Mag. Josef Mattes, PhD, MSc

Letzte Änderung Last change: 2024-10-14

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

Personal History

I always had considerable talent for and interest in mathematics, and to a lesser extent the sciences. On the other hand, for as long as I can remember I felt that there was a number of things about myself that needed improvement; thus I was also interested in ways to do this, in particular in "Eastern" methods of meditation like Zen or Daoism. In the course of time, interest in medical and psychological topics was increased also due to considerable back pain.

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 addition, I trained as a psychotherapist.

I am currently working as a 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 psychotherapy page and my Feldenkrais & MBSR page (both in German)

  

Publications and talks

Main Research (and practice!) Topics

Current work

Papers in preparation / under review / being revised

Conference contributions: upcoming

Publications: peer reviewed

3rd Millennium

  1. Mattes, J. (2024) Philosophy untouched by science? Zeno's runner, Sextus' epochē, and more. Philosophies, 9, Special Issue "Zeno's Paradoxes Today" (Open access).
  2. Mattes, J. (2024) Die Weite der Dritten Welle: MKT, ACT, Selbstmanagement - ein Fallbericht zu Agoraphobie mit Panikstörung. AVM Publications (Open Access).
  3. Mattes, J. (2022). Positive psychology and philosophy-as-usual: An unhappy match? Philosophies, 7, Special Issue "Philosophy of Human Well-being" (Open access).
  4. Mattes, J. (2022). ACTing as a Pyrrhonist. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 12, 101-125. (Open access).
  5. Mattes, J. (2019). Systematic review and meta-analysis of correlates of FFMQ mindfulness facets. Frontiers in Psychology, 10:2684 (Open access).
  6. 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).
  7. 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).
  8. Mattes, J. (2019). Reports of the death of value-free science are greatly exaggerated. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 10, 689-699. (Open access).
  9. 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.
  10. Mattes, J. (2018). Mindfulness and the psychology of ethical dogmatism. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 28, 233-269. (Open Access)
  11. Mattes, J. (2018). Response to "Forgetting ourselves: epistemic costs and ethical concerns in mindfulness exercises". Journal of Medical Ethics.
  12. Mattes, J. (2016). Attentional focus in motor learning, the Feldenkrais method and mindful movement. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 123, 258-276. author's PDF
  13. 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")

Publications: 2nd Millennium

Main Topics
  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.

Unpublished, or not peer reviewed

Past conference contributions: past

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