Critique of the methodology of empirical research on individual modernity in Taiwan

Yang's 1974 to 1991 research on individual modernity and traditionalism in Taiwan is examined and the methodology for developing measurement instruments in this program critiqued. It is proposed that the proper strategy for research on indigenous psychology is to analyze a culture at the conceptual level with the symbolic approach, and then conduct empirical research on 'lifeworlds' using activity theory. Yang's research on individual modernity and traditionalism uses an inductive empirical approach without the theoretical grounding of conceptual analyses. Based on the philosophy of constructive realism, two types of knowledge (the scientific 'microworld' and the 'experienced lifeworld') are differentiated in order to explicate the significance of the discontinuity hypothesis of modernity for non-Western countries and to critique Yang's methodology for measuring individual modernity and traditionalism. It is proposed that the research strategy of cultural psychology be used in future study. This replacement would usher in the indigenous psychology approach as is evident in Yang's (1999, Yang, 2000) later works.     

Methodological and theoretical issues on psychological traditionality and modernity research in an Asian society: In response to Kwang-Kuo Hwang and beyond

Three objectives are addressed in the present study. First, the methodological and conceptual aspects of my long-term research program on psychological (individual) traditionality and modernity in Taiwan are briefly reviewed to provide a background for systematically responding to Kwang-Kuo Hwang's critique of the research program. Second, my reply to Hwang is made in terms of five major issues, viz. the methodological approach adopted, the theoretical or conceptual basis, the explanation of the discontinuity between individual traditionality and modernity, the semantic opposites and psychological opposites, and the conceptual evaluation of the traditionality and modernity items. Third, a plea is made for conducting more and better studies on individual traditionality and modernity in developing Asian countries. Methodological and theoretical issues are further discussed and clarified for the sake of conducting methodologically and theoretically sounder research in this area.     

Backward Referral,Flash-Lags,and Quantum Free Will: A Response to Commentaries on Articles by Pockett,Klein, Gomes,and Trevena and Miller

The first priority of this response is to address Libet's rebuttal of my reinterpretation of his data. Then, because many authors have commented on various aspects of the debate, the rest of the response is organized in terms of subject matter, not as replies to each individual commentator. First, I reply to an objection expressed by two separate commentators to part of my reinterpretation of those of Libet's data supposedly supporting backward referral. This leads to a brief discussion of the whole concept of backward referral. The relevance of the flash-lag illusion to possible measurement errors in the Libet/Trevena and Miller paradigm is addressed next. Finally, I have a few words to say on the relationship between quantum mechanical ontology and free will.     

Reply to Reviews of Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys by Philip M. Bromberg

I reply here to reviews by three inspiring thinkers, Ethel Person, Susan Sands, and Allan Schore who, though uniquely different from one another in their conceptual frames of reference, share a sensibility as clinicians and creative scholars that has led them to engage and appreciate my work in depth while enriching it with their individual perspectives. Ethel Person's review is meaningful to me for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we think very much alike about “how we are” with patients despite the diversity in our families of origin. Her thinking, which extends the boundaries established by any one school of thought, transcends doctrine, especially that of “technique.” I am equally grateful to Susan Sands, whose review stimulated a dialogue between us about the similarities and differences in our views of the analyst's personal role in enactments with severe trauma survivors and whether there is reason to distinguish between life-threatening and developmental trauma. My reply to Allan Schore's review satisfies a long-standing wish to engage with him in dialogue about what he refers to in his review as “a remarkable overlap between Bromberg's work in clinical psychoanalysis and my work in developmental neuropsychoanalysis, a deep resonance between his treatment model and my regulation theory” (this issue, p. 755). In my reply I comment from my own vantage point on how our shared commitment to an interpersonal and intersubjective perspective—my interpersonal/relational treatment model and his “Interpersonal Neurobiology” led us to arrive at overlapping views on developmental trauma, attachment, the dyadic regulation of states of consciousness, and dissociation.     

William James on emotion and intentionality

In my reply I focus on three topics: the usefulness of Searle’s physical analogies for understanding the relationship between higher-level mental properties and lower-level physical properties, the question of overdetermination and the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that Searle’s reply does not refute my arguments against his analogies, while concerns about overdetermination are only taken away because his reply shows that there is no genuine unconscious mental causation in his view. That makes it hard to understand how he can maintain at the same time that we follow rules unconsciously.     

A brief reply to Carson Strong

Carson Strong's reply to my response to his article demonstrates what happens when there is unacknowledged disagreement about the facts of a case or about the meaning of the terms used to describe those facts. I hope that our dialogue will help reduce this disagreement.     

