Yoga Sūtras

The yoga system accepts the Sānkhya metaphysics, the fundamental variation being that consciousness is held to be supreme. The goal to be achieved is to attain this final state of pure consciousness. All obstacles, mental and physical, are subjugated and transcended. The method is the development of concentration by controlling all thought modes. It starts by the purification of the body by the control of posture and breathing. The mind is purified by the rejection of hindrances to the development of concentration. Both require a mandatory practice of the ethical ideals prescribed. The final goal of samādhi is not a post‐mortem state but realisable here and now. Many extraordinary capabilities acquired due to concentration are mere hindrances which are to be discarded. The Yoga Sūtras are four in number and made up pādās (steps). Only the first two sūtras are explained in a very sketchy manner.     

Sändor Ferenczi

Abstract

This essay will explore the early contributions of Sändor Ferenczi and their relationship to current psychodynamic perspectives on short-term treatment. Ferenczi'S development of the “active technique” and his later collaboration with Otto Rank influenced the works of Alexander and French, and the later writings of Malan, Davanloo, Sifneos, and Mann. Ferenczi'S emphasis on here-and-now transference interpretations and the importance of the patient'S emotional experience in treatment have proven to be enduring contributions to contemporary psychoanalytic practice.     

S+ versus S− Fading in prompting procedures with autistic children

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the relative effectiveness of two prompt-fading procedures for teaching difficult visual discriminations to autistic children. Both prompt procedures involved within-stimulus fading where manipulation occurred on the relevant component of the discrimination. One procedure involved fading first along the S+ stimulus, while holding the S? stimulus constant. The other procedure involved fading first along the S? stimulus, while holding the S+ stimulus constant. Eight autistic children were each taught two discriminations, one by each of the prompt procedures. Results indicated that for all but one child, the discriminations were acquired significantly faster, with fewer errors, when the S+ stimulus was faded first. These findings are related to the literature on the effects of stimulus novelty on selection and learning.     

REALIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVES: BION’S PSYCHOANALYSIS AND DOGEN’S ZEN

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The author discusses similarities, differences and identities between the later work of the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion and the Soto Zen Buddhist teacher...     

荷兰哲学家S.斯特拉塞

S.斯特拉塞(Strasser)1905年生于维也纳,他曾学习德国的语文学和哲学,1932年,他撰写了“作为戏剧作家的艾兴多夫”的论文而获得哲学博士学位。他在维也纳开始了他在中学的教学生涯,后来由于德国吞并奥地利,被迫前往比利时一所中学任教。为了秘密从事刚刚在卢汶开始的整理胡塞尔的文献、研究和出版胡塞尔著作的工作,他曾中断了数年的教学     

SHUTTING DRETSKE’S DOOR

Dretske proposes a theory of knowledge in terms of a theory of information, but wishes to deny that empirical knowledge settles the large question of scepticism. This leads him to deny the closure of knowledge under known entailment. In a recent paper J?ger argues that Dretske’s theory of information entails closure for knowledge, ‘at least for the kind of propositions here at issue’ (J?ger 2004:194). If J?ger is right, Dretske is seriously embarrassed and must give something up. In this paper I show that there are two flaws in J?ger’s argument. The principle of informational closure considered by J?ger is incompatible with Dretske’s theory of information, and J?ger’s argument that Dretske is committed to a certain kind of substitution instance of that principle of informational closure is invalid. I propose adequacy conditions on signalled information and use them to motivate a formulation of a general closure principle for signalled information. I show that Dretske’s account of information satisfies the adequacy conditions, but in a way which commits him to an instance of the general closure principle. I argue that Dretske is consequently committed to closure for some cases of knowledge for which he wishes to deny closure. Finally, I sketch how, on the basis of the closure principle to which Dretske is committed, J?ger’s broader argument may yet go through.     

Systemy S4 I S5 Lewisa a spójnik identyczności

Allatum est die 28 Septembris 1970     

Population norms of top sensory magnitudes and S. S. Stevens’ exponents

If S. S. Stevens’ exponents indicate the rates at which sensations grow with increases in sensory intensity, they ought to correlate with the population norms of top sensory magnitudes. Using a comprehensive sample of eight sensory dimensions, the tau coefficient of rank correlation between Stevens’ exponents and the medians of the top sensory magnitudes reported by 305 observers was found to be only +.15 (p>05). With the geometric means tau fell to ?.04. A split-half consistency check on the medians of the population norms suggested that they were not to blame for the low correlation. Direct comparisons of pairs of sensory dimensions on 146 additional observers produced results which confirmed the population norms. Since there is no way of comparing most of the top physical stimuli experienced in everyday life, it is not possible to make a joint prediction from exponents and top stimuli. S. S. Stevens’ exponents thus appear to have little predictive value outside the experimental conditions under which they were measured.     

MODERN ORTHODOXY’S ANCIENT PAST

The movement known as Modern Orthodox Judaism is often distinguished from “ultra-Orthodoxy” (or Haredi Judaism) in terms of openness. While adherents of the latter form of Judaism typically live together in isolated communities and seek to seal themselves off from secular books and learning (and, in our own age, such potentially malign influences as television, movies, and the internet), Modern Orthodox Jews are generally characterized by a more open attitude toward such things, and toward outsiders and outside ideas in general. The present article seeks to argue that the tendencies represented by these two movements are in fact dyed in the wool—that, from the very beginning, Judaism has endorsed and incorporated both isolationism and openness. This contention is illustrated with examples from the Hebrew Bible itself as well as from the extensive literature of the Second Temple period.     

