Perceived cultural distance and acculturation among exchange students in Russia

The relations of perceived cultural distance, personality, acculturation orientations and outcomes were studied among exchange students (N = 187) in Russia who came from various countries in Asia, sub‐Saharan Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet Union. The hypothesis was supported that a larger perceived cultural distance between mainstream and immigrant culture is associated with less psychological (homesickness and stress) and sociocultural (behaviour with Russian students and behaviour with co‐nationals) adjustment. The statistical relations between perceived cultural distance, personality and sociocultural adjustment were much stronger for host domain behaviour than for home domain behaviour. Adjustment was higher for participants with more cultural empathy, openmindedness and flexibility. Adjustment showed statistically stronger associations with cultural distance than with acculturation orientations. It is concluded that cultural distance may be more salient than acculturation orientations in studies of heterogeneous groups of immigrants. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stoic Conditionals,Necessity and Explanation

An examination of a particular passage in Cicero's De fato—Fat. 13–17—is crucial to our understanding of the Stoic theory of the truth-conditions of conditional propositions, for it has been uniquely important in the debate concerning the kind of connection the antecedent and consequent of a Stoic conditional should have to one another. Frede has argued that the passage proves that the connection is one of logical necessity, while Sorabji has argued that positive Stoic attitudes toward empirical inferences elsewhere suggest that that cannot be the right interpretation of the passage. I argue that both parties to the debate have missed a position somewhere between them which both renders a connection between antecedent and consequent that is not merely empirical and makes sense of the actual uses to which the Stoics put the conditional. This will be an account which grounds the connection between antecedent and consequent in a prolêpsis, a special kind of concept which plays a special epistemological role for the Stoics, especially in grounding scientific explanations. My contention will be that Stoic conditionals are true when there is a conceptually necessary connection between antecedent and consequent such that the former explains the latter via a prolêpsis     

Jung,the Wilderness,and the Call of the Wild

The publication of The Red Book reiterates how deeply connected to nature Jung was and how this connection emerged through his encounter with the spirit of the depths. This article reviews some of Jung's writings in regard to nature and suggests that the energy related to the earth that Jung expresses in The Red Book was continued in his ongoing work on his tower at Bolllingen. The author also reviews his own search for a deeper connection to nature and an understanding of his own ancestry. Reviewing the emergence of the value of wilderness in North America and the call to reclaim the wild, he considers the life of Englishman Archie Belaney, who took on the identity of a Native American, Grey Owl, and became one of Canada's first leading environmentalists.     

Wonder,Mystery, and Meaning

Abstract

This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosophical) search for meaning has not yet received any sustained attention. Does wonder ‘merely’ inspire our search for meaning, or does it also point the way towards meaning? In exploring this question I first engage with Hannah Arendt, then examine the suggestion (by Josef Pieper and Rachel Carson, among others) that the meaning wonder points us to lies in connecting us with the mystery of existence. Can there be meaning in mystery, or is wonder––as a state of being lost for words in the face of mystery––rather antithetical to meaning? This discussion leads to the idea, emphasized in recent writing on wonder, that wonder (also) depends on the meaning we ascribe to things. In the final section I discuss wonder as a potential source of meaning in life, then return to the question whether it can also point towards a deeper meaning of life. I conclude that no purely rational justification can be given for this view, but that this need not detract from the importance of wonder in our lives.     

A MOTHER'S LOVE: GENDER,ALTRUISM, AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

This article explores the concepts of altruism, spiritual connection, and shamanic healing as practiced by female curanderas in northern Peru. It suggests how coessence rather than transcendence is at the heart of the shamanic journey that both healers and patients embark upon in order to transform suffering. Using ethnographic and case‐study research, it describes how the metaphors of maternal care, shared suffering, and compassionate love are used by female healers in this region to shape their patients’understandings of illness and health as well as to construct their own understandings of the shaman's role in their healing process. The healers studied adopt attitudes of acceptance, empathy, spiritual connection, and altruism as integral to their work and encourage their patients to do the same in order to regain a sense of mastery over their own suffering. Parallels are presented between the model of spiritual connection and healing described here and that described by both scholars of feminist theology and feminist spirituality such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and popular lecturers/authors such as Marianne Williamson.     

