Misleading Evidence and the Dogmatism Puzzle

According to the Dogmatism Puzzle presented by Gilbert Harman, knowledge induces dogmatism because, if one knows that p, one knows that any evidence against p is misleading and therefore one can ignore it when gaining the evidence in the future. I try to offer a new solution to the puzzle by explaining why the principle is false that evidence known to be misleading can be ignored. I argue that knowing that some evidence is misleading doesn't always damage the credential of the evidence, and therefore it doesn't always entitle one to ignore it. I also explain in what kind of cases and to what degree such knowledge allows one to ignore evidence. Hopefully, through the discussion, we can not only understand better where the dogmatism puzzle goes wrong, but also understand better in what sense rational believers should rely on their evidence and when they can ignore it.     

The Emergence of Creativity

Creativity is one of the central dimensions of human achievement and social development and has always fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. But what is the essential nature of creativity? And what is the role of consciousness in the emergence of creativity? If it is true that it has been explored in many aspects in the cognitive and neurobiological field, it is also true that the lore chest—from which the conscious mind through unconscious mechanisms extracts the rough material that is then brought to the surface—has been less investigated. The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the multiplicity of levels of awareness is made possible by a spontaneous order that has nothing to do with a monolithic view of creativity.     

Personhood,culture and family therapy

This paper argues that ideas about personhood and relationships vary cross-culturally and that although it is not always obvious or easy to discover, this variation is particularly salient to family therapy. This argument is supported by a dual definition of culture emphasizing both continuity of cultural themes (generative aspect) and the reconstitution, redefinition and change of such themes through interaction and communication (interactive aspect). The effectiveness of interventions which are isomorphic with ideas which families themselves hold about personhood is demonstrated through work with two families, one Punjabi and one Bangladeshi.     

Penultimate interpretation

Interpretation is at the center of psychoanalytic activity. However, interpretation is always challenged by that which is beyond our grasp, the 'dark matter' of our mind, what Bion describes as ' O'. O is one of the most central and difficult concepts in Bion's thought. In this paper, I explain the enigmatic nature of O as a high-dimensional mental space and point to the price one should pay for substituting the pre-symbolic lexicon of the emotion-laden and high-dimensional unconscious for a low-dimensional symbolic representation. This price is reification--objectifying lived experience and draining it of vitality and complexity. In order to address the difficulty of approaching O through symbolization, I introduce the term 'Penultimate Interpretation'--a form of interpretation that seeks 'loopholes' through which the analyst and the analysand may reciprocally save themselves from the curse of reification. Three guidelines for 'Penultimate Interpretation' are proposed and illustrated through an imaginary dialogue.     

Hylomorphism and Human Wholeness: Perspectives on the Mind-Brain Problem

The relation between mind and matter has always been a conundrum in Western philosophy. Now framed as the mind-brain problem, it is often addressed through reductionism or dualism. As empirical science has become more aware of instances of emergence and top-down causality, however, it has developed a new appreciation of the wholeness of individuals or systems. By retrieving some aspects of Aristotle's philosophy of hylomorphism, we may better understand the metaphysical grounding of human wholeness and so develop an integrated account of the human person, including mind and brain.     

What is the Normativity of Meaning?

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view.     

Task switching: the effect of task recency with dual- and single-affordance stimuli

When we switch to a new task, performance is transiently relatively poor, but improves dramatically after one trial. Such a “switch cost” may result from the preceding task being highly primed while the new task is not yet primed. This predicts that it should become more difficult to switch back to Task A when more trials of Task B have intervened. Such a lag effect has been found in some but not in most previous experiments, and to resolve this discrepancy we examined the effects of task lag with different stimuli. We found that when stimuli uniquely and clearly cued the task—minimizing the need for control—switch reaction time increased with task lag. However, when the need for control was increased by using similar or identical stimuli in the two tasks, this lag effect was abolished or reversed. Thus only when control processes are minimized can priming explain the difficulty of switching back from Task B to Task A. Second, we asked how the impact of control is mediated in conditions where it is not minimized. If it is mediated through altering the relative activation states of competing tasks, then as it becomes easier to do one task—the relative task-set activation state is tipped in that task's favour—it should always become harder to do the other task. On the other hand, if control bias affects switch performance directly, this relationship need not hold. We found that as it becomes easier to perform one task it can become easier, not harder, to switch to the competing task. Thus control bias must act directly on switch performance, rather than only through its influence on relative task-set activation.     

