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An Embodied Spiritual Inquiry Into The Nature Of Human Boundaries: Outcomes Of A Participatory Approach To Transpersonal Education And Research, Olga R. Sohmer, Ross C. Baumann, Jorge N. Ferrer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Embodied spiritual inquiry (ESI) is a radical approach to integral and transpersonal education and research offered as a graduate course at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Inspired by elements of participatory research and cooperative inquiry, ESI applies interactive embodied meditations to access multiple ways of knowing (e.g., somatic, vital, emotional, mental, contemplative) and mindfully inquire into collaboratively decided questions. This article presents the learning outcomes of an inquiry into the nature of human boundaries within and between co-inquirers, providing an example of how ESI is implemented in the classroom and can be used to study transpersonal subject matter. …

An Illustration Of Cooperative Inquiry Design: Finding Our Way To Precious Knowledge, Together, Susan L. Ross

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Although transpersonal psychology and practices are inherently holistic, vitally informed by an ontology of interconnectedness, and fundamentally open to practices that challenge hegemonic norms in research practices, the use of participatory methods that implement these ideals, remains scarce. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the details of the transpersonal research I co-conducted, which used Cooperative Inquiry to analyze the transpersonal phenomenon of psychospiritual transformation, for researchers and practitioners who seek an example to guide their investigations. My intent is to stimulate enthusiasm for this method by providing an overview of cooperative inquiry followed by a detailed account of …

Justice Or Pleasure?, Christopher M. Innes

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dr. Robert Ford confides to Dolores that his father would not agree with his creation of robots for the enjoyment of humans. "My father told me to be satisfied with my lot in life. That the world owed me nothing. And so, I make my own world" ("Contrapasso"). This tells us at once that Dr. Ford's father had a Platonic notion of justice.

Hull House, The Pullman Strike, And Tolstoy: Documenting The Work Of Jane Addams, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Review:

Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Maree de Angury, and Ellen Skerrett, editors. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Volume III: Creating Hull-House and an International Presence, 1889-1900. University of Illinois Press, 2019.

The sheer amount of material packed into the nearly 1,000 pages of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, volume 3, is breath-taking. In this volume the editors, Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Maree de Angury, and Ellen Skerrett include a generous selection of Addams’s correspondence and writings during the first decade of Hull House’s existence, supplemented by extensive endnotes and commentary. This continues the pattern the editors used in …

Ua101/1 Society For Values In Higher Education Bylaws / Charter, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Bylaws and charter documents created by The Society for Values in Higher Education

Ua101/5 Society For Values In Higher Education Publications, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Publications of The Society for Values in Higher Education.

Gramscian Perspectives On Populism, Luke William Mooberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly liberal states are facing challenges from populist movements. This paper argues that the prison writings of Antonio Gramsci can provide important insights into the phenomenon and how to counteract it. The first two sections outline a set of Gramscian analytical tools: hegemony, non-hegemony, passive revolution, and Caesarism. These theoretical tools are then applied to different periods of the Third Republic of France, 1870-1940. This paper looks at this French example because it features unique relationships between populism, ideology, and the experience of liberalism prior to World War II. The third section demonstrates the implications of non-hegemony within international society, …

Comparative Pride, Christopher Morgan-Knapp

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Comparative pride – that is, pride in how one compares to others in some respect – is often thought to be warranted. In this paper, I argue that this common position is mistaken. The paper begins with an analysis of how things seem when a person feels pride. Pride, I claim, presents some aspect of the self with which one identifies as being worthy. Moreover, in some cases, it presents this aspect of the self as something one is responsible for. I then go on to argue that when the focus of one’s pride is comparative, things are never as …

Forty-Fourth Annual Midwest Philosophy Colloquium, 2019-2020, Philosophy Discipline

Midwest Philosophy Colloquium

Programs for the forty-fourth Midwest Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Minnesota Morris in 2018-2020.

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 …

Oneness In Everyday Life: Nonduality, Wholeness And Human Life After Awakening, Gibbons, Tom

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

In Advaita Vedanta a distinction is made between an experience of oneness and permanent awakening. The author argues that a nondual philosophy such as Advaita - as opposed to a direct experience of oneness – contains significant theoretical difficulties, which in turn are reflected in problems with actualizing nonduality in everyday human life. Alternative spiritual conceptions that might be more helpful in guiding the nondual aspirant in her spiritual life are examined, including the concept of “wholeness.” In the place of a reliance on an exclusive doctrine of nonduality, Jorge Ferrar’s concept of “Participatory Spirituality” and A. H. Almaas’s idea …

Categorical Modelling Of Conscious States, Baruss, Imants

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

In the last several decades, there has been an explosion of research concerning consciousness with some efforts at mathematical modelling. The purpose of this paper is to model conscious states using categorical constructions. In particular, this modelling captures temporality, the intentional structure of consciousness, and meaning fields, which provide the templates for occurrent events. The architecture of conscious states naturally lends itself to applications of category theory, more specifically to sheaf-like constructions in which the stacks over a site are topoi whose germs are the objects of the topoi. Each topos represents the potential experiential content of an individual where …

