Putnam, Peano, and the Malin Génie: could we possibly bewrong about elementary number-theory?

This article examines Hilary Putnam's work in the philosophy of mathematics and - more specifically - his arguments against mathematical realism or objectivism. These include a wide range of considerations, from Gödel's incompleteness-theorem and the limits of axiomatic set-theory as formalised in the Löwenheim-Skolem proof to Wittgenstein's sceptical thoughts about rule-following (along with Saul Kripke's ‘scepticalsolution’), Michael Dummett's anti-realist philosophy of mathematics, and certain problems – as Putnam sees them – with the conceptual foundations of Peano arithmetic. He also adopts a thought-experimental approach – a variant of Descartes' dream scenario – in order to establish the in-principle possibility that we might be deceived by the apparent self-evidence of basic arithmetical truths or that it might be ‘rational’ to doubt them under some conceivable (even if imaginary) set of circumstances. Thus Putnam assumes that mathematical realism involves a self-contradictory ‘Platonist’ idea of our somehow having quasi-perceptual epistemic ‘contact’ with truths that in their very nature transcend the utmost reach of human cognitive grasp. On this account, quite simply, ‘nothing works’ in philosophy of mathematics since wecan either cling to that unworkable notion of objective (recognition-transcendent) truth or abandon mathematical realism in favour of a verificationist approach that restricts the range of admissible statements to those for which we happen to possess some means of proof or ascertainment. My essay puts the case, conversely, that these hyperbolic doubts are not forced upon us but result from a false understanding of mathematical realism – a curious mixture of idealist and empiricist themes – which effectively skews the debate toward a preordained sceptical conclusion. I then go on to mount a defence of mathematical realism with reference to recent work in this field and also to indicate some problems – as I seethem – with Putnam's thought-experimental approach as well ashis use of anti-realist arguments from Dummett, Kripke, Wittgenstein, and others.     

Arriving at a “New View” of Women's Sexual Problems

Abstract

This essay offers an all-embracing narrative of the “new view” project to explain how and why a feminist critique of current sex problem nomenclature, an alternative vision, and an activist campaign have emerged since 1999. The story begins with 15 years of urology-promoted medicalization of men's sexuality and the building of a female market near the end of the 1990s. The Food and Drug Administration role is illuminated by the author's advisory panel experience and the FDA's proposed guidelines for testing sex drugs for women. The prevailing theory of women's sexual problems is traced to Masters and Johnson's biased research and continuing debates about orgasm. Finally, the origins of the “new view” campaign are described: a growing discomfort with the aggressive roles of urology and the drug industry in women's sexual medicine, the decision to take public as well as professional positions, the creation of a working group, and ongoing activism.     

Karl menninger: A centennial tribute

This tribute primarily focuses on Karl Menninger's literary skills as a preacher. His last two books,Sparks and Whatever Became of Sin? are used as examples of what Reinhold Niebuhr called “vital prophetic Christianity.” They clearly illustrate Dr. Menninger's homiletical style. These evaluations are augmented by personal conversations with him during which he strongly encouraged pastoral counselors to refocus their attention on the sermon as a basic resource for prevention and hope.     

Love Your Neighbour as Yourself

This paper examines the many ways interreligious dialogue and interreligious relationship-building interact with and serve how we live out – with others – the moral core of the Christian faith, which is the love of God and neighbour. I take as an example the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign in the United States. The campaign originated with the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and others involved in the civil rights movements of the early 1960s. While the Poor People’s Campaign was initiated by and is led by Christians, it is intentionally inclusive of people of many different faiths and those with no particular faith, all of whom share the commitment to love and to serve the poor.     

Friction in the interstices: Emotion and landscape in Stone Butch Blues

This article analyzes the role of emotion in Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues. Widely understood as one of the first modern transgender novels, Stone Butch Blues depicts the bodily changes of its protagonist, Jess Goldberg, from living as a “he–she,” to passing as male, to living as neither male nor female. This article analyzes how Jess's body, identity, and feelings shape and are shaped by the spaces ze encounters throughout the novel. Finding that Jess experiences emotions as bodily boundaries and metaphorical geographies, I draw from the work of Sara Ahmed to argue that Jess's decision at the novel's end not to pass as female or male is a choice to push back at the gendered norms of hir world through a body and politics shaped by emotion. Turning to contemporary trans* – transgender, transsexual, and trans – movements for social change, I argue that Jess's politics of bodily and emotional abrasion can help in the development of a trans* politics of emotion.     

