Die schrittweise interaktive Entstehung einer Fehlbeschuldigung sexuellen Missbrauchs

False accusations of sexual abuse and also violent sexual misconduct by persons in a close relationship often have a long history of development by which the alleged victim increasingly involves other persons who are then used to substantiate the authenticity and truth of the claims, even before allegations are made. Using three cases as examples this article describes the approaches used which are found particularly in emotionally unstable borderline type personalities. When a mental disorder or personality disorder of the alleged victim is suspected, the volitional competence to testify should be tested. This applies not only for borderline personality disorders (which is occasionally reclassified as posttraumatic disorder) but also when symptoms of a puberty crisis, an adolescence crisis or another relevant crisis, such as a posttraumatic disorder are present.     

How misinformation taints our belief system: A focus on belief updating and relational reasoning

This commentary complements Stanley et al.'s (2022) target article by concentrating on the process of false belief construction and its associated cognitive mechanisms. It also concurs with the target article that a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which consumers revise their truth judgments in view of new evidence is needed. Specifically, this essay develops two main dimensions: the first about what we know from the actual construction of truth judgments; the second about what we know from the cognitive mechanisms by which truth judgments are constructed. Particularly on this second dimension, I develop the idea that relational reasoning is key to understanding how individuals integrate new information within their internal belief systems. These two dimensions are both process-minded, yet one is about how beliefs evolve over time, whereas the other is about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie belief construction. Overall, an understanding of these two elements is crucial to finding behavioral interventions that may curb the spread of misinformation.     

Truth and Consequences: What We Lose and Gain in Psychoanalytic Postmodernism

In this article, I use the psychoanalytic concept of truth as a lens through which to explore how psychoanalysis has changed and not changed under the influence of postmodernism. I suggest that the seeking after truth remains in current psychoanalytic practice even though under different guises or conceptual umbrellas, for instance in the high value placed today on authenticity (or trueness) to self and of relationship. Although, admittedly, the search for truth in the sense of compiling historical facts has receded, our current interest in the construction of narratives still comes with the requirement that the stories we co-create with our patients at least have the ring of truth if they are to facilitate psychic growth and psychological intimacy. Additionally, I offer an overview of some of the salient characteristics of postmodern psychoanalysis, with suggestions as to how each of these might relate to the concept of truth. In closing, I borrow a brief clinical vignette from the unpublished notebooks of Melanie Klein for the purpose of making a brief comparison between earlier and current ways of interacting in the treatment relationship.     

Legal and psychological perspectives on children’s competence to testify in court

Young children are often called as witnesses to crimes they were victims of or observed. Because of their immaturity, child witnesses are sometimes more heavily scrutinized than adult witnesses before being allowed to testify in court, for example, through competency screening. This review discusses the psychology and US law relevant to decisions about children’s testimonial competency. Legally, a child is competent to provide in-court testimony if the presiding judge finds that the child can understand and answer basic interview questions, observe and recall pertinent events, understand the difference between truths and lies, and be affected by the moral obligation to tell the truth on the stand. We review the legal foundation and current practice of testimonial competence standards and discuss issues in the current system. We then review developmental psychology literature on children’s capabilities and individual differences in each domain of testimonial competency as well as the limited body of literature on competency exams. Finally, we make empirically-based recommendations and conclusions and highlight the need for further research and policy reforms related to children’s testimonial abilities.     

LOGICAL TRUTH IN MODAL LOGIC

In this paper, I consider the criticism due to Hartry Field, John Pollack, William Hanson and James Hawthorne that the Kripkean requirement that a logical truth in modal logic be true at all possible worlds in all quantified model structures is unmotivated and misses some logical truths. These authors do not see the basis for making the logical truth of a modal sentence turn on more than the model structure given by one reading of the modal operator(s) which occur in the sentence. The primary goal here is to motivate the Kripkean requirement.     

Right and Righteous: Children's Incipient Understanding and Evaluation of True and False Statements

Two studies examined young children's early understanding and evaluation of truth telling and lying and the role that factuality plays in their judgments. Study 1 (one hundred four 2- to 5-year-olds) found that even the youngest children reliably accepted true statements and rejected false statements and that older children's ability to label true and false (T/F) statements as “truth” and “lie” emerged in tandem with their positive evaluation of true statements and “truth” and their negative evaluation of false statements and “lie.” The findings suggest that children's early preference for factuality develops into a conception of “truth” and “lie” that is linked both to factuality and moral evaluation. Study 2 (one hundred twenty-eight 3- to 5-year-olds) revealed that whereas young children exhibited good understanding of the association of T/F statements with “truth,” “lie,” “mistake,” “right,” and “wrong,” they showed little awareness of assumptions about speaker knowledge underlying “lie” and “mistake.” The results further support the primacy of factuality in children's early understanding and evaluation of truth and lies.     

