Mental Freedom Research Articles

A DEFENSE OF BUDDHISM, MEDITATION, AND FREE WILL: A THEORY OF MENTAL FREEDOM

AbstractThis is my response to the criticisms of Gregg Caruso, David Cummiskey, and Karin Meyers, in their roles as members of the “Author Meets Critics” panel devoted to my book, Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom at the 2019 annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, organized by Christian Coseru. Caruso's main objection is that I am not sufficiently attentive to details of opposing arguments in Western philosophy, and Cummiskey's and Meyers’ objections, similarly, are that I am insufficiently attentive to details of Buddhism. I argue that all such objections, however putatively correct, do not rise to the level of objections that actually undermine my account of mental freedom.

ROBOTIC AI, CRISPR, AND FREE WILL

ROBOTIC AI, CRISPR, AND FREE WILL

MENTAL FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF THE LOVING HEART: FREE WILL AND BUDDHIST MEDITATION

AbstractIn Buddhism, Meditation and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom, Rick Repetti explains how the dynamics of Buddhist meditation can result in a kind of metacognition and metavolitional control that exceeds what is required for free will and defeats the most powerful forms of free will skepticism. This article argues that although the Buddhist path requires and enhances the kind of mental and volitional control Repetti describes, the central dynamic of the path and meditation is better understood as a process of habituation. This not only involves the dis‐identification from mental and emotional content that Repetti discusses—and is commonly emphasized in modern presentations of mindfulness or insight (vipassanā) meditation—but also a transformation of the heart that is effected through the complementary psychological and somatic qualities associated with calm abiding (samatha) and concentration (samādhi) and emphasized in the Pali Nikāyas and commentaries.

Psychometric properties of revised version of the fertility adjustment scale in infertile couples undergoing assisted reproductive technology

ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to validate the edited version of FAS for the purpose of couples undergoing ART. Study designIn this cross-sectional study, the validity of the revised version of the FAS questionnaire was assessed by testing it on 212 couples volunteered to undergo ART. The revised version comprises 12 items from the original FAS version and 6 items added based on a survey interview conducted on infertile couples. Following an assessment of the content validity and reliability, the construct validity was measured following exploratory factor analysis with a varimax rotation. The correlation of the revised fertility adjustment (R-FAS) score with the level of depression, too, was assessed using depression scale of the depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21). ResultsThe assessment of content validity yielded a content validity index and content validity ratio of 0.75 and 0.89. The reliability of the questionnaire measured twice with a correlation index of 0.76 was confirmed. Cronbach's Alpha for the entire questionnaire was 0.83. The exploratory factor analysis was conducted on 15 items by extracting 12 items using two factors: mental freedom and acceptance of extraction conditions. The score made on the R-FAS questionnaire was correlated with the level of depression (r = 0.51; p < 0.0001). ConclusionThe study results were indicative of the validity and reliability of the questionnaire for measurement of the adjustment attributed to the infertility in couples undergoing ART. It is proposed that the infertility-related adjustment in couples undergoing ART and with a high potential for mental disorders be measured using this questionnaire.

What do psychodynamic therapists make of their reveries in the therapeutic encounter? A constructivist grounded theory study

ABSTRACT The therapist’s mind can wander to daydreams, fantasies and preoccupations: mental events termed “reveries” in this study. As therapists attend to the current of their thought in the therapeutic encounter, the question of how to approach their reveries can arise. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with nine qualified psychodynamic therapists to investigate therapists’ attitudes to reveries. The research design and analysis followed the principles of Charmaz’s [Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage; Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage] constructivist grounded theory. Results showed that therapists experienced diverse reveries sometimes felt to yield deeper clinical understanding. Reveries were also seen to have a “freeing-up” function for the therapist and patient, and to require mental freedom to operate. Implications for theoretical understanding and recommendations for clinical technique are discussed.

Freedom of the Mind: Buddhist Soft Compatibilism

Analysis of Buddhist meditation experts’ skills grounds a theory of mental freedom, stronger than libertarianism, that includes freedoms of the will, emotion, attention, perception, and all voluntary phenomena, and is compatible with various Western and Buddhist conceptions of causation and the self, but poses challenges for all forms of free will skepticism.

