Hemingway's Aging Heroes and the Concept of Phronesis

This article explores the concept of phronesis (practical wisdom) in four aging protagonists in Ernest Hemingway's works ranging from the short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place to the novella The Old Man and the Sea. Phronesis represents an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering. The four aging protagonists are examples of Hemingway's definition of aging productively and profitably by purchasing an inner peace that consists of an intuitive system of continuous adjustment to the exigencies of daily living.     

Pavlov and the demise of the influence of Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union

Summary The demise of the influence of the classical Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union has been linked to I.P. Pavlov's negative stance toward Gestalt tenets. Actually, Pavlov's attitude toward Gestalt psychology was by no means uniform. Pavlov was receptive to, as well as critical of a number of substantive issues. He acknowledged the Gestalt interpretation of transposition, but criticized the Gestalt rejection of association and learning by trial and error. Pavlov's strongest objection to Gestalt psychology centered on the philosophical issues of causality, methodology, and on the problem of mind and body. Despite these objections, no direct evidence links Pavlov's criticism of Gestalt theses to the weakening of their influence on Soviet psychology. Instead, the demise of classical Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union should be attributed to political exigency. Soviet authorities, in a period of political crises, were intent upon the elimination of all traces of bourgeois psychologies.     

Yes,Virginia, Lemons are Yellow

This paper discusses a number of themes and arguments in The Quest for Reality: Stroud's distinction between philosophical and ordinary questions about reality; the similarity he finds between the view that coloris unreal and the view that it is subjective; his argument against thesecondary quality theory; his argument against the error theory; and the disappointing conclusion of the book.     

Context and strategy in acquiring temporal connectives

There has been considerable debate over the role of comprehension strategies in the acquisition of temporal connectives. This study examined the role of caluse logic and interpretational strategies in the acquisition of temporal words; age-related changes were also considered. Thirty-two children between 3 and 5 years of age served as subjects. Sentences with a variety of temporal words were used to tap children's comprehension of before, after, when, while, just before that, and and after that. Clause logic was found to significantly improve the understanding of these sentences. However, the order of mention and main clause first strategies were used infrequently. Apparently, when children respond to sentences that describe information in a way that is consistent with that they normally hear, these strategies are seldom applied.I wish to express my thanks to Janice Bogen, who assisted in data collection, and to Erika Hoff-Ginsberg, who assisted in some of the data analysis.     

Variations in use of the term “or”

Two studies showed that adults' responses to questions involving the term or varied markedly depending upon the type of question presented. When presented with various objects (A's and B's) and asked to circle all things which are A or B subjects tended to circle A's as well as B's, whereas when asked to circle all the A's or B's subjects showed a relatively stronger tendency to circle one or the other. Moreover the nature of the sets of objects (As and Bs) influenced behavior as well. There was also evidence that the effects due to question wording or set type transferred.     

A look at social support patterns

The issue of how to provide support for patients with a life-threatening illness continues to be a problem for pastors and chaplains. The authors discuss the significance and reasons for looking at the present day social support patterns as an unnatural problem. Unless the unnatural nature of support in the modern medical setting is understood pastors and chaplains can miss the target on answering the question of how to provide support. The authors conclude the article by addressing this question from the position of reserving the unnatural nature of providing support.Dr. Bergen is Professor of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH 03755. Dr. Nelson is affiliated with the Chaplain Service, Veterans Administration Center, White River Junction, VT 05001 and Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School.     

Fallacies and moral dilemmas

The continuing debate between utilitarians and deontologists often takes the form of disagreement over how particular moral dilemmas are to be resolved, but protagonists on both sides tend to overlook the possibility of resolving a dilemma with remainder, such as regret. The importance of remainder is also overlooked by critics of some absolutist ways of resolving or slipping between the horns of certain moral dilemmas. Moreover, deontologists, if not utilitarians, can be criticised for overlooking the possibility that, according to their theory, some dilemmas may be irresolvable. Virtue ethics, with its concentration on the agent, readily accommodates both mention of remainder and irresolvable dilemmas, and yields a specification of tragic dilemmas which the other two theories might like to take on.     

Does Alternating Between Masculine and Feminine Pronouns Eliminate Perceived Gender Bias in Text?

