Personality organization as an aspect of back pain in a medical setting.

The MMPI profiles of 74 low back pain patients who had previously been classified as "functional,"organic," or "mixed" were sorted into six profile groups. The six profile groups were those used by Pichot, Perse, Lekous, Dureau, Perez, and Rychewaert (1972); denial, "conversion V" without defensiveness, "conversion V" with defensiveness, depressed/anxious, psychotic and normal. Results indicate that all six profile types are well represented in the low back pain group. Evidence is also presented which shows that each of the pathological MMPI profile types examined across "functional," "organic," and "mixed" classification is significantly more elevated than a normal profile group on two scales (Lb, DOR) designed to measure functional aspects of pain. Pathological MMPI profile groups did not differ significantly from each other on the "functional" pain scales. The data presented in this study point to the relationship of various forms of psychopathology with "functional pain." The findings of this study would not support a homogeneous "pain personality" for low back pain patients. However, combined "conversion V" profiles accounted for 58% of the "functional" group, 45% of the "mixed" group and 35% of the "organic" group.     

Third Men: The Logic of the Sophisms at Arist. SE 22, 178b36–170a10

This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the , suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an explanation of the lines regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context.     

Ladies and Gentlemen, Women and Men: A Study of the Connotations of Words Indicating Gender

Lakoff's hypothesis about the connotations of the words "lady" and "woman" was investigated by asking college students to rate these words, as well as the masculine words "gentleman" and "man", on several adjective scales. Ratings indicated that the term "gentleman" implied greater competence and warmth than the word "man", while the term "lady" tended to suggest to raters relatively less competence and less warmth than the term "woman" did. Further, it was found that the more formal term ("gentleman", "lady") regardless of gender was described more positively than the less formal term ("man", "woman") on several scales concerned with goodness, politeness, morality, and femininity. Lakoff's hypothesis that "lady" conveys some unique meanings relative to sex role stereotypes thus received support, although some of the connotations of "lady" appear to be due to implied formality rather than to gender features. The degree to which feminine terms were differentiated by raters could be predicted to some extent on the basis of rater characteristics; no significant prediction was possible for the masculine terms.     

Some notes on the nature of methodological indeterminacy

This paper is an attempt to extend the meaning of the concept of indeterminacy for the human sciences. The authors do this by coining the term methodological indeterminacy and arguing that indeterminacy is better understood when linked to specific methodological techniques. Paradoxically, while specific research techniques demonstrate that the issue of indeterminacy is complex, yielding the possibility of types and degrees, it does not eliminate the problem of translation first raised by Quine. However, the authors go on to argue that, from a research perspective, indeterminacy can and must be approached in such a way that it is possible to reduce cases of it, even though never completely eliminating it in the human sciences.     

The Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut: What's It All About Theologically?

As a psychoanalytic thinker who offered by means of his self psychology a new paradigm of psychological development and functioning, Heinz Kohut was also a theologian manqué. With the help of the method of interpretation devised by Paul Tillich and David Tracy, Kohut's limit-concepts of tragic man, the self-object, and empathy, all set within his theory of narcissism, are elucidated as theological constructs. These are critiqued for adequacy from a Christian perspective. The conclusion is that Kohut's understanding of the human dilemma and of the way of salvation correlates well with Christianity, while his view of empathy as the means of salvation has created some confusion. Kohut has thus left an unfinished, profoundly important, agenda for theologians and clinicians.     

Richard Zaner’s Phenomenology of the Clinical Encounter

The clinical ethics propounded by Richard Zaner is unique. Partly because of his phenomenological orientation and partly because of his own daily practice as a clinical ethicist in a large university hospital, Zaner focuses on the particular concrete situations in which patients and their families confront illness and injury and struggle toward workable ways for dealing with them. He locates ethical reality in the clinical encounter. This encounter encompasses not only patient and physician but also the patients family and friends and indeed the entire lifeworld in which the patient is still striving to live. In order to illuminate the central moral constituents of such human predicaments, Zaner discusses the often-overlooked features of disruption and crisis, the changed self, the patients dependence and the physicians power, the violation of personal boundaries and their necessary reconfiguring, and the art of listening.     

