Inferential and Non-Inferential Reasoning

It is sometimes suggested that there are two kinds of reasoning: inferential reasoning and non-inferential reasoning. However, it is not entirely clear what the difference between these two kinds of reasoning is. In this paper, I try to answer the question what this difference is. I first discuss three answers to this question that I argue are unsatisfactory. I then give a different answer to this question, and I argue that this answer is satisfactory. I end by showing that this answer can help to resolve some disagreements in which the difference between inferential and non-inferential reasoning plays a role.     

Reasons and Impossibility

Many philosophers claim that it cannot be the case that a person ought to perform an action if this person cannot perform this action. However, most of these philosophers do not give arguments for the truth of this claim. In this paper, I argue that it is plausible to interpret this claim in such a way that it is entailed by the claim that there cannot be a reason for a person to perform an action if it is impossible that this person will perform this action. I then give three arguments for the truth of the latter claim, which are also arguments for the truth of the former claim as I interpret it.     

Postempiricism and psychological theory

Discusses postempiricism as a view of scientific knowledge and of knowledge in general. It gives a prominent role to theory in relation to experience, experiment, and action and emphasizes the contextual nature of knowledge. The articles by Dishion and Patterson (this issue), Evans (this issue), and Liddle (this issue) are all positioned clearly in this contemporary epistemology. Fonagy's (this issue) analysis of the apparent restriction of psychoanalytic methods of change is discussed.     

Hinduism and cyberspace

Hinduism is thriving in cyberspace. In this article I consider the suitability of this environment for Hinduism. This can indicate both whether various forms of Hindu religious expression online are valid and whether Hinduism needs to undergo any radical changes as a result of its presence in cyberspace. In order to investigate this issue I consider the nature of cyberspace and then discuss a number of key aspects of Hinduism in the light of this. I conclude that, overall, cyberspace appears to be a highly suitable environment for Hinduism.     

NGO-government relations and immigrant services: Contradictions and challenges

This article critically examines the “Canadian model” of immigrant settlement service delivery. This is a system where most settlement services are provided through community-based, including ethno-specific, agencies funded primarily by the various levels of government. Although this model has been widely celebrated as an efficient, immigrant-friendly, and inclusive model to be emulated elsewhere, we argue that it is a system in crisis. Rather than continuing to promote this model uncritically, we examine the roots of this crisis and in this light offer a reconsideration of a series of current policy issues in immigrant service provision in Canada.     

Self-deception and self-knowledge

The aim of this paper is to provide an account of a certain variety of self-deception based on a model of self-knowledge. According to this model, one thinks that one has a belief on the basis of one’s grounds for that belief. If this model is correct, then our thoughts about which beliefs we have should be in accordance with our grounds for those beliefs. I suggest that the relevant variety of self-deception is a failure of self-knowledge wherein the subject violates this epistemic obligation. I argue that construing this type of self-deception as a failure of self-knowledge explains two important aspects of it: The tension that we observe between the subject’s speech and her actions, and our inclination to hold the subject responsible for her condition. I compare this proposal with two other approaches to self-deception in the literature; intentionalism and motivationalism. Intentionalism explains the two aspects of self-deception but it runs into the so-called ‘paradoxes’ of self-deception. Motivationalism avoids those paradoxes but it cannot explain the two aspects of self-deception.     

On Quantitative and Qualitative Parsimony

The distinction between quantitative and qualitative parsimony is supposed to allow David Lewis to dismiss one of the charges against his modal realism: that is, the charge of bloated ontology. The aim of this paper is to undermine Lewis's response to this objection. In order to do this, a distinction between multipliable and nonmultipliable objects is introduced. Based on this it is argued that the acceptance of Lewis's response requires one to believe in modal realism in the first place—that is, one has to believe in the view that the existence of nonactual spatiotemporal worlds does not affect the quality of the ontological commitment. Although the paper focuses on the problem of the metaphysics of possible worlds, this should be regarded merely as a case study. Accordingly, the results of this analysis should find applications in other metaphysical debates as well.     

Couple Therapy and Spirituality and Religion

Abstract

The current state of the art of the integration of couple therapy with spirituality and religion is presented. Each of three waves of this integration identified in this article have seen an increase in the literature in this area, although only a limited amount in each wave has addressed couple therapy specifically. In the first wave, from 1990–1994, articles set forth arguments for why spirituality should be integrated in therapy. During the second wave, 1995–1999, publications focused on the ways that including spirituality in therapy can enhance as well as harm the therapeutic process. In the third wave, 2000-present, attention has shifted away from whether to include spirituality to how it should be included, and the literature of this period features many practical interventions and suggested guidelines for integrating spirituality and religion into therapy and training. The article concludes with recommendations for further developing the integration of spirituality and religion into couple therapy models, research, and training.     

