Human Nature and Conduct John Dewey

Dewey said that, “Morality is largely concerned with controlling human nature”.

Nietzsche would refer to this control as the sublimated resentment and self-congratulations of the controlled. This compensation for inferiority is the obverse side of the coin of the attempt to control human nature. Common to both is the view of human nature as evil. Dewey addresses the question that Nietzsche answers perfunctorily with the concept of ressentiment. Dewey's first question concerns the ways and wherefores of the dichotomy between the nature of humans and the nature of moral control. If, he muses, morality arose out of human nature, how is it that morality is something to struggle at rather than by something as natural and "second nature” as breathing. Like Nietzsche, Dewey looks for the answer in social stratification. Whereas, for Nietzsche, morality is the compensatory denunciation of the superior by the inferior, for Dewey, morality is the level of compliance of the controlled to the controlling agency. As Dewey looks to the origin of morality, while Nietzsche examinees the evolution of a morality of consequences to that of a morality of intent and preconditions, remember Polybius' words on the restructuring of a post-apocalyptic society.

Camouflage is the most effective defense against shame in a system of negative morals. Being "just like folk” as Clive Staples Lewis put it is just what Friedrich Nietzsche objected to in his condemnation of slave morality.

Dewey makes use of the interaction between the individual and the environment. In issues of ethics and morality, The person and social environment; considering Vision, the eye, the optic nerve, and light. He specifically Mentions that walking presupposes a surface that is walked upon. The question remains, which is preeminent? The eye? The optic nerve? The light? The interplay in between? Or would neuroscience more recent than John Dewey's Time point as toward the visual cortex in the occipital lobe as a processing center? Is This processing center the controlling factor or merely the focus from which the emergent property are call vision arises out of the matrix of light, eyeball and neural network?

Civilization presupposes infrastructure.

Jungian Archetypes

Archetypes are within the collective unconscious. They are mystical and artistic creations of ancient civilizations. Similarities in artistic images across cultures all the interpretation of unexpressed personal issues. Symbols give greater depth. Empirical testing is personal and subjective only. Is the collective unconscious something from beyond that extends downward into humanity or is it an emergent property arising out of the three dimensional matrix formed by interconnected human souls?Jung would have used the collective unconscious for more than the explanation of similarities in the cultural mythologies between cultural without physical contact. He would have brought in many kinds of phenomena beyond the explanation of a science restricted to the uniformity of natural causes within a closed system. A system closed to influences from beyond; the supernatural.
Individuation is the remedy for psychic imbalance. It is a return to a state of integration between conscious and unconscious.Persona is the mask that we wear for the world. The persona is dynamic. It adapts to the reactions we receive from the world. As we learn to value approval as a secondary reward, our persona mask is changed to elicit favorably reactions. Changes in Persona that are major life events are celebrated through ritual.
The Anima or Animus are like the shadow in that they are repositories for characteristics inconsistent with the ego but these characteristics inconsistencies are of a gender nature. A man’s feminine side or a woman’s masculine side. Biochemically all our bodies produce hormones indicative of the opposite gender. The amount to which the other side shines through may be more indicative of the potency, bioavailability, or the amount of other gender hormone produced. Certainly testosterone shows greater effects in post menopausal women, but even if estrogen produced breasts in older men would they still be as noticeable as the mustache on an older woman? Would passivity in an older man be as noticeable as aggression in an older woman? Are these phenomena interpreted according to cultural conventions? Are gender roles purely the result of social learning? 
The shadow is the repository for elements in the unconscious that have been neglected or shunted aside in the development of the persona. The shadow is the connection between the conscious and unconscious. It’s appearance represents moral conflict. The shadow that is integrated with the persona is the grey areas that give the image contrast. The shadow is the same gender as the persona. Cross gender images would be the Anima or Animus not the shadow.Self the most important archetype integration and balance; it provides the personality with unity and stability. During development aspects of the personality grow in a piece-meal fashion. The social identity and the internal identity grow at different rates. The part of the personality that works toward a unified whole is called the transcendent function. The unconscious participates in this function in a dynamic manner. It nudges the ego this way and that to focus attention on lesser development matters.

theories of motivation

The leader’s job is to help the work group achieve goals they desire. Leadership, in this theory is seen as a guide; a help to navigate obstacles in the path of goal achievement. In this theory, leadership is divided into four behavior categories. They are directive behavior, achievement oriented behavior, supportive behavior, and participative behavior. These categories are more intricately subdivided than the simple division of structure and consideration of behaviorist theories. Structure is broken down into directive and achievement behavior and consideration is broken down into supportive and participative behavior.

Happy Birthday, Malachi!

Today is my grandson’s eleventh birthday.

Alternative pay structures

Two alternative pay structures are merit pay, a pay structure which adds performance to a base pay rate, and knowledge based , or skill based pay, a pay system based on the knowledge and skills of the individual instead of the position the individual actually holds. Other alternative pay structures such as gain sharing and profit sharing are based on the performance of the company instead of the performance of the individual.(Knowledge based pay is a pay system wherein workers are compensated according to their skills and abilities rather than their actual position.) Knowledge based pay may lead to greater job satisfaction through cost effectiveness dictating greater worker utilization and job enlargement. Also workers may see skill based pay as more equitable, thus leading to more productivity. Workers might be more inclined to apply special expertise to increase productivity if this behavior is rewarded beyond the norm.  

