Picking Up the Gauntlet: How Individuals Respond to Status Challenges

How do people respond to status challenges? We suggest that responses depend on the relative status and genders of challenger and target. These variables affect appraisals about the status challenge (operationally defined as an act of incivility) and likely outcomes of various responses, and those appraisals proximately determine responses. Studies 1 and 2 show that male gender and high status were associated with more aggressive responses, whereas female gender and low status were associated with more avoidant responses. Study 3 shows that men's and women's responses were not perfectly antithetical: Men showed the greatest resistance toward peers, which may reflect greater sensitivity to status contests among men. Perceived legitimacy of challengers' actions and consequences affect the status–gender–response relationships.     

On Not Changing the Problem: A Reply to Howson

Howson's critique of my essay on Hume's problem of induction levels two main charges. First, Howson claims that I have attributed to him an error that he never made, and in fact which he warned against in the very text that I cite. Secondly, Howson argues that my proposed solution to Hume's problem is flawed on technical and philosophical grounds. In response to the first charge, I explain how Howson's text justifies attributing to him the claim that the principle of induction is shown to be inconsistent by Goodman's riddle. In regards to the second, I show that Howson's objections rest on misunderstandings of formal learning theory and on conflating the problem of induction with the problem of unconceived alternatives.     

Missing out: In praise of the unlived life,by Adam Phillips

Over the past three years, Greece has been in the throes of economic and social crises. The crises have been triggered by the implementation of severe austerity policies and have been connected with negative effects on people’s mental health and well-being. Consequently, psychological therapies have been instigated to respond to the arising systemic and political problems such as unemployment, deprivation and economic oppression. Traditional modes of intervention based on individualization, depoliticization and pathologization are hard pressed to help people confront such issues. Could mainstream approaches prevail? Using the mythical and tragic hero Prometheus, this review focuses on how psychotherapists and counsellors can help people who have been confronting insurmountable problems to reflect on the meaning of human suffering and develop active resistance against unjust authority in adverse conditions.     

Not Always Enslaved,Yet Not Quite Free: Philosophical Challenges from the Underside of the New World

This article is the keynote address of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, philosophy symposium in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the British outlawing the Atlantic Slave Trade. The paper explores questions of enslavement and freedom through challenges of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of social change, and metacritical reflections posed by African Diasporic or Africana philosophy. Such challenges include the relevance and legitimacy of philosophical reflection to the lives of racialized slaves and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for an understanding of the “face” of political life and the importance of the concept of “home” for a cogent theory of freedom.

What Was Not Discussed: Reply to Comments

Here I respond to comments and questions raised in commentary papers (Castro and Lafuente, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 2007; Charles, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 2007; Woodward and Hetley, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 2007) and address three issues not discussed on my previous paper: (1) the historiography used in the history of Japanese psychology, (2) the first generation of Japanese women psychologists to flesh out the history of psychology in Japan, and (3) how applied psychology and psychical research existed in the early phase of psychology in Japan. Consequently, this paper, together with the previous one, provides a broader picture of the development of psychology in Japan.

Reply to Schooler: Consistent Is Not Conclusive

ABSTRACT— In this reply, I address the major issues raised by Schooler in his commentary on my article. Although we probably disagree about some points, I suspect that we are in agreement that there is empirical evidence that can be interpreted as being consistent with some aspects of the mental-exercise hypothesis. However, from my perspective, the available evidence is far from conclusive with respect to mental exercise slowing the rate of age-related mental decline, and recognition of the current state of uncertainty on this issue will likely facilitate progress in identifying the role of mental activity and other moderators of mental aging.     

Taking Merleau-Ponty Literally: Reply to Dermot Moran

For most people, pronouns are just a matter for linguists. In linguistics, pronouns are classified according to the various linguistic functions they perform: for instance, deictic or anaphoric, definite or indefinite, personal or demonstrative, etc. But a closer look at the issue reveals that pronouns have a great deal to do with philosophy as well. This paper presents a brief sketch of some classical philosophical problems to show how dealing with pronouns has played a part in the formulation and advancement of important philosophical issues including spatial orientation, dialectics, cognition, existential experiences, social relationships, the philosophy of rights, and so forth.

For Elmar Holenstein on his Seventieth Birthday     

Need,Paradox, and Surrender: Commentary on Paper by Adam Phillips

Despite its centrality in the lives of many people, psychoanalysis, with its traditional emphasis on psychosexuality and rationalism, has generally undervalued the importance of love and romance. This essay explores this devaluation within psychoanalytic theorizing and the parallel widespread degradation of love in everyday life. Whereas common wisdom claims that familiarity extinguishes love, I argue that the illusory security that familiarity often masks is endangered by genuine love, with all its accompanying risks.     

Taking the Love Pill: A Reply to Naar and Nyholm

In recent discussions about whether the use of a love pill to enhance love in our romantic relationships is desirable, one argument centres on the question whether this love pill would secure the final value we attribute to love. Sven Nyholm argues that it would not, because one thing we desire for its own sake is to be at the origin of the love others feel for us. In a reply, Hichem Naar argues against Nyholm that a love pill does not need to be incompatible with the final value we attribute to love and that a love pill can have a facilitating role in the creation and sustainment of loving attachment. I think Naar is right but does not address Nyholm's worry completely. I will argue that Naar and Nyholm are speaking of different ends for which the love pill is used as a means, and that whether the love pill would fail or not fail to secure the final value we attribute to love, depends on this particular end.     

Truth-Predicates Still Not like Pronouns: a Reply to Salis

Philosophia - I here respond to Pietro Salis’s objections against my original critique of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT). In addition, I clarify some points regarding the relationship...     

Too Naturalist and Not Naturalist Enough: Reply to Horsten

Leon Horsten has recently claimed that the class of mathematical truths coincides with the class of theorems of ZFC. I argue that the naturalistic character of Horsten’s proposal undermines his contention that this claim constitutes an analogue of a thesis that Daniel Isaacson has advanced for PA. I argue, moreover, that Horsten’s defence of his claim against an obvious objection makes use of a distinction which is not available to him given his naturalistic approach. I suggest a way out of the objection which is in line with the naturalistic spirit of Horsten’s proposal but which further weakens the analogy with Isaacson’s Thesis. I conclude by evaluating the prospects for providing an analogue of Isaacson’s Thesis for ZFC.

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On Not Taking Objective Risk Assessments at Face Value

Progress in gene sequencing could make rapid whole genome sequencing of individuals affordable to millions of persons and useful for many purposes in a future era of genomic medicine. Using the idea of $1000 genome as a focus, this article reviews the main technical, ethical, and legal issues that must be resolved to make mass genotyping of individuals cost-effective and ethically acceptable. It presents the case for individual ownership of a person's genome and its information, and shows the implications of that position for rights to informed consent and privacy over sequencing, testing, and disclosing genomic information about identifiable individuals. Legal recognition of a person's right to control his or her genome and the information that it contains is essential for further progress in applying genomic discoveries to human lives.