Reflexivity, Relativism, Microhistory: Three Desiderata for Historical Epistemologies

This paper tries to motivate three desiderata for historical epistemologies: (a) that they should be reflective about the pedigree of their conceptual apparatus; (b) that they must face up to the potentially relativistic consequences of their historicism; and (c) that they must not forget the hard-won lessons of microhistory (i.e. historical events must be explained causally; historical events must not be artificially divided into internal/intellectual and external/social “factors” or “levels”; and constructed series of homogenous events must not be treated as quasi-organisms). Ian Hacking’s work on styles of reasoning and Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s investigation into epistemic virtues are used to identify the costs of neglecting these desiderata.     

Early neuropsychological correlates of later clock drawing and clock copying abilities among school aged children.

Although widely used in empirical study and bedside neuropsychological evaluation of geriatric populations, there is little literature on clock copying and drawing among children. However, existing research suggests that clock drawing tests (CDTs) may be effective and efficient tools for assessing neurocognitive development in children. This paper reports data on clock drawing on demand (CDT-D) and clock drawing to copy (CDT-C) among a non-clinical sample of elementary school aged children and identifies predictive relationships between earlier measures of executive function, visuo-construction, and visual-motor coordination and CDT performance 3 years later. Similar to findings with adult samples, analyses revealed better performance on copying than on drawing. Longitudinal analyses indicate that general intelligence significantly predicted performance on both tasks. Visual-motor coordination only predicted performance on the drawing on demand subtest of the CDT.     

Psychoanalysis as Prevention: Using PATHS to Enhance Ego Development, Object Relationships, & Cortical Integration in Children

For over a century, psychoanalysis has improved the lives of many individuals, as well as humanity in general. However, the great potential for psychoanalysis to vastly enhance cultural evolution has not yet been actualized. Employing psychoanalysis in the service of prevention could assist with this goal if it could be made exportable, user-friendly, and available to a large segment of the population. PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) is one specific application of psychoanalytic prevention that was developed with these objectives in mind. PATHS is a comprehensive, developmentally-based curriculum for teachers to use in their classrooms with latency-aged children throughout the elementary school years. Some of the major goals of PATHS include teaching emotional literacy, improving social competence, alleviating and preventing emotional distress and behavior problems, reducing risk factors, improving classroom atmosphere, enhancing student–teacher relationships, and promoting optimal development. The present paper provides an overview of the content and process of PATHS, discusses PATHS as psychoanalytic prevention, and summarizes research conducted with PATHS over the past 15 years. It is suggested that emotional literacy is now critical for our basic knowledge repertoire and that children not taught this information will likely be at a distinct disadvantage as adults.     

De-idealizing Disagreement,Rethinking Relativism

Relativism is often motivated in terms of certain types of disagreement. In this paper, we survey the philosophical debates over two such types: faultless disagreement in the case of gustatory conflict, and fundamental disagreement in the case of epistemic conflict. Each of the two discussions makes use of a (largely) implicit conception of judgement: brute judgement in the case of faultless disagreement, and rule-governed judgement in the case of fundamental disagreement. We show that the prevalent accounts work with unreasonably high levels of idealization. We defend two claims. First, philosophical discussions of disagreement need to be de-idealized. Second, once a less idealized account of disagreement is available, both our conception of judgement and our understanding of relativism need to be revised. Our example is a case study in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s classic Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985). This case study gives a less idealized account of disagreement that conceptualizes judgements as situated (rather than brute or rule-governed). We argue that this conception can and should be applied to cases of gustatory and epistemic disagreement. The payoff will be a reformulation of relativism in terms of rationally resolvable yet contingent disagreements.     

哲学与知识社会学（续）

关于心理学主义和社会学主义的争论的共同特点是，它们都被政治事件打断了：关于心理学主义的论战因第一次世界大战而终止了，关于社会学主义的论战则因希特勒上台而停止了。然而，至少对关于心理学主义的论战，以后的几代哲学家对谁是赢家几乎没有什么疑问。当然，赢家是弗雷格和胡塞尔。如果曾有过不确定的话，那也仅仅是关于谁应得到一等奖的问题；分析哲学家投了弗雷格的票，而现象学家则选择了胡塞尔。共识的力量尤其可以从这样一个事实中看出，即在关于心理学主义的论战中，那些关键的反心理学主义的专题论文，已经成了20世纪一般的西方哲学、尤其是分析哲学的经典文本。在英美世界中。