Groups to Resolve Conflicts Between Groups: Diplomacy with a Therapeutic Dimension

The group self, an individual's self-perception as a member of a group, is distinguished from the group's self, a personification of the group as a person with a self. The perceived group's self of an opposing other group is often a repository for attributes group members are not ready to recognize in their own group's self. Theoretically, the need for an adversarial other to hold one's own group's unwanted attributes—and thus to complete one's own group's self—contributes, however unconsciously, to the apparent intractability of intergroup disputes. In dealing with these issues, I compare intergroup conflict resolution (ICR) groups with therapy groups, on the one hand, and advocacy groups on the other. All of this sets the stage for a presentation of two ICR projects and their analysis in group-developmental terms.     

The retrieval of scaled English consonants

Two scales of the perceptual differences among English consonants had been constructed earlier, one from pairs of aural syllables and one from pairs of viewed one-syllable English words. In both instances the pairs of stimuli differed only in the initial consonants. In the present work 276 pairs of syllables were assembled in sets of six. A set was viewed sequentially for 1.5 sec/slide. Then 25 subjects who worked in groups of 4–6 attempted to write one randomly chosen omitted member of each pair on an answer form; another 25 subjects were asked to supply the opposite syllables of each pair. This task was termed primary memory. Fifty additional subjects repeated the tasks but spent 10 sec counting backward by 3s before trying to recall and write the missing syllables, thus setting up a task of secondary memory. Response forms were scored for right, wrong, and omitted responses. All responses were then compared with each of the scales referred to above, and the mean value for each group of 50 subjects (25 who used the anser form in theab order+ 25 who used theba order) was computed. The difference between the scores for the two tasks was statistically significant, as was the difference between the scores yielded by the two scales. The visual scale appeared to fit the data better than the aural scale. The procedures employed and the assumptions that were made yielded results that would not justify an opinion that an error in recall is typically almost right. However, the data did reflect partial forgetting.     

Partially-Ordered (Branching) Generalized Quantifiers: A General Definition

Following Henkins discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or cardinality quantifiers, e.g., most, few, finitely many, exactly , where is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a series of generalizations, extending the original, Henkin definition first to a general definition of monotone-increasing (M) POQ and then to a general definition of generalized POQ, regardless of monotonicity. The extension is based on (i) Barwises 1979 analysis of the basic case of M POQ and (ii) my 1990 analysis of the basic case of generalized POQ. POQ is a non-compositional 1st-order structure, hence the problem of extending the definition of the basic case to a general definition is not trivial. The paper concludes with a sample of applications to natural and mathematical languages.     

Theorizing Gender for Experimental Game Theory: Experiments with “Sex Status” and “Merit Status” in an Asymmetric Game

In experimental game-theoretic research, to the extent that sex has been considered at all, the approach has been to focus on the individual level of analysis. This paper reports the results of experiments designed to focus on sex/gender and to expand the level of analysis to include the institutional level. An asymmetric game was designed such that players in the male and female institutional locations had 3 and 2 alternatives, respectively. Players earned the institutional locations based on a test, so that top and bottom scorers respectively merited the 3- and 2-alternatives locations. Game-theoretic understandings of sex-of-player were compared to the expectations states theory concept of sex status; that is, men expect and are expected to perform more competently than women. Results indicated that top-scorer men and women behave similarly; bottom-scorer men resist their low merit status (behaving the most rationally of all player groups); bottom-scorer women accept their low merit status (behaving the most irrationally of all player groups). Whereas game theory cannot provide a coherent understanding of these findings, the concept of sex status helps to interpret the behavior of all four player groups and shows how judgments about rationality and irrationality depend critically on the interpretive framework used.     

Murder in the family: An analysis of two Poe short stories

Learning to be possessed has been described elsewhere by the writer as a form of pathogenic relating begun when children are taught by adults that they will receive a lesser penalty for misbehavior if they can show they were not responsible, such as if it were caused by an evil agent or the Devil. It was suggested that learning to be possessed can be an underlying cause of psychopathology, the delusion of persecution in particular. Two short stories by the distinguished American writer Edgar Allan Poe are examined to develop the formulation of learning to be possessed, especially when it has passed to a delusion of persecution. Two propositions are offered: (1) Where it appears that a family member is murdered by a delusional assailant by accident, it is not an accident; and (2) the delusion of persecution entails a memory loss so that the murderer not only can claim lack of personal responsibility for the act, but also spares himself the guilt of having broken a fundamental taboo. Further comparison is made between learning to be possessed as a cause of delusion, and the psychoanalytic theory in which the defense mechanism of projection is central. In the latter theory, interpretation of the delusion is critical; whereas in the former, interpretation is counterproductive because it merely reinforces the delusion.Probably a note of appreciation is due the writer's daughter Cary, who at age 14 is an expert at badgering her father for help with homework assignments. For several weeks the writer was alternatively pestered and cajoled to help Cary with her Poe Project for high school English which required an essay analyzing the work of a great American writer denigrated by the author as weird by his recollection formed decades earlier. Cary's persistence required the author to consider Poe anew, to recognize his unwarranted earlier prejudice, and to recognize that Poe offered him a gift of understanding regarding a topic about which the author had been thinking for several years, namely that form of pathogenic relating named learning to be possessed.     