“Anchor-range” results with “same” and “different” responses and similar and dissimilar stimuli

Summary Blocks of pairs of dissimilar (anchor-like) circles were unexpectedly followed by single pairs of similar circles and vice versa. The dissimilar circles were 3 and 10 mm in diameter, and the similar circles were 3 and 5 mm, 5 and 7 mm, and 7 and 10 mm in diameter. In a second experiment, the dissimilar and similar circles did not overlap in size (e.g., they were 1.5 and 5 mm and 7 and 10 mm, respectively). The same responses to the unexpected same pairs of similar circles were faster than the same responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. In contrast, the different responses to the unexpected different pairs of similar circles were slower than the different responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. Similar stimuli accelerate same responses and slow down different responses. So the time results (and the error results as well) suggest that the context of the block dissimilar circles increased the perceived similarity of the unexpected similar circles. These anchor-range results are not explained by Thurstonian theories, which are based on the absolute properties of stimuli. Instead, they imply that the relation between the similar circles in the context of the relation between the dissimilar circles affected performance.     

The amygdala is not necessary for unconditioned stimulus inflation after Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats

The basolateral complex (BLA) and central nucleus (CEA) of the amygdala play critical roles in associative learning, including Pavlovian conditioning. However, the precise role for these structures in Pavlovian conditioning is not clear. Recent work in appetitive conditioning paradigms suggests that the amygdala, particularly the BLA, has an important role in representing the value of the unconditioned stimulus (US). It is not known whether the amygdala performs such a function in aversive paradigms, such as Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats. To address this issue, Experiments 1 and 2 used temporary pharmacological inactivation of the amygdala prior to a US inflation procedure to assess its role in revaluing shock USs after either overtraining (Experiment 1) or limited training (Experiment 2), respectively. Inactivation of the BLA or CEA during the inflation session did not affect subsequent increases in conditioned freezing observed to either the tone conditioned stimulus (CS) or the conditioning context in either experiment. In Experiment 3, NBQX infusions into the BLA impaired the acquisition of auditory fear conditioning with an inflation-magnitude US, indicating that the amygdala is required for associative learning with intense USs. Together, these results suggest that the amygdala is not required for revaluing an aversive US despite being required for the acquisition of fear to that US.Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats is a behavioral model used to investigate the neurobiology underlying the development and maintenance of fear learning and memory (Grillon et al. 1996; LeDoux 1998, 2000; Bouton et al. 2001; Maren 2001b, 2005; Kim and Jung 2006). In this model, an innocuous conditioned stimulus (CS), such as a tone, is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a footshock. After one or more pairings, the rat learns that the CS predicts the US. As a consequence, CS presentations alone elicit a conditioned fear response (CR), which includes increases in heart rate, arterial blood pressure, hypoalgesia, potentiated acoustic startle, stress hormone release, and freezing (somatomotor immobility).The amygdala has been identified as one of the major regions in which fear memories are encoded and stored. Within the amygdala, the basolateral complex of the amygdala (BLA; consisting of the lateral, basolateral, and basomedial nuclei) and the central nucleus of the amygdala (CEA) receive convergent CS and US information and are involved in the acquisition of fear memories (LeDoux 1998, 2000; Fendt and Fanselow 1999; Davis and Whalen 2001; Maren 2001b; Schafe et al. 2001; Fanselow and Gale 2003; Wilensky et al. 2006; Zimmerman et al. 2007). In addition, the CEA has an important role in the expression of fear CRs (Fendt and Fanselow 1999; LeDoux 2000; Davis and Whalen 2001; Maren 2001b; Fanselow and Gale 2003). In support of this, many studies have shown that either permanent or temporary lesions of the BLA or CEA prevent the acquisition and/or expression of fear memories (Helmstetter 1992; Helmstetter and Bellgowan 1994; Campeau and Davis 1995; Maren et al. 1996a,b; Killcross et al. 1997; Muller et al. 1997; Walker and Davis 1997; Cousens and Otto 1998; Maren 1998, 1999, 2001a,b; Wilensky et al. 1999, 2000, 2006; Goosens and Maren 2001, 2003; Nader et al. 2001; Fanselow and Gale 2003; Gale et al. 2004; Koo et al. 2004; Zimmerman et al. 2007).In addition to its role in encoding CS–US associations during conditioning, recent work suggests that the amygdala is also involved in representing properties of the US itself. For example, temporary or permanent lesions of the BLA reduce both decrements in conditioned responding after devaluation of a food US (Hatfield et al. 1996; Killcross et al. 1997; Blundell et al. 2001; Balleine et al. 2003; Everitt et al. 2003; Pickens et al. 2003; Holland 2004) and increments in conditional responding after inflation of a shock US (Fanselow and Gale 2003). Moreover, recent electrophysiological studies in primates indicate that amygdala neurons represent the value of both aversive and appetitive outcomes (Paton et al. 2006; Belova et al. 2007, 2008; Salzman et al. 2007). These studies suggest that one function of the BLA is to represent specific properties of biologically significant events, such as the food or shock USs that are typically used in Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. By this view, the BLA may represent specific sensory properties of USs that shape the nature of learned behavioral responses to the US (Balleine and Killcross 2006) and allow CSs to gain access to the incentive value of the US (Everitt et al. 2003).In contrast to this view, we recently reported that rats with neurotoxic BLA lesions exhibit normal US revaluation after Pavlovian fear conditioning (Rabinak and Maren 2008). In this study, auditory fear conditioning (75 CS–US trials) with a moderate footshock (1 mA) was followed by several exposures (five US-alone trials) to an intense footshock (3 mA) during an inflation session. Both intact rats and rats with BLA lesions exhibit a robust increase in conditional freezing to the auditory CS during a subsequent retention test (Rabinak and Maren 2008). Control experiments suggested that this was due to a revaluation of the US with which the CS was associated, rather than nonassociative sensitization of fear engendered by exposure to intense shock. These data reveal that the BLA may not be necessary for representing properties of shock USs during Pavlovian fear conditioning. To address these issues further, we have examined the consequence of reversible pharmacological manipulations of the amygdala during US inflation on conditional fear responses established with either extensive or limited training.     

