Jung's mediatory science as a psychology beyond objectivism

In this paper, the author argues that Jung's non-objectivist--yet scientific--epistemology and his empirical/hermeneatic methods of inquiry situate him within a psychological tradition that, in many respects, began with William James and, today, is finding expression in the work of many non-Jungian cognitive scientists. In an effort to encourage dialogue between Jungians and scholars within related intellectual traditions, the author presents evidence from the corpus of Jung's work that demonstrates that, like William James, Jung intentionally rejected the absolutist claims of objectivism and the opposite position on 'anything goes' relativism, emotivism, or subjectivism. Instead, Jung forged a path that led to the meta-psychological position similar to internal realism (Putnam 1981) or experientialism (Lakoff 1987) and to a theoretical psychology that gave a central place both to unconscious cognitive structure and to imagination. This he labelled a 'mediatory science'. The psychological theories developed within this mediatory science framework represent an early articulation of key constructs that are currently used by a number of cognitive scientists seeking to understand how we make sense of experience.     

Perceived Job Discrimination: Going beyond a science of mean effects

This comment responds to the major issues raised by the papers of Anseel (2011) and Patterson and Zibarras (2011) as discussant commentaries to my keynote paper on perceived job discrimination (PJD) and applicant propensity to case initiation in employee selection. I respond first to the two main themes noted by these authors – (i) theoretical explanations for PJD, and, (ii) methodological and research design imperatives. In conclusion, this brief paper extends these issues to propose that applicant reactions research needs to develop from being a science of mean reactions to becoming a paradigm that can account for pragmatically important outlier reactions and responses as well.     

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous information: beyond the emotion-congruent effect

The authors investigated how anxiety influences the use of contextual information in the resolution of ambiguity. Participants heard ambiguous homophones (threat/neutral, positive/neural, and neutral/neutral) with related contextual information. State anxiety was manipulated experimentally. The interpretations of anxious participants were influenced by context to a greater extent than those of control participants. Some mood-incongruent effects were observed where anxious participants were more likely to adopt neutral interpretations of potentially threatening stimuli. Effects were observed in a spelling task (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a lexical decision task (Experiment 3), with supraliminal, and subliminal presentation of contextual cues, and with 2 different anxiety-induction procedures. Results show how anxiety affects both the content and the process of resolution of ambiguity.     

孔子新诠——对《论语》作为一个哲学解释学文本的解读

Communicating with Confucius based on our own hermeneutical context, and reading the Analects as a text of philosophical hermeneutics, it can be concluded that as an epochal thinker, the contribution of Confucius’ thought is that it initiated a humanistic moral ideal with cultural upbringing as its core. Based on this consciousness of humanistic moral ideal, Confucius thought and dealt positively with the human existential plight and social political problems that he faced during his own time, and his thought is more creative than conservative. Translated by Mi Li from Guanzi Xuekan 맜子学刊 (Guanzi Jouranl), 2006, (1): 69–74     

Nursing considered as moral practice: a philosophical-ethical interpretation of nursing

Discussions of ethical approaches in nursing have been much enlivened in recent years, for instance by new developments in the theory of care. Nevertheless, many ethical concepts in nursing still need to be clarified. The purpose of this contribution is to develop a fundamental ethical view on nursing care considered as moral practice. Three main components are analyzed more deeply -- i.e., the caring relationship, caring behavior as the integration of virtue and expert activity, and "good care" as the ultimate goal of nursing practice. For the development of this philosophical-ethical interpretation of nursing, we have mainly drawn on the pioneering work of Anne Bishop and John Scudder, Alasdair MacIntyre, Lawrence Blum, and Louis Janssens. We will also show that the European philosophical background offers some original ideas for this endeavor.     

Psychoanalysis as a science: a response to the new challenges

Few theoretical issues in psychoanalysis have been more constantly argued than the status of our discipline as a science. For long the attack has been from the logical positivists and the extensions of their argument by Karl Popper. Over recent decades the debate about the place of our metapsychology has intensified the concerns about our scientific status. In this paper I respond briefly to the logical positivist, the Popperian, and the information-processing systems theory arguments and then develop at greater length a response to the two current, most widespread philosophy-of-science assaults upon our credibility as science, that of the hermeneuticists (Ricoeur, Habermas, Gadamer, and others), and the newest, that of the philosopher, Adolf Grünbaum.     

On medicine as a human science

All the powerful influences exertedby the subjective-interpersonal dimension onthe organic or technical-functional dimensionof sickness and health do not make anintersubjective test concerning medicaltherapeutic results impossible. Theseinfluences are not arbitrary; on the contrary,they obey laws that are de facto sufficientlystable to allow predictions and explanationssimilar to those of experimental sciences.While, in this respect, the rules concerninghuman action are analogous to the scientificlaws of nature, they can at any time be revokedby becoming aware of them. Law-like andreproducible regularities in the sciences ofman are by no means separated from a patient'spersonal-hermeneutic mediation. This makes itpossible for human beings to modify, improve orsometimes even entirely (or better almostentirely) suspend these psychological,sociological, ethnological, medical,regularities. For this reason the sciences ofman including medicine are under the obligationof constantly inspecting the continuingvalidity of the rules on which theirpredictions and explanations are based, namelyby indirect, statistical methods. Thisrequires a synergistic collaboration ofextra-clinical and clinical tests through whichmedicine can obtain a good level ofintersubjective testability.     

Signs and the process of interpretation: sign as an object and as a process

Historically the words representation and symbol have had overlapping meanings, meanings that usually disregard the role played by the interpreter. Peirce’s theory of signs accounts for these meanings and also for the role of the interpreter. His theory draws attention to the static and dynamic nature of signs. Sign interpretation can be viewed as a continuous dynamic and evolving process. The static and dynamic nature of signs helps us understand the teaching–learning activity as a process of interpretation on the part of teacher and students. The paper attempts to explain the classroom interpretation process on the part of the actors involved using the Peircean theory of signs.     

Straightness as a cue for luminance edge interpretation

In order to determine the reflectance of a surface, it is necessary to discount luminance changes produced by illumination variation, a process that requires the visual system to respond differently to luminance changes that are due to illumination and reflectance. It is known that various cues can be used in this process. By measuring the strength of lightness illusions, we find evidence that straightness is, used as a cue: When a boundary is straight rather than curved, it has a greater tendency to be discounted, as if it were an illumination edge. The strongest illusions occur when a boundary has high contrast and has multiple X-junctions that preserve a consistent contrast ratio.     

The adequacy condition as a definition of elementary interpretation

A definition of elementary interpretation, equivalent (up to isomorphisms) to the ones of [3] and [4], is given. The defining condition, used here, seems to confirm that intuitions agree with the choice of the class of elementary interpretations, which was done in [3].