An Appreciation of Hal Childs' Critique of Historical Jesus Research

Biblical scholars have been exceedingly slow to grasp the implications of the Heisenberg principle, namely, that the observer is always a part of the field being observed, and disturbs that field by the very act of observation. In terms of the interpretive task, this means that there can be no question of an objective view of Jesus as he really was. Objective view; is itself an oxymoron; every view is subjective, from a particular angle of vision. We always encounter the biblical text with interests. We always have a stake in our reading of it. We always have angles of vision that can be helpful or harmful in interpreting texts. Historical writing does not treat reality; it treats the interpreter's relation to it, according to Brian Stock. All history, said the poet Wallace Stevens, is modern history. And historical criticism is a form of criticism of the present, according to Walter Kasper. All that is true, but only partially. For historical criticism can still help us recover an understanding of that past that holds out to us present meaning.     

A Q-Methodological Study of Women's Subjective Perspectives on Mathematics

The objective of this study was to explore, using Q-methodology, women's subjective reactions to and experiences with mathematics. Ninety-six undergraduate women from a private university conducted Q-sorts on items that related to their personal experiences, attitudes, and belief/awareness of gender stereotypes for math. On the basis of the Q-factor analysis, three unique perspectives toward math emerged. The perspectives were classified as Successfully Encouraged, Stereotypically Discouraged, and Mathematically Aversive. These groupings were differentiated by their variety of experiences, attitudes, and awareness of stereotypes about math. Measures of math self-schema, math anxiety, and self-reported math ability were also used to interpret the groupings. This research revealed the women's various experiences with and attitudes toward math. The findings are integrated with previous theories in order to understand women's underrepresentation in math-related fields.     

A dimensional analysis of claustrophobia

The present study investigated whether situational and cognitive dimensions of claustrophobia exist. To this end, the Claustrophobia Situations Questionnaire (CSQ) and the Claustrophobia General Cognitions Questionnaire (CGCQ) were developed and exploratory factor analyses were performed on these scales. Two-factor solutions for both the anxiety and the avoidance ratings on the CSQ were obtained, accounting for 40.1% and 34.2% of the variance, respectively. Two subscales were created from the two-factor solution of the anxiety section of the CSQ: (1) Fear of Entrapment and (2) Fear of Physical Confinement. Two subscales were also created from the two-factor solution of the avoidance section of the CSQ: (1) Avoidance of Crowds and (2) Avoidance of Physical Confinement. A three-factor solution was obtained for the CGCQ, accounting for 54.4% of the variance, from which the following three subscales were created: (1) Fear of Loss of Control, (2) Fear of Suffocation, and (3) Fear of Inability to Escape. Cronbach alphas for all subscales ranged from .84 to .94. Exploratory correlational analyses were conducted between the situational and the cognitive dimensions.     

Illness as a crisis of meaning: Psycho-spiritual agendas in health care

The term psychosocial has come to refer to a host of issues in health care. Its wide, indiscriminate usage in referring to almost any non-biophysical aspect of illness obscures or distorts the experience of illness as a crisis of meaning. The term psycho-spiritual agenda is introduced to emphasize the problems of meaning associated with illness, and to avoid the potential reductionism, pathological skew, and interventionist bias of conventional psychosocial analyses of the illness experience.     

A game-based formal system for Ł∞

A formal system for , based on a game-theoretic analysis of the ukasiewicz prepositional connectives, is defined and proved to be complete. An Herbrand theorem for the predicate calculus (a variant of some work of Mostowski) and some corollaries relating to its axiomatizability are proved. The predicate calculus with equality is also considered.     