Science, Politics, and Visual Design in Cold War America: Will Burtin’s “Cell”

In 1958, graphic designer Will Burtin’s (1908–1972) large-scale model of a basic cell, made of plastic and flashing lights, opened at the annual convention of the American Medical Association. It had been commissioned by Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, and was received with great enthusiasm. It subsequently traveled internationally, appearing widely in print and on television, and then settling for permanent exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This interactive, multimedia exhibition was an example of a specific approach to scientific visualization that manifested new attitudes toward the power of visual material for American social progress. In the context of the Cold War, certain ways of employing “the visual” were deemed to be conducive to securing individual agency and human mental freedom. In the realm of mid-century corporate science and technology display, where designers and businessmen worked closely together, these new design techniques helped to make corporate activity appear coherent with these democratic ideals. An analysis of the sensory experience of the Upjohn cell model and its circulation demonstrates the key role that visual technology played in defining American citizenship as a practice of viewing visual media. Burtin’s design projects helped to affirm relationships between progress, democracy, and Western capitalism during the Cold War period.

A School of Others: Jean-Nicholas Jager, Richard Hurrell Froude, Benjamin Harrison, and John Henry Newman's Turn to the Development of Doctrine

A School of Others:Jean-Nicholas Jager, Richard Hurrell Froude, Benjamin Harrison, and John Henry Newman's Turn to the Development of Doctrine Michael J. G. Pahls (bio) John henry newman penned his public Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on 27 December 1874 in response to Prime Minister William Gladstone's own published attacks regarding the doctrine of papal infallibility. Gladstone had argued that the newly defined doctrine would require a "renunciation of moral and mental freedom," provoking "civil disloyalty" among English Catholics.1 In response, Newman ventured a more winsome presentation for the new dogma, mitigating implications so as to allay fears that a foreign pope might subvert the English monarchy by infallible fiat. More intriguing in his defense, however, was Newman's appeal to the ongoing interpretive work of the Schola Theologorum—the "school of theologians." Considering that Gladstone had committed himself to "a representation of ecclesiastical documents which will not hold."2 Newman declared, "None but the Schola Theologorum is competent to determine the force of Papal and Synodal utterances, and the exact interpretation of them is a work of time."3 Shorn of [End Page 5] this necessary process of theological reception, Newman judged that Gladstone's reading was precipitous and at least potentially inaccurate. Gladstone's understanding of the dogma, like his understanding of the English Catholic faithful, was thereby "neither trustworthy nor charitable."4 While numerous treatments of the Catholic Newman's mature conception of the Schola Theologorum have appeared over the years, few have noticed how his regard for the ongoing, collaborative, and interpretive work of theologians finds an important, embodied precedent in the work of the Anglican Newman and in the Oxford Movement of which he was a principal figure.5 This article will explore a discrete period in that broader story wherein the failure of Newman's via media—a proposal constructed in the context of debate with the Catholic Abbé Jean-Nicholas Jager—was brought home to him under the sometimes-painful interrogations of fellow Oxford Movement collaborators, Hurrell Froude and Benjamin Harrison. I argue here that this ongoing theological reception of Anglican doctrine ultimately pressed Newman to acknowledge both the actuality and permissibility of doctrinal development and so anticipated what Newman envisioned for the Schola Theologorum in embodied practice. ENTANGLED IN CONTROVERSY WITH A FRENCH ABBÉ Since 1832, Newman had been at work as a Tractarian, working to buttress the Church of England's flagging high church hegemony in the face of Lord Charles Grey's Whig Government reforms.6 Fully expecting eventual [End Page 6] disestablishment, Newman sought to arm himself and his growing Association of Tory churchmen against the "systematic hatred … borne by Romanists, Sectarians, Liberals, and Infidels" by "poking into the Fathers with a hope of rummaging forth passages of history which may prepare the imaginations of men for a changed state of things, and also be precedents for our conduct in difficult circumstances."7 Those labors evolved into an effort to prioritize an older apostolicity over the Church of England's Elizabethan preoccupation with monarchical establishment. Resigned to life without royal preferment, Newman imagined that the national church's cause could be entrusted to the English faithful directly—"thrown on the people," as he put it, in both an economic and a theological sense.8 Here, the commonplaces of the Oxford Movement's popular Tracts for the Times—defending the apostolic succession of bishops, the liturgical stability of the Book of Common Prayer, the sacramental powers of the clergy, and the divinely established jurisdiction of the church—developed into Newman's more comprehensive via media theory of the English Church when a chance encounter grew into a fervid epistolary debate. It is well-known that the 1837 Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church represent Newman's attempt to realize an only-theoretical via media as the "very truth of the Apostles" amid the competing "real" religions of "Protestantism and Popery."9 This work grew out of his "lectures on Romanism," delivered orally [End Page 7] in Adam de Brome chapel of Saint Mary the Virgin in the summer of 1836, but those lectures were immediately preceded by a months-long correspondence...

