Avatar for Our Age: Sathya Sai Baba and the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism

Life itself is a market. Giving and taking, bargaining and speculating, is part of the game. Life has its … profits and losses appreciation and balance sheets. But the giving of Bhakti [devotion] in exchange for Mukti [liberation] is the most powerful business of all.—Sathya Sai Baba (Gokak, V.K. 1975. Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, an Interpretation. Krishna Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, p. 237)It is your imperative duty to strive for the preservation of dharma. Today some people are trying to uproot Bharatiya Dharma (Indian Religion). We must resist all such attempts.… There are some people who are blindly enamored of Modern Western Civilization.… These so-called spurious and self-styled social reformers are trying to pollute society by depriving it of dharma.—Sathya Sai Baba (Gokak, V.K. 1975. Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, an Interpretation. Krishna Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, p. 246)     

On Reinstating “Part I” and “Part II” to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

The Editors’ Preface to the fourth edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is disparaging of the earlier editorial efforts of G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees and in particular of their inclusion and titling of the material in “Part II”. I argue, on both historical and philosophical grounds, that the Editors have failed to refute the editorial decisions of Rhees and Anscombe – a failure born both of a neglect of the historical circumstances and Wittgenstein's own expressed hopes and intentions for his writings, and of a myopic understanding of his philosophy. Wittgenstein's legacy has not been well served by their interventions, which should be undone in future editions.     

Dummett and Frege on sense and Selbständigkeit

As part of his attack on Frege’s ‘myth’ that senses reside in the third realm, Dummett alleges that Frege’s view that all objects are selbständig (‘self-subsistent’, ‘independent’) is an underlying mistake, since some objects depend upon others. Whatever the merits of Dummett’s other arguments against Frege’s conception of sense, this objection fails. First, Frege’s view that senses are third-realm entities is not traceable to his view that all objects are selbständig. Second, while Frege recognizes that there are objects that are dependent upon other objects, he does not take this to compromise the Selbständigkeit of any objects. Thus, Frege’s doctrine that objects are selbständig does not make the claim of absolute independence that Dummett appears to have taken it to make. Nevertheless, in order to make a good case against Frege based on the dependency of senses, Dummett need only establish his claim that senses depend upon expressions: appeal to an absolute conception of independence is unnecessary. However, Dummett’s arguments for the dependency of senses upon expressions are unsuccessful and they show that Dummett’s conception of what it is to be an expression also differs significantly from Frege’s.     

A Poetic Path from Melancholy to Mourning: Robert Lowell's Elegies as Case Study

This essay builds on a previous one in this journal (Cole, 2005) that details how reading elegiac poetry, the poetry of mourning, may be a pastoral resource for complicated grief or what is classically termed melancholia. A study of elegies by poet Robert Lowell (1917–1977), which depict a progression from melancholia to more “typical” mourning, demonstrates how thinking and writing in elegiac terms may offer a similar resource, whether for one's own melancholia or that of persons in one's care. Allan Hugh Cole, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.     

Acute nonhypothermic exposure to cold impedes motor skill performance in video gaming compared to thermo-neutral and hot conditions

The study examined whether or not acute exposure to unfamiliar hot or cold conditions impairs performance of highly skilled coordinative activities and whether prior physical self-efficacy beliefs were associated with task completion. Nineteen volunteers completed both Guitar Hero and Archery activities as a test battery using the Nintendo Wii console in cold (2 degrees C), neutral (20 degrees C), and hot (38 degrees C) conditions. Participants all completed physical self-efficacy questionnaires following experimental familiarization. Performances of both Guitar Hero and Archery significantly decreased in the cold compared with the neutral condition. The cold trial was also perceived as the condition requiring both greater concentration and effort. There was no association between performance and physical self-efficacy. Performance of these coordinative tasks was compromised by acute (nonhypothermic) exposure to cold; the most likely explanation is that the cold condition presented a greater challenge to attentional processes as a form of environmental distraction.     

Consciousness: a neurological perspective

Consciousness is a state so essentially entwined with human experience, yet so difficult to conceptually define and measure. In this article, we explore how a bidimensional model of consciousness involving both level of arousal and subjective awareness of the contents of consciousness can be used to differentiate a range of healthy and altered conscious states. These include the different sleep stages of healthy individuals and the altered states of consciousness associated with neurological conditions such as epilepsy, vegetative state and coma. In particular, we discuss how arousal and awareness are positively correlated in normal physiological states with the exception of REM sleep, while a disturbance in this relationship is characteristic of vegetative state, minimally conscious state, complex partial seizures and sleepwalking.     

Review of Curren and Dorn,Patriotic Education in a Global Age

Studies in Philosophy and Education -