The liar: What paradox?

Most philosophers believe that the Liar Paradox is semantical in character, and arises from difficulties in the predicate true. The author argues that the paradox is pragmatic, not semantic, and arises from violations of essential conditions that define statement-making speech acts. The author shows that his solution to the paradox will not only handle the classical Liar sentences that are necessarily or intrinsically paradoxical, but also sets of Kripke-sentences that are contingently paradoxical.     

Is “some-other-time” sometimes better than “sometime” for proving partial correctness of programs?

The main result of this paper belongs to the field of the comparative study of program verification methods as well as to the field called nonstandard logics of programs. We compare the program verifying powers of various well-known temporal logics of programs, one of which is the Intermittent Assertions Method, denoted as Bur. Bur is based on one of the simplest modal logics called S5 or sometime-logic. We will see that the minor change in this background modal logic increases the program verifying power of Bur. The change can be described either technically as replacing the reflexive version of S5 with an irreflexive version, or intuitively as using the modality some-other-time instead of sometime. Some insights into the nature of computational induction and its variants are also obtained.This project was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, Grant No. 1810.     

A topological logic of action

We consider a quantifier-free language in which there are terms as well as formulas. The proposition-forming propositional operators are the usual ones, and the term-making term operators are the usual lattice theoretical ones. In addition there is a formula-making term operator, does. We study a new logic in which does is claimed to approximate some features of the informal concept the agent performs the action .     

Poetry in Existential Psychotherapy with Couples and Families

The use of poetry during the process of existential psychotherapy with couples and families is described and illustrated. In this approach, poems can be utilized to help the couple and/or family notice meaning potentials in the future, actualize and make use of such meaning potentials in the here and now, and re-collect and honor meanings previously actualized and deposited in the past.     

Illustrating two complementary enterprises at the interface of psychology and religion through reading Winnicott

Our work at the interface of psychology and religion can proceed in two complementary directions. When reading a psychological theory, (1) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used to interpret religious phenomena. We may focus on how those ideas may be involved in doing psychology of religion: the psychological interpretation of religious phenomena. Alternatively, (2) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used, either implicitly or explicitly, to make claims about human nature, about the meaning and purpose of life, about God. We may identify the psychology as religion-theology: psychological ideas potentially functioning in a religious-theological manner. I will illustrate this by: (a) examining D. W. Winnicott's article, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena (1953/1986) in terms of three successive concepts or categories: transitional object, transitional phenomena, and a third intermediate area of experiencing; (b) considering how these categories can be used in psychology of religion; (c) reconsidering how the psychological categories may function as religious-theological. The discussion is intended to illustrate how we might more fully appreciate how and why a psychological theory may work well in doing psychology of religion when we more fully appreciate how that psychology implicitly functions as theology.     

Variations in use of the term “or”

Two studies showed that adults' responses to questions involving the term or varied markedly depending upon the type of question presented. When presented with various objects (A's and B's) and asked to circle all things which are A or B subjects tended to circle A's as well as B's, whereas when asked to circle all the A's or B's subjects showed a relatively stronger tendency to circle one or the other. Moreover the nature of the sets of objects (As and Bs) influenced behavior as well. There was also evidence that the effects due to question wording or set type transferred.     

A partially ordered extention of the integers

This paper presents a monotonic system of Post algebras of order +* whose chain of Post constans is isomorphic with 012 ... -3-2-1. Besides monotonic operations, other unary operations are considered; namely, disjoint operations, the quasi-complement, succesor, and predecessor operations. The successor and predecessor operations are basic for number theory.The editing of this unified version of two previous papers [Epstein, Rasiowa 1990, 1991] by the authors was completed, except for footnotes, while the first author visited at Warsaw University during June–July, 1994. The footnotes were added by the first author in September, 1994.Presented byRyszard Wójcicki     

Логистическая система, исходными связками которой являются эквивалентность и дизъюнкция

- Allatum est die 5 Martii 1970     

The Deep Structure of Group Life: Unconscious Dimensions

There is a reconsideration and renaissance of interest in expanded conceptions of unconscious processes as they affect individuals and groups (Grotstein, 1999). Recent focus on social unconscious (Hopper, 1996) and cultural unconscious processes (Henderson, 1988) and the nature of intersubjectivity (Harwood and Pines, 1998) raise questions about the location of group analysis. This paper considers the deep structure of group life by examining four functions of the unconscious: repressive, conservative, creative, and mythopoetic (Ellenberger, 1970). On an individual level of analysis, these functions are equated respectively with formative ideas about the: personal–subjective, social–political, intersubjective–cultural and collective–objective unconscious. Group level analogs, as they develop and affect groups and their members, are explored as synthetic, shared, symbolicy and synchronous unconscious processes.     