Primordial Moral Awareness: Levinas,Conscience, and the Unavoidable Call to Responsibility

The phenomenon of conscience as articulated in Roman Catholic moral theology has at least three dimensions: a fundamental and universal call to moral goodness; the search for moral truth; and a commitment to act in a particular way. Recent moral theology has tended to focus on the latter two dimensions, but there has been a strong call from Thomas Ryan for attention to the first dimension of conscience, especially its constitution in ‘horizontal relationality’. In this article I respond to Ryan's call, and demonstrate that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas can show how the experience of conscience is constituted in horizontal relationality, as well as that it supports an understanding of conscience as a universal call to responsibility. Correlatively, and perhaps more significantly, the introduction of Levinas’ philosophy into the discussion of conscience sheds light on a significant aspect of this call to moral responsibility. This highlights that the Roman Catholic understanding of conscience has ethical consequences for theology more broadly considered (as well as the other academic disciplines) in terms of understanding why it is impossible to set aside considerations of responsibility in the search for truth.     

How self-transcendence via individualised moral foundations predict emotional and social enhancement

In this article we focus on explaining personality trait self-transcendence (ST) in relation to social and emotional competence, and suggest that ST through differences in moral foundations can partially predict social and emotional competence. A sample of 195 university students was used to test hypotheses regarding several paths between ST, trait emotional intelligence (EI), universalism and moral foundations. Consistent with the hypotheses, ST was found to predict social and emotional competence via individualised moral foundations (IMF). Results have implications for our understanding of the relationship between ST, moral foundations, social and emotional competence.     

母亲情绪调节与幼儿情绪理解能力:母亲应对方式的中介作用

对258名幼儿进行情绪理解能力任务测查,其母亲完成情绪调节方式问卷和应对幼儿消极情绪问卷,探讨母亲情绪调节方式、母亲对幼儿消极情绪的反应方式和幼儿情绪理解能力之间的关系。结果表明,幼儿情绪理解能力随年龄增长而提高,女孩情绪理解能力高于男孩。母亲对幼儿消极情绪更多采用情感关注和问题解决,惩罚反应最少,母亲对男孩的消极情绪表现出更多的惩罚反应,对女孩表现出更多的情感关注。母亲鼓励表达在其情绪调节方式和幼儿情绪理解能力之间有中介作用。     

Intrinsic Value,Alternative Possibilities,and Reason

I address three issues in this paper: first, just as many have thought that there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for the truth of judgments of moral responsibility, is there reason to think that the truth of judgments of intrinsic value also presupposes our having alternatives? Second, if there is this sort of requirement for the truth of judgments of intrinsic value, is there an analogous requirement for the truth of judgments of moral obligation on the supposition that obligation supervenes on goodness? Third, if the truth of judgments of intrinsic value and those of moral obligation do presuppose our having access to alternatives, what should be said about whether determinism imperils the truth of such judgments? I defend an affirmative answer to the first question, a more guarded answer to the second, and a yet more restrained answer to the third.     

Examining Biases and White Privilege: Classroom Teaching Strategies That Promote Cultural Competence

This article will discuss in-depth how a variety of effective classroom teaching strategies have been employed to assist White counseling trainees in developing a non-racist White racial identity (i.e., by examining biases and exploring privilege) thereby increasing cultural competence. Specifically, this article will address the utility of implementing classroom teaching strategies that promote both cognitive understanding and affective processing of biases and White privilege for White trainees. It will outline the efficacy of specific didactic (e.g., lecture, videos, discussions, readings) and experiential (e.g., small group interviews, journaling, autobiographies, modeling) in creating a non-racist White racial identity, thereby promoting cultural competence.     

Husserls Evidenzbegriff in der intersubjektiven Bewährung moralischer Evidenzen

Evidence is a central theme in Husserl´s transcendental phenomenology. This article investigates not only the theoretical aspects of evidence, but also tries to develop prolegomena for a phenomenological theory of moral evidence and moral truth. Nevertheless, this endeavor is based upon the theoretical insights of Husserl: the importance of intersubjectivity and the relevance of time, which are reviewed in the first two chapters. The temporal aspect, under the title of perpetuation (Bewährung), is crucial for the understanding of the concept of evidence. But it becomes even more important when the question of moral truth is considered. Perpetuation is not only stressed in the understanding of values, but also in the unanimity (Einstimmigkeit) of the ethical and loving person. As evidence of any kind can only be falsified by a higher evidence of the same character, moral evidence cannot be understood isolated from the living process of any prefigured moral settings of a society, moral evidence can give itself only in an interpersonal community and its moral tradition and demands the community’s own readiness for a critical habituality.     

Commentary: Psychodynamics and Social Cognition—Notes on the Fusion of Psychoanalysis and Psychology

ABSTRACT Interest in linking psychoanalysis with scientific psychology waxes and wanes. In part, the difficulties have been caused by the preference of psychoanalysts for Freud's clinical theory (and its emphasis on narrative truth) as opposed to his metapsychology (with its requirement for historical truth). Even though contemporary scientific psychology evolved largely independently of psychoanalysis, the articles on object relations, transference, and defense published in this special issue show that the theory remains a source of inspiration, observations, and hypotheses.     

