Letter Writing and the Performativity of Intimacy in Female Pedagogical Relations: Recuperating Derridean Amnesia,Writing Back to Madame de Maintenon

Performativity and performance of language are the subject of this re-writing of Derrida's position on the gift. Here the source of performativity is Althusser's while the source of the gift is not only Marcel Mauss, but also both the opening of Derrida's Given Time: I, Counterfeit Money and the signing through letters of Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV and founder of a school for girls. A third writing plays a role, that of a 1910 biography of Madame. The paper is a relay, a re-play of the positions of the central characters, -- Derrida and Maintenon -- and a semiology of their writings. Out of this a new gift of pedagogy is evoked in a conception of pedagogical retreat.     

Argumentative aspects of indirect proof

While direct proof is widely considered the paradigm of the acquisition of knowledge by deductive means, indirect proof has traditionally been criticized as showing merely that its conclusion is true and not why it is true. This paper accounts for the traditional objection by emphasizing the argumentative role in indirect proof of logical principles such as excluded middle and non-contradiction.     

Theorem counting

Consider the set of tautologies of the classical propositional calculus containing no connective other than and, or, and not. Consider the subset of this set containing tautologies in exactlyn propositional variables. This paper provides a method for determining the number of equivalence classes of each such subset modulo equivalence in the infinite-valued Lukasiewicz propositional calculus.     

Natural predicates and topological structures of conceptual spaces

In the framework of set theory we cannot distinguish between natural and non-natural predicates. To avoid this shortcoming one can use mathematical structures as conceptual spaces such that natural predicates are characterized as structurally nice subsets. In this paper topological and related structures are used for this purpose. We shall discuss several examples taken from conceptual spaces of quantum mechanics (orthoframes), and the geometric logic of refutative and affirmable assertions. In particular we deal with the problem of structurally distinguishing between natural colour predicates and Goodmanian predicates like grue and bleen. Moreover the problem of characterizing natural predicates is reformulated in such a way that its connection with the classical problem of geometric conventionalism becomes manifest. This can be used to shed some new light on Goodman's remarks on the relative entrenchment of predicates as a criterion of projectibility.     

Toulmin on Ideals of Natural Order

In this paper I criticize Toulmin's concept of Ideals of Natural Order and his account of the role these Ideals play in scientific explanation as given in his book, Foresight and Understanding. I argue that Toulmin's account of Ideals of Natural Order as those theories taken to be self evident by scientists at a given time introduces an undesirable subjectivism into his account of scientific explanation. I argue also that the history of science, especially the recent history of microphysics, does not support Toulmin's contentions about the supposed self-evidence of the basic explanatory theories in science.     

The relationship between perceived surface-lightness and perceived illumination

Summary An attempt was made to specify the relationship between perceived surface lightness and perceived illumination under the stimulus conditions where different combinations of albedo and illuminance gave 10 approximately equal-luminance levels of a test field (TF) on three different (black-, gray- and white-appearing) backgrounds. Two types of category judgments for TF-lightness and overall illumination were made on the total of 94 TFs by 5 Ss. The results indicated that under the condition where achromatic surface colors appear, the perceptual scission which produces two different perceptual dimensions (lightness and perceived illumination) from one sort of stimulation (luminance) was clearly observed. The relation between the two judgments was consistent with the lightness-illumination invariance hypothesis: As lightness judgments (A) changed from darker to lighter, illumination judgments (I) shifted form brighter to dimmer, the sum of A and I being kept nearly invariant for a given luminance of the TF; the psychological relationship between lightness and illumination, A+I, changed as a linear function of the photometric combination of albedo and illuminance, log A+log I. It was also found that the albedo of the background was an important factor determining the extent of perceptual scission between lightness and illumination.     

False Consensus and Adolescent Peer Contagion: Examining Discrepancies between Perceptions and Actual Reported Levels of Friends’ Deviant and Health Risk Behaviors

Adolescents perceptions of their friends behavior strongly predict adolescents own behavior, however, these perceptions often are erroneous. This study examined correlates of discrepancies between adolescents perceptions and friends reports of behavior. A total of 120 11th-grade adolescents provided data regarding their engagement in deviant and health risk behaviors, as well as their perceptions of the behavior of their best friend, as identified through sociometric assessment. Data from friends own report were used to calculate discrepancy measures of adolescents overestimations and estimation errors (absolute value of discrepancies) of friends behavior. Adolescents also completed a measure of friendship quality, and a sociometric assessment yielding measures of peer acceptance/rejection and aggression. Findings revealed that adolescents peer rejection and aggression were associated with greater overestimations of friends behavior. This effect was partially mediated by adolescents own behavior, consistent with a false consensus effect. Low levels of positive friendship quality were significantly associated with estimation errors, but not overestimations specifically.     

