Surrender-and-catch and phenomenology

Revision of a lecture given on November 10, 1982, in the course of a faculty seminar at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The present version owes much to the participants in the rational, undistorted discussion which followed, as well as to written comments by Erazim Kohák, his book, Idea and Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in IDEAS I (1978), discussions with Mildred Bakan, Helmut R. Wagner's response to a related paper, and a critical reading by George Psathas. I am deeply grateful.     

The structure of cockpit management attitudes

A revised version of the Cockpit Management Attitudes Questionnaire (CMAQ) is introduced. Factor analyses of responses from 3 different samples reveal comparable factor structure (previous attempts to factor analyze this measure had produced equivocal results). Implications for the measurement of attitudes and the assessment of attitude change are discussed. It is argued that the CMAQ will benefit both special training programs and efforts to explore attitude-performance linkages in air-transport operations.     

Selbst das selbst ist nicht selbst

EVEN SELF IS WITHOUT SELF. The Buddhist triad of body, speech and mind and the concept of self as their function are analysed from an analytic philosopher;s point of view. Buddhism is seen as an empirical religion with intersubjective operationalisations of its concepts. The mind is not observable but can be found by empirical methods in the traces of its actions, which can be found in the utterances of speech. Semantical and other paradoxes do not permit the location of mind within the hierarchy of languages. Mind has an active aspect by choosing a suitable frame of reference for every activity of the aspect of speech and is thus irreducible to that aspect. Mind is the space, the essence, indescribable by language, of possible frames of reference for perception and cognition. This absolute aspect of the mind corresponds to an absolute aspect of the self, unique by identitas indiscernibilium, which cannot be perceived, but can be found by the exercise of awareness; while the relative self corresponds to the individual form of cognition and does not therefore presuppose a semantical regress of ever richer metalanguages.     

Technical improvements to the projection tachistoscope

Three disadvantages of the usual projection tachistoscope are discussed. Because of low mechanical precision, stimulus alignment is difficult. Because of rather low focal distances of the projection lenses, the stimuli provide visual angles that are often larger than desired, and the photographic shutters are noisy, are relatively inert, and have a limited service life. A new construction is described that avoids these disadvantages with a modified configuration of commercial elements: stable and precise mounting of the single channels, a double-lens projection system, and a noiseless, fast mechanical shutter based on a limited-rotation motor.