What Chance‐Credence Norms Should Not Be

A chance‐credence norm states how an agent's credences in propositions concerning objective chances ought to relate to her credences in other propositions. The most famous such norm is the Principal Principle (PP), due to David Lewis. However, Lewis noticed that PP is too strong when combined with many accounts of chance that attempt to reduce chance facts to non‐modal facts. Those who defend such accounts of chance have offered two alternative chance‐credence norms: the first is Hall's and Thau's New Principle (NP); the second is Ismael's General Recipe (IP). Thus, the question arises: Should we adopt NP or IP or both? In this paper, I argue that IP has unacceptable consequences when coupled with reductionism, so we must accept NP alone.     

Four Myths about Subjective Well‐being

Subjective well‐being is a broad construct that reflects an individual's subjective evaluation of the quality of his or her life. Psychologists know a great deal about the causes and correlates of well‐being, but some important misconceptions have developed and are often repeated. The purpose of this article is to address the evidence for four such misconceptions that we believe reflect ‘myths’ about subjective well‐being. These myths include the idea that well‐being measures are strongly influenced by irrelevant contextual factors, the idea that money is not an important correlate of well‐being, the idea that social relationship variables are a particularly strong correlate of well‐being, and the idea that well‐being cannot change.     

Working with chronic and relentless self‐hatred,self‐harm,and existential shame: a clinical study and reflections (Paper 2 of 2)

This second of two papers focuses on the shame which emerged in the first 14 years of analysis of a woman who was bulimic, self‐harmed, and repeatedly described herself as ‘feeling like a piece of shit’. To explore this intense and pervasive shame I draw on Jung's and Laplanche's emphasis on experiences of unresolvable, non‐pathological ‘foreignness’ or ‘otherness’ at the heart of the psyche. Images, metaphors, elements of clinical experience, and working hypotheses from a number of analytic traditions are used to flesh out this exploration. These include Kilborne's use of Pirandello's image of shame as like a ‘hole in the paper sky’ which, I suggest, points to a crack in subjectivity, and reveals our belief in the efficacy of the self to be illusory. Hultberg's observations on shame as having an existential mode (function) are also explored, as is the nature of analytic truth. Using these ideas I describe my patient's process of finding some small but freeing space in relation to her shame and self‐hatred. Through enduring and learning from her shame in analysis she realized that it was part of a desperate unconscious attempt to draw close to her troubled father and so to ‘love him better’.     

Teleological principles in science

In the search for elementary particles, such principles are used as Gell‐mann's that ‘anything which is possible is compulsory’. This is an example of a teleological principle according to which the scientist tries to realize in science the kind of world that he desires on prior emotional grounds. Mendeleev's classical discovery of the Periodic Law and Table of Elements was thus guided by his mystical values. A mechanistic anti‐teleologist such as Jacques Loeb was indeed a crypto‐teleologist who wished science to fulfil his radical, socialistic aims. Hoyle's ‘perfect cosmological principle’ projected conservative values, while such conceptions as Oppenheimer's ‘catastrophic collapse’, and Mach's Principle likewise had their teleological bases. Anti‐mystical and individualistic values inspired Bridgman's operationism. A ‘perfect operational principle’ would stipulate that every imaginable state of affairs would be operationally differentiable from others. Teleological principles are essential to the functioning of sciences; in the Theory of Theories, the principle of plenitude may hold: that for every mode of theory, there is some segment of reality for which it provides the best explanation. Naturalistic accounts of basic teleological principles seem inadequate.     

Winnicott's invitation to ‘further games of Jung‐analysis’

Winnicott signs off his celebrated review of Jung's (1963) autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections with the warning that translation of ‘erreichten’ as ‘attained’ (implying assimilation) rather than as ‘reached to’, could ‘queer the pitch for further games of Jung‐analysis’. This subtly underscores his view that Jung—who he described earlier as ‘mentally split’ and lacking ‘a self with which to know’—remained essentially dissociated. However, Winnicott, whilst immersed in this work on Jung, wrote a letter to Michael Fordham describing himself as suffering ‘a lifelong malady’ of ‘dissociation’. But this he now reported repaired through a ‘splitting headache’ dream of destruction, dreamt ‘for Jung, and for some of my patients, as well as for myself’ (Winnicott 1989, p. 228). Winnicott's recurrent concern during his last decade was with ‘reaching to’—that quintessential Winnicottian term—some reparative experience that could address such difficulties in constellating a ‘unit self’. This is correlated with his engagement with Jung and tracked through his contemporaneous clinical work, particularly ‘Fear of Breakdown’ (1963). Themes first introduced by Sedgwick (2008) and developed by the author's earlier ‘Winnicott on Jung; destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious’ (2011) are given further consideration.     

