The Relevance of Fink’s Notion of Operative Concepts for Derrida’s Deconstruction

In the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgotten. When it is recalled, it is most often because of his 1930s articles on phenomenology. In this paper, I claim on the contrary that Fink’s writings exerted a lasting influence on Derrida’s thought, well beyond his early phenomenological works. More specifically, I focus on a 1957 paper presented at a conference on Husserl’s thought where Fink formulates an important distinction between operative and thematic concepts. By adopting both historical and theoretical perspectives, I show how this couple of notions can help to understand Derrida’s singular way of reading philosophical texts. In particular, I present the Derridean concept of supplement as a reworking of Fink’s notion of operative concept. I conclude by suggesting that deconstruction can be understood in part as a radicalization of Fink’s theses.     

道德概念垂直空间隐喻对空间关系判断的影响

本研究通过三个实验考察道德概念垂直空间隐喻对空间关系判断的影响。涉及的空间关系判断包括上下关系判断、远近关系判断和距离判断。研究结果显示：（1）上下判断中,在空间上方时,道德词的反应快于不道德词;在空间下方时,不道德词的反应快于道德词;（2）远近判断中,在空间上方时,个体更倾向于将道德词判断为"远",即道德词更偏上;在空间下方时,没有显著的偏向;（3）在距离判断中,个体对道德词的判断出现显著的向上偏移,对不道德词的判断则出现显著的向下偏移。由此得出结论：道德概念的垂直空间隐喻会影响个体对空间关系的判断,具体来说是"道德是上"的隐喻会导致空间关系判断产生"向上"的偏移效应;而"不道德是下"的隐喻则会导致空间关系判断产生"向下"的偏移效应。     

To infinity and beyond: Children generalize the successor function to all possible numbers years after learning to count

Recent accounts of number word learning posit that when children learn to accurately count sets (i.e., become “cardinal principle” or “CP” knowers), they have a conceptual insight about how the count list implements the successor function – i.e., that every natural number n has a successor defined as n + 1 (Carey, 2004, 2009; Sarnecka & Carey, 2008). However, recent studies suggest that knowledge of the successor function emerges sometime after children learn to accurately count, though it remains unknown when this occurs, and what causes this developmental transition. We tested knowledge of the successor function in 100 children aged 4 through 7 and asked how age and counting ability are related to: (1) children’s ability to infer the successors of all numbers in their count list and (2) knowledge that all numbers have a successor. We found that children do not acquire these two facets of the successor function until they are about 5½ or 6 years of age – roughly 2 years after they learn to accurately count sets and become CP-knowers. These findings show that acquisition of the successor function is highly protracted, providing the strongest evidence yet that it cannot drive the cardinal principle induction. We suggest that counting experience, as well as knowledge of recursive counting structures, may instead drive the learning of the successor function.     

Group affective learning in training for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis

This paper describes The Group Affective Model, a method for teaching psychoanalytic concepts and their clinical application, using multi‐channel teaching, process and review in group settings, and learning from experience in an open systems learning community for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. This innovation arose in response to criticism of existing methods in psychoanalytic education that have subordinated the primary educational task to that of the training analysis. Noticing this split between education and training analysis, between cognition and affect, and between concepts of individual and group unconscious processes, we developed the Group Affective Model for teaching and learning psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in an open psychological space in which students and faculty experience individual and group processes of digestion, assimilation, and review, which demonstrate the concepts in action and make them available for internalization selectively. We discuss our philosophy and our educational stance. We describe our institution and our participants. We give examples of teaching situations that we have studied to provide some insight about assimilation and internalization of the concepts and clinical approaches being taught. We discuss the transferability of the Group Affective Model to other teaching settings and psychoanalytic training institutions and propose it as the fourth pillar of psychoanalytic training, next to analytic treatment, clinical supervision, and didactic seminars.     

Abstract concepts,compositionality, and the contextualism-invariantism debate

Invariantists argue that the notion of concept in psychology should be reserved for knowledge that is retrieved in a context-insensitive manner. Contextualists argue that concepts are to be understood in terms of context-sensitive ad hoc constructions. I review the central empirical evidence for and against both views and show that their conclusions are based on a common mischaracterization of both theories. When the difference between contextualism and invariantism is properly understood, it becomes apparent that the way the question of stability is currently investigated will not lead to a consensus. Instead of focusing directly on stability, we should turn our attention to other desiderata on a theory of concepts. In particular, I show that invariantism, but not contextualism, fails to account for compositionality and abstract concepts.     

