Restoring Dyadic Connection in the Face of Multiple Disruptions: Accounting for Vicissitudes in the Therapist’s Capacity for Reflective Functioning

This article describes the working method of our study group comprised of former Chestnut Lodge Hospital therapists and focusing on understanding therapeutic work with severely disturbed adolescents. Using process material from one therapy session, the therapist’s commentary on her feelings and reactions in the session, and the group’s discussion of the work, we explore factors disrupting the therapist’s moment-to-moment capacity to maintain a theory of her own and the patient’s minds. We then discuss what allows her to refind her theory of mind in the face of the patient’s aggressive nihilism and her own sense of loss. Salutary factors included the therapist’s empathy for the patient’s shared sense of grief, the patient’s offering the therapist cues to his inner state, and the dyad’s capacity to tolerate the therapist’s vulnerability in the patient’s presence.     

Has Oppy Done Away with the Aristotelian Proof?

In this essay, we engage with Graham Oppy’s work on Thomas Aquinas’s First Way. We argue that Oppy’s objections shouldn’t be seen as successful. In order to establish this thesis, we first analyze Oppy’s exegesis of Aquinas’s First Way, as well as the counter-arguments he puts forth (including the charge that Aquinas’s argument is invalid or, if deemed valid, forces one to adopt determinism). Next, we address Oppy’s handling of the contemporary scholarship covering the First Way. Specifically, we lay out Edward Feser’s most recent formulation of the argument and analyze Oppy’s main objection to it.     

母亲的情景特异性归因与儿童问题行为:儿童消极情绪的调节作用

以67对3~6岁的儿童及其母亲为研究对象,通过假设情景法探索母亲对不同情景下儿童问题行为的归因方式,并考察这种特定情景下的归因对儿童后续问题行为的影响,以及儿童消极情绪的调节作用。研究发现:(1)母亲对儿童不同问题行为的稳定性归因和不可控归因存在情景上的差异;(2)母亲的不可控归因和稳定性归因可以影响儿童内隐问题行为的发展且受到儿童消极情绪的影响,但母亲的归因方式不可以预测儿童的外显问题行为。     

Extraversion predicts individual differences in women’s face preferences

Extraversion is positively associated with various indices of women’s mate quality (e.g., facial symmetry and attractiveness). Since such indices are thought to predict variation in women’s preferences for masculine men, we investigated the relationships between each of the ‘Big 5’ personality factors and women’s preferences for facial masculinity. Extraversion, but not the other four personality factors, was positively correlated with women’s preferences for masculinity in men’s, but not women’s, faces. Additionally, extraversion mediated the positive relationship between women’s self-rated attractiveness and their preferences for masculinity in men’s faces, suggesting that extraversion may play a role in condition-dependent mate preferences. Unexpectedly, openness to experience was associated with women’s preferences for femininity in faces of both sexes and this association was independent of that between extraversion and women’s preferences for masculine men. This is the first study that we know of to implicate personality traits in individual differences in women’s preferences for masculine men.     

In Spite of Indeterminacy Many Common Factor Score Estimates Yield an Identical Reproduced Covariance Matrix

It was investigated whether commonly used factor score estimates lead to the same reproduced covariance matrix of observed variables. This was achieved by means of Schönemann and Steiger’s (1976) regression component analysis, since it is possible to compute the reproduced covariance matrices of the regression components corresponding to different factor score estimates. It was shown that Thurstone’s, Ledermann’s, Bartlett’s, Anderson-Rubin’s, McDonald’s, Krijnen, Wansbeek, and Ten Berge’s, as well as Takeuchi, Yanai, and Mukherjee’s score estimates reproduce the same covariance matrix. In contrast, Harman’s ideal variables score estimates lead to a different reproduced covariance matrix.     

