Consequence and Interpolation in ?ukasiewicz Logic

Building on Wójcicki??s work on infinite-valued ?ukasiewicz logic ?_??, we give a self-contained proof of the deductive interpolation theorem for ?_??. This paper aims at introducing the reader to the geometry of ?ukasiewicz logic.     

Therapists’ Perspectives of the Cotherapy Experience in a Training Setting

The experience of cotherapy has been sparsely addressed in the literature. This qualitative study’s goals were to explore (a) the usefulness of cotherapy as a training model (b) the impact of cotherapy on services provided; (c) the impact of being trained in a cotherapy model; and (d) factors that both facilitated and hindered the process of cotherapy. The authors conducted a focus group interview with seven participants who graduated from a COAMFTE accredited MFT master’s program. Participants unanimously reported they believed cotherapy impacted client outcomes and training. They also expressed that cotherapists’ unwillingness to address issues within the cotherapy team negatively impacted the cotherapy relationship and client outcomes. Data analysis yielded four main themes, including cotherapy as a vehicle for personal growth, accountability in the cotherapy relationship, need for safety in the cotherapy relationship, and cotherapy team’s need for supervision.     

‘Mixed’ Religion Relationships and Well-being in Northern Ireland

Religion plays a pivotal role in intergroup and interpersonal relationships in Northern Ireland, and individuals traditionally marry within their own religious group. However, ‘mixed’ marriages between Catholics and Protestants do occur and present an interesting, yet under researched, dynamic within this divided society. Both religion and committed relationships have been associated with physical and psychological health, but little is known about how divergence in religious beliefs within relationships impacts on health. A secondary data analysis of the Northern Ireland cohort of the Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study was conducted to investigate the impact of mixed religion relationships on physical and psychological well-being in Northern Ireland. Less than 10 % of relationships were mixed religion relationships, and being in a mixed relationship was associated with poorer mental health but not with physical health. Mixed religion relationships in Northern Ireland are relatively uncommon in Northern Ireland, but are an important form of intergroup contact, as such it is important to fully understand the implications for the individuals involved and develop mechanisms to support those individuals psychological well-being.     

Setting the stage for children’s participation in worship practices

How children participate in worship practices is largely determined by adults. Adults set the stage; they shape the physical environment and determine the subject matter. Adults design the format for children’s participation in various forms of worship and the roles adults perform influence the interactions with children. Many different intentions inform these design choices and roles: Intentions revolving around faith, liturgy, community, and experience. The way adults shape worship with children points to the significance of spirituality. When adults perform directing roles, children’s spirituality can find a point of reference in stories and traditions while adults themselves gain from the process of translation this involves. When adults facilitate exploration, this nourishes both children’s and adults’ spirituality. Finally, when adults and children participate in worship practices together, it may contribute to a sense of community in which faith can be lived and shared.     

The Genetic Counselor’s Role in Managing Ethical Dilemmas Arising in the Laboratory Setting

Ethical dilemmas are encountered commonly in the setting of the clinical genetic testing laboratory due to the complexity of genetic testing and the number of relevant stakeholders involved in the genetic testing process. Based on their clinical training and role within the laboratory, genetic counselors are uniquely equipped to identify and facilitate management of ethical dilemmas. This paper reviews the historical context of ethical theory and its application to the field of genetic counseling. Theoretical and applied ethics are explored in the context of dilemmas arising in the laboratory setting, with a focus on the role of the laboratory genetic counselor in managing ethical dilemmas. Two illustrative case examples are provided.     

‘Aloneness’ and the problem of realism in classical Sākhya and yoga

The concept of kaivalya (literally, ‘aloneness’) is of crucial importance to the systems of classical Indian philosophy known as Sākhya and Yoga. Indeed, kaivalya is the supreme soteriological goal to which these systems are directed. Various statements concerning this final goal appear in the classical texts—namely, the Sākhyakārikā and Yogasūtra—and yet there is no consensus within modern scholarship about how the concept is to be interpreted. More specifically, there appears to be a great deal of confusion over the implications of kaivalya for the existence of the empirical world. In this article I discuss the principal difficulties encountered by existing interpretations of kaivalya, and propose that these difficulties result from an unwarranted assumption that Sākhya and Yoga take a realist view with regard to the empirical world. I further propose that these difficulties can, in large part, be overcome when the assumption of realism is set aside.     