Sufism and Gerotranscendence: The Impact of Way of Thinking, Culture, and Aging on Spiritual Maturity

This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between a gerotranscendental person's and a Sufi's view of ontological questions, of self and of social and individual relationships. Using the Life History Approach followed up by thematic semi-structured interviews, I studied thirteen Iranian Sufis residing in Sweden, dividing the interviewees into two groups according to the stage of their life in which they became familiar with the Sufi ideas: those who became familiar with Sufi ideas early in their life (30 years) are called early Sufis, and those whose familiarity with Sufi ideas came about in their later life (>30) are called later Sufis. The study posits that the existence of a cosmic view of self and the surrounding world can be observed among early Sufis due to their intemalization of the Sufi ideas in early life. Regarding later Sufis, we can hypothesize that the existence of such a cosmic view is not only due to the intemalization of Sufi ideas, but also to aging.     

Feminism versus minority group identity: Not for black woman only

An analytical review of the literature revealed four basic hypotheses that have been adopted by researchers investigating Black women and their relationships. The hypotheses have been identified by the author as follows: The weakening hypothesis, the double whammy hypothesis, the Black matriarchy hypothesis, and the Black racism hypothesis. In addition, a discussion of the implication that the hypotheses have for Black and White researchers was given. Finally, suggestions for new approaches and directions that future research should take were included.     

Rorty's Dewey: Pragmatism,education and the public sphere

In Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Bellah et al. diagnose our loss of public life in areas such as education and relate this loss both to flaws in moral ecology and to our institutions. Their opposition to the Lockean metaphysic of self and community and to objectivist epistemology as a way of understanding schools is helpful in that it naturally suggests the kind of piecemeal, contextualized change that we locate within Dewey's viewpoint. But, I argue, Bellah et al.'s penchant for first philosophy ultimately taints their work. While I applaud their turn to Dewey, I find their choice of a metaphysical, rather than a Rortyan reading of Dewey misguided. The proper alternative to a Lockean metaphysics is not a communitarian/Aristotelian one; the proper corrective to objectivist epistemology is not Deweyan epistemology or critical theory. We need to see, as in Rorty (1991b), that democracy exists prior to normative philosophy just as it has priority over substantive religion. To think otherwise would lead to a loss of contact with the ordinary, specific, ever-changing realms where our lives, and our democratic institutions — including the university — must either thrive or flounder. Finally, there is no epistemology or metaphysics that will adequately ground the university's workings. Instead, there is only, as Dewey put it, growth or failure to grow, guided by hints and resonances that arise in evolving circumstances.     

Irrational beliefs and conflict-handling orientations

Before a series of conflict-resolution and communication-skills workshops, measures were obtained on the dependent variables of conflict-handling orientations and on the independent variables of irrational beliefs. The population was rather general, i.e. nonstudent, nonclinical and non-volunteer, who were the managers and the engineers of three enterprises. Correlation analysis showed that irrational beliefs underlying anger, anxiety, frustration, guilt and other negative emotions were correlated with different conflict-handling orientations. On the basis of the obtained results a series of workshops was conducted in the format of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET).Mikhael I. Timofeev, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the Inter-Branch Institute of Advanced Training, St. Petersburg Technical University, Politechnicheskaya, 29, St. Petersburg, 195251, Russia.     

The relationship of sexual attitudes,attitudes about women,and racial attitudes in white males

A questionnaire measuring sexual attitudes, attitudes about women, and racial attitudes was administered to 350 White male college students. Sexual attitudes characterized by sexual guilt, emphasis on personal and social control of sexual expression, and depersonalization of sex were significantly positively correlated (p<.001) with attitudes that typified women in terms of traditional masculine—feminine stereotypes and good (nonsexual)—bad (sexual) dichotomies. These stereotyped and dichotomous attitudes about women and constricted and depersonalized sexual attitudes were both significantly positively correlated (p<.001) with negative racial attitudes. The implications of these results and other research suggested by this investigation are discussed.This report is based on a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree at Michigan State University, 1973. The author would like to express appreciation to Dozier W. Thornton for continued guidance and assistance as dissertation advisor. In addition, the author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Donald L. Grummon, Andrew M. Barclay, and Jeanne E. Gullahorn, all of whom served on the dissertation committee.     