The family as portrayed on prime-time television, 1947–1990: Structure and characteristics

Successful family series across four decades of American prime-time television were examined. Family portrayals were defined as either conventional or nonconventional. Conventional families were categorized as couples without children and couples with children. Nonconventional families were categorized as single parent or contrived. Additional family characteristics were also recorded including sex of single parent, reason for singleness, social class status, females employed outside the home, live-ins, race, and whether the presentation was dramatic or comedic. The data show a trend toward more equal presentation of conventional and nonconventional families, few divorced or female single parents, and few minority families. Implications of findings are discussed and future research questions suggested.     

Formalization of the basic concepts of animal ecology

Summary Formal definitions of the following concepts of animal ecology are given: environment, niche, locality, local population, natural population, community, ecosystem. Five primitive (undefined) notions are used including animal, offspring and habitat, the latter in the sense of Charles Elton. The defining equations for the environment of one animal are first given, then niche (in the Elton sense) is formally defined in terms of the environment. The fifth primitve notion habitat is then introduced in order to define the remaining concepts.     

Hemingway's Aging Heroes and the Concept of Phronesis

This article explores the concept of phronesis (practical wisdom) in four aging protagonists in Ernest Hemingway's works ranging from the short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place to the novella The Old Man and the Sea. Phronesis represents an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering. The four aging protagonists are examples of Hemingway's definition of aging productively and profitably by purchasing an inner peace that consists of an intuitive system of continuous adjustment to the exigencies of daily living.     

On a certain class ofm-address machines

Conclusion It follows from the proved theorems that ifM =Q, (whereQ={0,q ₁,q ₂,...,q }) is a machine of the classM _F then there exist machinesM _i such thatM _i(1,c)=M (q _i,c) andQ _i={0, 1, 2, ..., +1} (i=1, 2, ..., ).And thus, if the way in which to an initial function of content of memorycC a machine assigns a final onecC is regarded as the only essential property of the machine then we can deal with the machines of the formM ={0, 1, 2, ..., }, and processes (t) (wheret=1,c,cC) only.Such approach can simplify the problem of defining particular machines of the classM _F , composing and simplifying them.Allatum est die 19 Januarii 1970     

The drive for meaning in William James' analysis of religious experience

Summary Now that we have looked at the characteristics of mystical experience, we are ready to discuss the assumption made in this paper that mystical experience can be translated into an understanding of integration or the drive for meaning which Fingarette pursues in a much more analytic fashion. Reviewing the conversion process as an integration process we have seen that for the sick-souled, beset with the meaninglessness or melancholy which paralyzes his will, his own awareness of wrong in his situation prevents him from opening up to larger views of reality. But, as James has described, at the same time as the subject is attending so strongly to his own sense of worthlessness, all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work toward rearrangements. Yet the rearrangements can only come about by obeying the command of Chaung-Tse: Cease striving. The result is self-transformation in reconciling, unifying states. There is achieved a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness; facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life.However, James cautions us to realize that the same incursions of the subconscious which produce such reconciling, unifying states can also produce pathological states, a diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. In such a state the meanings of events become dreadful and the ruling emotion is pessimism. To this possibility James applied the pragmatic test, By their fruits..., and concluded that the mystical experience which brings optimism to the individual is a genuine experience and one which brings truth. In our context then, we would say that real integration brings the subject away from the melancholy and meaninglessness he felt into the genuinely insightful resolution of which Fingarette speaks.Conversion, then, is a process in James's analysis of religious experience analogous to the process of integration and meaning-discovery while mysticism is analogous to the state in which integration or meaning-discovery is achieved. Conversion is climaxed by self-surrender; mysticism is characterized by new determination, self-transformation: two ways of describing an indivisible event. Furthermore, the four characteristics James applies to mysticism are indeed characteristic of the experience of integration.Two other points should be added here which are much in line with James's treatment of experience. In the first place, one of the basic principles of radical empiricism is that not only objects but relations between objects are the subject of experience. Such an experience of relationships, of wholeness, is exactly what characterizes integration. At the same time, the five senses are suspended, and the insight is experienced with such a strong immediacy that it is almost sensed. James refers to this quality of mystical states: The records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression, - that is, they are face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist.I am not saying that every integration is a mystical experience. Rather I have been saying that James's discussion of religious experiences such as healthy-minded, sick-souled, melancholy, conversion, and mysticism provide analogues for better understanding the phenomenological processes and characteristics of the drive for meaning and integration which Fingarette analyzes. In fact, the very notion of religion itself for James bears not just an analogous resemblance but perhaps an identification with integration. For in his personal letters James had defined religious experience as Any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more home to one. And in Varieties James defines religion as a man's total reaction upon life....; his attitude towards what he felt to be the primal truth.If we look upon this outlook of James toward religion as an exaggeration of the reality of integration, we can follow James to what he perceives as the importance of religion upon an individual's life. The man of religious feeling possesses the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, an enthusiastic temper of espousal in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. So we are brought again to the area of creativity in which an individual has experienced the widening of the area of his immediate experience and is re-born in the karmic pattern, a valid pattern for both James and Fingarette. As Fingarette describes it, the converted individual creates values which the dead reality he had previously faced did not possess. The result of the achieved integration is explained by James when referring to religious experience as an excitement of the cheerful, expansive, dynamogenic order which, like any tonic, freshens our vital powers. This emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy [meaninglessness] and imparts endurances to the subject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and glory to the common objects of life.We might sum up this discussion not by a criticism of the shortcomings of James's treatment of the religious life, such as his apparent insensitivity to the part played by institutions in the religious experience itself, but rather by underscoring the richness of the phenomenological analysis James has undertaken. James Edie acknowledges that James's studies of religious experience itself rather than of religion. ... are not only more sound phenomenologically than some of the studies which have, under the influence of Husserl, up to now explicitly invoked the phenomenological method, but they are also the first to establish any solid basis for a true phenomenology of religious experience.And John Wild has pointed out the parallel between James's concept of melancholy and Heidegger's concept of anxiety as the genesis of the process of becoming: beginning with the prospect of death and nothingness, the individual gropes toward new birth.As we have seen, then, James's analysis of the varieties of religious experience leads to a fruitful discussion of the psychological processes involved in melancholy and meaninglessness, rearrangement and integration. In all such experiences, a sense of inner unity is reached to which the following words of Fingarette would apply by analogy: The soul-racking death which leads to blissful rebirth is the death of the subjectively experienced, anxiety-generated self perception; it is the emergence into the freedom of introspective self-forgetfulness of the psychically unified self.     