Sensibility and the otherness of the world: Levinas and Merleau-Ponty

Sensibility has traditionally been defined as a relation with the world’s exteriority. However, a certain post-husserlian phenomenology tends to reverse this definition and to redefine sensibility as an internal relation that takes place from within the world. This article focuses on this phenomenological concept of “sensibility” in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty and intends to show that this concept rests upon the presupposition of an alternative according to which we would have whether a sensible experience of identity, or an acosmic experience of otherness—whether a wordly experience of the same or a worldless experience of otherness. Yet, by reducing sensibility to the experience of the world’s interiority and rejecting otherness beyond any worldly experience, this conception fails to account for a significant dimension of sensibility—namely, sensibility as the experience of the world’s own otherness, foreignness or exteriority. It is our hope that, from the critical exposition of this alternative, will eventually appear in conclusion the significant part of this forgotten dimension of sensibility.

     

Destructiveness, atrocities and healing: epistemological and clinical reflections

In this paper, destructiveness is approached as a multi-dimensional phenomenon where the mental health perspective addresses only one of these dimensions. An attempt is made to locate this phenomenon in the context of epistemological and societal considerations. Critical of mono-dimensional explanations based on causal-reductive epistemology, the paper instead proposes the idea of an 'ecology of destructiveness', according to which mental health professionals cannot possibly continue to assume the role of detached observers. The ordinariness and archetypal fascination of destructiveness are discussed as preventing the psychologizing and pathologizing of it. In addition, it is suggested that 'destructiveness may be a tragic facet of the human condition', without this implying any justification of it. Based on my work with a group of Bosnian ex-camp prisoners, some basic principles of how one can work with survivors of atrocities are derived and discussed. A central feature of this work is the attempt to create an appropriate therapeutic context within which a 'therapeutic presence' and 'therapeutic witnessing' can be developed. Finally, the relevance of Jungian insights to this kind of work is reviewed and the emergence of new types of defences of the self is identified.     

Kierkegaard on Existential Kenosis and the Power of the Image: Fear and Trembling and Practice in Christianity

What is the role of the image in faith? How should we relate to Abraham and Christ? Through new readings of two of Kierkegaard’s rarely compared texts, this article locates the religious power of the image in its ability to cleanse the subject of received mis‐images of Christianity, and suggests that Kierkegaard was inspired by elements of Rheno‐Flemish mysticism. Kierkegaard not only identifies this inward existential kenosis as the correct form of imitation, he narratively induces this in his reader. As well as examining this textual performativity and the imagination’s role of kenotically preparing the subject for her subsequent upbuilding, this article identifies the movement of kenosis as constitutive of faith – a task that involves suffering, but a suffering that is always accompanied and tempered by love.     

Conceptualism and Truth

Truth implies mind because falsity does and the same analysis must be given of each. Some philosophers (Aristotle, Brentano) express this by saying that 'true' and 'false' apply strictly speaking to judgments and derivatively to everything else. A consequence of this is that all non-judgmental senses of 'true' and 'false' include some relation to a judgment. But counterexamples to this occur. So an alternative assay must be sought which both covers all cases and retains the idea that truth is mind-dependent. Under this correction, something is true if and only if it conforms to an ideal standard or measure.
This broader view of truth is compatible with realism and conceptualism but not with nominalism. If there are independent reasons for rejecting realism, it follows that conceptualism is true and universals exist only in minds.     

Naturalness in Zen and Shin Buddhism: Before and Beyond Self- and Other-Power

This article seeks to clarify the fundamental similarities and differences between the two most prominent forms of Buddhism in Japan: Zen and Shin (or True Pure Land School) Buddhism. While proponents of Zen typically criticize Shin for seeking the Buddha outside the self, rather than as one's ‘true self’ or ‘original face’, proponents of Shin typically criticize Zen for relying of ‘self-power’, which they understand as inevitably a form of ‘ego-power’, rather than entrusting oneself to the ‘Other-power’ of Amida Buddha. Yet Zen and Shin in fact share some deep commonalities: not only do they both characterize the ultimate ‘Dharma-body’ of the Buddha as ‘emptiness’ or ‘formlessness’, they also both speak of the enlightened state issuing from a realization of this Dharma-body in terms of ‘naturalness’. While attending to the significant differences between the Zen and Shin approaches to this enlightened state of naturalness, this article also pursues the most radical indications of both schools which suggest that this naturalness itself ultimately lies before and beyond both self- and Other-power.     

