Hussearle's Representationalism and the “hypothesis of the Background”

John Searle's hypothesis of the Background seems to conflict with his initial representationalism according to which each Intentional state contains a particular content that determines its conditions of satisfaction. In Section I of this essay I expose Searle's initial theory of Intentionality and relate it to Edmund Husserl's earlier phenomenology. In Section II I make it clear that Searle's introduction of the notion of Network, though indispensable, does not, by itself, force us to modify that initial theory. However, a comparison of this notion to the notion of horizon from Husserl's later phenomenology and an interpretation of Husserl's conception of the determinable X as providing a solution to the problem of perceptual misidentification lead me to conclude that in his discussion of 'twin examples' Searle had better modified his initial theory. Finally, I critically examine Searle's claim that anyone who tries seriously to follow out the threads in the Network will eventually reach a bedrock of non-Intentional capacities. In Section III I show in detail, partly in a rather Husserlian vein, that Searle's four official arguments for the Background thesis, though containing some very valuable contributions to a theory of linguistic skills, are not convincing at all if they are to be understood as going beyond the scope of (Hus)Searle's 'content-cum-Network' picture of Intentionality. The upshot of these considerations is that the Background thesis should be read as a thesis concerning the causal neurophysiological preconditions of human Intentionality rather than concerning the logical properties of Intentional states in general. Recently Searle himself has come to the same result, but he does not say for which reasons. The present essay makes it clear why Searle just had to arrive at this important result.     

Understanding Quine''s Famous `Statement''

I argue that Quine's famous claim, any statement can be held true come what may, demands an interpretation that implies that the meanings of the expressions in the held-true statement change. The intended interpretation of this claim is not clear from its context, and so it is often misunderstood by philosophers (and is misleadingly taught to their students). I explain Fodor and Lepore's (1992) view that the above interpretation would render Quine's assertion entirely trivial and reply, on both textual and philosophical grounds, that only this trivial reading is consistent with Quine's famous denial of analyticity. I also explain briefly how the trivial reading lends support to meaning holism, which, regardless of one's views of its consequences, is an important position in the philosophy of language and mind.     

Every Dogma has its day

This paper is a reexamination of Two Dogmas in the light of Quine's ongoing debate with Carnap over analyticity. It shows, first, that analytic is a technical term within Carnap's epistemology. As such it is intelligible, and Carnap's position can meet Quine's objections. Second, it shows that the core of Quine's objection is that he (Quine) has an alternative epistemology to advance, one which appears to make no room for analyticity. Finally, the paper shows that Quine's alternative epistemology is itself open to very serious objections. Quine is not thereby refuted, but neither can Carnap's analyticity be dismissed as dogma.     

Quine and the Limit Assumption in Peirce's Theory of Truth

Quine rejects Peirce's theory of truth because, among other things, its notion of a limit of a sequence of theories is defective in that the notion of a limit depends on that of nearer than which is defined for numbers but not for theories. This paper shows that the missing definition of nearer than applied to theories can be supplied from within Quine's own epistemology. The upshot is that either Quine's epistemology must be rejected or Peirce's pragmatic theory of truth is partially vindicated.     

John Nash's Postdelusional Period: A Case of Transformed Narcissism

This article concludes the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash begun in previous articles (Capps 2003a, 2003b) by focusing on his recovery from paranoid schizophrenia after more than a decade of being under control of his delusions. I develop the idea that Nash was a highly narcissistic personality, the primary focus of which was his beautiful mind, in the years preceding his mental breakdown. I attribute his recovery primarily to the transformation of his narcissistic personality and support this attribution by means of Heinz Kohut's identification of five major expressions of transformed narcissism in his classic essay on the forms and transformations of narcissism.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

The Client Is the Most Important Common Factor: Clients' Self-Healing Capacities and Psychotherapy

I first briefly review the dodo bird verdict and suggest that we should be responding to it by looking for a new way to conceptualize how therapy works. Then I describe the dominant medical or treatment model of psychotherapy and how it puts the client in the position of a dependent variable who is operated on by supposedly potent therapeutic techniques. Next I argue that the data do not fit with this model. An alternative model is that the client is the most important common factor and that it is clients' self-healing capacities which make therapy work. I then argue that therapy has two phases—the involvement phase and the learning phase—and that the involvement phase is the most important. I next review the five learning opportunities provided by therapy. Finally, I argue that a relational model of therapy focused on consultation, collaboration, and dialogue is better than a treatment model.     

Are there human rights?

Conclusion In conclusion, I have tried to show that if there are any rights at all, legal, moral and political, there are at least the sorts of human rights cited in the Universal Declaration, rights which extend beyond the slender base provided by Hart's right to be free and which include the right to an adequate human life for everyone, rights shared by all, rights that, as rights, imply correlative duties. Even though the duties thus implied are admittedly imperfect, as rights, they confer upon right-holders, the authority to obligate others.I have argued for the most part against regarding any rights, even some human, rights (interchangable here with manifesto rights, welfare rights, rights of recipience, social and economic rights, programme rights, Fawcett calls them, positive in rem rights) as claims to rights or proposals for adoption as rights. I have argued that to have a right of any kind, including especially a human right, one shared by and held equally by all human beings,while not unconditional or unalterable, is fundamentally important, - to return once again to Feinberg's definition at the opening of this paper. A human right is fundamentally important, however, only if it, too, implies an obligation on the part of other people, one in which other people are obligated to use their power and resources to make things happen. To havea right is to be in a position to impose corresponding obligations on others. As Kant pointed out, a right of any kind gives a right holder a title to compel.

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Thinking about the Needy: A Reprise

This article discusses Jan Narvesons Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Todays World, and Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy? and their relation to my Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations. Section 2 points out that Narvesons concerns differ from mine, so that often his claims and mine fail to engage each other. For example, his focus is on the poor, mine the needy, and while many poor are needy, and vice versa, our obligations may differ regarding the poor than regarding the needy. Also, Narveson invokes a narrow conception of morality as those rules that government or society may compel people to follow. Given a broader, more plausible, conception of morality, many of Narvesons claims actually support my substantive views. Section 3 shows that many of Narvesons claims are relevant to the best means of aiding the needy, but do not challenge the validity of that end. This is true, for example, of his claims about the role of poor governments, the importance of freedom, the undesirability of mere handouts, and the effects of bad economic policies. Section 4 defends the importance of my distinction between acting justly and acting for reasons of justice. It illustrates that on several widely shared conceptions of justice there might be agent-neutralreasons of justice to aid the needy, even if from an agent-relative perspective one would not be acting unjustly if one failed to do so. Section 5 contests Narvesons portrayal of egalitarianism as concerned about inequality of wealth, per se, as insensitive to prior wrongs, and as holding that the worse-off have a right to be made better off at the expense of the well-off. In addition, it rejects Narvesons contention that egalitarians violate impartiality, and aim to impose their personal tastes on others. Section 6 challenges a fundamental assumption underlying Narvesons doctrine of mutual advantage. In addition, it denies that egalitarians are irrational merely because equality can conflict with the pareto principle. More generally, by appealing to impersonal ideals, it challenges the widely held view that the pareto principle is a condition of rationality. Section 7 argues that Narvesons meta-ethical assumptions are controversial, internally inconsistent, in tension with his normative views, and ultimately a version of skepticism. In addition, it challenges Narvesons view about the role intuitions play in moral theory. Section 8 clarifies points where Narvesons discussion of my views may be misleading. Finally, the paper notes the role that moral reasons may play in deliberation and action, but emphasizes the philosophical and theoretical nature of my work. My aim is to determine the moral considerations that are relevant to how people should act regarding the needy. Whether people will actually be moved to so act, for those reasons or otherwise, is another matter.     

The price of information

In this paper I apply an old problem of Quine's (the inscrutability of reference in translation) to a new style of theory about mental content (causal/nomological/informational accounts of meaning) and conclude that no naturalization of content of the sort currently popular can solve Quine's gavagai enigma. I show how failure to solve the problem leads to absurd conclusions not about one's own mental life, but about the nonmental world. I discuss various ways of attempting to remedy the accounts so as to avoid the problem and explain why each attempt at solving the problem would take the information theorists further from their self-assigned task of naturalizing semantics.     

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.     

Listening to a different voice: A feminist critique of Gilligan

A critical examination of Carol Gilligan's study of psychological theory and women's development, this essay begins by exploring her concerns about malebiased developmental theorizing. I consider in detail Gilligan's criticisms of Sigmund Freud and her own empirical studies of moral development, as they relate to the work of L. Kohlberg. After defending Freud to some degree, I propose various (less theoretical but intuitively plausible) alternative interpretations of her data-interviews with males and females about hypothetical ethical dilemmas and with females about actual abortion decisions. I contend that Gilligan is too willing to concede the adequacy of Kohlberg's categories for fathoming the moral reasoning of males and that she may, in consequence, exaggerate differences between males and females. Noting the ironic similarities between Gilligan's claims and Schopenhauer's misogyny, I suggest that there may be something undesirably self-limiting about the different course of development she sketches. To move toward a morally preferable, feminism-compatible version of an ethic of care, I recommend that it be extended — by the imagination — beyond the here and now and that it not be restricted to existing webs of personal relationships.     

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.     

