The discrepancy between measures of preferred and actual participation in decision making was used as a measure of ecological dissonance for an organization and then used to assess its relationship to job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. Questionnaires were administered to 143 faculty and staff members of Mississippi State University. Correlational analyses indicated mild relationships between the measures of ecological dissonance and job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization, thus providing support for ecological dissonance theory (...) (see Miller, Topping, & Wells-Parker, 1989). It was concluded that ecological dissonance in participation in decision making was a predictor of workers’ job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Like an Elephant Pricked by a Thorn:Buddhist Meditation Instructions as a Door to Deep ListeningWilla B. MillerThe phrase “deep listening” has been circulating in recent years in the contexts of contemplative education, psychotherapy, pastoral care, and the arts. This article is a reflection on deep listening from a Buddhist perspective, as it might support the ongoing development of career educators, although this reflection might apply equally well to ministers (...) and (in the Buddhist world) dharma teachers. My motivation to contribute to this discourse of listening is spurred by the belief that the effectiveness of educators, ministers, and dharma teachers might be enhanced by training in the art of listening. These career professionals share a key aspect of their role in common: They get up in front of groups of people to teach or preach. In this performative role, it is possible for teachers (or preachers) to become so accustomed to being the source of information that a dynamic is created, inside and outside the classroom or pulpit, in which discourse is weighted primarily in one direction. This dynamic, I would argue, prevents optimal learning and stunts the feedback loop necessary for pedagogical health, both for students and for their educators.Listening, as a valued pedagogical discipline on the part of the teacher, has the potential to rebalance this dynamic. To educate effectively, we need to come to know the hearts and minds of those we educating, not as a theoretical group but as individuals. It takes time, effort, patience, and a dose of curiosity to listen attentively to students, to get to know them. But this effort is worth it. Only once we begin to listen to the voice of their interests, passions, and history can we begin to understand or assess their needs. Every human being is in formation. Every human being is completely unique. Listening, with curiosity and attention, is a window into the formation of the human being in his or her uniqueness. To the degree that we become familiar with the unique in our students is the degree to which we can effectively meet them where they are.There are as many definitions of deep listening as there are theorists. On a panel on the topic of deep listening at the 2013 American Academy of Religions meeting, Duane Bidwell of the Claremont School of Theology aptly noted that deep listening is [End Page 15] “an undertheorized category.” It is not a term that has been claimed by only one field or person, but it has become popular in some religious circles and psychotherapeutic circles as a term that implies that listening can dive below the surface contents of a narrative. Two years ago, in a chapter of an anthology titled The Arts of Contemplative Care, I proposed that Buddhist practices of self-cultivation may provide models that can be adapted for applications of deep listening in a context of spiritual care.1 In that chapter, I noted that Patrul Rinpoche’s three points of “how not to listen” found in The Words of My Perfect Teacher (Kun bzang bla med zhal lung)2 can help us reflect on the difference between poor and effective listening techniques in the context of spiritual care. In this article, taking a similar approach but with different material, I will explore how instructions on meditation culled from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition can be adapted to develop a discipline of deep listening for educators. In exploring this topic, I will also propose a definition of deep listening to act as support for the discipline itself. Specifically, I draw on religious instructions found in a Tibetan genre called “māhamudrā meditation instructions” (phyag chen sgom khrid), from within the Kagyu (‘brug pa bka’ brgyud) school of Tibetan Buddhism, to construct a definition of deep listening for use in educational contexts.The term “deep” (zab mo) often appears in Tibetan religious exegesis as an adjective modifying the word “dharma” (teaching). There, we find the term “deep teaching” (chos zab mo) juxtaposed with the term “vast teaching” (chos rgya che ba) in Tibetan commentaries. To say that a teaching is deep (zab mo) in the Buddhist context is to indicate that it... (shrink)

Three of Zeno's objections to motion are answered by utilizing a version of nonstandard analysis, internal set theory, interpreted within an empirical context. Two of the objections are without force because they rely upon infinite sets, which always contain nonstandard real numbers. These numbers are devoid of numerical meaning, and thus one cannot render the judgment that an object is, in fact, located at a point in spacetime for which they would serve as coordinates. The third objection, an arrow never (...) appears to be moving, is answered by showing that it only applies to a finite number of instants of time. A theory of motion is also advanced; it consists of a finite series of contiguous infinitesimal steps. The theory is immune to Zeno's first two objections because the number of steps is finite and each lies outside the domain of observation. Present motion is hypothesized to be an unobservable process taking place within each step. The fact of motion is apparent through a summing (Riemann integration) of the steps. (shrink)