Reflections on and Future Directions in Humility and Forgiveness Research

Research on humility and forgiveness has reached an important milestone. Scholars are transitioning from largely studying these character strengths in convenience samples (typically university undergraduates) to conducting studies in diverse samples that more accurately reflect the overall adult population in the United States. At important junctures like these, the field needs to both look back and learn from the work to date, as well as to look forward at the new questions that can now bed addressed with these expanded samples. In looking back, previous scholarship demonstrates a strong synthesis between forgiveness and humility, indicating the value of examining these characteristics together. Noel Card (this issue)’s meta-analyses of previous studies’ use of forgiveness and humility measures is also quite timely as it highlights the strengths of various measures, as well as where future measurement work is still needed. In looking forward, the remaining four articles within this issue (Krause, this issue; Hill, this issue; Webster, Ajrouch, & Antonucci, this issue; Antonucci, Ajrouch, Webster, & Birditt, this issue) raise, and begin to address, important developmental questions surrounding forgiveness and humility, such as between group differences, the role of social context, the impact of life stage, and adversity’s possible influence. Cumulatively, these papers point towards the critical questions the field of forgiveness and humility scholars need to address, especially as interest grows in application and intervention development.     

Tense and Relativity

Those inclined to positions in the philosophy of time that take tense seriously have typically assumed that not all regions of space‐time are equal: one special region of space‐time corresponds to what is presently happening. When combined with assumptions from modern physics this has the unsettling consequence that the shape of this favored region distinguishes people in certain places or people traveling at certain velocities. In this paper I shall attempt to avoid this result by developing a tensed picture of reality that is nonetheless consistent with ‘hypersurface egalitarianism’—the view that all hypersurfaces are equal.     

Introspection and Necessity

What is the connection between being in a conscious mental state and believing that you yourself are currently in that state? On the one hand, it is natural to think that this connection is, or involves, a necessary connection of some sort. On the other hand, it is hard to know what the nature of this necessary connection is. For there are plausible arguments according to which this connection is not metaphysically necessary, not rationally necessary, and not merely naturally necessary. If these arguments are correct, and if these options are exhaustive, while there is a necessary connection between a conscious state and the belief that you are in it, there is apparently no necessary connection it could be! This paper sets out this problem—the necessary connection problem, I will call it—and defends and explores a novel proposal about how to solve it.     

Multisemiosis and Incommensurability

Central to Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. Such a notion of incommensurability is based on a particular understanding of what a scientific language is. In this paper we first attempt to understand this notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability. We consider the consequences of the essential multisemiotic character of scientific theories and show how this leads to even a single theory being potentially ‘internally incommensurable’. We then discuss Kuhn’s lexicon‐based approach to incommensurability and the problems associated with it. Finally we argue that this approach by Kuhn has interesting overlaps with the problem of meaning associated with multisemiosis, particularly the challenge of understanding the process of symbolization in scientific theories.     

Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: The Use and Abuse of Examples

The philosophical debate over the compatibility between causaldeterminism and moral responsibility relies heavily on ourreactions to examples. Although we believe that there is noalternative to this methodology in this area of philosophy, someexamples that feature prominently in the literature are positivelymisleading. In this vein, we criticize the use that incompatibilistsmake of the phenomenon of ``brainwashing,' as well as the Frankfurt-styleexamples favored by compatibilists. We provide an instance of thekind of thought experiment that is needed to genuinely test thehypothesis that moral accountability and causal determinism arecompatible.     

Student Spirituality and School Counseling: Issues,Opportunities, and Challenges

In this article, the professional school counseling community is introduced to the value of addressing student spirituality as a way to foster personal and social growth. Prior to discussing the robust theoretical and research foundation for this endeavor, 3 workable definitional strands of spirituality are summarized and applied to educational settings. Strategies for transitioning from the conceptual to school practice are explored, including the key issues related to legal and ethical practice and school counselor education and training. Finally, recommendations for future school counseling research in this area are briefly examined.     

Reasons-responsiveness and degrees of responsibility

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is appropriately receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible.