The author says that physics & metaphysics are the two sides of the same coin. While physics deals with the objective/physical side of life, metaphysics deals with the mental/subjective side. THE PHYSICS OF METAPHYSICS traces the evolution of physics & metaphysics from their captivity in organized religion, from 2,000 years ago to the present, & explains the role of each. Physics & metaphysics were regarded as one discipline until separated in the 17th century by the Christian Church. Since the beginning (...) of the 20th century, with the introduction of the quantum & relativity theories, the two disciplines have been moving together again. The result is a new paradigm of the universe which encompasses our entire lives & provides answers to questions which have long demanded to be resolved. (shrink)

Two complementary bodies of literature either claim explicitly or imply that human cruelty is rooted in asymmetrical relationships. The first describes and analyzes various forms of domination and acquiescence, including colonialism, racism, imperialism, sexism, and interpersonal power dynamics, among others. The second attempts to describe what would constitute the antidote, namely symmetrical relationships of mutuality and equality. Both of these literatures counsel abandoning asymmetrical relationships in favor of the symmetrical. To the contrary, this paper argues that it is only in (...) the context of asymmetrical relationships that humans can learn the basics of equality and mutual regard that undergird democracy. More particularly, the moral use of asymmetrical relations would be to help the young acquire, inter alias, the kinds of self-awareness and self-understanding that would enable them to function as responsible parties in symmetrical relations. (shrink)

Since the introduction of the term dualcareer family by Rapoport and Rapoport in 1969, an increasingly large body of literature concerning this phenomenon has developed — perhaps in response to the rapid growth of dual-careerism in North American Society. This literature is extremely diverse, ranging from purely academic articles in the professional journals of economics, business, sociology, psychology, etc., to self-help and trade books such as The Two Career Couple by Hall and Hall; to light articles in popular magazines such (...) as Redbook, People, Good Housekeeping, etc.This paper reviews this literature and discusses the implications of the dual-career family structure from both the individual and the organizational points-of-view. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that misperceptions and illusory experiences can occur if sensory stimulation is withdrawn or becomes invariant even for short periods of time. Using a perceptual deprivation paradigm, we created a monotonous audiovisual environment and asked participants to verbally report any auditory, visual or body-related phenomena they experienced. The data (analysed using a variant of interpretative phenomenological analysis) revealed two main themes: (1) reported sensory phenomena have different spatial characteristics ranging from simple percepts to the feeling of immersion (...) in a complex multisensory environment and (2) the active contribution of the perceiver where participants report engaging in exploratory processes even when there is nothing to find. Detailed analysis of the qualitative data further showed that participants who reported more perceptual phenomena were more likely to report internal bodily sensations, move more during the experiment and score higher on the Revised Hallucination Scale than those reporting fewer percepts explicitly linking perceptual deprivation to somatic phenomena. The results demonstrate how the variety of sensory experiences induced by perceptual deprivation can give further insight into the factors mediating conscious awareness and may suggest ways in which the brain imposes meaning on the environment under invariant sensory conditions. (shrink)

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

Here, we assess the usefulness of first-person methods for the study of embodiment during the rubber hand illusion (RHI). Participants observed a rubber hand being stroked synchronously and asynchronously with their concealed hand after which they made proprioceptive judgments about the location of their hand and completed a self-report questionnaire. A randomly selected cohort was further interviewed during the illusion and their transcripts analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results showed that the IPA group experienced a more intense embodied experience (...) during the RHI, measured by proprioceptive distortion and self-report. IPA revealed four main themes of embodied experience: recalibration of the body schema; violation of the body schema; multisensory integration; and illusory experience over time. The report of agency was a significant predictor of proprioceptive distortion. This study shows how first-person methodologies can be empirically rigorous and how the introspective interview provides a rich, detailed account of embodied experience. (shrink)

For every uncountable regular cardinalκ and any cardinalλ≧κ,P κ λ denotes the set $\left\{ {x \subseteqq \lambda :\left| x \right|< \kappa } \right\}$ . Furthermore, < denotes the binary operation defined inP κ λ byx (...) + denotes the setP κ λ−I, andI * the filter dual toI.An idealI overP κ λ is said to benormal iff every functionf:P κ λ→λ with the property that {x∈P κ λ:f(x)∈x}∈I + is constant on a set inI +.I is said to bestrongly normal iff every functionf:P κ λ→P κ λ with the property that {x∈P κ λ:x∩xκ≠Ø∧f(x)shrink)

