For more than fifty years, taxonomists have proposed numerous alternative definitions of species while they searched for a unique, comprehensive, and persuasive definition. This monograph shows that these efforts have been unnecessary, and indeed have provably been a pursuit of a will o’ the wisp because they have failed to recognize the theoretical impossibility of what they seek to accomplish. A clear and rigorous understanding of the logic underlying species definition leads both to a recognition of the inescapable ambiguity that (...) affects the definition of species, and to a framework-relative approach to species definition that is logically compelling, i.e., cannot not be accepted without inconsistency. An appendix reflects upon the conclusions reached, applying them in an intellectually whimsical taxonomic thought experiment that conjectures the possibility of an emerging new human species. (shrink)

Race and religion are integral parts of bioethics. Harm and oppression, with the aim of social and political control, have been wrought in the name of religion against Blacks and people of color as embodied in the Ten Commandments, the Inquisition, and in the history of the Holy Crusades. Missionaries came armed with Judeo/Christian beliefs went to nations of people of color who had their own belief systems and forced change and caused untold harms because the indigenous belief systems were (...) incompatible with their own. The indigenous people were denounced as ungodly, pagan, uncivilized, and savage. Hence, laws were enacted because of their perceived need to structure a sense of morality and to create and build a culture for these indigenous people of color. To date bioethics continues to be informed by a Western worldview that is Judeo/Christian in belief and orientation. However, missing from bioethical discourse in America is the historical influence of the Black Church as a cultural repository, which continues to influence the culture of Africans and Blacks. Cultural aspects of peoples of color are still largely ignored today. In attempting to deal with issues of race while steering clear of the religious and cultural impact of the Black Church, bioethics finds itself in the middle of a distressing situation: it simply cannot figure out what to do with race. (shrink)

A comparison between Muḥammad and Siddhārtha’s psychological states is made to identify how they had their mystical experiences and how their presuppositions and personalities shaped their interpretation of these experiences. Muḥammad’s mystical experience appeared to be based on an altered state of consciousness. Siddhārtha’s teachings include that one must not have blind faith and remain open to various truths. These teachings may reflect that he was high in openness to experience, which may have fortified him from becoming delusional. While mystical (...) experiences may have pathological overlaps, they could be categorized in a similar way to psychological states. Yet, mindful presuppositions and personality traits, especially from within openness to experience spectrum, are what make perceptions of these experiences diverse. (shrink)

Scholars in religious studies, or “religionists,” often mischaracterize the social‐scientific study of religion. They assume that a social‐scientific analysis of the origin, function, meaning, or truth of religion either opposes or disregards the believer's analysis, which religionists profess to present and defend. I do not argue that the social sciences analyze religion from the believer's point of view. I argue instead that a social scientific analysis is more akin and germane to the believer's point of view than religionists assume. I (...) single out seven mischaracterizations of the social sciences typically held by religionists. (shrink)

I examine the ancient and perennial notion of the elements (stoicheia) and its relation to an idea of place proper (topos) and natural place (topos oikeios) in Aristotle's work. Through an exploration of his accounts, I argue that Aristotle develops a robust theory of place that is relevant to current environmental and geographical thought. In the process, he provides a domestic household and home for earth, air, fire and water that offers a supplement or an alternative to more abstract and (...) controversial uses of a conception of 'nature' (physis). I identify and elaborate upon environmental aspects of place-based and elemental philosophy. (shrink)

Established religions integrate a society's everyday secular realities with humankind's numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions nourish the cultural expression of the archetypes propelling the “ritual dances” of art, sport, and technocracy. During sacred moments such as mother‐infant or adult bonding, neuroendocrine triggers activate lifelong ties. The cultural canon of the left cortex contrasts with the intuitive right. Brainstem “switches” alternate the left's cool, extraverted, sympathetic drive for control with the right's “warm” attachment behavior and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma (...) damages flexibility with resultant alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes. Substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control ensue. (shrink)

This paper is positioned within broader scholarly debates about ritual‐religious and psychological elements underlying the phenomenon of altered states of mind in Egyptian Muslim contexts. This research examines the intricate relationships between ritual, consciousness, and the unseen/unknowable world reflected in the imagination and practices of urban and rural communities belonging administratively to the city of Tanta in Egypt. This comparative study proposes that the image of the embodied invisible Other, in both benevolent and malevolent forms, impacts the state of consciousness (...) of persons participating in two different rituals, thezikr(remembrance of God) and thezār(the exorcism of spirits). This inquiry concentrates on the transformation of the states of people's consciousness, namely themajzūb(those mystically attracted to God) and themalbūs(those possessed by spirits), through embodied engagement with the invisible Other that is made visible through participation in the ritual performances of thezikrand/or thezār. Rituals performed by Egyptians, particularly those who experience altered states of consciousness, display both a psychic (emotional) experience and an encounter with the invisible Other that may be depicted as divine or otherwise non‐divine. Each case of thezikrritual andzārcult relates to its participants' perception of reality. (shrink)

