Deeper Truth Research Articles

Excerpts from the International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting (2005) and the American Benedictine Academy Convention (2008): [From] Thomas Merton, Monk and Prophet of Peace: The Opening Address at the 2005 International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting

Excerpts from the International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting (2005) and the American Benedictine Academy Convention (2008): [From] Thomas Merton, Monk and Prophet of Peace: The Opening Address at the 2005 International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting1 John Eudes Bamberger …[F]rom my first contact with Merton’s writings, I viewed him as a prophetic voice for our times. In fact, I believe that Merton himself, already before he entered the monastery, was convinced he had a special gift to speak in God’s name to his age. That is what accounts for his beginning to write an autobiography already at the age of twenty‐four, shortly after his conversion. This conviction led him to break with a tradition of centuries and to overcome the initial resistance of his superiors, by publishing a journal, The Sign of Jonas, about his day‐to‐day experiences and reflections as a Trappist monk not long after publication of his life story. He continues to speak to us today in circumstances that, in many respects, are marked by the issues he identified half a century ago as crucial for the future of our world. His life and writings that have brought us together here in the cause of Christian faith and world peace are a living indication of his role as one who speaks in the name of the God of peace and justice. His concern for these issues was a fruit of the faith that grew out of his monastic life and contemplative prayer. Rightly to understand his approach to the issues of peace and non‐violence, it is essential to advert to the fact that his chief, daily efforts were expended in what the monastic tradition calls, “the work of the heart,” that is, the prolonged struggle with the passions and contemplative assimilation of the truths of faith. Through this interior labor he became, as Gordan Zahn notes, a man “ahead of his time” because he was “in tune with his time.” Merton viewed his times in the light of history. This perspective permitted him to observe with keen penetration that “somewhere in the last fifty years we have crossed a mysterious limit set by Providence and have entered a new era…There has been a violent disruption of society and a radical overthrow of that modern world which goes back to Charlemagne.” Based on his contemplative experience he viewed the issues of war and violence in the broadest of contexts, as a crisis of the spirit as he stated in 1962: The present world crisis is not merely a political and economic conflict. It goes deeper than ideologies. It is a crisis of [humanity’s] spirit. It is a great religious and moral upheaval of the human race, and we do not really know half the causes of this upheaval. We cannot pretend to have a full understanding of what is going on in ourselves and in our society…The moral evil in the world is due to [humanity’s] alienation from the deepest truth, from the springs of spiritual life within [one]self. Anyone who reads some of the many books and articles written about Merton the man and his thought, will soon realize that he was uncommonly sensitive to the social forces at work in his world and so was able to interpret its condition and spiritual needs with an exactitude of insight. It will also be apparent that he was a many‐sided personality, richly complex, not always obviously consistent in his opinions. Footnotes 1. The other keynote speaker was John Dear, S.J. See The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality, and Social Concerns, Vol. 19 (Louisville, NY: Fons Vitae, 2007), pp. 24‐38 © 2009 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life

Psychoanalysis and Psychosocial Studies

This paper examines the way in which debates over the place of psychoanalysis in psychosocial studies are developing in the British academic context, from the position of sympathetic criticism both of psychosocial studies and of psychoanalysis. The general argument is that both these approaches have real objects of study and considerable legitimacy, and that bringing them together is in principle productive. However, the loose and sometimes pious way in which psychoanalysis has been theorized within psychosocial studies has not done favours to either approach. The paper offers a critique of psychoanalytic certainty – of the type of reading of psychoanalysis that sees it as harbouring the deep truths of human nature – and utilizes the broader concept of reflexivity to suggest that psychoanalysis' contribution might usefully become more tentative and disruptive than has so far been the case.

Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York, a Memoir by Myra Shapiro

Reviewed by: Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York, a Memoir Margaret Fuchs Singer (bio) Myra Shapiro Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York, a Memoir ( Chicory Blue Press , 2007 ) She is dirty blond, curly haired, hazel eyed; she is almost fifty and, as her memoir Four Sublets opens, Myra Shapiro is about to begin a new life. Leaving behind her years as a wife, mother and high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Shapiro makes her way to Greenwich Village, opens the door to a sublet apartment on Perry Street and gives birth to herself as a poet. If you have ever fantasized living the life of an artist, actor or writer in New York City, if the longing to lead a creative existence rests at the core of your being, you will identify with this author’s need to transform her life. You will rejoice that she—grown strong through the collective consciousness of the women’s movement and the competent care of a therapist—comes to understand her past and honor her desire to launch her “deeper truth.” Myra Shapiro was born in the Bronx in 1932, of Jewish immigrant parents. She has happy memories of her extended family, Marxists, and in particular, remembers the warmth of her favorite cousin Sophie, whose home was where “everyone gathered around a table to eat and talk, to organize protests and make the world better... where people laughed at jokes and sang Yiddish songs.” But Myra’s childhood in New York ended abruptly when she was nine years old and her father moved his family to a small town in northwest Georgia. The year was 1941 and Myra’s father took a job managing a chenille [End Page 91] bedspread factory. Myra never adjusted to life in the South, “a world like Dick and Jane’s” where to survive, she was required to surrender her Bronx “moxie,” where to get along she had to learn not to yell and was expected to have good manners. As a Jew in this southern town, she was an oddity, a fish out of water, a person who experienced subtle and not-so-subtle prejudice. She could not be herself. Just as she failed to adjust to life in the South as a child, Myra felt confined and dis-satisfied, later, within the domesticity of marriage and family. Brought up in a time when most women defined themselves through marriage, Myra wanted to find a man, settle down and have children. At age twenty, in keeping with this wish and expectation, she married Harold Shapiro, her college sweet-heart, but she was not content. “I exposed my-self to another before I opened to myself,” she tells us. All along she longed for something else, something more personally rewarding. She fantasized getting away, going to New York, living alone and writing. Though it is clear she cared deeply for Harold and their two daughters, she hungered for a life of her own. January 1981. Having begun to write and having seen her younger daughter off to college, Myra grabs at an opportunity to fulfill her fantasy. While spending a few days in New York she decides to “enact a dream.” She answers an ad for a sublet in the Village and then, with only two days to make up her mind whether or not to take it, she shocks herself by signing the lease. Her husband Harold is alarmed, “enraged.” Upon hearing her plan, she tells us, he stares, flabbergasted. “Oh no,” he yells, “if you do this, don’t ever come back.” Myra digs in her heels. Her new strength and belief in her right to fulfill her passion has brought her to this place. She loves this man, does not want to cause him pain, but she will not be denied. “I refuse to say years from now If only....” This book gives witness to the birth and life of an evolving poet as she creates the space and serenity needed for her writing, as she gathers a community of poets around her, who teach her, share with her and provide her with support. You will celebrate with her the first...

Dreams Within Dreams; Books Within Books: Embedded Frames of Illusion in Psychoanalysis

Embedded levels of illusion, common in the arts, are also frequently encountered in psychoanalytic work. Classical psychoanalysts, comparing nested frames of illusion to Prince Hamlet's play within a play, concluded that the function of the inner frame is to protect and disguise deeper truths. In this paper, I contrast this classical paradigm with more modern approaches, especially those drawing on the Winnicottian school. Through two case examples, I illustrate how a patient's opening an embedded frame of illusion (in one case a dream within a dream, in the other a book within a book) may represent a spontaneous gesture, which when adequately met by the analyst may facilitate working through a treatment impasse. In each of my case examples, the opening of the inner frame could be understood not only as protecting a deeper truth but also as the creation of a transitional, potential space in which paradox could be tolerated and play begin. After reviewing classical and Winnicottian approaches, I turn to a third interpretation of the use of the inner frame: when it functions as a mirror, a paradoxical situation is created in which inner and outer frames are blurred, so that what is experienced as most illusionary may simultaneously be experienced as most real. In this way the most private aspects of the self may be brought into the therapeutic field. In addition to my case examples, brief examples from the art of painting help to clarify these ideas.

