Heidegger,Wittgenstein and St Paul on the Last Judgement: On the Roots and Significance of ‘The Theoretical Attitude’

The article examines Heidegger's lectures on St Paul and provides, in particular, a reading of their discussion of the remarks on the parousia in the letters to the Thessalonians. This reading serves a number of purposes. First, it makes clear how Heidegger's appropriation of a certain ‘anti-theological’ tradition helped first give a sense to his notion of ‘the theoretical attitude’, a problematic notion that plays a central role in his mature early philosophy. Second, it illustrates, and thus helps to refine the identity of, a particular kind of recognizably ‘phenomenological’ reflection that attempts to distance itself precisely from that ‘attitude’; and third, it points to a new perspective on some central and problematic themes in Heidegger's better known early writings and, in particular, their discussion of assertions. An identification of some remarkable similarities between Heidegger's remarks on the Last Judgement and remarks of Wittgenstein's help identify this perspective.     

The Hesychast method of prayer: its anthropological and symbolic significance

Hesychasm is an Eastern Christian method of prayer based on the invocation of the Name of Jesus and on the ‘descent of the noÛs (‘intellect’, ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’) into the heart’. This spiritual path, the method of which emerged in its most explicit form between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries on Mount Athos, is the core of Christianity, since it consists in the inner practice of the fervent and continuous repetition of the holy Name and aims to achieve metánoia (‘change of the noÛs’) for the entire human being; and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through an incessant militia super terram comparable to the Muslim jihād al-akbar (‘great holy war’). A meditated analysis of some forms of symbolism which characterize the method in question plus a few comparisons between some central components of Hesychasm, Sufism and other traditional spiritual paths may be an adequate starting-point to understand more deeply the symbolic and anthropological aspects of this eminently ‘paradoxical’ ascetic discipline.     

An evaluation of the effects of supplemental “fluency” training during maintenance

The voice onset time (VOT) of two groups of treated stutterers and a normal-speaking group was assessed by spectrographic analysis. Both groups of stutterers had significantly slower VOT than the normal speakers. The experimental group of stutterers was given 8 wk of “fluency” training designed to remediate characteristics of speech identified as related to “tenuous” fluency. The control group of stutterers received ongoing maintenance therapy. Posttreatment VOT was assessed. The experimental stuttering group had significantly decreased their VOT in the direction of the normal-speaking group, whereas the control group of stutterers had a greater VOT between pre- and posttreatment. The implication of these results for the maintenance of fluency are discussed.     

Rule learning in children: Multiple-set training and intermediate-size transposition

Two experiments were conducted in which the subjects were trained to choose the middle-size stimulus in either a single stimulus set or in each of two nonoverlapping stimulus sets. Following criterion, each subject was presented with a series of 12 test trials involving a new stimulus set. In Experiment 1, kindergarten children tended to choose the middle-size test stimulus if the test set consisted of stimuli intermediate in size to the stimuli in the smaller and larger training sets. When the test stimuli were all larger than any of the training stimuli, the probability of choosing the middle-size stimulus increased as the distance between the two training sets increased. Three groups of children participated in Experiment 2: a kindergarten group, a first-grade group, and a first-grade group that experienced middle-size training a year earlier. The distance between training sets and two training procedures affected the three groups in a similar manner during acquisition, but several interactions were obtained during the test. The findings were discussed in terms of the Lane and Rabinowitz (D. M. Lane & F. M. Rabinowitz, Child Development, 1977, 48, 412–426) rule based theory of intermediate-size transposition and suggestions were made as to how children acquire the concept of middle.     

Dissociative effects of flooding on a multivariate assessment of fear reduction and on jump-up avoidance extinction

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of three different amounts of flooding on hastening extinction of a jump-up avoidance response and on reducing fear as assessed by the multivariate fear assessment techniques of D. P. Corriveau and N. F. Smith (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1978, 107, 145–158). In Experiment 1, a 40-min flooding treatment significantly hastened jump-up avoidance extinction, 10 min of flooding had a marginal effect, and 5 min had no effect. In Experiment 2, flooding treatments of 5, 10, and 40 min duration were all effective in reducing fear of the grid floor as indexed by seven of our nine dependent measures, including approach latency, safety test latency, and amount of time spent on the grids. Flooded subjects that were dumped onto the grid floor once at the start of the fear observation phase were found to show somewhat more fear reduction than were flooded subjects that were simply placed on the ledge at the outset of the fear observation phase and never dumped. These results, i.e., less flooding is required to reduce fear than to hasten avoidance extinction, are contrasted with those of previous experiments indicating that more flooding may be required to reduce fear than to hasten shuttlebox avoidance extinction. Such differences are discussed in the context of SSDR theory.     

Toward a theory of apractic syndromes

Theoretical development on human motor behavior has occurred largely independently of data on pathological movement disorders. This paper represents an initial attempt to interface findings from studies of apraxia and those of normal motor behavior with a view to formulating a common theoretical framework. Such an integration may ultimately aid in understanding the nature of skill acquisition and provide insights into the organization of motor systems. Three putative theoretical models of movement control are discussed with reference to apractic syndromes. The most commonly accepted view—the hierarchy—possesses properties such as linear transitivity and unidirectionality of information flow that render it inadequate in explaining functional plasticity in the central nervous system. The heterarchy, which incorporates reciprocity of function and circular transitivity, is a more likely candidate but suffers from an inability to regulate the degrees of freedom of the system. Our favored candidate is the coalition model which embodies heterarchical principles, but in addition, offers a solution to the problems of degrees of freedom and context for motor systems. Evidence is reviewed from apraxia of speech and limbs in terms of a coalitional style of control and an experimental approach, consonant with coalitional organization, is developed. We promote the claim that an understanding of apractic behavior—and perhaps motor systems in general—will benefit when clinicians and experimenters embrace a theory of context and constraints rather than a theory of commands as is currently in vogue.