Between Science and Nature: Interpreting Lactation Failure in Elizabeth von Arnim's The Pastor's Wife

Interpreting a scene of lactation failure allows us to represent breast-feeding as a contested social practice. This essay reads a novelistic scene of lactation failure in the context of the decline of breast-feeding in the twentieth century. The protagonist's ignorance of the female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation is an effect of her objectification within the opposition between science and nature. Unnatural as a woman because she is a natural individual, the pastor's wife exemplifies the dilemmas of breast-feeding as a biosocial practice of maternity in a technological society which features the breakdown of traditional female networks in which knowledge about maternity and breast-feeding are circulated.     

The psychophysical nature of humans

Postpowanie czlowieka [Human activity] in [Ajdukiewicz 1985], vol. 1, 317–324.     

Where “Sex” Is Born(e): Intersexed Births and the Social Urgency of Heterosexuality

Our beloved genders of the present moment are neither universal nor trans-historical presences in the world. The specific gender order which we employ today is the legacy of a particular cultural and political history, and there is still a great deal at stake in preserving it. As a graduate student I stumbled upon the topic of intersexuality a few years ago and found myself enthralled with its implications. Continuing to present itself inspite of all our scientific knowledge about the supposed immutability of female and male, intersexuality disrupts the gender order. The response to this disruption has been swift and terrible: from the intersexed infants who enter our world everyday are carved (literally and figuratively) supposedly normal boys and girls (mostly girls). The following exposition represents a pre-fieldwork (theoretical) stage in my current research and attempts to demonstrate that medical authorities manage intersex cases as they do in order to stabilize the always precarious institution of heterosexuality.     

Ethical Reasoning And The Embodied,Socially Situated Subject

My discussion is concerned with how symbolic power constitutively structures our very identities in relation to one another and at the bodily level of lived experience. Although many accounts of the self and of subjectivity as socially situated have difficulties in their explanations of agency, Zaners work suggests a basis upon which the selfs independence from others can be understood. His phenomenology of embodied subjectivity explains how the emerging self presupposes presence with others. At the same time, however, co-presence also reveals the selfs distinct perspective and capacity for circumstantial possibilizing, that is to say, actualizing another possible than the actual. My aim is to examine critically the intersections between Zaners phenomenology and other theoretical accounts of the socially situated self. I also show how Zaners work contributes to these discussions a way of understanding the possibility of agency that is rooted in embodied experience.     

Foucault on the Case: The Pastoral and Juridical Foundation of Medical Power

This paper employs Foucaults concept of governmentality to examine critically the efforts by medical humanists to reform the medical case. I argue that these reform efforts contribute to the individualizing dimensions of medical power through the development of a pastoral technique that medicine has taken over from religious authority. Clinical experiences at this NEH Institute also revealed a juridical dimension of the medical case that treats a patients statements as suspect and in need of corroboration by evidence provided by the patients body. The combination of these pastoral and juridical dimensions of the case contributes to the normalizing power of modern medicine, and medical humanists need to be aware of their own contribution to this form of power as they reform the case.     

Emeralds are no chameleons — Why “Grue” is not projectible for induction

The model function for induction of Goodmans's composite predicate Grue was examined by analysis. Two subpredicates were found, each containing two further predicates which are mutually exclusive (green and blue, observed before and after t). The rules for the inductive processing of composite predicates were studied with the more familiar predicate blellow (blue and yellow) for violets and primroses. The following rules for induction were violated by processing grue: From two subpredicates only one (blue after t) appears in the conclusion. As a statement about a future and unobserved condition this subpredicate, however, is not projectible for induction whereas the only suitable predicate (green before t) does not show up in the conclusion. In a disjunction a v b where a is true and b false the disjunction is true. When, however, the only true component is dropped, what remains is necessarily false. An analogous mistake may be observed in the processing of grue, where the only true component (green) was dropped in the conclusion. — As a potent criterion for correct inductions a check of the necessity of the conclusions is recommended.The author is indebted to Prof. Curt Christian for valuable suggestions.     

