Beyond Death’s (and Conception’s) Door: The Unsettling Limitations of Incarnate Existence

The psychological effects of contemplating one’s death have received much empirical attention, but the impact of thinking about one’s conception—the other temporal endpoint of physical existence—has not. Across three experiments, reflecting on conception or death (vs. a neutral topic) led to increased framing of sexual reproduction as miraculous and sacred, intensified belief in discarnate immortality, and a greater desire to experience a discarnate state that offered no direct assurance of literal immortality. Thinking about death uniquely evoked greater anxiety as well as greater desire for an experience that offered assurance of literal immortality, congruent with the tenets of terror management theory. Nevertheless, the parallel effects evoked by reflecting on conception and death also suggest that both amplify the aversive salience of the limitations inherent to physical existence, such that people respond by seeking experiences and adjusting attitudes/beliefs to divert attention from the physical body.     

Beyond sympathy: Smith’s rejection of Hume’s moral theory

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core moral theory. We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations (as Smith thought it to be) has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory.     

Therapy Process: A Reflective Account from Therapist’s Perspective

A case report is presented providing an account of therapy process and describing the therapist’s reflection on the process of therapy. It draws attention to the course of building hypothesis and clinical formulation, the core nucleus of any therapy. The paper highlights the change in therapy goals in different phases of therapy with the introduction of new information. It also underlines the fact that hypotheses in the formulation need to be constantly updated and checked against the ever changing information as therapy progresses. The importance of single case design is invaluable in the presentation of therapy process as it is more closer to clinical practice then group experimental design. Although attention to therapy process issues is important and there is no dearth of clinical material in India but there are very few published studies reporting therapy process using single case design. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to provide the account of therapy process and to share the reflections on the process of building hypothesis & formulation.     

A Child Therapist at Work: Playing,Talking, and the Therapist’s Inner Dialogue

The author reflects on his work with a child patient struggling with affect regulation, loss, and his adoption through a detailed process account of the treatment with a focus on the therapist’s inner dialogue in relation to the child’s play and words—how each affects the other. Drawing from his personal use of clinical theory stemming from multiple theoretical influences, the author shows how his associations, identifications, and tentative formulations inform his work and how the various transference/countertransference matrices influence his inner dialogue. Attention is paid to the movement from the therapist as an object within the patient’s closed system to a system that gradually becomes more open, in which the patient is able to take in the therapist’s own person as they come upon various ways to communicate and build a narrative together.     

The Fascist Seduction of Narrative: Walter Benjamin’s Historical Materialism Beyond Counter-Narrative

This essay introduces Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism to illuminate how history teachers may invoke a critique of the past and present through democratizing the production of knowledge in the classroom. Historical materialism gives students access to the means of knowledge production and entrusts them with the task of generating a critique of politics though encounters with historical objects. The rise of the alt-right, alternative facts, and fake news sites necessitates social studies methods that intervene into the fascist seductions of narrative in history. A Benjaminian pedagogy emphasizes reading practices that acknowledge the political layers of history inscribed within the objects. This generates space for forms of pessimism and dialectic critiques of barbarism that students may experience with history beyond the teacher’s capacity for understanding. In the name of democracy over fascism, the article adds a political critique to students’ historical and critical thinking skills.     

The Analyst’s Generous Involvement: Recognition and the “Tension of Tenderness”

I define the analyst’s generous involvement as inherent to human encounter and a necessary element of therapeutic process. When the analyst’s generous involvement goes missing, it can be read as a sign of disengagement and disconnection. Using as metaphor H. S. Sullivan’s concept of the “tension of tenderness,” I argue that the analyst’s recognition of a need or affect state in the patient evokes an internal tug constituting the analyst’s need to provide for what has been recognized. I elaborate on what the analyst’s generous involvement is, and what it is not, including countertransference pitfalls and corruptions that may masquerade as generosity. I engage a relational conversation with the radical ethical ideas of Emmanuel Levinas. An extended clinical vignette illustrates the challenges and conflicts entailed in the analyst’s finding an analytically useful form of expressing the tug of generous involvement in the immediate moment.     

On Visitations: The Appearance of Sustaining Thoughts When Processing the Therapist’s Illness with Patients

This paper describes clinical and personal challenges when the therapist had to disclose his illness to long-established patients as a clinical and ethical imperative. Uncertainty about duration of treatment was processed in ways unique to each dyad. Mutual efforts at affect regulation became potent avenues of repair in some cases, although unexpected conundrums arose at the interface of privacy and disclosure, recognizing the intrusiveness of illness and its highly personal meanings. Vivid clinical vignettes and key pieces of clinical reading appeared to the therapist like visitations, spanning his career, corresponding to sustaining thoughts, admonitions, and former self-states. In kinship with authors of fiction, the therapist looks for a way through, to rebuild a holding environment capable of containing and utilizing the unwelcome news, responding very differently to each patient’s expression of compassion and caretaking, with particular sensitivity to those he feared were reenacting their own suppression of need. These became pivotal elements to explore relationally in trying to broaden the field in which topics of illness and mortality could rise above pathos, guilt, pity, despair, and other forms of isolation. In each relationship, a different wilderness was navigated.     

