The Influence of Einstein on Wittgenstein's Philosophy

On the basis of historical and textual evidence, this paper claims that (i) after his Tractatus, Wittgenstein was actually influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity and, (ii) the similarity of Einstein's relativity theory helps to illuminate some aspects of Wittgenstein's work. These claims find support in remarkable quotations where Wittgenstein speaks approvingly of Einstein's relativity theory and in the way these quotations are embedded in Wittgenstein's texts. The profound connection between Wittgenstein and relativity theory concerns not only Wittgenstein's “verificationist” phase (more closely connected with Schlick's work), but also Wittgenstein's later philosophy centred on the theme of rule‐following.     

Aristotle on Predication

A predicate logic typically has a heterogeneous semantic theory. Subjects and predicates have distinct semantic roles: subjects refer; predicates characterize. A sentence expresses a truth if the object to which the subject refers is correctly characterized by the predicate. Traditional term logic, by contrast, has a homogeneous theory: both subjects and predicates refer; and a sentence is true if the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In this paper, I will examine evidence for ascribing to Aristotle the view that subjects and predicates refer. If this is correct, then it seems that Aristotle, like the traditional term logician, problematically conflates predication and identity claims. I will argue that we can ascribe to Aristotle the view that both subjects and predicates refer, while holding that he would deny that a sentence is true just in case the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In particular, I will argue that Aristotle's core semantic notion is not identity but the weaker relation of constitution. For example, the predication ‘All men are mortal’ expresses a true thought, in Aristotle's view, just in case the mereological sum of humans is a part of the mereological sum of mortals.     

Sabina Spielrein: out from the shadow of Jung and Freud

Abstract: Since the 1982 publication of Aldo Carotenuto's book, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud, there has been renewed interest in the life and work of Sabina Spielrein. She was Jung's first psychoanalytic case at the Burghölzli Hospital in 1904, and was referred to several times in The Freud/Jung Letters. Spielrein recovered, enrolled in medical school, and went on to become a Freudian analyst. Her most famous paper, published in 1912, ‘Destruction as a cause of coming into being’, was referred to by Freud in 1920 in relation to his Death Instinct theory. In the few Freudian publications on this controversial theory since 1920, Spielrein's contribution is consistently omitted. Jung also neglected to refer to her ‘Destruction’ paper in his early 1912 version of ‘Symbols of transformation’, even though he had edited her paper and had promised to acknowledge her contribution. He did refer extensively to Spielrein's first paper, her medical thesis, ‘On the psychological content of a case of schizophrenia’, published in 1911, as yet unpublished in English. In her paper Spielrein sought to understand the psychotic delusions of Frau M, a patient at the Burghölzli, much in the style of Jung's ‘Psychology of dementia praecox’ (1907). The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Spielrein's Frau M paper, and its companion ‘Destruction’ paper, make an original contribution to both Jung and Freud's emerging theories on the possible creative versus destructive outcomes of neurotic or psychotic introversion, culminating in Jung's concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ (1916) and Freud's concept of a ‘Death instinct’ (1920).     

Contextual modulation of reading rate for direct versus indirect speech quotations

In human communication, direct speech (e.g., Mary said: “I’m hungry”) is perceived to be more vivid than indirect speech (e.g., Mary said [that] she was hungry). However, the processing consequences of this distinction are largely unclear. In two experiments, participants were asked to either orally (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiment 2, eye-tracking) read written stories that contained either a direct speech or an indirect speech quotation. The context preceding those quotations described a situation that implied either a fast-speaking or a slow-speaking quoted protagonist. It was found that this context manipulation affected reading rates (in both oral and silent reading) for direct speech quotations, but not for indirect speech quotations. This suggests that readers are more likely to engage in perceptual simulations of the reported speech act when reading direct speech as opposed to meaning-equivalent indirect speech quotations, as part of a more vivid representation of the former.     

Problem Finding,Creativity Style and the Musical Compositions of High School Students

This study sought to understand the effect of problem finding and creativity style on the creative musical product. Participants (N = 32) were categorized by creativity style (adaptor or innovator) using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory. The participants completed two musical composition problems involving two different degrees of problem finding behaviors: an open (ill defined) and a closed (more defined) problem. The resulting products were scored for creativity by three judges using a modified version of Amabile's “consensual assessment technique.” A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data. The independent variables were composition problem type and creativity style, and the dependent variable was the creativity score on the open and closed problems. No significant differences due to problem type, creativity style, or the interaction of the two factors was found. This research supports the assertion of Kirton that adaption-innovation theory is a measure of creativity style rather than creativity level, but calls into question its use in individual creativity style.     