Perceptual Knowledge Derailed

The tracking theory treats knowledge as counterfactual covariation of belief and truth through a sphere of possibilities. I argue that the tracking theory cannot respect perceptual knowledge, because perceptual belief covaries with truth through a discontinuous scatter of possibilities. Perceptual knowledge is subject to inner derailing: there is an inner hollow of perceptual incompetence through which the differences are too small to track. Perceptual knowledge is subject to outer derailing: there are outlying islands of perceptual competence that extend well past skeptical sinkholes.     

Science,spirituality and truth: acknowledging difference for spiritual dialogue and human well‐being

This article seeks to explain why spiritual education must be clear about the nature of spiritual knowledge and truth and how it differs from the knowledge and truth generated by science. The author argues this is important in order that spirituality and science are equally valued, and in order that spiritual pedagogy appropriately reflects the nature of spiritual truth in the context of spiritual diversity and commitment. Based on these arguments, and inspired both by the ideas of inter‐faith dialogue and the philosophy of Michael Bakhtin, the author then suggests a dialogical approach to spiritual pedagogy for spiritual development and wellbeing. The article suggests education will best enhance human wellbeing if it is positive about the contributions of both science and spirituality, and if it promotes understanding of spiritual difference and commitment.     

Consistency,Truth and Ontology

After a brief survey of the different meanings of consistency, the study is restricted to consistency understood as non-contradiction of sets of sentences. The philosophical reasons for this requirement are discussed, both in relation to the problem of sense and the problem of truth (also with historical references). The issue of mathematical truth is then addressed, and the different conceptions of it are put in relation with consistency. The formal treatment of consistency and truth in mathematical logic is then considered, with particular attention paid to the relation between syntactic and semantic properties of sets and calculi. After the crisis of mathematical intuition and the dominance of the formalistic view, it seemed that consistency could totally replace the requirement of truth in mathematics, also in the sense that the existence of “objects” of axiomatic systems could be granted by their consistency. A rejection of this claim is presented, whose central point is a detailed analysis of the theorem that any consistent set S of sentences of first order logic has a model. A critical scrutiny shows that this model is very peculiar, being offered by the elements of the same language that is being interpreted, and the satisfiability conditions for any sentence being constituted by the mere fact of belonging to S. Though not being insignificant from a metatheoretical point of view, this theorem fails to endow consistency (even in this privileged case) with an “ontological creativity”, that is, with the capability of providing a model ontologically distinct from the language itself (which is the precondition for the classical notion of truth that is also preserved in the Tarskian semantics and model theory). A final discussion regarding the different “ontological regions” and the referential nature of truth clarifies the different aspects of the whole issue discussed.     

Analyticity and Incorrigibility

The traditional point of view on analyticity implies that truth in virtue only of meaning entails a priori acceptability and vice versa. The argument for this claim is based on the idea that meaning as it concerns truth and meaning as it concerns competence are one and the same thing. In this paper I argue that the extensions of these notions do not coincide. I hold that truth in virtue of meaning — truth for semantic reasons—doesn't imply a priori acceptability, and that a priori reflection based only on knowledge of meaning—in the sense of competence—doesn't necessitate true conclusions.The main consequence of this view concerns conceptual analysis, as it presupposes we have a privileged—incorrigible in the face of empirical evidence—access to non-trivial truths about the world on the basis of mere a priori reflection founded on meaning. If, as I argue, such access is not incorrigible the project of conceptual analysis loses its special epistemological status.     

Constructing Cultural Competence: Perspectives of Family Therapists Working with Latino Families

This article focuses on developing an understanding of how nine therapists working with Latino families construct the idea of cultural competence in the counseling room. In-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed yielding five themes in cultural competence from the therapists' perspectives: the use of language in therapy; the impact of social class, gender, and power on the therapeutic relationship; immigration and culture clash; definitions of family; and unique constructions of cultural competence. The therapists'narratives in this study are best understood through a postmodern paradigm suggesting that the field of psychotherapy needs to move beyond a “checklist” modernistic approach to developing cultural competency.     

Truth table tasks: Irrelevance and cognitive ability

Two types of truth table task are used to examine people's mental representation of conditionals. In two within-participants experiments, participants either receive the same task-type twice (Experiment 1) or are presented successively with both a possibilities task and a truth task (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examines how people interpret the three-option possibilities task and whether they have a clear understanding of it. The present study aims to examine, for both task-types, how participants' cognitive ability relates to the classification of the truth table cases as irrelevant, and their consistency in doing so. Looking at the answer patterns, participants' cognitive ability influences their classification of the truth table cases: A positive correlation exists between cognitive ability and the number of false-antecedent cases classified as “irrelevant”, both in the possibilities task and the truth task. This favours a suppositional representation of conditionals.