Psychotherapy In The Dream: A Phenomenological Exploration, Bustos, Nick

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Post-materialist ontologies offer a transformed worldview whose implications point toward the illusory nature of the separate self, or ego. Aligned with the literature of mysticism and perennialist spiritual models, this portends a significantly altered backdrop for the practice and discipline of psychotherapy, the underlying premises of which assume a strict existential dichotomy between patient and therapist. Kenneth Wapnick, preeminent scholar of the twentieth-century spiritual document of A Course in Miracles, provides a relevant model toward integrating spiritually-based, ego-negative states within psychotherapy practice. The author studied the lived experiences of eight psychotherapists, both practicing and retired, who practice according to this …

Love And Respect As Moral Attitudes And Practices Of Recognition, Erica Stonestreet

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Beginning from the premise that moral deliberation and action have their roots in the recognition of persons, this paper argues that love deserves to stand on equal footing with respect as a mode of moral recognition. I argue first that as attitudes, respect and love are modes of moral recognition responding to specific others. They thus have similar epistemologies, but are distinguished by their positions along a concrete-abstract axis. In particular, I claim, respect is an attitude that recognizes another as a person, whereas love is an attitude that recognizes another as the person they are. Both attitudes check the …

Slip Of Southern Hospitality, Grace O'Rourke

Writing Across the Curriculum

Personal narrative of a family trip and stop at upscale South Carolinian restaurant.

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 …

The Aristotelian Context Of The Existence-Essence Distinction In De Ente Et Essentia, Angus Brook

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

This paper explores the Aristotelian context of the real distinction between existence and essence thought to be posited in Thomas Aquinas’ early work De Ente Et Essentia. In doing so, the paper situates its own position in the context of contemporary scholarship and in relation to the contemporary trend to downplay Aristotle’s influence in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. The paper argues that re-reading De Ente Et Essentia in this way sheds new light on some of the crucial debates in contemporary Thomist scholarship, particularly with respect to the analogous relation between potency and act: essence and existence, the distinction between …

Whither Rose?: Philosophy, Theology, And The West, Elijah Perry

Philosophy Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

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

Recovering Heraclitus: Neglected Religious, Ethical And Political Themes In The Work Of A Pre-Socratic Thinker, Thomas Joseph Wood

Wayne State University Dissertations

The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus writes in a puzzling, cryptic way which makes his ideas difficult to work out. Many commentators are content to make some broad statements about his place in the development of philosophy as a natural philosopher or metaphysician; statements for which there is ample support.

In this essay, I argue that we can use Heraclitus’ biography and his historical context to recover his ideas about religion, ethics, and politics. I believe that this method reveals a Heraclitus who was grasping for an early sort of political theory and ethics in response to the turbulent period in …

Idiot Science For A Blue Humanities: Shakespeare's The Comedy Of Errors And Deleuze's Mad Cogito, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

Can we imagine a Blue Humanities that takes the non-relation as a starting point for ecological thought? I believe we can. Following Shakespeare and Deleuze, this essay engages in a thought experiment that, if it is not too absurd, might, like the ship of fools of medieval times, unmoor the Blue Humanities from its current safe harbor by putting the thought of ‘our’ world under erasure. This is not a matter of turning thought around, such that, by turning to the sea, we turn thought away from calculation and instrumental reason and rediscover our true nature. Rather, the image of …

Parental Licensing And Discrimination, Carolyn Mcleod, Andrew Botterell

Philosophy Publications

In order to protect children from risks associated with bad parenting, some philosophers have recommended that all parents be licensed, in much the same way in which drivers of motor vehicles and many professionals, such as physicians, are licensed. In this chapter, we clarify what parental licensing is, describe philosophical theories about it, and assess these theories in terms of how well they deal with problems of discrimination in parental licensing. While much of our discussion focuses on biologism, the privileging of biological parenthood over non-biological forms of parenthood, we also touch on other forms of discrimination that parental licensing …

Quasi-Factives And Cognitive Efficiency, Axel Barcelo Aspeitia, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

We introduce the notion of a "quasi-factive" -- sentences such as 'It isn't widely known that Obama has been arrested', which is true because he hasn't been arrested -- and offer an explanation of why we hear them as if they were factives.

Slurs And Register: A Case Study In Meaning Pluralism, Justina Diaz-Legaspe, Chang Liu, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor …

Emociones, Ofensa Y Registro Sociolinguistico: El Caso De Los “Usos Distantes” De Los Términos Discriminatorios, Justina Diaz Legaspe, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

There is a particular kind of use of slurs in which the negative emotions typically associated with them (hatred, anger) are not present in the occurrence. Even so, these uses still resonate as incorrect or inadequate. This kind of “detached use” is not only an interesting, rarely mentioned phenomenon per se; it also offers some support to a novel approach to slurs based on the sociolinguistic notion of “register”. This paper examines some types of detached uses, extracts some of their essential features and assesses the way the register-based approach to slurs can account for them.

Plato's Bed: Essence And Archetype In The Theory Of Forms, John Thorp

Philosophy Presentations

The Theory of Forms is a thread that runs through nearly all of Plato’s intellectual career, being variously elaborated, nudged, and tweaked along the way. The project summarized in this poster argues that there is a serious ambiguity underlying the entire theory, an ambiguity that Plato himself never really noticed; at different times he was pursuing two different understandings of the Forms: as archetypes on the one hand, and as essences on the other. Each of these understandings has serious drawbacks.