Emotions and Cognitions: A Critique of the Dichotomous View of Mental Function

Many approaches to the psyche, models of therapy, and neuroscience tend to view emotional and cognitive brain functions as separate entities. Such a focus on one of these two aspects of mental function, at times comes at the expense of ignoring the other. In this paper emotions and cognitions, along with perceptions and other elements of the internal and external contexts, are viewed as relevant vectors in a matrix of information. Through the processes of pattern completion and noise reduction, information in each of these vectors may evoke memories in the same or other vectors that are used in the formation of a subjective understanding of each experience. The important roles of the external (physical, temporal, relevant events, etc.) and internal (emotional, affective, hormonal, medications, etc.) contexts in the formation of such subjective experiences will be discussed. The use of this view in broader and more comprehensive psychotherapeutic approaches and combined pharmacological and psychological treatment is explored.     

Ancestral Consciousness in the Zulu Culture: A Wilberian View

The aim of this research was to complement and advance Wilber's integral approach through an investigation into ancestral consciousness by the Zulu. Five isiZulu home language speakers (age range 33 to 56 years) and a sixth English speaking person were participant-researchers. Experiences of ancestral consciousness from individual, collective, subjective, objective, cultural and social perspectives were explored. Findings suggested that ancestral consciousness increased perceived spirituality as assessed on a standardized spirituality scale. It was also associated with immediate apprehensions of senior kinsmen, living and dead, of God and/or more generally of Spirit. Wilber's integral approach appears to hold explanatory value in non-Western culture.     

Kantian Schemata: A Critique Consistent with the Critique

Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third‐man regress. Siding with those who think that the mid‐way posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyse a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.     

Consumer Disclosure and Disclosure Avoidance: A Motivational Framework

In this research, we investigate consumers’ motivations for disclosing personal information to relationship‐seeking marketers. We explore the impact of consumers’ relationship perceptions, the nature of benefits offered by marketers in exchange for requested information, and the type of information requested on consumers’ disclosure willingness, focusing on consumers’ forecasts of 2 types of potential disclosure‐related loss (i.e., loss of privacy and loss of face), which are shown to mediate this decision. The results of an experiment revealed that although participants with relatively deep relationship perceptions were more likely to reveal “privacy‐related” personal information, they were more reluctant to reveal embarrassing information. The findings also suggest that although loyal customers found the exchange of privacy‐related personal information for customized benefit offerings (relative to noncustomized offerings) attractive, the reverse was true for embarrassing information; these participants seemed to find the exchange of customized offerings for this latter type of information unattractive. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings for consumer researchers and relationship‐seeking marketing practitioners.     

Revelation,Consciousness+ and the Phenomenal Powers View

Topoi - Revelation is roughly the thesis that we have introspective access to the essential nature of our conscious states. This thesis is appealed to in arguments against physicalism. Little...     

Meritocracy: A Critique

Herpes Simplex, by T. Natasha Posner, The Experience of Illness Series, London: Routledge, 1998, 143 pages, paperback £13.99     

Ethics and Selfhood: A Critique

Connectionism: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Volume Two Edited by Cynthia Macdonald and Graham Macdonald Blackwell, 1995. Pp. xvii + 424. ISBN 0–631–19744–3. £50.00 (hbk). ISBN 0–631–19745–1 £16.99 (pbk).

New books on the philosophy of religion

Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason By J.L. Schellenberg, Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. 217. ISBN 0–8014–2792–4. $36.50 (hbk).

Reason and the Heart By William J. Wainwright, Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. 160. ISBN 0–8014–3139–5. $28.50 (hbk).

The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith Edited by Thomas D. Senor, Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. 291. ISBN 0–8014–3127–1. $39.95 (hbk).     

Postmodernism: A Feminist Critique

In this article the author suggests that progress in philosophy can be conceived through contemporary French theories that propose a new, polysemantic way of thinking. Postmodern philosophy has tried to renew the meaning of the subject, of the subject's identity, and of language and communication. The author believes that the postmodern, feminist approach to those concepts represents significant progress in philosophy. It is, in fact, exactly in the context of feminism—conceived of not just as a women's sociopolitical or scientific activity but as a broad theoretical approach to many areas—that Western philosophy has acquired its most explicit and adequate meaning. A crucial example here is the new historicophilosophical analysis of the concept of gender. The author appeals to Lipovetsky, Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, and other thinkers to show how postmodern feminism helps to overcome the binary vision of the contemporary world and the dichotomic composition of earlier philosophical thought.     

American Psychology and Schools: A Critique

No one denies that the Boulder Conference on Clinical Psychology marked a turning point on American psychology. This paper by one of the three or four living participants lists the conference as one in which psychology was at a choice point, went in one and only one direction, without examining the possible consequences or the possibility of going in more than 1 direction. A second theme is that the APA has to be faulted for a lack of searching self-scrutiny of its past. Organizations, like individuals, resist such self-scrutiny.     

现代世界观中的意识及其哲学难题

人是具身心智的存在者,其存在方式独特性在于:他既依赖于物理形态的身体,又有存在论上不可还原性的主观性。因此如何在现代世界观中一致且完备地解释和理解人遂成了心智哲学的大问题。如果坚持现代世界观的基本立场一致性,那么对意识的解释和理解不可避免存在着"难问题"所界定的不完备性。人们大致从三个进路来处理不完备性的局面。然而,原则上它们都无法实现一致且完备的要求,因为这里存在一个根本的局限,即不可能通过认识论的方法在两种存在论形式(无和有)之间实现等价转换。尽管在认识论上这是一个悲观的结局,但另一方面它又是积极的,因为它显示了个体经验在存在论上是独一无二的。     

Critique ofThe Psychology of the Self:A Casebook

The book,Psychology of The Self (1978), and the movement of thePsychology of the Self are criticized as having degenerated into a kind of cult that basically rejects all former and contemporary psychoanalytic contributions. The end product is that many patients are incorrectly diagnosed as narcissistic character disorders and then treated by the same method, emphasizing the patient's need for an empathic self-object. Even the cures reported seem to put the patient in a schizoid and narcissistic position in which object relations that involve real attachments to another person are minimized. Instead of changing people from narcissistic to object-related, the reverse appears to occur. The Psychology of the Self: A Casebook was written with the collaboration of Heinz Kohut, M.D., edited by Arnold Goldberg, M.D.