-pathological psychotic experiences of this kind (we will call them “psychotic phenomena” as distinct from “psychotic symptoms”—see also Endnote 1, terminology) was a key finding in a study carried out by one of us (MJ) at the Alister Hardy Research Centre (AHRC) in Oxford. Details are given elsewhere both of the overall empirical findings of the study, including the relationship between spiritual experience and personality variables, and of a hypothetical cognitive problem-solving model of these phenomena (Jackson 1991, and forthcoming a and b). In the present paper, 1) the background to the study is described briefly in relation to earlier work on the possible links between spiritual experience and psychopathology; 2) some of the psychotic phenomena identified are illustrated with three detailed case histories; 3) the significance of these phenomena is reviewed for our understanding respectively of psychopathology, of diagnostic syndromes, and of the concept of mental illness; and 4) some of the practical implications of the study for clinical work and research in psychiatry are indicated.BackgroundIt has long been recognized that there are similarities between spiritual and psychotic experiences. [End Page 41] William James (1902), for example, argued that “in delusional insanity, paranoia as they sometimes call it, we may have a kind of diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down” (426). Other commentators have noted a wide variety of phenomena, such as time distortion, synesthesias, loss of self-object boundaries and the transition from a state of conflict and anxiety to one of sudden “understanding,” all of which are reported in both spiritual and psychotic experiences (Buckley 1981; Watson 1982; Wapnick 1969; and Wootton and Allen 1983).Yet the similarities notwithstanding, the distinction between these two kinds of experience can be crucially important. Spiritual experiences, whether welcome or unwelcome, and whether or not they are psychotic in form, have nothing (directly) to do with medicine (Fulford 1996a). It would be quite wrong, then, to “treat” spiritual psychotic experiences with neuroleptic drugs, just as it is quite wrong to “treat” political dissidents as though they were ill (Fulford, Smirnoff and Snow, 1993). Pathological psychotic experiences, on the other hand, or psychotic symptoms, are by definition a proper object of medical treatment, sometimes even against the wishes of the person concerned. Hence it would be both negligent and, as Wing (1978) put it, morally “repellent,” to leave untreated someone who is genuinely ill (244).Given how much turns on the distinction between spiritual experience and psychopathology, it is perhaps not surprising that scholarly discussion of the relationship between them has at times... (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the moral and scientific value of ‘expertise by experience’, that is, knowledge based on personal experience of ill mental health as a form of expertise in mental health research. In contrast to individualistic theories of personal autonomy and the first-person in bioethics, my account of shared decision-making is focussed on how a relational approach to the ‘person’ and ‘patient values’ can throw new light on our understanding of ‘voice’ in mental health (...) research. The mistake, I argue, is to think that a commitment to listening to the patient voice in the process of perspective taking implies a threat to ‘objectivity’ in clinical practice and the very concept of evidence in the philosophy of science more generally. Instead, I use Helen Longino's account of epistemic validity in philosophy of science to argue that narrative experience and ‘patient perspective’ should be understood as an ongoing dynamic partnership working between the different stakeholders’ knowledge perspectives. I also address the connection between expertise by experience and the psychiatric significance of the personal self for the entrenched topics of agency, self-hood, personal identity, and self-knowledge in psychiatric diagnosis. In contrast to identity politics, my model of shared decision-making preserves a critical distance between perspective-taking and value itself in self/other appraisal as the gold standard for good clinical practice. (shrink)

Normal convictions are formed in a context of social living and common knowledge. Immediate experience of reality survives only if it can fit into the frame of what is socially valid or can be critically tested. … Each single experience can always be corrected but the total context of experience is something stable and can hardly be corrected at all. The source for incorrigibility therefore is not to be found in any single phenomenon by itself but (...) in the human situation as a whole, which nobody would surrender lightly. If socially accepted reality totters, people become adrift.As Jaspers indicates in this quotation on incorrigibility, delusions may not be regarded as mere disorders of thinking, reasoning or... (shrink)

Delusional misidentification is commonly understood as the product of an inference on the basis of evidence present in the subject's experience. For example, in the Capgras delusion, the patient sees someone who looks like a loved one, but who feels unfamiliar, so they infer that they must not be the loved one. I question this by presenting a distinction between “recognition” and “identification.” Identification does not always require recognition for its epistemic justification, nor does it need recognition for its (...) psychological functioning. Judgments of identification are often the product of a non-inferential mechanism. Delusional misidentification arises as the product of this mechanism malfunctioning. (shrink)

If you want to understand McDowell's spatial metaphors when he talks about perceptual knowledge, place him side-by-side with Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Though McDowell shows no evidence of reading Dretske's writings on knowledge from the late 1960s onwards (McDowell mentions "Epistemic Operators" once in passing), McDowell gives the same four arguments as Dretske for the conclusion that knowledge requires "conclusive" reasons that rule of the possibility of mistake. Despite various differences, we think it is best to (...) read McDowell as re-discovering Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Since Dretske is easy to understand, all of McDowell's metaphors become easy to understand. But what about McDowell's disjunctivism? Turns out McDowell is not an ontological disjunctivist, and his epistemological disjunctivism is really just the banal point that some perceptual experiences provide conclusive reasons for perceptual belief and some do not. Perceptual experiences are either conclusive or inconclusive. Dretske would agree. (shrink)

There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in-class intervention called (...) ‘Philosophy for Children’, after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C or act as a control for one year. This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading and maths, and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores and writing. The results for the most disadvantaged pupils were larger for attainment, but not for CATs. Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment, and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach. (shrink)

There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in-class intervention called (...) ‘Philosophy for Children’, after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C or act as a control for one year. This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading and maths, and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores and writing. The results for the most disadvantaged pupils were larger for attainment, but not for CATs. Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment, and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach. (shrink)

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his Lectures (...) and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

From religion to philosophy to science, all human systems of definition are formed by human brains. The nature and limits of the human brain are the nature and limits of those systems. This essay shows how the human brain works normally then unusually, and what this reveals about the limits of human knowledge. There are many conditions and instances where the brain processes information unusually, including mental disorders, physical events, and drug use. This essay focuses on the neurological (...) events called mystical experiences. (shrink)

