More than One Flaw: Reply to Millican

Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004) claims to have detected ‘the one fatal flaw in Anselm’s ontological argument.’ I argue that there is more than one important flaw in the position defended in Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004). First, Millican’s reconstruction of Anselm’s argument does serious violence to the original text. Second, Millican’s generalised objection fails to diagnose any flaw in a vast range of ontological arguments. Third, there are independent reasons for thinking that Millican’s generalised objection is unpersuasive.     

Anna Freud and the Holocaust: Mourning and survival guilt

This article explores the period of Anna Freud's life after she was informed of the deaths of her aunts in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Understanding of this period may be enhanced by consideration of the role of the Holocaust in her complicated mourning process. A series of her dreams is re‐examined from the point of view of survivor guilt and the complicated mourning of her father in the context of the Holocaust. It is argued that unconscious reproaches against her father led to an identification with him that included his ‘decision’ to leave his sisters in Vienna. Survivor guilt in relation to her aunts’ murders is seen as one of the complicating factors in the mourning process. In addition the article discusses the possible role of this period, particularly her work with child concentration camp survivors, in her post‐war writing. The noted duality in her work between innovation and conservatism is explored in terms of an outcome of the mourning process of this period. It is argued that her views on mourning, trauma, attachment, and the widening scope of indications for psychoanalysis were influenced by the outcome of her mourning process. Finally, an irony is noted in the fact that her attitude about altruism never changed despite the role of the altruism of others in her rescue from the Nazis.     

More than words: A reply to Malt and Sloman

In four experiments, Malt and Sloman [Malt, B. C., & Sloman, S. A. (2007). Category essence or essentially pragmatic? Creator’s intention in naming and what’s really what. Cognition, 105, 615-648] show that the naming of artifacts is affected by discourse context. They see this phenomenon as posing a problem for the intentional-history theory of artifact categorization (e.g., [Bloom, P. (1996). Intention, history, and artifact concepts. Cognition, 60, 1-29]), and as supporting instead their alternative theory that naming is determined by communicative goals. This response begins by distinguishing the problem of artifact categorization (determining the categories that artifacts belong to) from the problem of artifact naming (deciding how to talk about members of these categories). In light of this distinction, it turns out that Malt and Sloman’s findings are fully consistent with all theories of artifact categorization, including the intentional-historical one. Moreover, contrary to what they argue, there are actually many cases where the relative contributions of categorization and pragmatics can be clearly distinguished. Finally, it is argued that Malt and Sloman’s own account of artifact naming presupposes a capacity for artifact categorization; it cannot work without one.     

There is More to Negation than Modality

There is a relatively recent trend in treating negation as a modal operator. One such reason is that doing so provides a uniform semantics for the negations of a wide variety of logics and arguably speaks to a longstanding challenge of Quine put to non-classical logics. One might be tempted to draw the conclusion that negation is a modal operator, a claim Francesco Berto (Mind, 124(495), 761–793, 2015) defends at length in a recent paper. According to one such modal account, the negation of a sentence is true at a world x just in case all the worlds at which the sentence is true are incompatible with x. Incompatibility is taken to be the key notion in the account, and what minimal properties a negation has comes down to which minimal conditions incompatibility satisfies. Our aims in this paper are twofold. First, we wish to point out problems for the modal account that make us question its tenability on a fundamental level. Second, in its place we propose an alternative, non-modal, account of negation as a contradictory-forming operator that we argue is superior to, and more natural than, the modal account.     

More than one pathway to action understanding

Many believe that the ability to understand the actions of others is made possible by mirror neurons and a network of brain areas known as the action-observation network (AON). Despite nearly two decades of research into mirror neurons and the AON, however, there is little evidence that they enable the inference of the intention of observed actions. Instead, theories of action selection during action execution indicate that a ventral pathway, linking middle temporal gyrus with the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, might encode these abstract features during action observation. Here I propose that action understanding requires more than merely the AON, and might be achieved through interactions between a ventral pathway and the dorsal AON.     

The feminization of the female oedipal complex, Part I: a reconsideration of the significance of separation issues

Freud's insights about the oedipus complex have been universalized to include the psychology of the girl. The authors argue that this crucial developmental phase for girls has uniquely feminine characteristics that have not been fully recognized or cohesively incorporated into psychoanalytic theories. This paper addresses these differences, which are based on characteristic patterns of object relationships, typical defenses, and social considerations. The authors argue that "female oedipal" is an oxymoron, and propose that this constellation be named "the Persephone complex" after the Greek myth of Persephone, which seems to capture better the typical situation of the little girl. They focus on the issue of separation and its complicated and necessary role in the triangular situation of females. Using illustrations from clinical material, the authors argue that the frequent appearance of separation material linked to triangular heterosexual competitive fantasies can and should be differentiated from material in which ideas about separation stem from dyadic and earlier issues. Misunderstanding how these separation conflicts tie into triangular "oedipal" relationships can lead to a "preoedipalization" of the dynamics of girls and women.     

Infantile sexuality, gender identity, and obstacles to oedipal progression

Contrary to when it was first proposed, infantile sexuality nowadays is accepted as an important part of child development. However, Freud's views on masculine primacy and feminine inferiority are seen to be incomplete and inaccurate not only because they over-emphasize sexuality and sexual anatomy, but also because they neglect aggression, object relations, ego and superego functioning, and the sense of self. Infantile sexuality is therefore reconsidered within the broader perspective of gender identity. Within this broader perspective, normal and aberrant sexual development is discussed, and new ideas are offered about familiar concepts such as castration anxiety and penis envy.     

