Healing the Wound: Rossi on Kantian Critique,Community, and the Remedies to the “Dear Self”

Philosophia - The main purpose of these introductory remarks is to give the reader a sense of Philip Rossi’s philosophical project and its importance (§§1-2). I will then advance an...     

Distance education: Has technology become a threat to the academy?

Recent discussions regarding technology-assisted distance education have given rise both to enthusiastic predictions about how this form of instruction will transform higher educational institutions and to widespread fears about the threats that this technology poses to the student-teacher relationship and to the profession of university teacher in general. A review of opinions regarding distance education and computer technology in academia suggests a continuum of positions, ranging from the expectation that dramatic and even cataclysmic changes will lead to the eventual dissolution of the university to an envisioning of only minor changes in the academy’s objectives and methods. In the present paper, this continuum is used as an organizing scheme to present the positions of several well-known advocates for and against the use of distance education and information technology. It is argued that the accreditation process will ultimately determine the degree to which distance education replaces traditional classroom instruction and that this process can be influenced by faculty involvement in decisions about the use of technology in the classroom.     

The theory‐ladenness of observations,the role of scientific instruments,and the Kantian a priori

During the last decades it has become widely accepted that scientific observations are ‘theory‐laden’. Scientists ‘see’ the world with their theories or theoretical presuppositions. In the present paper it is argued that they ‘see’ with their scientific instruments as well, as the uses of scientific instruments is an important characteristic of modern natural science. It is further argued that Euclidean geometry is intimately linked to technology, and hence that it plays a fundamental part in the construction and operation of scientific instruments. Finally, Euclidean geometry is compared to fractal geometry, and the question of its a priori status is raised. Although the position that Euclidean geometry is a priori in the original Kantian sense is untenable, the paper concludes that in some restricted sense Euclidean geometry may be said to be a priori.     

Nominalistic content,grounding, and covering generalizations: Reply to ‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’

‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’ presents a number of ways in which nominalists can use the notion of grounding to rebut the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. I will begin by considering the strategy that puts grounding to the service of easy-road nominalists (“Nominalistic content meets grounding” section). I will give some support to this strategy by addressing a worry some may have about it (“A misguided worry about the grounding strategy” section). I will then consider a problem for the fast-lane strategy (“Grounding and generality: a problem for the fast lane” section) and a problem for easy-road nominalists willing to accept Liggins’ grounding strategy (“More on the grounding strategy and easy-road nominalism” section). Both are related to the problem of formulating nominalistic explanations at the right level of generality. I will then consider a problem that Liggins only hints at (“Mathematics and covering generalizations” section). This problem has to do with mathematics’ function of providing the sort of covering generalizations we need in scientific explanations.     

Causal and Constitutive Relations, and the Squaring of Coleman’s Diagram: Reply to Vromen

We respond to Jack Vromen’s (this issue) critique of our discussion of the missing micro-foundations of work on routines and capabilities in economics and management research. Contrary to Vromen, we argue that (1) inter-level relations can be causal, and that inter-level causal relations may also obtain between routines and actions and interactions; (2) there are no macro-level causal mechanisms; and (3) on certain readings of the notion of routines and capabilities, these may be macro causes.     

Ethics and professionalism: what does a resident need to learn?

Training in ethics and professionalism is a fundamental component of residency education, yet there is little empirical information to guide curricula. The objective of this study is to describe empirically derived ethics objectives for ethics and professionalism training for multiple specialties. Study design is a thematic analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups conducted in a setting of an academic medical center, Veterans Administration, and community hospital training more than 1000 residents. Participants were 84 informants in 13 specialties including residents, program directors, faculty, practicing physicians, and ethics committees. Thematic analysis identified commonalities across informants and specialties. Resident and nonresident informants identified consent, interprofessional relationships, family interactions, communication skills, and end-of-life care as essential components of training. Nonresidents also emphasized formal ethics instruction, resource allocation, and self-monitoring, whereas residents emphasized the learning environment and resident-attending interactions. Conclusions are that empirically derived learning needs for ethics and professionalism included many topics, such as informed consent and resource allocation, relevant for most specialties, providing opportunities for shared curricula and resources.     

Transcendental Phenomenology and the Way to Happiness: Husserl’s Reply to Csikszentmihalyi

It is an unprecedented task to interpret Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a fundamental philosophy of happiness. Although happiness has been discussed in many psychologies, Csikszentmihalyi’s positive psychology defines happiness as “flow”, a psychic state of ongoing immersion guided by intrinsic motivations and rewards. In this paper, I interpret our transcendental consciousness as a radical “flow” maker and claim that in our transcendental life, happiness is what we ourselves are. Then, I propose this not only as an appeal to a change of attitude (i.e. reduction) for happiness, but also as a deep hermeneutics of the mental skills and activity designs suggested by positive psychology. In this way, worldly happiness dictums can be profoundly re-examined. Understood as such, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology leaves us the task of how to make a concrete form of qualitative or hermeneutical research on happiness out of it.     

