A fallacy of aristotle''s about ends

A distinction between activities and processes plays an important role in Aristotle's argument to establish that the good life is a life of activities, among which metaphysical contemplation is foremost. But, as a result of having failed to distinguish internal from external ends of action, Aristotle makes fallacious inferences from every activity's having an internal end in itself to its possessing features which may be legitimately inferred only from external ends, and from every process's having an internal end that is its terminal point to its having the attainment of that terminal point as an external end. The resulting confusion explains a number of problematic elements in Aristotle's ethical theory.     

Having a voice and getting a hearing: An educational perspective on free speech in a plural society

This paper examines Ronald Dworkin's claim that the right to free speech does not include a right to circumstances that encourage citizens to speak nor a right to competent and sympathetic understanding on the part of listeners. Drawing on familiar arguments for the existence of other human rights, the paper challenges Dworkin's claim. Even if, however, the challenge fails and it is not possible to show that there is such a right, that is not the end of the story. It is argued that democratic societies should try to foster conditions in which citizens are encouraged to speak and are listened to sympathetically in the interests of the well-being and flourishing of the polity. The important role education has to play in this is explored.     

Treating the “Wise Baby”

In a previous examination of Ferenczis concept of the Wise Baby (1996), I had noted both its applications and its limitations in the analytic treatment of an unusually intelligent adult. Ferenczis concepts of the origin of intellect in trauma and of the wise baby have often left the indistinct impression of being interrelated phenomena. In this paper, I regard as arguable the notion that very high intelligence is pathological when it is precocious. This return visit to the territory of the wise baby extends Ferenczis ideas about the origin and use of the intellect to include a consideration of what may constitute effective treatment for those who suffer from giftedness.Judith E. Vida, M.D. edits On the Arts for this journal. She is a Founding Member and Faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, CA, a member of both American and International Psychoanalytic Associations, and of the Sándor Ferenczi Society of Budapest. Her private practice is in Pasadena, CA.Address correspondence to Judith E. Vida, 301 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 406A, Pasadena, CA 91105, USA; e-mail: jvida@spence.net     

The Suspended Aesthetic: Slavoj Žižek on Eastern European Film

Slavoj iek's writings on Krzysztof Kies´lowski and Andrej Tarkovskij represent direct challenges to the Central and Eastern European tradition of spiritual art and to dominant aesthetic concepts as such. He refuses to separate the solemn films of Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij from popular culture and stresses their import as ethical statements by their directors. Despite this ethical emphasis, iek makes an important contribution to philosophical aesthetics. He implicitly defines art as a suspension of reality which reveals time in its fragility and potentiality. Defining iek's aesthetics in terms of suspension helps to explain his partiality for Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij and bears comparison to the Russian tradition of philosophical aesthetics, in particular Aleksej Losev and Alexander Bakshy.     

Lordship, Bondage, and the Formation of Homo Religiosus

After a brief exploration of Hegel's writing on the formation of self-consciousness, including the place of religiosity in this formation, the article examines Kojeve's response to a Hegelian homo religiosus, followed by a counter-response to Kojeve's atheism through a peculiar, Jaspersian reading of Erich Fromm's discussion of the x experience. Finally, it will be argued that the desire for mutual recognition, and humanity's yearning for transcendence, are essential experiences in the formation of self-consciousness.     

The application of the satir model of family therapy to the families in Hong Kong: A personal reflection

Practitioners in Hong Kong have shown an increasing interest in various family therapy approaches since the 1980s. This paper offers a critique of the major concepts and techniques of the Satir model applied to families in Hong Kong. Cultural considerations are examined in relation to the family structure and hierarchy, the Chinese self and self-esteem, communication patterns, and family rules. Implications for the application of the Satir model of family therapy in Hong Kong are discussed.     

Der “dritte Weg” der “neo-eurasischen” Zeitschrift “Elementy” -- zurück ins Dritte Reich?

Studies in East European Thought - Articulated in the twenties, the doctrines of the exiled Russian ‘Evrazijstvo’ movement are undergoing a renaissance in Russia today. As the...     