Capitalism and the Banality of Desire

ABSTRACT

This paper elaborates on Todd McGowan’s perspicacious, psychoanalytic explanation of capitalism’s resilience, due to its formidable ideological insinuation into the banal micro-desires of consumers. I outline his contention that capitalism’s false promise of future satisfaction is subverted by the psychical change indicated by Freud’s re-evaluation of the desire/satisfaction relationship. This is elaborated on via Lacan’s claim, somewhat underplayed in McGowan’s reflections, that desire is essentially narcissistic. Lacan’s claim raises the stakes of capitalism’s psychic appeal, but also indicates how Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a point of intervention. I briefly point to the consistency between Lacan’s conception of the actualized subject and Deleuze’s and Guattari’s articulation of desire in terms of “the process” and the complex metaphor of “desiring machines”. I finally turn to ?i?ek’s conception of the developing world as “the place of rupture” and a major fault line internal to capitalism that threatens to disrupt its operation.     

The Social Authority of Paradigms as Group Commitments: Rehabilitating Kuhn with Recent Social Philosophy

By linking the conceptual and social dynamics of change in science, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions proved tremendously fruitful for research in science studies. But Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability provoked strong criticism from philosophers of science. In this essay I show how Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality illuminates and strengthens Kuhn’s model of scientific change. After recalling the central features and problems of Kuhn’s model, I introduce Tuomela’s approach. I then show (a) how Tuomela’s conception of group ethos aligns with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as group commitments, and (b) how Tuomela’s distinction between I-mode and we-mode forms of collective intentionality can capture the shifting paradigmatic commitments in Kuhn’s model of change as a cycle of normal and revolutionary science. But Tuomela’s analysis does not rely on meaning holism, and thus does not involve the problematic notion of incommensurability that burdened Kuhn’s analysis.     

比较母亲和老师对幼儿亲社会行为的评价：一致性和预测性

采用儿童移情和亲社会反应量表,由母亲（n=86）和老师（n=8）分别对86名3-5岁儿童进行评价,并记录实验情境中儿童的亲社会反应,考察母评和师评间的一致性,以及两种评价对儿童亲社会反应的预测性。结果发现：（1）母评得分高于师评,两种评价只在男孩中存在中等程度正相关;（2）只有师评能预测男孩的亲社会反应,两种评价对女孩的亲社会反应都有预测作用。结果提示评价者间的差异反映了不同评价者在儿童亲社会行为关注点上的特点。     

Time/History,Self-disclosure and Anticipation: Pannenberg,Heidegger and the Question of Metaphysics

This essay examines Wolfhart Pannenberg’s defense of metaphysics’ foundational importance for philosophy and theology. Among all the modern philosophers whose claims Pannenberg challenges, Martin Heidegger’s discourse against Western metaphysics receives the major portion of criticism. The first thing one concludes from this criticism is an affirmation of a wide intellectual gap that separates Pannenberg’s thought from Heidegger’s, as if each stands at the very opposite corner of the other’s school of thought. The questions this essay tackles are: is this seemingly irreconcilable difference between Pannenberg and Heidegger fully justifiable? What if there is a reading of Panneberg’s and Heidegger’s view of metaphysics that can reveal deeper similarities between the two thinkers than the first reading of Pannenberg’s criticism of Heidegger allows us to see? It then answers these questions by showing that both thinkers actually share a common emphasis on the concepts of ‘time/history’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘anticipation’, and their reliance on these notions reveals that Heidegger’s and Pannenberg’s approaches to the phenomenon of understanding and to metaphysical ontology are not fully contradictory but rather hold noticeable hermeneutical similarities.     