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth‐grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., 5 + 4 + 9 + 5 = _) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ or 6 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems (...) of the form 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students' encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank‐final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank‐final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Common Sense and Theological 9 9 Exper_,ence on the Bas s o,f Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy NATHAN ROTENSTREICH The position of Franz Rosenzweig's thinking within the framework of presentday philosophy is difficult to ascertain. Though he was deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition, his chief work, The Star o] Redemption (Der Stern der Erlgsung, 1921), was conceived outside the main discussions of the philosophical controversy in the twenties. He formulated (...) his ideas side by side with the trends of German philosophy, but not by way of keeping pace with these trends. Yet his polemic against traditional philosophy in general, and against idealism in particular brings Rosenzweig close to the character of the rebellion represented by Existenz-Philosophie. 1 I The question of grounding a philosophical system or a set of philosophical ideas with an objective toward faith clearly poses the difficulty, in terms of the ultimate authority, of maintaining the validity of such a system of ideas. Could that authority be reason, which as a source of ideas and confirmation is outside faith while having consequences or expressions within the scope of faith? Or is faith, asserting the existence of God and his relations to world and man, an independent source? In case faith is an independent source, does it have the guarantee of its validity in its own boundaries, or does it still point to a source of validity which is outside faith and yet is not reason? It seems that Franz Rosenzweig was willy-nilly in his concern with this question. As said before the first approach would have been to construct a system along rational lines. This, however, would have done violence to a basic anti-rationalistic trait in Rosenzweig's thinking that can be clearly discerned in his The Star o] Redemption, in his Kleinere Schri]ten and in his small book, Understanding the Sick and Healthy, published until now in English only. Rosenzweig's criticism of rationalism may be summed up as follows: a) Reason strives for a unified conception of the world; and in support of this monistic fiction its assimilative energy is ready to seize upon all arguments that militate against the doctrines and practices of faith. b) Reason tends to ignore the existence of the individual which it regards as 1On the relation between Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger, see Karl LSwith, "M. Heideggerand F. Rosenzweigor Temporality and Eternity," Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch,III (Sept., 1942),53-77. [353] 354 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY merely one of the variations of an all-inclusive unity. The question of the relation of the particular to the general or of the individual to the whole, which has engrossed philosophers since time immemorial, has no place in rationalistic systems. c) Since reason places the understanding above the things to be understood (and hence also above the data of religious experience, including the existence of God), we find that from a speculative and historical point of view rationalism has a strong bias against religion or theology. The other way open to Rosenzweig was to rely on the principle of Revelation, but he could not adopt this principle as the basis of his system for the following reasons" a) The first reason can be understood from Schelling's paradox: He who adheres to Revelation does not philosophize, and he who philosophizes finds Revelation inadequate for his purposes. Since Rosenzweig was basically a philosopher --despite his protestations to the contrary--he was precluded by that very fact from appealing to the evidence furnished by Revelation. On the contrary, he sought to find a non-rational basis for Revelation itself. b) The second reason that precluded Rosenzweig from taking the traditional course of relying on Revelation is implicit in that principle itself as Rosenzweig understood it. Revelation in his system has no enlightening or cognitive significance, or what is called in Christian theology Kerygma, instructive knowledge. In Revelation, he says, God reveals only revelation; He reveals himself to man and to man alone.2 In his view, then, Revelation does not transmit informative content and hence has no dogmatic significance. It is a dialogue that posits the existence of the participants, the existence of God, and (highly important for... (shrink)

Suppose, familiarly, that you and a friend have landed in an alien territory, amidst people who speak a language you do not know. Upon seeing you, one of them starts yelling, seemingly alarmed. You say to your friend, “She thinks we want to hurt her. She's scared. We must seem very strange to her.” Your friend, who is facing you, says, “No, I think she's actually trying to warn you: there's a snake right above your head, on that tree. (...) You see the sling in her hand? I think she's going to try to shoot it down.“On a prevalent view, much discussed in recent years, you and your friend have engaged in a mini-theoretical enterprise. Using certain observations of the alien's behaviour as your data, and deploying certain generalizations and principles concerning human behaviour, you advance hypotheses regarding the internal psychological states which issued in her observed behaviour. (shrink)

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth‐grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., 5 + 4 + 9 + 5 = _) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ or 6 + 4 + 5 = _ + 5). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems (...) of the form 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + _ overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students' encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank‐final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank‐final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding. (shrink)

