Mag. Josef Mattes, PhD, MSc

Homepage: https://www.jmattes.at

Universität Wien Email: a08401972@unet. univie.ac.at or even better: research AT jmattes.AT

Publikationen und Vorträge / publications and talks

Siehe auch meine Seite zu / See also my page about Feldenkrais & MBSR (auf Deutsch / in German)

Tree of Interests

• My root interest is How to Live Life.
  Main (overlapping) branches:
  • Flourishing/Well-being/Liberation
    • Mindfulness, meditation
    • Contemplative traditions: Early Buddhism, Chan/Zen/Son, Daoism (ZhuangZi); other (e.g., Sufism, ...)
    • Mindfulness based interventions: MBSR & Co, and their applications in psychotherapy, sports, etc.
    • Mindful movement: Feldenkrais, Yiquan, Qigong, Yoga, Tango,...
    • Positive Psychology
    • Related areas of philosophy: Philosophy as a Way of Life
  • The big picture: Consciousness, Cosmology, Evolution, Neuroscience, ... and related philosophy.
  • Constraints and obstacles:
    • Physical and mental health: evidence-based therapies.
    • Limited resources: Economics.
    • Impact on others: (virtue) ethics
    • Impact of others: Credulity, herding, collectivism, moralizing, manipulation, fraud, group think, ...
    • Decision making, epistemology:
      • Cognitive illusions ("heuristics and biases", if you prefer).
      • Fallibility, σκέψις, vagueness.
      • History, philosophy, foundations of mathematics and science; pseudoscience.

Personal History

After starting academic work on foundations of mathematics (see publications), and being disappointed by the actually pretty weak justifications for the allegedly "intuitively obvious" axioms of set theory, I wanted to move in a more applied direction and got a PhD from UC Berkeley for work on quantum groups and topology. My time in California encompassed a major personal crisis lasting several years, whose collateral damage included loss of interest in more or less abstract mathematics. After a three-year stint as visiting research assistant professor at UC Davis I returned to Austria.

Trying to get into a really applied field, and through a chain of chance events, I ended up both having a part-time job at the Numerical Harmonic Analysis Group; and getting a post-graduate degree in Quantitative Finance from the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) Vienna. Already having abandoned foundations of mathematics for its lack of real foundations, the foundations of much of economic theory turned out to look no better. On the positive side, I did acquire a strong interest in behavioural economics, and more generally in how/when/why we go wrong in our opinions and decisions (what psychologists refer to as "cognitive illusions" or "heuristics and biases").

One of these biases, the negativity bias, leads us to overemphasis perceived problems (just look at the nearest newspaper). Positive psychology set out to redress this imbalance - this is another one of my interests, resulting in a "MAPP" (MSc Applied Positive Psychology) from Bucks New University.

In 2020, I started woking as a trainee psychotherapist (with particular interest in "3rd wave" cognitive-behavioural therapy: MBCT, ACT, ...; and body-involving approaches: Focusing, AT, ...), and recently took up again my philosophy studies from 30 years ago, while also teaching Mindful Movement (in the form of the Feldenkrais Method) and MBSR.

For recent work see List of publications. For my practice see my Feldenkrais & MBSR page (in German)

Publications and talks

3rd Millennium

Main Research (and practice!) Topics

• Overambitious project 1: Mindfulness, positive psychology, and rationality.
  Relations between non-judging acceptance, well-being, meaning, critical thinking and open-mindedness.
• Overambitious project 2: Flow and flexibility: Optimizing optimal experience.
  What, if anything, Psychology (flow theory, self-determination theory, harmonic passions, ...), Psychotherapy (REBT, ACT, Focusing, ...), Somatics (Feldenkrais, ...), and ancient Wisdom (Early Buddhism, Pyrrhonism, Daoism, Stoa, ...), can learn from each other.

Conference contributions: upcoming

• 26. wissenschaftliche Tagung der AVM zum Thema Verhaltenstherapeutische Zugänge zum Selbstwert; Graz, Okt.2024. Vortrag "Nicht-wertende Werterhöhung? Über Achtsamkeit und Selbstwert in der Verhaltenstherapie.".
• Int.Conference on Mindfulness ICM:2024, Bangor (Wales, UK), Aug.2024. Talk "A path through the mindfulness jungle?"

