Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Spiritual Emergence(Y), Psychosis, And Personality: Investigating The Role Of Schizotypy, Kylie P. Harris, Adam J. Rock, Gavin C. Clark

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Spiritual emergency (SEY) refers to a process of spiritual emergence (SE) or awakening that becomes traumatic for an individual, leading to a state of psychological crisis. There is evidence that SE(Y) is associated with both psychotic symptomatology and personality traits. This study examined the relationship between SE(Y), psychotic symptoms, and schizotypy, a construct that addresses psychotic-like personality traits in the general population. A total of 250 participants completed an anonymous online questionnaire. Results showed that SE(Y) was positively correlated with positive symptoms of psychosis and schizotypy, but demonstrated only very weak to no correlations with negative symptoms of psychosis and …

Is Diversity Possible In An Integrative Psychology-Transpersonal As A Whole Person-All Person Approach, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Table Of Contents—Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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The Mushroom, The Frog, And The Rainbow Of Desire: A Participatory-Psychedelic Spiritual Emergence, Gregg Lahood

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article will explore a spiritual emergency through a myth or fairy tale that emerged at the same time I had a frightening brush with death. Two days before the accident I had ingested psilocybin mushrooms. Michael Washburn, among other transpersonal theorists, will be used to interpret, amplify and re-frame this potential ‘psychotic episode’ with ‘borderline features’ into something more, perhaps, on the threshold of a shamanic initiation in a liminal state. The mythic sequence in my story anticipates the death-rebirth (perinatal pattern) and evolution of consciousness in the LSD research of Stanislav Grof; an evolution given epic participatory elucidation …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Core-Shamanism On A Group Of Westerners: A Brief Research Report, Joanic Masson, Yannick Gounden, Charlemagne Simplice Moukouta, Amal Bernoussi, Antoine Saurat

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

A study was conducted on Western adults who participated in a group undergoing initiation into therapeutic shamanism. It investigated how shamanic work could be a factor triggering changes in persons who never had been previously immersed in such a tradition. Five groups, each composed of six people for a total of 30 participants, met eight times over a period of four months. Analyzing questions asked of the 27 who completed the program resulted in the following identified themes: experiences of the group, trust in the shamanic practitioner, raised awareness of their feeling states, experiences of the shamanic journeys, understanding of …

The Meso-American Goddess Coatlicue: Too Terrifying For The Spaniards, Stanley Krippner

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The Coatlicue myth of Meso-America is currently represented by the huge basalt statue of the Earth goddess on display at the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. The Spanish invaders who unearthed the statue promptly reburied the goddess, who did not again see the light of day until 1803. Today she commands attention both as a singular work of art and as a reminder that Earth is, at the same time, a loving mother and an insatiable monster, one who ultimately devours those to whom she has given birth. From a postmodern stance, myths are

Crossed Tracks: Mesolimulus, Archaeopteryx, And The Nature Of Fossils, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

Organisms leave a variety of traces in the fossil record. Among these traces, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists conventionally recognize a distinction between the remains of an organism’s phenotype (body fossils) and the remains of an organism’s life activities (trace fossils). The same convention recognizes body fossils as biological structures and trace fossils as geological objects. This convention explains some curious practices in the classification, as with the distinction between taxa for trace fossils and for tracemakers. I consider the distinction between “parallel taxonomies,” or parataxonomies, which privileges some kinds of fossil taxa as “natural” and others as “artificial.” The motivations …

Betting & Hierarchy In Paleontology, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

In his Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences, Adrian Currie argues that historical scientists should be optimistic about success in reconstructing the past on the basis of future research. This optimism follows in part from examples of success in paleontology. I argue that paleontologists’ success in these cases is underwritten by the hierarchical nature of biological information: extinct organisms have extant analogues at various levels of taxonomic, ecological, and physiological hierarchies, and paleontologists are adept at exploiting analogies within one informational hierarchy to infer information in another. On this account, fossils serve the role …

Transpersonal Dimensions In Islamic Spirituality, Nikos Yiangou

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The Sufi tradition that arose within Islam describes a compelling and varied map of the self and its transformations. Over the span of a millennium of practice and discourse, Sufis have explored and detailed the stages of the journey of selftransformation towards their ultimate aim of union with the One. Their models of the spiritual journey and of the emergent transpersonal self, extensively contextualized in phenomenology, epistemology, theology and ontology, offer singular insights into a richly detailed holistic psychology of self-realization and the making of the complete human.

Participatory Research Methods In Transpersonal Studies: Introduction To The Special Topic Section, Olga R. Sohmer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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An Interview With John Heron: Exploring The Interface Between Cooperative Inquiry And Transpersonal Studies, John Heron, Olga R. Sohmer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In this interview, John Heron—the founder of cooperative inquiry (CI; Heron, 1996, 1998)—discusses this experiential, participatory approach to research and learning with participatory research special issue guest editor Olga Sohmer. After presenting a summary of cooperative inquiry, Heron and Sohmer discuss CI in the context of transpersonal studies, including past and prospective future applications. Questioning the emphasis on “trans” in transpersonal, Heron unfolds the three dimensions of human spirituality that CI engages and offers a vision for transpersonal studies in light of CI ideals. Additional themes that are explored include cultivating authentic relationships in CI, the role of the nonhuman …

Towards A Critical Understanding Of Deepfakes: Developing A Teaching Module And More, Wentao Guo