The Ethics of Pseudonymous Publication

Historically, the reasons behind the pseudonym have been both brutal and mild, ranging from the political safeguards against being killed for your subversions, to the merely social, when you didn't want the king's court, or your relatives around the corner, to know what you wrote. Or you craved to be a child of the people, though by birth an aristocrat. Or if female, you felt yourself to be less than a Sappho, yet more than a Miss Reade.-Hortense CalisherI. Fiction.It appears self-evident that no ethical issues arise from the pseudonymous publication of genuine fiction-since works of fiction state no claims. This intuition is bolstered by the apparent fact that no recent author1 has had serious difficulties-beyond eventual exposure-because of the use of this hoary literary device. Moreover, such issues as I may not have considered are outside the scope of this journal since fiction is not information in any straightforward sense, whatever deeper truths it may convey. Moreover, I suspect that such ethical issues as might arise do so in cases where the fiction is not what we would call genuine fiction. It is, of course, arguable whether there is any such thing as genuine fiction, or whether everything ever penned by man somehow derives from personal experience-regardless, the inverse function by which the personal experiences involved in the creation of a work of fiction can be recovered from its text is so complicated as to be beyond anyone but a couchman or a certain type of critic.II. Nonfiction.Nonfiction is quite another matter. If the classical question in the political context is cui bono?, the two questions that immediately present themselves when a pseudonym is used are, (a) From whom does the author hide? and (b) What does the author hide-beyond his identity and behind his pseudonymous identity?A. From whom does the author hide?The author may be concealing his identity from his family, friends, and acquaintances (if, say, he is advocating a position on a sexual issue in which he believes, about which he is not ashamed, but which would cause him considerable embarrassment, a rather different matter), from his employer and coworkers (if, say, he is advocating a position his company has strenuously rejected in court filings), from his industry (if, say, he is advocating a position against which the industry as a whole is feverishly lobbying), from his professional colleagues (if, say, he is on the masthead of a number of magazines that have a certain general outlook, and he is, in this instance, deviating substantially from orthodoxy), from the government or organized crime (if, say, he has a reasonably justified fear of unjustified prosecution or investigation-or a hit). These are among the many ethically justified deceived. The one group it is, in general, unethical to deceive-the only group to which the author has a commitment qua author-is his audience, his readers, those for whom he writes. While his family, friends, acquaintances, employer, co-workers, industry, colleagues, the state, and the mob may come to learn of his writing, as long as they are not his intended audience (as indicated, in part, by the venue), no duty has been breached and no commitment violated.This simple rule clears most legitimate uses of pseudonymous publication of nonfiction, although it leaves open the difficult-genuinely difficult-question as to whether an author may pseudonymously address the very audience from which he seeks to conceal his identity, for fear of repercussions. I do not think the answer to this question can be formulated by a rule, even by one that is complex and multi-partite. That is why I call it genuinely difficult: Each individual case requires wisdom and judgment-and, I would advise, consultation with at least two trusted others whose inner moral compasses have been found to be true in the past. I would also add-in warning, and would be remiss if I failed to do so-the purely pragmatic point that the veil of pseudonymity is much more easily pierced than one might naively suppose, and should that occur, the repercussions will invariably be even more severe. …

Teaching war literature, teaching peace

This article explores literature taught in three different courses and the peace education approaches used for each, including epics in literature courses, Vietnam War literature, and literature of anger and hope. The author recommends the teaching of war literature as an essential part of a peace education curriculum. Devastating events such as the Holocaust, the Hiroshima‐Nagasaki bombings and the Partition of India should be studied not only as history but also as literature, for deeper truths may emerge from metaphoric representation and descriptive details than can be provided by factual accounts.

To keep America number 1: confronting the deep nationalism of US higher education

The Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau, told Time magazine recently that America is in ‘an economic war’ with the world and ‘the importance of investing in long‐term research for winning that war hasn’t been understood’. This article argues that such comments are not just metaphorical or unfortunate word choices, but instead reveal deep truths about the role of American universities globally. The fact that people such as Birgeneau, as head of a ‘world class’ university, line up so readily behind US nationalism and militarism has serious implications for how we need to understand higher education not just in America but worldwide.

