Third Men: The Logic of the Sophisms at Arist. SE 22, 178b36–170a10

This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the , suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an explanation of the lines regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context.     

Argument as a formulation-decision-decision... sequence

Problems with regard to the analysis of argumentative partly discourse arise from definitorial disconformity. In this article, Informal argument is taken as the primary definition to study the basic structure of argument from a fragment of an Agatha Christie novel. Bilmes' account of the notions of Formulation (F) and Decision (D+/D-) are adapted to describe the relations of opposition which are displayed in informal argument. The minimal structure of argument is represented by the formula F/D-/D-, in which F is a speaker's personal composition of a fact, the first D- is the disconfirming uptake of it by another speaker and the second D- is the completing disconfirming uptake by the initial speaker. Some of the speaker's possibilities to initiate an argument by expressing a Formulation are explored, as well as the social and cultural norms which play a role in argument-initiation and the concepts of win and loss.     

The Primacy of the “Shoulds”: Where Is the Evidence?

A central tenet of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) has always been that irrational beliefs which express demands through absolutistic shoulds, musts or oughts are the basic cause of emotional disturbance. This premise is characteristic of Ellis' theory but is not always supported by other REBT writers or other writers within the cognitive therapy field. This paper reviews a range of research findings which appear to call into question Ellis' tenet of the primacy of the shoulds and which, in turn, raise theoretical and methodological difficulties in the measurement of beliefs. This along with the current theoretical debate regarding irrational belief processes may preclude the possibility of testing the proposition that demandingness is the primary irrational or dysfunctional belief.     

Once More into the Breach of Self-Ownership: Reply to Narveson and Brenkert

In reply to Narveson, I distinguish his no-proviso argument from his liberty argument, and I show that both fail. I also argue that interference lacks the strategic status he assigns to it, because it cannot be appropriately distinguished, conceptually and morally, from prevention; that natural resources do enjoy the importance he denies they have; that laissez-faire economies lack the superiority he attributes to them; that ownership can indeed be a reflexive relation; that anti-paternalism does not entail libertarianism; and that he misrepresents the doctrines of a number of philosophers, including John Locke, Ronald Dworkin, and myself. In reply to Brenkert, I show that he seriously misconstrues my view of the nature of freedom, and of its relationship to self-ownership. I then refute his criticisms of my treatment of the contrasts between self-ownership, on the one hand, and autonomy and non-slavery, on the other. I also show that his attempt to exorcize the demon of self-ownership is multiply flawed.     

From I: A/M to “Who am I?”—Aggregation/Massification and Trauma-Based Affects and Object Relations in Groups: A Response to Earl Hopper

Hopper's portrayal of the fourth basic assumption of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification has two components: (1) a revision of Turquet's theory of BA Oneness to incorporate the polarity of aggregation and massification stemming from annihilation anxiety; and (2) a conception of the difficult patient as having an encapsulated psychosis. Hopper's theory of the encapsulated psychosis offers an important but incomplete perspective in explaining borderline and narcissistic pathology, as well as psychological trauma. In this response to Hopper, I suggest that the fourth assumption is in fact a still more primitive state of boundary opening and closing. I also see a need to differentiate trauma as such from borderline pathology, and further hold that the relationship between Hopper's British Independent theory and trauma theories based on dissociation needs to be clarified.     

The Client Is the Most Important Common Factor: Clients' Self-Healing Capacities and Psychotherapy

I first briefly review the dodo bird verdict and suggest that we should be responding to it by looking for a new way to conceptualize how therapy works. Then I describe the dominant medical or treatment model of psychotherapy and how it puts the client in the position of a dependent variable who is operated on by supposedly potent therapeutic techniques. Next I argue that the data do not fit with this model. An alternative model is that the client is the most important common factor and that it is clients' self-healing capacities which make therapy work. I then argue that therapy has two phases—the involvement phase and the learning phase—and that the involvement phase is the most important. I next review the five learning opportunities provided by therapy. Finally, I argue that a relational model of therapy focused on consultation, collaboration, and dialogue is better than a treatment model.     

The Revival of Rejective Negation

Whether assent (acceptance) and dissent (rejection) are thought of as speech acts or as propositional attitudes, the leading idea of rejectivism is that a grasp of the distinction between them is prior to our understanding of negation as a sentence operator, this operator then being explicable as applying to A to yield something assent to which is tantamount to dissent from A. Widely thought to have been refuted by an argument of Frege"s, rejectivism has undergone something of a revival in recent years, especially in writings by Huw Price and Timothy Smiley. While agreeing that Frege"s argument does not refute the position, we shall air some philosophical qualms about it in Section 5, after a thorough examination of the formal issues in Sections 1–4. This discussion draws on – and seeks to draw attention to – some pertinent work of Kent Bendall in the 1970s.     

Relentless writing and the death of memory in elementary education

This paper explores the relentless character of writing in elementary education. We begin with the reflections of a Grade Three teacher on incidents in her classroom regarding writing and the leaving of traces, followed with a consideration of the deep cultural investment we have in leaving such traces. A brief examination of the latest work by Lucy Calkins is followed by a discussion of the paradoxical relations between writing, remembering and forgetting and the forging of community as an order of memories. The issue of writing as the rendering of experience into cultural capital is followed by concluding remarks on the pleasures of walking around unwritten.     