Choice and Logic

There is a little known paradox the solution to which is a guide to a much more thoroughgoing solution to a whole range of classic paradoxes. This is shown in this paper with respect to Berrys Paradox, Heterologicality, Russells Paradox, and the Paradox of Predication, also the Liar and the Strengthened Liar, using primarily the epsilon calculus. The solutions, however, show not only that the first-order predicate calculus derived from Frege is inadequate as a basis for a clear science, and should be replaced with Hilbert and Bernays conservative extension. Standard second-order logic, and quantified propositional logic also must be substantially modified, to incorporate, in the first place, nominalizations of predicates, and whole sentences. And further modifications must be made, so as to insist that predicates are parts of sentences rather than forms of them, and that truth is a property of propositions rather than their sentential expressions. In all, a thorough reworking of what has been called logic in recent years must be undertaken, to make it more fit for use.Portions of this paper have previously been published in Logical Studies, vol. 9, http://www.logic.ru/LogStud/09/No9-06.html, and the Australasian Journal of Logic, vol. 2, http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/ajl/2004/2004_4.pdf.     

The Impact of ‘the Dream’ on Women's Experience of the Midlife Transition

Daniel Levinson's claim for the universality of age-linked periods is considered highly controversial considering that his theory evolved from a study consisting of males only. Theories relating to women's development, particularly at midlife, are somewhat scarce and restricted. Using Levinson's theory of adult development as a framework, the present study retrospectively examined the Dream and its impact on women's psychological health and adjustment to the Midlife Transition. Three hundred midlife women completed a questionnaire examining Dream Status, Dream Content, Dream Success, and the psychological health variables, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Dream Success was significantly related to psychological health on dimensions of well-being and composure, and interesting changes were observed in Dream Content across the early and current Dream. Our findings revealed that, despite the overall greater complexity of women's Dreams, Levinson's theory is largely applicable to women's development.     

A narwhal is an animal: partial word knowledge biases adults' decisions

Adults' accuracy on a sentence verification task was measured to assess reliable biases in their responses as a function of their level of knowledge about the target words, as well as adults' ability to reject incorrect ontological category membership for their partially known words. Three levels of word knowledge (known, frontier, and unknown) were assessed in two experiments. Results indicated that participants were conservative decision-makers about sentences using the vocabulary words and that the conservative bias increased in strength as their level of knowledge about the target word increased. When biased guessing was discouraged, results indicated that participants were able to accurately identify both correct and incorrect sentences using targets at all three levels of knowledge, including their partially known words, but were least reliable at rejecting false sentences using unknown targets. Implications for the role of knowing not in adults' vocabulary acquisition are discussed.     

Inferential Intensionality

The paper is a study of properties of quasi-consequence operation which is a key notion of the so-called inferential approach in the theory of sentential calculi established in [5]. The principal motivation behind the quasi-consequence, q-consequence for short, stems from the mathematical practice which treats some auxiliary assumptions as mere hypotheses rather than axioms and their further occurrence in place of conclusions may be justified or not. The main semantic feature of the q-consequence reflecting the idea is that its rules lead from the non-rejected assumptions to the accepted conclusions.First, we focus on the syntactic features of the framework and present the q-consequence as related to the notion of proof. Such a presentation uncovers the reasons for which the adjective inferential is used to characterize the approach and, possibly, the term inference operation replaces q-consequence. It also shows that the inferential approach is a generalisation of the Tarski setting and, therefore, it may potentially absorb several concepts from the theory of sentential calculi, cf. [10]. However, as some concrete applications show, see e.g.[4], the new approach opens perspectives for further exploration.The main part of the paper is devoted to some notions absent, in Tarski approach. We show that for a given q-consequence operation W instead of one W-equivalence established by the properties of W we may consider two congruence relations. For one of them the current name is kept preserved and for the other the term W-equality is adopted. While the two relations coincide for any W which is a consequence operation, for an arbitrary W the inferential equality and the inferential equivalence may differ. Further to this we introduce the concepts of inferential extensionality and intensionality for q-consequence operations and connectives. Some general results obtained in Section 2 sufficiently confirm the importance of these notions. To complete a view, in Section 4 we apply the new intensionality-extensionality distinction to inferential extensions of a version of the ukasiewicz four valued modal logic.     

AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY

“Africana Philosophy” is a gathering notion used to cover collectively particular articulations, and traditions of particular articulations, of persons African and African-descended that are to be regarded as instances of philosophizing. (The notion is meant to cover, as well, the philosophizing efforts of persons not African or African-descended, efforts that are, nonetheless, contributions to the philosophizing endeavors that constitute Africana philosophy.) A central concern of the essay is the question whether there are characteristics of the philosophizing practices of persons identified as members of social groups thought to comprise a geographically and historically dispersed and ethnically diverse race that do, or should, distinguish the practices by virtue of being those of persons African and/or African-descended. Is there, can there be, should there be a properly determined field of philosophy that is constituted, first and foremost, by the efforts of persons of a particular race and its ethnic groups?     

Unintelligibility or Defeat: The Issue of Engagement in Philosophical Debates

A recognition of the acutely terministic and agonistic character of philosophizing has led to the perception of a dilemma in philosophical debates: differing positions are capable of being maintained only at the expense of mutual unintelligibility, and a real contact of minds could never be achieved without one side of the controversy abandoning its position and the enabling argumentative tension ceasing to exist. This perception is sustainable, however, only if we continue to accept the assumption that a direct, unmediated confrontation between disputants personifying two sets of rigidly defined terms is the mode of philosophical argumentation. A triadic rather than diadic conception of a typical debate between opposing schools of thought, which differentiates between the opponent and the audience, would address the theoretical misgivings caused by the perceived predicament.     

Free Łukasiewicz and Hoop Residuation Algebras

Hoop residuation algebras are the {, 1}-subreducts of hoops; they include Hilbert algebras and the {, 1}-reducts of MV-algebras (also known as Wajsberg algebras). The paper investigates the structure and cardinality of finitely generated free algebras in varieties of k-potent hoop residuation algebras. The assumption of k-potency guarantees local finiteness of the varieties considered. It is shown that the free algebra on n generators in any of these varieties can be represented as a union of n subalgebras, each of which is a copy of the {, 1}-reduct of the same finite MV-algebra, i.e., of the same finite product of linearly ordered (simple) algebras. The cardinality of the product can be determined in principle, and an inclusion-exclusion type argument yields the cardinality of the free algebra. The methods are illustrated by applying them to various cases, both known (varieties generated by a finite linearly ordered Hilbert algebra) and new (residuation reducts of MV-algebras and of hoops).     

Players’ Gender and Male Referees’ Decisions About Aggression in French Soccer: A Preliminary Study

The aim of this study was to examine (a) aggression displayed by players and (b) referees decisions about these behaviors as a function of the gender of the players in French soccer. Twenty-six games (13 for women and 13 for men) were videotaped. Instrumental aggressive acts and referees decisions were then observed. The findings indicated a significant effect of gender on instrumental aggression and referees decisions related to these behaviors. Male players displayed more instrumental aggressive acts than female players did. Nevertheless, relative to the total number of aggressive acts displayed, referees penalized women more than men. Gender stereotypes might be a relevant explanation for these results, as soccer is generally perceived as a masculine-type sport, particularly in France, and aggression as a masculine characteristic.     

The Tacit–Explicit Connection: Polanyian Integrative Philosophy and a Neo-Polanyian Medical Epistemology

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an approach to clinical practice aiming to resolve the dilemma of choosing between a mechanistic and a phenomenological model. The approach is an extension of Polanyi's epistemology. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976), devised an epistemology of science which overcomes the problem of detachment, inherent in the mechanistic approach, and resolves the problem of subjectivity troubling phenomenologists. His epistemology is known as Personal Knowledge. An extension of this epistemology, a Neo-Polanyian proposal, is offered as a more successful model for clinical practice than previous suggestions addressing the dilemma.