Augustine,Arendt, and Anthropy

Arendt’s theoretical influence is generally traced to Heidegger and experientially to the traumatic events that occurred in Europe during the Second World War. Here, we suggest that Arendt’s conception of politics may be usefully enriched via a proto-anthropic principle found in Augustine and adopted by Arendt throughout her writings. By appealing to this anthropic principle; that without a spectator there could be no world; a profound connection is made between the ‘cosmic jackpot’ of life in the universe and the uniquely human activity that takes place in the political realm. By making this connection we suggest that solutions present themselves to a central puzzle arising in Arendt’s thought: namely, what it is that people actually do in the political realm. The first solution directly addresses the issue of content: what people talk about in Arendt’s public space. The second addresses the importance of ‘maintaining’ a space of appearances. The third considers the effect of participating in and observing the public domain. Consequently, we conclude that, for Arendt, action is nothing less than the activity of ‘world-making.’     

Unifying the Intellectual Virtues

The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry‐regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of virtues can be understood as contributing in different ways to our cognitive goal, and develop a general framework for understanding their value.     

Auseinandersetzung,Colonialism and Heidegger’s Oblivion of Other Beginnings

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to enact a creative confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) between Heidegger and Sikh spirituality. Heidegger’s idea of confrontation did not stay the same throughout his career. It goes through multiple transformations. The earliest iteration of this idea in the 1930s can be linked to his ethno-centrism. In the Black Notebooks, Heidegger performs a confrontation with himself, which marks his attempts to go beyond his prior position. Later in the 1960s and 1970s, Heidegger gets a glimpse of what a different confrontation might look like. However, he fails to enact it. This failure can be located in his inability to build a profound connection between his quest and non-European traditions. The article concludes with a fleeting glance at what such a connection between Heidegger’s quest and Sikh spirituality might look like.     

Jung, the Tao, and the Classic of Change

This paper developed from a series of lectures and seminars given in London and Cambridge, England, in early 1999 and takes into consideration participants' comments. In it, Dr. Karcher looks at the connection between Jung's psychology and the Chinese oracle book called I ChingorYijing,usually translated as Classic of Change.This connection centers on a mysterious symbolic awareness that Chinese philosophers call tao or way. This symbolic awareness involved both Jung and his psychology in a very special orientation, a Journey to the East.     

Neo‐pragmatism,Representationalism and the Emotions

This paper offers a neo‐pragmatist account of the representational character of the emotions, for those emotions that have such a character. Put most generally, neo‐pragmatism is the view that language should not be conceived primarily in terms of a robust relation of reference to or representation of antecedently given objects and properties. Rather, we should view it as a social practice that lets us do various quite different sorts of things. One of those things might be called ‘assessing representational accuracy’, but this need not be thought of in terms of a metaphysically heavyweight relation. In applying neo‐pragmatist techniques to the domain of the emotions, the result will be an alternative to currently popular accounts that individuate emotions partly in terms of what they represent. This alternative continues to allow us to use representational language in connection with some emotions. And it also helps to explain the awkwardness of representational talk in connection with other emotions: an awkwardness that was always a liability of monolithic representationalist views.     

Reasons and religious belief

This paper purports a limited study of the concept of reason. It analyzes the claim of religious belief to be reasonable. The context for this analysis is an examination of some evidential (criteriological) connections between reasonable belief and ‘(good) reasons’ for such belief. Consideration of the typical sort of evidential connection shows, not surprisingly, that religious belief cannot claim to be reasonable. But it is argued that there is (at least) one other sort of connection, and that it is philosophically plausible to regard this connection as definitive of a quite distinctive sense of ‘reasonable’, with its own kind and style of criteria, according to which religious belief can be thought reasonable.     