Prinzipielle Problemstellungen der Forschungspolitik

Research consists of choosing a problem, proposing and testing problem solutions, and presenting the results. In its central moment — conjectures and testing — science must be autonomous in order to be successful. Securing this autonomy by organizational means is one of the tasks of research policy. Research needs to justify itself only when the researcher makes a claim to the resources of others. To discuss problems of justification of governmental support, it is imperative to distinguish between basic and applied research. In basic research the problem choice is guided only by considerations of scientific interest, while in applied research the problems emanate from extra-scientific concerns since applied research is by definition a means for tackling concrete practical problems. Deciding on external criteria (e.g. deciding whether to support more energy research or more cancer research) is a genuine political problem rather than a problem of research policy. Thus applied research can be justified by referring to the benefit the expected results will yield, but basic research requires a completely different justification. One such justification is the argument that applied research requires a certain overhead in basic research. Securing an adequate balance between funding basic and applied research within the problem area concerned is another task of research policy. (E.g. in the area of cancer whether to support more molecular biology research or more clinical research.) When the overhead argument is not applicable, there still remain several possible justifications for basic research. These are examined in the paper. When setting priorities for basic research within a certain discipline, one apparently must turn to the scientific community itself. It may well be that the researches, who constitute the only expertise available for this task, have to rely on tacit knowledge. If so, this remains afaute de mieux procedure since articulated criteria would be preferable to intuitive procedures. The purpose of methodological reflection on research policy making is to supply intellectual instruments for making the discussion about substantive problems more rational. The substantive problems can be tackled only through the close cooperation of research policy makers and researchers. Thus methodology should not limit the degrees of freedom of either but increase them.     

The two cultures

Anhand von zwei Unterbereichen der künstlichen Intelligenz — den Expertensystemen und der wissenschaftlichen Entdeckung — wird aufzuzeigen versucht, daß die Beziehung zwischen der formalen und der intuitiven Kultur aus dem Gleichgewicht geraten ist. Dem Bereich der Intuition sollte größere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden.

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This article is based on a presentation given on a symposium The Art of Science, in Amsterdam, Amolf, 27 May 1987. It was organized to celebrate the 65th birthday of Prof. J. o.     

Out of Season: Illness in Adolescent Fiction

The young adult novel is aimed at a carefully defined target market, often focused on a predictable range of issues. Where illness and death are the theme, the process of growing up is more dramatically defined. Young people who suffer or watch a family member suffer a serious illness find their stages of moral development disrupted, their values reorganized, and emerging sexual interests submerged under more insistent demands. The books discussed in this article are not formula novels, but complex tales with interesting subplots and characters. Notable features common to them are as follows: 1) strategies of normalization, 2) abandonment and alienation, 3) unexpected emotions, 4) extra-familial support, 5) other people's problems, and 6) God, meaning, and hope.     

Fragmentation and re-integration of experience

Secular and religious counselors require a model of psychotherapy that conceptualizes human beings as conscious, goal-seeking entities. Such a model, based on the construct being in one's own world, is sketched in broad outline in this essay. The building blocks for the model are the intentional modes that lie at the heart of the self-world dialectic in which we live our lives. It is demonstrated how these intentional modes are organized into a gestalt-like whole referred to as the existential gestalt. From the diagram of the existential gestalt the concepts of intentional clarity and modal congruence are derived. These concepts enable us to understand the processes of the fragmentation and re-integration of experience that lie at the heart of psychotherapy. Inclusiveness and purposefulness, two additional factors that are important for assessing the adequacy of the existential gestalt, are also briefly touched upon.     

Some basic problems in the development of the human sciences in China today

Paper read on November 3, 1988 before the Philosophical Society of Fribourg (Switzerland) — In China we use social sciences to refer to all disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. The expression is juxtaposed to natural sciences. Since I do not discuss such subjects as economics, education, journalism, and other practical fields, I prefer to use here the term human sciences.     