The Principle of Sufficient Reason,the Ontological Argument and the Is/Ought Distinction

Kant's attack on metaphysics consists in large part in his attack on a principle that he names the Supreme Principle of Pure Reason. This principle, it is not often noticed, is the Principle of Sufficient Reason [PSR]. In interpreting this principle as such, I argue that Kant's attack on the PSR (and thereby his attack on dogmatic metaphysics as a whole) depends on Kant's claim that existence is not a first‐order predicate. If existence isn't what Kant calls a real predicate, the PSR is false. While this constitutes a powerful Kantian argument against dogmatic rationalism, it also poses a problem for Kant. For, as I argue, if the PSR is true, Kant's argument that existence isn't a first‐order predicate is false. In this sense, Kant's attack on the PSR is begging the question vis‐á‐vis radical metaphysicians (e.g. Spinoza). Concluding the paper I suggest relying on Kant's 'is'/'ought' distinction in avoiding this circularity, thereby reinforcing the Kantian critique.     

Shame,Publicity, and Self‐Esteem

Shame is a puzzling emotion. On the one hand, to feel ashamed is to feel badly about oneself; but on the other hand, it also seems to be a response to the way the subject is perceived by other people. So whose standards is the subject worried about falling short of, his own or those of an audience? I begin by arguing that it is the audience's standards that matter, and then present a theory of shame according to which shame is a response to the subject's perception that he is not thought of in the way he intrinsically values himself for being thought of by someone else. Then I go on to suggest some refinements to this basic view. First, the subject of shame is primarily concerned about his audience's attitudes toward him, not what they believe about him. And second, there may be one particular attitude which he values himself for inspiring. There is no very perspicuous term for this attitude, so I call it ‘proto‐respect’ – the attitude a social animal directs toward those it regards as valuable allies or bad enemies.     

Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’ by Béatrice Ithier

In this Commentary I will first of all summarise my understanding of the proposal set out by Béatrice Ithier concerning her concept of the ‘chimera’. The main part of my essay will focus on Ithier's claim that her concept of the chimera could be described as a ‘mental squiggle’ because it corresponds to Winnicott's work illustrated in his book ‘Therapeutic Consultations’ (1971). At the core of Ithier's chimera is the notion of a traumatic link between analyst and patient, which is the reason she enlists the work of Winnicott. I will argue, however, that Ithier's claim is based on a misperception of the theory that underpins Winnicott's therapeutic consultations because, different from Ithier's clinical examples of work with traumatised patients, Winnicott is careful to select cases who are from an ‘average expectable environment’ i.e. a good enough family. Moreover, Winnicott does not refer to any traumatic affinity with his patients, or to experiencing a quasi‐hallucinatory state of mind during the course of the consultations. These aspects are not incorporated into his theory. In contrast (to the concept Ithier attempts to advance), Winnicott's squiggle game constitutes an application of psychoanalysis intended as a diagnostic consultation. In that sense Winnicott's therapeutic consultations are comparable with the ordinary everyday work between analyst and analysand in a psychoanalytic treatment. My Commentary concludes with a question concerning the distinction between the ordinary countertransference in working with patients who are thinking symbolically in contrast to an extraordinary countertransference that I suggest is more likely to arise with patients who are traumatised and thus functioning at a borderline or psychotic level.     

Expressive Individualism,the Cult of the Artist as Genius,and Milton's Lucifer

I propose an ‘intellectual genealogy’ of the widespread contemporary lifestyle called ‘expressive individualism’, tracing it back first to the cult of the artist as genius, which flourished during the 19^th century, but which has been democratized and universalized in our time. I then trace it back one step further, somewhat surprisingly, to the altered depiction of Lucifer John Milton gives in his poem Paradise Lost. Milton's Lucifer rejects not only Jesus as the highest creature, he rejects the Father as father; he announces ‘I know none before me; I am self‐begot.’ To the extent that we embrace the ethic of ‘expressive individualism’, therefore, we are implicitly committed to Milton's Lucifer as an archetype for human fulfilment, which I suggest, however, is a toxic model.     