In this issue we include contributions from the individuals presiding at the panel All in a Jurnal's Work: A BABEL Wayzgoose, convened at the second Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. Sadly, the contributions of Daniel Remein, chief rogue at the Organism for Poetic Research as well as editor at Whiskey & Fox , were not able to appear in this version of the proceedings. From the program : 2ND BIENNUAL MEETING OF THE BABEL WORKING GROUP CONFERENCE “CRUISING IN (...) THE RUINS: THE QUESTION OF DISCIPLINARITY IN THE POST/MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY” SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2012: SESSION 13 MCLEOD C.322, CURRY STUDENT CENTER NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, MA. Traditionally, a wayzgoose was a celebration at the end of a printer’s year, a night off in the late fall before the work began of printing by candlelight. According to the OED, the Master Printer would make for the journeymen “a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night.” Following in this line, continent. proposes in its publication(s) a night out and a good Feast, away from the noxious fumes of the Academy and into a night of revelry which begins, but does not end, at the alehouse or Tavern. continent. proposes that the thinking of the Academy be freed to be thought elsewhere, in the alleys and doorways of the village and cities, encountered not in the strictly defined spaces of the classroom and blackboard (now white) but anticipated and found where thinking occurs. Historically, academic journals have served a different purpose than the Academy itself. Journals (from the Anglo-Fr. jurnal , "a day," from O.Fr. jornel , "day, time; day's work," hence the journalist as writer of the news of the day ) have served as privileged sites for the articulation and concretization of specific modes of knowledge and control (insemination of those ideas has been formalized in the classroom, in seminar). In contrast, the academic journal is post-partum and has been an old-boys club, an insider trading network in which truths are (re)circulated against themselves, forming a Maginot Line against whatever is new, or the distinctly challenging. All in a Jurnal’s Work will discuss (in part) the ramifications of cheap start-up publications that are challenging the traditional ensconced-in-ivory academic journals and their supporting infrastructures. The panel will be seeking a questioning (as a challenging) towards the discipline of knowledge production/fabrication (of truth[s]) and the event of the Academy (and its publications) as it has evolved and continues to (d)evolve. Issues to be discussed will revolve around the power of academic publishing and its origins, hierarchical versus horizontal academic modules (is there a place for the General Assembly in academia?) and the evolving idea of the Multiversity as a site(s) of a (BABELing) multivocality in the wake of the University of Disaster. STAGE NOTES AND/AS/OR TRACK CHANGES: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND MAGICAL THINKING ON PRINTING: AN ELECTION AND A PROVOCATION Isaac Linder “Of course most people don’t think of editing/publishing as theatre but as something boring or parasitical (vis-à-vis a ‘source’ text), a textual backwater populated by people with glasses. But I think publishing a book today is theatre, socially networked theatre…. Facebook and Flickr are our era’s administered and generic version of sixties happenings!” — Tan Lin 1 ELECTING A MASCOT: THE BARNACLE GOOSE After pitching the idea for this panel with the editorial help of my continental cohorts I became fascinated with the image of the goose—dead and roasted as it may be—and its relationship to the space of the printing press. For a long while after proposing this gathering I was seriously under the sway of delusions of grandeur, imagining that we might roast a goose (or goosefu) and, preparing a meal as one prepares a text for publication, feast in something approaching a warm and well-nourished revelry. I should note, by way of introduction, that a substantial part of my undergraduate experience involved learning to typeset and work as a devil, as typesetters mischievously call it, in a letterpress studio. This accounts in part for my fascination and helps to explain the fact that, when I began to leaf around in medieval beastiaries in lieu of being able to procure a goose, I was almost immediately struck by a fantastic monster that I hereby elect to be the mascot for our so-called para-academic practice(s) the relatively famed, but no less fabulous for it, barnacle goose. The barnacle goose is a creature that first makes its way into 12th century manuscripts with Giraldus Cambrensis in 1186. Phenomenologically speaking the monster is a tree, a tree which, when approached closer is seen to be birthing geese budding from the buds that hang like ripe fruit from its branches. As the story goes these trees were found over water; the fledgling geese, once wrested from their pods would take off in flight or fall to their watery death, where they would be transformed into driftwood. In retrospect we presume the barnacle goose was posited as a consequence of the fact that geese born in more northern regions, migrating to Ireland and western Europe at large, were never seen to give birth. And I should note that this is far from the only other animal posited to be born from trees at around this time, my other favorite being medieval accounts of Moroccan tree-climbing goats. 2 In particular I’ve thrown up the mascot of the barnacle goose and singled it out from the quires of its beatiaries because its thoroughly hybrid origins lead us to name two very real creatures we can find point to in abundance; discrete materialities of the world cobbled together in textual fancy: on the one hand, the modern day barnacle goose , a common species of goose and, on the other, goose barnacles , a particular type of crustacean with incredible feathery tendrils and—I can't help but mention—one of the largest body mass to penis size ratios of all of the animals in the kingdom. Why is this bit of genital trivia relevant? Because they’re all hermaphroditic and in rare cases have been found to reproduce just with themselves—to inseminate themselves and give birth to their kin. So I think it must be stressed, as a symbol for what we’re really here to talk about, it's not a boy’s club thing so much as a very queer thing and, I contend, para - in every perfect sense of the word... Alongside the natural world, a monstrous imaginary concatenation; Alongside the hulls of so many institutional structures, funding sources and resources, Serresian parasites in all manner of mutualist, symbiotic, or properly parasitic positions; migratory and adrift; The tree, center stage in the 21st century adaptation of Waiting for Godot that is unraveling in ateliers across the world, is a barnacle goose birthing a flurry of miscegenous texts beyond medium and genre. PROVOCATION 1: CHAOSMOSIS “Genre is obsolete.” — Ray Brassier 3 And so, here I was getting carried away in daydreams about this generative and genealogical symbol under which to think all of the diverse projects we are all involved in as architects of the dressed word, (well dressed, bespoke, mansy, butch, careless, or roguishly punk attired as those words may be), when it also dawned on me, mid-flight here from Denver, that we are, even in lieu of being able to roast geese together, very much so literalizing what was never just the metaphor of the wayzgoose—a tradition, as you know, celebrated to mark the crepuscular turn into fall—as we are poised here, tomorrow being the first official day of fall on our calendars in the US marking the seasonal change from at which point it will no longer be possible to print without the aid of candlelight. A beautiful thought, that tipped into magical thinking on account of a little quick math I was able to do to come to the conclusion that we can all be delighted to know that as we proceed into the autumn with our printing projects always ahead of us and still to be set, we will tonight be bathed not only by the artificial candlelight of our screens, but also in part by photons raining down on us at 186,282 miles per second—photons from an aspect of 9 cyg, a stereoscopic binary deep within Cygnus, the swan but not-so-distant-relative of the goose, with a distance of 572 Light years away; photons that are raining down on us, will rain down on us all winter, have been raining down on us all year, and which had their origin in the combustion cores at a center of 9 cyg 572 years ago, in 1440, the year which we point to today as the common year in which, as we all know, Gutenberg is said to have brought the movable type to the western world, inaugurating an era that stretches farther into the past and future than McLuhan could justify; the proliferation of so much ambient text; insurrectionary coups on (and re-crystallizations of) genre—perceived amidst so much ambient light—enveloping this campus, just now. So, with that thought, and perhaps a new mascot, Nico Jenkins... NOTES “ Writing as Metadata Container, An Interview with Tan Lin ,” Chris Alexander, Kristen Gallagher, Danny Snelson, Gordon Tapper, Tan Lin, Jacket 2. January 20, 2012. To explore Lin’s notion of ambient textuality, plagiarism, and parallel, cross­platform publication in the 21st century, also see Lin’s sampled novel, “ The Patio and the Index ,” Triple Canopy 14, October 24, 2011, as well as the Edit event, organized at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, April, 2010 . For a fascinating and fecund exploration of medieval plant­animal hybrids in relation to media ecology, see Whitney Trettien, “ Becoming Plant: Magnifying a Microhistory of Media Circuits in Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants (1682) .” postmedieval 3.1 (2012):97. See also the crowd­review version of the essay. “ Genre Is Obsolete .” Compléments de Multitudes . 28 (2007). (shrink)

