Although considerable research indicates that mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance (Cook & Davis, 2006), athletic mental energy (AME) has never been conceptualized and measured. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conceptualize and develop a reliable and valid instrument to assess athletic mental energy. In Study 1, a focus group interview established the initial framework of athletic mental energy. Study 2 used a survey to collect athletes’ experiences of athletic mental energy and (...) develop a scale draft titled “Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES).” In Study 3, we examined the psychometric properties and the underlying structure of AMES via item analysis, internal consistency, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 4, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine AMES’s factorial validity; and examined concurrent and discriminant validity by examining correlations with athletes’ life stress, positive state of mind, and burnout. In study 5, we examined the measurement invariance of the 6-factor, 18-item AMES with Taiwanese and Malaysian samples. Study 6 examined the predictive validity by comparing AMES scores of successful and unsuccessful martial artists. Across these phases, results showed a 6-factor, 18-item AMES had adequate content validity, factorial structure, nomological validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, measurement invariance, and reliability. We suggest future studies may use AMES to examine its relationships with athletes’ cognition, affect, and performance. The application of AMES in sport psychology was also discussed. (shrink)

There are themes in Wittgenstein's later work which are extremely radical. By ‘radical’ I mean both that they cut to the very root of crucial philosophical issues, and that they tend to be ignored by the established philosophical positions of the day. More specifically, these themes focus on the understanding of epistemological bedrock, and they lead in directions about which it is difficult to get a hearing in major philosophical circles.

There is good reason to believe that Paul Tillich would have objected to the title of this paper. Several years ago I heard him begin a lecture on ‘Religious Existentialism’ with the comment, ‘There is no such thing as Religious Existentialism because there is only Religious Existentialism’. Similarly, he might have objected to the present paper's title by suggesting that every search for knowledge is, consciously or unconsciously, a religious search.

Reasoning about religion would seem to involve both explicit and tacit factors. These latter are what Pascal had in mind when he spoke of the ‘reasons of the heart which the reason knows not of’. Moreover, these reasons of the heart are the more interesting by virtue of being at least the more difficult and perhaps the more crucial. In these pages I want to examine the notion of reasons of the heart from the angle provided by the insights of (...) Michael Polanyi. Space will not permit a review of the major features of Polanyi's crucial concept of tacit knowledge. 1 I shall simply introduce and explore certain of these features as they seem relevant to the main concern of the paper. I trust this can be done in such a way as to be both meaningful to the reader and fair to Polanyi. (shrink)

Jerry H. Gill provides a fresh angle of interpretation for the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein by exploring his use of metaphor, as well as the implications of this use for new insights into his view of language in particular and philosophy in general. The first part of the work catalogs the major metaphors in the Tractatus, the Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty. The second part explores what these metaphors mean in the context of a broader interpretation of Wittgenstein—an approach (...) that has not been developed by other interpreters. (shrink)

In _Words, Deeds, Bodies_, Jerry H. Gill seeks to connect the thought of L. Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, M. Merleau-Ponty, and M. Polanyi in relation to the intersection between language and embodiment.

In this critical assessment of postmodernism, philosopher Jerry H. Gill points out that, however insightful the critiques of the postmodernists, they did little or nothing to offer constructive approaches to overcoming the impasse that their criticism of modernism created. Gill turns to an earlier generation of twentieth-century philosophers who anticipated later postmodern trends but offered alternative approaches to the dilemmas of modernism regarding the nature of reality, knowledge, and language. In four major chapters, Gill shows how Alfred (...) North Whitehead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi reinterpreted reality, meaning, the mind-body problem, and knowledge in refreshingly new ways. Essentially, these four thinkers provide us with a deeper understanding of postmodernism by viewing the nature of reality as interactive and open-ended, meaning as contextual and functional, the role of the body as integral and axial, and knowledge as dynamic and tacit. To tie together the main themes of his study, Gill concludes with a brief analysis of the key insights offered by J. L. Austin, especially his "linguistic phenomenology.". (shrink)

In this excellent survey of Native American worldviews, philosopher of religion Jerry H. Gill emphasizes the value of tracing the overarching themes and broad contours of Native American belief systems. He presents an integrated view to serve as an introduction to ways of life and perspectives on the world far different from those of the dominant Euro-American culture. Drawing on the scholarship of anthropologists and specialists in American Indian Studies, Gill brings together much original research in broad, accessible (...) chapters. He explores Native American origin stories, the special connotations given to spatial concepts such as the cardinal directions and the circle, the influence of the seasons and the cycles of life on different cultures, and clan and kinship systems. Separate chapters are devoted to key ceremonies and customs as well as to concepts of health, harmony, virtues, wisdom, and beauty. The final chapter considers the devastating effects on native peoples of the European incursion into North America. Gill discusses the reservation system, attempts at assimilation and resistance, the recent renaissance of American Indian cultures, and prospects for the future. A valuable appendix presents a representative sampling of Native American writings on beliefs and origin stories. This excellent introduction to the many diverse yet related American Indian worldviews will be a welcome resource for teachers of introductory courses in Native American Studies or philosophy of religion, as well as laypersons with an interest in native cultures. (shrink)

Subcreative sets, introduced by Blum, are known to coincide with the effectively speedable sets. Subcreative sets are shown to be the complete sets with respect to S-reducibility, a special case of Turing reducibility. Thus a set is effectively speedable exactly when it contains the solution to the halting problem in an easily decodable form. Several characterizations of subcreative sets are given, including the solution of an open problem of Blum, and are used to locate the subcreative sets with respect to (...) the complete sets of other reducibilities. It is shown that q-cylindrification is an order-preserving map from the r.e. T-degrees to the r.e. S-degrees. Consequently, T-complete sets are precisely the r.e. sets whose q-cylindrifications are S-complete. (shrink)

Explores the thought of twentieth-century philosopher Michael Polanyi.