The Israeli Lust for Peace: Illusion, Tragedy and Prospect

There is a widely indulged pretence that our political views and policies are derived from reason and study. The opposite is often more true. In international politics, as in all else, baser emotions lie at the root of much of what is dressed up as reasoned thoughtful argument. Lust, fear, pride, hatred are all powerful driving forces. These emotions are not necessarily bad substitutes for reason. They sometimes serve as a shorthand for getting at a deeper truth. But, not always. Sometimes emotions short-circuit thought and lead to wishful thinking and blindness to empirical reality. It is lust – the lust for peace – that in the view of this author has led to the misbegotten Israeli (and American) policy attempts at peace with the Arabs in general, and with the Palestinians in particular. The Israeli wish for peace is neither foolish nor evil. The sin of lust is not a mistaken object of desire, but rather a desire too strongly held, a desire that has metastasized into a passion, a passion so strong and misdirected that it perniciously undermines the very well-being it is intended to foster. As is often the case with sexual lust, so too with Israel’s peace lust, the object of desire is hopelessly out of reach. And as with sexual lust, so too with peace lust, accepting that the object of desire is unattainable makes life a good deal easier, and happier. And, perhaps most importantly, just as with sexual lust, so too with peace lust, the lust itself is, more often than not, a barrier to its own satisfaction – who gets the girl, the self-assured and aloof suitor or the desperate and needy one? Let us look at Israel’s peace lust more closely. The thesis of this article is that those, in both Israel and the West, who most forcefully press for a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians are fundamentally misguided and self-deceptive. They are driven by an admirable, thoroughly decent if unrealistic desire leading to policies that have brought, and will continue to bring, turmoil rather than peace. Israel must accept that peace with the Arabs is not likely to be achieved in the foreseeable future. It must

Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation (review)

Reviewed by: Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation Rachel Adler Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation, edited by Rebecca T. Alpert, Sue Levi Elwell, and Shirley Idelson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 252 pp. $24.00. When seminaries began to ordain women rabbis, they also began to ordain lesbian rabbis. Some of these rabbis had not acknowledged even to themselves that they were lesbian. Others had always known, but made their way through rabbinical school carefully closeted. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Hebrew Union College have admitted openly lesbian and gay rabbis since 1984 for RRC and 1989 for HUC. The Conservative Jewish Theological [End Page 209] Seminary does not admit or ordain students it knows to be lesbian or gay. The other Conservative seminary, the Los Angeles-based University of Judaism, has a "don't ask, don't tell policy " and makes valiant attempts at obliviousness. The absorbing first-hand accounts of lesbian rabbis' educations and careers which this book comprises are set in their broader sociohistorical context in a solid scholarly introduction. This introduction traces how the feminist movement's challenge to gender ideology and masculine privilege, its concern with questions of inclusion and exclusion from social power and social benefits, paved the way for lesbian feminists to challenge heterosexual ideology and their own exclusions from benefits and power within the Jewish community. For congregations, the lesbian rabbi sharpens the question already given new relevance by the appearance of women rabbis. As the editors put it. "What does it mean to acknowledge the sexuality of a role model and guide?" (p. 16). The late Rabbi Julie Spitzer relates a tale of the closet from the early days. Spitzer's senior colleague told her after her hiring that he had been told a rumor about her personal life which he chose not to believe. This signaled that she had better remain closeted (p. 59). Leaving her next job, Spitzer was determined at last to be completely open. She wrote to the congregational leaders and rabbis with whom she worked explaining that she was relocating because her partner had a wonderful career offer in New York. One obtuse recipient misunderstood the term "partner" and remarked, "I didn't know you were in business!" (p. 61). For pregnant rabbis sexuality is no theoretical issue. It is a very concrete bulging belly on the bima. These encounters are full of ironies. Rabbi Karen Bender remarks, "The congregation was not only supportive but excited. . . . If the wedding had made me into a lesbian, the pregnancy made me into a woman. It was almost as if they had said, 'I thought she was a lesbian, but apparently, she is a woman'" (p. 129). Rabbi Julie Greenberg, on the other hand, recalls a shocked male mentor in rabbinical school pleading, "You've got to help me with this pregnancy." "I've always felt family was important," she responds demurely, and he says, "Well, as long as you aren't going to make a political statement out of it" (p. 185). Integrity is a touchstone for many of the writers. They talk about the need to bring a complete self to their work and their worship, not to be fragmented or hidden or disguised. "The only thing you bring to others is your self," writes Rabbi Nancy Weiner, a professor of pastoral counseling. "You are a religious being, an intellectual being, a social being, a sexual being. And so are the people with whom you interact. How do you acknowledge this? How do you nurture it?" (p. 55) Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell exemplifies this integrity in her account of finding her truth while directing the Los Angeles Jewish Feminist Center. "I [End Page 210] was finally able to name my hunger as a hunger for wholeness, a wholeness I hoped would lead to holiness. . . . My truth was a deep truth of my body and soul, for as Judaism is my home, my body is my home" (p. 71). The most wrenching tale of how difficult it is for a lesbian rabbi to retain integrity is Rabbi Benay Lappe's ordeal at Jewish Theological Seminary. For six years, Lappe remained closeted in the unfriendly atmosphere of the Seminary...

