‘Pure Time Preference’: Reply to Lowry and Peterson

A pure time preference is a preference for something to occur at one point in time rather than another, merely because of when it occurs in time. Such preferences are widely regarded as paradigm examples of irrational preferences. However, Rosemary Lowry and Martin Peterson have recently argued that, for instance, a pure time preference to go to the opera tonight rather than next month may be rationally permissible, even if the amounts of intrinsic value realized in both cases are identical. In this reply, we argue that Lowry and Peterson's argument is unsuccessful.     

Pornography's Many Meanings: A Reply to C.M. Concepcion

C.M. Conception's review of “Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty ¹ 1 See Steinem (1986, 250); discussed in Carse (1995, 175-76, n. 15).
” ( Carse 1995 ) fundamentally misconstrues the position defended in that article. This paper examines possible sources of this misconstrual, focusing critical attention on the narrowly crafted, morally loaded notion of “pornography” that figures centrally in the original argument under review. Pornography is not a category of speech that can be charaC' terized as having one crucial meaning or message, nor is the message of pornography easily identifiable in instances of pornographic speech. This raises the problem of interpretive privilege, which haunts many of the antipomography arguments being offered in the contemporary debate, including the author's own earlier argument.     

Reply to Commentary by Daniel N. Stern

I respond to Stern's largely affirming discussion by fleshing out a few points, for example, improvisation is more than just being spontaneous, it is ensemble work that plays off and with patterns emergent in the personalities of both parties. These patterns illuminate something about the unconscious of each from which blossom things heretofore unimagined or unarticulated. Several principles are then emphasized: First, improvisational moments arise when the “characters” in the moment draw from something real within themselves along with who they are inducing one another to become. Second, the cultivation of play in improvisation lends itself to putting to rest the myth of the perfectly analyzed analyst as not only impossible but as being both unnecessary and undesirable—a seminal point to the entire relational canon. Third, improvisation is a means for putting live flesh on the sterile bones of a host of theories now informing the contemporary psychoanalytic perspective such as chaos and complexity theory, along with dynamic systems theory. I also note that improvisational moments exhibit an emerging sense of vitality and a deepened sense of connection between the partners. Their work obtains a greater sense of focus, though not a deliberate focus as that their relational unconsciouses are “directing” them. Improvisational work feels liberating, playful, as well as affirming and recognizing what what each is bringing to their coauthorship. By contrast, when the improvisation fails, it devolves into negative thirdness or one-upsmanship, the qualities of which reflect deadness, avoidance, confusion, constriction of play, and a misrecognition of one another that devolves into a mutual sense of defeat. Responding to Stern's question about posi-traums, I affirm there is a phenomenon in which an entrenched emotional conviction of a patient's can be dramatically altered. This happens when something positive occurs that cannot be assimilated within the patient's intransigently negative belief system such that she must accommodate a new organizing principle, that is, a new emotional conviction to make sense of it. I concede, however, that it may be too soon to tell how much such phenomena penetrate the more physiologically encoded elements of trauma.