“Anchor-range” results with “same” and “different” responses and similar and dissimilar stimuli

Summary Blocks of pairs of dissimilar (anchor-like) circles were unexpectedly followed by single pairs of similar circles and vice versa. The dissimilar circles were 3 and 10 mm in diameter, and the similar circles were 3 and 5 mm, 5 and 7 mm, and 7 and 10 mm in diameter. In a second experiment, the dissimilar and similar circles did not overlap in size (e.g., they were 1.5 and 5 mm and 7 and 10 mm, respectively). The same responses to the unexpected same pairs of similar circles were faster than the same responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. In contrast, the different responses to the unexpected different pairs of similar circles were slower than the different responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. Similar stimuli accelerate same responses and slow down different responses. So the time results (and the error results as well) suggest that the context of the block dissimilar circles increased the perceived similarity of the unexpected similar circles. These anchor-range results are not explained by Thurstonian theories, which are based on the absolute properties of stimuli. Instead, they imply that the relation between the similar circles in the context of the relation between the dissimilar circles affected performance.     

Thomas Kuhn revisited: Near-death studies and paradigm shifts

Near-death studies can be viewed within a theoretical framework of paradigms and paradigm shifts as explicated by Thomas Kuhn (1962). Assuming the validity of Kuhn's model, I hypothesize that the paradigm of today's normal science is shifting to a new paradigm to accommodate data from near-death studies.     

Some modifications of Scott's theorem on injective spaces

D. Scott in his paper [5] on the mathematical models for the Church-Curry -calculus proved the following theorem.A topological space X. is an absolute extensor for the category of all topological spaces iff a contraction of X. is a topological space of Scott's open sets in a continuous lattice.In this paper we prove a generalization of this theorem for the category of , -closure spaces. The main theorem says that, for some cardinal numbers , , absolute extensors for the category of , -closure spaces are exactly , -closure spaces of , -filters in , >-semidistributive lattices (Theorem 3.5).If = and = we obtain Scott's Theorem (Corollary 2.1). If = 0 and = we obtain a characterization of closure spaces of filters in a complete Heyting lattice (Corollary 3.4). If = 0 and = we obtain a characterization of closure space of all principial filters in a completely distributive complete lattice (Corollary 3.3).     

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.     

Notes on the theology of marriage

The theology of marriage has tended to focus on the establishment and the dissolution of marriages. This is a mistake, for it leaves us with little notion of the day-to-day married life appropriate to our Christian convictions. This situation is the result of two confusions, one about the concepts of love and marriage and one about the interpretative framework in which marriage is understood. In this light five types of marriage theologies are discussed. The claim is made that a theology which sees marriage as a member of the category of special relations, with its central interpretative metaphor, fidelity, not only brings out the proper moral significance of marriage but also offers the most theologically appropriate formulation.Mr. Bondi is a Dissertation Fellow writing on Fidelity and Agape: Special Relations in Christian Ethics in the Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.     

Richard Zaner’s Phenomenology of the Clinical Encounter

The clinical ethics propounded by Richard Zaner is unique. Partly because of his phenomenological orientation and partly because of his own daily practice as a clinical ethicist in a large university hospital, Zaner focuses on the particular concrete situations in which patients and their families confront illness and injury and struggle toward workable ways for dealing with them. He locates ethical reality in the clinical encounter. This encounter encompasses not only patient and physician but also the patients family and friends and indeed the entire lifeworld in which the patient is still striving to live. In order to illuminate the central moral constituents of such human predicaments, Zaner discusses the often-overlooked features of disruption and crisis, the changed self, the patients dependence and the physicians power, the violation of personal boundaries and their necessary reconfiguring, and the art of listening.     

Distance and fusion in Robinson Jeffers' “the purse-seine” and other poems

Distance and fusion are fundamental ideas in Bowenian thinking, especially as expressed in the dynamic of distancing and pursuing. In this paper I have used these ideas as a means to briefly examine a short selection of Robinson Jeffers' poetry, which provides us with a literary example of these concepts in action.My thanks to M. K. Lane and the anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this article for their many suggestions, especially to the reviewer who helped me better distinguish between distance and fusion, and intimacy and autonomy.     

