Body Dualism Research Articles

POST‐MODERN MISSION: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN DAVID BOSCH'S THEOLOGY OF MISSION?

KIRSTEEN KIM [*] A PARADIGM SHIFT IN DAVID BOSCH'S THEOLOGY OF MISSION? In his renowned Transforming Mission, [1] David Bosch delineates what he calls post-modem (p. 349) for mission. Magnificent in its clarity, scope and depth, the book has understandably fulfilled Lesslie Newbigin's prediction that it would become indispensable foundation for the teaching of missiology for many years to come (back cover). However, without doubting its value and usefulness for teaching missiology, this paper questions, in some important respects. Bosch's claim that his missiology is post-modern. The weakness of Bosch's emerging ecumenical consensus on mission was apparent in its very year of publication (1991) when the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Canberra famously failed to find a consensus. [2] The assembly took a pneumatological theme with a missionary thrust based on a creation theology: Come, Holy -- Renew the Whole Creation. Canberra was particularly influenced by the work of the Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation 'process' (JPIC) which evidenced at Canberra particular concern for feminism, ecology, and spirituality -- and the Spirit of life theology of J[ddot{u}]rgen Moltmann. [3] In his chapter outlining post-modernity, Bosch recognizes its eco-feminist dimensions when he notes briefly that it involves a basic reorientation: One should, again, see oneself as a child of Mother Earth and as sister and brother to other human beings. One should think holistically, rather than analytically, emphasize togetherness rather than distance, break through the dualism of mind and body, subject and object, and emphasize 'symbiosis' (p. 355). He suggests such a change of worldview would have profound and far-reaching consequences for the epistemology of mission but these are not worked out in his book. Creation theology and its attendant concerns at Canberra are hardly mentioned in Transforming Mission. As far as feminism is concerned, although he does allude to women, nowhere does Bosch mention feminism as a theological or philosophical movement. [4] Bosch hardly touches on ecology or on the perceived global environmental crisis, which fuelled the IPIC process. [5] Thirdly, the related interest in indigenous or spiritualities of Indigenous People is missed. [6] This lack of interest is surprising in view of Bosch's own direct experience of peoples during his formative years as a missionary in Transkei (1957-71). [7] By its very nature, Transforming Mission is retrospective; it documents what has already been resolved, not the debates of today. [8] In that sense it was inevitably already out of date by the time of its publication. However, its lack of reference to these contemporary issues is remarkable when we consider that Bosch was a section leader at the San Antonio meeting of the Conference for World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC at which the influence of JPIC was clearly evident. Though preparation of his book was in its final stages in 1989, Bosch does refer to the San Antonio meeting six times (pp. 389, 429, 460-61, 467,487, 489) but never with reference to JPIC themes. When he concludes that San Antonio contained no new missiological reflections, [9] it is hard to avoid the conclusion that what falls outside his paradigm has simply been ignored. The of mission The fact that Bosch passes over feminism, ecology and spiritualities raises the question of whether Bosch's paradigm can be described as a truly post-modem one, even by his own criteria above. In the light of Canberra, it reveals both Bosch's lack of a creation theology and suggests also the limited nature of his pneumatology. Bosch has been praised for his emphasis on the work of the Holy in mission. [10] In highlighting the Orthodox contribution to the theology of mission and the theology of Luke, Bosch draws attention to the of mission (especially pp. …

Chronic fatigue syndrome: new insights and old ignorance.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a condition characterized by impairment of neurocognitive functions and quality of sleep and of somatic symptoms such as recurrent sore throat, muscle aches, arthralgias, headache, and postexertional malaise. A majority of patients describe an infectious onset but the link between infections and CFS remains uncertain. Findings show an activation of the immune system, abberations in several hypothalamic-pituitary axes and involvement of other parts of the central nervous system. The origin is bound to be complex and it may well be that the solution will come together with a more generally altered view about mind-body dualism, and the concept of illness and disease.

Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (review)

Reviewed by: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge Giuseppe Mazzotta Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge, by Donald Philip Verene; xx & 296 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, $30.00. Donald Verene’s study can be said to belong legitimately to the timeless tradition of meditative thinking. The phrase is burdened with ambiguous resonances. One thinks of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy or Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, where “meditation” describes the very foundation of philosophy, the roots from which alone, as Husserl has it, “philosophy can grow originally.” Verene’s book, which forcefully counters the claims of the Cartesian cogito because it breeds skepticism and doubts about knowledge, recalls a different, more ancient practice of thought. In the twelfth century, the Cistercian monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, launches his opposition to Abelard’s dialectical rationalism from the perspective of Socratic self-knowledge, a perspective that stretches onto Petrarch and Erasmus who deploy it respectively, against the Averroists and the Scholastics. Bernard, who is a practitioner of the interior life, speaks of “consideration” (etymologically “to move with the stars”). He distinguishes it from “reflection” and “contemplation” and sees it as involving a searching with both heart and mind into the sacred sources of life. Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge self-consciously inscribes itself in the speculative tradition inaugurated, in modern spirituality by the doctor mellifluus, and, in antiquity, by Pythagoras and the Delphic oracle. As is appropriate to a specifically philosophical inquiry, Verene acknowledges the ascetic labors of the soul, but he translates them into a secularized humanistic ethics and a civil wisdom. There are for Verene two radically divergent value-systems that accompany and/or threaten with forfeiture the endless quest for self-knowledge. On the one hand, there is the false kingdom of the cult of appearances. In this land of unlikeness, like Narcissus gazing at his own image, we are dupes of our phantasms and mistake images for reality. Like Prometheus, who steals the fire from the gods, we create a universe of shams that is a caricature of Creation. This world of lies and mere appearances is also the world of antiphysis where modern man, master of illusions, reflects himself in ephemeral and immoderate objects of consumption. On the other hand, can emerge from the depths of nothingness by following the path of true self-knowledge, by heeding the instruction of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “gnothi seauton, ‘know thyself.’ Only in it, and in its corresponding instruction in virtue—meden agan, ‘nothing too much’—can true philosophy expect to live” (p. 259). This dualistic paradigm of knowledge and values organizes the unfolding of Verene’s essay, but the bulk of it centers on—but does not retrieve—the possible middle ground between them. Written in a diaphanous, translucent style, Philosophy and the Return of Self-Knowledge has as its point of departure the interrogation of the spiritual roots for the crisis of modernity. In “Notes toward [End Page 249] a Supreme Fiction,” Wallace Stevens writes: “The first idea was not our own. Adam/ in Eden was the father of Descartes.” Verene offers a tacit gloss to Stevens: in his genealogy, Prometheus is the “imaginative universal” or mythical prefiguration of Descartes as the philosopher of dualism of mind and body, of confusion between certainty and knowledge, of philosophy and method, of science that engenders the technological values of our time, and brings about the erasure of Memory. The classical polarization between Vico and Descartes overtly sustains “Barbarism of Reflection” (chapter one), which is a magisterial exercise in the tradition of the history of the idea of “reflection” from optics to philosophy, from antiquity to the present. Reflection declares the world to be phenomenal, not substantial. More than that, the optimistic belief that the essence of reality can be grasped and controlled by the power of science is exposed as a recurrent dream or delusion. In fact, in the House of Science reason dwells isolated from the demands of human reality. There, scientific reason shuts the door that leads to the outside and, blinded by the glimmer of its own light, it drafts endless geometries of the possible. What is needed—so...

Feeling the Spirit in the Dark: Expanding Notions of the Sacred in the African-American Gay Community