According to Brandom, perceptual knowledge is the product of two distinguishable capacities: the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli, and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlements and commitments of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this (...) is a blind spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somatic Knowledge and Qualitative Reasoning:From Theory to PracticeRichard Siegesmund"Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with" is how my undergraduate student, Cheyenne, opened her final essay on The Arts and the Creation of Mind. After a semester of using his text in my art education methods class, reckoned seemed an apt word. The dictionary gives the definitions of reckoned as to settle accounts, make calculation, judge, and (...) take into consideration.1 The ideas in The Arts and the Creation of Mind are challenging on multiple levels, and Eisner does not provide any easy answers. There are no pithy how-to-do-it bullet points in the text. The issues he addresses are complex: nonlinguistic meaning, somatic knowledge, qualitative reasoning, the arts as habits of mind that guide experience and inquiry into the world — just to name a few. Nevertheless, in this text he brings these ideas into a format that is accessible to undergraduates entering the profession of teaching and experienced professionals, who wish to reflect on their own practice.The lucidity of Eisner's text can belie the complexity of the issues he addresses. Regrettably, some students only saw the outer shell of the content: the discussion of conceptual approaches to arts education or the delineation of the developmental stages of children's drawing. Yet for these aspects alone, they considered the text to be valuable; however, I was disappointed that they did not go deeper. Some just could not synthesize the big point: that the arts are not simply about mastery of technical skills, but that technical skills are merely a gateway into non-linguistic thinking. Educational objectives that are limited to content and skills are mundane.However, for more thoughtful and reflective students like Cheyenne, who was in her last semester of course work before student teaching in Guadalajara, the book was an inspiration. It provided a more robust conception of arts education that spoke to her feelings that compelled her to be a teacher. She reflected on what she read in The Arts and the Creation of Mind, and saw how an arts educator was more than an activities manager. She discovered she was embarking on a calling that could change minds — and [End Page 80] by changing minds, transform lives. For a young idealist, Eisner articulated her passion to serve. He said what up until that moment she had only felt. She discovered what she had previously sensed — known in her bones — but had not articulated. Eisner was a voice she wanted to take for her own. He provided a vision of the teacher she hoped to be. Indeed, Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with.Two ideas that my art students want to discuss when they first encounter The Arts and the Creation of Mind are the concepts of somatic knowing and qualitative reasoning. Somatic knowledge is a felt reaction of rightness within an experience. Qualitative reasoning is the ordering of relationships of qualities. Qualitative reasoning produces somatic knowledge. Using my students' questions and classroom discussions as inspiration, I want to explore these ideas for I believe they represent the essence of what is distinctive about learning in the arts. Furthermore, I share Eisner's belief that they provide the foundation on which to make an enduring case for the importance of the arts in education. These ideas reside at the heart of the process of education, which is, as he states, "learning to create ourselves."2It is immensely satisfying as a teacher to see the ah-ha moments in class discussion when students begin to integrate Eisner's ideas into their own experience. It is an even greater satisfaction to work with teachers who find these ideas illuminating for their educational aims and objectives and to see them played out in real classrooms where students flourish. In this essay, I want to try to build on my own experience with these moments to more deeply explore the significance of Eisner's work.To begin, I will briefly revisit the work of John Dewey. I will then discuss how Eisner's previous thinking sets a foundation for The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Finally, on a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somatic Knowledge and Qualitative Reasoning:From Theory to PracticeRichard Siegesmund"Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with" is how my undergraduate student, Cheyenne, opened her final essay on The Arts and the Creation of Mind. After a semester of using his text in my art education methods class, reckoned seemed an apt word. The dictionary gives the definitions of reckoned as to settle accounts, make calculation, judge, and (...) take into consideration.1 The ideas in The Arts and the Creation of Mind are challenging on multiple levels, and Eisner does not provide any easy answers. There are no pithy how-to-do-it bullet points in the text. The issues he addresses are complex: nonlinguistic meaning, somatic knowledge, qualitative reasoning, the arts as habits of mind that guide experience and inquiry into the world — just to name a few. Nevertheless, in this text he brings these ideas into a format that is accessible to undergraduates entering the profession of teaching and experienced professionals, who wish to reflect on their own practice.The lucidity of Eisner's text can belie the complexity of the issues he addresses. Regrettably, some students only saw the outer shell of the content: the discussion of conceptual approaches to arts education or the delineation of the developmental stages of children's drawing. Yet for these aspects alone, they considered the text to be valuable; however, I was disappointed that they did not go deeper. Some just could not synthesize the big point: that the arts are not simply about mastery of technical skills, but that technical skills are merely a gateway into non-linguistic thinking. Educational objectives that are limited to content and skills are mundane.However, for more thoughtful and reflective students like Cheyenne, who was in her last semester of course work before student teaching in Guadalajara, the book was an inspiration. It provided a more robust conception of arts education that spoke to her feelings that compelled her to be a teacher. She reflected on what she read in The Arts and the Creation of Mind, and saw how an arts educator was more than an activities manager. She discovered she was embarking on a calling that could change minds — and [End Page 80] by changing minds, transform lives. For a young idealist, Eisner articulated her passion to serve. He said what up until that moment she had only felt. She discovered what she had previously sensed — known in her bones — but had not articulated. Eisner was a voice she wanted to take for her own. He provided a vision of the teacher she hoped to be. Indeed, Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with.Two ideas that my art students want to discuss when they first encounter The Arts and the Creation of Mind are the concepts of somatic knowing and qualitative reasoning. Somatic knowledge is a felt reaction of rightness within an experience. Qualitative reasoning is the ordering of relationships of qualities. Qualitative reasoning produces somatic knowledge. Using my students' questions and classroom discussions as inspiration, I want to explore these ideas for I believe they represent the essence of what is distinctive about learning in the arts. Furthermore, I share Eisner's belief that they provide the foundation on which to make an enduring case for the importance of the arts in education. These ideas reside at the heart of the process of education, which is, as he states, "learning to create ourselves."2It is immensely satisfying as a teacher to see the ah-ha moments in class discussion when students begin to integrate Eisner's ideas into their own experience. It is an even greater satisfaction to work with teachers who find these ideas illuminating for their educational aims and objectives and to see them played out in real classrooms where students flourish. In this essay, I want to try to build on my own experience with these moments to more deeply explore the significance of Eisner's work.To begin, I will briefly revisit the work of John Dewey. I will then discuss how Eisner's previous thinking sets a foundation for The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Finally, on a... (shrink)

