The Rational Reconstruction of Argumentation Referring to Consequences and Purposes in the Application of Legal Rules: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective

In this paper, the author develops an instrument for the rational reconstruction of argumentation in which a judicial decision is justified by referring to the consequences in relation to the purpose of the rule. The instrument is developed by integrating insights from legal theory and legal philosophy about the function and use of arguments from consequences in relation to the purpose of a rule into a pragma-dialectical framework. Then, by applying the instrument to the analysis of examples from legal practice, it is demonstrated that the instrument can offer a heuristic and critical tool for the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation that can ‘bridge’ the gap between more abstract discussions of forms of legal argumentation on the one hand, and legal arguments as they occur in actual legal practice on the other hand.     

Applied Political Philosophy at the Rubicon: Will Kymlica's Multicultural Citizenship

Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship represents an extraordinary attempt to put applied political philosophy to work in the empirical context of contemporary political debates about immigration and ethnic minorities in western society. This paper explores the methodological and interpretative difficulties of combining normative and empirical goals, in a critical discussion of the examples Kymlicka makes of multicultural issues in France, Britain and the US. It goes on to argue that these weaknesses lie in the Rawlsian influence in Kymlicka's work, and that political philosophers may have to rethink their methodological approach if they wish to pursue further the kind of applied work which Kymlicka is aiming for.     

Hermeneutics and Experiences of the Body. The Case of Low Back Pain

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the notion of clinical medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise and to bridge the gap between the general perspectives of hermeneutics and the particularities of medical practice. The case of a patient with low back pain is analyzed. The discussion centers around the metaphor of the patient as a text and a model of five social discourses about low back pain. The problems addressed are: (1) the nature of a moral experience, (2) the variety of available texts, (3) the difference between the doctor's and patient's narratives, and (4) the patient's and doctor's responsibility regarding the existential, biographical meaning of an illness. Although many problems are left unsolved, it is argued that from a philosophical point of view the notion of medicine as a hermeneutical enterprise opens up the possibility of gaining insight in the foundations of the clinical encounter.     

QUANTUM PHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND THE IMAGE OF GOD: INSIGHTS FROM WOLFGANG PAULI

Abstract. Nobel Laureate in physics Wolfgang Pauli studied philosophy and the history of ideas intensively, especially in his later years, to form an accurate ontology vis-à-vis quantum theory. Pauli's close contacts with the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung gave him special qualifications for also understanding the basic problems of empirical knowledge. After Pauli's sudden death in 1958, this work was maintained mainly in his posthumously published correspondence, which so far extends only to 1939. Because Pauli's view differs essentially from the direction physics research took after the deaths of the founding fathers of quantum theory, this article attempts to describe the main features in Pauli's revolutionary thought, which is based on nature's "epistemological lesson" as revealed by Pauli's atomic research. Pauli's conclusions have important implications for various issues in Western culture, not least with the limits of science and the relation of science to religion.     

Rhetoric,reasonableness and ethics: An essay on Perelman

The article deals with an interpretation of the work of Ch. Perelman. The author tries to determine the meaning of reasonableness in a hermeneutical and anthropological perspective. He then places the work of Perelman in the light of the theory of symbolic interactionism of G.H. Mead.     

Relationship between social anxiety and perceived trustworthiness

Four different patterns of biased ratings of facial expressions of emotions have been found in socially anxious participants: higher negative ratings of (1) negative, (2) neutral, and (3) positive facial expressions than nonanxious controls. As a fourth pattern, some studies have found no group differences in ratings of facial expressions of emotion. However, these studies usually employed valence and arousal ratings that arguably may be less able to reflect processing of social information. We examined the relationship between social anxiety and face ratings for perceived trustworthiness given that trustworthiness is an inherently socially relevant construct. Improving on earlier analytical strategies, we evaluated the four previously found result patterns using a Bayesian approach. Ninety-eight undergraduates rated 198 face stimuli on perceived trustworthiness. Subsequently, participants completed social anxiety questionnaires to assess the severity of social fears. Bayesian modeling indicated that the probability that social anxiety did not influence judgments of trustworthiness had at least three times more empirical support in our sample than assuming any kind of negative interpretation bias in social anxiety. We concluded that the deviant interpretation of facial trustworthiness is not a relevant aspect in social anxiety.     