Spirit in the Dark is one of many songs recorded by the Queen of Soul diva, Aretha Franklin, that blurs the boundaries between the sacred and the secular-both through its lyrics and its musical composition. Fueled with the vocal melismas1 and rhythmic syncopation found in gospel and blues, Franklin's song uses the sacred notion of as a metaphor for sexual ecstasy as she sings, It's like Sally Walker, sitting in her saucer. That's how you do it. It ain't nothing to it. Ride, Sally ride. Put your hands on your hips and cover your eyes and move with the spirit in the While some listeners might argue that the reference to spirit in this song is symbolic of the holy spirit, those of us who hear the double entendre know that Franklin's use of this word is much more fluid. Indeed, she endows Sally Walker, the innocent and chaste little girl of the famous children's nursery rhyme, with sexual agency as Franklin encourages Sally to ride the spirit in the dark. Spirit in the Dark also highlights the dichotomy of body and soul within the black church, the belief that to be saved means to yield not to temptations of the flesh. Within the context of the black church, feeling the spirit in the secular/sexual sense is an act of transgression, a symptom of the sinsick soul. And in the most fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, the sin of the flesh will pave a slippery road down into the fiery gates of Hell into everlasting darkness. Although this split of the spirit and flesh is continually preached in the pulpit, it is rarely practiced by the deliverer of the message and the congregants who listen. But this denial of the flesh encourages an unhealthy and unrealistic view of sexuality and the body in general. Indeed, feeling the spirit under these conditions may only happen under a shroud of darkness because the spirit and flesh never unite, never become one incarnation through the body of Christ.

Freiheit als Summe. Über die Gestalt christlichen Lebens nach Martin Luther

Freedom is a controversial topic in christian theology as well as in modern social philosophy. Reflecting on Luther's Tractatus de libertate christiana it is shown that (1) Luther maintains the internal reality of freedom in faith, which unites human beings beyond their irrevocable duality of body and soul with God in Christ. This freedom turns (2) into visible intersubjective reality by opening human reciprocity, as well in individual as in social perspective ; this offer of reciprocity, however, is the basis for interpersonal recognition. Therefore we can say that it is (3) God himself who acts in reconciliating the lasting human diversities. By this way the article proposes a protestant interpretation of elementary social structures.

Radio-TV Journalism Curriculum: First Jobs and Career Preparation

It has been more than a decade since the heralded Oregon project Planning Curricular Change in Journalism Education-commonly referred to as the Oregon Report (1983)-drove a deep wedge between the concepts of a general journalism education and a professionally education. In late 1996, to help bridge the gap between mass communication programs and the profession, a task force of the Society of Professional Journalists funded by NBC news reporter Jane Pauley made numerous recommendations regarding broadcast education. However, the study primarily used broadcast executives as resources to study the principal question of the preparedness of entry-level journalists (Tomorrow's Broadcast Journalists: A Report and Recommendations from the Jane Pauley Task Force on Mass Communication Education, 1996). This study is unique because it provides a nationwide examination of the opinions of both industry professionals and educators specifically regarding broadcast curriculum. Furthermore, this study reveals the first time an agreement between academics and professionals on the approach to the best broadcast journalism education. Literature review On one side of the curriculum debate are the proponents of skills-oriented education-a professional method of training students that resembles a trade school (Dorfman, 1984; Friendly, 1984). On the other side are advocates of a broad-scoped liberal arts education (Planning For Curricular Change in Journalism Education, 1984; Planning For Curricular Change in Journalism Education, 1987; Mullins,1987; Dickson and Sellmeyer, 1992). Their beliefs are grounded in neohumanism, the founding principles of the university. Neohumanism was a direct descendent of humanism stemming from the study of classical culture and culture during the Middle Ages and was one of the driving forces behind the Renaissance. Neohumanists view the human being as a learner, recognizing the primacy of cultivating the intellect but assuming a dualism of mind and body, thought and action, and reason and emotion (Crookston, 1975; Knock, Rentz and Penn, 1989, p. 117). Based on this, neohumanists would argue that some college students are not receiving education at all. Instead, they are participating in a lower order of study in a university environment (Gossman,1990). This lower order cultivates human capacities for the useful knowledge and practical skills required by the majority the dayto-day business of life, trade, industry or agriculture (Gossman, 1990, p. 105). Neohumanist theory still drives the concept of liberal arts education today. Students who focus their attention on liberal arts disciplines such as philosophy or history are engaged, according to Neohumanists, in a true order of study. Some students, however, aspire to pursue careers in skills-oriented professions, such as broadcast journalism. To prepare students these disciplines, many universities or colleges offer skillsoriented courses in the respective areas of study. The debate over university education, in a sense, surrounds the issue of which capacities should be developed in the university-the lower order; both the lower and order; or, as it was originally intended, only the order capacities of students. Most scholars argue that broadcast curricular should not remain at status quo, but that a change is coming or is desperately needed (Planning For Curricular Change in Journalism Education, 1983; Dorfman,1984; Friendly, 1984; Planning For Curricular Change in Journalism Education, 1987; Mullins, 1987; Dickson and Sellmeyer, 1992; Tomorrow's Broadcast Journalists: A Report and Recommendations from the Jane Pauley Task Force on Mass Communication Education, 1996). Prior to the release of the Oregon Report (1983), McBath and Burhans contradicted the persisting myth that higher education is largely non-career oriented while arguing that, regardless of the educational system, the most viable program would satisfy requirements both liberal perspective and professional competence (McBath and Burhans,1978, p. …

