Close Calls and the Confident Agent: Free Will, Deliberation, and Alternative Possibilities

Two intuitions lie at the heart of our conception of free will. One intuition locates free will in our ability to deliberate effectively and control our actions accordingly: the ‘Deliberation and Control’ (DC) condition. The other intuition is that free will requires the existence of alternative possibilities for choice: the AP condition. These intuitions seem to conflict when, for instance, we deliberate well to decide what to do, and we do not want it to be possible to act in some other way. I suggest that intuitions about the AP condition arise when we face ‘close calls,’ situations in which, after deliberating, we still do not know what we really want to do. Indeed, several incompatibilists suggest such close calls are necessary for free will. I challenge this suggestion by describing a ‘confident agent’ who, after deliberating, always feels confident about what to do (and can then control her actions accordingly). Because she maximally satisfies the DC condition, she does not face close calls, and the intuition that the AP condition is essential for free will does not seem to apply to her. I conclude that intuitions about the importance of the AP condition rest on our experiences of close calls and arise precisely to the extent that our deliberations fail to arrive at a clear decision. I then raise and respond to several objections to this thought experiment and its relevance to the free will debate.     

The homophile movement: Its impact and implications

Conclusion We do not conclude that homosexuality must be accepted by society. We do hope that society's attitudes towards homosexuals can be more intelligent, less confused. Perhaps our society will reject homosexuality on a basis of manifestly conscious prejudice of the majority who simply find it distasteful; but at least this will be more honest than many current rationalizations. Perhaps it will be possible and desirable because of changing conditions to accept homosexuality in our culture at some future time. Any sincere effort to confront the issues raised by homosexuality in our culture will be rewarded with a deeper understanding of many other aspects of human life.Presented to One Inc., Los Angeles, May 7, 1967.     

Activating the Mind: Descartes' Dreams and the Awakening of the Human Animal Machine

In this essay I argue that one of the things that matters most to Descartes' account of mind is that we use our minds actively. This is because for him only an active mind is able to re‐organize its passionate experiences in such a way that a genuinely human, self‐governed life of virtue and true contentment becomes possible. To bring out this connection, I will read the Meditations against the backdrop of Descartes' correspondence with Elisabeth. This will reveal that in Descartes' writings there is a crucial connection between the conception of ourselves as dreamers and the idea that we fail to realize our true potential as self‐determined, active agents. Dreams, as Descartes conceives them, are passively received mental states that inhibit our freedom to use reason at will. To awaken here takes the form of activating our thoughts, which holds the key to freeing ourselves from the stimulus‐response patterns that Descartes takes to be at work in animal conduct. Applied to the Meditations, these insights suggest that this work engages in questions far beyond the epistemological agenda. By activating the mind, the Meditations teach us how to realize our true human potential as virtuous thinkers and passionate agents.     

Post/Human Conditions

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues for the twenty-first century will be the impact of new technologies on our experiences and understandings of what it means to be human. For many commentators, this signals the advent of the ‘posthuman condition’, in which digital technologies will have the capacity to reconfigure our conceptions of space and time; cybernetic devices will enhance and augment bodies and minds; and genetic modification will challenge the fixity of ‘human nature’ at the most fundamental level. This article examines some of the most influential discourses—from science, ethics and popular culture—that promise to shape the choices and values determining how such technologies will be used, and to what ends. Closer analysis reveals a multiplicity of visions of ‘posthuman conditions’, however, informed by a diversity of philosophical, ethical, political — and theological—understandings of what it means to be human in an age of technology; and this article proposes the terminology of ‘post/human’ as a critical device designed to alert us to the choices and values inherent in our engagement with our tools and technologies. The article concludes by advancing some themes by which a deeper theological critique of the post/human might be conducted: transcendence, sacramentality and creativity, divine and human.     

Emotions in action through the looking glass1

Abstract: The paper aims at highlighting how our primary understanding of others’ actions is rooted in the mirror mechanism. To this end, the anatomical architecture of the mirror neuron system for action will be outlined as well as its role in grasping goals and intentions in others’ motor behaviour. One further step through the looking glass of social cognition will be referring to the ubiquitous emotional colouring of actions and considering its links with the motor domain. This will allow a clearer perspective on the mechanism underlying our abilities for emotional understanding and on cases in which these abilities are amiss, as in autistic spectrum disorders.     