Cognition and Emotion,Volume 24, 2010, List of Contents

Effective emotion regulation is important for high-quality social functioning. Recent laboratory-based evidence suggests that mindfulness may enhance emotion regulation in socioemotional contexts; however, little is known about mindful emotion regulation during in vivo social interactions. In a study of romantic couples, we assessed each partner's mindfulness and top-down attentional efficiency (with an Emotional Go/No-Go task) prior to sampling emotions and perceived connection with others during day-to-day social interactions. Analyses revealed that mindfulness-related differences in top-down attentional efficiency on the Emotional Go/No-Go predicted positive emotion during daily social interactions. In turn, positive emotion and two additional indices of social emotion regulation each mediated the relation between actor mindfulness and perceived social connection. In corresponding analyses, neither trait reappraisal nor suppression use predicted the outcomes, and all mindfulness relations held controlling for these strategies. Findings support a framework for investigating mindfulness and higher-quality social functioning, for which mindful emotion regulation may be key.     

My Recency,Our Primacy: How Social Connection Influences Evaluations of Sequences

Individuals have many life experiences (e.g., work and vacations) that consist of a series of interconnected episodes (i.e., temporal sequences). Assessments of such experiences are integral to daily life in that they facilitate future planning and behaviors for individuals. Therefore, these experiences often culminate in evaluations of their global affect. Past work has shown that retrospective, affective evaluations of these sequences generally exhibit an “end effect,” whereby a sequence's end intensity—but not its start intensity—is disproportionately weighted. Yet, researchers have largely investigated experiences that occur alone. In contrast, many real‐world experiences vary in their extent of social connection to others (e.g., working in an office with others versus alone in a cubicle). The present work fills this gap by showing the moderating role of social connection on how episodes are weighted in global affective ratings. Five studies involving two autobiographical experiences spanning several days each (workweek and spring break) and two brief simulated experiences show that high social connection leads to greater (lesser) weighting of the first (last) episode. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that these effects persist across different forms of social connection (i.e., interpersonal interaction versus semantic priming tasks) and are supported regardless of whether social connection occurs at encoding or retrieval of an experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perception, Causation, and Supervenience

What relation between an experience and a physical object makes the experience a perception of the object?¹ One common answer is that it is a certain kind of causal relation. The idea is that to perceive an object is just to undergo an experience appropriately caused by the object. This answer is incorrect. The reason is that perceiving an object does not supervene on the causal connection the object bears to the perceiver's experience. Whether or not a person perceives an object depends, in part, on conditions that could obtain or fail to obtain without variation in the causal processes (if any) by which the object causes the person's experience. In what follows, I explain and defend these claims.     

Schopenhauer on Christ,Suffering and the Negation of the Will

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to illuminate Schopenhauer’s notion of the negation or denial of the will by investigating the figure of the saint within his philosophy. We argue that various discussions in Schopenhauer’s works of the possible role of Christ as exemplar reveals an underlying Christological understanding of self-denial as a model for the saint. The connection between Schopenhauer’s approach to Christ and Kant’s Christology in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason is also explored. We note how Schopenhauer builds on the Kantian demythologization of the Incarnated Christ in order to uncover the moral and existential spirit that underlies Christianity. In addition, we outline how a recognition of the symbolic importance of Christ for Schopenhauer suggests features of the denial of the will that have been overlooked in the literature, involving the intellectual transcendence of suffering through the cultivation of a state of emotional unresponsiveness. It is argued that this reflects a deeper connection between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and Christian thought than is often recognised.     

Connection Tableau Calculi with Disjunctive Constraints

Automated theorem proving amounts to solving search problems in usually tremendous search spaces. A lot of research therefore focuses on search space reductions. Our approach reduces the search space which arises when using so-called connection tableau calculi for first-order automated theorem proving. It uses disjunctive constraints over first-order equations to compress certain parts of this search space. We present the basics of our constrained-connection-tableau calculi, a constraint extension of connection tableau calculi, and deal with the efficient handling of constraints during the search process. The new techniques are integrated into the automated connection tableau prover Setheo.     