"Solar love": Nietzsche,Merleau-Ponty and the fortunes of perception

Both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty repudiate the mirror view of perception and embrace what Nietzsche refers to as solar love or creative perception. I argue that Merleau-Ponty thinks of this type of perception primarily in terms of convergence and Nietzsche in terms of divergence. I then show how, contrary to their own emphases, Merleau-Ponty's notion of flesh and Nietzsche's idea of chaos suggest that convergence and divergence are abstractions from an ontologically prior realm of hybrid perceptions. In this realm, each perception is shot through with the others, simultaneously inside and outside one another. The creative tension among these perceptions continually produces new perspectives or voices, that is, a realm whose very being is metamorphosis. Moreover, this realm of hybrid perceptions suggests a political principle that might prove attractive for communities in an age of diversity and cultural hybridity.     

African American Dance - Philosophy,Aesthetics, and ‘Beauty’

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation.     

Death and the “life review” in Halakhah

Coping with old age involves resolving the task of integrity versus despair, which demands a nondefensive confrontation with the inevitability of death. Halakhah (Jewish ethics) also considered this task critical in later years of life, spoke of death's inevitability, and attempted to discourage denial of death. The Jewish approach seems compatible with Butler's concept of life review as a reconciliation with death and a reintegration of one's identity that occurs throughout later years. While the Eriksonian goal is confronting old age with a certain capacity for wisdom, the rabbis maintained that such wisdom must culminate in the creative act of repentance.     

Nonstandard combinatorics

Ramsey type theorems are theorems of the form: if certain sets are partitioned at least one of the parts has some particular property. In its finite form, Ramsey's theory will ask how big the partitioned set should be to assure this fact. Proofs of such theorems usually require a process of multiple choice, so that this apparently pure combinatoric field is rich in proofs that use ideal guides in making the choices. Typically they may be ultrafilters or points in the compactification of the given set. It is, therefore, not surprising that nonstandard elements are much more natural guides in some of the proofs and in the general abstract treatment.In Section 1 we start off with some very natural examples of Ramsey type exercises that illustrate our idea. In Section 2 we give a nonstandard proof of the infinite Ramsey theorem. Section 3 tries to do the same for Hindman's theorem, and points out, where nonstandard analysis must use some hard standard facts to make the proof go through.In Section 4 we describe a general theory of Ramsey Properties, identifying a Ramsey Property with its nonstandard kernel in the enlargement.In Section 5 nonstandard analysis is used again to deduce the finite Ramsey theorems from their infinite counterpart. More generally, a compactness theorem is proved to work for all theorems of this type.     

On Davidson and interpretation

Davidson's theory of interpretation, I argue, is vulnerable to a number of significant difficulties, difficulties which can be avoided or resolved by the more Quinean approach which I develop. In Section 1 I note difficulties which apply to T-theories but are avoided by translation manuals. In Section 2 I show how to construct what I call T-manuals, which are like T-theories in requiring Tarskian structure, but like translation manuals in avoiding the difficulties discussed in Section 1. In Section 3 I show that the approach using T-manuals does at least as well as Davidson's with respect to a number of other concerns of his. In Section 4 I show that it does better than Davidson's with respect to reporting interpretations, especially where demonstrative utterances are concerned. In Section 5 I argue for (somewhat modified) Quinean empirical constraints, which go with manuals, as superior to the empirical constraints Davidson imposes, which go with T-theories. In Section 6 I show that Davidson is unable to offer an adequate account of what an interpreter knows; and propose a more acceptable theory of language mastery which gives a central role to the requirement that the interpreter's language usage satisfy the refined and amplified Quinean empirical constraints of Section 5.I wish to thank Susan Haack for her help in turning a draft into the present paper.     

O liczbach kardynalnych

Tre: Wstp. I. Niektóre pojcia i prawa teorii klas stosunków. II. O klasach abstrakcji. III. O równoskadnikowoci. IV. O kardynalnych liczbach skadników. V. O. stosowanej teorii równoskadnikowoci. VI. O relacji równej liczby elementów. VII. Stosunek obu poj liczb kardynalnych. Zakoczenie.Allatum est die 30 Augusti 1961     

Naive realism about operators

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a naive realism about operators. By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about measuring operators that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by measuring a quantum observable, such an expression can have no clear meaning. A definite specification is provided by Bohmian mechanics, a theory that emerges from Schrödinger's equation for a system of particles when we merely insist that particles means particles. Bohmian mechanics clarifies the status and the role of operators as observables in quantum mechanics by providing the operational details absent from standard quantum mechanics. It thereby allows us to readily dismiss all the radical claims traditionally enveloping the transition from the classical to the quantum realm — for example, that we must abandon classical logic or classical probability. The moral is rather simple: Beware naive realism, especially about operators!