The endorsement of irrational beliefs in a general clinical population

Burgess' Attitude and Belief Scale, a measure of Ellis' irrational beliefs, was administered to a large sample of outpatients. All 13 subscales demonstrate very adequate internal consistency. A factor analysis yielded one factor accounting for 83% of the variance, which was labeled irrationality. Clients endorsed focused items more than overgeneralized items, self-referential items more than non-self-referential items, and preferential items more than irrational items. Clients also received higher scores on the irrational process of demandingness than they did on the irrational process of awfulizing, self-worth and low frustration tolerance. The results were consistent with new formulations in Rational-Emotive theory. Suggestions were made for the construction of measures of irrational beliefs.     

《管子》中"礼法并用"的再探讨

《管子》所代表的"齐法家",较之以商鞅、韩非为代表的"晋法家",其最大的特色就是其中儒法结合的倾向。学界将这个特点称之为"礼法并用"。在本文中,从人性论基础、治理方式和"道统"观三个角度入手,认为《管子》中言"礼",很大程度上是从综合手段的意思上来说的,以教为本的意思不强。在这一点上,与先秦儒家的"礼"是有着根本性差别的,因此两者之间并不能简单的对等起来。较为准确的认识,应该是"礼治"与"法治"并存于以法为本的政治体系当中。     

“Girl,” “woman,” “guy,” “man”: The effects of sexist labeling

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of sexist labeling. Sixty males and 60 females were asked to evaluate an artist and a series of paintings on a variety of cognitive and affective measures. For half the subjects, the artist was identified as a male with either a high status label (man), a low status label (guy), or a neutral label (person); for the other half of the subjects, the artist was identified as a female with either a high status label (woman), a low status label (girl), or a neutral label (person). The findings indicated that for the female artist, the low and high status labels had an equally negative effect on subjects' judgments; for the male artist, the low and high status labels had an equally positive effect on subjects' judgments. There were no significant differences between male and female subjects. The social and psychological implications of the findings are discussed.The present study is based in part on a paper presented at the meetings of the Western Psychological Association held in San Diego, California, April 1979, in collaboration with Ms. Julie Horowitz.     

Partially-Ordered (Branching) Generalized Quantifiers: A General Definition

Following Henkins discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or cardinality quantifiers, e.g., most, few, finitely many, exactly , where is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a series of generalizations, extending the original, Henkin definition first to a general definition of monotone-increasing (M) POQ and then to a general definition of generalized POQ, regardless of monotonicity. The extension is based on (i) Barwises 1979 analysis of the basic case of M POQ and (ii) my 1990 analysis of the basic case of generalized POQ. POQ is a non-compositional 1st-order structure, hence the problem of extending the definition of the basic case to a general definition is not trivial. The paper concludes with a sample of applications to natural and mathematical languages.     

