Not “Not ‘Better Never to Have Been’”: A Reply to Christine Overall

Philosophia - In her Why Have Children?, Christine Overall takes issue with my anti-natalist arguments that it is better never to come into existence. She provides three criticisms of my arguments...     

Emotional Responses to Changing Feedback: Is It Better to Have Won and Lost Than Never to Have Won At All?

Two experiments investigated how self-esteem guides people's emotional responses to changing evaluative feedback. In both experiments, participants received an initial evaluation (either positive or negative) followed by a second evaluation (either positive or negative). Emotional reactions to the second evaluation were then assessed. High self-esteem participants found feedback that was consistently negative to be most distressing, whereas low self-esteem participants were most disturbed by feedback that changed from positive to negative. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

How Might I Have Been?

What would my life have been like if I had been born more intelligent? Or taller? Or a member of the opposite sex? Or a non‐biological being? It is plausible that some of these questions make sense, while others stretch the limits of sense making. In addressing questions of how I might have been, genetic essentialism is popular, but this article argues that genetic essentialism, and other versions of origin essentialism for organisms, must be rejected. It considers the prospects for counterpart theory and shows how counterpart theory can be used to illuminate volitional accounts of identity as proposed by Harry Frankfurt. This enables one to make sense of claims that, say, being gay, or Deaf, or Black, can be essential to someone's identity. The discussion is then extended to show how it can be made applicable to the transworld identity theorist who denies that individuals possess essential properties.     

Can it Ever Be Better Never to Have Existed At All? Person‐Based Consequentialism and a New Repugnant Conclusion

Broome and others have argued that it makes no sense, or at least that it cannot be true, to say that it is better for a given person that he or she exist than not. That argument can be understood to suggest that, likewise, it makes no sense, or at least that it cannot be true, to say that it is worse for a given person that he or she exist than that he or she never have existed at all. This argument is of critical importance to the question of whether consequentialist theory should take a traditional, aggregative form or a less conventional, person-affecting, or person-based form. I believe that, potentially, the argument represents a far more serious threat to the person-based approach than does, for example, Parfit's two medical programmes example. Parfit's example nicely illuminates the distinction between aggregative and person-based approaches and raises important questions. But the example--though not, I think, by Parfit--is sometimes pressed into service as a full-fledged counterexample against the person-based approach. As such, I argue, the example is not persuasive. In contrast, the Broomeian argument, if correct, is definitive. For that argument relies on certain metaphysical assumptions and various uncontroversial normative claims--and hence nicely avoids putting into play the controversial normative claims that lie at the very heart of the debate. The purpose of the present paper, then, is to evaluate the Broomeian argument. I argue that this potentially definitive challenge to a person-based approach does not in fact succeed.     

Psychoanalysts Working With Patients Who Have Been Subjected to Torture Due to Socio-Political Circumstances: Possible or Impossible Challenge?

This paper presents some comments about the clinical case treated by two Chilean psychoanalysts in the period of violation of human rights, Isidora and her son Martín. We should recognize the pain of listening as psychoanalysts to this kind of story reopens our own wounds, which reappear again, showing some of the toughest realities in the curtailment of personal freedoms like torture, abuse, and violence, which strip away the subject’s identity and any consideration of their selfhood. All therapists or analysts who work in such a situation, whether or not they have been through similar traumas, will be included, affected, and pierced by the social and cultural context. In these cases, it is not only the patient and her internal world that is being treated, but the analysts as well, as they are not outsiders to the conflict. Analyze patients like this case or similar cases could be a possible or sometimes an impossible challenge?     

Preschool Assessment: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

This article reviews trends in the assessment of preschool children. Preschool assessment is compared with the assessment of other populations and early history, current status, recent advances, and future needs are discussed. Preschool assessment is seen as having both similarities with and important differences from other types of assessment. Though the last two decades have seen changes in models, procedures, and theories, it is concluded that much remains to be accomplished.     

