A DISCOURSE ON SOPHOCLES: FREUD AND DETERMINISM

A study on the subjective experience of neuroleptic treatment is used as an example of research that employs psychoanalytic theory and methodology outside the clinical situation. Psychoanalytic tenets such as psychosexuality and the unconscious are highlighted, and the systematic study of internal reality is discussed with reference to the study on neuroleptics, the results of which are presented in extenso. Metapsychology is considered as a means for systematization, and self-reflexive countertransference analysis is seen as a means for fostering trustworthiness and reliability. The validity criteria discussed are clinical relevance, coherence, and originality (as distinct from merely confirming received theory). Value conflicts between academic and psychoanalytic scientific cultures are described with reference to the data of the specimen study. The concluding discussion includes a brief comparison of the time-limited interview method with long-term, clinical psychoanalytic inquiries.

“Flechsig's Brain science is the theory and Schreber's delusions are the practice of the same traumatic collapse of…subjectivity, of the gap separating bodily cause and symbolic effect. Schreber's point would seem to be that the elimination of the gap—the attempt to fill it with neuroanatomical knowledge—is nothing short of soul murder.” Eric Santner (1996), My own private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber's secret history of modernity (p. 75)     

Philosophy,mathematics, science and computation

Attempts to lay a foundation for the sciences based on modern mathematics are questioned. In particular, it is not clear that computer science should be based on set-theoretic mathematics. Set-theoretic mathematics has difficulties with its own foundations, making it reasonable to explore alternative foundations for the sciences. The role of computation within an alternative framework may prove to be of great potential in establishing a direction for the new field of computer science.Whitehead's theory of reality is re-examined as a foundation for the sciences. His theory does not simply attempt to add formal rigor to the sciences, but instead relies on the methods of the biological and social sciences to construct his world-view. Whitehead's theory is a rich source of notions that are intended to explain every element of experience. It is a product of Whitehead's earlier attempt to provide a mathematical foundation for the physical sciences and is still consistent with modern physics.A computer simulation language is, in fact, a theory of reality; one that is often based on extremely simplistic notions. Simulation languages have evolved from the various programming languages and not from the development of their underlying world-view. The use of an established theory of reality, such as Whitehead's, as the basis of a simulation language is proposed as a way of extending the usefulness of computer simulation as an experimental tool for the theory.The simulation language is a first step in this direction. Based on Whitehead's notion of concrescence and a formalization in the typed -calculus, provides a notation and method for the construction and simulation of real-world phenomena. Both philosophy and computer science stand to benefit from such an attempt. Whitehead's theory gains a testing tool, while computer science gains a significantly more advanced simulation language. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to the finality of statement is an exhibition of folly. A. N. Whitehead,Process and Reality.     

Genetic epistemology,history of science and genetic psychology

Genetic epistemology analyzes the growth of knowledge both in the individual person (genetic psychology) and in the socio-historical realm (the history of science). But what the relationship is between the history of science and genetic psychology remains unclear. The biogenetic law that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is inadequate as a characterization of the relation. A critical examination of Piaget's Introduction à l'Épistémologie Généntique indicates these are several examples of what I call stage laws common to both areas. Furthermore, there is at least one example of a paradoxical inverse relation between the two — geometry. Both similarities and differences between the two domains require an explanation, a developmental explanation. Although such an explanation seems to be psychological in nature, it is not merely empirical but also normative (since psychology is both factual and normative according to Piaget). Hence genetic epistemology need not be reduced to psychology (narrowly conceived), but rather should be seen as being both empirical and normative and thus similar to certain types of contemporary philosophy of science.I wish to thank Guy Cellerier, Ken Freeman, Pierre Moessinger, and Pat McKee who provided stimulating conversation on several of the issues discussed in this paper.     