The Stream of Consciousness: XII. Consciousness and Self-Awareness

Consciousness and self-awareness—how are they mutually related? This contribution to the present series of articles begins to consider replies to this question from the Jamesian perspective of The Principles. First, several relevant senses of consciousness are made explicit. Then, I give attention to James's notion of personal consciousness: How do the basic durational components of a stream of consciousness “cohere” to form a stream, given that, on James's mind—body dualism, they do not have a spatial location? Continuities of content among the components of a single stream is supposed to be the unifying factor; James held bodily feelings are an intrinsic feature of every component of a stream. The diachronic unity of consciousness rests heavily on a kind of self-awareness. Also addressed here are inner awareness, or the immediate awareness that one can have of one's mental-occurrence instances, and whether remembering past experiences requires that one had not only inner awareness of them when they occurred, but self-awareness as well.

Response: What Does Evolutionary Theory Tell Us About the Moral Status of Animals

Binary opposition as an ordering principle of thought has, indeed, been a paradigm for modes of thinking in Western civilization. Doubtless, evolutionary biology has been pivotal in the deconstructing of radical binary oppositions. The history of non-evolutionary biology goes beyond the circle of fundamentalist Christian opponents of evolution. Long before Christianity, Greek philosophical anthropology assumed an atomistic worldview, paradigmatically expressed in Aristotle, sometimes in Plato, and given its modern character by Descartes. The primary binary opposition manifest in these thinkers, and more importantly, in the general ethos of their historical epoch, is the mind­ body dualism. The body is like any other natural entity, to be understood in atomistic-mechanistic language. The human soul, as a ghost in the machine, is incorporeal and spiritual in nature. Professor Sheets-Johnstone recognizes that this example of binary opposition gave rise to the situation wherein human beings are both essentially and morally segregated from God, animals, nature, and even each other. This foundational ordering principle established a justification for human tyranny over other creatures and the entire natural world. Much of the reign of tyranny over nature stems from outdated religious, biological, and metaphysical systems of thought. These

A Meditation on the Use of Hands

The theme of mind-body unity is fundamental to occupational therapy. Nonetheless, the field continues to embrace a dualism of mind and body. This dualism persists because the field views the body only as an object, ignoring how the body is lived. Drawing upon phenomenological discussions of bodily experience, this paper illustrates how the lived body is a locus of intelligence, intentionality, adaptiveness, and experience. It also considers the bodily ground of motivation and thought and discusses how the body constitutes and incorporates its world. Finally, the paper considers implications of the lived body for therapy.

Theological theses on the ethics of organ transplantation and on a law concerning the transplantation

The message of the resurrection from the dead is relevant to human beings living and dying in the unity of body and soul. The personality of man is inseparable connected with this unity — even beyond death. Brain death only marks a (decisive) point during the process of dying, and it cannot be defined as the death of a human being (in general). Theological ethics object to this definition and to a new dualism of brain and body as well as of body and personality (i.e. soul), because this dualism socialises the organs of individuals and denies the personal dignity of disappearing life. Therefore, the explantation of organs must depend on a personal declaration of consent given by the adult sponsor himself. Each information given on organ transplants must clarify that the explantation of organs means an interruption of dying.