A Personal Reprise of Couples Intervention

The writers recount personal glimpses into working with couples during their combined 85 years of experience. Rather than take the standard approach of tidbits and sound bites to emphasize a point here and there based upon some quoted authority, our goal is to state our case and in the process permit readers to verify on their own what we have said. The reader will note us taking sidelong glances at expert colleagues less to make a point than to call attention to similar thinkers. We will then attempt to integrate the various articles in this two-volume presentation in JRE&CBT.     

Moral Responsibility,Reactive Attitudes and Freedom of Will

In his influential paper, “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argued that our ordinary practices of holding persons morally responsible and related reactive attitudes (such as blame, resentment, indignation, and moral approval) were wholly “internal” to the practices themselves and could be insulated from traditional philosophical and metaphysical concerns, including concerns about free will and determinism. This “insulation thesis” is a controversial feature of Strawson’s influential paper; and it has had numerous critics. The first purpose of this paper is to explain my own reasons for thinking that our practices of holding responsible cannot be entirely insulated from incompatibilist concerns about freedom and determinism. The second purpose is to argue that these incompatibilist concerns are in fact legitimate concerns: There are sound reasons to believe that our ordinary practices of holding persons morally responsible do require at least sometimes in our lives that we must be capable of acting freely in a manner that is not determined. I defend this thesis by spelling out why I believe various compatibilist strategies attempting to show that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism fail to show this. In the course of this critique, a general theme will emerge: In order to do full justice to our ordinary practices of holding persons responsible and the freedoms thus involved, one must distinguish between different types of freedom, and in particular, between freedom of action and freedom of will.     

The expanding role of the minister as community health services develop

Conclusion In summary, we have suggested in this brief discussion that (1) clinical pastoral training has established itself firmly in our culture and will be an important resource in the function of community mental health centers; (2) there will also be need for many clinically trained pastoral ministers who will serve importantly in the prevention of mental illness and promotion of mental health; (3) that standards of training in the clinical pastoral field are very much needed and should be nationally unified and coordinated; and (4) that the Association of Mental Hospital Chaplains might well exercise the leadership in developing a national resurgence of interest in a dynamic religion which will better meet the needs of our people as we move forward in this complex scientific age. For myself, I have no doubt that religion can provide many of the positive elements of good mental health, and I believe that this concept will grow to full maturity in the years ahead.Delivered at Annual Anton T. Boisen Banquet, Association of Mental Hospital Chaplains, Los Angeles, California May 6, 1964.     

The Contribution of Empathy to Ethics

ABSTRACT

Empathy has been taken to play a crucial role in ethics at least since the Scottish Enlightenment. More recently, a revival of moral sentimentalism and empirical research on moral behavior has prompted a renewed interest in empathy and related concepts and on their contribution to moral reasoning and to moral behavior. Furthermore, empathy has recently entered our public discourse as having the power to ameliorate our social and political interactions with others.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which such a role can be actually granted. Before focusing on a positive assessment, I will delve into a few problems our ordinary concept of empathy and our commonsensical way of conceiving its connection to ethics will need to face. Specifically, I will show how an exaggerated reliance on the ordinary concept of empathy could lead to an underestimation of its biases and potential limitations (§ 2), how a naïve conception of its connection to morality can overlook relevant counterexamples (§ 3) and lead to forms of reductionism (§ 4). Overcoming this possible shortsightedness would pave the way for arguing in favor of an important – though not sufficient and possible neither necessary – role for empathy in ethics (§ 5).     

