Keeping (Direct) Reference in Mind

This paper explores the psychological analogues of a cluster of arguments that have played an important role in motivating a now widespread, reference‐based approach in philosophy of language. What I will call the psychological analogues of Kripke‐style arguments provide a substantial motivation for a reference‐based approach to concepts. Insofar as such an approach is rarely given serious consideration, the availability of these arguments suggests the need for a rethinking of some foundational assumptions in philosophy of mind and other branches of the cognitive sciences.     

Mind and Matter: A Physicist's View

Physics explores a universe of wonderful order, expressed in terms of beautiful mathematical equations. Mathematics itself is understood to be the exploration of a realm of noetic reality. Science describes matter in terms of concepts with mind-like qualities. The psychosomatic nature of human persons is best understood in terms of a dual-aspect monism, in which matter and mind are complementary aspects of a unitary being. The new science of complexity theory, with its dualities of parts/whole and energy/information, offers modest resources for the speculative exploration of this idea. The intrinsic unpredictabilities present in nature afford the metaphysical opportunity to consider dissipative systems as exhibiting top–down causality.     

Discrete Process Model for Quantum Systems of Matter and Mind

Attempts to create a coherent scientific picture of the world as a whole on the basis of quantum physics has sped up at the turn of the millennium. There particularly seem to be expectations that the development of a new kind of quantum mechanics could make it possible to describe both matter and consciousness in one frame of reference (“dual aspect approach”). These ideas are often results of brilliant intuitive visions but as yet not able to produce testable hypotheses. Maybe “wave mechanics” is not very suitable in the study of consciousness from the quantum mechanical point of view. The aim of this article is to show how both the matter and the mind systems can be described with one coherent mathematical model if we assume both space and time to be discrete.     

Modeling Mind and Matter: Reductionism and Psychological Measurement in Cognitive Neuroscience

Psychological resilience has become a popular concept. Owing to that popularity, the word resilience has taken on myriad and often overlapping meanings. To be a useful framework for psychological research and theory, the authors argue, the study of resilience must explicitly reference each of four constituent temporal elements: (a) baseline or preadversity functioning, (b) the actual aversive circumstances, (c) postadversity resilient outcomes, and (d) predictors of resilient outcomes. Using this framework to review the existing literature, the most complete body of evidence is available on individual psychological resilience in children and adults. By contrast, the research on psychological resilience in families and communities is far more limited and lags well behind the rich theoretical perspective available from those literatures. The vast majority of research on resilience in families and communities has focused primarily on only one temporal element, possible predictors of resilient outcomes. Surprisingly, however, almost no scientific evidence is actually available for community or family resilient outcomes. We close by suggesting that there is room for optimism and that existing methods and measures could be relatively easily adapted to help fill these gaps. To that end, we propose a series of steps to guide future research.     

Keeping the Body in Mind: The Influence of Body Esteem and Body Boundary Aberration on Consumer Beliefs and Purchase Intentions

This research explores the influence of consumers’ body‐related information on beliefs and purchase intentions toward products for which the consumption experience is significantly and directly determined by body‐related information (e.g., feel, fit, sense of safety) when the products are bought in body‐absent purchase environments such as the Internet. We examine the effects of consumers’ body esteem (i.e., like or dislike of one's body) and body boundary aberration (variation in the perceived location of the edges of one's body) in the context of apparel purchases that are made on the Internet. Body esteem had a positive influence on involvement with apparel, and body boundary aberration had a negative influence on consumers’ overall concern with the fit of apparel. Involvement with apparel and overall concern with fit, in turn, significantly influenced consumers’ intentions to purchase apparel online. Consequently, consumers with high body esteem were less likely to buy on the Internet and those with high body boundary aberration were more likely to buy.     

Someplace in Mind

This paper is a meditation on the interpenetration of mental and physical, particularly architectural, place. Its premise is that the relationship between person and place is transitional, ever in flux, person continually defining place into a continuous reality, and reality perpetually placing person. Further, this interchange occurs against the backdrop of an inconceivable void whereby the very terms of the interchange can be nullified. Such a void is unconscious and outside in the sense that it is outside what can be known. The matter of opening the inside to the outside becomes an endeavor shared by psychoanalysis and by architecture, notably sacred architecture. The exchange between inside and outside is considered using as examples the body, Freud's office, Disneyland, and the cathedral. Implications are extrapolated as to the provisional nature of the self.     

Keeping things in perspective

Scientific realism holds that scientific representations are utterly objective. They describe the way the world is, independent of any point of view. In Scientific Representation, van Fraassen argues otherwise. If science is to afford an understanding of nature, it must be grounded in evidence. Since evidence is perspectival, science cannot vindicate its claims using only utterly objective representations. For science to do its epistemic job, it must involve perspectival representations. I explicate this argument and show its power.     

Keeping fathers in mind

This paper focuses on keeping fathers in mind – in the mind of the mother and the mind of the therapist – as a symbol and as an actual person so that he can become a healthy presence in the mind of the child. Through its myths and laws, mainstream Indian culture constantly reinforces the idea that the child belongs first to the man who places ownership over a womb. This paper will focus on the importance of the father as a parent and not only as a sexual partner or keeper of the mother. It will illustrate that the actual presence of the father qualitatively enhances the child’s capacities and that the father’s absence or disengagement deeply and painfully affect a young boy. Through an account of some clinical work with young boys at a community-based psychotherapy clinic, the paper aims to illustrate the need of the boy for a good enough father, the reluctance of fathers to be involved in the parenting of their children, and the role of the mother in drawing in the father to be actively paternal.     

Keeping Students in School

This paper examines strategies for the development of programs to prevent students from dropping out of school before graduation. The first set of strategies involves increasing the opportunities for students to succeed in school. This may be accomplished by setting standards that are challenging but within reach of students, by providing students with appropriate support to meet those standards, and by making the school curriculum relevant to the current and future lives of students. The second set of strategies involves increasing the opportunties for students to develop positive relationships in school. Such relationshps may be with adult staff members, with other students, or with the school as an institution.     

Keeping the Result in Sight and Mind: General Cognitive Principles and Language‐Specific Influences in the Perception and Memory of Resultative Events

We study how people attend to and memorize endings of events that differ in the degree to which objects in them are affected by an action: Resultative events show objects that undergo a visually salient change in state during the course of the event (peeling a potato), and non‐resultative events involve objects that undergo no, or only partial state change (stirring in a pan). We investigate general cognitive principles, and potential language‐specific influences, in verbal and nonverbal event encoding and memory, across two experiments with Dutch and Estonian participants. Estonian marks a viewer's perspective on an event's result obligatorily via grammatical case on direct object nouns: Objects undergoing a partial/full change in state in an event are marked with partitive/accusative case, respectively. Therefore, we hypothesized increased saliency of object states and event results in Estonian speakers, as compared to speakers of Dutch. Findings show (a) a general cognitive principle of attending carefully to endings of resultative events, implying cognitive saliency of object states in event processing; (b) a language‐specific boost on attention and memory of event results under verbal task demands in Estonian speakers. Results are discussed in relation to theories of event cognition, linguistic relativity, and thinking for speaking.