Implementing the Scientist–Practitioner Model in the Hospital Setting

Psychologists who work in hospital settings confront assorted challenges in implementing the scientist–practitioner model. Clinical psychologists must deal with the tension between an evidence-based model and the realities of clinical practice. Psychologists can gain a better understanding of what it means to function as a scientist–practitioner by understanding current debates in both psychology and medicine on the relationship between research and practice. Psychologists are not unique in the slow pace of implementing research into practice. Psychologists in hospitals can make a contribution to the treatment of medical patients by emphasizing the role of the treatment relationship in health-care outcomes. Medicine’s use of practice-based research networks provides a valuable structure for psychologists to emulate in order to function as active participants in the collection of practice-based evidence rather than passively accommodating to the evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.     

Thomason’s Paradox for Belief,and Two Consequence Relations

Thomason (1979/2010)’s argument against competence psychologism in semantics envisages a representation of a subject’s competence as follows: he understands his own language in the sense that he can identify the semantic content of each of its sentences, which requires that the relation between expression and content be recursive. Then if the scientist constructs a theory that is meant to represent the body of the subject’s beliefs, construed as assent to the content of the pertinent sentences, and that theory satisfies certain ‘natural assumptions’, then it implies that the subject is inconsistent if the beliefs include arithmetic. I challenge the result by insisting that the motivation for Thomason’s principle (ii), via Moore’s Paradox, leads to a more complex representation, in which stating the facts and expressing one’s beliefs are treated differently. Certain logical connections among expressions of assent, and between expression and statement, are a matter of consequence on pain of pragmatic incoherence, not consequence on pain of classical logical inconsistency. But while this salvages the possibility that a modification of the above sort of representation could be adequate, Thomason’s devastating conclusion returns if the scientist identifies himself as the subject of that representation, even when paying heed to the requirement of pragmatic coherence of the sort highlighted by Moore’s Paradox.     

Teasing ‘Islam’: ‘Islam’ as the Other Side of ‘Tolerance’ in Contemporary Dutch Politics

This article deals with the role of ‘Islam’ in contemporary Dutch political discourses on tolerance. I will show how Islam is described as an ideology (and not as a religion) competing with liberal values. I argue that political disputes are not at all about Islam as a living religion, but about ‘Islam’ as a culturally presumed menace to, or negative projection of, dominant Dutch imaginaries, such as tolerance and free speech, that are taken as elementary conditions for a liberal democratic state. The first part of this article deals with the staging and development of ‘Islam’ in Dutch politics since the 1970s. Part two develops a theoretical understanding of the framing of ‘Islam’ as the opponent of ‘tolerance’ and argues that this position shows a typical modern stance.     

Setting the Record Straight: Confucius’ Notion of Ren

Comparative studies involving early Confucian ethics often appear to assume that it is a unified approach to morality. This essay challenges that assumption by arguing that Confucius had a significantly different conception of ren, commonly viewed as central to Confucian ethics, from that of Mencius. It is generally accepted that ren has two senses: in a narrow sense, it is the virtue of benevolence (or compassion); in a broad sense, it is the all-encompassing ethical ideal. Both senses fail to capture Confucius’ conception of ren, for the narrow sense fits only Mencius’ understanding of ren, while the broad sense lacks emphasis and precision. I propose a third sense of ren, that is, ren as an integral, higher-order virtue with respect as its most salient component. This sense of ren is more in keeping with the textual evidence in the Analects. It played a key role in Confucius’ political-moral thinking and made his doctrine diverge considerably from that of Mencius, who understood ren primarily as compassion.     

Adult Learners’ Informal Learning Experiences in Formal Education Setting

Schools typically ignore an enormous part of students’ learning, i.e. informal learning. Such informal processes include intentional, incidental, and tacit learning and tend to be unnoticed because of their taken-for-granted nature. By conducting in-depth interviews with 15 students, two teachers, and two program coordinators of an adult education program, this study examines informal learning outcomes, processes, and personal informal learning experiences within formal education. The study aimed to reveal the interaction between formal and informal learning as well as the respondents’ experiences in this matter. Respondents report a diverse array of informal learning results. Respondents describe informal learning to occur through self-directed learning projects, daily conversations and experiences, and the program’s informal and hidden curriculum. According to respondents, informal learning has the potential to enrich and complement formal learning. Moreover, the findings point to potential personal, educational, and societal benefits of revealing informal learning within formal education. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

‘Nature’ and ‘Elementary Nature’ in Phenomenology and Sāṅkhya

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This is a comparative study. It is in two parts: ‘nature’ and ‘elementary nature’. ‘Nature (of things)’ as...     