In support of content theories of art

A standard view of reference holds that a speaker's use of a name refers to a certain thing in virtue of the speaker's associating a condition with that use that singles the referent out. This view has been criticized by Saul Kripke as empirically inadequate. Recently, however, it has been argued that a version of the standard view, a response-based theory of reference, survives the charge of empirical inadequacy by allowing that associated conditions may be largely or even entirely implicit. This paper argues that response-based theories of reference are prey to a variant of the empirical inadequacy objection, because they are ill-suited to accommodate the successful use of proper names by pre-school children. Further, I argue that there is reason to believe that normal adults are, by and large, no different from children with respect to how the referents of their names are determined. I conclude that speakers typically refer positionally: the referent of a use of a proper name is typically determined by aspects of the speaker's position, rather than by associated conditions present, however implicitly, in her psychology.     

Frege's Cardinals Do Not Always Obey Hume's Principle

Hume's Principle, dear to neo-Logicists, maintains that equinumerosity is both necessary and sufficient for sameness of cardinal number. All the same, Whitehead demonstrated in Principia Mathematica's logic of relations (where non-homogeneous relations are allowed) that Cantor's power-class theorem entails that Hume's Principle admits of exceptions. Of course, Hume's Principle concerns cardinals and in Principia's ‘no-classes’ theory cardinals are not objects in Frege's sense. But this paper shows that the result applies as well to the theory of cardinal numbers as objects set out in Frege's Grundgesetze. Though Frege did not realize it, Cantor's power-theorem entails that Frege's cardinals as objects do not always obey Hume's Principle.     

The five functions of psychological type

From the mid‐1930s to the end of his life, Jung complained that most readers misunderstood the main point of his book Psychological Types. He viewed being a type as one‐sided and problematic for a variety of reasons. His symbol‐based solution to the ‘type problem’ involved developing a transcendent function to become the new dominant function of consciousness. However, this function has not featured in the popular use of his typology and Isabel Briggs Myers believed that the one‐sidedness of Jung's eight types could be balanced by the auxiliary function. This has led to the transcendent function being widely ignored, and to a developmental philosophy that encourages a degree of one‐sidedness. This divergence of popular type theory and analytical psychology is the result of various factors, such as Jung describing typology as containing four functions, and a letter in 1950 where Jung apparently supported Myers’ version of type theory. This hinders the application of analytical psychology to normal psychology, and particularly individual and cultural development. If we refer to Jung's typology as containing five functions not four, this more accurately represents both the content of the book Psychological Types and the primary value Jung saw in typology.     

Thought and the social community

The anti‐Cartesian idea that a person's thoughts are not entirely fixed by what goes on inside that person's head is suggested by Hegel, and echoed in Wittgenstein and Frege. An argument for the view has recently been given by Tyler Burge. This paper claims that Burge's data can be explained better by an individualistic theory. The basic idea is that an individual's thoughts are specified analogically, in ordinary discourse, through the model of a language. Though the modelling‐sentences are public, the thoughts of the individual are inner states whose identity does not depend upon those sentences. They have content naturally, whether or not content happens to be ascribed to them.     

Implicit ambivalence of significant others: Significant others trigger positive and negative evaluations

Despite the rich literature on implicit partner evaluations, there has been scant attention to a defining feature of significant other mental representations—their affective complexity. Recent findings (Zayas & Shoda, 2015), however, provide an empirical demonstration that significant others automatically and simultaneously activate positive and negative evaluations—a phenomenon we refer to as implicit ambivalence. A primary aim of this paper is to extend extant theory by elaborating on the features of the dyadic context that may contribute to the formation of implicit ambivalence. Particularly, drawing from research from relationship science, social cognition, and social neuroscience, we focus on the ability of significant others to dynamically and simultaneously confer rewards and threats, the attunement of perceivers to potential social rewards and social threats, and aspects of sense‐making of another person's mind that may give rise to implicit ambivalence. From this new perspective, implicit ambivalence is not a pathological or rare state. Quite the opposite, implicit ambivalence may be a normative, typical process, that is triggered even by people who are highly positive in one's network. We identify future directions for social cognition and relationship science.     

