A Dynamical Successor to Modernism and Postmodernism

The author introduces an emerging worldview that could affect counseling concepts and methods greatly in the relatively near future. The worldview, dynamicalism, incorporates essential features of modernism and postmodernism. It also incorporates cutting‐edge concepts from physics and philosophy. The synthesis of these ideas provides a conceptual basis for thinking about and conducting counseling in new ways.     

Introduction: Postphenomenological Research

This introduction to the special issue of Human Studies on postphenomenology outlines specific developments which have led to this style of phenomenology. Postphenomenology adapts aspects of pragmatism, including its anti-Cartesian program against early modern subject/object epistemology. Postphenomenology retains and emphasizes the use of phenomenological variations as an analytic tool, and in practice postphenomenology takes what is commonly now called “an empirical turn,” which deeply analyzes case studies or concrete issues under its purview.

Classical Game Theory, Socialization and the Rationalization of Conventions

The paper begins by providing a game-theoretic reconstruction of Gilbert’s (1989) philosophical critique of Lewis (1969) on the role of salience in selecting conventions. Gilbert’s insight is reformulated thus: Nash equilibrium is insufficiently powerful as a solution concept to rationalize conventions for unboundedly rational agents if conventions are solutions to the kinds of games Lewis supposes. Both refinements to NE and appeals to bounded rationality can plug this gap, but lack generality. As Binmore (this issue) argues, evolutive game theory readily explains the origin of conventional behavior, but that is not Lewis’s project. Gilbert’s critique is generalized by reference to Bacharach’s (2006) work on team reasoning in games. The paper then argues that although Lewis’s account of the rationalization of conventions is shown by the reconstruction of Gilbert’s critique to be incomplete, Gilbert is wrong to conclude that classical (‘eductive’) game theory lacks the resources to explain conformity to conventions among people. A game-theoretic account of the dynamics of socialization, based on Ross’s (2005, 2006) idea of ‘game determination’, rationalizes choices of conventional strategies in overlapping generations contexts, provided agents are products of evolutionary selection and know that other players are also such products.     

INTERNISTS OF THE MIND OR PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUL: DOES PSYCHIATRY NEED A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY?

Although psychiatry is interested in what both body and mind contribute to behavior, it sometimes emphasizes one more than the other. Since the early 1980s, American psychiatry has shifted its interest from mind and psyche to body and brain. Neuroscience and psychopharmacology are increasingly at the core of psychiatry. Some experts claim that psychiatry is no longer interested in problems in living and positive goals such as mental health, happiness, and morality but rather has narrowed its focus to mental disorders addressed with psychotropic drugs. In view of this trend, psychiatry needs to confront two questions in social philosophy. If it is no longer directly concerned with health and happiness, how does it relate to these positive goals? And how does it relate as a medical institution to religious institutions, schools, and other organizations that directly promote health, happiness, morality, and the purposes of life? It is not enough for psychiatry to renounce its moral role; its practices still shape cultural values. Psychiatry should take more responsibility for developing a public philosophy that addresses these issues.     

Sensed presence as a correlate of sleep paralysis distress, social anxiety and waking state social imagery

Isolated sleep paralysis (ISP) is a common parasomnia characterized by an inability to move or speak and often accompanied by hallucinations of a sensed presence nearby. Recent research has linked ISP, and sensed presence more particularly, with social anxiety and other psychopathologies. The present study used a large sample of respondents to an internet questionnaire (N=193) to test whether these associations are due to a general personality factor, affect distress, which is implicated in nightmare suffering and hypothesized to involve dysfunctional social imagery processes. A new measure, ISP distress, was examined in relation to features of ISP experiences, to self-reported psychopathological diagnosis, to scores on the Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale and to scores on a new questionnaire subscale assessing social imagery in a variety of waking states. Three main results were found: (1) ISP experiences are only weakly associated with a prior diagnosis of mental disorder, (2) sensed presence during ISP is associated preferentially with ISP distress, and (3) ISP distress is associated with dysfunctional social imagery. A general predisposition to affective distress may influence the distress associated with ISP experiences; overly passive social imagery may, in turn, be implicated in this affect distress influence.     

The Immigration Triangle: Quebec, Canada, and the Rest of the World

As with many other immigrant destination areas, Quebec has experienced difficulty in retaining its original set of newcomers. This paper addresses the issue of retention in terms of a brain circulation model, under which immigrants enter a niche area (Quebec) and receive more subsidized human capital benefits in the form of education, language training, and skill certification than in any other province in Canada. The results suggest that a triangular migration model explains the internal migration decision for both the foreign-born and Canadian-born populations in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.     

Temperament and Psychopathy: A Dual-Pathway Model

ABSTRACT— The concept of psychopathy refers to a pattern of chronic antisocial behavior and personality features, such as emotional detachment, lovelessness, and guiltlessness, attributable in part to a temperament deficit. Historically, that deficit has been seen as a low reactivity to fear, but recent research has documented a second temperament deficit in adults that involves poor emotional and behavioral control. Both pathways are found in the child psychopathology literature, pointing to multifactorial developmental pathways from childhood to adult psychopathy.     

How Do Students Learn Theology?

This paper explores the way students learn theology through a small qualitative research project. It is undertaken in conversation with current higher education learning theory. This learning theory suggests that it is important to discover how a student conceptualizes learning and how they perceive the teaching environment. Students interviewed increasingly spoke of the value of this academic or more cognitive side of learning as they learned “deep approaches.” Important in this movement to deep, transformational learning was the presence of a relational teaching environment in which peers and teachers played a crucial role. This present study offers support to the view that the tradition of the learning community remains important for deploying deep approaches to the learning of theology in higher education. The paper argues that these relational principals of teaching and learning remain important in the face of the increased use of technology‐based tools and other pedagogical challenges to theological education today.     

The survival and developmental outcome of extremely low birthweight infants

The purpose of this retrospective study is to compare the factors affecting the survival and developmental outcome of extremely low birthweight infants (ELBW; < 1,001 gms.). One hundred and forty of two hundred and twenty-three ELBW neonates (63%) from two Level III NICUs born between 1986 and 1988 survived until discharge. Lower birthweight, 5-minute Apgar ≤ 3, and no administration of surfactant were the best predictors of infant mortality as assessed via logistic regression (correct classification = 78%). The functioning of 34 of these infants was assessed at approximately 18 months of age with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Mean performance on the Mental Development Index (MDI) was 88.65 ± 21.75, with 35.3% and 20.6% of infants scoring, respectively, I (< 85) and 2 (< 70) standard deviations below the mean. Given survival, intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH, Grade III or IV) was the best predictor of MDI performance as assessed via stepwise multiple regression (adjusted R²=.23). Cerebral palsy affected one fifth of the sample and was also best predicted by IVH. Discussion focuses on the conceptual and practical implications of the finding that infant survival and infant developmental status were associated with different factors.