Task switching: The effect of task recency with dual- and single-affordance stimuli

When we switch to a new task, performance is transiently relatively poor, but improves dramatically after one trial. Such a “switch cost” may result from the preceding task being highly primed while the new task is not yet primed. This predicts that it should become more difficult to switch back to Task A when more trials of Task B have intervened. Such a lag effect has been found in some but not in most previous experiments, and to resolve this discrepancy we examined the effects of task lag with different stimuli. We found that when stimuli uniquely and clearly cued the task—minimizing the need for control—switch reaction time increased with task lag. However, when the need for control was increased by using similar or identical stimuli in the two tasks, this lag effect was abolished or reversed. Thus only when control processes are minimized can priming explain the difficulty of switching back from Task B to Task A. Second, we asked how the impact of control is mediated in conditions where it is not minimized. If it is mediated through altering the relative activation states of competing tasks, then as it becomes easier to do one task—the relative task-set activation state is tipped in that task's favour—it should always become harder to do the other task. On the other hand, if control bias affects switch performance directly, this relationship need not hold. We found that as it becomes easier to perform one task it can become easier, not harder, to switch to the competing task. Thus control bias must act directly on switch performance, rather than only through its influence on relative task-set activation.     

Working through and its various models

Working through is an integral part of the psychoanalytic process, one could even say its epitome. It is therefore always present in the work of an analysis but, depending on the various phases and constraints that arise in that process, changes are brought to its form, to the issues involved in it and to its economic dimension. The author explores three forms or models of how working-through functions in relation to the dominant feature of any given analytical process. In the first of these, the issue that has to be worked over involves insight into a repressed representational complex; in the second, work has to be done on bringing into consciousness drive-related impulses or mental experiences that have until then not been able to be represented, so that the analysis itself is the first occasion on which retroactive [après-coup] processing can be initiated; and in the third, when representation and some kind of symbolization of the subjective experience and the drive-related issues that are part of it have been accomplished, the analysand then has to appropriate these subjectively and integrate them.     

Renaissance Madonnas and the Fantasies of Freud

Through the work of Julia Kristeva, this paper challenges Freud's laws that everyone is always already gendered, that the mother is feminine and every infant masculine, and that one cannot love the same (gender). The figure of the Madonna, seen through the paintings of Giovanni Bellini, is used to theorize the time in the life of a child before Oedipus and to undo the conceptual knot with which Freud has bound the feminine to the maternal.     

“授人以筌”——评析卡尔·罗杰斯的学习理论

在教学上人们一直围绕着教育是"授人以鱼"还是"授人以渔"展开激烈的讨论,"鱼"和"渔"何者为重,似乎毋庸置疑。人本主义心理学的创始人之一罗杰斯把从事数十年的心理治疗方法"来访者中心疗法"应用到教育领域,在"鱼"和"渔"的选择上二者皆抛,提出的以学生为中心的学习理论体现了一种"授人以筌"的教育理念。本文从其学习理论的提出、教育理念等方面予以说明。     

Life Stories of Latvian Lutheran Pastors

I have interviewed leading Latvian pastors and present here a series of autobiographical tributes in grateful recognition of their work. When I look at the typed pages on my table, it seems strange to me that it could all fit on a few sheets of paper: the pain, the suffering, the love and the victory, many victories. These pages are the fruit of long conversations with people I had known for many years - now I think I had not really known them before. Their deepest thoughts and longings had been hidden from the casual enquirer. For the first time in my life I have played the part of the journalist, one who enquires with the purpose of understanding and communicating this knowledge to others. A mysterious, even sacramental world has revealed itself to me: the world of the human soul, the world of a pastor's soul as he leads his flock through vicissitudes to the green pastures of heavenly life here on earth. I asked myself whether the pastors had always known the way, whether they had always seen the mighty hand of God in action. I was reminded that these people are our neighbours too; that as human beings it is they who sometimes need our help. The Latvian people owe their freedom to their pastors. I would like this brief collection to be a gesture of thanks to all the other pastors whose stories have not been told.     