巧解“S”之谜

众所周知,途岛之战,是二战史上一个以少胜多的成功战例,也是太平洋战争的重要转折点,但战前那个颇有意思的小插曲,却是鲜为人知的1942年5月下旬,日军秘密集结大中型航空母舰八艘,战列舰二百多艘,战机七百余架,由海军大将山本率领,浩浩荡荡直奔美海军基地而来,企图一举摧毁美国太平洋海军力量。     

Popper’S Evolutionary Epistemology Revamped

In a paper entitled “Revolution in Permanence”, published in the collection “Karl Popper: Philosophy and Problems”, John Worrall (1995) severely criticised several aspects of Karl Popper’s work before commenting that “I have no doubt that, given suffi-cient motivation, a case could be constructed on the basis of such remarks that Popper had a more sophisticated version of theory production......” (p. 102). Part of Worrall’s criticism is directed at a “strawpopper”: in his “Darwinian Model” emphasising the similarities and differences between genetic mutation, variation in animal behaviour and the gestation of scientific theories, Popper (1975, 1981, 1994) never stated that tentative scientific conjec-tures “while more or less random, are not completely blind.” He was referring to variation in animal species behaviour, and about tentative scientific conjectures he said nothing, although common sense would indicate that presumably he regarded them as being less blind and less random. In Popper (1977, 1983), giving a summary of his “Darwinian Model”, he repaired this omission about tentative scientific conjectures by inserting the sentence “On a level of World 3 theory formation they are of the character of planned gropings into the unknown.” Recent developments in the field of genetics (see for example Raff (1996), Lewis (1999), Korn (2002)) indicate that Popper’s intuitions were along the modern lines while Worrall’s intuitions are old fashioned. Therefore Popper’s “Darwinian Model” remains both viable and fruitful.     

A Tamil Muslim Sūfï

The Sufi biography has a certain historical value and significance, when we take into account the historical context and the social environment in which the Sufi comes into existence and evolves. In this paper, I have made a modest attempt in this direction, first by portraying the life history of the obscure, little known Tamil Sufi of Pondicherry, saint Sayyid Ahmad Moula Sahib, reconstituted exclusively from oral sources and then by unravelling its historical and social value. Though the life history of the Sufi is always shrouded in mystery, yet all is not mystery, when we consider it in the light of the actual social and historical background, if available. This is not always an easy task.     

Affective matching moderates S–R binding

We investigated the moderating influence of affective matching on S–R binding processes in a sequential priming study in which positive and negative nouns had to be categorised as referring to a person or to an object. Irrelevant positive and negative distractor words (adjectives) were integrated with responses into S–R episodes if they had the same valence as the target (affective match condition). In this case, repeating the prime distractor in the probe led to a retrieval of the prime response, which facilitated performance for response repetition sequences but had no effect on performance when responses changed between prime and probe. However, if target and distractor had different valences (affective mismatch condition), no interaction of distractor relation and response relation occurred, indicating that distractors were less likely to be associated with responses into event files during the prime trial episode. Findings reveal that affective mismatches are detected automatically and modulate a binding of irrelevant information with responses.     

“TANCRED’S WOUND”:

A recent debate over trauma theory in Holocaust studies has implications for writing by the “generation after.” This article looks at Anne Karpf’s The War After (1996) and the 1998 movie Left Luggage (based on a novel by Carl Friedman), as well as David Grossman’s See Under: Love (1985), as examples of how traumatic knowledge is accessed through literary narratives and the imagination, rather than the historical events. In particular, the trope of “autism” serves to symbolize the difficulty of communicating repressed traumatic memory, while images of containment symbolize the unspeakable contents of the psychic envelope.     

Finite automata and S−R models

Suppes (1969, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6) apparently proved that any finite automaton could be mimicked by the asymptotic behavior of a stimulussampling S?R model, broadly implying that cognitive theory could be reduced to S?R theory. Here it is shown that the finite automata used by Suppes are more restricted and less powerful than finite automata in general. Furthermore, the S?R models proposed by Suppes are limited to producing the behavior of only these restricted automata, and cannot mimic all finite automata. Hence, the formal claim that S?R models are adequate to produce all behaviors obtainable from finite automata, and the informal claim that cognitive theory reduces to S?R theory, do not follow from Suppes's (1969) result. Some alternative S?R models and their problems are also briefly discussed.     

Peter Singer’S Argument for Utilitarianism

The paper begins by situating Singer within the British meta-ethical tradition. It sets out the main steps in his argument for utilitarianism as the ‘default setting’ of ethical thought. It argues that Singer’s argument depends on a hierarchy of reasons, such that the ethical viewpoint is understood to be an adaptation – an extension – of a fundamental self-interest. It concludes that the argument fails because it is impossible to get from this starting-point in self-interest to his conception of the ethical point of view. The fundamental problem is its mixing the immiscible: the Humean subordination of reason to interest with the Kantian conception of reason as universal and authoritative.