Authoritarianism,Projection, and Person Perception: What Do Authoritarians Infer From Another's Attempt to Rebut a Rumor?

In the course of a field study, subjects first filled out a short form of the California F Scale (Adorno, 1973). In addition, one group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which a rumor had proven to be true. Another group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which they themselves had been a target of an unjustified accusation. A third (control) group did not undergo a priming procedure. All subjects read a brief newspaper advertisement in which a person issued the warning to take legal proceedings if anyone continued to spread untrue rumors concerning him. Subjects were asked to give reasons why the person initiated the rebuttal. High authoritarians, as identified by their responses to the California F Scale, were more likely than low authoritarians to infer anxiety, paranoia, and guilty conscience as motives for the rebuttal. This effect was particularly pronounced in the two priming conditions. Further, authoritarians evaluated the target person more negatively than did nonauthoritarians. The interpretation of the results dwells on repressive developmental and environmental forces causing the authoritarian style and the role of projection in person perception.     

“A Place to Enter and in Which to Feel”: Reply to Cath,Levine, and Peltz

In this response, I clarify my argument for the utility of affectively organizing and containing work in the treatment of a traumatized child. I find myself in agreement with many of the comments of Peltz regarding the vitalizing aspects of the work and Levine’s discussion of scaffolding to promote development. I delineate my thinking in response to Cath’s queries about transference, Oedipal themes, and the value of interpretation.     

Guilt,Shame, Disobedience: Social Regulatory Mechanisms and the “Inner Normative System”

The author, a criminologist, describes a metadisciplinary guilt conception that combines elements of psychoanalysis, psychology of moral judgment, and evolutionary psychology.     

‘A Glorious Sun and a Bad Person’. Wittgenstein,Ethical Reflection and the Other

Most commentators working on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics note that he rejects the very possibility of traditional normative ethics, that is, a philosophically justified normative guide for right conduct. In this article, Wittgenstein’s view of ethical reflection as presented in his notebooks from 1936 to 1938 is investigated, and the question of whether it involves ethical guidance is addressed. In Wittgenstein’s remarks, we can identify three requirements inherent in ethical reflection. The first two is revealed in the realisation that ethical reflection presupposes both a clear understanding of oneself and a normative ideal of how one ought to live and reason. The third source of normativity springs from the fact that ethical reflection involves a relationship with the other, not as judge, but as example and addressee. In this way, ethical reflection is essentially relational. In the article, we unfold how these three normative sources figure in Wittgenstein’s remarks, especially how the third requirement, the relationship with the other, shows both a point of conversion and a difference between his view of ethics and religious faith. It will also be argued that even if Wittgenstein thus presents ethical reflection as a normatively guided activity, the content of the guidance is personal, springing solely from the reflecting individual.     

Gödel,Kant, and the Path of a Science

Gödel's philosophical views were to a significant extent influenced by the study not only of Leibniz and Husserl, but also of Kant. Both Gödel and Kant aimed at the secure foundation of philosophy, the certainty of knowledge and the solvability of all meaningful problems in philosophy. In this paper, parallels between the foundational crisis of metaphysics in Kant's view and the foundational crisis of mathematics in Gödel's view are elaborated, especially regarding the problem of finding the “secure path of a science” for both mathematics and philosophy. Gödel's temporal subjectivism and metaphysical conceptual objectivism are presented as positively or negatively motivated by Kant's viewpoints. A remark on Gödel's collapse of modalities (in accordance with the collapse of objective time) is added.     

The Fee and the Analyst’s Life Cycle: Reply to Berger and Sopher

This response develops some further thoughts on the fee and its relationship to the analyst’s life cycle. Sigmund Freud’s letters to Karl Abraham from 1912 provide a window into how he thought about issues such as the fee, work–life balance and the place of writing and other efforts to give back to the profession. These same themes are fated to be re-discovered – as if for the first time – by each successive generation.     

John Prine’s Images of God and Male Melancholia: Terror,Forgiveness, and the Persistence of Desire

Examines the God-representations of the country-folk singer John Prine in the light of psychological theory about male melancholia, drawing from Donald Capps and Erik H. Erikson. Describes the manner in which songwriting serves as a therapeutic enterprise to express and interpret melancholia in Prine's lyrics, especially in the songs "Saddle in the Rain" and "Fish and Whistle." At times these images evoke terror and at other times they humorously erase the authority divide between the divine and the human, suggesting that God may even need to be forgiven. Describing how melancholia is rooted in the man's experience with mother, this article interprets Prine's image of God in light of the need for sustenance, acknowledgement, and care.

Reply to: A comment on and : How to investigate whether personality items form a hierarchical scale?

We reply to the comment by Meijer (2009) on our recent papers investigating the hierarchical properties of personality scale items. We conclude that Mokken scaling is an appropriate method for investigating the existence of hierarchical scales in general and, specifically, addresses the issue of invariant item ordering in polychotomous data.