Terra es animata On Having a Life

For the past quarter century bioethics has been a booming business in this country. In part that may be because humanists found here a field in which they could compete with scientists for grant money. In larger part, it is surely because medical advance has forced certain problems upon our attention. But, at least in part, it must also be because some of the concerns of bioethics impinge upon everyday life--upon the lives of most people, and at some of the crucial moments of life, in particular birth and death. Bioethics could not have boomed as it has were it not a reflection of some of our central concerns. will examine some of the issues that have emerged in bioethical discussions of death, dying, and care for the dying as a way of thinking about what it means to have a life. In particular, will focus on a concept that has risen to great prominence in our thinking: the concept of a person. Two competing visions of the person--and the relation of person to body--have unfolded as bioethics has developed, and in my view, the wrong one has begun to triumph. We have tried to handle our substantive disagreements on this question by turning to procedural solutions--in particular, advance directives--trusting that they presume no answer to the disputed question. We are, however, beginning to see how problematic such a procedural solution is, how flawed and even contradictory much thinking about advance directives has been. What we need, will suggest, is to recapture the connection between our person and the natural trajectory of bodily life. That will be the course of my argument. But, as a way of framing the issues, begin in what is likely to seem a strange place: with the thought of some of the early Christian Fathers about heaven and the resurrection of the dead. They were attempting to relate the body's history to their concept of the person's optimal development. In so doing, they provide a different and illuminating angle from which to see our present concerns. Patristic Images of the Resurrection of the Body In his City of God Saint Augustine describes the human being as terra animata, animated earth.[1] Such a description, contrary in many ways to trends in bioethics over the last several decades, ought to give pause to anyone inclined to characterize Augustine's thought simply in terms of a Neoplatonic dualism that ignores the personal significance of the body. It may, in fact, be our own constant talk of personhood that betrays a more powerful tendency toward dualism of body and self. This same Augustine, however, found himself puzzled at the thought of the resurrected body. What sort of body will one who dies in childhood have in the resurrection? As for little children, Augustine wrote, I can only say that they will not rise again with the tiny bodies they had when they died. By a marvelous and instantaneous act of God they will gain that maturity they would have attained by the slow lapse of time (22.14). This is, in fact, a question to which a number of the Church Fathers devoted thought.[2] Origen, for example, understood that throughout life our material bodies are constantly changing. How, then, can the body be raised? He appealed (in good Platonic fashion) to the eidos, the unchanging form of the body. Despite the body's material transformations, its eidos remains the same as we grow from infancy, through childhood and adulthood, to old age. (For Origen this eidos is not the soul; it is the bodily form united with the sold in this life and again in the resurrection. J.N.D. Kelly comments that Origen was charged with having held that resurrected bodies would be spherical; he may have held such a view, in keeping with the Platonic theory that a sphere is the perfect shape.) From here it is not a long step to suppose that since the eidos of each resurrected body will be perfect, it will in every instance be identical in qualities and characteristics. …

Body and ParadoxMonstres: Histoire du corps et de ses defauts. Jean-Louis FischerThe Jew's Body. Sander GilmanMaking Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Thomas LaqueurBody Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Barbara Maria Stafford

The human body, and hence the historical study of it, contains a series of paradoxes. It is at once the site of truth and of concealment; at once the most private and the most public of objects; at once the most ineluctable of human experiences and the one whose historical presence is the most difficult to describe. In another paradox, the history of the body began to emerge as a separate historical field in the years immediately preceding and just after the Holocaust, which had tried to establish the ultimate meaninglessness of all bodies. In 1930, Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents pointed out the important role that man's struggle to repress and control physical desires and responses had played in the shaping of civilization. This description of the civilizing process was related to the growth of physical civility from the feudal era to the Enlightenment in a pathbreaking study published in 1939 by Norbert Elias, which reached cult status on its republication in 1978. By the 1970s, from a different angle, the rebirth of feminism had focused attention on the body as part of the history of the oppression of women. Simultaneously, Michel Foucault pointed out the historical importance of the way the body has been subjected to various disciplines in order to make it more amenable to subjection, first by the absolutist states of Enlightenment Europe and then by the bureaucratic democracies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This statement of the centrality of the history of the body to the understanding of state formation, which endorsed the much older perspective of Freud and Elias, was given an even grander sweep by Gregory Bateson, who pinpointed the dualism of mind and body established by Des-