Biology and Awe: Psychology's Critical Juncture

Psychology stands at a crossroads. Even more than in the time of Rollo May, psychology faces a dilemma of alarming moral and scientific proportions. On the one hand, psychology is about to become a "biologism." This is a discipline-led by the high tech, consumerist model for living-that emphasizes measurement, materialism, and efficiency. On the other hand, psychology still has a chance-mainly through humanistic and depth orientations-to be a vibrant discipline. The question is, will we take this path to become the "queen of the sciences," as Nietzsche put it, or will we jeopardize 5,000 years of arts and humanities, centuries of depth analyses, and decades of awe-inspired practice. In this article, which echoes the spirit of my great friend and mentor, Rollo May, as well as my new book, Rediscovery of Awe, I will outline the stakes in this dilemma, the players involved-from biopsychology to humanism-and an alternative, conciliatory vision that I call "awe-based" psychology. The dilemma we face today is whether we will approach our subject matter with a sense of the magnificence and mystery of living (awe) or whether we will persist in making mole-hills of mountains, as Rollo once put it, and succumb to the glib, the well-packaged, and the instrumental; whether we will find the terms and resources to reflect life's profundity; or whether we will skirt its edges, resort to the commercial, and bow to the expedient. I will illustrate further how this dilemma need not be solved by an "us-them," "either-or" mentality but can be addressed dialectically with practical as well as visionary implications for our profession. Finally, I will summarize a few of these implications, both for our practices and contemporary lives.     

How Shall We Talk With Our Patients About Mortality? Response to Gerson and Shabad Discussions

In this response I discuss Shabad and Gerson’s viewpoints, not only in relation to my own but also to each other, in an effort to delineate variables at play within analytic subjectivity when we are confronted by issues concerning mortality in treatment. I suggest that our personal relationships with our own mortality, in conjunction with our analytic commitments and clinical sensibilities, determine how we will talk with patients about their having to die and/or if we will talk with them about it at all.     

The French model at work: indication and the Jean Favreau Centre for Consultation and Treatment

The goal of this paper is to present the way in which an analyst trained in the French Model at the Paris Psychoanalytical Society and working at its policlinic, the Jean Favreau Centre for Consultation and Treatment (CCTP), approaches the question of indication. After a brief examination of Freud ’s 1905 text on indication I will discuss certain concepts, such as representation and tertiary processes, which form the basis of our listening to today’s patients. After presenting certain elements of the French Model I will then discuss a period which was a turning point in French psychoanalysis. Psychodrama, a psychoanalytically inspired treatment modality developed in France, which is useful when the capacity to represent is limited will be introduced. Two clinical illustrations of consultations at the CCTP will then follow.     

Announcement

We are pleased to announce that effective this issue, Teresa Ostler, a member of our Consulting Editor Board, will begin serving as an associate editor of The Journal of Genetic Psychology. She will replace Janina Jolley in this position. We wish to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Jolley, our good friend and colleague, for her many contributions to the success of the journal.     

Near-Death Experience,Consciousness, and the Brain: A New Concept about the Continuity of Our Consciousness Based on Recent Scientific Research on Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest

In this article first some general aspects of near-death experience will be discussed, followed by questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function. Details will be described from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet in 2001. In this study it could not be shown that physiological, psychological, or pharmacological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. Neurophysiology in cardiac arrest and in a normal functioning brain will be explained. Finally, implications for consciousness studies will be discussed, and how it could be possible to explain the continuity of our consciousness. Scientific study of NDE pushes us to the limits of our medical and neurophysiologic ideas about the range of human consciousness and mind–brain relation.     

The good, the bad and the ugly

This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting an issue that arises from looking at the Bad Company objection from an epistemological perspective. For the most part, our issue is independent of the details of any resolution of the Bad Company objection and, as we will show, it concerns other foundational approaches in the philosophy of mathematics. In the first two sections, we give a brief overview of the “Scottish” neo-logicist school, present a generic form of the Bad Company objection and introduce an epistemic issue connected to this general problem that will be the focus of the rest of the paper. In the third section, we present an alternative approach within philosophy of mathematics, a view that emerges from Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie (1899, Leipzig: Teubner; Foundations of geometry (trans.: Townsend, E.). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1959.). We will argue that Bad Company-style worries, and our concomitant epistemic issue, also affects this conception and other foundationalist approaches. In the following sections, we then offer various ways to address our epistemic concern, arguing, in the end, that none resolves the issue. The final section offers our own resolution which, however, runs against the foundationalist spirit of the Scottish neo-logicist program.     