Spinoza on Causation and Power

The purpose of this paper is to argue that, for Spinoza, causation is a more fundamental relation than conceptual connection, and that, in fact, it explains conceptual connection. I will firstly offer a criticism of Michael Della Rocca's 2008 claims that, for Spinoza, causal relations are identical to relations of conceptual dependence and that existence is identical to conceivability. Secondly, I will argue that, for Spinoza, causation is more fundamental than conceptual dependence, offering textual evidence from both Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Ethics. In particular, I will offer an interpretation of the attributes as first and foremost causal activities, or powers: this interpretation has the advantage to clarify the role of 1D6 as a “genetic definition.”     

Race,Exclusionary Discipline,and Connectedness to Adults in Secondary Schools

This study examines racial differences in students' connectedness to school adults and considers the possibility that disparities in exclusionary discipline practices may reduce all students' sense of connection to educators, not just those who have been disciplined or are from racial groups overrepresented in out‐of‐school suspensions. Data sources include a self‐report survey of secondary school students (n = 29,148) linked to administrative data (n = 107 schools) from a large urban district. Multilevel modeling techniques were used to estimate the relationships between students' racial background, youths' connection to school adults, and school‐level racial discipline gaps. Controlling for school racial composition, gender, grade level and other covariates, students of color were significantly less likely to feel connected to school adults than their White peers. Additionally, the racial discipline gap was significantly and negatively associated with connectedness for all students. Results indicate that strategies to improve educational outcomes for youth of color need to attend to relational dynamics between students and school adults. Research findings also suggest that efforts to reduce discipline disparities may improve all students' connectedness.     

The Metaphysics of Personal Identity and Our Special Concern for the Future

Abstract: Philosophers have long suggested that our attitude of special concern for the future is problematic for a reductionist view of personal identity, such as the one developed by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Specifically, it is often claimed that reductionism cannot provide justification for this attitude. In this article, I argue that much of the debate in this arena involves a misconception of the connection between metaphysical theories of personal identity and our special concern. A proper understanding of this connection reveals that the abovementioned objection to reductionism cannot get off the ground. Though the connection I propose is weaker than the connection typically presupposed, I nonetheless run up against a conclusion reached by Susan Wolf in “Self‐Interest and Interest in Selves.” According to Wolf, metaphysical theses about the nature of personal identity have no significance for our attitude of special concern. By arguing against Wolf's treatment of self‐interest, I suggest that her arguments for this conclusion are misguided. This discussion leads to further clarification of the nature of the link between theories of personal identity and our special concern and, ultimately, to a better understanding of the rationality of this attitude.     

Convergence,commonality, and context in psychoanalytic supervision

ABSTRACT

What are the binding commonalities that demark and define any and all psychoanalytic supervision perspectives? What do we all do as psychoanalytic supervisors that practically matters? Furthermore, might there be a unifying model that anchors those binding commonalities together into a supervision meaning-making, explanatory framework? In this two-part paper, I take up those questions. In Part I, based on a century-spanning literature review, I identify 50 (non-exhaustive) common Support and Learning factors that appear present across the panoply of psychoanalytic supervision perspectives. Relational, educational, and interventional, these 50 factors reflect the very stuff of which psychoanalytic supervision is made. In Part II, I present and elaborate upon the Contextual Psychoanalytic Supervision Relationship Model (CPSRM) – a theoretically-grounded model that anchors and contextualizes those common Support and Learning factors. Because common factors can be seen as nothing more than atheoretical amalgamation (i.e., lists of desirable characteristics endlessly strung together), the CPSRM is proposed as a theoretically-based antidote. A supervisory extrapolation of Wampold’s contextual psychotherapy relationship model, the CPSRM accentuates relational connection, expectations/goals, and educational action as preeminently supervisee change inducing and learner affecting.