Against Pogge's ‘Cosmopolitanism’

Thomas Pogge labels the idea that each person owes each other person equal respect and concern ‘ethical cosmopolitanism’ and correctly states that it is a ‘non‐starter’. He offers as an allegedly more convincing cosmopolitan alternative his ‘social justice cosmopolitanism’. I shall argue that this alternative fails for pretty much the same reasons that ‘ethical cosmopolitanism’ fails. In addition, I will show that Pogge's definition of cosmopolitanism is misleading, since it actually applies to ethical cosmopolitanism and not to social justice cosmopolitanism. This means that cosmopolitanism as defined by Pogge is wrong in the light of his own arguments and that Pogge is not even a cosmopolitan in the sense of his own definition. I will further show that he is also not a cosmopolitan if cosmopolitanism is defined as a philosophical position involving the claim that state borders have no fundamental moral significance.     

Contacting a 19 month‐old mute autistic girl: A clinical narrative

Conveying that psychoanalysis offers rich opportunities for the very early treatment of autistic spectrum disorders, this clinical communication unfolds the clinical process of a 19 month‐old ‘shell‐type’ encapsulated mute autistic girl. It details how, in a four‐weekly‐sessions schedule, infant Lila evolved within two years from being emotionally out‐of‐contact to the affective aliveness of oedipal involvement. Following Frances Tustin's emphasis on the analyst's ‘quality of attention’ and Justin Call's advice that in baby–mother interaction the infant is the initiator and the mother is the follower, it is described how the analyst must, amid excruciating non‐response, even‐mindedly sustain her attention in order to meet the child half‐way at those infrequent points where flickers of initiative on her side are adumbrated. This helps attain evanescent ‘moments of contact’ which coalesce later into ‘moments of sharing’, eventually leading to acknowledgment of the analyst's humanness and a receptiveness for to‐and‐fro communication. Thus the ‘primal dialogue’ (Spitz) is reawakened and, by experiencing herself in the mirror of the analyst, the child's sense of I‐ness is reinstated. As evinced by the literature, the mainstream stance rests on systematic early interpretation of the transference, which has in our view strongly deterred progress in the psychoanalytic treatment of autistic spectrum disorders.     

Hume's Foundational Project in the Treatise

In the Introduction to the Treatise Hume very enthusiastically announces his project to provide a secure and solid foundation for the sciences by grounding them on his science of man. And Hume indicates in the Abstract that he carries out this project in the Treatise. But most interpreters do not believe that Hume's project comes to fruition. In this paper, I offer a general reading of what I call Hume's ‘foundational project’ in the Treatise, but I focus especially on Book 1. I argue that in Book 1 much of Hume's logic is put in the service of the other sciences, in particular, mathematics and natural philosophy. I concentrate on Hume's negative thesis that many of the ideas central to the sciences are ideas that we cannot form. For Hume, this negative thesis has implications for the sciences, as many of the texts I discuss make evident. I consider and criticize different proposals for understanding these implications: the Criterion of Meaning and the ‘Inconceivability Principle’. I introduce what I call Hume's ‘No Reason to Believe’ Principle, which I argue captures more adequately the link Hume envisions between his logic, in particular his examination of ideas, and the other sciences.     

Secondary self‐deception

According to doxastic accounts of self‐deception, self‐deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self‐deceiver really believes what he, in self‐deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self‐deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self‐deceiver's defending his professed (deceit‐induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non‐doxastic account of how we should understand self‐deception in terms of the self‐deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P.     

Outside‐In: Jung's myth of interiority ambiguated. Or ‐ Knowing me,Knowing Jung – ahah!

Given his lifelong battle against one‐sidedness Jung's persistent prioritising of the ‘inner life’ over the ‘outer’ can seem problematic. The question is raised as to whether an approach that seems to verge uncomfortably close to solipsism can sometimes render Jung blind to the intuition that psychic life is constituted by an on‐going interplay between inner and outer, self and other (an intuition that he himself sometimes articulated so brilliantly). The ‘ambiguation’ of Jung's work offers an opportunity to confront this problem by utilising a critical dynamic that is consistent with Jung's psychological insights.     

Do You Have the Heart to Come to Faith? A Look at Anti‐Climacus' Reading of Matthew 11.6

In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti‐Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the thoughts of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti‐Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith.     

Object‐Dependent Thought Without Illusion

When unknowingly experiencing a perceptual hallucination, a subject can attempt to think specifically about what is, as far as he or she can tell, the perceived object. Is the subject then deceived about his or her cognitive situation? I answer negatively. Moreover, I argue that this answer is compatible with holding that thought specifically about a certain object – singular thought – is object‐dependent. By contrast, both critics and advocates of the view that singular thought is object‐dependent have assumed this view to be committed to postulation of illusions of object‐dependent thought in cases like that mentioned. The core ingredient in my illusion‐free version of the view is a special form of disjunctivism. Alleged cases of illusion are not considered parasitic on ‘the good case’ where the object thought about is perceived.