Revisioning Our Kumblas: Transforming Feminist and Nationalist Agendas in Three Caribbean Women's Texts

Caribbean women share with feminists and nationalists a number of literary agendas common to modernist writing in the twentieth century. These include the search for an identity that acknowledges or transcends the fragmentation and alienation of modern life, a concern with origins, and a questioning of the psychological needs and cultural myths which drive such searches. Like their feminist sisters elsewhere in the modern world, Caribbean women frequently have turned inward to examine their personal experience as a way of naming the issues they deem pertinent to their search for a language and an identity. Like male writers in other postcolonial cultures, Caribbean women writers also look beyond themselves to the indigenous cultures of their region as a rich source of metaphor. This essay explores the ways in which three novels by Caribbean women transform and destabilize orthodox strategies of representing the female and/or colonial subject in feminist and nationalist texts. Such an exercise creates seductive opportunities for establishing new orthodoxies. I have tried to mitigate this tendency by naming at various points in the essay the ways in which other feminist or nationalist writers have arrived by different routes at transformative strategies similar to those I ascribe to Caribbean women writers. Conversely, in my conclusion I examine the extent to which the transformative power I ascribe to the work of Caribbean women writers is peculiarly constrained by class agendas within Caribbean society. One of the with many forms of feminist critical praxis is that, in their attempt to extricate themselves from dependency on a male-dominated literary discourse which retards our progress in solving our own theoretical problems (Showalter 246-47), feminist writers sometimes fail to challenge the assumption that the literary project, renamed and revised in the image of woman, is somehow purer, somehow closer to essential humanist ideals than the discursive traditions of men. This reduction of the agenda on a given issue to what seems an inevitable polarity between self and other is a familiar paradigm in many forms of Western discourse. As Donna Haraway comments in her essay Manifesto for Cyborgs: American socialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formulations and physical artifacts associated with 'high technology' and scientific culture (Haraway 70-71). Haraway critiques both groups for having allowed themselves to run aground on Western epistemological imperatives to construct a revolutionary subject from the per

Time-asymmetric phenomena in biology

Modern natural science is still based on the Cartesian dualism of mind and body («res cogitans» and «res extensa»), as well as on Francis Bacon's rejection of final causes. Yet there is a growing recognition of the inadequacy of the Cartesian and Baconian conceptions as the only basis for our understanding of nature. Modern quantum mechanics has rendered obsolete reductionism and atomism and casts severe doubts on the Cartesian duality. Furthermore, the Baconian rejection of teleology does not follow from the first principles of quantum theory. While modern physics cannot dispense with the Cartesian cut, the distinction between endophysical and exophysical descriptions forces the breaking of the fundamental time-reflection symmetry and allows the derivation of both Baconian and teleological exophysical descriptions from the first principles of algebraic quantum exophysics.

Intrinsic Value in Environmental Ethics

It is widely held that all hope for a satisfactory environmental ethic rests on the question whether intrinsic can be discovered in non human nature, for it is also widely held that intrinsic is what, anything, grounds human obligations to non-human nature. The work of J. Baird Callicott on intrinsic has been central to the contemporary discussion of environmental ethics and the present paper leads off with an overview of some aspects of his work in this area. An account of Callicott's views falls naturally into two parts. His earlier work in theory explicitly endorsed subjectivism and con sisted in an articulation of a sentimentalism, with roots in Hume and Dar win, which he perceived to be essential to a satisfactory exposition of Aldo Leopold's land ethic. With the publication of Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics in 1985, however, Callicott confessed that subjectivism rests on the dualism of mind and body, subject and object, characteristic of the waning Cartesian/Newtonian world view, and formulated a relational theory of intrinsic inspired by the new physics.1 Callicott's tack in his earlier work was to provide as much objectivity for intrinsic as possible within a subjectivist framework by adopting a Humean moral philosophy and tailoring it to the needs of environmental ethics by the inclusion of Darwin's account of the origin of other-regarding sentiments and Leopold's account of the biotic community of which we are members. Stipulating that something has value (for our pur poses here, read 'intrinsic value') if (while its is not independent of all valuing consciousness) it is valued for itself and not only and merely because it serves as a means to satisfy the desires, further the interests, or occasion the preferred experiences of the valuers,2 Callicott argued that such inherent does exist in non-human nature. He also argued that his view does not entail a radical relativism of since there is a functional