Conversational artificial agents and artificially intelligent voice assistants are becoming increasingly popular. Digital virtual assistants such as Siri, or conversational devices such as Amazon Echo or Google Home are permeating everyday life, and are designed to be more and more humanlike in their speech. This study investigates the effect this can have on one’s conformity with an AI assistant. In the 1950s, Solomon Asch’s already demonstrated the power and danger of conformity amongst people. In these classical experiments test persons were (...) asked to answer relatively simple questions, whilst others pretending to be participants tried to convince the test person to give wrong answers. These studies were later replicated with embodied robots, but these physical robots are still rare. In light of our increasing reliance on AI assistants, this study investigates to what extent an individual will conform to a disembodied virtual assistant. We also investigate if there is a difference between a group that interacts with an assistant that communicates through text, one that has a robotic voice and one that has a humanlike voice. The assistant attempts to subtly influence participants’ final responses in a general knowledge quiz, and we measure how often participants change their answer after having been given advice. Results show that participants conformed significantly more often to the assistant with a human voice than the one that communicated through text. (shrink)

We have previously found that attention to internal somatic sensations during a heart beat perception task increases the misperception of external touch on a somatic signal detection task , during which healthy participants erroneously report feeling near-threshold vibrations presented to their fingertip in the absence of a stimulus. However, it has been suggested that mindful interoceptive attention should result in more accurate somatic perception, due to its non-evaluative and controlled nature. To investigate this possibility, 62 participants completed the SSDT before (...) and after a period of brief body-scan mindfulness meditation training, or a control intervention . The meditation intervention reduced tactile misperception and increased sensitivity during the SSDT. This finding suggests that the perceptual effects of interoceptive attention depend on its particular nature, and raises the possibility that body-scan meditation could reduce the misperception of physical symptoms in individuals with medically unexplained symptoms. (shrink)

volume 1. Quantifying diversity and formulating success -- volume 2. Perspectives and exemplary programs.

The biblical notion of dominion has often been cited as the source and sanction for Western attitudes of environmental disregard. An analysis of the Genesis passage in which dominion (radah) is mentioned reveals a curious misreading of the text: dominion is actually an ideal of human-divine intimacy and peacefulness-as one ought to expect in a paradise creation story. I analyze Genesis dominion not only as areligious concept, but also as a philosophical notion manifesting the Hebrew self-understanding of its contemporary experience (...) with the natural world. Being a verb, radah is also an action concept that connotes an ethic of environmental responsibility. Dominion authorizes a philosophical critique of Western attitudes and practices of environmental exploitation. I defend it here as an intentional expression of the Western religious consciousness that could, if it were understood as an ideal of responsible action rather than as an authorization for callous disregard of the natural world, actually promote interreligious dialogue on environmental issues. (shrink)

Self-Deception and the Common Life investigates the topic of self-deception from three points of view: philosophical psychology, ethics, and theology. Empirical evidence and an -ordinary language- analysis support the case that the linguistic expression 'self-deception' is literally meaningful and that the language of the common life can be trusted. After critically analyzing the cognition, translation, and action accounts, along with the contributions of Freud and Sartre, Steffen proposes a new synthetic -emotional perception- account, one that avoids paradox. Giving attention to (...) relevant moral issues, he argues that self-deception is not immoral, but represents a peculiar form of akrasia. Finally, because theologians employ 'self-deception' to describe the cognitive component of sin, Steffen considers the logic of theological self-deception. His study seeks an -intimate acquaintance- with self-deception and exemplifies a method of analysis relevant to constructive theological inquiry.". (shrink)

Comments on Fullerton's paper, 'The doctrine of space and time' (1901). Fullerton adapts both Kantian and Berkelian doctrine of space, but his view on space is dominated more by the Berkelian views. His views on time are the same as that on space. His comparative study on animals has been criticized since it is claimed that animals are living wholes and abstracting certain parts have little value for fundamental comparison. The concepts of infinity and infinite divisibility are considered important. However, (...) he misses the real import of infinity by recognizing the possibility of infinite divisibility and ignores the distinction between being infinitely divisible and infinitely divided. The world according to him is not given directly by intuition and consciousness can only represent it. (shrink)