Reaction to Mortality: An Interdisciplinary Organizing Principle for the Human Sciences

Ernest Becker's theory about death denial is one example of depth psychological theory. Because very important features of Becker's theory have now successfully and singularly met the rigorous empirical testing of Terror Management Theory (TMT), it must be concluded that the theory of death denial stands apart from and above alternative depth psychological theories in explaining human behavioral and attitudinal motivation. Nevertheless, TMT only touches the surface of Becker's theory in the round. This essay looks at how Becker's wider theories of death denial are applied to (1) personal psychological, (2) social psychological, (3) political, and (4) spiritual aspects of human experience and suggests that what Becker has given us is an organizing principle, a theory of considerable integrative, explanatory, and interpretive power, for a broadly interdisciplinary social science of human behavior.     

Methodological Considerations in the Neuropsychological Study of Central Nervous System Underarousal with a Specific Emphasis on Coma

Several obstacles exist that impede the scientific study of pathological underarousal (stupor and coma). For instance, there is a lack of a clear, rational, standardized taxonomy with which to describe the phenomenon. Moreover, there is considerable confusion of the construct of arousal with other neurobehavioral constructs. The field also suffers from a general lack of acceptably reliable and valid instruments, especially measures of long-term outcome. Additionally, current treatments for chronic pathological underarousal are frequently presumptive and applied haphazardly, and thus do little to elucidate the process of recovery. It is suggested that biomedical and neuropsychological approaches to the study and treatment of pathological underarousal are complementary and that it is useful to view pathological underarousal as a behavioral, as well as a medical, phenomenon.     

Teaching the Bible in the Context of General Education

Three conceptions of general education developed under the titles ‘general,’‘generalist,’ and ‘generalizing’ are matched with appropriate strategies for teaching the Bible. These provide the basis for two points relevant to teaching the Bible in colleges and universities: first, that the prime object of attention is not the Bible, but rather a corporate agreement regarding an educational project; and second, that the ways in which the Bible might be taught will vary, appropriately, according to the ways in which that educational enterprise is understood. A corollary is stated: teachers of the Bible need to be as informed about research in teaching as they are in biblical research.     

Sudden changes in spectrum of an echo cause a breakdown of the precedence effect

The effect of changing the frequency components of an echo relative to the sound source was examined in a two-choice discrimination task. Subjects sat in an anechoic chamber and discriminated the direction of the lag noise burst within a lead-lag pair presented over loudspeakers. The leading noise burst was broadband, and the lagging burst was either high- or low-pass filtered. On some conditions, this test burst pair was preceded by a conditioning train of burst pairs, which also had a broadband lead and either a high- or low-frequency lag. When the frequency content of the echo was held constant across the conditioning train and test burst pair, echo suppression that was built up during the repeating train was maintained for the test burst pair, shown by the subjects’ poor performance in detecting the location of the lagging burst. By comparison, subjects had little difficulty in localizing the lagging burst when the frequency content of the echo changed between the conditioning train and the test burst, indicating that any buildup of suppression during the train was broken when the lagging burst’s spectrum shifted. The data are consistent with an interpretation in which echo suppression is temporarily broken when listeners’ built-up expectations about room acoustics are violated.     

Sexuality and Spirituality: A Humanist Account

Typical accounts of spirituality define it by association with religious faith and especially one's relationship with God. Without impugning the validity of theological considerations, this humanist account treats spirituality apart from them. Whereas the standard model of the human being is bipartite (body and mind), this paper distinguishes two dimensions within the human mind—psyche and spirit—and thus proposes a tripartite model (organism, psyche, and spirit). Attention to human spirit grounds an account of spirituality, and attention to organism and psyche introduces sexuality into the picture. Then, the reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality is nothing other than the integration of the human being: organism, psyche, and spirit. Granted that human spirit entails its own criteria for unbounded unfolding, such integration would generally express the ideals of spirituality proposed by the various religions. Psychotherapist and educator at     

Historical materialism and Capital

It is commonly supposed that Marx's Capital is part and parcel of his theory of historical materialism. It is argued here, however, that this view is incorrect, and that Capital is distinguished from the more general theory of historical materialism in its standing as a work of social science. This conclusion rests on several grounds. First, Capital is substantially more specialized than the theory of historical materialism, since it is concerned only with one aspect of one mode of production. As a result, Capital provides a more rigorous treatment of its subject matter. Second, Capital is based on a fund of empirical evidence which is substantially more detailed than that offered in support of the theses of historical materialism. And third, given the preceding points, Capital is a developed empirical theory, whereas historical materialism is best construed as a general program of research. For these reasons Capital is epistemically distinct from historical materialism: unlike the latter, it is a substantive contribution to social science.