B. “Verification” of statements in psychiatry

(1) It remains to be seen if in the field of Psychiatry just as in that of Psychology the verbal output of a subject can be submitted to verification. Many statements of a highly emotional character being merely symptoms of certain dispositions have no direct communicative sense at all.(2) It being one of the characteristics of the mentally ill to loose contact and exchange of ideas with other people, the question naturally suggests itself if this symptom may be at the bottom of the phenomenon of these persons taking refuge in logical and ideological terminologies, their talk being a kind of verbal autism.(3) The expression verbal autism is used here for statements on a purely subjective level. This kind of statements prevailing with mental patients, the conversation between observer and subject tends to the monologue.(4) Here we can find too that statements of a purely subjective nature appear as indicative ones. Even physical and logical terms applied by the subject during the sittings do not have any physical or logical reference. This characteristic of the subject often baffles the observer. So confusion of verbal levels occurs frequently.(5) The introduction of a psychological term like verstehen does not solve the problem under consideration, but renders the mystery only the better camouflaged.     

Binary action based estimation of propensities

An observer is to make inference statements about a quantityp, called apropensity and bounded between 0 and 1, based on the observation thatp does or does not exceed a constantc. The propensityp may have an interpretation as a proportion, as a long-run relative frequency, or as a personal probability held by some subject. Applications in medicine, engineering, political science, and, most especially, human decision making are indicated. Bayes solutions for the observer are obtained based on prior distributions in the mixture of beta distribution family; these are then specialized to power-function prior distributions. Inference about logp and log odds is considered. Multiple-action problems are considered in which the focus of inference shifts to theprocess generating the propensitiesp, both in the case of a process parameter known to the subject and unknown. Empirical Bayes techniques are developed for observer inference aboutc when is known to the subject. A Bayes rule, a minimax rule and a beta-minimax rule are constructed for the subject when he is uncertain about.This research was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and was monitored by ONR under Contract No. N00014-77-C-0095. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research, or Carnegie-Mellon University.     

The social postulate of theoretical ethics

Conclusion Kant believed all and only the guilty should be punished. Other retributivists believed that only guilt should bring punishment down on a person. In neither way is the retributive theory sufficiently distinguished from utilitarianism for, on contingent grounds, the utilitarian may agree with either of these theses. The advantage of PRJ is that it brings out the difference between retributivism and utilitarianism more sharply while at the same time it manages to be a less stern and unyielding view than traditional retributivism. The retributivist need not deny the core of good sense in utilitarianism, and he certainly need not deny the connection between morality and happiness. His view is that punishment does not have to produce good consequences in order to be justified. It suffices that it be deserved and that it not produce a set of clearly bad consequences. If it is true that punishment generally does have bad consequences which more than outweigh its good consequences then retributivists and utilitarians should join hands in their condemnation of punishment. The heart of the difference between the retributivist and the utilitarian is that the latter counts punishment itself as an evil but believes that, generally speaking, it is an evil which is instrumental in the production of enough good to out-weigh its intrinsic demerit. The retributivist does not regard punishment as an evil. The pain of punishment is not by itself a reason for not punishing (so long as it is not excessive). Insofar as utilitarianism is the view that no considerations but those of utility should justify punishment, it is only one side of that counterfeit coin the other side of which is Kant's dictum: ...Woe to him who creeps through the serpent-windings of Utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may discharge him from the Justice of Punishment, or even from the due measure of it.... It is irrational for Kant to rule out concern for utility but it is also irrational for the utilitarian to rule out concern for retribution.I have tried to show in this paper that the two main aspects of a plausible theory of retribution - PRJ and that the punishment should fit the crime - can be vindicated in terms of acceptable beliefs one of which is incompatible with utilitarianism (PRJ), and one of which does not derive the respect we accord it from any connection with utilitarianism. I emphasize, however, what I previously stated, that the retributivist does not have to believe that retributive justice must prevail at all costs. What is asked for is the recognition that one purpose of punishment (and not the one purpose) can justifiably have nothing to do with utility. The sensible retributivist will concede, and gladly, that there are more things in heaven and earth than retribution.     