Given the profound public health and economic ramifications of decisions made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the degree to which FDA activities should reflect an approach founded on complete transparency versus one focused on preserving confidentiality of information deserves public discussion. On one hand, reasonable requirements for transparency are critical to stimulating effective innovation, knowledge dissemination, and good business practice. On the other, ensuring the vitality of the medical products industry requires protecting legitimately proprietary information. With (...) current standards reflecting a lengthy accumulation of legal, regulatory, and practical precedent, recent significant changes in the environment in which the FDA operates should prompt a critical examination of current practices. In this article, I comment on Sharfstein and colleagues’ “Blueprint for Transparency,” which calls for multiple specific actions to increase transparency at the agency across five key areas, including interactions between FDA and industry, public disclosure of internal FDA analyses, deliberations concerning generics and biosimilars, expanded access to raw study data, and approaches to countering misleading information in the public sphere. I evaluate these recommendations in light of my experience as a clinician, researcher, and former FDA Commissioner, and reflect on possible outcomes that could result from enacting these practices. (shrink)

(Draft of Feb 2023, see upcoming issue for Chalmers' reply) In Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, David Chalmers argues, among other things, that: if we are living in a full-scale simulation, we would still enjoy broad swathes of knowledge about non-psychological entities, such as atoms and shrubs; and, our lives might still be deeply meaningful. Chalmers views these claims as at least weakly connected: The former claim helps forestall a concern that if objects in the simulation (...) are not genuine (and so not knowable), then life in the simulation is illusory and therefore, not as valuable as a non-simulated life. Taking up these questions, I argue that in general, the value of social knowledge for a meaningful life dramatically swamps the value of non-social knowledge for a meaningful life. Along the way, I propose a non-additive model of the meaningfulness of life, according to which the overall effect of some potential contributor of value to a life depends in part on what is already in a life. One upshot is that the vindication of non-social knowledge, absent a correlative vindication of social knowledge, contributes either not at all or scarcely at all to the claim that our lives in the simulation might be deeply meaningful. This is so even though the vindication of non-social knowledge does forestall the concern that in the simulation, our lives might be wholly meaningless. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 87-94 [Access article in PDF] Talk and the Nature of Delusions:Defending Sociocultural Perspectives on Mental Illness Eugenie Georgaca Keywords discourse, social constructionism, delusions, psychosis, mental illness, context It is very pleasing to see writers from philosophy, psychiatry and psychology, the three disciplines represented by this journal, debating the issue of delusions. The majority of the papers in this volume set out to determine (...) the underlying mechanisms responsible for delusions. As such, they offer themselves as discussions of the etiological factors of the formation and maintenance of delusions. My paper analyzes the interactional presentation and negotiation of statements that would be considered as delusional. This led some commentators (Ghaemi 2004; Sass 2004) to argue that the analysis of talk about delusions is useful, but cannot be extended to claims about the nature of delusions. In the following section, I discuss the ways in which analyzing interactions can be useful in clinical research and practice. Subsequently, I identify and critically discuss the assumptions about the nature of delusions that underlie these criticisms and the majority of the papers in this volume. The Usefulness of the Study of Interaction My paper can be seen as part of a growing body of studies that attempt to elucidate the role of interactional and discursive processes in the identification and management of disorders (Barrett 1988; Coulter 1975; Hak 1989; Pollner 1975; Smith 1978; Soyland 1994). Microsociological and ethnographic studies look at the properties of client-professional interaction with the aim of clarifying the tacit skills and knowledges used in such encounters. Palmer (2000), for example, argues that the recognition of disorder is a social and interactional issue both in the sense that the judgment of disorder is based on social criteria and in the sense that diagnosis is an interpersonal process with its own inherent social order. The aim, therefore, of analyzing professional-client interactions would be to articulate the properties of this implicit social order. Other researchers argue that diagnosis is not a process of identification or recognition of disorder, but rather a process of active construction of disorder and of transforming the person to a mental patient. Barrett's (1988) analysis of the transformation of a [End Page 87] person to a "person suffering from schizophrenia" and subsequently a "schizophrenic" through interviewing and report writing is an excellent example of this kind of work.The application of this approach to the field of delusions would attempt to address the issue of how delusions are diagnosed and managed through the interactions between the delusional patient and the clinician. In this paper and in previous work (Georgaca 1996, 2000) I showed that statements that have been diagnosed as delusional are presented and argued through using appropriate conversational strategies, drawing on socially meaningful systems of knowledge and applying appropriate rules of evidence. Moreover, I argued that there was no way in which these disagreements over competing versions of reality could be definitely settled conversationally, and that instances of breakdown in communication were due not to the delusional version being proven wrong, but to lack of explanatory frameworks within which the competing versions could be negotiated. At least in the exchanges analyzed, the criteria of implausibility, conviction, and incorrigibility were shown not to apply.Clinicians do not customarily investigate the truth of patient claims against empirical data (Maher 1992), which means that they have to judge claims on the basis of the patient's presentation in the diagnostic interview. Because there are no technical guidelines for the assessment of truth and falsity, plausibility and implausibility, rationality and irrationality, clinicians have to rely on personal judgment. The question then is on what grounds the clinician's personal judgment is granted the status of determining the truth of someone else's claim and in what capacity clinicians are called to make such decisions. I will not pursue this argument any further here. The point I want to make is that the analysis of professional-client interactions foregrounds the active role of professionals in clinical decisions and questions the criteria upon which decisions are... (shrink)

Nowadays cognitive science often views sensorial presentations and mental presentations as mutually exclusive, and they are also given separate treatment by neurophysiologists and by cognitive scientists, and some phenomena (like anomalous surfaces or various types of imagery) are reduced to either the former or the latter. Since no adequate methods for its investigation have been developed, the level of perceptual experiences analysed by Gestaltists and magnificently illustrated by Metzger in his Laws of Seeing remains unexplored. Starting from Metzger’s analyses (...) the paper deals with the question of the theoretical value of experimental phenomenology to the theory of knowledge and ontology. (shrink)

