A Philosophical Inquiry to Include Trance into Epistemology

In a state of voluntary trance or meditation, the perception of reality appears to extend beyond the usual and temporal boundaries that are normally perceived by the sense organs. It is argued that the problems of validity and reliability of trance experiences for scientific discourse are in principle no different than the problems associated with ordinary perception. The shift in early Greek philosophy from myth to and emphasis on logos (reason) has led to a neglect of those subtle qualities of reason that were considered to be gateways for divine revelation. Scientific methodologies cannot account for such revelation, and there are no criteria known to science that would enable people to utilize these phenomena. Shamanic experiences are intersubjectively accessible and provide data that is suitable for the construction of rational theories if appropriate methodologies are developed. However, for a scientist, shamanic experiences are considered at most to be psychological ones, and consequently without any value for empirical research. This article examines the possibility of reevaluating the terms "rational� and "consciousness,� in order to expand scientific methodologies in such a way that volitionally altered perceptions of reality can be integrated into scientific research

On Love and Awareness

In this paper, I will discuss some aspects of a humanistic perspective on love which includes both idealistic as well as realistic elements of love. I will argue that any experience of love is directly affected by the level of self-awareness in an individual, that enables him to recognize the origins of his feelings and allows him to act upon them in an intentional manner. I use the term "awareness" in a similar way as, for example, the Jungian psychologist Arnold Mindell. He describes awareness as the capacity of a living human system which is connected to other minds to discover and to use the perception modality. There is a common element to all feelings which is directly related to the self-awareness of an individual. It is the truism that feelings or emotions accentuate a clear picture of an individual's traits of character. Emotionality without self-awareness is a rather burdensome experience for the transmitter as well as it is for the recipient of an emotion. With this I do not refer to rational control of emotionality. Rather, I refer to an existential human condition, in which the consequences of an individual's action must be realized and accepted by oneself

Solving the inverse magnetostatic problem using fictitious magnetic charges

We present a method for solving the inverse magnetostatic problem using fictitious magnetic charges. The method utilizes the fact that a given magnetic stray field is generated by only one unique charge distribution. Furthermore the usage of fictitious magnetic charges reduces the number of degrees of freedom when solving the inverse problem. We demonstrate two numerical experiments showing that these advantages make the method more efficient and that it has better smoothing properties regarding noise in the input data compared to a previous method using the magnetization

Book Symposium: Trevor Tchir, Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Political Action: Daimonic Disclosure of the ‘Who’

Georgia Southern faculty member Prof Karin Fry was a discussant at American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting, Vancouver, Canada Progra