The Healer's Mandate: Seeing “Things Unseen”

The challenged posed to modern scientific medicine by alternative and complementary therapies is described, lines of thought drawn from the history and psychology of religions are used to focus discussion on rituals of healing, and a process of understanding illness as a spiritual event with lifestyle lessons to teach is articulated and illustrated.     

Have you been to Paris?

Two experiments examined how people answer questions of the form ‘Have you been to X?’ where X is a city or a country abroad. In the natural experiment subjects were not given any material to memorize, and were timed as they indicated whether they themselves had been to the place in question. In the artificial experiment subjects were given places to memorize and were asked to imagine they had been to them. The test was similar to that of the natural experiment. The natural experiment supports a hierarchical search proceeding first on the level of countries and then on that of cities. The results of the artificial experiment reflect the structure of the memorized information. The comparison between the two experiments is made from a general methodological perspective.     

The Role of Religion in Therapy: Time for Psychologists to Have a Little Faith?

The argument has been made that religious and spiritual (R/S) forms of treatment, or R/S adaptations of existing treatments, are an appropriate, culturally sensitive, and potentially efficacious method of intervention when working clinically with religious patients experiencing psychological, behavioral, or physiological dysfunction. The previous articles in this special series describe four such interventions designed for use with patients with particular presenting problems including serious mental illness, cancer, eating disorders, and scrupulosity. This article offers a brief historical presentation on the growth of interest in R/S in clinical psychology and behavioral medicine, with particular attention to the general issue of the role of values in therapy, and includes criticisms of integrating R/S in treatment. The difficulty of appreciating unique R/S perspectives and their relevance for particular clients is emphasized and the question of whether a “true” understanding of R/S beliefs necessarily leads to better health is examined. Each of the four therapies presented in this special series is individually analyzed, and it is clear that they offer sensitive and culturally relevant approaches to treating the various disorders, though areas of potential improvement or possible confusion are highlighted. Finally, the following are deemed essential if R/S-informed therapies are to impact the field and be appropriately introduced with clients: (a) training of future and current practitioners; (b) longitudinal research on R/S; (c) outcome studies of R/S interventions; and (d) adequate funding for the achievement of these goals.     

When is it Selectively Advantageous to Have True Beliefs? Sandwiching the Better Safe than Sorry Argument

Several philosophers have argued that natural selection will favor reliable belief formation; others have been more skeptical. These traditional approaches to the evolution of rationality have been either too sketchy or else have assumed that phenotypic plasticity can be equated with having a mind. Here I develop a new model to explore the functional utility of belief and desire formation mechanisms, and defend the claim that natural selection favors reliable inference methods in a broad, but not universal, range of circumstances.     

Identities: Never the Same Again?

In response to the suggestion of treating identity as a historically bound notion (Matusov and Smith Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 46, 2012), its genealogy is further explored. First establishing that identity has been understood in a particular personal way, and that genealogy might carry beyond this conception, as it also carries beyond the notions of class and adolescence that are used to contextualize identity. Then opting for treating historically bound notions as dynamic, studying them in the continuous interaction between conceptualization and practice, as processes and verbs rather than essences and substantives. Finally suggesting to dissociate identity from selfhood by looking at why, when and to whom we need to identify ourselves and also inverting the question: why and when do we ask others to identify themselves? After all, sameness and difference are two sides of a coin called identity, and what is looked at is a matter of how it is looked at.     

Reactions to Intragroup Deviance: Does Disidentification Have a Role?

In this study, we address previous evidence about the interchangeable use of derogation and disidentification in protecting the self from intragroup deviance. We argue that when the in-group stands for a valued social identity, members may disidentify from the group, but only if the immediate context provides no opportunity to derogate. In the present experiments (n = 80 and n = 79), we provided or did not provide participants with the opportunity to recommend a punishment for an in-group or an out-group deviant. We also measured in-group identification before and after exposure to deviant behavior and after judgment. The results show that participants first disidentified from the in-group but, when presented with an opportunity to judge the deviant, also derogated. Importantly, participants who could judge the deviant also recovered their initial in-group identification level. Participants’ reactions to the out-group deviant suggest they used an intergroup rather than intragroup strategy.