What is the nature of consciousness? How is consciousness related to brain processes? This volume collects thirteen new papers on these topics: twelve by leading and respected philosophers and one by a leading color-vision scientist. All focus on consciousness in the "phenomenal" sense: on what it's like to have an experience. Consciousness has long been regarded as the biggest stumbling block for physicalism, the view that the mind is physical. The controversy has gained focus over the last few decades, (...) and phenomenal knowledge and phenomenal concepts--knowledge of consciousness and the associated concepts--have come to play increasingly prominent roles in this debate. Consider Frank Jackson's famous case of Mary, the super-scientist who learns all the physical information while confined in a black-and-white room. According to Jackson, if physicalism is true, then Mary's physical knowledge should allow her to deduce what it's like to see in color. Yet it seems intuitively clear that she learns something when she leaves the room. But then how can consciousness be physical? Arguably, whether this sort of reasoning is sound depends on how phenomenal concepts and phenomenal knowledge are construed. For example, some argue that the Mary case reveals something about phenomenal concepts but has no implications for the nature of consciousness itself. Are responses along these lines adequate? Or does the problem arise again at the level of phenomenal concepts? The papers in this volume engage with the latest developments in this debate. The authors' perspectives range widely. For example, Daniel Dennett argues that anti-physicalist arguments such as the knowledge argument are simply confused; David Papineau grants that such arguments at least reveal important features of phenomenal concepts; and David Chalmers defends the anti-physicalist arguments, arguing that the "phenomenal concept strategy" cannot succeed. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and explore the current state of internet regulation through content filters in Swedish public libraries. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected through an electronic survey directed to library managers of Sweden’s 290 main municipal libraries. 164 answers were returned, yielding a 57% response rate. The analysis comprises descriptive statistics for quantitative data and an activity theory approach with focus on contradictions for qualitative counterparts. Findings In total, 33% of the responding libraries report having (...) content filters; 50% have not; and a surprising 18% do not know. There is a strong correlation between internet misuse and positive attitudes towards filters, and, reversely, between lack of misuse and lack of active stances concerning filters. Rather than seeing this as weakness, the authors suggest that there is strength in a context-bound flexibility open to practical experience and weighting of values, ethics, legislation and local circumstances. More troublesome indications concern the high deferral of decision-making to local authorities (municipalities) whereby libraries are left with limited insight and influence. Research limitations/implications The situation calls for professional organisations to address political mandate questions, and educational programs to strengthen future information professionals’ knowledge of IT in general; filter issues in specific; and local authority decision-making. The study highlights the need of adequate information professional competences and mandates to decide on and oversee internet regulation. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first internationally published study on content filters in Swedish public libraries. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty, in his well-known essay, "Eye and Mind," startlingly comments: "A Cartesian does not see himself in the mirror; he sees a dummy, an 'outside,' which, he has every reason to believe, other people see in the very same way but which, no more for himself than for others, is not a body in the flesh." This essay opens up a discourse on this very problem: the question of what one sees when looks at oneself in the mirror. As well, (...) the now-common assumption that we have arrived at a postmodern condition of experience, knowledge, and interpretation comes into question when we consider the possibility that the human sciences have not sufficiently embraced a post-Cartesian perspective on mind, body, self, and vision. The essay closes with a reflection on the contact of the self and the other in vision. The self and the other are not "signs" that are "read" in the context of a perceptual field. Rather, the interpersonal world embodied through the vital flesh of self in communion with other is reflected to the eye only if the observer cares to take note, to imaginatively flesh-out the world embodied in the moment of a thoughtful glance. (shrink)

The titular ‘Mary’ refers to Jackson’s famous protagonist. Her story takes place in the future, when all physical facts have been discovered. This includes “everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles”. Mary learns all this by watching lectures on a monochromatic television monitor. But she spends her life in a black-and-white room and has no color experiences. Then she leaves (...) the room and sees colors for the first time. (shrink)

Nurses in all practice roles and settings need to understand the therapeutic use and potential for abuse of prescription drugs. Nursing roles, which include the administration and prescription of medication, health teaching and the implications of application, and the detection of drug-related problems, require that such education be timely and comprehensive. This paper discusses the state of knowledge dissemination about prescription drugs within the general context of nursing education. It highlights educational needs and explores the attitudinal factors and (...) knowledge deficits that influence the nursing practices of prescribing, pain management, nursing assessment, and care of persons with drug problems.Standard educational requirements in all nursing curricula undergird teaching about licit and illicit drugs and medication, as well as their therapeutic use, misuse, and abuse. It has been recognized widely since the early 1980s, however, that clinical experiences and didactic content on licit and illicit drugs presented in nursing programs is inadequate. (shrink)

Nurses in all practice roles and settings need to understand the therapeutic use and potential for abuse of prescription drugs. Nursing roles, which include the administration and prescription of medication, health teaching and the implications of application, and the detection of drug-related problems, require that such education be timely and comprehensive. This paper discusses the state of knowledge dissemination about prescription drugs within the general context of nursing education. It highlights educational needs and explores the attitudinal factors and (...) knowledge deficits that influence the nursing practices of prescribing, pain management, nursing assessment, and care of persons with drug problems.Standard educational requirements in all nursing curricula undergird teaching about licit and illicit drugs and medication, as well as their therapeutic use, misuse, and abuse. It has been recognized widely since the early 1980s, however, that clinical experiences and didactic content on licit and illicit drugs presented in nursing programs is inadequate. (shrink)

Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality (...) of materials, what it means to make things, the perception and formation of the ground, the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world, the experiences of light, sound and feeling, the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge, and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 37-41 [Access article in PDF] What I Know and Don't Know: A Christian Reflects on Buddhist Practice Mary Frohlich Catholic Theological Union To reflect and write on spiritual practice for publication in an academic journal requires a delicate balancing act. It is not appropriate simply to recount one's experience; nor is it appropriate merely to theorize. I am assisted in this balancing act by (...) a set of categories proposed some years ago by Walter Principe and generally accepted as standard now within the academic field of spirituality. Principe observed that spirituality operates on three interrelated yet distinct levels and that it is crucial for the academician to be clear about which level or levels are being presented. The three are: (1) experience; (2) articulation within wisdom traditions; (3) academic interpretation. 1 My understanding of what is desired in the present context is some of all three but with a primary emphasis on the second. What does Buddhist practice look like from my stance within my Christian "wisdom traditions"? Thus, this is the horizon within which I will present both experience and academic insights.First a bit of autobiographical context. I became a Christian as a young adult, after having been raised in a secular humanist household. My first attempts at a form of meditation as a teenager came from reading Taoist books; in college I experimented with drugs (at that time this was often seen as "spiritual practice") and spent a couple of years very seriously practicing transcendental meditation. Only after all this did I seek baptism and church membership. Since then, my certainty that my call is to be a Christian has not wavered. I spent several years in a Carmelite contemplative monastery, and I now belong to another Roman Catholic religious order.Yet I have repeatedly been drawn to periods of engagement with various practices having Hindu and Buddhist roots.This context is important to describe because I am aware that for me (and for many spiritual seekers today) there can never be a "pure" insertion in a single tradition. I reflected on that recently in an airplane at twenty-five thousand feet, looking down and seeing how totally human constructive activity has reshaped the contours of the land, the rivers, and everything that depends on them. I realized then that the same must be said of the inner contours of my soul. Nearing fifty, I bear the marks [End Page 37] of everything that I have ever done or touched or suffered or known. As I approach this task of reflecting on Buddhist practice from the point of view of a Christian, I cannot do it as a pure outsider. My spiritual practice is Christian in its core, but it has been inextricably shaped by so many other influences--including varieties of Buddhist practice.It is also important to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge about Buddhism and Buddhist practices. My academic exposure to Buddhism is about equivalent to an introductory undergraduate course. As for Buddhist practice, I have participated in a total of five weekend retreats, three one-week retreats, and one three-week retreat. These were all from either Vipassana (Insight Meditation) or Zen (Kwan Um or Diamond Sangha) traditions. Occasionally, I have also had even briefer exposure to other Buddhist traditions. I am very aware that there is much I do not know, or that perhaps I just plain misunderstand, about Buddhism.Yet dialogue requires that I honestly state my views, in their present form, with the hope that in the dialogical process what is misinformed or insensitive can eventually be corrected.Spiritual practice (for Buddhists as well as Christians) involves many different kinds of practices. Practices of charity, such as hospitality or almsgiving, perhaps present the fewest obstacles to mutual understanding, because the practices may be generally similar in both traditions. The ritual practices of a religious tradition, on the other hand, can feel extremely alien to those who do not belong to that religious culture. Paul Hanvey has noted that our reaction to... (shrink)