The embodied mind: Toward a relational perspective

Throughout his working life Freud rejected the dualism of mind and body, which suggests that we can study people's thoughts, feelings, and relationships without taking into account the bodily contexts in which people live their lives. In his conception of the bodily origins of mental functioning, however, children are seen to be oblivious to their environments for a significant period in their early lives (the first 18–24 months). This conception is increasingly found to be untenable: current perspectives and observations both within and outside psychoanalytic psychology suggest that infants interact with their environments from birth. This paper attempts a model for an interactive perspective on the bodily origins of the mind. It proposes that from the beginning of life infant experience occurs in interactions. Because the mental and physical aspects of infant's experience are initially not differentiated, these interactions are absolutely body‐bound. That nondifferentiation also results directly in the primitive experience modes Freud described as the primary processes. Development occurs by integration and differentiation. It leads to the transition, at 18–24 months, that Freud ascribed to the child's turn to the external world and to the testing of reality, the beginning of psychic conflict, and the relegation to the unconscious of unacceptable ideas, which in his view accompany it.

Umdenken in der Naturwissenschaft

Modern natural science does not deal with nature as a whole but is still based on the Cartesian dualism of mind and body ('res cogitans' and 'res extensa'), as well as on Francis Bacon's motto “dissecare naturam”. Moreover, Bacon restricted science to the investigation of material and efficient causes and refused to admit the use of final causes. The metaphysics of Baconian science is based on the confidence that nothing can be known about nature except what can be proved by experiments, that is by interventions which require artificially produced, deliberately controlled, and reproducible conditions. However, empirical science does not intrinsically require the invasive experimental interrogation of nature, called for by Francis Bacon. The Baconian mode of explication seems to be so effective since it sets its own well established normative standards of judgement we often tacitly adopt for our research, so that we only see what we look for. – There is a growing recognition of the inadequacy of Cartesian and Baconian conceptions as the only basis for our understanding of nature. The Baconian method is specialized in experimental manipulations and in predictions, but the aim of science is not to manipulate nature but to create insight. Moreover, modern science, specifically quantum mechanics, has rendered obsolete the Cartesian duality, reductionism, and atomism. Furthermore, the Baconian rejection of finality does not follow from the first principles of quantum theory. There are good reasons for the view that methods of contemporary science are unnecessarily limited by many tacit preconceptions and blind fascinations. In order to secure the continuation of our culture it is important to make our tacit preconceptions and driving motivation explicit. A full-grown science cannot any longer be one-eyed. We have to admit that nature contains both rational and irrational elements, that it includes physis and psyche as complementary aspects of the same reality. We are at the bare beginning to understand reality, but we may have reached a turning point, a way of thinking is developing which is very different from that which has been dominant in the past decades, and which recognizes the repression of the irrational as incongruous.

Persoonwees en die morele status van die menslike embrio

During the last decades the moral status of the human embryo has been compromised in numerous ways. A survey of these reveals the consistent influence of the ideology of the freedom of the human person. Screening the criteria for assigning moral status (if at all) to the human embryo, 'personhood’ is the main consideration. In this article the relevance of this criterion is examined from a Christian perspective on man and his ethical life. The conclusion is that the old Scholastic dualism of body and soul has been traded in for a dichotomy of person and body. Personhood is then defined in purely humanistic terms as qualified by rationality, self-conscious decisions, et cetera. A n integral view of man becomes impossible and man’s bodily existence is devalued. Ethically the results are devastating. The paradigm for treating the ethical issues in this regard should be far more comprehensive and extensive, as only the Christian world view can guarantee.