Wanted: real Children. about Innocence and Nostalgia in a Commodified Childhood

Today childhood takes place within amultimedia context where education, marketingand entertainment operate together in one bigmelting pot. Childhood is commodified, asituation not everybody seems happy with. Dueto increasing exposure with violence and sexualactivities, for example in children's games,children seem to lose the chance to be realchildren. In the discussions about thiscommodified childhood, innocence and nostalgiaseem omnipresent concepts. In this article wefirst analyse the discourse about the innocenceof childhood as presented by Neil Postman inhis bestseller ``The Disappearance ofChildhood.'' Here, childhood is seen as a periodwhich can mainly be characterised in terms of a``not yet.'' However, Postman's view on childhoodpresents only one side of the romanticcontinuum. The other side – in which the childappears as having a nature of her own – can beillustrated by ``On naïve and sentimentalpoetry,'' an essay written by Friedrich Schillerin 1795. Both opposing views on childhood canlead to a different interpretation of theinnocence of childhood. Finally, Schiller'sdichotomy – the naïve versus thesentimental poet – can be seen as a useful legup to the clarification of nostalgia whichseems to go hand in hand with the feeling ofthe loss of (one's own) childhood.     

From Inverted Spectra to Colorless Qualia: A Wittgensteinian Critique

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The Legacy of Neoplatonism in F. W. J. Schelling's Thought

F.W.J. Schelling, one of the essential thinkers in the development of German Idealism, formed his own thought not only in a critical dialogue with Kant's and Fichte's transcendentalism and Hegel's earlier conception of thinking, but also in an intensive discussion with Plato and Aristotle. Over and above that, Neoplatonism – especially Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian Dionysius the Areopagite – played a decisive role in Schelling's reception and transformation of ancient philosophy. Selecting the manifold aspects which could be reflected on in this field, I want to make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus' concept of self-knowledge Schelling's requirement for a raising-up and transformation of the finite 'I' into the form of the Absolute, whose central features converge with the goal of the Plotinian self – transformation of thought into a timeless self-thinking and its ground. A main part of this paper discusses Schelling's and Plotinus' concept of nature as a dynamic process constituted by an immanent 'creating theoria'. Furthermore we find in Schelling's theory of the Absolute as the 'utterly One' a union of Plotinus' notion of a pure One beyond Being with that of the reflexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood as an All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality – because it is in itself the most unifying self-affirmation or self-mediation. What follows is a reflection on the anagogical function of art, especially from the viewpoint of Plotinus' non-Platonic rehabilitation of art as an imitation of nature. The last perspectives focus on Schelling's concept of matter and emanation – as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus – and on Schelling's theory of an absolute self – willing will in connection with Plotinus' Enneads VI.8, 'On free will and the will of the One' as a causa sui.     

A Dangerous Movie? Hollywood Does Psychoanalysis

After the appearance of David Cronenberg’s film A Dangerous Method in 2011, dealing with the relationships of Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein, Dr. Donald Ferrell published: A Dangerous Method, A Film Directed by David Cronenberg: An Extended Review (Ferrell 2012) in the Journal of Religion and Health. Upon its publication, Dr. Ferrell’s article was nominated for a Gradiva Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. On November 1, 2013, the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society held its annual conference at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Billie Pivnick, a member at large of the Board of Directors of the APCS and also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Religion and Health, persuaded the 2013 Conference Program Committee that Cronenberg’s film would make an interesting subject for discussion for conference participants. To that end, Dr. Pivnick invited Dr. Ferrell, C. G. Jung Institute of New York, Dr. Steven Reisner, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, and Dr. Martin Silverman, Training and Supervising Analyst and Supervising Child Analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education, NYU College of Medicine, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, and Associate Editor of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly to serve as panel members to discuss: A Dangerous Movie? Hollywood does Psychoanalysis. Presentations on Cronenberg’s film and the early history of psychoanalysis were given by Drs. Ferrell and Reisner, followed by a response to their presentations by Dr. Silverman. Dr. Pivnick chaired the session. The articles presented here were given originally at the APCS conference by Dr. Ferrell and Dr. Silverman. Dr. Reisner declined the invitation to submit his presentation for publication. Dr. Silverman’s remarks were based not only on the presentation given by Dr. Ferrell at the session on A Dangerous Movie?, but also on his close and careful reading of the extended review of Cronenberg’s film Dr. Ferrell published in the Journal of Religion and Health, as well as Dr. Reisner’s presentation. It was appropriate for Dr. Silverman to serve in his capacity as discussant since he had earlier published a critical review of A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud by Aldo Carotenuto (Silverman 1985).     