The use of group therapy to help women with eating disorders differentiate and articulate affect

In this discussion of eating disorders, symptoms are viewed as responses to unprocessed and unprocessable affect—what Stolorow and Atwood, Krystal, and Sifneos have called alexithymia. The article explores ways in which a group experience can help to provide an arena for the articulation and exploration of this affect. The group can provide its members with the responsive milieu necessary for the development of an internal structure that eliminates the need for the eating behavior. The metaphor of a child learning to swim is used to suggest that the group process can be seen as a kind of group swimming lesson. Group members work together with the therapist to develop the necessary skills and muscles to negotiate the waves of their own feelings, making the eating behavior unnecessary.     

A Translation of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic into Basic Predicate Logic

Basic Predicate Logic, BQC, is a proper subsystem of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic, IQC. For every formula in the language {, , , , , , }, we associate two sequences of formulas 0,1,... and 0,1,... in the same language. We prove that for every sequent , there are natural numbers m, n, such that IQC , iff BQC n m. Some applications of this translation are mentioned.     

Difficult Patients in Group Analysis: The Personification of (ba) I:A/M

Following a discussion of the treatment of difficult patients in group analysis, two theories are proposed concerning a fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of groups, called Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I:A/M and the personification of basic assumption processes, in particular that of (ba) I:A/M by difficult patients. These theories are illustrated with clinical data. Special attention is given to crustacean and amoeboid forms of encapsulation as a defence against the fear of annihilation within the context of the traumatogenic process. It is suggested that for difficult patients the treatment of choice is dyadic psychotherapy/psychoanalysis followed by group analysis.     

Chris: The “crazy” kid as a family hero

A case is discussed of an eleven-year-old schizophrenic male who had made a conscious decision several years earlier to act crazy to keep his parents from fighting and divorcing. A relabeling of his crazy behavior as that of a family hero was a first step in releasing him from marital difficulties and beginning to return him to a normal life.     

Intuitionistic uniformity principles for propositions and some applications

This note deals with the prepositional uniformity principlep-UP: p x N A (p, x) x N p A (p, x) ( species of all propositions) in intuitionistic mathematics.p-UP is implied by WC and KS. But there are interestingp-UP-cases which require weak KS resp. WC only. UP for number species follows fromp-UP by extended bar-induction (ranging over propositions) and suitable weak continuity. As corollaries we have the disjunction property and the existential definability w.r.t. concrete objects. Other consequences are: there is no non-trivial countable partition of;id is the only injective function from to; there are no many-place injective prepositional functions; card () is incomparable with the cardinality of all metric spaces containing at least three elements.     

A game-based formal system for Ł∞

A formal system for , based on a game-theoretic analysis of the ukasiewicz prepositional connectives, is defined and proved to be complete. An Herbrand theorem for the predicate calculus (a variant of some work of Mostowski) and some corollaries relating to its axiomatizability are proved. The predicate calculus with equality is also considered.     

How to frame the free will problem

Conclusion The exchange is almost complete. I have argued that if we wish to view the free will problem in a non-question-begging way, we should frame the problem in more radical terms than we usually do. If we frame the problem this way, then we discover a compelling reason for rejecting all of the familiar isms in favor of my non-realism thesis. This thesis holds that free choice has a coherent meaning just in case it is treated as a subjective term; thus, if we try to view free choice as denoting classes of entities that themselves possess the characteristic of freeness, it is logically inconsistent. My thesis is supported by a certain metaphilosophical view. I admit that this metaphilosophical view — which tries to locate everything where it belongs — is neither provable nor refutable. But if my argument in this paper is correct, when we assert any of the positions that presuppose the coherence of free will (Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Libertarianism, Incompatibilism, Compatibilism), we should add the fact that we have adopted a metaphilosophical view that supports these. Since these metaphilosophies are non-truth-tracking views, our joint declaration of our lower level free will theory and its supporting metaphilosophy will sound Pickwickian (e.g., I believe that Libertarianism is true and I support that view with the metaphilosophical thesis that the most important role of philosophy is not to track truth, but to create an intellectual climate best for improving the human condition.) If I have shown that my opponents are forced to such declarations, I will be satisfied.     

Structuring argumentation in a social constructivist framework: A pedagogy with computer support

What we usually think of as higher order skills in argumentation can be profitably viewed as systematic structures for organizing and representing information. Standard terms like line of argument, synthesis, analysis and draft can be viewed as ways of constructing, storing, and accessing data in a social context — data structures for social communication. What makes argument difficult are the multiple structures that arguers have to construct and negotiate when reading and composing. In this paper, we describe the WARRANT project, a project designed to identify data structures of written argument and to design and implement computer tools to aid in the reading and design of argument.