Feb 4,2010

Had she lived, my daughter  would have celebrated her 29th birthday today

Sleep and Depression

Sleep is not an homogenous phenomenon. It is, of course, divided into sleep both with and without rapid eye movement (REM); Slow and fast electroencephalograph (EEG) wave sleep; sleep with or without muscular tonus. Sleep categories can be discriminated as to whether noradrenalin or serotonin is ascendant. As sleep is divided into dreaming or not, dreaming sleep is subdivided into tonic and phasic. If we include transitory phases, we can increase that division to three as the ancient Hindus did. Divided thus into light sleep, deep sleep and dreaming sleep, these divisions correspond to Vedic categories characterized by the nature of what the sleeper is cognizant. If we make distinctions based on the frequency signature of the EEG, then sleep is divided into four phases. EEG waves are divided into four categories: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta. Wakefulness corresponds to Beta wave activity. Relaxation and drowsiness correspond to Alpha waves. A Hertz spectrum of brainwave frequencies in ascending order begins with the delta waves of deep sleep. The next higher frequency is that of the theta waves of paradoxical sleep. Then there is a .5 Hz gap between the theta frequencies and the frequencies of light alpha wave sleep. The .5 Hz gap between alpha waves and the Beta brain waves of wakefulness is straddled by the frequencies of the anomalous spindles and K complexes of light sleep (Carlson, 2005, Levinthal, 1979).

Light sleep corresponds to slow EEG waves. (Although there are sharp jumps called spindles presented in stage one light sleep.) Light sleep is also characterized by retention of muscular tonus. (The high voltage spikes, characteristic of the phasic portion of dreaming or paradoxical sleep resemble the spindles of light sleep except that they come at a relatively stable rate of 60-70/minute and that they are specifically located in the Pons and the Occipitus.) Slow wave sleep seems to be dependent upon the cortex and thalamus as opposed to the Pons and Occipitus as animals without a cortex fail to present light sleep. Also animals whose brains have been sectioned at the level of the Pons oscillate between deep sleep and dreaming sleep without transitioning through light sleep. Light sleep is correlated with serotonin as injections of serotonin precursors can induce light sleep while artificial serotonin deprivation produces wakefulness (Jouvet, 1967).

EEG frequency decreases as arousability declines indicating a positive correlation. Sleep consists of alternating periods of REM and slow wave sleep. Stage 4 sleep is the time wherein metabolic repair occurs. REM sleep is a time of intense physiological activity despite the lack of muscular tonus. As many as 10% of the population do not present alpha waves. Drugs related to the parasympathetic function of Acetylcholine (ACh) such as atropine present slow waves and arousal in paradoxical simultaneity. Physostigamine, an ACh agonist presents with fast waves and sleep or quiescence. Self reports of dreaming are associated with low amplitude waves indicative of wakefulness during sleep. High frequency asynchronous brain waves and eye movements of 60-70 minutes are also thus associated.

90 minutes after sleep and 45 minutes after stage four EEG enters asynchrony and Theta waves appear. REM begins; muscle tonus disappears perhaps to the point of paralysis punctuated by occasional twitching. People deprived of sleep will recover slow wave and REM sleep but present no need to recover stage one or two sleep. Sleep progresses on a 90 minute cycle containing a 20-30 minute episode of REM sleep. Most stage 3 & 4 sleep occurs early in the night with the proportion of stage 2 sleep increasing as the night progresses. The oscillation between slow wave sleep and paradoxical sleep appears to follow a production and depletion through usage cycles of neurotransmitters perhaps the result of a continually shifting balance of serotonin and noradrenalin similar to the water and oil mixture in a decorative wave machine.

Depression is characterized by disordered sleep. Light transitional sleep is increased at the expense of stage 3 & 4 deep sleep. The sleep of depressed people is punctuated by periods of wakefulness. The first half of their sleep period contains more REM sleep with increased rapidity of the eye movements. Depriving depressed people of either sleep in toto or of merely paradoxical sleep have a positive therapeutic effect resembling that of antidepressant medications. Comparative psychology experiments have demonstrated a connection between monoamine oxidase inhibitors, alleviation of depression, and the suppression of dreams. Like antidepressants, the effects build over time and may continue after discontinuation. Some treatments for depression suppress REM sleep, delaying onset and reducing duration.

free will vs. determinism

The theory of Materialistic Monism lends itself to a denial of free will.  There are those that would attribute this theory to evil in that a denial of free will is in effect, a denial of moral responsibility.  The observations of Konrad Lorenz, and Robert Audrey have great value, but do they really support a denial of spirit without prejudiced interpretation.  Does one’s philosophical presuppositions determine one’s opinions.  Does De Omnibus Dubitandum apply when looking in the mirror?

Man is not a moral agent. Man does not make choices. He merely gravitates sensationally in one direction or another due to the electro-chemical disposition of the body at the moment. God has a mind which is greater than mine, however, the mind of God encompasses mine; absorbs it. I am part of it, therefore God understands my mind even more so than I understand myself, and since God teaches us to accept, (S)He Her(Him)self accepts. God accepts and understands me, this follows naturally and logically from the fact of our mutual existence. Inadequacy is the natural result of finitude just as excess is the result of infinity. However, the finite and the infinite are not separate; the finite is contained within and is part and parcel of the infinite.

Modern research on long-term potentiation  gives an appearance of a denial of Materialistic Monism in this respect.  For it may well be that in making choices, we alter the manner in which individual neurons in the brain are more (or less) likely to activate in response to similar stimuli.