Each of the antiretroviral drugs that are currently used to stop the progression of HIV infection causes its own specific side effects. Despite the expansion, multiplication, and simplification of treatment options over the past decade, side effects continue to affect people living with HIV. Yet, we see a clear disconnect between the way side effects are normalized, routinized, and framed in clinical practice and the way they are experienced by people living with HIV. This paper builds on the premise that (...) new approaches are needed to understand side effects in a manner that is more reflective of the subjective accounts of people living with HIV. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, it offers an original application of the theory of ‘assemblage’. This theory offers a new way of theorizing side effects, and ultimately the relationship between the body and antiretroviral drugs (as technologies). Combining theory with examples derived from empirical data, we examine the multiple ways in which the body connects not only to the drugs but also to people, things, and systems. Our objective is to illustrate how this theory dares us to think differently about side effects and allows us to originally (re)think the experience of taking antiretroviral drugs. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public (...) domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Andrew Sims (bio)In examining this interesting paper, we need first of all to understand what the authors are doing. They are not taking the conceptual vehicles of “spiritual experience” (SE) and “psychotic phenomena” (PP) for a gentle outing, but exposing both of them to the hardest road test they can devise. From 1,000 accounts of “spiritual experiences” that were already so dramatic (...) that those involved were prepared to describe them, the authors selected three which most successfully blurred the boundaries between SE and PP. So we are not exploring whether these concepts have general practical validity, but whether their mutual frontiers are discrete or overlapping. The authors’ task is legitimate, but it needs to be recognized for what it is.Unusual spiritual experiences are interpreted by the authors as psychotic symptoms, and the definitions of the Present State Examination (PSE) descriptions are cited to justify this. However, we have known for a long time that using instruments for purposes for which they were not designed can produce unexpected results; it is rather like washing socks in a dishwasher and being surprised that it does little good to the socks. The PSE was devised for categorizing and quantifying existing psychiatric disorders in epidemiological studies. The further one gets from this, its true purpose, the less satisfactory it becomes as an instrument. A better way of evaluating symptomatology in an individual case is a skilled and painstaking interview by a well-trained descriptive psychopathologist. One can only conclude from the authors’ use of the PSE in distinguishing SE from PP, that the instrument itself is not capable of doing this, which is not really very surprising. One can form no views on the concepts of SE and PP themselves, except that in some circumstances they may be difficult to tell apart.It would be easy to dispute whether Simon’s beliefs were delusions. Believers from many religious backgrounds “know” that God gives them thoughts or ideas, and it requires detailed psychopathological examination, and not the application of a questionnaire, to distinguish this from the much more concrete experience as described in PSE of “inserted thoughts.”Rating scales, be they assessments of the quality of teaching in primary schools or quantification of established psychotic symptoms, are necessarily only a pale reflection and an over-simplification of the skilled work that professionals undertake. To imply that because a score could be given on the PSE to an otherwise healthy woman who describes the frequent experience of hearing God’s voice, denies the validity of her experience, but also affronts the professional skills of a trained psychopathologist. When psychiatrists, or even [End Page 79] untrained research workers, use the PSE they are presumably doing so as part of an epidemiological research study, and the validity of their individual result is evened out by results from a number of other subjects. If a psychiatrist is trying to decide whether Sara had “true” hallucinations, he or she will carry out a psychopathological interview in which the criteria for establishing true hallucinations are much more sophisticated than is possible in a questionnaire, and the interview will be individualized. Sara’s significant statement, “but God doesn’t take your free will away,” immediately distinguishes her diagnosis from schizophrenia. It was good that Sara’s priest did not need detailed knowledge of psychopathology to come to a common-sense evaluation of her experience.It was with some feelings of disappointment that I realized that when the authors use the word “psychotic” they merely mean that a tick could be placed in an appropriate box for the PSE. If one were to carry out an investigation of serum electrolytes on a fit athlete on completion of a marathon, one would get bizarre and probably abnormal results. For a quantified investigation to be meaningful, one must always take account of the context.When I read these three cases as a psychopathologist, I find no convincing psychotic phenomena, and the three human beings were undoubtedly not psychotic at the time of expression of their religious experiences. The word psychosis is not helpful in psychopathology: if one looks more specifically in these cases for the phenomena... (shrink)

Current models of delusion converge in proposing that delusional beliefs are based on unusual experiences of various kinds. For example, it is argued that the Capgras delusion (the belief that a known person has been replaced by an impostor) is triggered by an abnormal affective experience in response to seeing a known person; loss of the affective response to a familiar person’s face may lead to the belief that the person has been replaced by an impostor (Ellis & (...) Young, 1990). Similarly, the Cotard delusion (which involves the belief that one is dead or unreal in some way) may stem from a general.. (shrink)