Effects of gender and topic on speech style

Male and female subjects described nine photographs that had been selected to be of interest to males, females, or both. The resulting speech samples were analyzed for the incidence of five features of word production and five features associated with a women's language (WL) speech style. Results showed that topic (photograph type) determined aspects of speech production. However, there were no gender differences in production or style. Correlations between dependent variables suggested that WL is a consistent set of features. Its use by both female and male speakers may reflect social uncertainty.The authors thank Janis Glenn and Cynthia Johnson for help in collecting and transcribing data.     

Glossolalic speech from a psycholinguistic perspective

This is a psycholinguistic study of glossolalia produced by four speakers in an experimental setting. Acoustical patterns (signal waveform, fundamental frequency, and amplitude changes) were compared. The frequency of occurrence of vowels and consonants was computed for the glossolalic samples and compared with General American English. The results showed that three of the four speakers had substantially higher vowel-to-consonant ratios than are found in English speech. Phonology, morphology, and syntax of the four glossolalic productions were analyzed. This revealed two distinct forms of glossolalia. One form, which we called formulaic tends towards stereotypy and repetitiousness. The second form, which we called innovative shows more novelty and unpredictability in the chaining of speech-like elements. These contrastive forms of glossolalia may relate to dimensions of linguistic creativity. Precise correlates with personality patterns, educational backgrounds, psychopathology, and other sociolinguistic variables remain to be employed.     

Introduction to the Special Edition: The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups

This introduction to a special edition of the journal Group on The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups explores the reasons that social and political forces and traumatic societal events have until recently been neglected in the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. Freud's abandonment of the infantile seduction theory and subsequent emphasis on intrapsychic fantasy and defense, the philosophy and science of the Enlightenment, and professional norms in a field dominated by individuals from privileged classes and cultures are cited as sources of the relative neglect of ethnopolitical conflict, minority issues, and multicultural diversity in the treatment process. The articles in this journal attempt to redress these shortcomings and constitute a movement towards including these factors in the common standard of training and treatment.     

"Solar love": Nietzsche,Merleau-Ponty and the fortunes of perception

Both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty repudiate the mirror view of perception and embrace what Nietzsche refers to as solar love or creative perception. I argue that Merleau-Ponty thinks of this type of perception primarily in terms of convergence and Nietzsche in terms of divergence. I then show how, contrary to their own emphases, Merleau-Ponty's notion of flesh and Nietzsche's idea of chaos suggest that convergence and divergence are abstractions from an ontologically prior realm of hybrid perceptions. In this realm, each perception is shot through with the others, simultaneously inside and outside one another. The creative tension among these perceptions continually produces new perspectives or voices, that is, a realm whose very being is metamorphosis. Moreover, this realm of hybrid perceptions suggests a political principle that might prove attractive for communities in an age of diversity and cultural hybridity.     

Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order,duration, and simultaneity

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions after, before, since, and until. Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions since and until. These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing while. The results revealed that the order sentence structures (before and after) were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in since and until sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.This report is based on a dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Ph.D.     

Denying Diversity: Perceptions of Beauty and Social Comparison Processes Among Latina,Black, and White Women

The purpose of this study was to investigate Latina, Black, and White women's conceptions of beauty and perceptions of cultural standards of beauty, as well as whether or not the participants were engaging in similar social comparison processes, specifically, the denial of personal disadvantage. One hundred and fifty-seven college women participated: 48 Latinas, 52 Black women, 51 White women, and 6 Others. Results indicate that there are significant differences in Latinas', Black women's, and White women's relationships with their bodies, and their relationships to dominant cultural standards of beauty. In addition, there were differences by race in the tendency to engage in the denial of personal disadvantage response. These findings contribute to the understanding of how racial identity affects, or interacts with, the experience of beauty standards among Latina, Black, and White women.     

The unwanted child and mental illness: A brief,selective review

A commonly held belief is that the unwanted child is at risk for emotional disorders. This article teases out the aspects of unregulated fertility that are likely to result in an unwanted child and examines the evidence that suggest their relationship to mental illness.Samuel O. Okpaku, M.D., Ph.D., is in private practice.     