Romanticism, Origins, and the History of Heredity by Christine Lehleiter

Reviewed by: Romanticism, Origins, and the History of Heredity by Christine Lehleiter Stefani Engelstein Christine Lehleiter. Romanticism, Origins, and the History of Heredity. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2014. 323 pp. Christine Lehleiter's engaging first monograph delves lucidly into the complex currents of scientific and literary investigations into heredity in the period around 1800. Lehleiter's contribution to this growing field includes fascinating accounts of breeding experiments on plants and animals, medical literature on hermaphrodites, and early naturalist speculations on species transformation, culled from painstaking archival research. Her approach leads to provocative new readings of work by Goethe, Jean Paul, and E. T. A. Hoffmann, as well as to a [End Page 313] more robust understanding of the diversity of the theoretical landscape surrounding questions of individual identity, species identity, and transmission of traits. Lehleiter's interdisciplinary analyses also enable her to discover in the works of her chosen literary authors an implicit theory of the relationship between literature and science that has enjoyed significant and lasting influence and that establishes literature as a legitimate site for interrogating scientific methods, theories, and jurisdictions. Lehleiter opens with a readable and informative history of ideas about the inheritance of traits, culled from texts on medicine, natural history, and breeding. The quest to understand the transfer of traits, both physical and mental, merged with speculations about their metamorphosis and their retention, leading to debates about the possible transformation of species and to evaluations of the effects of inbreeding and hybridization. Here and throughout her volume, Lehleiter demonstrates that reflections on reproduction and heredity at the turn of the nineteenth century extended beyond the exclusionary rivalry between epigenesist and preformationist camps familiar from the growing literature in this field. She demonstrates that these discussions implicated humans not only in the context of incest and racial mixing but also in considerations of determinism, education, and identity formation. While an Enlightenment attitude had segregated the human from nature, she argues, thereby creating a space for spiritual or mental freedom, this dualism was threatened by the acknowledgment of human as animal. Lehleiter's subsequent three chapters interpret literary works within the context established in this first chapter. She begins each case study by situating the author within a debate and then turns to an analysis of the way each author comments on and contributes to the emerging definitions of the sciences and humanities. Lehleiter's reading of the Mignon episode in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre forces the reader to confront the neglected surface, namely, of Mignon's body, as indecipherable because truly hermaphroditic, what we would now call intersex. Hermaphrodism, infertility, and infirmity were among the reported risks of inbreeding in the literature on livestock. The offspring of sibling incest, Mignon thus demonstrates for Lehleiter Goethe's insistence on a firm reality of nature that the Tower Society anachronistically denies and screens. Goethe participates in a nuanced differentiation of value spheres both here and in the Mann von funfzig Jahren episode of the Wanderjahre, in order to enable the coexistence of a biological and a moral domain in which the latter is informed but not subsumed by the former. Lehleiter soon moves from animals to plants, where breeding experiments similarly interrogated inheritance and questioned the stability of species in the wake of speculations about evolution (or transformationism, as it was known at the time) that spread from Erasmus Darwin in England to Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in Germany and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in France. Here Lehleiter uncovers intriguing connections between the discourses of transformation in biology and in alchemy. Less amenable to the idea of nature's influence on morality than Goethe, Jean Paul Richter would seem to subvert the logic of heredity in his novel Der Komet, where a kind of speculative self-generation or monstrous poetology substitutes for inheritance—whether of traits or of social position. And yet, this spiritual freedom arises against the fixity of a natural substratum that rejects evolutionary thinking and anchors physical drives in instinct. Richter thus returns to an earlier dualism that adheres to a divine order in nature and a human realm of freedom beyond it. [End Page 314] In her final chapter, Lehleiter turns to explicit considerations...

New beginnings after the war: Precision and mental freedom in dance and choreography – An interview with Susanna Linke

Abstract Susanne Linke spoke to us about the state of dance in post-war Germany, her experiences of dancing for Pina Bausch at Folkwang Tanzstudio and her generation’s intuitive emancipatory gesture of abandoning classical roles and themes.

Conflict between the Individual and Society in The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter can be considered a story of neverending conflict between the individual and society. Here individuality is being downtrodden by the society in the name of Puritanism where religion and law are identical to one another. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl are struggling to find their identities against the harsh Puritan society. The aim of this paper is to show how hypocritical the Puritan society is in applying their ethics when they themselves do not follow it and how the instinctive nature of the soul of the individual has been shattered by the iron grasp of Puritanism. This paper is also an attempt to show that, in spite of all the efforts of the Puritan society, individuals find a way to uphold their mental freedom and thus defeat the society.