Vier Philosophen über semantische Paradoxien

In his treatise on sophisms, the medieval logician and philosopher J. Buridan expounded a theory on what we have come to call semantic paradoxes. His theory has not yet been fully understood. The present paper aims at showing that Barwise’s and Etchemendy’s considerations on paradoxes (founded upon Aczel’s non-well-founded sets) provide the framework for an improved understanding. Barwise’s and Etchemendy’s account is contrasted with Kripke’s. Finally, a recent analysis of Buridan’s position by Epstein is criticized     

Death’s Badness and Time-Relativity: A Reply to Purves

According to John Martin Fischer and Anthony Brueckner’s unique version of the deprivation approach to accounting for death’s badness, it is rational for us to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. In previous work, I have defended this approach against a criticism raised by Jens Johansson by attempting to show that Johansson’s criticism relies on an example that is incoherent. Recently, Duncan Purves has argued that my defense reveals an incoherence not only in Johansson’s example but also in Fischer and Brueckner’s approach itself. Here I argue that by paying special attention to a certain feature of Fischer and Brueckner’s approach, we can dispense of not only Johansson’s criticism but also of Purves’s objection to Fischer and Brueckner’s approach.     

Sellars and Quine on empiricism and conceptual truth1

I compare Sellars’s criticism of the ‘myth of the given’ with Quine’s criticism of the ‘two dogmas’ of empiricism, that is, the analytic–synthetic distinction and reductionism. In Sections I to III, I present Quine’s and Sellars’s views. In IV to X, I discuss similarities and differences in their views. In XI to XII, I show that Sellars’s arguments against the ‘myth of the given’ are incompatible with Quine’s rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction.     

组织氛围对员工行为有效性的影响机制

该研究采用问卷调查法和专家评估法探讨员工行为有效性的影响机制.结果表明:(1)组织氛围对员工行为有效性有积极的影响.(2)员工的自我效能感在组织氛围与绩效间起完全中介作用,在组织氛围与组织承诺间起部分中介作用,在组织氛围与满意度之间没有中介效应.(3)员工的自我效能感、满意度和组织承诺在组织氛围与员工绩效间起完全中介作用.(4)组织氛围对员工绩效的影响存在双重中介效应.结论:组织氛围对员工绩效的影响机制非常复杂,不仅可以直接影响,而且还可以通过影响员工的自我效能感、满意度和组织承诺等多种中介效应来影响.     

Maternal Emotion Regulation and Children’s Behavior Problems: The Mediating Role of Child Emotion Regulation

Children’s difficulties managing emotions are contributors to their behavior problems, and parents’ emotion regulation difficulties are also likely contributors to their children’s regulatory challenges and behavioral difficulties. This study examined the associations among mothers’ emotion regulation, children’s emotion regulation, and children’s behavior problems. Children’s emotion regulation difficulties were hypothesized to mediate the association between maternal difficulties with emotion regulation and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. A sample of 454 mothers completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, the Emotion Regulation Checklist, and the Child Behavior Checklist for their children aged 3–7. Children’s emotion regulation difficulties accounted for the indirect association between mothers’ lower emotion awareness and both internalizing and externalizing problems. On the other hand, children’s emotional negativity accounted for the indirect association between mothers’ difficulties with emotion regulation and behavior problems. Future directions for research and clinical intervention focused on promoting parental and child emotion regulation are discussed.     

Caregiving styles and anxiety among couples: coping versus not coping with cardiac illness

Background and Objectives: partners’ caregiving efforts are not always beneficial to both recipient and provider. Bowlby’s conceptualization of caregiving style as a stable predisposition may clarify such caregiving effects. The relationship between caregiving style (compulsive and sensitive) and anxiety among couples coping with cardiac illness and a matching control group not coping with cardiac illness were assessed. We hypothesized that one’s compulsive caregiving would associate positively, and one’s sensitive caregiving would associate negatively, with one’s and one’s partner’s anxiety across contexts (cardiac and non-cardiac) and gender. Design: A comparative design of 131 couples with a diagnosis of husbands’ acute cardiac syndrome and 68 matched couples in the community was applied. Methods: The Adult Caregiving Questionnaire and the Brief Symptoms Inventory were administered. Results: Structural equation modeling revealed that one’s compulsive caregiving was positively associated with one’s anxiety, across most contexts. Multi-group analyses revealed that the associations between one’s compulsive caregiving and one’s partner’s anxiety levels differed depending on gender and context. Conclusions: The distress which emerges in an individual who takes on a caregiving role and in his/her partner seems to result not only from the demands of the concrete caregiving situation but also from one’s and one’s partner’s developmental history.     