SIMONE WEIL'S SPIRITUAL CRITIQUE OF MODERN SCIENCE: AN HISTORICAL‐CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Simone Weil is widely recognized today as one of the profound religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet while her interpretation of natural science is critical to Weil's overall understanding of religious faith, her writings on science have received little attention compared with her more overtly theological writings. The present essay, which builds on Vance Morgan's Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Necessity, and Love (2005), critically examines Weil's interpretation of the history of science. Weil believed that mathematical science, for the ancient Pythagoreans a mystical expression of the love of God, had in the modern period degenerated into a kind of reification of method that confuses the means of representing nature with nature itself. Beginning with classical (Newtonian) science's representation of nature as a machine, and even more so with the subsequent assimilation of symbolic algebra as the principal language of mathematical physics, modern science according to Weil trades genuine insight into the order of the world for symbolic manipulation yielding mere predictive success and technological domination of nature. I show that Weil's expressed desire to revive a Pythagorean scientific approach, inspired by the “mysterious complicity” in nature between brute necessity and love, must be recast in view of the intrinsically symbolic character of modern mathematical science. I argue further that a genuinely mystical attitude toward nature is nascent within symbolic mathematical science itself.     

Mechanics Lost: Husserl’s Galileo and Ihde’s Telescope

Don Ihde has recently launched a sweeping attack against Husserl’s late philosophy of science. Ihde takes particular exception to Husserl’s portrayal of Galileo and to the results Husserl draws from his understanding of Galilean science. Ihde’s main point is that Husserl paints an overly intellectualistic picture of the “father of modern science”, neglecting Galileo’s engagement with scientific instruments such as, most notably, the telescope. According to Ihde, this omission is not merely a historiographical shortcoming. On Ihde’s view, it is only on the basis of a distorted picture of Galileo that Husserl can “create“ (Ihde 24:69–82 2011) the division between Lifeworld and the “world of science“, a division that is indeed fundamental for Husserl’s overall position. Hence, if successful, Ihde’s argument effectively undermines Husserl’s late philosophy of science. The aim of this paper is to show that Ihde’s criticism does not stand up to closer historical or philosophical scrutiny.     

Kant and the General Law of Causality

Summary In the Second Analogy, Kant provides a deductive argument as proof that Every event has a cause. This claim, GLC is the conclusion of a valid argument consisting of five premises P ₁ ... P ₅, which jointly imply GLC. The premises P ₁ ... P ₅ are true, empirical statements about successive perceptual sequences when they serve as ground for correctly saying s ₁ This is an event, or s ₂ This is a new happening, or s ₃ I perceive an objective successive sequence of percepts.However, unlike these premises or even s type statements, Kant's conclusion, GLC, is not a statement that is asserted within empirical or experiential discourse. No one can say on purely observational grounds that every event has a cause since no one can be a witness to every event for all time. But as an unstated claim whose truth is a necessary condition for the truth of P ₁ ... P ₅ (p ₁ ... p ₅ jointly imply GLC), GLC is a presupposition. Furthermore, GLC is true without doubt since the premises that presuppose it are obviously true under the present minimal interpretation. Thus, while GLC is not established by observation of constant uniformities, as Hume correctly believed, neither, is its truth merely presupposed by Kant, who deductively demonstrated the truth of this important presupposition in answer to Hume.     

Sociology and the Twenty-First Century: Breaking the Deadlock and Going Beyond the Postmodern Meta-reflection Through the Relational Paradigm