The Changes and Meanings of the Image of Cow(牛) in Sino-Korean Poems during the Koryo and Early Joseon Dynasties

The Changes and Meanings of the Image of Cow(牛) in Sino-Korean Poems during the Koryo and Early Joseon Dynasties

Embodied Paths in Aging: Body Journeys Towards Enhanced Agency and Self-Attunement

Informed by the Developmental Theory of Embodiment, the article describes the embodied journeys of 31 women, ages 50 to 70 years, who participated in 52 life-history interviews, and delineates the implications of the theory and the research program to the practice of feminist therapy with women in older adulthood. In the domain of Physical Freedom, a core construct of the theory, the research suggests that women at these ages often seek to re-capture experiences of joyful immersion and competence in physical action as well as of moving freely and taking space in the physical territory; safety where it has been violated; and attuned comfort and agency with physical desire. In the domain of Mental Freedom, another core construct of the theory, the research suggests that women in later adulthood aim to challenge long-held constraining ‘feminine’ molds, such as inhabiting the body as an object to be gazed at and as a deficient site, caring for others at the expense of oneself, or acting demure and submissive. Older adulthood seems to be a productive phase for transformations in the way women engage with the world.

Moral Enhancement and Mental Freedom

AbstractPromotion of pro‐social attitudes and moral behaviour is a crucial and challenging task for social orders. As traditional ways such as moral education have some, but apparently and unfortunately only limited effect, some authors have suggested employing biomedical means such as pharmaceuticals or electrical stimulation of the brain to alter individual psychologies in a more direct way — moral bioenhancement. One of the salient questions in the nascent ethical debate concerns the impact of such interventions on human freedom. Advocates argue that moral bioenhancements do not pose a serious threat to freedom. This contention, however, is based on an overly narrow, if not impoverished, sense of freedom, which comprises only freedom of action and freedom of will. Mind‐altering interventions primarily affect another sense of freedom: freedom of mind, a concept that has not received much attention although it should rank among the most important legal and political freedoms. The article introduces three senses of mental freedom potentially infringed upon by moral bioenhancement and places it in a broader perspective. Ignorance of mental freedom has far‐ranging consequences for the shape of the political and legal order at large. As many advocates are apparently not aware of the freedoms they seek to undermine, their calls for moral enhancement programmes are dangerously premature.

Mental freedom: Who has control-the rider or the horse?

This paper has been reproduced and modified from a PhD dissertation (Deakin University, 2013) written by the author titled ‘Freedom and Conditionality: Analysing Mental and Yogic Models of Freedom’. It is a cross-cultural, crossdisciplined work based on an exploration into Eastern and Western concepts of mental freedom. The thesis methodology included a critical analysis and examination of various theories relating to emotional life. To achieve this aim textual exploration and empirical research was carried out. The empirical data collected included questionnaires and interviews pertaining to life-experiences in terms of emotional well-being, which is discussed in context as “mental freedom”). This paper is taken from the results of the research, in particular Chapter Five of the thesis, which will be published early next year by Cambridge Scholars Publishing under the title ‘Freedom Beyond Conditioning: East West’. The paper discusses key elements related to emotional well-being in particular Sigmund Freud’s philosophical approach to certain aspects of his theories, including the life and death instinct and the organisation of the personality. The paper also introduces key Eastern theories in respect to Yogic traditions, which it relates to Freud’s id, ego and superego and theory of dynamic (psychical) energy. The paper concludes that certain elements of Freud’s theories and Eastern philosophy share important parallels that relate to the individual’s ability or inability to achieve mental freedom.

Snakes and Dragons, Rat’s Liver and Fly’s Leg: The Butterfly Dream Revisited

The Zhuangzi begins with Peng, a soaring bird transformed from a bounded fish, which is the first metaphor that points beyond limited standpoints to a higher point of view. The transformation is one-way and symbolizes that there is a higher viewpoint to attain which affords mental freedom and the clarity and scope of great vision. Under the alternate thesis of constant transformation, values and understandings must ceaselessly transform and collapse. All cyclical transformations must collapse into skeptical relativism and confusion. But Peng does not turn back into a fish, and the awakened sage does not fall into a slumber of ignorance and confusion. It is only the thesis of a one-way transformation that leaves the sage in a state of knowledge.

Right to the City, Desire for the Suburb?