Derrida and Cavaillès: Mathematics and the Limits of Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper examines Derrida’s interpretation of Jean Cavaillès’s critique of phenomenology in On Logic and the Theory of Science. Derrida’s main claim is that Cavaillès’s arguments, especially the argument based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, need not lead to a total rejection of Husserl’s phenomenology, but only its static version. Genetic phenomenology, on the other hand, not only is not undermined by Cavaillès’s critique, but can even serve as a philosophical framework for Cavaillès’s own position. I will argue that Derrida’s approach to Cavaillès is fruitful, facilitating the exposition of some central Cavaillèsian ideas, including the notion of dialectics. Nevertheless, it is important to evaluate Derrida’s own arguments against static phenomenology. I undertake such an assessment in the last section of the paper, showing that Gödel’s theorems do not in themselves warrant rejection of static phenomenology. I base this conclusion in part on Gödel’s own understanding of phenomenology as a philosophical basis for mathematics.     

Knowing One’s Own Self: An Analysis of Vivekananda’s Approach to One’s Identity

A successful declaration of one’s identity in saying “ahaṃ Brahmāsmi” is a result of knowing one’s own self as indistinguishable from Brahman. The non-difference between oneself and the Brahman is one’s true identity, and it goes without saying, knowledge of one’s true identity constitutes the correct knowing of one’s own self. That the said non-difference is upheld by vedānta, and we need to put this ideal non-difference into practice is the crux of Vivekananda’s practical vedānta. Vivekananda gives certain reasons for the practicability of vedānta. This paper’s part I is an exposition of Vivekananda’s practical vedānta, focussing on those reasons for practical vedānta and orienting each towards an analytical understanding. In part II, a linguistic analysis of Vivekananda’s approach to one’s identity has been carried out after introducing J. Hintikka’s interpretation of Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am” and G. Misra’s interpretation of sat (existence, reality or being) cit (consciousness, knowledge or cognition) ānanda (bliss, intense happiness or felicity). The latter’s interpretation displays a positivist’s linguistic analysis of vedānta, whereas the former’s does a speech act theorist’s analysis of Descartes’ cogito principle. The present analysis indicates that practical vedānta can be read in the light of analytic philosophy and Vivekananda’s approach to one’s identity can be understood in terms of speech acts.

     

Jung and Chinese Religions: Buddhism and Taoism

This article introduces the close relationship between Jung and Chinese religions, compares Jung’s psychological theories to Chinese religious thoughts taking Buddhism and Taoism as examples, and draws the following three conclusions. First, although Jung never went to China, Jung’s interest and studies in Chinese religions continued throughout his life. Second, there are important similarities and differences between Jung’s unity of opposites and Buddhism’s “Middle Way,” Jung’s synchronicity and Karmic harmony, Jung’s Self and Buddhism’s Self, and Jung’s individuation and Buddhism’s meditation. Third, there are significant, close relationships between Jung’s concepts of synchronicity, Self, and his three principles of psyche and parallel concepts in Chinese Taoism.     

Merleau‐Ponty’s Reading of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

The aim of this paper is to explore Merleau‐Ponty’s ambivalent relationship with Kant’s transcendental philosophy. I begin by looking at several points of convergence between Kant and Merleau‐Ponty, focusing on the affinities between Kant’s account of transcendental realism and Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of objective thought. I then show how Merleau‐Ponty’s analysis of Kant’s paradox of asymmetrical objects points to a parallel in Kant’s thought to Merleau‐Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. In the second part of the paper, I show why Merleau‐Ponty believes that, despite the promise of Kant’s thought, he fails to adequately escape from objective thought. After presenting the central claims of the transcendental deduction, I piece together Merleau‐Ponty’s criticism of it by answering three questions: For Merleau‐Ponty, how do we encounter the world prior to reflection? How is experience constituted? And what leads Kant to mischaracterise experience in his own transcendental philosophy?