Cooperation,Knowledge, and Time: Alternating-time Temporal Epistemic Logic and its Applications

Branching-time temporal logics have proved to be an extraordinarily successful tool in the formal specification and verification of distributed systems. Much of their success stems from the tractability of the model checking problem for the branching time logic CTL, which has made it possible to implement tools that allow designers to automatically verify that systems satisfy requirements expressed in CTL. Recently, CTL was generalised by Alur, Henzinger, and Kupferman in a logic known as Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL). The key insight in ATL is that the path quantifiers of CTL could be replaced by cooperation modalities, of the form , where is a set of agents. The intended interpretation of an ATL formula is that the agents can cooperate to ensure that holds (equivalently, that have a winning strategy for ). In this paper, we extend ATL with knowledge modalities, of the kind made popular in the work of Fagin, Halpern, Moses, Vardi and colleagues. Combining these knowledge modalities with ATL, it becomes possible to express such properties as group can cooperate to bring about iff it is common knowledge in that . The resulting logic — Alternating-time Temporal Epistemic Logic (ATEL) — shares the tractability of model checking with its ATL parent, and is a succinct and expressive language for reasoning about game-like multiagent systems.     

"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.     

“Soul-making” in a schizophrenic saint

Soul-making (cf. Jung and Hillman) is the process of integrating spiritual and bodily imagery into an intimated wholeness transcending conscious comprehension. Pierre Janet's case of the psychotic mystic, Madeleine, reveals that the patient had been making her own-soul even though his theory had no provision for soul. Janet's soul-stripping theory is contrasted with a soul-making approach, primarily in their respective interpretations of Madeleine's altered states of consciousness. Religious ecstasy is a stretching of soul, an expansion into the realm of spirit, which requires a subsequent descent into and reconciliation with tradition, society, outer world, and body.     

Care and the dynamics of social world

The concept of social world is formulated for the purpose of deepening our understanding of the dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and care in interpersonal interaction. World is defined as an irreducible subject-object polarity.Social world is the extremely fragile environment within which people meet, and is easily destroyed. With special attention to family and church life, the conditions for maintaining or losing this environment are examined. Three levels of social world are defined. On the highest level, mutual care, rather than shared opinion, is seen as the factor that facilitates the preservation of social world in the face of world-threatening issues.     

The Dancing Philosopher

This excerpt from Kenneth Kings essay, The Dancing Philosopher, traces its genesis from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a work that greatly impacted Isadora Duncans founding of modern dance) that, in tandem with the emerging technology of the writing machine (typewriter), camera and kinetoscope (cinematography), conjoined the kinetropic and lexigraphemic to inaugurate the kinetic cogito. Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological exposition of corporeality further amplified the reflexive potential of movement and the philosophical understanding of kinesthesia, and King cites as well the technosophic synergy of John Cages and Merce Cunninghams long artistic collaboration that furthered the frontier of a mind-body epistemic.     