The 2000s have been a lively decade for cities. The Worldwatch Institute estimated that 2007 was the first year in human history that more people worldwide lived in cities than the countryside. Globalisation and new digital media technologies have generated the seemingly paradoxical outcome that spatial location came to be more rather than less important, as combinations of firms, industries, cultural activities and creative talents have increasingly clustered around a select node of what have been termed “creative cities,” that are in turn highly networked into global circuits of economic capital, political power and entertainment media. Intellectually, the period has seen what the UCLA geographer Ed Soja refers to as the spatial turn in social theory, where “whatever your interests may be, they can be significantly advanced by adopting a critical spatial perspective”. This is related to the dynamic properties of socially constructed space itself, or what Soja terms “the powerful forces that arise from socially produced spaces such as urban agglomerations and cohesive regional economies,” with the result that “what can be called the stimulus of socio-spatial agglomeration is today being assertively described as the primary cause of economic development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity”

불교철학과 대순사상의 사유체계에 대한 일고찰

Both Daesoon philosophy and Buddhist philosophy have strong aspirations for establishing a world comprised of human-beings. In other words, Daesoon philosophy and Buddhist philosophy put human-beings in the place of ‘subject character(主語的 人格)’ instead of ‘predicate character(述語的 人格).’ This is because a human is the master rather than a guest of the universe and the world. In this regard, it is safe to say that both Daesoon philosophy and Buddhist philosophy have a common goal of reaching ‘an infinitely open life managed by a human-being, the master.’ Daesoon philosophy and Buddhist philosophy also share the idea that everything in the universe is an organistic world that is closely connected, like a network. In this aspect, the two philosophies consider the whole world rather than the individual, and seek ways for people to live together actively while expanding the scope of community to the world. Even if ‘the morality of living together (相生)’ and ‘the realization of mercy(同體大悲)’ are completely different languages on the surface, it is not difficult to understand the homogeneity inherent in such expressions. Daesoon philosophy and Buddhist philosophy show endless reliability towards all humans and are declarative and reasonable, but both herald human beings as eligible to become the main characters of the future world and lead to the birth of independent human beings while inducing them to the highest position in the universe by liberating humans from the limitations they find. ‘Heaven on Earth’ as stated in Daesoon philosophy refers to an ideal society where humans and God harmonize, and God and humans complement each other. Also, the world will achieve political stability and equality, realizing an economically prosperous world. Furthermore, social justice will be realized and cultural and religious conflicts resolved. As humans acknowledge there is a way to live together in a universal nature, the environmental issue no longer becomes the top priority for human beings and a world where the morals of human beings reach the highest level will be established. From the original Buddhist perspective, King Jeonrhyun, the proxy of Buddha, realizes the ideal of Buddhism in the mundane world. The world controlled by King Jeonrhyun can be described as having liberty, equality, peace, justice, prosperity, morality, order, legality, democracy, welfare, etc. Therefore, the ideal Buddhist world is materially prosperous, physically healthy and socially just, as well as a world where moral maturity and mental freedom are achieved.

From symmetry to particles

The notion of a particle-like state emerging from a symmetry breaking is given five corresponding pictures. We start from a geometrical picture in two dimensions involving a modular curve constructed using 336 triangles. The same number of building blocks is found again, this time as 336 contact points in the ten dimensional space of super string theory in the context of the largest kissing number of lattice sphere packing. The next corresponding representation is an abstract one pertinent to the order of the simple linear Lie group SL(2, n) in seven dimensions (n = 7) which leads to 336 symmetries. Subsequently a tensorial picture is given using the Riemannian tensor of relativity theory but this time in an eight dimensional space (n = 8) for which the number of independent components is again 336. Finally we use a physical string theory related picture in the 12 dimensions of F theory to find 336 moduli space dimensions representing the instanton cells of our theory. It is evident that the five preceding pictures are ten fold interconnected and exchangeable. This additional mental freedom does not only enhance the feeling of understanding, but also facilitates the easy recognition of complex mathematical relations and its connection to the physical concepts.

Freedom and loss in a human landscape: multinational oil exploitation and the survival of reindeer herding in north-eastern Sakhalin, the Russian Far East

Sakhalin’s multinational offshore oil and gas projects signify hope for the region’s economic regeneration. They also pose an environmental threat to the livelihoods of local natural resource-users, including Sakhalin’s few remaining reindeer herders. For the herders over the past century, industrial development, particularly in relation to the domestic onshore oil and gas industry, has been associated with environmental degradation and loss of pastures, family cohesion, language and culture. The herders contrast the physical and mental freedom they enjoy living on the land to the constraint of village life. Their survival strategies are based on a certain freedom from authority and the formal law. Their desire for freedom is also manifested in a reluctance to engage with outsiders who could have a significant influence on their future. This paper explores the survival strategies of reindeer herding households and enterprises and the ways that they engage with outsiders such as state officials, NGOs and o...