Behavioral momentum theory has evolved within the realm of operant conditioning. The thought-provoking momentum metaphor equates the strength of an operant response with its resistance to change and preference (i.e., choice) for that response over other available responses. Whereas baseline response rate (velocity in the metaphor) is assumed to be largely influenced by the response-reinforcer contingency, resistance to change and preference are assumed to reflect an intervening variable called behavioral mass, which is determined primarily by the stimulus-reinforcer relationship. This invites (...) the question of how well the momentum metaphor applies to the stimulus-reinforcer relationships of traditional Pavlovian paradigms. Presumably, a correspondence exists between behavioral mass and the notion of associative strength in the associative learning literature. Although response rate has little meaning in the trialwise structure of classical (i.e., Pavlovian) conditioning, response probability or magnitude might be regarded metaphorically as velocity. Momentum theory suggests that resistance to change (e.g., extinction) is a better indicator of associative strength than is response probability or magnitude. Therefore, variables that strengthen Pavlovian learning should influence resistance to extinction of conditioned responding in a similar manner. Moreover, it is important to assess momentum theory outside of strictly operant paradigms, particularly because in clinical settings many common disorders (e.g., phobias) and their therapies (e.g., cue exposure) are thought to be classically conditioned. (shrink)

Current guidelines on investigators' responsibilities to communicate research results to study participants may differ on whether investigators should proactively re-contact participants, the type of results to be offered, the need for clinical relevance before disclosure, and the stage of research at which results should be offered. Lack of consistency on these issues, however, does not undermine investigators' obligation to offer to disclose research results: an obligation rooted firmly in the principle of respect for research participants.

The cultures here in question are those of mathematics and of physics that I shall interpret with the goal of exploring different modes of creativity. As case studies I will consider two scientists who were exemplars of these cultures, the mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) and the physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955). The modes of creativity that I will compare and contrast are their notions of aesthetics and intuition. In order to accomplish this we begin by studying their introspections.

It has been said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It is important, therefore, to consider the parallels between the decimation of basic and applied biology by Trofim Denisovich Lysenko in the Soviet Union earlier in this century and the battering of present-day biotechnology by the Clinton administration. In both cases, we see the sacrifice of new science to old myth; heterodox, unscientific theories steering public policy; the abject failure of that public policy, (...) with dire outcomes for research and commerce; and glib, condescending, and exclusionary attitudes toward policymaking. (shrink)

It is a little understood fact that the system of formal logic presented in Wittgenstein’s Tractatusprovides the basis for an alternative general semantics for a predicate calculus that is consistent and coherent, essentially independent of the metaphysics of logical atomism, and philosophically illuminating in its own right. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to describe the general characteristics of a Tractarian-style semantics, to defend the Tractatus system against the charge of expressive incompleteness as levelled by Robert Fogelin, and to (...) give a semantics for a formal language that is the Tractarian equivalent of a first-order predicate calculus. Of note in regard to the latter is the fact that a Tractatusstyle truth-definition makes no appeal to the technical trick of defining truth in terms of the satisfaction of predicates by infinite sequences of objects, yet is materially equivalent to the usual Tarski-style truth-definitions. (shrink)

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

Arthur I. Miller is a historian of science whose approach has been strongly influenced by current work in cognitive science, and in this book he shows how the two fields might be fruitfully linked to yield new insights into the creative process.