Festering boils and screaming canvases: Culture,contagion and why place no longer matters

This paper is a ficto-critical account of the relationship between boils – Staphylococcus aureus – and Central Desert art. It develops an analysis of the ontogenetic relationship between art and disease through the specific aetiology of contemporary manifestations of Staphylococcus. What Warlpiri call Winjini (boils) are found to bear a linguistic and visual relationship with traditional marks, and mark-making, which is more than a simple matter of likeness, metaphor or analogy. Through an account of one ethnographer's narrative of her own, and her family's, contraction of Winjini, a very different understanding of both Staphylococcus, and the productive work of Central Desert art, emerges.     

Using targeted visceroception to improve interoceptive sensibility and emotion regulation

Focusing on one's body can improve the awareness and regulation of emotion. Interoception – sensing the physiological condition of the body, particularly of the viscera – appears to play an important role. While the majority of previous research studies have examined interoceptive sensitivity (i.e., detection of objectively measurable physiological changes), there has been relatively limited investigation of interoceptive sensibility (i.e., subjective awareness of those changes), and even fewer studies permitting causal conclusions. The current study is part of a randomised controlled trial on visceroception in the context of emotion regulation, using an 8-week intervention involving focused attention on either cardiac or gastrointestinal activity. Group differences in emotion regulation and reactivity were assessed using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, and the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS). The findings suggest that focussed attention on gastrointestinal activity (i.e., gastroception), in particular, improves interoceptive sensibility and emotion regulation, as evidenced by increases on the MAIA's Noticing, Body Listening, and Self-regulation subscales, and decreases on the Arousal subscale of the ERS. Gastroception may make distinct contributions to the benefits of body focus in a research context where the gut is often overlooked.     

Today's misery and yesterday's happiness: Differential effects of current life-events on perceptions of past wellbeing

Negative events – such as romantic disappointment, social rejection or academic failure – influence how we feel and what we think. Either component can influence evaluations of our past life, but in opposite ways: when sad feelings serve as a source of information, they give rise to negative evaluations; when current events serve as a standard of comparison, they give rise to positive evaluations. Because comparison requires applicability of the standard, its benefits should be limited to the domain of the event. Consistent with this rationale, three experiments showed a robust paradoxical effect: people who experienced romantic disappointment (Experiment 1), social exclusion (Experiment 2) or academic failure (Experiment 3) were more satisfied with their past romantic, social, or academic life, but less satisfied with all other domains of their past. The negative influence in unrelated domains was mediated by mood, whereas the positive influence in the event domain was not. Thus, last year's social life looks good compared to today's social rejection, but all other aspects of last year's life suffer.     

Knowledge’s Boundary Problem

Where is the justificatory boundary between a true belief’s not being knowledge and its being knowledge? Even if we put to one side the Gettier problem, this remains a fundamental epistemological question, concerning as it does the matter of whether we can provide some significant defence of the usual epistemological assumption that a belief is knowledge only if it is well justified. But can that question be answered non-arbitrarily? BonJour believes that it cannot be – and that epistemology should therefore abandon the concept of knowledge. More optimistically, this paper does attempt to answer that question, by applying – and thereby refining – a non-absolutist theory of knowledge.     

Hylemorphism,remnant persons and personhood

Animalism is the doctrine that we human beings are – are identical with – animals. Hylemorphism is a form of animalism. In this paper, I defend hylemorphism by showing that while other forms of animalism fall prey to the problem of ‘Remnant Persons,’ hylemorphism does not. But hylemorphism's account of personhood seems to have some very implausible implications. I address one of those implications, and argue that it isn't nearly as objectionable as it might at first appear.     

Lass die Toten ihre Toten begraben

This article presents a part of Danish church history which has previously suffered from a lack of attention: The story of homosexual pastors in Denmark. I want to show how the discussion on homosexuality and ministry ran in Denmark in the 1970's and 1980's and how homosexual pastors were integrated into the ELCD. Moreover, I will analyse this discussion material from the perspective of the German Pfarrhaustradition and point to the civil side of the Lutheran understanding of ministry – marriage and household – as a crucial reason why homosexual pastors, as well as unmarried heterosexual pastors, have been considered a theological problem. Finally, I will compare the image of the pastor in the Lutheran Pfarrhaustradition with a Catholic understanding of ministry and suggest that both set the pastor apart from the world through regulation of relationships and sexuality.     

