Professional judgement in the assessment of risk: is there a role for systemic practice?

Risk assessment is an example of professional decision‐making pared to its stark essentials. Political pressures towards accountability and the need for defensible decisions encourage a ‘tick‐box’ approach to risk assessment, but this can create unrealistic expectations of certainty. In practice, as technological approaches produce ever more complex formal tools for assessing risk, their effectiveness remains dubious while our human decision‐making apparatus is marginalized. This article examines whether we should respect our ability to apprehend complex multi‐stranded narrative realities intuitively, with the hope that such intuitions might contribute to professional decision‐making. This idea is explored with reference to a case study.     

VIRTUES, SOCIAL ROLES, AND CONTEXTUALISM

Abstract: Contextualism in epistemology has been proposed both as a way to avoid skepticism and as an explanation for the variability found in our use of "knows." When we turn to contextualism to perform these two functions, we should ensure that the version we endorse is well suited for these tasks. I compare two versions of epistemic contextualism: attributor contextualism (from Keith DeRose) and methodological contextualism (from Michael Williams). I argue that methodological contextualism is superior both in its response to skepticism and in its mechanism for changing contexts. However, methodological contextualism still faces two challenges: explaining why we are solidly committed to some contexts, and explaining why knowledge within a context is valuable. I propose virtue contextualism as a useful extension of methodological contextualism, focusing on the way that our virtues depend on our social roles. My proposed virtue contextualism retains the benefits of methodological contextualism while explaining both our commitment to particular contexts and the value of knowledge held within those contexts.     

SIGNALING STATIC: ARTISTIC,RELIGIOUS, AND SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS IN A RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY

Abstract. In this essay I point toward the difficulties inherent in ontological objectivity and seek to restore our truth claims to validity through a relational ontology and the dynamic of coimplication in signals and noise. Theological examination of art and science points toward similarities between art, religion, and science. All three have often focused upon a “metaphysics of presence,” the desire for absolute presence of the object (the signified, the divine, the natural object). If we accept a relational ontology, however, we must accept that the revelation of presence is always simultaneously a concealment. This helps explain technoscientific achievement without recourse to a philosophically flawed objectivity. Twentieth‐century information theory shows the impossibility of a “pure signal.” By accepting that signal and noise are permanently interconnected, we begin to see how noise makes signal possible and even how noise becomes signal (allowing the discovery of novel facts). Information theory thus underscores important similarities and leads toward new approaches in aesthetics, Christian theology, and scientific research. By comparing art, religion, and science, I argue that rejecting a metaphysics of presence without rejecting presence itself allows human beings to know the world. Although religion, science, and art often seek the absolute presence of their objects, they function better without.     

Sturdy roots for the graceful eucalyptus: The parallel process of integrating counselling around a client's needs and aligning research paradigms with methodology

This article explores the relationship between the therapist as an eclectic clinician and the therapist as researcher. The process of finding a well-grounded place for my heuristic inquiry in academic discourse is compared with the struggle to find unity and integrity in the counselling of a client using many modalities. The intellectual and emotional struggle in either case is similar. It is posited that the engagement of students of counselling in research, therefore, has a clinical as well as an academic purpose, but that this benefit needs to be made explicit.     

“GOING TO THE DOGS”: CANID ETHOLOGY AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

Abstract. Theological reflection often treats animals in the very broadest terms and establishes a dramatic difference between humans and animals. Empirical observations, however, describe animals and their relationship to humans in more nuanced ways. Marc Bekoff's science, which integrates ethology and ecology, generates a view of the complex social behaviors of animals and entails observations about difference. Dialogue with Bekoff's sensitive awareness of animal behavior is the occasion to construct a theology of nature that is better informed about diversity among animals and differences within and among species.     

After pluralism: Towards a new,integrated psychoanalytic paradigm1

After a restatement of the isolationism of psychoanalysis from allied disciplines, and an examination of some of the reasons for the diversity of schools of thought and the fragmentation of psychoanalytic knowledge, the author suggests the need to adopt principles of correspondence or external coherence along with those of hermeneutic coherence to validate psychoanalytic hypotheses. Recent developments in neurocognitive science have come to the aid of psychoanalysis in this period of crisis, resulting in the proposition of integrating both areas to form a new paradigm for the construction of the theory of the mind. This emerging paradigm tries to integrate clinical knowledge with neurocognitive science, fi ndings from studies on the process and outcome of psychotherapy, research into the early mother‐infant relationship, and developmental psychopathology. The author examines theoretical‐ technical models based on the concept of drives and of relationships in the light of interdisciplinary fi ndings. He concludes that the relational model has a broad empirical base, except when the concept of drives is discredited. Interdisciplinary fi ndings have led to the positing of the replacement of the Freudian model of drives with a model of motivational systems centred on affective processes. He draws certain conclusions which have a bearing on the technique of psychoanalytic treatment. These arise from the adoption of the new integrated paradigm.     

The origins of Bion's work1

This study attempts to identify the scientifi c, philosophical and psychoanalytic origins of Bion's work, and includes an organization of these in a comprehensive and synthetic way with the help of a synoptic table. Investigation has revealed Bion's scientifi c orientation, fed by classical and modern authors‐notably, Locke, Hume, Kant, Sylvester and Cayley, Poincaré, Heisenberg, and the German Romantics. Bion was able to rescue certain transcendent aspects of human, and also of Freudian, knowledge that had largely fallen into neglected obscurity. He made an original use of new verbal expressions related to the immaterial facts of psychic reality, the unconscious and the id. The method involves a search for counterparts in reality with two kinds of evidential source: some works and their authors have appeared ipsis litteris in Bion's work. In those situations where Bion does not cite the sources, the study has been able to establish connections with the lengthy marginal notes which Bion left in the texts of the books from his library.     

适宜技术与诊疗最优化临床应用患者方面的影响因素

从诊疗中的认识论和辩证法的角度,通过实际案例分析医生及患者对选择适宜技术实现诊疗最优化的消极和积极的影响;阐述了患者自身的经济状况在很大程度上影响着适宜技术的应用;患者的心理因素和家人的态度在一定程度上也影响着适宜技术的应用及实现诊疗最优化。医生要提高自己的综合素质,患者要充分发挥自己的主观能动性,消除消极的影响,增强积极的影响,共同促进适宜技术的临床应用及实现诊疗最优化。     

Ontological Epistemology: William James and the Chinese Traditional Philosophy of Experience

William James’s understanding of the concept of experience has much in common with ideas in Chinese traditional philosophy. This connection, however, has remained unexplored. Here we introduce the idea of ontological epistemology as a way to bring these important commonalities into view. By highlighting two features of the concept of experience in Chinese philosophy, we suggest that the perspectives of holism and relationism are common to both James and the Chinese tradition. With regard to the personal and impersonal characteristics of radical experience and its commensurability with Chinese philosophy, we will pay attention to the self-dissolving aspect of both. However, there are still some theoretical complexities that remain unresolved, which clearly show the possibility of further research in the comparative study of contemporary pragmatism and Chinese philosophy.