“Anchor-range” results with “same” and “different” responses and similar and dissimilar stimuli

Summary Blocks of pairs of dissimilar (anchor-like) circles were unexpectedly followed by single pairs of similar circles and vice versa. The dissimilar circles were 3 and 10 mm in diameter, and the similar circles were 3 and 5 mm, 5 and 7 mm, and 7 and 10 mm in diameter. In a second experiment, the dissimilar and similar circles did not overlap in size (e.g., they were 1.5 and 5 mm and 7 and 10 mm, respectively). The same responses to the unexpected same pairs of similar circles were faster than the same responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. In contrast, the different responses to the unexpected different pairs of similar circles were slower than the different responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. Similar stimuli accelerate same responses and slow down different responses. So the time results (and the error results as well) suggest that the context of the block dissimilar circles increased the perceived similarity of the unexpected similar circles. These anchor-range results are not explained by Thurstonian theories, which are based on the absolute properties of stimuli. Instead, they imply that the relation between the similar circles in the context of the relation between the dissimilar circles affected performance.     

Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order,duration, and simultaneity

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions after, before, since, and until. Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions since and until. These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing while. The results revealed that the order sentence structures (before and after) were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in since and until sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.This report is based on a dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Ph.D.     

Paradigms lost: Remembering herstories and other invalid subjects

During the First World Family Therapy Congress, Dublin, 1989, the author was the only women on a six member panel discussing The New Paradigm. This article re-presents her attempt to remember women and other invalid subjects, (e.g. those in poverty) in what was imagined would be an otherwise male oriented discourse. Until recently, within family therapy, the contrary and negatory experiences of women in families and society gained little recognition. This article joins others in adding herstory to history.She is in private practice at Vico Consultation Centre.The author acknowledges her team, Nollaig Byrne and Philip Kearney; and her sister witches (The Women in Therapy Chapter), Kay Gilliland, Bernadette O'Sullivan, Mia Van Doorslaer, and Jane Williams for their valued help and comments on this paper.     

In and behind a Lenneberg paradigm

Lenneberg suggested that a chimpanzee's linguistic ability could be tested by presenting sentences containing two prepositional phrases joined by a conjunction. This would involve joining two semantic propositions, and thus represents a more complex test of chimpanzee syntactic competence than previously attempted. Jane, a five year-old language trained chimpanzee, was tested on her ability to both produce and comprehend sentences involving a preposition (in or behind) and a conjunction (and). The results from production and comprehension were substantially the same. Jane showed the ability to appropriately deploy and, behind and in, but displayed very little flexibility in their use. It is suggested that a chimpanzee may be able to learn some rules of syntax but is not able to be creative with that syntax.     

“Emotionally, Soulfully, Spiritually ‘Free to Think and Act’: The Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902–59) Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care”

This essay aims to stimulate rethinking about religious and medical healing and wholeness. While psychiatrist (Helen) Flanders Dunbar (1902–1959) is well known as a psychosomatic investigator and as Medical Director of the Council for Clinical Training, the initial home of Anton Boisen's groundbreaking movement for the clinical pastoral education of institutional chaplains and parish ministers, she is less appreciated as a theologically-trained scholar. This essay explores an earlier era's understanding of the spiritual and the more soulful components of healing and how Dunbar combined these to focus on helping all peoples become free to think and act. This essay was originally delivered as The Helen Flanders Dunbar Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care at Columbia Presbyterian Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York on November 2, 1999.