The Sleeping Beauty and the Therapist’s Gaze: Commentary on Hours and Mayers’s Article on Finding a Path toward Re-Enchantment

In their article, Hours and Mayers make the case that in the imaginary world of fairy tales children have an opportunity to engage and symbolize and also to reflect on the experiences and motives of imaginary characters. This was the case with 8-year-old Barbara who responded to the fairy tales that were narrated to the group by joining in and beginning to share her ideas and reactions. In this commentary, it is argued that it was not just the experience of enchantment that enabled Barbara to begin to listen more attentively to the stories and to engage with her peers. It was also her experience of the narrator's gaze, the therapist who wanted to tell a story to her to make her feel enchanted by all the images and emotions stories can evoke to anyone who listens to them.     

The New Alliance Between Science and Education: Otto Neurath’s Modernity Beyond Descartes’ ‘Adamitic’ Science

Starting from a suggestion of Stephen Toulmin and through an interpretation of the criticism to which Neurath, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, submits Descartes’ views on science, the paper attempts to outline a pattern of modernity opposed to the Cartesian one, that has been obtaining over the last four centuries. In particular, it is argued that a new alliance has to be established between science and education, overcoming Descartes’ banishment against education. In a Neurathian perspective education is a key-moment of the scientific enterprise without which science itself is in danger of going astray and no scientific outlook is promoted in the society at large. Such an anti-Cartesian attitude is a leitmotiv of the whole Neurath’s production and characterizes his fundamental approach to the sense of modernity. For this reasons, despite all its shortcomings, Neurath’s proposal represents a very promising option for a new agenda of the modernity away from Descartes’ spell. By elaborating on Neurath’s (and Dewey’s) insights, the paper puts forward the idea that philosophy of science (such as it was originated by neopositivism in its Reichenbachian version) should give way to an educational philosophy of science which could allow us “to bring the genuine modern into existence”.     

Tragic Recognition: Revisiting Hegel’s Conception of Ethical Life

This paper interprets Hegel’s engagement with tragedy and especially tragic action as an interpretive model for understanding ethical life in complex societies in which independent value spheres collide. Tragic recognition, in contrast to the kind of recognition introduced in the master and slave dialectic, is not based on desire, but arises from the suffering deriving from clashing value spheres. As a coming to terms with one’s finitude, tragic recognition presents an important corrective to the account of mutual recognition that has been the reference point of contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. The paper concludes by pointing to some of the limits of tragedy as a universal interpretive framework for modern societies.     

Forgiveness: The Victim’s Prerogative

Abstract

This article explores and offers a qualified defence of the claim that the entitlement to forgive a wrongdoer belongs to the victim of the wrong. A summary account of forgiveness is given, followed by arguments in favor of the victim’s prerogative to forgive. Primary, or direct victims are then distinguished from secondary and tertiary ones, which point to a plurality of prerogatives to forgive. In cases of conflicts between these prerogatives it is emphasized that special care should be taken to protect the primary victim’s entitlement, without giving an absolute and exclusive status to the latter prerogative. Grounds for limiting the primary victim’s prerogative regarding forgiveness include (a) cases where harm to secondary and/or tertiary victims are greater than the harm resulting from the original wrong committed against the primary victim, (b) the social dimensions of the elements of forgiveness, and (c) the need for self-forgiveness when a repentant wrongdoer is not forgiven by any of the victims. The practical significance of these arguments are illustrated by considering the criticism that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission have forgiven perpetrators in ways that inappropriately pre-empted the primary victims’ entitlement to forgive.     

Beyond a Paycheck: The Influence of Workforce Participation on Women’s Cancer Screening in Turkey

The present study investigates the influence of workforce participation on women’s cancer screening behaviors in Turkey. In cultures with predominantly Muslim populations like Turkey, emphasis is typically placed on a woman’s traditional role as a child bearer. Although the impact of workforce participation on women’s welfare has been studied in various contexts, the relationship between workforce participation and health protective behavior has received scant attention. Using quantitative data from a survey of women aged 40 and above from 33 urban cities in Turkey (N?=?483), we examine the influence of workforce participation on breast and cervical cancer screening behaviors. Homemakers were less likely than working/retired women to be up-to-date on screenings. Women with lower income and education screened less; however, workforce participation seemed to have a positive effect on screening among these women. Additionally, working/retired women and homemakers differed from each other in terms of their perceptions regarding their risk of developing cancer (perceived susceptibility). In addition, both perceived susceptibility and women's perceptions regarding their ability to get cancer screening (self-efficacy) were significant predictors of intention to engage in screening in future. In Turkey, homemakers are in a vulnerable position due to lower rates of cancer screening. Furthermore, targeting homemakers for interventions may be easier than trying to identify other low screening groups of women such as those with lower education or income. Interventions raising perceptions of susceptibility to cancer, possibly by targeting neighborhoods during working hours, could be useful in increasing screening rates at risk women.     