The fact that sociology was born during the period of the Industrial Revolution does not authorize us to consider its discourse as lacking in philosophical elements that are rooted in a previous age. Neither can we consider as fully accomplished its role for modernity, nonetheless today, in an after-modern climate (in the sense of Donati 2009), sociology is trying to escape the prejudice of modern ethics to go beyond the clichés of postmodernity (Ardigò 1989 Ardigò, A. 1989. Per una sociologia oltre il post-moderno, Bari: Laterza.  [Google Scholar]). Filled with self-reflexivity and reductionist dichotomies, the twenty-first-century sociologist feels the need to “own factual reality again” and to rediscover “a new metaphysics of the social world” (Donati 1993). If self-consciousness is in the world, sociology, perhaps, has to go beyond science and turn into “globology” (Arnason 1990), or into a sociology on a global scale, which looks at how world unification has occurred. In order to accomplish this, it has to be careful about what it was able to do best in the past: “to foresee and to enhance sustainable change,” to be aware of the “relational connections,” which no mathematics will ever be able to show, to build new “memes,” and to decide to accelerate or to go against the phenomena it encounters in its observation. Society in the twenty-first century will go beyond postmodern stagnation and turn into something new (After-modernity? Hyper-modernity? Trans-modernity?) if it is to be helped by the interpretations of sociology. Notwithstanding the endeavors to change, most Westernized countries are trapped in the lib-lab model, while China argues for a complete reconfiguration of the concepts of public and private, states and market, freedom and controls, copyright and copyleft. What is going to happen in the future? Are we going to fall into a technocratic and authoritarian form of neo-modernization? Are we going to rediscover the system of exchanging gifts? Are we going to create a fully “relational” society, going beyond the Hegelian categories of right and left? It will be the role of a “strong and relational” sociology to identify all the “viable” scenarios and to prepare its advent in symbolic terms.     

Ways in which coherence is confirmation conducive

Recent works in epistemology show that the claim that coherence is truth conducive – in the sense that, given suitable ceteris paribus conditions, more coherent sets of statements are always more probable – is dubious and possibly false. From this, it does not follows that coherence is a useless notion in epistemology and philosophy of science. Dietrich and Moretti (Philosophy of science 72(3): 403–424, 2005) have proposed a formal of account of how coherence is confirmation conducive—that is, of how the coherence of a set of statements facilitates the confirmation of such statements. This account is grounded in two confirmation transmission properties that are satisfied by some of the measures of coherence recently proposed in the literature. These properties explicate everyday and scientific uses of coherence. In his paper, I review the main findings of Dietrich and Moretti (2005) and define two evidence-gathering properties that are satisfied by the same measures of coherence and constitute further ways in which coherence is confirmation conducive. At least one of these properties vindicates important applications of the notion of coherence in everyday life and in science.     

Is Thomas Reid a Direct Realist about Perception?

The controversy over the interpretative issue—is Thomas Reid a perceptual direct realist?—has recently had channelled into it a host of imaginative ideas about what direct perception truly means. Paradoxically enough, it is the apparent contradiction at the heart of his view of perception which keeps teasing us to review our concepts: time and again, Reid stresses that the very idea of any mental intermediaries implies scepticism, yet, nevertheless insists that sensations are signs of objects. But if sensory signs are not mental intermediaries, what are they? Hasn't Reid merely swapped the common ‘sensation’ for the notorious ‘idea’, ending up with indirect realism? ^{1 1}This view is attributed to Reid by Hamilton (1865) and Mill (1877) , as well as Duggan 1960, Immerwahr 1978 , Chappell 1989 , Putnam 1994 , and Wolterstorff 2001 . Madden 1986 refuses to assign sensations any cognitive role. Others think that sensations are compatible with direct realism: See Cummins 1974, Daniels 1974, DeRose 1989, Pappas 1989, Haldane 1989, Copenhaver 2000 , and Van Cleve 2004 .
Current imaginative strategies answer negatively: Reid's sensory sign does not contradict direct perception, and those who think otherwise merely fail to understand what it means.     

Outline of a new principle of mathematical psychology (1851)

Summary The paper presents a translation of Appendix 2 of the second volume of Fechner's Zend-Avesta (1851), which contains the first outline of psychophysics as the quantitative science of mind-body relations. Fechner argues that mathematical psychology must be based on observation of physical phenomena, because observation of mental phenomena results in equality judgments only. The logarithmic formula is not yet based on Weber's law, but on various observations showing that mental intensities increase at a slower rate than the corresponding physical intensities. The physical substrate of mental phenomena is oscillatory and can be decomposed into a main wave and ripples superimposed on it, a conception which is illustrated by attentional phenomena and by sleeping and waking. The notion of negative sensations is introduced and discussed. A variant of the logarithmic law is proposed for higher mental activities. Throughout, Fechner's main concern is with what he called inner psychophysics in his later writings.Translated and edited by Eckart Scheerer Selection from: G. T. Fechner, Zend-Avesta;; oder über die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits, Leipzig: Voss 1851, Vol. 2, pp. 373–386     