On Why There is a Problem of Supererogation

How can it be that some acts of very high moral value are not morally required? This is the problem of supererogation. I do not argue in favor of a particular answer. Instead, I analyze two opposing moral intuitions the problem involves. First, that one should always do one’s best. Second, that sometimes we are morally allowed not to do our best. To think that one always has to do one’s best is less plausible, as it makes every morally best act obligatory. I argue that, despite its implausibility, this is the main ingredient in a traditional outlook I call ‘morality of law,’ which conceives of morality as impartial, impersonal, rule-based and obligation-based. My main point is that supererogation will always be seen as problematic if the background theory is a morality of law. This is because supererogation encapsulates a view of morality-outside-obligation, whereas morality of law centers upon obligation as its main instrument of curbing a supposedly natural human selfishness.

     

Human, transhuman, posthuman. Representations of the body between incompleteness and enhancement

"Posthuman" is often used to indicate some position, practice, perspective and vision concerning the future of human beings closely related to the use of contemporary technologies. This contribution would like to analyze some conceptions of the notion of posthuman and to present it as a possible form of "non-anthropocentric" thought which considers technological changes as non-human realities strictly involved in the construction and the definition of what constitutes a human being (and his body) and its predicates. Contrary to anthropocentrism which has characterized Western thought from humanism up to the extreme outcomes of transhumanism, non-anthropocentric posthumanism shows how the human being, who has always been the product of hybridization with the non-human (environment, animals and techniques), is built not only by his own strength but always through his partnership and his environment. The idea of enhancement of the body by technology to reach another stage of human evolution is one of the constant elements characterizing transhumanism. Posthumanism suggests no longer considering the interface with technology as an ergonomic relationship with an external tool that just extends the human body, but as a hybrid, or interpenetration that questions the separation of the body and its centrality. In this perspective, the question is not of simply establishing which is a good use of a technology but, every time, of redefining ourselves in our perspectives and our predicates with regard to what a technology allows and opens up to us.     

初中生生活事件、即时通讯与孤独感之间的关系

个体使用互联网对其心理与行为的影响一直是研究者关注的焦点,同时互联网世界是丰富多彩的,不同的互联网服务对使用者的影响是不同的。该研究采用问卷法抽取北京市两所中学初一、初二年级学生进行调查,目的是考察初中生生活事件、即时通讯服务使用偏好与孤独感之间的关系。结果表明:生活事件带来的主观压力能够显著正向预测孤独感;即时通讯能够显著负向预测孤独感;客观压力不能够预测孤独感,但是它可以通过即时通讯间接地影响个体的孤独感水平。从结果中可以看到互联网的使用对个体的发展不全是消极的,即时通讯服务的使用能够缓解生活事件对个体产生的消极影响,对个体起到一定的保护作用。     

Facilitating 'Perspectival Reciprocity' in Medication: Some Reflections on a Failed Case

Mediation services arise in contexts where the notions of community cohesion, relationship integrity and social order are valued over their opposites (disorder, dissent, conflict etc). Yet it is not at all clear whether and how the mediation of conflict works to re-establish harmony or consensus. Indeed it is not at all clear that mediation is always effective or just. It has even been suggested that some conflicts (e.g. work-place, commercial and sexual assault) are either not resolved or not resolved justly by mediation. On the other hand, advocates maintain that mediation can bring resolution and repair to ongoing relationships, promote community harmony, and empower people to be self-determining in the construction and maintenance of their resolutions. Whether mediation is adjudged positively or not, all mediation is instantiated in, indeed performed through, talk. In this paper I examine mediations from an Australian mediation program, and use Conversation Analysis to expose the practical methods by which mediators achieve consensus between disputants. I then examine a case in which mediation has failed to produce the sought-after consensus, and explore one way of understanding the failure of mediation in that case.     