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another Philip Ball. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004. This is a big book by an author who thinks big. Holding a PhD in physics, now a writer and consulting editor in England, he asks essential questions. Why is society way it is? Are there laws of nature that guide human affairs? Do we have complete freedom in creating our societies? Just how, in human affairs, does one thing lead to another? Where are we headed? Can applying concepts from physics to our culture (he calls this the physics of society)-to social, political, and economic areas-improve societies, lead to better decisions, and make for a safer and fairer world? His answers are thoughtful and original, and deserve our thought and attention. He waxes poetic and scientific, bringing insights of poets and Taoist scholars to bear on subject. His first chapter centers on brutish world of Thomas Hobbes, fathering Enlightenment enthusiasm for a mechanistic philosophy that looks naive to us now. Still, in work of authors like Galileo and Newton, there are deep and elegant truths about way universe works. Their ideas, expanded in later centuries, underpin physics of society. Understanding what atoms do when they get together is one of science's greatest triumphs. But no one could have expected this to lead where it has. Today, we have confronted transitions, which explain processes of change in social contexts. Postmodernist Charles Jencks calls these sudden jumps in organization, and Thomas Kuhn, paradigm shifts in scientific thought. Our task now is to know something of why and how phase transitions occur. How did we ever get to -what author calls The Grand Ah-Whoom, atomic bomb that altered world thinking and acting? And idea of Village and synthetic society, which lands some countries in Cyberspace, others in riot, exploitation, and war? In past, cultural beliefs and values were bound up with dreams of empire. Today they favor a commercial imperative and cultural imperialism. We are determined to teach world to enjoy benefits of Coca-Cola, computers, e-mail, and hamburgers. My travels have taken me to many parts of Global Village, meeting people from countries in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. I was usually well received and accommodated, but I did not always feel at ease in highly touted Electronic Utopia. I heard from various leaders and sociologists a word seldom used in prosperous America: pillage. I checked my dictionary for an exact meaning: The act of looting or plundering; to take booty. Are we pillaging many Third World countries, taking their products and labor at near-starvation prices to resell for huge profits? There are still a billion people in world working for less than $2 a day. Many of their products end up in United States-plunder? People everywhere are being bombarded, entertained, and enticed by new mass media. …

Visual and Ethical Truth in The Winter's Tale

A T THE END OF THE WINTER'S TALE, Shakespeare offers a scene so improbable that in order to perceive it, Paulina informs Leontes, It is requir'd / You do awake your faith (5,3.94-95).2 What we are about to see, of course, is the living statue of Hermione-art become life, imagination turned into reality. This theatrical spectacle is paradigmatic of a Shakespearean aesthetic in which characters and audience alike are confronted with an impossibility that somehow gestures toward a deeper truth. The invitation to accept the living Hermione is powerful, leading to the conclusion that the playwright's gift is an invitation to accept the openness or, in more recent critical terms, the indeterminacy of both art and life. Yet the final scene is prefigured by another, less-positive encounter with an impossible image, the product of Leontes's frantic response to Hermione and Polixenes in the opening scenes of the play. In this essay I will argue that the two scenes are more alike than is generally acknowledged, that Leontes's dilemma in facing each image involves not a choice between certitude and openness-between understanding and faith-but an ethical judgment: a response to a demand from another. And while there is no doubt that his first response is wrong, the fact that he makes a choice constitutes the ethical nature of his character contra indetermi-