It is important for psychology - as a discipline of thought about the nature of psyche - and for psychotherapy, as its practice of understanding, to draw a distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering if it aims to assist a person to become an indivisible being. A difficulty with mainstream psychology is the conviction that psyche begins and ends in the realm of Reason as this conviction tends to establish a reality of permanence, absolutes and substance, and hence consequently, colludes (...) with the ‘ten thousand things’ of neurotic suffering. When reason sets the rules of reality, it is argued, a deep sense of alienation and meaninglessness takes root. A psychology stuck in this realm is unable to attend to authentic human suffering, which is the reconciliation and synthesis of opposites in human nature. In the dichotomy of subject and object, and unconscious and conscious, a psychology of the reason unwittingly identifies with and acts out that which it rejects as inferior. It thus suffers from the very condition it sets out to alleviate. The concepts of enlightenment and individuation on the other hand draw a clear distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering. They conceive of a reality in which subject and object are one, so providing support to one suffering authentically so as to remain true to oneself and thus to become an indivisible being. (shrink)

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents (...) the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology. (shrink)

Therapeutic practice is based on theories displaying different profiles, which imply philosophical traits. My main concern is to discover these traits, in my eyes a neglected issue. The question of what sort of psychology helps for enhancement also depends on the inherent philosophical approach, including an idea about human nature. I try to identify philosophical features in two main psychological concepts: in the empirically founded psychoanalytic one dealing with psychic mechanisms, which could be observed in patients; and the so-called analytical (...) one based on a philosophy of nature, I call an ontological perspective. For characterising these two features, it seems appropriate to me to go back to the founder figures Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. It is open for discussion and interests which theory both representatives and their followers developed will be used for practice or research. (shrink)

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and (...) interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact. (shrink)

Ever since its beginning, Christianity ascribed an important role to care for bodily and psychic suffering. Up to modernity, psychological assistance was closely connected with theology. In modern times, philosophy and theology began to distance themselves from metaphysics and transcendence, thus opening the path for a purely psychological interpretation of religion and of religious life (cf. Kant, Schleiermacher). The founders of important psychological schools (Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Fromm, Fritz Perls, and Carl Rogers) offered purely naturalistic interpretations of (...) the human condition and discounted transcendence. Today, pastoral psychology is situated in a field of tension between a purely naturalistic psychology and openness to a spiritual dimension and to man’s vocation for transcendence. What those recent psychological schools contribute is important for a deeper understanding of man, but it remains merely partial as long as his spiritual dimension is disregarded. (shrink)

This essay applies the material developed in The Wounded Researcher to education. The core issue in that book is the necessity to make a place for the complex unconscious in research in order to lay a foundation for an ethics that is based in deep subjectivity. The therapy room has characteristically been the place where this kind of work has occurred, and in this regard therapy has been a form of education. The boundaries of the therapy room have, however, exploded (...) and, given the awesome powers of technology to develop and communicate information, how do we make a place for the unconscious in our educational practices? Drawing upon the work of Carl Jung this essay addresses the following questions: How does one make a place for the unconscious in the classroom, without turning teaching into therapy?; How does a teacher make a place for the unconscious dynamics in the complex interactive field among himself/herself, the students, and the material without overwhelming students?; What are the limits and dangers of this effort?; What are the consequences if we continue to ignore these dynamics in the bodies of knowledge we build? Examples from teaching my book to graduate students in psychology are provided. (shrink)

This research examines whether religious conceptions of guilt in Protestant and Roman Catholic groups account for constructive or non-constructive guilt-reactions and for different guilt-frequency. Participants in three groups filled in the Leuven Guilt and Shame Scale, the Leuven Emotion Scale and the Post Critical Belief Scale. Protestants were expected to experience more non-constructive guilt than Catholics, who were expected to experience more constructive guilt. Both were expected to have a higher frequency of guilt experience than the control group. Differences between (...) the groups were found: Catholics show more constructive guilt reactions than the other groups. Differences in non-constructive guilt reactions were not found. The Protestant and Catholic group experienced guilt more frequently than the control group. (shrink)

Edebi yaratıcılığın ne'liğinin anlaşılması sorunu uzunca bir süredir yalnız felsefenin değil, psikolojinin de temel araştırma alanlarından birine dönüşmüştür. Bu türden araştırmalarda salt edebiyat içi bir eleştirinin edebi yaratıcılığın somut betimlemelerini yapmakla kendisini sınırlandırmak durumunda olmasına karşın, felsefe ve psikoloji arasında kurulabilecek bir iletişimle, edebi yaratıcılığın kökenlerine yönelik verimli bir kavrayışın olanaklı olduğu ileri sürülebilir. Bu amaçla bir edebi esere yaklaşmanın uygulama adımlarında birinin de edebi metnin açıkça amaçlamadıklarını ortaya çıkarabilecek, felsefe ve psikolojiden olabildiğince beslenen bir çağrışım derlemeciliği olduğu söylenebilir. Bu (...) yazı, Kahin adlı bir edebi metnin bu amaçla ve özellikle Jungcu çağrışımlarla yeni bir okumasını yapmak amacındadır. (shrink)

Este artículo establece un diálogo entre el concepto de medio –presentado por Marshall McLuhan– y el concepto de mito–enarbolado por Roland Barthes– para evidenciarsus similitudes de trasfondo, y de este modo acercar el trabajo de estos dos pensadores quienes, no obstante susdistintos puntos de partida, logran confluir conceptualmentepara comprender de mejor manera la idea del macro-mito, y reconocer el efecto que esta construcción tiene sobre la reconocida sentencia de McLuhan: el medio es el mensaje.