Papers in preparation / being revised

• Naturalism and Nagarjuna
• (Dys-)Functional Contextualism: Pragmatic Truth is neither true nor pragmatic.

Papers under review

• "Die Breite der Dritten Welle"

Peer reviewed

20. Mattes, J. (2022). Positive psychology and philosophy-as-usual: An unhappy match? Philosophies, 7, Special Issue "Philosophy of Human Well-being" (Open access).
    
21. Mattes, J. (2022). ACTing as a Pyrrhonist. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 12, 101-125. (Open access).
22. Mattes, J. (2019). Systematic review and meta-analysis of correlates of FFMQ mindfulness facets. Frontiers in Psychology, 10:2684 (Open access).
23. Mattes, J. (2019). Are we forgetting sati? Memory and the benefits of mindfulness from a non-Buddhist viewpoint. Mindfulness, 10, 1703-1706. (Full-text view-only).
24. Mattes, J. (2019). Towards Making Sense of Spiritual Intelligence: Two Contrasting Approaches. 5th Annual Applied Positive Psychology Symposium: Proceedings of Presented Papers, pp.51-61. (Open access).
25. Mattes, J. (2019). Reports of the death of value-free science are greatly exaggerated. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 10(4), 689-699. (Open access).
26. Mattes, J. (2018). Mindful movement: Self-determination for the "running ape". The Chronicle of Advances in Positive Health and Well-Being, 1 (Open access).
    Human bodies are made for movement. Yet, despite much lip service being paid to the importance of movement for well-being and health, in practice it is grossly neglected in (positive) psychology. Here I argue that certain forms of movement not only contribute to health, but can also be used to further important goals from Self-Determination Theory (SDT): an integrated self and acting from intrinsic motivation.
27. Mattes, J. (2018). Mindfulness and the psychology of ethical dogmatism. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 28, 233-269. (Open Access)
    
28. Mattes, J. (2018). Response to "Forgetting ourselves: epistemic costs and ethical concerns in mindfulness exercises". Journal of Medical Ethics.
    
29. Mattes, J. (2016). Attentional focus in motor learning, the Feldenkrais method and mindful movement. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 123, 258-276. author's PDF
30. Mattes, J. (2014). Scientabilität - eine Antwort auf Homöopathie? Zeitschrift für Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualität im Gesundheitswesen (ZEFQ), 108, 229-232. author's PDF (siehe auch unten: "Sextus und die vier Dogmatiker")

Unpublished, or not peer reviewed

• Mattes, J. (2017). Why ACT like Donald Trump?
  Akzeptanz- und Commitment Therapie (ACT) ist eine interessante und wirksame Therapiemethode. Leider kommt sie vermischt mit zum Teil skurriler Philosophie ("es gibt keinen Fortschritt in der Wissenschaft", "kein Platz für Realität und Wahrheit"). Ein Plädoyer, ACT von postmodernem Unsinn zu befreien.
• Mattes, J. (2015). Moshe und der Aderlass. Fokus (Zeitschrift des österreichischen Feldenkrais-Verbandes), 2015, 36-40.
  Ein Versuch, der Feldenkrais-Welt evidenzbasiertes Arbeiten nahezubringen.
• Mattes, J. (2014). Sextus und die vier Dogmatiker.
  Die Zeitschrift "Skeptiker" hatte unlängst einen Schwerpunkt "Evidenz-basierte Medizin und Homöopathie". Darin haben vier Artikel brav im geistigen Gleichschritt die Idee der "Scientabilität" (de facto ein Forschungsverbot) von Christian Weymayr angepriesen. Nun scheinen mir Forschungsverbote problematischer als Zuckerkügelchen, und Weymayrs Argumente keineswegs stichhaltig (siehe oben "Scientabilität - eine Antwort auf Homöopathie?"). "Sextus und die vier Dogmatiker" zeigt auf informale Weise, dass auch die vier Artikel im Skeptiker weit davon entfernt sind eine zwingende Argumentation zu ergeben. Besonders interessant ist, dass die "Skeptiker"-Redaktion ausdrücklich behauptete "eine angeregte Debatte" zu erhoffen, aber keine kritische Stellungnahme erscheinen ließ, und insbesondere die Veröffentlichung meines Artikels ohne Begründung ablehnte (ob zurecht, können Sie nach Lektüre selbst bewerten).

