THE VACUITY OF POSTMODERNIST METHODOLOGY

Abstract: Many of the philosophical doctrines purveyed by postmodernists have been roundly refuted, yet people continue to be taken in by the dishonest devices used in proselytizing for postmodernism. I exhibit, name, and analyse five favourite rhetorical manoeuvres: Troll's Truisms, Motte and Bailey Doctrines, Equivocating Fulcra, the Postmodernist Fox Trot, and Rankly Relativising Fields. Anyone familiar with postmodernist writing will recognise their pervasive hold on the dialectic of postmodernism and come to judge that dialectic as it ought to be judged.     

Eliciting Self-Explanations Improves Understanding

Learning involves the integration of new information into existing knowledge. Generating explanations to oneself (self-explaining) facilitates that integration process. Previously, self-explanation has been shown to improve the acquisition of problem-solving skills when studying worked-out examples. This study extends that finding, showing that self-explanation can also be facilitative when it is explicitly promoted, in the context of learning declarative knowledge from an expository text. Without any extensive training, 14 eighth-grade students were merely asked to self-explain after reading each line of a passage on the human circulatory system. Ten students in the control group read the same text twice, but were not prompted to self-explain. All of the students were tested for their circulatory system knowledge before and after reading the text. The prompted group had a greater gain from the pretest to the posttest. Moreover, prompted students who generated a large number of self-explanations (the high explainers) learned with greater understanding than low explainers. Understanding was assessed by answering very complex questions and inducing the function of a component when it was only implicitly stated. Understanding was further captured by a mental model analysis of the self-explanation protocols. High explainers all achieved the correct mental model of the circulatory system, whereas many of the unprompted students as well as the low explainers did not. Three processing characteristics of self-explaining are considered as reasons for the gains in deeper understanding.     

Fear of the Dark

Meditating on the liturgy of Holy Week, Aemiliana Lohr insisted that “the real Christian Pasch remains the mysterium of night”. The Christian mysterium is “always entire”, but its entirety we can never directly state or see; the darkness of our circumstance wans and waxes. We fear the dark, but what kind of fear is compatible with the command to “fear not”? Exploring this question in relation to Mark's passion narrative, the paper considers the kinds of context in which such reassurance as the first Christians sought might still be needed, for what is required of Christians is “patience”: the of staying awake in the dark. The paper concludes with remarks on the trinitarian grounds and christological character of patience.     

Aetiology of Coexisting Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drug Disorders: Perspectives of Refugee Youth and Service Providers

In the general population, people with comorbid mental health (MH) and alcohol and other drug (AOD) disorders (comorbidity) have great difficulty accessing appropriate services, and poor outcomes. Little is known about comorbidity in resettled refugees in Australia. This study was designed to identify risk factors and patterns of comorbidity development in young people from refugee backgrounds living in a disadvantaged urban region of Adelaide, South Australia. This qualitative study utilised in‐depth semi‐structured interviews (n = 30) with resettled refugee youth and workers from MH, AOD, and refugee support services. Thematic analyses were conducted to investigate the aetiology of MH and AOD disorders in young refugees. Interviews with both groups revealed how the interrelated nature of risk factors may place young people from refugee backgrounds at heightened risk of experiencing MH and AOD problems. The situations and conditions described by both groups are discussed under six main themes: pre‐migration experiences of torture and trauma; familial factors of intergenerational conflict; post‐migration adjustment difficulties in terms of language, culture, education, and employment; exposure to and availability of substances; maladaptive coping strategies and self‐medication; and access to information and services. Implications for psychologists and MH professionals are identified, emphasising the need for clinicians to understand the complexities surrounding the aetiology of comorbidity in these youth. The initial assessment needs to be comprehensive, including pre‐ and post‐settlement experiences and cultural and family dimensions of their current situation. Treatment may often need to simultaneously address multiple contributing factors and involve culturally sensitive psycho‐education.     

Kant's Argument that Existence is not a Determination

In this paper, I examine Kant's famous objection to the ontological argument: existence is not a determination. Previous commentators have not adequately explained what this claim means, how it undermines the ontological argument, or how Kant argues for it. I argue that the claim that existence is not a determination means that it is not possible for there to be non‐existent objects; necessarily, there are only existent objects. I argue further that Kant's target is not merely ontological arguments as such but the larger ‘ontotheist’ metaphysics they presuppose: the view that God necessarily exists in virtue of his essence being contained in, or logically entailed by, his essence. I show that the ontotheist explanation of divine necessity requires the assumption that existence is a determination, and I show that Descartes and Leibniz are implicitly committed to this in their published versions of the ontological argument. I consider the philosophical motivations for the claim that existence is a determination and then I examine Kant's arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason against it.