More than belief,but not more than belief and desire

Manuel A. Vásquez’ More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion paints a rich picture of what a ‘non-reductive materialist framework for the study of religion’ would look like. Although it receives strong motivation from the inability of the predominant meta-approaches of theorizing religion to take seriously a range of materially grounded religious phenomena, it suffers somewhat from a lack of independent and autonomous argumentation. This article explores a convergence between Vásquez’ main points and the basic elements of one of the most influential positions within philosophical semantics – namely the semantic holism of Donald Davidson. Because Davidson's holism (assuming its correctness) provides constraints on all forms of theorizing, the fact that Vásquez’ position, unlike the ones he critiques, conforms to those constraints lends it a degree of rational presumption.     

More human than you: attributing humanness to self and others

People typically evaluate their in-groups more favorably than out-groups and themselves more favorably than others. Research on infrahumanization also suggests a preferential attribution of the "human essence" to in-groups, independent of in-group favoritism. The authors propose a corresponding phenomenon in interpersonal comparisons: People attribute greater humanness to themselves than to others, independent of self-enhancement. Study 1 and a pilot study demonstrated 2 distinct understandings of humanness--traits representing human nature and those that are uniquely human--and showed that only the former traits are understood as inhering essences. In Study 2, participants rated themselves higher than their peers on human nature traits but not on uniquely human traits, independent of self-enhancement. Study 3 replicated this "self-humanization" effect and indicated that it is partially mediated by attribution of greater depth to self versus others. Study 4 replicated the effect experimentally. Thus, people perceive themselves to be more essentially human than others.     

Empathy, guilt, and gender: a comparison of two measures of guilt

The relations of empathy with two measures of guilt were examined in a sample of 13- to 16-year-olds (N= 113). Empathy was measured using Davis's IRI and guilt by Tangney's TOSCA and Hoffman's semi-projective story completion method that includes two different scenarios, guilt over cheating and guilt over inaction. Empathy correlated more strongly with both measures of guilt than the two measures correlated with each other. For boys, cognitive perspective-taking was a stronger predictor for guilt than for girls. Hoffman's guilt over inaction was more strongly associated with empathy measures in girls than in boys, whereas for guilt over cheating the pattern was the opposite. The results indicate that boys and girls may emphasize different aspects of morality.     

Incest avoidance: oedipal and preoedipal, natural and cultural

Why do most people experience a subjective aversion to the idea of incestuous sexual relations? To help answer this question, recent strands of thinking in both cultural and evolutionary anthropology are considered together with psychoanalytic theories regarding incest avoidance. Coevolutionary theories that propose ways to think about genetic and cultural inheritance as partially independent of each other, evolutionary arguments about the reproductive advantages of incest avoidance, structuralist theory arguing for a kind of incest aversion unrelated to any possible Darwinian selective advantage, and other trends in biosocial research into the origins of the incest avoidance are considered. Finally, a synthesis is proposed that seeks to expand our understanding of the oedipal and preoedipal dynamics of the aversion as these are conceptualized in psychoanalytic theory.     

Language is never enough: memories are more than words reveal

In this commentary I discuss the work by Fivush and Schwarzmueller (1998) including some methodological limitations to their study. It is perhaps because of these limitations that the data do not provide support for their linguistic hypothesis concerning the onset of autobiographical memory. The data do, however, address important issues in the study of autobiographical memory, particularly in terms of very long-term retention and reconstruction of unique (and perhaps distinctive) events that are pleasant. This is a welcome change from the typical studies of recall of distinctive life events in which the target event is one that revolves around unpleasant medical procedures. Future research efforts should continue along these lines, although alternative suggestions are made for which theoretical issues need to be addressed and new measures developed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teaching ethics: More than an honor code

An honor code is certainly a good place to start teaching engineering students about ethics, but teaching students to live honorably requires far more effort than memorizing a code of ethics statement or applying it just to academic performance. In the School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University, we have followed the model provided by the United States Military Academy at West Point. For our students this involves an introduction to the Honor Code as part of a larger Honor Concept at the very beginning of their studies and then making it an integral part of their preparation as engineers. The challenge is significant because the culture at large does not support living with an Honor Concept. This paper will begin with a discussion of the cultural context in which we must teach, because that context has changed significantly in the years since many faculty members were students themselves. The rest of the paper will detail the approach that we have taken to teach ethics as an engineer’s way of life. “The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be. All human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.” Plato An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 conference, Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology, Linking Workplace Ethics and Education, co-hosted by Gonzaga University and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9–10 June 2005.     

More than fantasy: Prosocial daydreams relate to prosocial dispositions and behaviour

The current studies examined the relationship between the penchant to daydream about helping others and prosocial traits and behaviour. We reasoned that fantasising about prosocial acts should be positively associated with a more prosocial disposition and real behaviour. Across both studies, the findings suggest that people who exhibit prosocial characteristics (e.g., empathic concern, fantasy/fictional empathy, moral reasoning) are more likely to fantasise about prosocial behaviour, and these characteristics are reliably associated with increased helping behaviours. From Study 1, the correlational results showed that people higher in agreeableness exhibited a stronger tendency to engage in prosocial fantasising, and empathy, in part, mediated the relationship. The experimental results from Study 2 conceptually support those from Study 1; when prompted to fantasise about prosocial behaviour, those higher in agreeableness and openness to experience engaged in more helping behaviour, whereas in a control condition, no helping differences emerged. Finding that empathic concern was most consistently related to daydreaming is consistent with the theory in that people are more intrinsically motivated to promote other's welfare at a personal cost when they feel empathy. Engaging in prosocial fantasising may increase empathy, which in turn, may enhance one's prosocial disposition and increase one's helping behaviour.