In a world surrounded by smart objects from sensors to automated medical devices, the ubiquity of ‘smart’ seems matched only by its lack of clarity. In this article, we use our discussions with expert stakeholders working in areas of implantable medical devices such as cochlear implants, implantable cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators and in vivo biosensors to interrogate the difference facets of smart in ‘implantable smart technologies’, considering also whether regulation needs to respond to the autonomy that such artefacts carry (...) within them. We discover that when smart technology is deconstructed it is a slippery and multi-layered concept. A device’s ability to sense and transmit data and automate medicine can be associated with the ‘sting’ of autonomy being disassociated from human control as well as affecting individual, group, and social environments. (shrink)

In _Words, Deeds, Bodies_, Jerry H. Gill seeks to connect the thought of L. Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, M. Merleau-Ponty, and M. Polanyi in relation to the intersection between language and embodiment.

To localize wheat ESTs on chromosomes, 882 homoeologous group 6-specific ESTs were identified by physically mapping 7965 singletons from 37 cDNA libraries on 146 chromosome, arm, and sub-arm aneuploid and deletion stocks. The 882 ESTs were physically mapped to 25 regions flanked by 23 deletion breakpoints. Of the 5154 restriction fragments detected by 882 ESTs, 2043 were localized to group 6 chromosomes and 806 were mapped on other chromosome groups. The number of loci mapped was greatest on chromosome 6B and (...) least on 6D. The 264 ESTs that detected orthologous loci on all three homoeologs using one restriction enzyme were used to construct a consensus physical map. The physical distribution of ESTs was uneven on chromosomes with a tendency toward higher densities in the distal halves of chromosome arms. About 43% of the wheat group 6 ESTs identified rice homologs upon comparisons of genome sequences. Fifty-eight percent of these ESTs were present on rice chromosome 2 and the remaining were on other rice chromosomes. Even within the group 6 bins, rice chromosomal blocks identified by 1-6 wheat ESTs were homologous to up to 11 rice chromosomes. These rice-block contigs were used to resolve the order of wheat ESTs within each bin. (shrink)

In 1956, Melvin M. Rader started a tradition of exploring life's "enduring questions" via classic and contemporary philosophical readings. Jerry Gill upholds this tradition in the sixth edition of this respected introductory text that addresses such fundamental concepts of philosophy as rationalism, idealism, and the social contract.

Gill contends that the seeming loss of transcendence, in favor of naturalism (or overcome by thinking of intangible reality as it mediates and is mediated by tangible reality. He draws on well-seasoned theories of reality, knowledge, ethics, and language. Cloth edition, $26.50 (unseen). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Reason and quest for revelation, by P. Tillich.--On the ontological mystery, by G. Marcel.--The problem of non-objectifying thinking and speaking, by M. Heidegger.--The problem of natural theology, by J. Macquarrie.--Metaphysical rebellion, by A. Camus.--Psychoanalysis and religion by E. Fromm.--Why I am not a Christian, by B. Russell.--The quest for being, by S. Hook.--The sacred and the profane; a dialectical understanding of Christianity, by T. J. J. Altizer.--Three strata of meaning in religious discourse by C. Hartshorne.--The theological task, by J. B. (...) Cobb.--Theology and objectivity, by S. A. Ogden.--Can faith validate God-talk? by K. Nielsen.--The logic of God, by J. Wisdom.--Mapping the logic of models in science and theology, by F. Ferré.--On understanding mystery, by I. T. Ramsey.--Teilhard de Chardin; a philosophy of precession, by E. R. Baltazar.--The nature of apologetics, by H. Bouillard.--Metaphysics as horizon, by B. Lonergan.--Deciding whether to believe, by M. Novak. (shrink)

A comparison of the views of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Kazantzakis on the topic of transcendence. A fresh model for understanding this important yet complex notion is offered by the author.

It is well known that the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is the role of the body in all human experience and knowing, including even in the use of speech. Thus it is appropriate that his philosophy of language revolves around the notion of gesture. This essay explores the ramifications of this understanding of language in relation to the “speech” of deaf people through “American Sign Language,” which represents language as gesture par excellence.

It is well known that the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is the role of the body in all human experience and knowing, including even in the use of speech. Thus it is appropriate that his philosophy of language revolves around the notion of gesture. This essay explores the ramifications of this understanding of language in relation to the “speech” of deaf people through “American Sign Language,” which represents language as gesture par excellence.

This essay focuses on the applicaation of the notions of tacit knowing and embodied interaction to the college classroom. Topics ranging from classroom arrangement and discussion techniques, through curriculum and textbook choices, to attitudes and values are address.

The focus is on the crucial role played by metaphor in language acquisition, Following the insights of wittgenstein, Barfield, And polanyi. Emphasis is placed on the essentially informal and tacit dynamics involved in the mediation of meaning.