Dreamwork beyond psychoanalysis

Abstract

Dr. Montague Ullman's work with dream groups is the main subject of this paper. After detailing his method there follows an account of the author's experience in a dream workshop run by Dr. Ullman. The theoretical issues involved in this work are discussed, particularly the ideas of Trigant Burrow, an early American analyst who believed in species connectedness, and David Bohm's theory of implicate order. Dr. Ullman's intention to return to the healing process in dreams to ordinary people is connected with the author's paper “Thoughts on the Healing Process.” The implications for psychoanalysis of these holistic ideas are considered.     

The whistleblower's dilemma and the fairness–loyalty tradeoff

Whistleblowing – reporting another person's unethical behavior to a third party – often constitutes a conflict between competing moral concerns. Whistleblowing promotes justice and fairness but can also appear disloyal. Five studies demonstrate that a fairness–loyalty tradeoff predicts people's willingness to blow the whistle. Study 1 demonstrates that individual differences in valuing fairness over loyalty predict willingness to report unethical behavior. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrate that experimentally manipulating endorsement of fairness versus loyalty increases willingness to report unethical behavior. Study 3 demonstrates that people recall their decisions to report unethical behavior as driven by valuation of fairness, whereas people recall decisions not to report unethical behavior as driven by valuation of loyalty. Study 4 demonstrates that experimentally manipulating the endorsement of fairness versus loyalty increases whistleblowing in an online marketplace. These findings reveal the psychological determinants of whistleblowing and shed light on factors that encourage or discourage this practice.     

The Letter and the Witness: Agamben,Heidegger, and Derrida

In Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben introduces a particular conception of bearing witness to overcome the problems contained in an account of language that depends on the voice or the letter. From his earlier work, it is clear that his critique of the voice and the letter is not only directed to ancient and medieval metaphysics, but also concerns Heidegger's account of the voice and Derrida's account of the letter and writing. Yet, if Agamben is correct in claiming that bearing witness offers an alternative to Heidegger's voice and Derrida's letter, it is remarkable – a fact unnoticed in the available literature – that Agamben does not discuss how these conceptions of the voice and the letter are intrinsically connected to the problem of testimony for Heidegger as well as Derrida. To show how this lack of attention to bearing witness in Heidegger and Derrida affects Agamben's critique, this article proceeds as follows. First, we interpret Agamben's critique of Heidegger's conception of the voice and Derrida's conception of writing in terms of the presuppositional constitution of metaphysics. Second, we describe Agamben's concept of the witness and indicate how it offers an alternative to this presuppositional constitution of metaphysics. Finally, we show which role bearing witness plays in Heidegger's voice and Derrida's letter, and how our analysis presents a more precise version of Agamben's critique.     

Socrates in the Platonic Dialogues

If Socrates is portrayed holding one view in one of Plato's dialogues and a different view in another, should we be puzzled? If (as I suggest) Plato's Socrates is neither the historical Socrates, nor a device for delivering Platonic doctrine, but a tool for the dialectical investigation of a philosophical problem, then we should expect a new Socrates, with relevant commitments, to be devised for each setting. Such a dialectical device – the tailor‐made Socrates – fits with what we know of other contributions to the genre of the Sokratikos Logos, to which Plato was neither the first nor the only contributor.     

Choice, Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities

Is choice necessary for moral responsibility? And does choice imply alternative possibilities of some significant sort? This paper will relate these questions to the argument initiated by Harry Frankfurt that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility, and to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's extension of that argument in terms of guidance control in a causally determined world. I argue that attending to Frankfurt's core conceptual distinction between the circumstances that make an action unavoidable and those that bring it about that the action is performed – a distinction emphasised in his recent restatement – provides a new route into an analysis of Frankfurt's argument by showing how it depends on a person's ‘decision to act’ involving the exercise of choice. The implicit reliance of Frankfurt's argument on this notion of choice, however, undermines his claim that the example of the counterfactual intervener strengthens the compatibilist case by providing a counter-example to the principle of alternative possibilities. I also argue that Frankfurt's reliance on the exercise of choice for moral responsibility is also evident in the Fischer/Ravizza argument, and that a close analysis of both arguments shows that such exercise of choice is not available if causal determinism is true.