Applications of object relations theory and self-psychology in current group therapy

In an effort to explore how group therapists can apply psychoanalytic theory in the group modality to advantage, two major developments in analytic theory are examined. 1) Kernberg stresses the neutral interpretive stance and utilizes concepts of protective identification and splitting in dealing with borderline pathology. This paper illustrates concretely how such theory can be used by the group therapist to encourage working through in the group situation. 2) Kohut's work stresses the empathic, nurturant analytic stance and focuses upon idealization, the grandiose self and the self-object. An understanding of these concepts helps the group therapist avoid obstacles in the treatment of narcissistic patients and can enrich the therapeutic work. The paper concludes that treatment of the difficult patient may be enhanced by the group situation in combination with specific psychoanalytic concepts.     

Die Zukunft der Ethik Albert Schweitzers

Summary The basic thought of Schweitzer's ethic, the reverence for life, has manifold significance. First, it is an appeal to our moral feeling. But secondly, Schweitzer lent this thought also a general, fundamental and therewith philosophical meaning: proceeding from the most immediate and encompassing fact of consciousness, described by him with the proposition I am life that will live in the midst of life that will live, Schweitzer believed to have found in the idea of reverence for life the fundamental principle of all morality; this consists in the fact that I experience the need to extend to all wills to live the same reverence that I extend to my own. In addition to its effect on moral feeling and on ethical theory, the future of the thought, reverence for life, also depends on its compliance in the activity of men.The future prospects of the appeal to moral feeling appear good insofar as testimonies from history permit one to assume that the awareness of the reverence for life can be awakened in all men. The ancient Greeks knew such sensibility in theaidos, Goethe in the reverence for that which is in our midst. This ever strengthening recognition among the peoples of the earth will, through historically succeeding generations, increasingly eliminate a full disregard for such reverence.Less promising are the prospects of acknowledging the reverence for life as a fundamental principle of morality. On its basis Schweitzer rests his aversion to harming anything living. He does not fail to see thereby that, in order to preserve life, we must destroy some life (at least that of plants). But, says Schweitzer, I become guilty in sacrificing life, and we must constantly remain conscious of this guilt; any attempts at justification, through considerations of differences in the value of various lives, must be rejected.However, an ambiguity in the word guilt underlies Schweitzer's position. On the one hand guilt is understood as a regrettable cause for the subsistence or eventuation of an evil, on the other as the moral reprehensibility of an attitude. Only the latter represents guilt in a moral sense. Whoever follows the necessity to destroy other, less valuable life in order to preserve his own or another life, assumes guilt only in the second sense. Therefore ethics must raise and pursue the question concerning the value priority of one life over another. This question leads to an encounter with the modern directions of ethics which proceed from the concept of value, and to the continuation of Schweitzer's ethics through this encounter. Schweitzer's explanation that life in the world is to be brought to its highest value likewise conduces to the same point, since it necessitates an investigation of the rank order of values.We can note a slow progress of the reverence for life in the private domain of human activity. On the other hand in the interrelationship of peoples there is danger of monstrous mass murder through the atomic bomb.

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Text eines Vertrags in der Allg. philos.-relig. Vereinigung in München, am 14.1.1966.     

Quantum Logic as a Fragment of Independence-Friendly Logic

The working assumption of this paper is that noncommuting variables are irreducibly interdependent. The logic of such dependence relations is the author's independence-friendly (IF) logic, extended by adding to it sentence-initial contradictory negation ¬ over and above the dual (strong) negation . Then in a Hilbert space turns out to express orthocomplementation. This can be extended to any logical space, which makes it possible to define the dimension of a logical space. The received Birkhoff and von Neumann quantum logic can be interpreted by taking their disjunction to be ¬(A & B). Their logic can thus be mapped into a Boolean structure to which an additional operator has been added.