Pomona Senior Theses

Recently, computer-generated and computer-altered videos known as deepfakes have raised widespread concerns about the harms they may cause to democratic elections, national security, people’s reputation, and people’s autonomy over their words and actions as represented in videos and other media. How can we build towards a critical understanding of not only deepfakes, but also photos, videos, and the role of many other media objects surrounding us that inform us about the world? In this thesis, wanting to take a historical approach and noting the newness of deepfakes, I first investigate a historical case study regarding a manipulated photo from a …

Course Syllabus (W19 Online) Coli 331t--Television Culture: "Lens, Mirror, Screen: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

Or a conjuncture of three moments in the dialectic of television as technical apparatus and cultural practice. In this course, we will read George Orwell’s 1984, view Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of the novel, and consider a number of critical texts in order to think the psychological and social implications of television as an instrument of control, manipulation, and knowledge production. What, we ask, are the implications, in both 1984 and concrete experience, of light-speed communication capabilities for sense perception, consciousness, language, and awareness? In its dissemination of images and information, how does television impede and/or facilitate politics …

Art's Truth: An Aid To Ethical Sensibility, Nova Quaoser

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper I explore the philosophical implications of decision theory and deliberation on ethics, paying special attention to how vicious individuals yearn for a separate philosophical account. Drawing largely on Fricker, McDowell, Paul, and Nussbaum I discuss how transformative experiences open a window for understanding moral development in terms of habituation in the Aristotelian sense, and further how the vicious individual’s failure to deliberate may be remedied via a transformation through art.

A Feminist Epistemological Framework: Preventing Knowledge Distortions In Scientific Inquiry, Karina Bucciarelli

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how scientific knowledge claims can become distorted due to socially constructed conceptions of gender. Further, it delves into the key components of an epistemological framework that will minimize these distortions.

To set up the analysis, I first explore how ‘traditional’ scientific explanations of human fertilization map stereotypes of the passive female and the active male onto the scientific participation of the egg and the sperm in human reproduction, thus rendering this knowledge claim problematic. We then turn to arguments presented by prominent feminist epistemologists. I argue that in order to produce knowledge claims free of distortions due …

The Bionic Brain: Pragmatic Neuroethics And The Moral Plausibility Of Cognitive Enhancement, Peter A. Depergola Ii

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The seemingly infinite possibilities of contemporary neuroscience span from the augmentation of memory, executive function, appetite, libido, sleep, and mood, to the maturation and development of emotional health and personality. These prospects hint at the capacity to alter neurocognitive conceptions of reality. They also mark the unavoidable inculcation of nuanced individual responses, perhaps radical, to these “tailor- made” perceptions. Hence, there exists certain neuroethical, and even more generally, existential risks within this fascinating and expeditious enterprise. The primary question in the context of present-day neurotechnology is not what can be done, but what should be. To that end, this paper …

Predictors Of Perceived Multicultural Competence Among Neuropsychological Trainees, Hannah K. Greenbaum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Multicultural competence is necessary to provide psychological services to an increasingly diverse population (Sue, 2001). It is established that multicultural competence is important for training in psychology (Bodin et al., 2014; Diaz-Santos & Hill, 2016). Despite increased interest in recent years, multicultural competence in neuropsychology has not progressed in parallel with the focus of multiculturalism in psychology broadly (Rivera Mindt, Byrd, Saez, & Manly, 2010). Little is known about multicultural assessment, and it is not yet known what factors in training contribute to perceived multicultural competence in neuropsychological trainees (Elbulok-Charape, Rabin, Spadaccini, & Barr, 2014). The primary purpose of this …

Homelessness Status Among Female Veterans: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, And Hopelessness, Shorrelle Sheri Kennedy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Homelessness among female veterans is a problem that is likely to increase as growing numbers of women in the United States military reestablish themselves into their communities as veterans. The purpose of this quantitavie quasi-experimental study was to determine whether there are differences in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), depression, and hopelessness in homeless versus nonhomeless female veterans who have experienced at least 1 U.S. military deployment. Four theories served as the basis for this research: the cognitive theory of depression, conditioning theory, ecological theory, and the hopelessness of depression theory. The data were collected from 88 female veterans who were deployed …

John Toland’S Pivotal Version Of Secularism At The Turn Of The Eighteenth Century, Edward Jayne

English Faculty Publications

John Toland’s Pivotal Version of Secularism at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

John Toland (1669-1728) sustained a life-long confrontation with Christianity as well as with religion and orthodox belief in general. His unprecedented advance from Irish Catholicism to secularism and finally outright atheism played a central role in European philosophy despite its having been all but forgotten in later times. He left Ireland to attend Edinburgh University in Scotland followed by Leyden University in the Netherlands and finally a faculty position at Oxford University preceding his career as an independent author. By his early death he had published as …

Traversing States: A Reflection On Digital Technology And Simondon's Critique Of Hylomorphism, Michael O'Hara

Articles

In this article, I examine Simondon's concept of the technical object reflecting on its analogous relationship to digital technology. Intrinsic to such an analysis is Simondon's distinction between the abstract and concrete and his specific critique of the hylomorphic model. In a deeply rich example, Simondon, contra Aristotle, mobilises the process of mould-making as an exemplar of the modulated ensemble of forces that prefigure any formations of matter through form. I analyse Simondon's paradigmatic criticism while at the same time carving out the potential intersections that emerge through the kinaesthetic awareness of the body. By doing so I highlight the …