Conference contributions: past

• ACT World Conference 2023, Nicosia, July 2023: 2 talks
• ACT2022, Poznan, September 2022: Talk "Against Dogmatic Anti-Dogmatism" and daily morning activity "Awareness Through Movement"
• 10th anniversary Applied Positive Psychology Symposium: London July 2022: Talk "Aspects of Flourishing in Modern Psychology and Ancient Philosophies" and Feldenkrais workshop "Harmonious Movement - Less Effort, More Learning".
• 32nd International Congress of Psychology, Online, 18th - 23th July, 2021: talk "Making sense of spiritual intelligence" (Congress postponed from July 2020).
• ACBS World Conference 19, Online, 24-27 June 2021: talk "ACT and Greek philosophy: What if your chosen valued-direction is ataraxia (undisturbedness, equanimity)?"
• 5th Annual Applied Positive Psychology Symposium, London High Wycombe 2019: talk "Towards making sense of spiritual intelligence"
• 7th International Self-Determination Theory Conference, Amsterdam 2019: talk "Mindful Movement: Connecting physical and mental health and well-being".
• 4th Conference on Exercise for Health and Rehabilitation, Kaunas 2018:
  • Invited talk "Mindful Movement: Connecting physical and mental health and well-being"
  • Invited workshop "Modern Mindful Movement: Lessons from the Feldenkrais Method® "
• International Conference on Mindfulness (ICM-3), Amsterdam 2018: two talks
  • "Systematic review and meta-analysis of correlates of FFMQ mindfulness facets"
  • "On the psychology of mindfulness dogmatism"
• 3rd Conference of the German Society for Positive Psychology Research (DGPPF), Bochum 2018:
  • Workshop: „Selbstbestimmung in Bewegung: Achtsamkeit und integriertes Selbst“ (Self-determination in movement: Mindfulness and integrated self)
  • Research report: “Optimizing optimal experience: Flow and Harmony in Positive Psychology and Ancient Wisdom”
• 5th World Congress on Positive Psychology, Montreal 2017: two round table contributions
  • Positive Psychology and the Moving Body
  • Meta-analysis of Positive Psychology Correlates of Mindfulness Facets
• Second International Conference on Mindfulness (ICM-2), Rome 2016: talk "Mindful movement and attentional focus".

Publications: 2nd Millennium

Main Topics

• Foundations of Mathematics
• Low-dimensional Topology and related areas of Mathematical Physics

Peer reviewed publications

1. Andersen, J. E.; Mattes, J.; Reshetikhin, N. (1998). Quantization of the algebra of chord diagrams. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 124(3), 451-467.
2. Mattes, J. (1997). Functions on the moduli space of flat G 2 -connections on a Riemann surface. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 125(8), 2241-2244.
3. Andersen, J. E.; Mattes, J.; Reshetikhin, N. (1996). The Poisson structure on the moduli space of flat connections and chord diagrams. Topology 35(4), 1069-1083.
4. Mattes, J.; Reshetikhin, N. (1994). On invariants of tangles derived from balanced categories. In: Yetter, David N. (ed.), Proceedings of the conference on quantum topology, Manhattan, KS, USA, March 24–28, 1993, Singapore: World Scientific, 269-299.
5. Mattes, J.; Polyak, M.; Reshetikhin, N. (1993). On invariants of 3-manifolds derived from abelian groups. In: Kauffman, Louis H. (ed.) et al., Quantum topology. Singapore: World Scientific. Ser. Knots Everything. 3, 324-338
6. Mattes, J. (1993). On the convenient setting for real analytic mappings. Monatsh. Math. 116(2), 127-141.
7. Mattes, J. (1993). Axiomatic approaches to nonstandard analysis. Jahrbuch 1992 der Kurt-Gödel-Gesellschaft, 61-79.
8. Mattes, J. (1990). Classes and internal set theory. Jahrbuch 1990 der Kurt-Gödel-Gesellschaft, 98-104.
9. Mattes, J. (1990). Some set-theoretical aspects of differentiation theory. Monatsh. Math. 110(2), 137-144.