The Bright Forms … . .: Commentary on Paper by Vivian Dent

This brief commentary on Vivian Dent's paper about my way of introducing the horizontal axis of siblings engages in a two-way dialogue about what art can tell us of the unconscious psyche and what psychoanalysis can tell us of the art object. It urges us to look at siblings in the transference and countertransference.     

对改善农村医疗卫生人才队伍现状的思考

农村卫生技术人才匮乏给农村卫生事业发展带来了严峻的挑战,导致这一现状的缘由应从多层面进行分析。作为医学领域新思想、新知识、新技术的创造者和发源地以及医学人才培养摇篮的高等医学院校在改变这种格局中担负着重大的使命。探讨如何以客户意识作为教育及办学价值取向,从而为改善农村卫生队伍现状开拓了思路。     

WHY PRACTICE PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE?

This essay explains why there are good reasons to practice philosophy as a way of life. The argument begins with the assumption that we should live well but that our understanding of how to live well can be mistaken. Philosophical reason and reflection can help correct these mistakes. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that philosophical reasoning often fails to change our dispositions and behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, the essay claims that spiritual exercises and communal engagement mitigate the factors that prevent us from living in accordance with our conceptions of the good life. So, many of us have reasons to engage in philosophical reasoning along with behavioral, cognitive, and social strategies to alter our behavior and attitudes so that they’re in line with our philosophical commitments. In these respects, many of us should practice philosophy as a way of life.     

“道德”探幽

道德既是人之为人的内在规定性,亦是人的自由存在方式,既是人对存在的反思性把握,亦是人的反思性存在方式。     

近视发展的整体调节方式

近视发展是一个复杂而精细的整体调节过程.运用一种全新的整体思维模式描述近视发展中整体和要素之间相互影响及相互作用,合理推论近视发展的整体调节机制,使人们从整体上了解近视的产生-发展-稳定机制.通过对视觉系统整体调节方式的研究,使我们突破了以往孤立看待组织和疾病的传统观念,而更加注重整体调节方式的调整,这将成为我们及早预防和治疗疾病的新的前景.     

On Sporting Integrity

It has become increasingly popular for sports fans, pundits, coaches and players to appeal to ideas of ‘sporting integrity’ when voicing their approval or disapproval of some aspect of the sporting world. My goal in this paper will be to examine whether there is any way to understand this idea in a way that both makes sense of the way in which it is used and presents a distinctly ‘sporting’ form of integrity. I will look at three recent high-profile sporting incidents that caused sporting integrity to be called into question. I will then examine three different ways in which philosophers have sought to understand integrity and examine whether any of these accounts can provide us with a plausible account of sporting integrity. I will argue that such an account can be given and show how this helps us to understand the three cases.     

Just do it? When to do what you judge you ought to do

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that’s notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won’t lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay.     

Hamlet and psychoanalytic experience

Hamlet draws us into its rendered world, enabling us to experience it with depth, awareness, and resonance, in a mode we recognize as aesthetic. By way of Shakespeare's play--primarily the first act--and a detailed case study, aesthetic and psychoanalytic experience are compared, to suggest that, for our own analytic discourse, we revalue Freud's unease that his case studies read like short stories.     

Jung and Mr. Punch as mythologems

This paper explores how we can make our own mythological version of ‘Jung’ say whatever we want. Excessive veneration gets in the way of his theories being allowed to stand on their own. Understanding ‘Jung’ as a mythologem provides a way out of this intoxication with identification by letting us recollect and re‐connect to the Collective Unconscious.     

Secular Discourse and the Clash of Faiths: 'The Satanic Verses' in British Society

Let us never believe that the way in which the people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look, because if we do that, then that's a kind of appalling self-censorship. (Salman Rushdie).
In Britain we believe in live and let live … Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists and Rastafarians are all welcome to our tolerant society. But there is only one law for all of us… Those who say their deep religious convictions prevent them from obeying the law of this land should quit Britain immediately and go and live in a country where the conflict does not exist.( Sunday Sport , 19 February, 1989—editorial on Rushdie).
So the battle over The Satanic Verses is a clash of faiths, in a way. Or, more precisely, it's a clash of languages. (Salman Rushdie, The Observer , 22 January, 1989).     

Armchair Disagreement

A commonly neglected feature of the so‐called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give our peers’ opinions the same weight we give our own, is its prima facie incompatibility with the common picture of philosophy as an armchair activity: an intellectual effort to seek a priori knowledge. This view seems to imply that our beliefs are more likely to be true if we leave our armchair in order to find out whether there actually are peers who, by disagreeing with us, force us to revise our beliefs. This article argues that the Equal Weight View should be spelled out in such a way that not only actual peer disagreement requires us to revise our beliefs, but also merely possible peer disagreement. This result is not a reductio ad absurdum of the view. Quite the opposite: it shows that the view is, contrary to appearance, compatible with our common way of doing philosophy.     