Fischer’s Way: The Next Level

I present an analogy between analytic philosophy and a particular sort of computer game, and analyze some aspects of John Martin Fischer's My Way in the light of this analogy. I set out the different levels of the free will question, and explore how well Fischer does on them. On the compatibility level, he succeeds, in my view, in confronting the "metaphysical challenge" and the "manipulation challenge", but does less well with the "moral arbitrariness challenge". The compatibilist perspective captures only part of the moral and personal truth on the compatibility issue, and is shown to be inherently shallow. On the next levels we see that Fischer confronts particular dangers: the very virtues that make his minimalist position so resilient on the second (compatibility) level, render it too impoverished when it comes to the third, which asks about the very importance of taking moral responsibility seriously. Connecting to other positions (such as P.F. Strawson's version of naturalism) may be an imperative, but would also be risky. Likewise, on the fourth level, where we confront the difficulty of deciding how to deal with the previous conclusions, it is doubtful how well Fischer can do, given his previous philosophical commitments.

Nussbaum’s Capabilities and Self-Determination Theory’s Basic Psychological Needs: Relating Some Fundamentals of Human Wellness

Research and theory concerning the nature and sources of well-being has been undertaken through varied approaches. Two such approaches are the capability approach and self-determination theory (SDT), both of which have postulated specific factors deemed necessary for human well-being and flourishing. In two studies we examine the relations between capabilities and well-being indicators, as well as the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction in these relations. Results indicate that both capabilities and SDT’s basic psychological needs are substantially associated with well-being, and that SDT’s basic needs partially mediate the relation between capabilities and indicators of wellness.     

The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevskij’s Hosanna

The novel The Brothers Karamazov shows the spiritual rebirth of man and society. At first the world of the town Skotoprigon’evsk is depicted as heathen and even demonic, where everyone is in search of earthly justice, forgetting about love and losing a connection to God; here the theme of orphanhood is dominant. The second half of the novel is dominated by the image of the Holy Trinity, the symbol of mutual love and unity. The human world, according to Dostoevskij, cannot be divided into adults and children, the guilty and the innocent, insofar as all can freely participate in the redemption of humanity’s sin (like Christ, the paragon of innocence). If all people are God’s children, death does not have power over them. Upon completing his final novel Dostoevkskij wrote: “my Hosanna has passed through a big crucible of doubt.” The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevskij’s Hosanna. Translated by Robert Bird     

Beyond Midlife and Before Retirement: A Short-Term Women’s Group

As women move into the second half of life and towards retirement, they may experience many changes and transitions, including in health, relationships, career choices, and spirituality. Some of those changes can be distressing, such as serious health problems for themselves or their families, increased isolation, multiple losses of important people, feelings of uselessness and lack of a meaningful role, and growing questions or struggles around spirituality. Time is often seen as moving faster and increasingly limited. This short-term group offers an opportunity for women to reflect upon issues of identity, values, choices, desires, and hopes regarding relationships, work and other activities, spirituality, and health to create new visions. We describe an integrated theoretical framework that includes existentialism, mindfulness, adult development, object relations, attachment, and relational cultural therapy. We discuss the group’s underlying assumptions in terms of its short-term and semi-structured nature and its format, and suggest exercises, with examples highlighting important learning and/or group interaction. Finally, we address the need for more intensive psychotherapy, outliers, ensuring participation, and our own responses.     

Roger Swyneshed’s Obligationes: A Logical Game of Inference Recognition?

In [Dutilh Novaes, Medieval-obligations as logical Games of Consistency maintenance, synthese, (2004)], I proposed a reconstruction of Walter Burley’s theory of obligationes, based on the idea that Burley’s theory of obligationes could be seen as a logical game of consistency maintenance. In the present paper, I intend to test the game hypothesis on another important theory of obligationes, namely Roger Swyneshed’s theory. In his treatise on obligationes [edited by P.V. Spade, cf. Spade History and philosophy of Logic 3(1982) 1-32], Swyneshed introduced significant modifications to the general framework of obligationes. To compare the two theories, I apply the same formal apparatus used in the previous paper. It will become patent that Swyneshed’s theory is considerably different from Burley’s, among other reasons because the dynamic aspects that play a major role in the latter are simply not present in the former. My conclusion is that Swyneshed’s version of obligationes is not directed towards consistency maintenance, but rather towards inference recognition, and that it is, from a game-theoretical perspective, less interesting a theory than Burley’s.