The drive for meaning in William James' analysis of religious experience

Summary Now that we have looked at the characteristics of mystical experience, we are ready to discuss the assumption made in this paper that mystical experience can be translated into an understanding of integration or the drive for meaning which Fingarette pursues in a much more analytic fashion. Reviewing the conversion process as an integration process we have seen that for the sick-souled, beset with the meaninglessness or melancholy which paralyzes his will, his own awareness of wrong in his situation prevents him from opening up to larger views of reality. But, as James has described, at the same time as the subject is attending so strongly to his own sense of worthlessness, all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work toward rearrangements. Yet the rearrangements can only come about by obeying the command of Chaung-Tse: Cease striving. The result is self-transformation in reconciling, unifying states. There is achieved a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness; facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life.However, James cautions us to realize that the same incursions of the subconscious which produce such reconciling, unifying states can also produce pathological states, a diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. In such a state the meanings of events become dreadful and the ruling emotion is pessimism. To this possibility James applied the pragmatic test, By their fruits..., and concluded that the mystical experience which brings optimism to the individual is a genuine experience and one which brings truth. In our context then, we would say that real integration brings the subject away from the melancholy and meaninglessness he felt into the genuinely insightful resolution of which Fingarette speaks.Conversion, then, is a process in James's analysis of religious experience analogous to the process of integration and meaning-discovery while mysticism is analogous to the state in which integration or meaning-discovery is achieved. Conversion is climaxed by self-surrender; mysticism is characterized by new determination, self-transformation: two ways of describing an indivisible event. Furthermore, the four characteristics James applies to mysticism are indeed characteristic of the experience of integration.Two other points should be added here which are much in line with James's treatment of experience. In the first place, one of the basic principles of radical empiricism is that not only objects but relations between objects are the subject of experience. Such an experience of relationships, of wholeness, is exactly what characterizes integration. At the same time, the five senses are suspended, and the insight is experienced with such a strong immediacy that it is almost sensed. James refers to this quality of mystical states: The records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression, - that is, they are face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist.I am not saying that every integration is a mystical experience. Rather I have been saying that James's discussion of religious experiences such as healthy-minded, sick-souled, melancholy, conversion, and mysticism provide analogues for better understanding the phenomenological processes and characteristics of the drive for meaning and integration which Fingarette analyzes. In fact, the very notion of religion itself for James bears not just an analogous resemblance but perhaps an identification with integration. For in his personal letters James had defined religious experience as Any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more home to one. And in Varieties James defines religion as a man's total reaction upon life....; his attitude towards what he felt to be the primal truth.If we look upon this outlook of James toward religion as an exaggeration of the reality of integration, we can follow James to what he perceives as the importance of religion upon an individual's life. The man of religious feeling possesses the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, an enthusiastic temper of espousal in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. So we are brought again to the area of creativity in which an individual has experienced the widening of the area of his immediate experience and is re-born in the karmic pattern, a valid pattern for both James and Fingarette. As Fingarette describes it, the converted individual creates values which the dead reality he had previously faced did not possess. The result of the achieved integration is explained by James when referring to religious experience as an excitement of the cheerful, expansive, dynamogenic order which, like any tonic, freshens our vital powers. This emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy [meaninglessness] and imparts endurances to the subject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and glory to the common objects of life.We might sum up this discussion not by a criticism of the shortcomings of James's treatment of the religious life, such as his apparent insensitivity to the part played by institutions in the religious experience itself, but rather by underscoring the richness of the phenomenological analysis James has undertaken. James Edie acknowledges that James's studies of religious experience itself rather than of religion. ... are not only more sound phenomenologically than some of the studies which have, under the influence of Husserl, up to now explicitly invoked the phenomenological method, but they are also the first to establish any solid basis for a true phenomenology of religious experience.And John Wild has pointed out the parallel between James's concept of melancholy and Heidegger's concept of anxiety as the genesis of the process of becoming: beginning with the prospect of death and nothingness, the individual gropes toward new birth.As we have seen, then, James's analysis of the varieties of religious experience leads to a fruitful discussion of the psychological processes involved in melancholy and meaninglessness, rearrangement and integration. In all such experiences, a sense of inner unity is reached to which the following words of Fingarette would apply by analogy: The soul-racking death which leads to blissful rebirth is the death of the subjectively experienced, anxiety-generated self perception; it is the emergence into the freedom of introspective self-forgetfulness of the psychically unified self.     

A Translation of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic into Basic Predicate Logic

Basic Predicate Logic, BQC, is a proper subsystem of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic, IQC. For every formula in the language {, , , , , , }, we associate two sequences of formulas 0,1,... and 0,1,... in the same language. We prove that for every sequent , there are natural numbers m, n, such that IQC , iff BQC n m. Some applications of this translation are mentioned.     

Shyness:“害羞”还是“羞怯”？ ——基于概念与词源学的分析

在人际交往中羞怯是一种普遍存在的现象,西方关于羞怯的系统研究始于上世纪70年代。中国从上世纪末开始关注这一问题,但对“shyness”这一基本术语的翻译却较为混乱并存在分歧：有的学者将其译为“羞怯”,有的则译作“害羞”,究竟哪种译法更准确、更切合shyness的本意？这不仅是一个简单的翻译问题,更涉及到对概念的准确把握及跨文化比较研究中文化对等的要求。本文通过对西方“shyness”概念的梳理及对“羞怯”、“害羞”等词语的中文词源学考证发现,“羞怯”这一译法更接近“shyness”的本意,达致概念互译上的对等。