Free construction of time from events

Conclusions and conjectures Some may be of the opinion that one event can begin before another only by virtue of the existence of some event (a witness) which wholly precedes the other and does not wholly precede the one (and similarly for ends before and does not abut). Those would prefer ₀ to as a model for observers' apprehensions of events. Since G is a functor from to ₀, the current construction (restricted to ₀) remains applicable.This work supports a claim that the psychologically fundamental temporal relationships are wholly precedes, begins before, ends before and abuts. But only in a very weak sense. Any other set of relationships which is interdefinable with this one, using only quantifier-free formulas in the definitions, could be used to define a category which is indistinguishable from (because the same functions preserve and reflect the new relationships). This work equally supports the claim that those relationships are the psychologically fundamental ones, or the claim that it is just wholly precedes which is fundamental, and that we perceive begins before just by virtue of witnesses. But it refutes the claim that only wholly precedes is fundamental, and that we understand begins before only because we understand time as a linear ordering.     

Introduction

My special thanks are due to Dr Paul Joseph Chu who proofread all the texts and who collaborated on the whole project of the collected writings of the Lvov-Warsaw School (in preparation for publication in separate volumes). I am also indebted to Gwen Burda for her linguistic correction, Stanisaw Judycki for his comments and Zofia Kolbuszewska for her linguistic remarks. My student Lila Wesierska helped me with the bibliographical research. Kazimierz Dudkiewicz and Jarek Kinal from the University Computer Centre assisted me in solving all technical questions. Due to my fellowship at the Catholic University in Leuven (August-September 1994) where I was able to work in the Husserl Archive, it was possible to prepare the editorial addition to the bibliography. I would like to thank also the Polish Scientific Publishers for their permission to include the following essays in the present collection: K. Twardoswski, Imageries (see [Twardoswki 1965], 114–148), K. Ajdukiewicz, The psychophysical nature of humans (see [Ajdukiewicz 1985], vol. 1, 317–324). Ajdukiewicz's paper is translated here by kind permission of Mr. Bron Ajdukiewicz. I would like to extend my grateful thanks to Kluwer Academic Publishers and to Prof. Robert S. Cohen for their kind permission to publish H. Mehlberg's paper On psychophysical parallelism (a modified version of this paper appeared as a supplement in [Mehlberg 1980], 261–285]).     

From principles to principals: The new direction in medical ethics

Many alternatives or supplements to principalism seek to reconnect medical ethics with the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the persons directly involved in ethically troublesome situations. This shift of attention, from deeds to doers, from principles to principals, acknowledges the importance of the moral agents involved in the situation — particular practitioners, patients, and families. Taking into account the subjective, lived experience of moral decision-making parallels recent efforts in the teaching of medicine to give the patient's subjectivity — his or her personal experience of being sick or disabled — epistemological parity with scientific medicine's objective, biomedically-oriented view of the person's sickness or disability.Moreover, the shift from principalism to principals signals a growing realization that ethical problems in the profession of medicine are inseparable from its practice. Philosophers and other humanists working in medicine should resist the temptation to institutionalize a professional role as solver of ethical problems, clarifier of values, or mediator of disputes and work instead to help practitioners practice medicine reflectively.     

Death anxiety: A hidden factor in countertransference hate

We suggest that when diffucult patients attack our grandiosity and sense of self, we are vulnerable to countertransference anxieties similar, if not identical, to the kind existentialists refer to as ontological. The latter refers specifically to a threat to our psychological equilibrium and is meant to describe the utter ambivalence we associate with death anxiety. In this paper, we are proposing the presence, in certain therapeutic situations, of just such counter-transference reactions to so-called aversive patients. We believe that terms like aversive, obnoxious, or impossible are professional euphemisms used to mask the degree of anxiety we often feel, and that there is a collusion present both within and without our profession, especially in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic centers, which keeps us from exploring death-related issues within ourselves as well as in our patients.He is Director of Psychological Services at the Parkside Weight Loss Clinic, an interdisciplinary eating disorders program affiliated with the Lutheran General Health Care System.