Belief change as change in epistemic entrenchment

In this paper, it is argued that both the belief state and its input should be represented as epistemic entrenchment (EE) relations. A belief revision operation is constructed that updates a given EE relation to a new one in light of an evidential EE relation, and an axiomatic characterization of this operation is given. Unlike most belief revision operations, the one developed here can handle both multiple belief revision and iterated belief revision.The authors are thankful to John G. Bennett, Henry E. Kyburg, Jr., Norman Foo, Pavlos Pepas, Maurizio Pagnucco, Bob Hadley, members of the Knowledge Systems Group at the University of Sydney and participants of the AI'93 workshop on Belief Revision: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice at Melbourne where a version of this paper was presented, for their suggestions. The authors also express their gratitude to the two anonymous referees for Synthese for their excellent comments and suggestions. Of course it is only the authors that are responsible for the errors that remain.     

Sheaves over Heyting lattices

For a complete Heyting lattice , we define a category Etale (). We show that the category Etale () is equivalent to the category of the sheaves over , Sh(), hence also with -valued sets, see [2], [1]. The category Etale() is a generalization of the category Etale (X), see [1], where X is a topological space.     

A Translation of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic into Basic Predicate Logic

Basic Predicate Logic, BQC, is a proper subsystem of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic, IQC. For every formula in the language {, , , , , , }, we associate two sequences of formulas 0,1,... and 0,1,... in the same language. We prove that for every sequent , there are natural numbers m, n, such that IQC , iff BQC n m. Some applications of this translation are mentioned.     

On superintuitionistic logics as fragments of proof logic extensions

Coming fromI andCl, i.e. from intuitionistic and classical propositional calculi with the substitution rule postulated, and using the sign to add a new connective there have been considered here: Grzegorozyk's logicGrz, the proof logicG and the proof-intuitionistic logicI set up correspondingly by the calculiFor any calculus we denote by the set of all formulae of the calculus and by the lattice of all logics that are the extensions of the logic of the calculus, i.e. sets of formulae containing the axioms of and closed with respect to its rules of inference. In the logiclG the sign is decoded as follows: A = (A & A). The result of placing in the formulaA before each of its subformula is denoted byTrA. The maps are defined (in the definitions of x and the decoding of is meant), by virtue of which the diagram is constructedIn this diagram the maps, x and are isomorphisms, thereforex ^–1 = ; and the maps and are the semilattice epimorphisms that are not commutative with lattice operation +. Besides, the given diagram is commutative, and the next equalities take place: ^–1 = ^–1 and = ^–1 x. The latter implies in particular that any superintuitionistic logic is a superintuitionistic fragment of some proof logic extension.     

Moral conflict and ordinary emotional experience

Conclusion If we ask ourselves whether ultimate moral conflicts exist, and if we take seriously the goal of capturing ordinary emotional experience in our views about morality, we find the evidence mixed. We might have some reason for concluding that some situations are ultimate moral conflicts, but we also have good reasons of the same kind for concluding that these situations are not ultimate moral conflicts. So this kind of argument does not provide secure enough footing for any sort of powerful criticism of moral theories which deny the existence of ultimate moral conflicts. Those who want to argue for the reality of ultimate moral conflicts can still argue from something other than ordinary emotional experience. Any such alternative strategy, though, will involve a retreat from the idea that ordinary emotional experience provides unambiguous support for the existence of ultimate moral conflicts and a secure point from which to criticize moral theories.I conclude, then, that accepting the reality of ultimate moral conflicts does not allow a truer picture of ordinary emotional experience. I am not sure, though, that this should be good news for those who believe in a moral realm without ultimate moral conflicts. What is most striking about ordinary emotional experience is not its tendency to support one or another picture of the moral realm, with or without ultimate moral conflicts, but its failure to endorse any very determinate picture of a moral realm. This suggests a rather shocking gap in our understanding of the concepts of moral obligation, prohibition, and permission, concepts which, after all, are alleged to play a familiar and vital role in our lives. Perhaps this gap can be filled by arguments beginning somewhere other than ordinary emotional experience. (Although skeptics will point to the failure of deontic logicians to find any decisive reason to choose between accounts that do and do not permit ultimate moral conflicts.) Alternatively, though, the ambiguity of ordinary emotional experience on the question of ultimate moral conflict might provide one kind of support for the suspicion, famously entertained by Elizabeth Anscombe, that the word ought, used to refer to a specifically moral realm, is a word containing no intelligible thought: a word retaining the suggestion of force, and apt to have a strong psychological effect, but which no longer signifies a real concept at all - No content could be found in the notion morally ought; if it were not that - philosophers try to find an alternative (very fishy) content and to retain the psychological force of the term. I am grateful to Annette Baier, Richard Bell, Robert Ginsberg, Patricia Greenspan, Carolyn Hartz, Eugene Heath, Don Hubin, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.

