Jung's mediatory science as a psychology beyond objectivism

In this paper, the author argues that Jung's non-objectivist--yet scientific--epistemology and his empirical/hermeneatic methods of inquiry situate him within a psychological tradition that, in many respects, began with William James and, today, is finding expression in the work of many non-Jungian cognitive scientists. In an effort to encourage dialogue between Jungians and scholars within related intellectual traditions, the author presents evidence from the corpus of Jung's work that demonstrates that, like William James, Jung intentionally rejected the absolutist claims of objectivism and the opposite position on 'anything goes' relativism, emotivism, or subjectivism. Instead, Jung forged a path that led to the meta-psychological position similar to internal realism (Putnam 1981) or experientialism (Lakoff 1987) and to a theoretical psychology that gave a central place both to unconscious cognitive structure and to imagination. This he labelled a 'mediatory science'. The psychological theories developed within this mediatory science framework represent an early articulation of key constructs that are currently used by a number of cognitive scientists seeking to understand how we make sense of experience.     

Compassion and Beyond

This paper is a discussion of the emotion of compassion or pity, and the corresponding virtue. It begins by placing the emotion of compassion in the moral conceptual landscape, and then moves to reject the currently dominant view, a version of Aristotelianism developed by Martha Nussbaum, in favour of a non-cognitive conception of compassion as a feeling. An alternative neo-Aristotelian account is then outlined. The relation of the virtue of compassion to other virtues is plotted, and some doubts sown about its practical significance.

Feminist Epistemology, Contextualism, and Philosophical Skepticism

Abstract: This essay explores the relation between feminist epistemology and the problem of philosophical skepticism. Even though feminist epistemology has not typically focused on skepticism as a problem, I argue that a feminist contextualist epistemology may solve many of the difficulties facing recent contextualist responses to skepticism. Philosophical skepticism appears to succeed in casting doubt on the very possibility of knowledge by shifting our attention to abnormal contexts. I argue that this shift in context constitutes an attempt to exercise unearned social and epistemic power and that it should be resisted on epistemic and pragmatic grounds. I conclude that skepticism is a problem that feminists can and should take up as they address the social aspects of traditional epistemological problems.     

追寻美德的统一——古希腊德性统一性问题

德性是古希腊一个重要的道德观念,对德性统一性的追求也是古希腊道德实践与思想领域的一个显著特征。从荷马史诗、苏格拉底、柏拉图到亚里士多德,表现了对德性统一性追求的不同路径。而德性统一性问题与古希腊对德性本身的理解有着必然联系,但从更深层意义上说,是由古希腊现实社会状况所决定的。     

A Grim Semantics For Logics of Belief

Patrick Grim has presented arguments supporting the intuition that any notion of a totality of truths is incoherent. We suggest a natural semantics for various logics of belief which reflect Grim’s intuition. The semantics is a topological semantics, and we suggest that the condition can be interpreted to reflect Grim’s intuition. Beyond this, we present a natural canonical topological model for K4 and KD4.     

Naturalizing the essential tension

Kuhn’s “essential tension” between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production.     

Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled

Mystical experience is not unusual. Nearly half of all Americans report having had one or more mystical experiences. The author looks at how these experiences are moments of knowing—Do they unveil what is hidden?—and at how pastoral theologians and clinicians may help others come to understand their experience. Some thoughts on what this area of study may contribute to pastoral theology and pastoral counseling are also provided.     

Constructivism and the Limits of Reason: Revisiting the Kantian Problematic

The main focus of this paper ison ways in which Kantian philosophy can informproponents and opponents of constructivismalike. Kant was primarily concerned withreconciling natural and moral law. His approachto this general problematic was to limit andseparate what we can know about things(phenomena) from things as they are inthemselves (noumena), and to identify moralagency with the latter. Revisiting the Kantianproblematic helps to address and resolve longstanding epistemological concerns regardingconstructivism as an educational philosophy inrelation to issues of objectivity andsubjectivity, the limits of theoretical andpractical reason, and the relation betweenhuman experience and the world. It also servesto address ethical concerns regardingliberation from limited self-interests andcontexts conditioned by localised beliefs andinclinations. In light of revisiting theKantian problematic, both Glasersfeld's radicalview of constructivism and Jardine's socialcritique of constructivism are found wanting.Beyond constructivism, Kant's distinctionbetween phenomena and noumena and the limits ofreason that follow from it are brieflyconsidered in terms of Merleau-Ponty's noveldouble-embodied notion of flesh as anontological primitive – as a matter of beingboth in, and of, the world – with an aim tomore intimate connections between epistemologyand ethics.     

International Language and the Everyday: Contact and Collaboration Between C.K. Ogden,Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden's international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden's philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath's Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy.     

The Religion of Genetics in Epistemology and Ethics

In the dialog between genetics and religion, the genetics of religion has received thoughtful attention from the possibility of free will to the evolution of human religious behavior. In this article, the author focuses on the reverse, the religion of genetics – specifically, two aspects of how religion shapes our understanding and use of genetics. If religion is (as often argued) whatever our ultimate concern or worldview is, it gives context and direction for the study and application of genetics. Some of the implications are traced through two examples of interaction with one religion, the varied Christian tradition.