The Sociology of Health and Healing: A Textbook (Book).

Johnston, J.R. (ed) The American Body in Context: An Anthology . Wilmington, Delaware : Scholarly Resources Inc., 2001, $55.00, xi + 335pp. ISBN 0842028587 (cloth). This book draws on interdisciplinary studies to examine the American body in its contemporary, cultural and social context. It posits that physical attractiveness has become extremely salient in Western cultures and that the body is no longer only a physical and biological entity, but a symbolic creation to be laboured over and evaluated by others. This view is widely supported. For example, Shilling (1997) argues that ‘The human body has, in recent years, been interrogated, investigated and invaded as never before.(…) Images of the body beautiful circulate within advertising and consumer culture at an ever greater rate, while many people spend large amounts of time and money attempting to change the shape and appearance of their physical selves’. Johnston argues that the body has become an individual and collective experience, which, to be understood, needs to take gender, race and class into account. This excellent book presents an extremely comprehensive and accessible account of interpretations of the body. The book is divided into four main sections, covering issues such as the debate about the dualism of mind and body, the body as symbol and metaphor, control and conformity of the body and acts of resistance. Johnston’s thought-provoking comments run like a thread through the book, pulling various strands together from a constructivist perspective. A superb introductory section precedes the main parts and each essay is introduced by a short summary. A popular culture article is included in each main part, with questions to draw the more scholarly and popular contributions together. Suggestions for further reading are made, including some ‘core texts’ by authors such as Susie Orbach and Susan Bordo. However, although these are essential reading for anyone interested, it might have been valuable to include some more recent publications. The first section of the book explores the philosophical distinction between body and mind in Western culture, reminding the reader that both are socially constructed concepts. There has been much academic debate recently on how and where individuals locate a sense of themselves within the body. Johnston argues in the introductory section that although the social sciences claim to bridge the gap between mind and body, they subscribe to the body and mind dualism just as biology and medicine do. Two essays in this section highlight how the mind and body split is reproduced even in science fiction. This is counterbalanced by an article about the experience of living with disability, emphasising the close link of mind and body. The second section analyses the media construction of the body, which promotes the ‘self’ as an image. By discussing the historical and contemporary effect of consumer culture, it argues that the body has become a symbol of the personal self, which can be easily altered and formed. The essays highlight different debates and developments, with an emphasis on gender and race. The third section investigates how bodies are controlled, disciplined and transformed, especially in relation to medicine, psychotherapy and education. Johnston suggests that these social systems have their own institutional language, forcing individuals to think about their bodies in a certain way and mould them according to particular ideals. The essays in this section explore how rituals surrounding bodily functions are regulated, learned and disciplined through medicine and education. After having explored the various social mechanisms through which the body is conceptualised and disciplined, the last section focuses on the possibility of resistance to various forms of control at an individual and collective level. It shows that concepts of the body are not only shaped by dominant cultural notions, but also by physical, emotional and social experiences. The essays in this section present viewpoints of those who resist and challenge dominant culture mandates, but also act as a reminder that individuals are firmly grounded within social structures. Johnston suggests that through analysing power relationships and ways of resistance, avenues of choice and alternatives are explored. In short, Johnston has drawn together knowledge from different disciplines and woven an intriguing tapestry which is rich and thought provoking. Most impressive is her ability to draw together and integrate different points of view, moving the ‘body’ out of the narrow confines of separate disciplines and into the much wider sphere it merits in our culture. The American Body in Context: An Anthology is highly recommended as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the subject.

Mind and Body

I expect every reader knows the hackneyed old joke: ‘What is matter? Never mind. What is mind? No matter.’ Antique as this joke is, it none the less points to an interesting question. For the so-called mind–body dichotomy, which has been raised to almost canonical status in post-Cartesian philosophy, is not in fact at all easy to draw or to defend. This of course means that ‘the mind–body problem’ is difficult both to describe and to solve—or rather, as I would prefer, to dissolve.