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Hare on utilitarianism and intuitive morality

InMoral Thinking R. M. Hare offers a very influential defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections. Hare's argument is roughly that utilitarianism conflicts with defensible moral intuitions only in unusual cases and that, in such cases, even defensible moral intuitions are unreliable. This paper reconstructs Hare's arguments and argues that they presuppose the success of his problematic proof of utilitarianism. Contrary to what many have thought, Hare's negative defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections is not separable from his proof. In the second part of the paper I argue that Hare does not succeed in defending utilitarianism against the objection that it is too demanding. The final section of the paper sketches a substantially revised version of Hare's reply to intuitive objections. So revised, the argument is independent of Hare's proof and affords a plausible answer to the objection that utilitarianism is too demanding.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Loyola University and Saint Olaf College. I am greatly indebted to my colleague Harry Gensler for helpful comments on numerous drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Michael Gorr, Brad Hooker, Shelly Kagan, Heidi Malm, Richard Hare, Peter Singer, Onora O'Neill, George Trey, Joe Sullivan, and an anonymous referee. This paper developed out of a series of discussions with Mark Overvold. I dedicate the paper to his memory. I would also like to thank Loyola University for a paid leave of absence which enabled me to write the paper.     

The Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut: What's It All About Theologically?

As a psychoanalytic thinker who offered by means of his self psychology a new paradigm of psychological development and functioning, Heinz Kohut was also a theologian manqué. With the help of the method of interpretation devised by Paul Tillich and David Tracy, Kohut's limit-concepts of tragic man, the self-object, and empathy, all set within his theory of narcissism, are elucidated as theological constructs. These are critiqued for adequacy from a Christian perspective. The conclusion is that Kohut's understanding of the human dilemma and of the way of salvation correlates well with Christianity, while his view of empathy as the means of salvation has created some confusion. Kohut has thus left an unfinished, profoundly important, agenda for theologians and clinicians.     

The principle of charity and the problem of irrationality (translation and the problem of irrationality)

Common formulations of the principle of charity in translation seem to undermine attributions of irrationality in social scientific accounts that are otherwise unexceptionable. This I call the problem of irrationality. Here I resolve the problem of irrationality by developing two complementary views of the principle of charity. First, I develop the view (ill-developed in the literature at present) that the principle of charity is preparatory, being needed in the construction of provisional first-approximation translation manuals. These serve as the basis for explanatory accounts and associated refinements in the translation manual. In developing such explanatory accounts, the principle of charity is no longer constraining. Thus, the principle of charity applies only in the early stages of constructing translation manuals, and there is no problem of irrationality in the later stages of constructing translation manuals. Second, I reduce the principle of charity, where it does apply, to a special case of what I call the principle of explicability: so translate as to attribute explicable beliefs and practices to the speakers of the source-language. I show that the appropriate formulation of the principle of charity counsels just what the principle of explicability requires in the early stages of social scientific investigation.I am grateful to Robert Barrett, Roger Gibson, and Paul Roth for their generous assistance.     

Construction of monadic three-valued Łukasiewicz algebras

The notion of monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebras was introduced by L. Monteiro ([12], [14]) as a generalization of monadic Boolean algebras. A. Monteiro ([9], [10]) and later L. Monteiro and L. Gonzalez Coppola [17] obtained a method for the construction of a three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a monadic Boolea algebra. In this note we give the construction of a monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a Boolean algebra B where we have defined two quantification operations and ^* such that ^*x=^*x (where ^*x=-^*-x). In this case we shall say that and ^* commutes. If B is finite and is an existential quantifier over B, we shall show how to obtain all the existential quantifiers ^* which commute with .Taking into account R. Mayet [3] we also construct a monadic three-valued ukasiewicz algebra from a monadic Boolean algebra B and a monadic ideal I of B. The most essential results of the present paper will be submitted to the XXXIX Annual Meeting of the Unión Matemática Argentina (October 1989, Rosario, Argentina).     

Game Logic and its Applications II

This paper provides a Genzten style formulation of the game logic framework GLm (0 m ), and proves the cut-elimination theorem for GLm. As its application, we prove the term existence theorem for GL used in Part I.     

Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant

Plato and Kant advance a constitutional model of the soul, in which reason and appetite or passion have different structural and functional roles in the generation of motivation, as opposed to the familiar Combat Model in which they are portrayed as independent sources of motivation struggling for control. In terms of the constitutional model we may explain what makes an action different from an event. What makes an action attributable to a person, and therefore what makes it an action, is that it issues from the person's constitution, and therefore from the person as a whole, rather than from some force working on or in the person. This in turn implies an account of what makes an action good: what makes an action good is that it is deliberated upon and chosen in a way that unifies the person into a constitutional system. Through deliberative action we constitute ourselves as unified agents. Platonic justice and Kant's categorical imperative are shown to be normative standards for action because they are principles of self-constitution.     

Understanding the Self in Self-Transcendence

Based on the work of William James and Bernard Lonergan, this article proposes an understanding of the self as a duplex, dialectical, first-person reality constituted by consciousness and experienced as I and me.