Jung's reflections on self-healing

Not long before his death on July 17, 1998, Edward Edinger asked me to draw together a book of quotations by Jung on religious themes. Edinger's image was that of a thin, leather-covered book containing spiritual uplift and consolation, that one might carry around in a pocket or purse: a “vademecum” or “enchiridion,” as he termed it. It was a project he had begun by collecting quotations from Jung's Answer to Job and Letters. Always fond of “giving the last word to Jung,” he then employed those quotes to conclude Transformation of the God-Image and The New God-Image, respectively. But he lacked the energy, he confessed, to complete this project

The Vademecum which, I hope, resembles what Edinger had in mind-is now nearly complete. It is tentatively entitled, Jung on Soul: Quotations on Religious Themes. The following excerpted chapter is entitled “On Self-Healing.” The other topical divisions are: First Principles; The Inner Life; Consciousness; Good and Evil; The Paradoxical God-Image; Individuation; Continuing Incarnation; Psychology and Christianity; Old Age, Death and Beyond; Community, Society, Culture; Civilization in Crisis; Love and Sex; Parents and Children; Healing; Analyst and Patient; C. G. Jung: Personal; and From Jung's Answer to Job.     

A Lewisian Semantics for S2

This paper sets out a semantics for C.I. Lewis's logic S2 based on the ontology of his 1923 paper ‘Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World’. In that article, worlds are taken to be maximal consistent systems. A system, moreover, is a collection of facts that is closed under logical entailment and conjunction. In this paper, instead of defining systems in terms of logical entailment, I use certain ideas in Lewis's epistemology and philosophy of logic to define a class of models in which systems are taken to be primitive elements but bear certain relations to one another. I prove soundness and completeness for S2 over this class of models and argue that this semantics makes sense of at least a substantial fragment of Lewis's logical theory.     

The Representation of an Action: Tragedy between Kant and Hegel

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre‐critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free.     

Toward a Spinozistic modification of skinner's theory of man

B. F. Skinner argues in Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York 1971) that only his theory of man is compatible with a ‘scientific’ approach to human behavior. I argue that Skinner's entirely open‐ended view of man is inadequate for his own purposes in that it leaves no room for the claim that certain value judgments are universally valid, something I argue Skinner is committed to despite an explicit avowal in one place of cultural relativism. I then go on to show that a modification of Skinner's theory of man which builds on Spinoza's notion of conatus would provide one with a theory‐based rationale for universally valid judgments without involving one in a ‘non‐scientific’ approach to human behavior. Specifically, I argue that such a Spinozistic modification would provide one with a theory‐based guarantee that man will not evolve in such a way that a truly scientific observer would deem a totalitarian state good.     

Facilitating Internalization: The Self-Determination Theory Perspective

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) posits that (a) people are inherently motivated to internalize the regulation of uninteresting though important activities; (b) there are two different processes through which such internalization can occur, resulting in qualitatively different styles of self-regulation; and (c) the social context influences which internalization process and regulatory style occur. The two types of internalization are introjection, which entails taking in a value or regulatory process but not accepting it as one's own, and integration, through which the regulation is assimilated with one's core sense of self. Introjection results in internally controlling regulation, whereas integration results in self-determination. An experiment supported our hypothesis that three facilitating contextual factors—namely, providing a meaningful rationale, acknowledging the behaver's feelings, and conveying choice—promote internalization, as evidenced by the subsequent self-regulation of behavior. This experiment also supported our expectation that when the social context supports self-determination, integration tends to occur, whereas when the context does not support self-determination, introjection tends to occur.     

CICERO, AMBROSE, AND AQUINAS "ON DUTIES"OR THE LIMITS OF GENRE IN MORALS

To compose a Christian book on exemplary Christian living, Ambrose appropriates and criticizes Cicero's book on “duties,”De officiis. In many passages within the moral part of his Summa of Theology, Thomas Aquinas incorporates quotations from both Cicero and Ambrose. Comparison of the three texts raises issues about the relation of genres to terms, arguments, rules, and ideals in religious teaching. Genre becomes a useful category for analyzing religious rhetoric only when it is conceived as a set of persuasive or pedagogical relations below a text's surface disposition.