What is Psychotherapy for? A Plausible Alternative to Empirically Supported Therapies,Therapy Relationships,and Practice Guidelines

Task forces come up with empirically supported therapies and therapist-client relationships. A careful study of their research provides an empirically supported answer to the long-standing question of what psychotherapy is for. Accordingly, if your way of doing therapy falls outside the empirically based boundary, (a) you can risk declining their practice guidelines; (b) you can develop your own practice guidelines; and (c) you can pursue some exciting implications from having an alternative set of guidelines for how to do psychotherapy. A strategy is proposed as a plausible alternative to the task forces empirically based strategy.     

Mel Gibson’s Big Gamble: <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Passion of Christ</Emphasis>

Mel Gibsons film is a creative reworking of opportunities provided by migrating to Australia as a boy and a life-long desire to be reconciled to his father, Hutton Gibson. If the film is read as a study in psychology and biography, then biblical and theological critiques, along with contemporary politically correct stances towards what Gibson did, can be set temporarily aside in search of a larger trajectory of meaning implicit in the film. The embodied nature of the film, along with other violent films in which Gibson starred in the past three decades, points to wellsprings of power in the blood. Violence becomes an idiom of reconciliation with authority. Gibsons relationship to his father plays a major role in such a reading of the film. A continuous reconciliation with his father is evident not only in thematic continuities over the course of Mel Gibsons professional acting career and starring roles. It also structures the directors construction of Christs Passion. A desire not to be forsaken gives rise to this idiosyncratic and controversial film, itself a cinematic statement about Gibsons own personal spiritual torment.Richard A. Hutch is Director of Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Reader in Religion and Psychological Studies in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia 4072.     

Natural deduction rules for English

A system of natural deduction rules is proposed for an idealized form of English. The rules presuppose a sharp distinction between proper names and such expressions as the c, a (an) c, some c, any c, and every c, where c represents a common noun. These latter expressions are called quantifiers, and other expressions of the form that c or that c itself, are called quantified terms. Introduction and elimination rules are presented for any, every, some, a (an), and the, and also for any which, every which, and so on, as well as rules for some other concepts. One outcome of these rules is that Every man loves some woman is implied by, but does not imply, Some woman is loved by every man, since the latter is taken to mean the same as Some woman is loved by all men. Also, Jack knows which woman came is implied by Some woman is known by Jack to have come, but not by Jack knows that some woman came.     

PROXY FUNCTIONS,TRUTH AND REFERENCE

Quines ontological relativity is related to Tarskis theory of truth in two ways: Quine repudiates term-by-term-correspondence, as does Tarskis rule of truth; and Quines proxy argument in support of relativity finds exact formulation in Tarskis truth definition.Unfortunately, relativity is threatened by the fact that the proxy argument doesnt comply with the rule of truth (Tarskis celebrated condition (T)). Despite Quines express allegiance to (T), use of proxy schemes does not generate all of the true sentences condition (T) requires.A possible adjustment is to drop (T), retain the satisfaction definition and proxy argument, and appeal to the theory of observation and indeterminacy of reference as grounds of relativity. But as we shall see Quines theories of assent to observation sentences and of reference-learning dont square easily with his naturalism. The first attributes intentional attitudes to observers; and the second assumes a holistic context principle and a concept of individuation which do not withstand scrutiny as empirical notions. Both appear to violate Quines behavorist canon.A saving alternative is a theory of term-reference that appears in Roots of Reference and affords a return to behaviorism, and reinstatement of the proxy argument and relativity in a way compatible with Tarskis (T).     

The array size function in simple visual search tasks: A comparison between “go-no go” and “yes-no” tasks under conditions of high and low target-noise similarity

Summary In research on visual search within a single eye-fixation a number of different tasks are used and referred to interchangeably. Research with other types of tasks suggests that there are possibly important differences between these tasks. In the present study, two types of search tasks were compared under conditions as equal as possible: the go-no go task and the yes-no task. Conditions of low and high target-noise similarity were used. The results obtained showed: a) a steeper slope of the array size function in yes-no tasks than in go-no go tasks on the first day of practice but not on the second: b) a higher intercept value of the same function for yes-no tasks than for go-no go tasks; and c) a greater proportion of errors with yes-no tasks than with comparable go-no go tasks. A tentative model, describing the main features of the results obtained, is briefly sketched.     