Concept History and Religious Discourse

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) has made important contributions to the study of political and social thought, as well as to cultural history more generally. Reinhart Koselleck has argued that, during the eighteenth century, basic concept use in Europe experienced widespread trends of (1) democratization, (2) temporalization, (3) ideologization, and (4) politicization. This article will consider the possibility of a conceptual history of religious discourse. While conceptual history has thus far focused primarily on political and social concepts, some research has more recently turned to religious concepts. This work should be expanded and can be improved by the insight of theologians and ethicists who often have a better understanding of religious concept use than conceptual historians whose main focus is political thought. I will summarize how concept history could be applied to religious concepts, how theologians might make a contribution to the theory behind Koselleck's understanding of modern concept use, and offer a critique of a recent methodological introduction to religious concept history.     

Do children learn the integers by induction?

According to one theory about how children learn the meaning of the words for the positive integers, they first learn that "one," "two," and "three" stand for appropriately sized sets. They then conclude by inductive inference that the next numeral in the count sequence denotes the size of sets containing one more object than the size denoted by the preceding numeral. We have previously argued, however, that the conclusion of this Induction does not distinguish the standard meaning of the integers from nonstandard meanings in which, for example, "ten" could mean set sizes of 10, 20, 30,... elements. Margolis and Laurence [Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2008). How to learn the natural numbers: Inductive inference and the acquisition of number concepts. Cognition, 106, 924-939] believe that our argument depends on attributing to children "radically indeterminate" concepts. We show, first, that our conclusion is compatible with perfectly determinate meanings for "one" through "three." Second, although the inductive inference is indeed indeterminate - which is why it is consistent with nonstandard meanings - making it determinate presupposes the constraints that the inference is supposed to produce.     

Costs and benefits of representational change: effects of context on age and sex differences in symbolic magnitude estimation

Studies have reported high correlations in accuracy across estimation contexts, robust transfer of estimation training to novel numerical contexts, and adults drawing mistaken analogies between numerical and fractional values. We hypothesized that these disparate findings may reflect the benefits and costs of learning linear representations of numerical magnitude. Specifically, children learn that their default logarithmic representations are inappropriate for many numerical tasks, leading them to adopt more appropriate linear representations despite linear representations being inappropriate for estimating fractional magnitude. In Experiment 1, this hypothesis accurately predicted a developmental shift from logarithmic to linear estimates of numerical magnitude and a negative correlation between accuracy of numerical and fractional magnitude estimates (r = −.80). In Experiment 2, training that improved numerical estimates also led to poorer fractional magnitude estimates. Finally, both before and after training that eliminated age differences in estimation accuracy, complementary sex differences were observed across the two estimation contexts.     

Inscrutability and ontological commitment

There are two doctrines for which Quine is particularly well known: the doctrine of ontological commitment and the inscrutability thesis—the thesis that reference and quantification are inscrutable. At first glance, the two doctrines are squarely at odds. If there is no fact of the matter as to what our expressions refer to, then it would appear that no determinate commitments can be read off of our best theories. We argue here that the appearance of a clash between the two doctrines is illusory. The reason that there is no real conflict is not simply that in determining our theories’ ontological commitments we naturally rely on our home language but also (and more importantly) that ontological commitment is not intimately tied to objectual quantification and a reference-first approach to language. Or so we will argue. We conclude with a new inscrutability argument which rests on the observation that the notion of objectual quantification, when properly cashed out, deflates.

Apprentissage de concepts perceptuels, associationnels et relationnels chez le pigeon

The study of concepts in cognitive psychology has generally been anthropocentric with respect to both content and theory. A broader comparative perspective on the various forms of concept learning would provide a more inclusive view of conceptual behavior. It would also provide a more objective perspective from which to identify underlying processes. Several of the major varieties of conceptual classes claimed for humans alone also appear to be represented in nonhuman animals and young children: perceptual classes involving classification according to the shared attributes of objects, associative classes or functional equivalences in which stimuli form a class based on common associations and relational classes, in which the conceptual relationship between stimuli defines the class.