Readers Elaborate on Fashion and Truth, Fact and Theory

Igreatly enjoyed Michael Riordan’s Opinion piece criticizing the Platonic aspects of contemporary theoretical physics. He is right that several of today’s research areas—superstrings, wormholes, and extra dimensions, for example—have cut loose almost completely from experimental reality.Unfortunately, though, Riordan’s arguments were undercut by his appeals to Charles Sanders Peirce and the pragmatist definition of truth. Although I believe Riordan is right to be proud of physicists’ discovery of quarks, that feeling would not be justified if the reality of quarks meant merely that experienced practitioners agree that quarks are a “convenient rubric,” as Riordan called it, for mocking up the observable consequences of certain experiments. That was also true of Ptolemy’s epicycles, phlogiston, and Lamarckian evolution—not to mention young-Earth creationism. No, the discovery of quarks is impressive because they are more than a useful fiction; as proved by experiment, they really do exist outside our imaginations.The pragmatist notion of truth is based on radical philosophical skepticism and leads logically to outright subjectivism—the claim that all scientific theories are mere “fanciful ideas and constructs.” And like the Platonism that Riordan criticizes, that kind of error has done real damage to physics.Consider, for example, Andreas Osiander’s plea that Copernicus didn’t really mean it, Ernst Mach’s bizarre and influential refusal to believe that atoms represented more than a useful rubric for organizing experience, and the ongoing refusal to face and fix what John Bell called the “unprofessionally vague and ambiguous” foundations of quantum theory. 1 1. J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1987), p. 173. This refusal is usually based on the claim that the wavefunction is merely a mental construct, and does not refer to physical reality (see the Opinion piece by Christopher Fuchs and Asher Peres, Physics Today, March 2000, page 70).Consider also the contemporary attacks on science from the social-construction crowd; as those attackers point out, the pragmatist conception of truth gives scientists the same claim to know reality as any other group: none.Pitting science against Platonism tells only half the story. What makes the scientific method unique is that it rejects both Platonism and skeptical subjectivism. Unlike Platonism, science demands that its conclusions be based on hard, empirical evidence. But science also rejects the idea that we are cut off from true reality, forever confined to superficial appearances, subjective constructs, and useful fictions.At its best, science neither rejects empirical evidence in favor of rationalist flights of fancy nor dismisses as impossible the task of uncovering deep truths about the external world. Instead, it demonstrates, in the face of both traditional philosophical approaches, that hidden realities can be reliably grasped by means of empirical evidence. And that is an achievement all physicists can be proud of.REFERENCESection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCE <<1. J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1987), p. 173. Google Scholar© 2003 American Institute of Physics.

A Portrait of the Poet as Still Life

By drawing on the one hand on the insights of the art historian Norman Bryson, and on the other on self-portraits such as Nora Heysen's, which incorporate a still life that comments on it, I set out to trace some of the main outlines of a portrait of the poet as still life. From Baudelaire's pipe, Mallarmé's empty vase, and Laforgue's jade elephant, I turn to three smoked herrings, those of Cros, Huysmans and Klingsor, who present themselves as fish poets, before concluding with the irony of Marie Krysinska. If, as Valéry claims, 'le fruit se fond en jouissance', in the case of still life fruit (and other objects) it is less because of the beauty of the mimetic representation than because that representation drives us to a recognition of a deeper truth concerning the poet him- or herself.

Chaotic-time-series reconstruction by the Bayesian paradigm: right results by wrong methods.

Recently, papers have appeared that champion the Bayesian approach to the analysis of experimental data. From reading these papers, the physicist could be forgiven for believing that Bayesian methods reveal deep truths about physical systems and are the correct paradigm for the analysis of all experimental data. This paper makes a contrary argument and is deliberately provocative. It is argued that the Bayesian approach to reconstruction of chaotic time series is fundamentally flawed, and the apparent successes result not from any degree of correctness of the paradigm, but by an accidental and unintended property of an algorithm. We also argue that (non-Bayesian) shadowing techniques provide all the information the erroneous Bayesian methods obtain, but much more efficiently, and also provide a wealth of additional useful information.

Responding to the Bottomlessness of Human Being

If the linguistic turn in twentieth century philosophy succeeded in establishing anything of enduring importance to education, it is that the deep hidden truth of the species Homo sapien is there is no deep hidden truth. We are not born with an essence, a mind, a self, rationality, free will, nor are we made in God’s image. On this matter, philosophers as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida agree.

‘Wholeness, Dignity and the Ageing Self’: A Conversation Between Philosophy and Theology