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

The tower number ${\mathfrak t}$ and the ultrafilter number $\mathfrak {u}$ are cardinal characteristics from set theory. They are based on combinatorial properties of classes of subsets of $\omega $ and the almost inclusion relation $\subseteq ^*$ between such subsets. We consider analogs of these cardinal characteristics in computability theory.We say that a sequence $(G_n)_{n \in {\mathbb N}}$ of computable sets is a tower if $G_0 = {\mathbb N}$, $G_{n+1} \subseteq ^* G_n$, and $G_n\smallsetminus G_{n+1}$ is infinite for each n. (...) A tower is maximal if there is no infinite computable set contained in all $G_n$. A tower ${\left \langle {G_n}\right \rangle }_{n\in \omega }$ is an ultrafilter base if for each computable R, there is n such that $G_n \subseteq ^* R$ or $G_n \subseteq ^* \overline R$ ; this property implies maximality of the tower. A sequence $(G_n)_{n \in {\mathbb N}}$ of sets can be encoded as the “columns” of a set $G\subseteq \mathbb N$. Our analogs of ${\mathfrak t}$ and ${\mathfrak u}$ are the mass problems of sets encoding maximal towers, and of sets encoding towers that are ultrafilter bases, respectively. The relative position of a cardinal characteristic broadly corresponds to the relative computational complexity of the mass problem. We use Medvedev reducibility to formalize relative computational complexity, and thus to compare such mass problems to known ones.We show that the mass problem of ultrafilter bases is equivalent to the mass problem of computing a function that dominates all computable functions, and hence, by Martin’s characterization, it captures highness. On the other hand, the mass problem for maximal towers is below the mass problem of computing a non-low set. We also show that some, but not all, noncomputable low sets compute maximal towers: Every noncomputable (low) c.e. set computes a maximal tower but no 1-generic $\Delta ^0_2$ -set does so.We finally consider the mass problems of maximal almost disjoint, and of maximal independent families. We show that they are Medvedev equivalent to maximal towers, and to ultrafilter bases, respectively. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that Aristotle does not stay true to his official account on which every instance of choice must be preceded by deliberation, and it is a good thing that he does so because his official account has catastrophically bad theoretical implications. I argue that Aristotle does not deviate from his official account, and that the official account does not have the decisively bad implications others have claimed it to have. These objectionable entailments only obtain on a certain (...) conception of what deliberation is like, and I argue that this conception is not Aristotle’s. Once Aristotle’s own conception of deliberation is understood, the terrible putative entailments clearly do not follow from the official account, and so textually Aristotle remains consistent while conceptually he remains plausible. (shrink)

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

Arthur I. Miller is a master at capturing the intersection of creativity and intelligence. He did it with Einstein and Picasso, and now he does it with Pauli and Jung. Their shared obsession with the number 137 provides a window into their genius. --Walter Isaacson.

The philosophy of Wittgenstein is both novel and enigmatic. What is his new revolutionizing methodology? What is his aim, his purpose, his intention? What does he mean by the puzzling terms ‘forms of life’, ‘language-games’, ‘seeing as’? The key to the answers, according to the thesis of this paper, lies in Wittgenstein’s conception of the ‘Weltanschauung’. By the explanation of the use of this term, the entire philosophy of Wittgenstein may become illuminated with new meaning and interpretation. In understanding the (...) meaning of the word ‘Weltanschauung’ we shall come to understand why Wittgenstein used his new method, just what that method was, and what the impact of the concept and method had on the terms ‘Language-game’, ‘forms of life’ and ‘seeing as’. (shrink)

I offer a novel analysis of the relations between Aristotle’s three species of desire - appetite, temper, and wish - and the three things he says in EN 2.3 lead to pursuit - the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble. It has long been tempting to think that these trios line up with one another in some way, ideally relating their members in one-to-one fashion. One account, by John Cooper, has gathered prominent adherents, but other authors, notably Giles Pearson, have (...) argued we should give up on even trying to correlate the two trios. I attempt to show that the two trios do relate in interesting ways, but not in a way that correlates their members in a one-to-one fashion. Instead, I argue that both appetite and temper are ultimately for the pleasant, while all things that an agent takes as objects of wish are conceived of as either pleasant, beneficial, or noble. This account conflicts with a dominant understanding of the species of desire as differentiated by their objects. I reply defend the view by showing that there is a second criterion for differentiating the species of desire. (shrink)

Abstract Taking the integrated viewpoints of causal theory of reference, cognitive science and the notion of correspondence principles from physics, this paper addresses the problems of creativity, the nature of visual imagery and the manner in which science progresses.

I propose to support these replies with actual episodes in late nineteenth and twentieth century physics. The historical record reveals that meaning does change but not in the Kuhnian manner which is tied to descriptive theories of meaning. A necessary part of this discussion is commentary on realist versus antirealist conceptions of science.