Gadamer: Psychotherapy as conversation

Outcome research into psychotherapy shows that therapeutic approaches may all be equally valid forms of therapy despite the mutually exclusive theories on which they are based. Reviews of what therapists do in practice suggest a largely atheoretical and eclectic approach in which non-specific factors such as empathy, clinical management and persuasion are prominent. This paper proposes that a hermeneutic approach based on the work of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer can be useful in providing a non-dogmatic basis for therapy which makes room for these non-specific qualities. It outlines a hermeneutic mode of therapy and shows how this can allow for the rhetorical, interpretative and poetic dimensions of therapy-in-action.     

The dream of dreams

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between the therapist's use of the dream and the patient's use of the dream, both inside and outside the formal therapeutic setting.     

Self-Disclosure and Vulnerability

Abstract

Based on the theoretical assumption and clinical observation that projective identification is a natural, constant element in human psychology, clinical material is used to illustrate how projective identification centered transference states create situations where acting out of the patient's phantasies and conflicts by both patient and therapist is both common and unavoidable. Because they are more obvious, some forms of projective identification encountered in clinical practice are easier for the analyst to notice and interpret. Other forms are more subtle and therefore difficult to figure out. Finally, some forms, whether subtle or obvious, seem to create a stronger pull on the analyst to blindly act out.

In some psychoanalytic treatments, one form of projective identification might embody the core transference. In other cases, the patient might shift or evolve from one level of this mechanism to another. Some patients attempt to permanently discharge their projective anxiety, phantasy, or conflict into the analyst. There is a patent resistance to re-own, examine, or recognize this projection. Some of these patients are narcissistic in functioning, others are borderline, and many attempt to find refuge behind a psychic barricade or retreat (Steiner 1993). In other forms of projective identification, the patient enlists the analyst to master their internal struggles for them. This occurs through the combination of interpersonal and intra-psychic object relational dynamics. This “do my dirty work for me” approach within the transference can evoke various degrees of counter-transference enactments and transference/counter-transference acting out.

Another form of projective identification, common in the clinical setting, is when a patient wants to expand the way of relating internally, but is convinced the analyst needs to validate or coach the patient along. This is why such a patient may stimulate transference/counter-transference tests and conduct practice runs of new object relational phantasies within the therapeutic relationship. Over and over, the patient may gently engage the analyst in a test, to see if it is ok to change their core view of reality. Depending on how the analyst reacts or interprets, the patient may feel encouraged to or discouraged from continuing the new method of relating to self and object. The patient's view of the analyst's reactions is, of course, distorted by transference phantasies, so the analyst must be careful to investigate the patient's reasoning and feelings about the so-called encouragement or discouragement. This does not negate the possible counter-transference by the analyst in which he or she may indeed be seduced into becoming a discouraging or encouraging parental figure who actually voices suggestions and judgment.

All these forms of projective identification surface with patients across the diagnostic spectrum, from higher functioning depressive persons to those who are more disturbed paranoid-schizoid cases. Whether immediately obvious or more submerged in the therapeutic relationship, projective identification almost always leads to some degree of acting out on the part of the analyst. Therefore, it is critical to monitor or use the analyst's counter-transference as a map towards understanding the patient's phantasies and conflicts that push them to engage in a particular form of projective identification.     

The Metaphysics of Meaning: Hopkins on Wittgenstein

Abstract

Jim Hopkins (2012 Hopkins, Jim (2012) ‘Rules, Privacy, and Physicalism’, in Jonathan Ellis and Daniel Guevara (eds) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) defends a ‘straight’ (non-skeptical) response to Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, a response he ascribes to Wittgenstein himself. According to this response, what makes it the case that A means that P is that it is possible for another to (correctly) interpret A as meaning that P. Hopkins thus advances a form of interpretivist judgment-dependence about meaning. I argue that this response, as well as a variant, does not succeed.