This study explores whether alternating betweenthe pronouns he and she ina text is an effective way to avoid sexist language.Participants were psychology students at a largemidwestern university and were predominately White and frommiddle-class backgrounds. Students read two versions ofan essay, one that alternated between masculine andfeminine pronouns and one that exclusively used paired, he or she-type pronouns. Readersperceived the alternating version to be biased in favorof females and lower in overall quality than the pairedversion. However, the alternating version appeared to be more effective at combating sexism,suggesting an alternating strategy may be desirable forauthors with this goal. If the author is not primarilyconcerned with increasing readers' awareness of gender issues, techniques such as pluralization or thesingular they may be moreappropriate.     

Tomboys and sissies: Androgynous children?

Psychological studies of masculinity-femininity in children have paralleled those done with adults, which often consider deviations from masculinity for males and femininity for females as abnormal and perhaps pathological. Children who demonstrate cross-sex behaviors, however, may become androgynous adults whose cross-sex behaviors mean flexibility, not pathology. This study had two purposes: (1) to identify potentially androgynous children as those labeled by their peers as tomboys and sissies; (2) to compare personality characteristics of androgynous children with those of peers. Subjects were 312 elementary school children in a midwestern city. Results indicate that the labels tomboy and sissy are not necessarily indicators of androgynous children, but important social behaviors are related to the labels. For males, the possibility of frustrated creativity was raised.     

On seeing oneself as “left out”: The chronically complaining patient in psychotherapy

A clinical observation regarding patients who complain about feeling left out and/or second best provides the framework for this paper. What is expressed is a form of separation anxiety coupled with a loser self-concept. It is suggested that these patients represent a milder form of the moral masochism. Early theoretical formulations include Freud and his emphasis on the superego and Reich's emphasis on the masochist's fear of being left alone. Kramer's little man phenomenon is an example of a more current theoretical formulation which takes account of the complexities of the ego, and composite self and identity in the clinical phenomena observed. A case of a latency-aged child is provided.     

Is “some-other-time” sometimes better than “sometime” for proving partial correctness of programs?

The main result of this paper belongs to the field of the comparative study of program verification methods as well as to the field called nonstandard logics of programs. We compare the program verifying powers of various well-known temporal logics of programs, one of which is the Intermittent Assertions Method, denoted as Bur. Bur is based on one of the simplest modal logics called S5 or sometime-logic. We will see that the minor change in this background modal logic increases the program verifying power of Bur. The change can be described either technically as replacing the reflexive version of S5 with an irreflexive version, or intuitively as using the modality some-other-time instead of sometime. Some insights into the nature of computational induction and its variants are also obtained.This project was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, Grant No. 1810.     

Developmental study of the comprehension and production of the pronoun “it”

Forty-two English-speaking children aged 3,3 to 7,0 were asked to act out instructions of the type There is clay on the table, give it to me, where the pronoun it occurs in object position and refers to a collective noun, or to a count noun, or to a noun (chocolate) which can be either. They were also asked to describe actions performed by the experimenter and to repeat the experimenter's instructions. A hierarchical pattern of behavior emerged and unexpected errors were noted. The results do not appear to be interpretable from the purely linguistic point of view; it is argued that analogous observations have been made in problem-solving tasks and that therefore cognitive development in general must play an important part.     

The group member's view of inner and outer reality: The Janus phenomenon applied to the group

This paper surveys some theoretical aspects of psychodynamic group treatment from the vantage point of the Janus phenomenon. This focus may provide some clarification in understanding how group therapy facilitates growth, especially in the relationships between inner realities and the realities of the external world. The paper explores and seeks bridges and connections between the dynamics of the group and intrapsychic dynamics. The inner view may be understood as intimately connected with intrapsychic concerns, whereas the issues for patients in groups do, to a degree, concern interpersonal processes in and projections onto the external world. The paper concludes that, thus far, we must accept less than perfect integration of theory and settle for limited domain reasoning (Scheidlinger, 1982). Erlebnis is the term coined by Paul Federn (1952) to refer to subjective experience of the self.     

