JUSTICE,INCENTIVES AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

In Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen reiterates his critique of John Rawls's difference principle as a justification for inequality‐generating incentives, and also argues that Rawls's ambition to provide a constructivist defence of the first principles of justice is doomed. Cohen's arguments also suggest a natural response to my earlier attempt to defend the basic structure objection to Cohen's critique, which I term the alien factors reply. This paper criticises the reply, and Cohen's more general argument against Rawls's constructivism. 1     

I. Mathematical modeling of election predictions: Final reply to professor Aubert

Professor Aubert's ‘three‐stage rocket’ (Inquiry, Vol. 26 [1983], No. 1) has reached periodic orbit. His comments on my earlier reply to his critique of my election predictions paper simply repeat arguments I have already refuted. In this note, I limit myself largely to pointing out Professor Aubert's misconceptions of what my position actually is. I find no reasons for revising the views stated in my original election predictions paper, nor any reasons for thinking that paper violated norms of scientific method that prevail in the natural sciences.     

Replies to Wallace,Queloz, and Kirwin

In this article, I reply to the comments offered by R. Jay Wallace, Matthieu Queloz, and Claire Kirwin on my book, The Will to Nothingness. An Essay on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (OUP, 2021). These comments and my replies cover central features of the book, including my analysis of ressentiment as an expression of the will to power; the concept of self-undermining functionality I introduce to make sense of Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal; and my reasons for omitting to examine the “unconditional will to truth,” which he presents as the latest embodiment of this ideal.     

Dialogue and Synthesis: Developing Consensus in Visitor Research Methodology

ABSTRACT

This brief synthesis presents the main points of agreement between Dawson and Jensen's article, “‘Towards a ‘Contextual Turn’ in Visitor Studies: Evaluating Visitor Segmentation and Identity-Related Motivations” (this issue) and Falk's reply, “Contextualizing Falk's Identity-Related Visitor Motivation Model” (this issue), and it highlights important considerations for future research.     

Jensen's reaction-time studies: A reply to Longstreth

Longstreth's (1984) critique of Jensen's research on the relationship of IQ to individual differences in visual reaction time (RT), measured in the Hick paradigm, is found to have numerous errors of fact and interpretation, some trivial and some of theoretical importance. Longstreth's narrowly focused and conjectural style of criticism, which peculiarly strains to favor the null hypothesis, unfortunately obscures the essential findings of Jensen's (and others') studies of the RT-IQ relationship. The two main negative verdicts of Longstreth's critique concerning the RT-IQ relationship are refuted by meta-analyses of presently available data. First, not only do individual differences in RT show a significant negative correlation with IQ, but individual differences in the slope of the regression of RT on stimulus set size scaled in bits (i.e., the binary logarithm of the number of potential reaction stimuli) also show a fully significant, albeit low, negative correlation with IQ. Contrary to Longstreth's second negative surmise, meta-analysis also shows that the magnitude of the RT-IQ correlation itself is a linearly increasing (negative) function of stimulus set-size scaled in bits.     

Do Rawls's theories of justice fit together? A reply to Pogge

In my reply to Pogge's critique of Rawls's international relations theory, I will try to show two things: (1) that Pogge's account of the public criterion of domestic social justice endorsed by Rawls is a partial one and (2) that this leads him to wrongly postulate a significant asymmetry between Rawls's domestic and international theories of justice. In the end, I hope to show that the domestic and international accounts are characterized by a significant degree of symmetry – that both accounts are motivated by Rawls's fundamental concern with self-respect. In other words, a more expansive, complete account of the domestic public criterion of social justice necessarily leads us (contra Pogge) to affirm a significant degree of continuity between the domestic and international accounts.     

A REPLY TO ANNE KULL,EDUARDO CRUZ,AND MICHAEL DeLASHMUTT

In my reply to the essays by Anne Kull, Eduardo Cruz, and Michael DeLashmutt, I turn first to Cruz's charge that my use of “the sacred” is at odds with a growing religious studies mainstream that understands religion in secular terms. I suggest that this latter approach has its own problems, deriving partly from its neglect of the political, constructed nature of the category of “religion.” Second, in relation to Cruz's suggestion that my lack of attention to explanation compromises my claim to be social scientific, I defend a broader understanding of the human sciences and explore the relationships between understanding, critique, and history, and between sociology and theology. Third, reflecting on DeLashmutt's suggestion that I neglect the way that technical invention provides a glimpse of divine creativity, and the myth making that goes on around technology in vehicles such as science fiction, I argue that such issues have to be approached in a radically historical way. I conclude by identifying three challenges: to explore more deeply how technological objects form part of human being‐in‐the‐world, to show how my approach might offer practical resources for assessing technological and environmental developments, and to expand my analysis to include non‐Western religious traditions.     

Wittgenstein's picture‐theory

In a paper published in this journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1962, pp. 46–64, Mr. H. R. G. Schwyzer has argued that ‘the current view (as held by, eg., Wamock, Anscombe and Stemus) of Wittgenstein's theory of language in the Tractatus is mistaken’. The editor of the journal has asked me for a reply. My reply concerns only my own book, and it amounts to the statement that Mr. Schwyzer's attack on the book has very little to do with what is said in it.     

Epistemic Two-Dimensionalism and Empirical Presuppositions

This note argues that Laura Schroeter's [2005] critique of David Chalmers's epistemic two-dimensional semantics is not touched by a reply by Edward Elliott, Kelvin McQueen, and Clas Weber [2013].     

In search of a new paradigm for cultural psychology

It is my privilege to be invited to write a response to K.S. Yang's reply to my critique of the methodology he used in his empirical research on individual modernity in Taiwan (Hwang, 2003). Yang's reply consists of three parts: The first part provides a quick overview of the methodology used in his individual traditionality and modernity (T/M) research in Taiwan. The second part presents his reply to my methodological criticisms. The third part is a plea for more and better individual T/M research in Asia. My response consists of three corresponding sections, although I will concentrate on the second part of Yang's text.     

Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology: A Reply to Ken Wilber

This article is a reply to Ken Wilber's critique of Albert Ellis's “Fanatacism that may lead to a nuclear holocaust,” which outlines some of the dangers of transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy.     

Reply to Catriona Mackenzie

In her excellent critique of my book Self to Self (2006), Catriona Mackenzie highlights three gaps in my view of the self. First, my effort to distinguish among different applications of the concept ‘self’ is not matched by any attempt to explain the interactions among the selves so distinguished. Second, in analyzing practical reasoning as aimed at self-understanding, I speak sometimes of causal-psychological understanding (e.g. in the paper titled ‘The Centered Self’) and sometimes of narrative self-understanding (e.g. in ‘The Self as Narrator’), but I never explain how these two modes of self-understanding are related. Third, I never explain how my account of autonomous agency can be reconciled with my interpretation of Kant's (e.g., in ‘A Brief Introduction to Kantian Ethics’). In this reply to Mackenzie, I agree with her about all three of these gaps, and I offer some (admittedly incomplete) ideas about how they might be filled.     

A third (meta-)critique

I begin my third reply by answering some of the criticisms raised by Tierno against theodical attempts to account for the pervasiveness of moral evil. I then take the discussion to a meta-philosophical level, where I question the very way of thinking about God and evil implicit in Tierno’s critique and in much contemporary philosophy of religion.     

Reply to Aijaz and Weidler on Hiddenness

In this brief reply I argue that criticisms of the hiddenness argument recently published in this journal by Imran Aijaz and Markus Weidler are without force. As will be shown, their critique of my conceptual version of the argument misses the mark by missing crucial distinctions. Their critique of my analogical version of the argument misunderstands that argument and also misapplies the work of W. H. Vanstone. And their critique of my view that belief is necessary for a certain kind of relationship with God overlooks both some central features of that kind of relationship and some good reasons for not accepting acceptance or anything similarly nonbelieving as a substitute for belief in this context.     

Reply to Reviews of Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys by Philip M. Bromberg

I reply here to reviews by three inspiring thinkers, Ethel Person, Susan Sands, and Allan Schore who, though uniquely different from one another in their conceptual frames of reference, share a sensibility as clinicians and creative scholars that has led them to engage and appreciate my work in depth while enriching it with their individual perspectives. Ethel Person's review is meaningful to me for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we think very much alike about “how we are” with patients despite the diversity in our families of origin. Her thinking, which extends the boundaries established by any one school of thought, transcends doctrine, especially that of “technique.” I am equally grateful to Susan Sands, whose review stimulated a dialogue between us about the similarities and differences in our views of the analyst's personal role in enactments with severe trauma survivors and whether there is reason to distinguish between life-threatening and developmental trauma. My reply to Allan Schore's review satisfies a long-standing wish to engage with him in dialogue about what he refers to in his review as “a remarkable overlap between Bromberg's work in clinical psychoanalysis and my work in developmental neuropsychoanalysis, a deep resonance between his treatment model and my regulation theory” (this issue, p. 755). In my reply I comment from my own vantage point on how our shared commitment to an interpersonal and intersubjective perspective—my interpersonal/relational treatment model and his “Interpersonal Neurobiology” led us to arrive at overlapping views on developmental trauma, attachment, the dyadic regulation of states of consciousness, and dissociation.     

Reply to Commentaries

In reply to my discussants, I take up their questions on the subjects of foolishness, the analyst's dreams, and the unnamed patient. My responses to them bring me back to my own father to ask questions that had not been asked yet about my mother's release; back to the return of my patient after years of absence, and the additional history I learned then; and back to Lacan's seminar and my Lacanian analytic training to question that approach to the treatment of madness.     

A Brief History of Ghosts: Commentary on Paper by Laurel Moldawsky Silber

Although Gerhardt's commentary points to substantial points of agreement between us—the claim that human being is embodied being, the critique of rationalisms, and the resistance to relativisms—we also have important differences. The chief of these, from my point of view, concern (1) the functions of theoretical language, (2) the level of commitment psychoanalysts owe to traditional language for the sake of community and continuity, and (3) the issue of reification. My reply suggests that Gerhardt has confused the functions of expressive and theoretical language; that, for the sake of a “gossipy connection,” she seems to deprive the psychoanalytic community of the self-reflective criticism of its own shared assumptions; and that there is a difference between metaphor and the misplaced concreteness that is sometimes called reification.     

EVIDENCE AND FALSIFICATION: CHALLENGES TO GREGORY PETERSON

In this reply to Gregory Peterson's essay “Maintaining Respectability,” which itself is a response to my “Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?” I elaborate upon my claims that theology treats God's existence as an absolute certainty immune to refutation and that modern science constitutes the canons of respectable reasoning for metaphysical disciplines. I conclude with some comments on Peterson's “In Praise of Folly? Theology and the University.”     

The Ontic and the Ontological in Heidegger's Philosophy of Technology: Response to Thomson

Iain Thomson's critique is persuasive on several points but not on the major issue, the relation of the ontological to the ontic in Heidegger's philosophy of technology. This reply attempts to show that these two dimensions of Heidegger's theory are closely related, at least in the technological domain, and not separate, as Thomson affirms. It is argued that Heidegger's evaluations of particular technologies, the flaws of which Thomson concedes, proceed from a flawed ontological conception.     

Reply to Jahren

This is a reply to Neal Jahren's “Comments” on my paper, “Uncovering Gynocentric Science,” which appeared in a 1987 issue of Hypatia 2 (3).