Still living in a war zone: Perceived health and wellbeing of partners of Vietnam veterans attending partners' support groups in New South Wales,Australia

Post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans is well documented, less so the long‐term impact on the health of their partners and families. The perceived health and wellbeing of women partners of Australian Vietnam veterans who were members of partners of veterans support groups is reported. This qualitative study used data from 76 participants in 10 focus groups in metropolitan, regional, and rural and remote areas of New South Wales (NSW). The data were tape‐recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed using constant comparison methods. The impact of living with a partner with war‐related PTSD appears to be significant and ongoing with women drawing parallels to living in a war zone. The biggest negative impact was on their mental health. They felt burdened as carers and struggled to find explanations for their husbands' problems. Support groups were very helpful. There are implications for partners of veterans who have returned from active military duty and from peacekeeping in current conflicts.     

The Relatively Happy Fish

Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's discussion about whether Zhuangzi knows ‘fish’s happiness' is a Daoist staple. The interpretations, however, portray it as humorous miscommunication between a mystic and a logician. I argue for a fine inferential analysis that explains the argument in a way that informs Zhuangzi philosophical lament at Hui Shi's passing. It also reverses the dominant image of the two thinkers. Zhuangzi emerges as the superior dialectician, the clearer, more analytic epistemologist. Hui Shi's arguments betray his tendency (manifest elsewhere) to misstate the conclusions of their shared relativism leading him but not Zhuangzi to intuitive mysticism.     

Sinking Cohen's Flagship — or Why People with Expensive Tastes Should not be Compensated

G. A. Cohen argues that egalitarians should compensate for expensive tastes or for the fact that they are expensive. Ronald Dworkin, by contrast, regards most expensive tastes as unworthy of compensation — only if a person disidentifies with his own such tastes (i.e. wishes he did not have them) is compensation appropriate. Dworkinians appeal, inter alia, to the so‐called ‘first‐person’ or ‘continuity’ test. According to the continuity test, an appropriate standard of interpersonal comparison reflects people's own assessment of their relative standing: Person A can only legitimately demand compensation from person B if he regards himself as worse off, all things considered, than B. The typical bearer of expensive tastes does not regard herself as being worse off than others with less expensive tastes. Hence, in the typical case, pace Cohen, compensation for expensive tastes is inappropriate. The article scrutinizes this rationale for not compensating for expensive tastes. Especially, we try to bolster the continuity test by relating it to Dworkin's distinction between integrated and detached values, pointing out that an argument for the continuity test can be built on the assumption that equality has integrated value. In brief, the point is that a metric of equality should be assessed, partly, in virtue of its consequences for related ideals. One of these is the kind of justificatory community promoted by the continuity test. We defend this view against an objection to the effect that equality is a detached value. We conclude that the continuity test constitutes a strong foothold for the resourcist egalitarian reluctance to compensate people for their expensive tastes.     

Rapport as mutual respect

Rapport in testing and counseling contexts is usually described by a listing of conditions said to produce optimal performance through eliciting or inhibiting certain behaviors and traits. In this article, the traditional conditions are criticized as grounded in a combination of inadequate faculty-trait and behavioristic theories. “Mutual respect” is proposed as a more accurate and practical alternative, one that is explicitly grounded in a conception of the person as always involved with his total situation and acting in accordance with his experience of it. Rapport, then, exists when each person recognizes and respects the reality of the other's experience.     

ANCIENT CHINESE THEORIES OF LANGUAGE

It is a commonplace hope of much modern philosophy that philosophy be understood as intimately related to language. The bridge between philosophical doctrines and language is typically erected by explaining various substantive views in e.g. ontology, logic, epistemology, ethics, etc., as presupposing a certain view of language, its function, its significance, etc. Insofar as this view is helpful, understanding Chinese philosophy should be no exception. Behind some of the ethical, metaphysical or epistemo-logical doctrines, we should be able to find views about language which themselves can be explained by certain general features of Chinese language and accepted philosophical practice. These, naturally, would be most interesting and informative where they provide a contrast with the views which historically were dominant in Western philosophy.