Psychotic-like experiences are a phenomenon that occurs in the general population experiencing delusional thoughts and hallucinations without being in a clinical condition. PLEs involve erroneous attributions of inner cognitive events to the external environment and the presence of intrusive thoughts influenced by dysfunctional beliefs; for these reasons, the role played by metacognition has been largely studied. This study investigates PLEs in a non-clinical population and discriminating factors involved in this kind of experience, among which metacognition, as well as psychopathological (...) features, seems to have a crucial role. The aim of this study was to extend the knowledge about the relationship between metacognition, psychopathology, and PLEs, orienting the focus on metacognitive functioning. The sample consisted of 207 Italian participants voluntarily recruited online, who gave consent to participate in the study. The average age of the sample was 32.69 years. Subjects affected by psychosis, neurological disease, and drug addiction were excluded from the analyses. The following scales were used to investigate PLEs: Peters et al. Delusions Inventory, Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended Revised, Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief, and Revised Hallucination Scale. To assess general psychopathological features, the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale was administrated. The Metacognition Self-Assessment Scale was chosen to evaluate metacognitive functioning. From hierarchical regression analyses, it emerged that the presence of anxiety, depression, and impulsive/addictive symptoms constitute a remarkable vulnerability factor for PLEs, in line with previous evidence regarding the relationship between general psychopathology and PLEs. Metacognition negatively predicts PLEs, and its presence does not affect the significance of psychopathological variables, suggesting that metacognitive abilities seem to play a protective role for the occurrence of PLEs among non-clinical individuals, and such ability operates as an independent predictor along with other variables. These results are explained by the role of metacognitive functions, which allow individuals to operate many mental processes such as interpreting sensorial events as real or illusory, understanding behaviors, thoughts, and drives of others, and questioning the subjective interpretation of facts. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to examine the long-term effects of an Israeli digital literacy government program for disadvantaged populations, as they are perceived by participants of the program one year after completing the course. Design/methodology/approach Participants in the program were interviewed about the effects of participating in the program, their experiences and satisfaction, in retrospect, a year after they completed the program. Findings The main reasons for joining the program included cognitive motivations, mainly interest to become familiar with internet applications, (...) followed by employment aspiration. Positive benefits from participation included accumulated knowledge, confidence in using technology, empowerment and enhanced sense of self-efficacy. Interviewees also reported that as they could not practice or communicate with instructors once they completed the program, a significant portion of the accumulated gains faded. Social implications Social and practical implications: Digital technologies constitute key infrastructure to facilitate public participation, as well as for gaining social, political and economic capital. Therefore, there is a significant social value in reducing digital inequality by increasing digital literacy of disadvantaged populations, i.e. citizens with low socioeconomic status and low digital literacy. This study sheds light on the benefits gained from such programs, as perceived by past participants. Originality/value While previous studies evaluating digital literacy programs focus on specific technical improvements and short-term gains, this study investigates the long-term effects and shortcomings of the program as perceived by participants. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the topic of paranoid atmospheres. This subject is especially of interest with respect to persons who are deluded, and also, I will demonstrate, sheds light upon the psychiatrist's "gaze" and knowledge of delusions. In my argument I will follow a path initially outlined by Karl Jaspers (1883-1969): modern psychiatric diagnosis of delusions is a diagnosis of form and not content. Jaspers' emphasis on the form of delusions enables psychiatrists to be self-critical about their professional (...) knowledge and, consequently, prevent the development of dogmatic attitudes. In accord with Jaspers, my argument will focus on the basic structure of delusions and highlight the difference between delusional realities and non-delusional realities, a difference that follows from the possibility of self-criticism of one's own conscious and explicit convictions. I will demonstrate the importance of self-criticism with regard to paranoid atmospheres and also to psychiatric knowledge. In this manner, an understanding of delusions as lived experience will be developed, which argues that an escalation of the influence of delusional convictions, resulting in a profoundly paranoid atmosphere, is most problematic for the deluded person. To acknowledge this insight mirrors the need for a self-critique of psychiatric discourse, encourages an empathic and respectful relationship between professionals and deluded patients, and enables deluded persons to restrict their paranoid atmosphere. It is the main conclusion of my paper that a deluded person cannot do (with respect to his delusional convictions) what a psychiatrist must do (with respect to his psychiatric knowledge and his own existential convictions) in order to prevent a profoundly paranoid atmosphere in their relationship: be self-critical. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public (...) domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this chapter, I compare and contrast Kant’s and Sidgwick’s arguments in defense of moral cognition as objective practical knowledge. Kant focuses on practical truths in terms of practical laws governing the mind in action, while Sidgwick is concerned with practical truths about action. I argue that this is a crucial difference in the understanding of practical knowledge, which is matched by a different understanding of moral phenomenology and of the significance of subjective experience in accounting for (...) the authority of moral obligations. Key to these differences is a more fundamental divergence regarding the nature of reflection, its dynamics, and its impact on agency. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 679-682, September 2021.

A considerable number of areas of bioscience, including gene and drug discovery, metabolic engineering for the biotechnological improvement of organisms, and the processes of natural and directed evolution, are best viewed in terms of a ‘landscape’ representing a large search space of possible solutions or experiments populated by a considerably smaller number of actual solutions that then emerge. This is what makes these problems ‘hard’, but as such these are to be seen as combinatorial optimisation problems that are best (...) attacked by heuristic methods known from that field. Such landscapes, which may also represent or include multiple objectives, are effectively modelled in silico, with modern active learning algorithms such as those based on Darwinian evolution providing guidance, using existing knowledge, as to what is the ‘best’ experiment to do next. An awareness, and the application, of these methods can thereby enhance the scientific discovery process considerably. This analysis fits comfortably with an emerging epistemology that sees scientific reasoning, the search for solutions, and scientific discovery as Bayesian processes. (shrink)

As genetic knowledge continues to strengthen notions of identity in Euro-American societies and beyond, epigenetic knowledge is intervening in these legitimation frameworks. I explore these interventions in the realm of assisted reproduction—including adoption, donor conception, and gestational surrogacy. The right to identity is protected legally in many states and receives due attention in public and private international law. Originating from the context of adoption, donor-conceived and surrogacy-born persons have recently demanded the same protections and focused on the right (...) to genetic knowledge. This article explores possible implications of epigenetic knowledge on identity. I start by articulating the deep influence of genetics on the notion of identity, and how this unfolds in legal contexts. Next, I examine how epigenetic findings that stress the importance of seeing biological life as situated and embedded in environments can challenge how adoption, donor conception, and gestational surrogacy are experienced and understood. While I argue that epigenetic knowledge can reify identity with the same determinism underpinning genetics, it can also allow for more biosocial understandings of identity that consider history and experience as entangled with biology. (shrink)