The Shattered Horizon How Ideology Mattered to Soviet Politics

This article argues that ideology was of key-importance to the Soviet system. The rules which governed Soviet ideological discourse did not only hold for the producers of ideology but also aimed at filtering public communication. The respect people showed for an ideologically filtered discourse counted as a sign of loyalty. In this way ideology constituted a central pillar of power. The article presents the results of an analysis of political texts dating from the Gorbachev era. It concludes that the Gorbachev reforms eroded the communication filter because they changed the rules on which ideological discourse and thus power rested.     

Stuffed Cabbage in the Old New School Cafeteria

The purpose of this lecture is to celebrate the memory of Aron Gurwitsch by examining and enlarging the domain of phenomenological clarification of some elements of what Gurwitsch called the logic of reality. Chief among those elements are the nature of the taken-for-grantedness of our existential belief, the difference between presentive and non-presentive indices of reality and the ground for the self-illumination of the world of working.     

Theor of free choice permission

I argue that the conjunctive distribution of permissibility over or, which is a puzzling feature of free-choice permission is just one instance of a more general class of conjunctive occurrences of the word, and that these conjunctive uses are more directly explicable by the consideration that or is a descendant of oper than by reference to the disjunctive occurrences which logicalist prejudices may tempt us to regard as semantically more fundamental. I offer an account of how the disjunctive uses of or may have come about through an intermediate discourse-adverbial use of or, drawing a parallel with but, which, etymologically, is disjunctive rather than conjunctive and whose conjunctive uses seem to represent just such a discourse-adverbial application.     

Some notes on the nature of methodological indeterminacy

This paper is an attempt to extend the meaning of the concept of indeterminacy for the human sciences. The authors do this by coining the term methodological indeterminacy and arguing that indeterminacy is better understood when linked to specific methodological techniques. Paradoxically, while specific research techniques demonstrate that the issue of indeterminacy is complex, yielding the possibility of types and degrees, it does not eliminate the problem of translation first raised by Quine. However, the authors go on to argue that, from a research perspective, indeterminacy can and must be approached in such a way that it is possible to reduce cases of it, even though never completely eliminating it in the human sciences.     

The relevance of Habermas' communicative turn

This paper points out the way in which educational and communicative action (Habermas) are to be related. It is shown that earlier attempts to put Habermas ideas to use have led to a dead end because they do not realize clearly that the new basic notion introduced by Habermas, namely communicative action, is the expression of a communicative turn. It is argued that Habermas' concept expresses a radical new attempt to grasp the intersubjective character of social action. Next implications of this communicative turn for the concept of education as a social praxis are indicated. Education can be conceived of as a praxis responding to the vulnerability of a communicative self.     

The Dancing Philosopher

This excerpt from Kenneth Kings essay, The Dancing Philosopher, traces its genesis from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a work that greatly impacted Isadora Duncans founding of modern dance) that, in tandem with the emerging technology of the writing machine (typewriter), camera and kinetoscope (cinematography), conjoined the kinetropic and lexigraphemic to inaugurate the kinetic cogito. Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological exposition of corporeality further amplified the reflexive potential of movement and the philosophical understanding of kinesthesia, and King cites as well the technosophic synergy of John Cages and Merce Cunninghams long artistic collaboration that furthered the frontier of a mind-body epistemic.     

On two arguments for the indeterminacy of personal identity

Both arguments are based on the breakdown of normal criteria of identity in certain science-fictional circumstances. In one case, normal criteria would support the identity of person A with each of two other persons, B and C; and it is argued that, in the imagined circumstances, A=B and A=C have no truth value. In the other, a series or spectrum of cases is tailored to a sorites argument. At one end of the spectrum, persons A and B are such that A=B is clearly true; at the other end, A and B are such that the identity is clearly false. In between, normal criteria of identity leave the truth or falsehood of A=B undecided, and it is argued that in these circumstances A=B has no truth value.These arguments are to be understood counterfactually. My claim is that, so understood, neither establishes its conclusion. The first involves a pair of counterfactual situations that are equally possible or tied. If A=B and A=C have no truth value, a counterfactual conditional with one of them as consequent and an antecedent that is true in circumstances in which either is true should have no truth value. Intuitively, however, any such counterfactual is false. The second argument can be seen to invite an analogous response. If this is right, however, there is an important disanalogy between this and the classical paradox of the heap. If the disanalogy is only apparent, the argument shows at most that the existence of persons can be indeterminate.