‘Necessity’ and ‘provability’ in the later wittgenstein

I present a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of logic and mathematics. This interpretation, like others, emphasizes Wittgenstein's attempt to reconcile platonistic and constructivistic approaches. But, unlike other interpretations, mine explains that attempt in terms of Wittgenstein's position about the relations between our concepts of necessity and provability. If what I say here is correct, then we can rescue Wittgenstein from the charge of naive relativism. For his relativism extends only to provability, and not to necessity.     

Professors’ Behaviors and Attributes that Promote U.S. Women’s Success in Male-Dominated Academic Majors: Results from a Mixed Methods Study

High rates of attrition of women from male-dominated academic majors may stem from both individual-level personal attributes (e.g., lower confidence in skills; Sax et al. 2015) and non-supportive environmental factors (e.g., chilly climate; Blickenstaff 2005; Hill et al. 2010). Grounded in social cognitive career theory (Lent et al. 1994), the present study utilized a mixed methods approach to identify faculty behaviors and attributes that support women in male-dominated majors and help to prevent attrition. In Study 1, data from eight focus groups involving 23 senior women in male-dominated majors at a mid-sized U.S. Midwestern university were coded to identify common themes exploring why certain professors’ behaviors/attributes are useful to women in male-dominated majors. Results indicated that professors’ behaviors led to learning experiences that helped women create personal connections within departments and provided them with department or career-related information as well as opportunities to gauge/demonstrate their skills to combat the idea that they fit the incompetent-woman stereotype. In Study 2, survey data (n = 65) examined professors’ support, academic advising time, and percentage of female faculty within a department as buffers against the negative effects of sexism on women’s academic achievement, physical health, and social belongingness. Sexist events in the department were associated with women’s reduced sense of belonging, but academic advising time served as a buffer of this association. Overall, our results indicated that proximal environments are important and that professors’ behaviors that support women without singling them out were most helpful.     

National Survey of Psychologists’ Training and Practice in Breaking Bad News: A Mixed Methods Study of the MUM Effect

Research on breaking bad news has involved undergraduates, medical students, and physicians. However, to date, no studies have examined how, or whether, psychologists are trained to break bad news, as well as their current practice of breaking bad news. This mixed methods study explored the training and practice of 329 licensed psychologists/APA members in breaking bad news, using the MUM effect as a theoretical backdrop. Results suggest (1) psychologists are, as hypothesized, significantly more reluctant to break bad news than good news, (2) anxiety accounts for 30.6% of the variance in their reluctance, and (3) three-out-of-four psychologists break bad news “to some extent” or more, most typically related to a patient’s psychological health, major Axis I diagnosis, or learning disability. Results also suggest most psychologists are not trained to break bad news, with only 2.7% being familiar with existing recommendations and guidelines; and anxiety, concerns for self/other, context, and norms play an important role in the bad news breaking process. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed and a training model is proposed.     

Chemical and Biological Weapons in the ‘New Wars’

The strategic use of disease and poison in warfare has been subject to a longstanding and cross-cultural taboo that condemns the hostile exploitation of poisons and disease as the act of a pariah. In short, biological and chemical weapons are simply not fair game. The normative opprobrium is, however, not fixed, but context dependent and, as a social phenomenon, remains subject to erosion by social (or more specifically, antisocial) actors. The cross cultural understanding that fighting with poisons and disease is reprehensible, that they are taboo, is codified through a web of interconnected measures, principal amongst these are the 1925 Geneva Protocol; the Biological Weapons Convention; and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whilst these treaties have weathered the storm of international events reasonably well, their continued health is premised on their being ‘tended to’ in the face of contextual changes, particularly facing changes in science and technology, as well as the changed nature and character of conflict. This article looks at the potential for normative erosion of the norm against chemical and biological weapons in the face of these contextual changes and the creeping legitimization of chemical and biological weapons.