Phenomenology, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pokémon Go</Emphasis>, and Other Augmented Reality Games

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects on the everyday world of actual Augmented Reality games which introduce digital objects in our surroundings from a phenomenological point of view. Augmented Reality is a new technology aiming to merge digital and real objects, and it is becoming pervasively used thanks to the application for mobile devices Pokémon Go by Niantic. We will study this game and other similar applications to shed light on their possible effects on our lives and on our everyday world from a phenomenological perspective. In the first part, we will show how these digital objects are visualised as merged in the surroundings. We will point out that even if they are visualised as part of the everyday world, they are not part of it because they are still related to the fictional world generated by the game. In the second part, we will show how the existence of these objects in their fictional world has effects on the everyday world where everybody lives. The goal of Augmented Reality is not reached yet because these objects are not part of the everyday world, but it already makes our lives embedded with digital elements. We will show if these new objects have effects on our world and on how we live our lives.     

A goal model of catharsis

Although research in social psychology has repeatedly refuted the idea that aggression reduces subsequent aggression (e.g., Bushman, 2002), we suggest a more fine-grained analysis of catharsis. We will present and discuss a social-cognitive goal model of cathartic effects in aggression that predicts under which conditions aggression increases or reduces subsequent aggression. The model assumes that the accessibility of aggression-related constructs is a function of goal fulfilment: Prior to goal fulfilment constructs related to the goal are highly accessible in order to facilitate goal fulfilment. However, after goal fulfilment this heightened accessibility loses its functionality and aggressive constructs are consequently inhibited. In the present article we will review empirical work testing this model. Moreover, we will extend this model to the effects of violent computer games. Finally we will discuss theoretical challenges and applied relevance of our model for intervention strategies aimed at reducing aggression.     

Psychosis,symbol, affectivity 1: etiopathogenesis and treatment through analytical psychology

This is the first of two papers concerning our study into an integrated approach to psychotic disorders, conducted at the University of Palermo’s Psychiatry Unit Polyclinic over approximately 15 years. Here we will explore and reflect upon the acute psychotic condition mainly from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, while in the second paper we will explore the clinical perspective. From the point of view of psychopathology, and in the light of C.G. Jung’s conceptualization of analytical psychology, as well as calling on contributions from other authors from the systemic-relational and post-psychoanalytic field, we will clarify the ideas developed over these last few years by our team. From a more speculative perspective we will advance new interpretive hypotheses in an attempt to thoroughly understand the nature of the psychotic condition, both on a psychodynamic relational and a neuroscientific level. The paper describes how we revised our understanding of psychosis from a brain disease to a process aimed at the rearrangement of psychic functioning, as anticipated by John Weir Perry nearly 40 years ago.     

Delusions and Personal Autonomy

This article will examine the claim that personal autonomy is impaired by a paradigmatic instance of serious psychopathology – namely, the condition of being delusional – in light of the hierarchical conception of personal autonomy. This conception of personal autonomy aims at yielding value‐neutral judgements about freedom and self‐governance. I will argue that when viewed from the perspective of this specific conception of autonomy, delusions do not necessarily impair an agent's personal autonomy. In order to establish this claim, I will probe the general idea that delusional subjects are beset by a mental disease that is rationally incapacitating, to which the hierarchical theorist might appeal. I argue that, understood within the parameters set by the commitment to value neutrality, this idea fails to provide support for the claim that delusion necessarily impairs personal autonomy. One contribution this article makes to the effort of understanding how delusion impairs personal autonomy is to help us pinpoint the ways in which our value commitments inform our judgements of impaired personal autonomy in delusional agents.     

Plantinga’s Skepticism

For over 20 years, Alvin Plantinga has been advocating his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, or EAAN. We will argue that this argument functions as an atypical form of global skepticism, and Plantinga’s development of it has repercussions for other types of skepticism. First, we will go over the similarities and differences; for example, the standard ways of avoiding other forms of skepticism, namely by adopting some form of naturalized or externalist epistemology, do not work with the EAAN. Plantinga himself is a naturalized epistemologist, and his skepticism comes from within this perspective. Next, we will look at how Plantinga moved from presenting his skepticism diachronically, as a loop, to presenting it synchronically, as an infinite regress. Finally, we can extend this move from Plantinga’s skepticism to other forms of global skepticism, in so far as these will involve the rejection of our cognitive faculties’ reliability, and formulate them synchronically as well. Global skepticism is often accused of instability, since it leads us to skepticism about all of our beliefs, including belief in the skeptical scenario itself. Yet formulating it as an infinite regress rather than a loop allows the skeptical charge to go forward.