Maturing Religious Experience and the Postmodern Self

Past attempts to define mature religion have been rooted in a modernist theological anthropology which assumes an atomistic, universal, rational, and stable human self. Yet postmodernists resist universal statements about humanity and understand the self as an ever-changing social construct. This paper suggests a theological anthropology more adequate to the postmodern world, examines maturing religious experience from this perspective, and considers ways pastoral care/counseling can nurture healthy, integrative, and maturing Christian faith in postmodern culture.     

Self and others in “private language”

The aim of this paper is to restore the interdependent or complementary relationship between self and others against the universalistic one (as I call it) that Kant, for example, once insisted on, by reexamining the concept of so-called private language. I shall consider some views in speech act theory and pragmatics, since there has often been discussion about such a private occurrence as the speaker's sincerity. For example, Jürgen Habermas situates it in the speaker's internal nature as will be seen later. In my opinion, alter ego is an ego because we can empathize (einfühlen) with it, and yet it is alter ego because it has some private experiences which we cannot perfectly comprehend.     

Depression and Anxiety in Persons with Parkinson's Disease With and Without “On–Off” Phenomena

On–off phenomena in Parkinson's disease (PD) are unpredictable motor fluctuations associated with long-term levodopa use. Mood fluctuations have been found to coincide with the motor fluctuations in that depression and anxiety increase while the person with PD is in the off state. What has been relatively unexplored is whether those persons with PD who have on–off phenomena differ psychologically in fundamental ways from those who do not have on–off phenomena. In the present study, depression and anxiety symptoms were assessed in 36 persons with PD (n = 14 with on–off phenomena, n = 22 without on–off phenomena). All those with on–off phenomena were assessed in their on state. Those persons with PD with on–off phenomena had significantly higher levels of anxiety than those without on–off phenomena. However, both groups, regardless of on–off status, were mildly depressed. Neurobiological interpretations of the results implicate the locus coeruleus in the pathogenesis of both on–off phenomena and anxiety, whereas psychological interpretations of the results involve the issues of learned helplessness and control over health symptoms in PD.     

Parents' Attitudes and Expectations About Children's Cross-Gender Behavior

The goals of the present study were to assessparents' attitudes toward crossgender boys and girls, aswell as to explore possible reasons for differentialevaluations. A total of 224 White parents of five-year old children completed questionnaires probingtheir attitudes toward cross-gender behavior inchildren, and their expectations regarding the futureadult behavior of typical boys, typical girls,cross-gender boys and cross-gender girls. The resultsrevealed that cross-gender boys were more negativelyregarded than crossgender girls and thatmen perceivedmore societal acceptance of cross-gender boys thanwomen. Cross-gender children were predicted tocontinue to show cross-gender behavior in adulthood andto be less psychologically welladjusted as adults thantypical boys and girls. Cross-gender boyswere expected to be less psychologicallywell-adjusted than cross-gender girls. When predictingfuture sexual orientation, cross-gender boys were deemedto have a greater likelihood of being gay thancross-gender girls of being lesbian. Men expectedcross-gender boys to be more likely to show male-malesexual behavior than typical boys inadulthood while women predicted typicalgirls to be more likely to show female-female sexual behavior in adulthoodthan cross-gender girls.     

The Good's Magnetism and Ethical Realism

People support ethical antirealism with various arguments. Gilbert Harman thinks if a property of goodness existed, it would have detectable effects on objects that have it. However, Harman reasons, the good has no such detectable effects. Internalists think if good objects had some goodness property, that property would bond to desire and action in a way inconsistent with ethical realism. I defend ethical realism from the two arguments. I explain how good can both name a property and how objects with that property might dispose people to seek them. This explanation of the good's magnetism provides a reply to Harman.     

On some structural aspects of physical problems

Bachelard's concept of the problématique is used in order to classify physical problems and their interrelations. This classification is effectuated along two dimensions. Along the horizontal dimension, physical problems are divided into the kinds that the different modes of physics' development define. These modes are themselves determined by the interplay among the conceptual system, the object and the experimentation transactions specific to physics. Along the vertical dimension, physical problems are classified according to the different stages of maturation they have to undergo before the process of their solution is effectively undertaken. To determine these maturation stages, the Althusserian conception of ideology is used. The interrelations between physical problems are examined through the introduction and elaboration of the notion interdependence network.It is a pleasure to thank Marcello Pera and Kostas Gavroglou for their very helpful comments and criticisms.