R?ume der Gewalt

Violence is everywhere, just as love and the need for sexual satisfaction are omnipresent, nowadays just as it was 1,000 years ago. However, one is taken for granted as a part of fundamental human behavior and needs no explanation, while violence is considered an anomaly which should disappear from our lives. People who live in peace are irritated when they hear of massacres and violent acts which do not occur in their world. They cannot believe that people kill, abuse and sexually assault each other for no apparent reason and that some actually gain pleasure from this. Then the belief that violence is abnormal behavior under any circumstances helps them to imagine its reality as a space in which argumentation triumphs over fists. Humans, however, will not be what they are: they have always been complete. Violence is a human capability: that was always so and everywhere. It is a resource for action which is not only available for everybody but can also be used by everyone. Even the smallest can achieve an increase in power and gain respect by the use of the fists. The source of violence lies in the fundamentals of the powers of imagination. All atrocities can be imagined and what has once become engraved in the memory can never be removed. When one has understood what violence does to man and what man does with violence, it can no longer only be comprehended as an expression of ideas, intentions and programs, as a deviation which can be redressed by moral persuasion but as a consequence of an unlocking of safety measures which protect people from killing and injuring each other. Even in the future violence will be part of our lives. The belief in the healing powers of civilization is nothing more than romantic idealism. It always concerns only situations and people. Undoubtedly a depressing outlook but when one has comprehended that violence is an integral part of life, measures can also be taken to enclose it. Violence is an experience which creates order because death means the end of everything. For dreamers who crave eternal peace, this recognition is depressing but for realists it is a comfort.     

Response to Erich Loewy: commentary

The capacity to suffer, the vulnerability with respect to suffering, confers on all animals with that capacity (not just human beings) a prima facie right not to be caused suffering. Nurturing in order to stave off such suffering is the first act of the community toward the individual, primarily in infancy. Hence for Loewy, autonomy, the gradual growth of self-determination in individuals, is grounded in a broader moral commitment of the community, that of beneficence. This is the critical point in his argument, for it represents a wholesale critique of modern libertarianism. Libertarians, in contrast to Loewy's argument, seem to ground the nature of the community in the prima facie right of autonomy. For Loewy, the community not only has an obligation to refrain from harming individuals (nonmaleficence), but it also has an active duty to ameliorate and prevent, as far as possible, the suffering of its members. Thus, if there is a social contract, it is one of nurturing one another to overcome the vulnerability of suffering, not primarily one of protecting autonomy. This is most significant for clinical ethics as well. Once the primary obligation to ameliorate suffering is no longer necessary, when the individual loses or does not have the primary moral worth prompted by the capacity to suffer, then secondary and symbolic obligations emerge. Loewy is thereby able to suggest a "calculus" of moral worth, wherein our obligations to individuals in a permanent vegetative state or to anencephalics (almost always the individual will have lost the capacity to suffer through some cerebral event) must be weighed against other primary obligations. Although Loewy admits that grounding clinical ethics in the capacity to suffer might be "thin," it nevertheless prompts serious discussion about the nature of the "good" in good clinical ethics decisions.     

Rapport as mutual respect

Rapport in testing and counseling contexts is usually described by a listing of conditions said to produce optimal performance through eliciting or inhibiting certain behaviors and traits. In this article, the traditional conditions are criticized as grounded in a combination of inadequate faculty-trait and behavioristic theories. “Mutual respect” is proposed as a more accurate and practical alternative, one that is explicitly grounded in a conception of the person as always involved with his total situation and acting in accordance with his experience of it. Rapport, then, exists when each person recognizes and respects the reality of the other's experience.