This paper attempts to clarify the meaning and significance of "qualitative confirmation". The need to do so is related to the fact that, without such a conceptualization, a large portion of the human sciences are relegated to a less than scientific status. Accordingly, "qualitative confirmation" is viewed as a proper subset of traditional confirmation theory. To establish such a case, a general Hempelian framework is utilized, but it is supplemented with two additional levels of confirmation. It is concluded that the (...) final test for adequacy of such confirmation must rest on a subjective probability notion. (shrink)

While Merleau-Ponty’s political positions evolved over the course of his career, they are grounded in and guided by a remarkably consistent account of historicity. Praxis requires authentic historical engagement; and Merleau-Ponty was critical of inauthentic a-historical approaches throughout his career. I chart a trajectory of Merleau-Ponty’s position from The War Has Taken Place (1945), through some of the newly published material from the mid to late 1940’s Michel Dalissier’s monumental two volume collection of inédits, and the Introduction to Signs (1960). (...) This results in two surprising and admittedly controversial observations that contradict dominant narratives. I argue that: (1) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity precludes the claim that he abandoned Marxism altogether with the writing of Adventures of the Dialectic (1955); and (2) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity reveals the dominant Western narrative about the war in Ukraine to be inauthentic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deep Listening and Virtuous Friendship:Spiritual Care in the Context of Religious MultiplicityDuane R. BidwellA monk asked Zen master Yunmen: “What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?” Yunmen answered:“An appropriate response.”1In a pivotal scene from the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda, con artist Wanda Gershwitz is fed up—finally—with her partner, Otto West. When his jealousy and ersatz intellectualism repeatedly jeopardize their attempts to steal $20 million in (...) diamonds, Wanda yells: “Now let me correct you on a few things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every Man for Himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto, I looked them up.”2 It’s a funny moment, of course. But Otto’s (mis)understanding of Gautama’s teaching demonstrates a challenge in translating a spiritual-religious tradition from one cultural setting to another. Too often, and usually without intention, we are like Otto; we colonize and domesticate unfamiliar ideas, assimilating them into our existing worldview instead of experiencing and accommodating their challenging differences. Otto’s facile appropriation of Buddhism confirms rather than confronts his pre-critical, individualistic, and perhaps Darwinist worldview. A Buddhist caregiver might say that Otto was not “listening deeply” to the myriad voices that shaped his perspective.Similar hazards face someone writing about deep listening in relation to religious multiplicity.3 Deep listening, as a caring practice, “belongs” to the emerging field of Buddhist contemplative care,4 in which it has a technical (although perhaps undertheorized) usage richly informed by Buddhist thought and practice. But when I reflect as a pastoral theologian and spiritual caregiver trained in the Christian traditions of cura animarum, the cure or care of souls, deep listening can become unmoored from its origins. Someone marinated in the discourses and practices of Christian care can easily and perhaps unintentionally conflate deep listening with classic Christian [End Page 3] concepts of care such as the ministry of presence, the practice of unconditional positive regard,5 and the giving of oneself to God for the sake of the care seeker. Although I identify as a Buddhist Christian, habitual Christian views shape my thinking the way a canyon or streambed shapes the flow of water; unless I am attentive to the ways that Buddhist thought and practice seek fissures and carve new channels through the sediment of Christian spiritual care, I risk appropriating or erasing the practices that Buddhist caregivers call deep listening.Mindful of these waters, I want to immerse myself and readers in a particular question: In the context of spiritual care, what happens at the confluence of deep listening and a practitioner’s multiple religious voices? In responding to this question I have three aims: to describe deep listening, to provide a theoretical and experiential account of deep listening in the context of religious multiplicity, and to suggest an image from the Pāli canon that can help practitioners engage religious multiplicity in ways that minimize harm, increase compassion, and realize wisdom. A particular moment in spiritually integrative psychotherapy serves as a touchstone for my reflection; thus, I begin where the canyon creates a slender and fast-moving channel for deep listening: psychotherapy with Julie.6violence, karma, and compassionAt twenty-seven years of age, Julie was a soft-spoken, biracial graduate student who radiated mindful presence. She identifies as Asian American, and with her shaved head and tendency to wear dark colors and dramatic scarves, she might seem a typical LA hipster to other passengers on the commuter train she rode to and from our appointments. One year before our psychotherapeutic work, Julie had been beaten and raped by a boyfriend; subsequent thoughts of suicide led to a brief hospitalization. At that time she was assigned diagnoses of bipolar II and post-traumatic stress disorders. Daily, she swallowed a powerful mood stabilizer; monthly, she visited a psychiatrist. The symptoms of bipolar disorder, substance abuse, addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and suicide were present in her extended family. Julie sought counseling because of tension between what she called her “Buddhist identity” and the mental health diagnoses assigned to her. She said she... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social ArtifactDuane R. BidwellIt is somewhat paradoxical to write or speak about identity formation in two religious traditions that ultimately deny the reality of any identity that we might claim or fashion for ourselves. In the Christian traditions, a person’s true (or ultimate) identity is received through God’s action and grace in baptism; to foreground any other facet of the self, or (...) to anchor identity in anything but baptism, could be considered a form of idolatry. In the Buddhist traditions human identity is empty, woven not from an inherent or externally granted essence but through the interdependent arising of all things; 1 to cling to self and to identity as independent, enduring, immutable, or autonomous signals a mistaken understanding of reality.2 Indeed, as religious scholar Alice Keefe has written, “belief in the self as independent and self-existent is our fundamental delusion and root poison.” 3Yet day by day most of us experience our identities, including our religious, cultural, and social identities, as neither empty nor erased. On the contrary: they seem to be inscribed with enduring meaning. Knowledge has been chiseled into them through our participation in the rituals and relationships of the world. At times the very fullness of our identities can feel on the verge of overflowing. This sense of dynamic presence and fullness causes our identities to serve as important (and perhaps essential) tools for negotiating the hurly-burly of experience and relationship in the mundane, finite, material world.4 From this perspective, our religious identities are social artifacts, entities and meanings formed in between, or on the margins of, biological selves that are related to one another through communities of practice.5 These communal artifacts may then be interiorized by individuals as resources that can be employed in or offered back to the world—performed, if you will—through particular (and sometimes disciplined) practices.6The primacy of social process in creating and maintaining religious identity implies that community remains central to the process of fashioning the religious self in contemporary Buddhist and Christian practice. If this is true, it raises, of course, important questions about our understandings of ecclesiology and the nature of the sangha, theological anthropology and Buddhist understandings of the person. These questions [End Page 3] deserve to be answered, but they are too broad to be addressed here. My more modest intention is to contribute to generative conversation about religious identity formation by illustrating how my own religious identities as Buddhist and Christian have been practiced and performed as social artifacts in two particular instances. In a secondary sense, this essay serves as a reflection on pastoral work in a multifaith context, something “much needed in the Buddhist-Christian studies milieu.” 7Given the diverse academic approaches to Buddhist-Christian studies, it seems wise to begin by describing my own background and approach. By training I am a pastoral theologian, someone who seeks to understand critically the richness and complexity of human experiences and then to respond with appropriate, faithful, and effective acts of care. The psychological meta-theory of social constructionism serves as a primary conversation partner for my work; it invites me to ask “not what goes on ‘inside’ people, but what people go on inside of.” 8 For pragmatic reasons I tend to utilize David Tracy’s mutual critical (or revised) correlational method,9 and in the dialectic between understanding human experience and responding to it, I privilege liberationist theologies and religio-ethical norms of justice, love, and wisdom. My practice as a spiritual director and pastoral counselor seeks to promote practices of freedom for all people.10As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I am accountable to the Reformed tradition of Christian theology. My formal theological education occurred in the ecumenical context of a divinity school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and at a diocesan seminary affiliated with the contemplative Anglican tradition. My informal training in Buddhist philosophy and practice occurred in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, primarily through five years of participation in an immigrant congregation and weekly study with Thich Phap Nhan, a Vietnamese monk... (shrink)

The analysis here is an attempt to show how the current epistemological theory of response‐dependence (R‐D) may be relevant to understanding putative ontological claims of the empirical social sciences. To this end I argue that the constitutive features of human response, central to R‐D theory, can be made explicit for social science. I conclude that for the empirical social sciences the implication of combining R‐D and certain forms of statistical analyses leads to the possibility of an events‐based ontology.

Roth's analysis of the Rationalitätstreit (i.e., the debate(s) about rationality) stands as one of the major works on how the debate affects a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science and the social sciences. His principal thesis is that the debate may be seen as a series of Quine-type "translation manuals," exhibiting characteristics of paradigms (following Kuhn 1970) that can be treated as testable scientific theories by adequate empirical tests. The author argues that Roth's notion of empirically testing (...) translation manuals is not possible given his criteria. He suggests a clearer definition of "methods" and develops a case whereby translation manuals can be adequately tested within an inductive model-but with rather severe restrictions. Implications are indicated. (shrink)