On Hesitation before the Other

Hesitation is a phenomenological moment. One is disturbed when, unexpectedly, someone else is there. There is that sharp intake of breath which accompanies being taken by surprise, and even a suspension of time, before one exhales. The other person takes us by surprise and often jolts us out of self-complacency and self-contentment, but also introduces us and invites us into a situation of responsibility in which the ego is no longer for itself but for the other. This is declining subjectivity otherwise and in terms of the other. This short article takes as its point of departure a simple incident: one halts or gives way before someone pushing a child’s pram. One says, ‘after you.’ With Levinas and Blanchot, this moment of ‘giving way’ needs to be phenomenologically frozen in that very moment of giving way, for hesitation is a hesitation in being. ‘To be’ is a reflexive verb, and existence is already fissured. Into this wound within existence, an other may enter, and provide an exit from ontology to ethics.     

The Metaphysical Consequences of Counterfactual Skepticism

A series of recent arguments purport to show that most counterfactuals of the form if A had happened then C would have happened are not true. These arguments pose a challenge to those of us who think that counterfactual discourse is a useful part of ordinary conversation, of philosophical reasoning, and of scientific inquiry. Either we find a way to revise the semantics for counterfactuals in order to avoid these arguments, or we find a way to ensure that the relevant counterfactuals, while not true, are still assertible. I argue that regardless of which of these two strategies we choose, the natural ways of implementing these strategies all share a surprising consequence: they commit us to a particular metaphysical view about chance.     

公共行政伦理价值定位与规范体系

加强公共行政伦理建设,是加强政风建设、建设廉洁勤政务实高故政府、建设高素质公务员队伍的基本途径。因此,必须对公共行政伦理进行价值定位,借鉴国外公共行政伦理建设的经验,建构中国当代公共行政伦理的规范体系。     

Are archetypes transmitted or emergent? A response to Christian Roesler

In this paper the author argues that Jung's concept of archetype should not be reduced to an univocal definition. Jung himself proposed many definitions of this concept, some of them being partially or totally contradictory to others. A univocal and logical way of thinking can lead us to refute and reject part of those definitions, but a complex way of thinking, as proposed by Edgar Morin or Roy Bhaskar for example, can allow us to consider that those apparent contradictions in Jung's definitions of archetype reflect the complexity of the psychic reality. The main argument of the author is that Jung was missing the epistemological concept of emergence (which appeared in science at the time of his death) and that he tried to express it with the epistemological concepts of his time.     

Absolute Goodness,Wonder and the Evildoer

Raimond Gaita affirms absolute goodness as the only thing with the power to keep fully among us the worst kind of evildoer. At issue in this goodness is a wonder that he ties to joy. Yet Gaita does not, perhaps cannot, imagine this power with respect to the evildoer concretely enough for it to move us in the way his account requires. An aspect of his writings that resists the emphasis on a joyous wonder may assist our thinking about the relation to the evildoer.     

Speech and sensibility: Levinas and Habermas on the constitution of the moral point of view

For Habermas, a moral point of view is based in the procedural requirements of our linguistic competence. For Levinas, it is the way in which we find ourselves related in speech to the face of the other that we find ourselves obliged to the other. But these differing conceptions of the moral significance of language need not be seen as opposed to each other. Rather, they can be conceptualized as complimentary accounts of the ways in which a moral point of view onto life is inextricably bound up for us with our capacities as linguistic creatures. While Habermas enables us to see the importance of language as a rule-governed social practice for the constitution of a moral point of view, Levinas draws our attention to the way in which the moral significance of language so conceived lies in a form of sensibility, a sensible “exposure” or “vulnerability” to the other person, older than language itself. Appropriately coordinated, these two perspectives give us a more adequate understanding than either can on its own of the central place of language in our lives as moral agents.     

The Dance: Essence of Embodiment

An analysis of movement, and particularly of dance,helps us to see in an extraordinarily effective way the meaningof embodiment. This paper then looks through the eyes ofdance theorists and at philosophers who consider dance andmovement and their meaning of embodiment. A study of movementand dance encompasses the fullest meaning of embodiment: that theembodied way of being-in-the-world is also an embedded way ofbeing in a world of others. Dance has critically importantsocial ramifications. In our own and other cultures, dance playsan important role in healing and in health enhancement.     

The Play’s the Thing: Improvisation in Group Psychotherapy

Study of improvisational theater suggests practices that can help us respond more fully in a therapeutic way. Improvisation is a powerful tool that emphasizes present-centered awareness and spontaneity. It helps us respond effectively to present moment processes, a key requirement for psychodynamic group psychotherapy. It enhances our ability to communicate with our patients when traditional interventions fail. Improvisation requires a readiness to play and a willingness to be open to the challenges of non-rational modes of relating. This article provides clinical examples of improvised group interventions.     

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND THE RATIONALITY OF FAITH

This paper evaluates the role that evolutionary psychology can play in examining the rationality of faith in the Christian sense. It is argued that because evolutionary psychology enables us to understand human nature, it can help us understand what faith is. I argue that faith is not a universal human instinct that all religions tap into. Rather, we must understand how the early Christian community used the basic building blocks provided by human nature in a particular way. It is argued that it is a misunderstanding of the nature of faith to assert that faith is intrinsically irrational. However, evolutionary psychology cannot tell us whether or not faith is rational.