Enigmatic Masculinities: A Reply to Swartz and Grossmark

In reply to Swartz and Grossmark’s commentaries on my paper about encounters with the masculine, I elaborate from a reflexive stance on the notions of context, positionality, and warrants to speak in my writing and the responses. My account is part of an unfolding exploration of how I stand as a gendered being within psychotherapeutic praxis, and in line with that, how what was intimated in my original paper points to Laplanche’s theorizing on the sexual and to his notion of enigmatic seduction in ongoing gendering processes. The reply finds itself haunted by the abject and its position within the postcolony, and with a desire for what is an illusory transcendence.     

Religious Wars in the NDE Movement: Some Personal Reflections on Michael Sabom's Light & Death

After a short personal glance at the early days of the field of near-death studies, I offer an open letter to Michael Sabom in response to his book, Light & Death (Sabom, 1998). This letter is in effect both a reply to certain criticisms Sabom has made of my work and an attempt to make public certain significant changes in my own view of near-death experiences (NDEs) since the publication of Heading Toward Omega (Ring, 1984), particularly in regard to their being a catalyst for higher consciousness. The second part of this essay presents a personal perspective on the ideological role of religion in the NDE movement, which I see as corrupting the original vision that prompted the formation of the field of near-death studies. I end with an ecumenical call for a return to the values of nontheologically driven inquiry with which near-death studies began.     

On Disability and Illness. A Reply to Edwards

This paper is a reply to an article by Steven Edwards in a previous issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. In this paper Edwards discusses two types of problems which he finds to be inherent in my theory of disability, mainly as presented in my On the Nature of Health, Kluwer 1995. First, Edwards discerns a tension in my basic definition of health, a tension between my “subjectivistic” and my “objectivistic” aspirations in the definition. Second, he finds that my theory of disability does not allow for a distinction between disability due to illness or injury and disability which has no such (at least not immediate) background. In my answer to Edwards's arguments I claim that his first criticism must be due to a misunderstanding of my intentions. I find his second criticism to be more to the point. It raises important issues in the theory of health which partly concern our interpretation of the notion of illness. Edwards introduces the notion of capacity in order to separate between disability due to illness or injury and disability without such a background. In the last part of my paper I argue that this distinction, however, will not fulfil its purpose. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

In Defence of Direct Realism

In her careful consideration of my book, The Problem of Perception (henceforth, PP), Susanna Siegel highlights what she takes to be a number of shortcomings in the work. First, she suggests that a sense-datum theorist has two options–what she calls the "complex sense-data option" and the "two-factor option"–that survive the argument of my book unscathed. I consider these two options in the first two sections of this reply. Secondly, she criticizes my suggestion that there are three and only three basic and independent sources of perceptual consciousness: an issue I take up in my third section. Thirdly, she expresses reservations about my response to the argument from hallucination. In particular, she argues that the phenomenological considerations on which I put so much weight cannot settle the fundamental issue here. I address this criticism in the fourth section of this reply. Finally, she spends a certain amount of time discussing the notion of a "veridicality-rele-vant property", a topic to which I devote the concluding section of this reply.     

Research ethics and the principle of Justice as Fairness – A restatement

In my recent article, I addressed the question of whether a potential categorical exclusion of decisionally impaired patients from non-therapeutic medical research would be inaccordance with the Principle of Justice as Fairness. I came to the conclusion that a categorical exclusion of decisionally impaired persons from relevant research projects may collide with Rawls’s understanding of Justice as Fairness. Derek Bell has criticized my paper by denying that it is legitimate to apply Rawls to this bioethical problem. In my restatement I try to show that an extrapolation of John Rawls’s thought to such bioethical cases is possible, because Rawls himself has written that his orientation towards decisionally non-impaired persons is an idealized situation that allows extrapolations. In a second part I try to show that Bell hasroughly misunderstood my concept of “presumed consent” which I make a prerequisite for the legitimisation of research on decisionally impaired persons. In using advance consent as a proposal for resolving the problem, Bell has indirectly confirmed my approach because he is using a similar construct of consent, which operates with similar hypotheses and probabilities of error. I see here no categorical difference between Bell’s conclusion and my discussion. Thus, Bell’s reply does not represent a refutation of my thoughts, but rather it is a para phrased confirmation of my central theses. I conclude by showing the relevance of Rawls, pointing out that the discussion between Bell and me illustrates how Rawls’s concept of reflective equilibrium is an appropriate approach to finding a solution to this bioethical problem. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

'IF 2 = 3, THEN 2 + 1 = 3 + 1': REPLY TO HEYLEN AND HORSTEN

Jan Heylen and Leon Horsten object to my proposed analysis of ordinary-language conditionals by appealing to certain putative counter-examples. In this reply, I explain how, by ignoring my reading of the indicative/subjunctive distinction, their objection misses its target. I also criticize their underlying methodology.     

Hard incompatibilism and its rivals

In this article I develop several responses to my co-authors of Four Views on Free Will. In reply to Manuel Vargas, I suggest a way to clarify his claim that our concepts of free will and moral responsibility should be revised, and I question whether he really proposes to revise the notion of basic desert at stake in the debate. In response to Robert Kane, I examine the role the rejection of Frankfurt-style arguments has in his position, and whether his criticism of my version of this argument is sound. In reply to John Fischer, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness central to his account of moral responsibility is not best characterized counterfactually, and I provide a suggestion for revision.

Two Moralities: Reinterpreting the Findings of Empirical Research on Moral Reasoning in Taiwan

This paper reinterprets the findings of previous empirical research on moral reasoning and moral judgment conducted in Taiwan using Kohlberg's research paradigm. It consists of three major parts. The first part explores Kohlberg's theory of moral development and its limitations. Gibb's (1979) two-phase model is used to emphasize the necessity of studying cultural heritage in understanding the prevalent moral reasoning of existential phase adults in a given society. The second part presents an analysis of Confucian ethics (Hwang, 1995), and proposes a conceptual scheme for discerning the significant features of Confucian ethics by referring to distinctions between positive/negative and imperfect/perfect duties. The discretionary features of Confucian ethics are further analyzed in terms of Shweder et al .'s (1990) scheme for discerning a rationally defensible moral code. In addition, the Confucian moral dilemma and its modern fate in the New-Culture Movement of the May Fourth period on mainland China, and the 1960s Gong De Movement in Taiwan are discussed. The third part of this paper reinterprets the findings of several empirical studies on moral reasoning in Taiwanese society. Special attention is paid to Cheng's (1991) data from interviews with a group of college students using Kohlberg's moral dilemma. The implication of her findings is discussed on the basis of the new conceptual scheme.     

Does She Do or Does She Don't?: Reply to Commentary

This reply clarifies the ideas originally presented in “Beyond Milk and the Good Breast: Reconfiguring Psychoanalytic Dyads” (PD 9/5, 1999) in response to Steven Reisner's commentary. It faults Dr. Reisner's reading of Lacan and Kristeva, as well as his use of male-gendered metaphors to transform my clinical material into a different analytic treatment. I conclude that, by arriving at such differing conclusions regarding theory and clinical treatment, he inadvertently proves, and enacts, the basis of my argument: that the gender of the analyst is an important variable that affects psychoanalytic formulations, treatment, and outcome.     

I. Mathematical modeling of election predictions: Final reply to professor Aubert

Professor Aubert's ‘three‐stage rocket’ (Inquiry, Vol. 26 [1983], No. 1) has reached periodic orbit. His comments on my earlier reply to his critique of my election predictions paper simply repeat arguments I have already refuted. In this note, I limit myself largely to pointing out Professor Aubert's misconceptions of what my position actually is. I find no reasons for revising the views stated in my original election predictions paper, nor any reasons for thinking that paper violated norms of scientific method that prevail in the natural sciences.     

JUSTICE,INCENTIVES AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

In Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen reiterates his critique of John Rawls's difference principle as a justification for inequality‐generating incentives, and also argues that Rawls's ambition to provide a constructivist defence of the first principles of justice is doomed. Cohen's arguments also suggest a natural response to my earlier attempt to defend the basic structure objection to Cohen's critique, which I term the alien factors reply. This paper criticises the reply, and Cohen's more general argument against Rawls's constructivism. 1     

Dual Visions,Dual Voices Reply to Commentary

An overarching thematic implication of both Grand's discussion of my article and my reply to her discussion is the need for sharing and integration of knowledge and concepts belonging to the separate fields of psychoanalysis and the trauma/dissociation. Grand and I have different expressive voices, both singular and plural, which, I conjecture, are in part reflective of different traditions. Grand's response demonstrates eloquently a problem facing both psychoanalysis and the field of trauma treatment: the tendency of fields, like individuals, to proceed in isolation deprives all from the benefit of shared information. Procrustean beds cannot be shared.     

The Free will Revolution (Continued)

I seek to reply to the thoughtful and penetrating comments by William Rowe, Alfred Mele, Carl Ginet, and Ishtiyaque Haji. In the process, I hope that my overall approach to free will and moral responsibility is thrown into clearer relief. I make some suggestions as to future directions of research in these areas. I thank Michael McKenna for his thoughtful comments, his generous introduction, and all his hard work in putting this together. Also, I wish to thank J. Angelo Corlett for his very pleasantly surprising decision to do this volume, and for his outstanding work in editing this wonderful journal from its inception.