SUMMARY Winifred Wing Han Lamb: My philosophical interest straddles the areas of education, religion and theology. As a teacher involved in school philosophy programs, I have also been interested in the philosophy of childhood and particularly in the recurring notion of the ‘whole child’ in education. In considering what ‘wholeness’ could mean for children's education, I have also been led to consider what meaning it holds for the self through the ‘changing scenes’ of life, especially in the face of the challenges of ageing. The notion of ‘wholeness’ holds an intuitive appeal and invites articulation of the deep truths of our faith with respect to persons in all ‘sorts and conditions.’ In section one of this chapter, I attempt that articulation. But this conversation needs to be complementary. Our chapter is the beginning of a dialogue between philosophy and theology in which both affirm the ageing self in the light of the human search for wholeness and dignity. Heather Thomson: My theological research into humanity as an image of God led me to inquire about the way in which we could speak meaningfully of ageing and dying in terms of imaging God. This challenged how God-likeness was to be understood in relation to glory, honour and power, terms associated with imaging God and exerting dominion. In searching for a theological view of the self that would confer dignity on the ageing, I was led into conversation with various philosophies of the self, some very helpful for my task. It seems to me that, if ageing people are to be counted as having dignity and worth, and not discounted, then one's theory of the human person was significant. In pondering the issue, it appeared that a conversation between philosophy and theology would be fruitful. Hence, this joint paper. We each speak from our own discipline but find resonance with each other's work. We see this as a first step in a constructive conversation.

Life sentences: elementary zenetics--do or dai.

Life sentences: elementary zenetics--do or dai.

'MONT BLANC': TRANSCENDENCE IN SHELLEY'S RELATIONAL SYSTEM

'MONT BLANC': TRANSCENDENCE IN SHELLEY'S RELATIONAL SYSTEM

INDIVIDUALISM, NORMATIVITY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF UNDERSTANDING

We commonly think that it is by virtue of a shared language that one person understands another’s words. Shared language seems sufficient, other things being equal, for understanding. But is it necessary? Can we think of linguistic understanding as occurring between speakers who do not share a language? This question is not mere idle, counterfactual speculation; it bears directly on the initial common thought, that shared language is the typical explanation of paradigm cases of understanding. Does that common thought harbor or instead mask over a deep truth about language and understanding? According to a powerful and influential line of argument, the common thought is forced on us because of the very nature of linguistic meaning. A speaker’s meanings are constituted by norms ‐ conditions of correct and incorrect usage; and according to this argument, such norms can be publicly accessible ‐ understandable to others ‐ only if they belong to a linguistic practice that is shared. This paper formulates that argument, uncovers controversial assumptions on which it depends, and responds to it by offering a conception of linguistic meaning and understanding that does not require shared language but that nonetheless accounts for the normative and public nature of meaning. In doing so, it defends a form of individualism about meaning. As understood here, individualism is the view that the meanings of a speaker’s expressions are determined by her linguistic and nonlinguistic dispositions and behavior, specifiable without embedding that speaker in some larger, shared linguistic practice. Individualism is not committed to internalism ‐ the view that the nature or existence of the external environment is not relevant to the individuation of meanings. The important question for the purposes of this paper

The Letters of Her Strange Alphabet

Each of these poems approaches the text of death in a different way. After 30 years as a nurse, Veneta Masson is not surprised when Old Mother Death sits down beside her and waits, “shuffling/the letters of her strange alphabet.” The poet edges closer to “La Muerte,” ready to listen, ready to learn. Dwaine Rieves also attempts to listen. He looks back at death’s presence in a busy Intensive Care Unit and remembers a detail—“a sofa dissolving in pink.” “The Words” have disappeared. The people have disappeared. But Dr. Rieves recalls the tone and texture of the room in which messages of life and death were spoken, an ordinary room, but not an ordinary memory. Arthur Ginsberg senses the possibility of his own death from cancer, acknowledging that we know very little about what goes on within our own bodies. In fact, the enemy may already be “spreading hot tentacles deep within my bedrock.” What was once a fantasy—turning one’s eye within—is now, at least in part, a realistic possibility. In “Colonoscopy” the internal journey becomes humorous and metaphorical. The tipsy poet imagines a cruise along his personal Nile, observing the monuments and “well preserved hieroglyphs.” Are these glyphs actually the strange alphabet of death? Like all good light verse, “Colonoscopy” touches on deeper truths. There is only so much we can learn; the rest is chance. Wayne Liebman acknowledges the role of chance in death’s monopoly. La Muerte always wins the game. Her “Monopoly” of outcomes is supreme. But in the day-to-day moves we make—like buying Baltic Avenue, for example—there are real choices. We can choose life. We can choose poetry. We can also choose forgiveness. In “Dr. Williams, After the Stroke,” George Young evokes the image of the elderly William Carlos Williams, disabled by a stroke, pecking on “this damn typewriter” his last poems. And in this case a