idealawg

Poetry -- and law -- are about matters of the mind and the brain, not just the brain

As I have blogged about in the past both here and at Brains on Purpose™, a debate continues among neuroscientists about whether or not there is a difference between the mind and the brain. The materiaIists do not distinguish between the two. After much research, thought, and conversation, I do.

I believe the mind is not the same as the brain so sighed long and loudly when reading a column written by David Brooks. He was writing about the recent Social and Affective Neuroscience Society’s conference. From "The Young and the Neuro" (New York Times):

Since I’m not an academic, I’m free to speculate that this work will someday give us new categories, which will replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’ I suspect that the work will take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity and other unconscious capacities.

The hard sciences are interpenetrating the social sciences. This isn’t dehumanizing. It shines attention on the things poets have traditionally cared about: the power of human attachments. It may even help policy wonks someday see people as they really are.

Oh, dear. Were life and love ever in the future to be so clear and easily reduced to the organ inside our skull. I say, no, never.

I was glad to read this in the column:

[The research] also suggests that even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.

And

[C]onsciousness is too slow to see what happens inside, but it is possible to change the lenses through which we unconsciously construe the world.

That change would be one of the roles of the mind. As Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has said, "The brain puts out the call, the mind decides whether to listen."

Many of the materialists do not believe in free will. (See, for example, the first link below.) This reductionist lens can be insulting to the human spirit. In the legal profession, it can be dangerous

An article about my old haunts: Makes me a bit homesick

My high school alma mater is there; I learned to mediate there; I met with a small group of mediators and Gary Friedman weekly for more than two years there. Where? Marin County, a unique place of true beauty and hippie roots.

Reading this article about Marin was such fun! Hope some of you also will find the reading entertaining. From "On the hippy trail" (Irish Independent):

"There were men and women naked all over the beach, everyone was huffing and puffing on pot, children were running wild, there was drugs and sex everywhere," Gordon Johnson, a local resident, is telling me, gesticulating energetically at the seaside town in front of us.

I am looking at what can only be called middle-class America. ... Wild, naked, drug-taking orgies it is not.

[Marin County] is just a 15-minute drive from San Francisco over the majestic orange pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge and past Alcatraz Island; you know you have arrived when you drive through the rainbow-painted tunnel.

...

After several hours of hiking we reach another spectacular viewpoint, and it is impossible not to be struck with the beauty of the place. We look down across San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, the

Southern CA Mediation Association focusing on the future of mediation

The organization's 2009 conference is called "M3: The Next Generation." It is being held November 6 and 7, 2009, at Pepperdine University. Learn more from the brochure [pdf].

Mediator's behavior may have little to do with the outcome of a mediation

Is the outcome of a mediation independent of the mediator's, well, mediating? If you are interested in that question, read "Civil Case Mediations: Observations and Conclusions" in the new edition of The Jury Expert.

From the article:

What are the practical implications of these findings? The primary implication - for mediators - is that they should acknowledge that the outcome of the mediation (e.g., agreement or nonagreement) is to some extent independent of the mediator's behavior. This suggestion is consistent with Judge Wayne Brazil's charge that mediators should not exaggerate their responsibility, ability or contribution to the mediation (Brazil, 2007). Rather, they should understand that they are hosting a negotiation process.

I almost missed the invited responses to the article. Just keep scrolling to read them.

I would like to hear how the authors decided whether or not the mediator's behavior affected the outcome. How is behavior defined? For example, could attendance equal behavior? Sometimes just the presence of a third party can have an effect on a conflict. A Mennonite friend told me that's one of the reasons Mennonites send "witnesses" to places where conflict is occurring; they do not say anything but merely watch.

Rita Handrich, editor of The Jury Expert was kind enough to send me the article "Hosting Mediations as a Representative of the System of Civil Justice" (Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution) by Judge Brazil. This is the article referred to above—and it's quite an article! No wonder Judge Brazil wrote:

Daniel Bowling, who was kind enough to read this Essay in a couple of its earlier iterations, commented that it is a "radical" version of "mediation" that underlies the views I express in this article.

Here are some quotes from the Brazil article related to mediators' exaggerating their "responsibility, ability or contribution."

No judge or mediator ever settled a case. Neutrals don't make the binding commitments that constitute the settlement agreements; they don't pay or receive settlement money; they don't become parties to the settlement contract. Parties, and only parties, settle cases. Of course judges know this, but the ego-blur that is reflected in asserting that "I settled that case" is not just a product of semantic carelessness. It also

Excellent mediation training programs coming up

Having attended several, I can highly recommend the programs offered by The Center for Understanding in Conflict & The Center for Mediation in the Law. Mediation Intensive Training programs are coming up on September 30 through October 4, December 2 through December 6, and from March 18 through March 22, 2010. Read about the Center and its model of mediation here.

Read about the important book on the understanding-based method of conflict resolution written by Jack Himmelstein and Gary Friedman, the Center's founders, here, here, and here.

Oregon Mediation Association - “Beyond Heroes and Villains: The Power of Collaboration”

This conference will be held November 5 and 6, at University of Oregon School of Law in Eugene. Click to see the programs being offered.

ACR Annual Conference & Summit on Workplace Conflict Resolution

The Association for Conflict Resolution is holding its annual conference in Atlanta from October 7 through 10. More about the event here. Its title is "Convening 'Whole of Community': Integrating Approaches and Practices to Address Conflicts in a Chaotic World." Whew! What a mouthful!

Also on October 7 in Atlanta will be a day-long program on workplace conflict resolution. Its title is "Conflict Competent Strategies in Challenging Organizational Times." More here. Here's a short podcast on which the organizers of the October 7 event are interviewed.

Free teleseminar on elder mediation on September 16

I see at Elder Law Prof Blog that the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) is offering a no-charge teleseminar entitled “Elder Mediation Today: A Conversation with the Contributors to ACResolution Summer 2009 Issue.” You can get all the information here.

A thought for mediators

Research described in Is That Behavior Ethical? The Powerful Have a Different Perspective (Miller-McCune) looked at whether people in positions of power view the bending of rules differently from those with less power. In short, according to this research, the answer is yes.

Are rules made to be broken — or obeyed? Newly published research suggests your answer to that question depends largely upon whether you are mulling it over from a position of power.

“In determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences,” states the study “How Power Influences Moral Thinking,” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “For this reason, the powerful are also more inclined to stick to the rules — irrespective of whether this has positive or negative effects — while the powerless are more inclined to make exceptions.”

Hypotheses for reasons behind this difference are included in the post. What caught my interest was the researchers' advice for mediators.

[T]he realization that a person’s relative level of power influences moral thinking is a valuable

Good-by to a favorite in the mediation neighborhood of the blawg/blogosphere

I am sorry to read that Geoff Sharp of Mediator Blah... Blah... is closing his blog. From his last post blah... blah... bows out:

Regular visitors to this blog will have noticed a gradual decline in posting over the last couple of months.

Life, dear reader, has got busy and the call of the keyboard is not what it was after 1016 posts. I have decided to pack it in.

To some extent I feel this blog has achieved its aim of bringing the best of the ADR web to those who might not have otherwise sought it out. I leave you in the hands of many doing exactly that and better than I ever could.

...

It's time for new projects and, for me, a time for family to pull together and look after our own.

I will miss reading Mediator Blah... Blah... . Geoff has stratospheric levels of both wisdom and wit. His was one of the top blogs on mediation and, as you can see from the comments to his post, many of us will miss it. I wish him the best and thank him for past posts!