The Problem of Memory Knowledge

When one recalls that P, how is one justified in believing that P? I refute the three most natural answers to this question: a memory belief is not justified by a belief in the reliability of memory; a memory experience does not provide a new, foundational justification for a belief; and memory does not merely preserve the same justification a belief had when first adopted. Instead, the justification of a memory belief is a product of both the initial justification for adopting it and the justification for retaining it provided by seeming memories.     

Phenomenological Views on Intersubjectivity: Towards a Reinterpretation of Consciousness

Intersubjectivity and consciousness are reinterpreted according to the dynamic and relational coordinates of lived experience. Consciousness is not just another property of the subject, but rather the condition itself of his/her own being-in-the-world. The different aspects of consciousness are the moments and movements which constitute its intentional structure. These structures lead us to reinterpret material embodiment, temporality, and intersubjectivity as the “complex” steps taken by consciousness, which in its movements does not turn inward, on itself like a transcendental, reasoning, and self-centred consciousness, but, on the contrary, as an embodied consciousness immersed in others and in the world.

Why ‘believes’ is not a vague predicate

According to what I call the ‘Vagueness Thesis’ (‘VT’) about belief, ‘believes’ is a vague predicate. On this view, our concept of belief admits of borderline cases: one can ‘half-believe’ something (Price in Belief, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969) or be ‘in-between believing’ it (Schwitzgebel in Philos Q 51:76–82, 2001, Noûs 36:249–275, 2002, Pac Philos Q 91:531–553, 2010). In this article, I argue that VT is false and present an alternative picture of belief. I begin by considering a case—held up as a central example of vague belief—in which someone sincerely claims something to be true and yet behaves in a variety of other ways as if she believes that it is not. I argue that, even from the third-person perspective prioritised by proponents of VT, the case does not motivate VT. I present an alternative understanding of the case according to which the person in question believes as they say they do yet also has a belief-discordant implicit attitude otherwise. Moreover, I argue that, independently of the interpretation of any particular case, VT fails to accommodate the first-person perspective on belief. Belief is not only an item of one’s psychology that helps explain one’s behaviour; it is what one takes to be true. This fact about belief manifests itself in the nature of deliberation concerning whether to believe something and that of introspection regarding whether one believes something. Attending to these phenomena reveals that VT is not merely unmotivated, but untenable.     

Types of Institutions as Patterns of Regulated Behaviour

Nowadays, neo-institutionalistic approaches are prominent in economics, political science, the science of public administration and sociology. There is a general complaint about the vagueness of the concept of institutions and the apparent disparity of phenomena falling under it. This article shows how institutional legal theory provides a typology of institutions as sets of rules and corresponding patterns of regulated behaviour that can help to avert much confusion. The typologys usefulness is tested by applying it to an array of private governance structures distinguished by transaction cost economics.The author would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.See for an extensive account of these two developments K. van Kersbergen and F. van Waarden, Shifts in Governance: Problems of Legitimacy and Accountability. Paper on the theme Shifts in Governance as part of the Strategic Plan 2002--2005 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (The Hague: NWO, 2001).     

Egocentrism redux

This commentary addresses itself to D.K. Lapsley and M.N. Murphy's critique (1985, Developmental Review, 5, 201–217) of my theory of egocentrism (D. Elkind, 1967, Child Development, 38, 1025–1034). These authors argue that the theory of egocentrism is inconsistent, that self-other differentiation occurs earlier than the theory suggests, and that self-consciousness does not require egocentrism. They conclude that perspective taking provides a more consistent and clear explanation of the adolescent phenomena of the imaginary audience and the personal fable than does egocentricism. I disagree and counter their arguments with my own.