The Sceptic,The Outsider,and Other Minds

Topoi - The usual way with scepticism is to formulate a problem in connection with the external world and then apply this to other minds. Drawing on work by Stanley Cavell and Richard Moran, I...     

Necessity,The A Priori,And The Standard Meter

This article critically examines SaulKripke's (1972) argument for the separability ofnecessary truths from truths known a priori,focusing on his criticism of the standard meter casepresented by Wittgenstein (1968). It attempts to showthat Kripke's argument is unworkable on any of severalreadings. Wittgenstein's own broadly conventionalistaccount of necessary truth is then considered in thelight of the standard meter example.     

The body, adolescence, and psychosis

This article explores aspects of the clinical development of a male 17 year-old patient who had four weekly sessions of psychoanalysis during an acute psychotic crisis. In the context of arrested adolescent development, a psychotic crisis can present an opportunity to set the process of maturation in motion again. Adolescent psychosis is examined in the light of Bion's theories of catastrophic change - in which the container/contained relationship becomes explosive and overwhelming - as well as of Ferrari's and Matte Blanco's hypotheses on the mind-body relationship. The authors emphasize the role of denial of the body and its changes in the genesis of adolescent psychotic conflict, and show how the analytic relationship can offer crucial reverie conditions for promoting recognition of the body, bodily sensations and affects, as a prerequisite for the activation of an autonomous mental system. This clinical approach entails recognizing the urgent need to make room for the elaboration of intrasubjective relationships and for mind-body dialogue, transference interpretations being postponed. Clinical material and fragments of analytic dialogue illustrate the authors' hypotheses and demonstrate the patient's development towards recognition of his body and an incipient capacity to think associated with the perception of the limits set by time and reality.     

Most People are Pretty Happy,but There is Cultural Variation: The Inughuit,The Amish,and The Maasai

Diener and Diener (1996; Psychological Science 7: 181–185) suggested that most people are happy, and offered support for this claim from surveys in industrialized societies. We extend their findings to include people who lead materially simple lives and live in cultures far removed from those of typical survey respondents. We found that the Kenyan Maasai, the United States Amish, and the Greenlandic Inughuit, all reported positive levels of life satisfaction, domain satisfaction, and affect balance (more frequent positive emotions than negative ones). Across satisfaction and affect measures, including methods in addition to global self-reports, our 358 respondents from these cultures were one average, positive on all 54 scales, and significantly above neutral on 53 of them. Across all measures and samples 84% of participants scored above neutral. However, nobody was perfectly happy and satisfied, and the groups reported unique configurations of satisfaction and affect. Although all three groups were high in satisfaction with so cial domains, the Amish reported lower satisfaction with self-related domains, and the Maasai and Inughuit were relatively lower in satisfaction with material domains. All three groups reported frequent positive emotions, but only the Maasai reported frequent feelings of pride. Thus, the fact that most people tend to be moderately happy does not mean that they are ecstatic, or that there is no variation across cultures in happiness.     

The conscientious retiree: The relationship between conscientiousness,retirement, and volunteering

The current study examined the relationship between conscientiousness, work status, and volunteering utilizing two large samples, the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). It was hypothesized that conscientious adults who were retired would be more likely to volunteer because, after retirement, they gain a substantial amount of free time, while losing an outlet for their industrious and achievement-striving tendencies. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses revealed that conscientious, retired individuals were more likely to volunteer than conscientious, working individuals. Further analyses revealed that facets of conscientiousness provide differential information from the general trait. These findings indicate that volunteering during retirement fills an important niche for high-striving, conscientious individuals.     

The Future is Bright: The Underdog Label,Availability, and Optimism

Research suggests that people support underdogs. Three studies examined how laypeople conceptualize the underdog label. Study 1 used a free association method to create a semantic network map of the underdog construct. In Study 2, participants provided their own definitions and selected the entity that best exemplified an underdog. In the two studies, the underdog term was linked to both disadvantage and successful qualities. In Study 3, participants read fictional stories about competing entities unlikely to succeed. When targets were labeled as underdogs, participants predicted that they would perform significantly better than expectations. We suggest that, although dictionaries define underdogs as unlikely to prevail, a layperson's conceptions, shaped by inspirational archetypal stories of odds overcome, are more optimistic.     

The Concept, and Conceptions, of Justice

ABSTRACT Occasioned by but not pretending to constitute a critique of Julian Le Grand's 'Equity as an Economic Objective', published in the first issue of the Journal of Applied Philosophy , this paper argues that the concept of justice must be distinguished from conceptions thereof. Once this is done it emerges that many of what are both offered and accepted as conceptions of justice really are not. By proceeding next both to enquire what are the incentives to such misrepresentations and to reveal some of their unrecognized costs, this is shown to be by no means a merely trifling and purely verbal matter. In particular, by misrepresenting the imposition of their peculiar and characteristic ideal of equality of outcome as the enforcement of the mandate of justice, Procrusteans unwittingly imply that they are themselves involved in appallingly shabby and discreditable practices.