A major theme in recent psychoanalytic thinking concerns the use of therapist subjectivity, especially "countertransference," in understanding patients. This thinking converges with and expands developments in qualitative research regarding the use of researcher subjectivity as a tool to understanding, especially but not exclusively in observational and interview-based studies. Psychodynamic or psychoanalytic approaches to research add an emphasis on unconscious motivational processes in both researchers and research participants that impact research experience and data. Building upon Anglo-Saxon and continental traditions, this special (...) issue provides examples of the use of researcher subjectivity, informed by psychoanalytic thinking, in expanding research understanding. (shrink)

The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force was assembled by the American Psychological Association (APA) to guide policy on the role of psychologists in interrogations at foreign detention centers for the purpose of U.S. national security. The task force met briefly in 2005, and its report was quickly accepted by the APA Board of Directors and deemed consistent with the APA Ethics Code by the APA Ethics Committee. This rapid acceptance was unusual for a number of reasons but (...) primarily because of the APA's long-standing tradition of taking great care in developing ethical policies that protected anyone who might be impacted by the work of psychologists. Many psychological and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as reputable journalists, believed the risk of harm associated with psychologist participation in interrogations at these detention centers was not adequately addressed by the report. The present critique analyzes the assumptions of the PENS report and its interpretations of the APA Ethics Code. We demonstrate that it presents only one (and not particularly representative) side of a complex set of ethical issues. We conclude with a discussion of more appropriate psychological contributions to national security and world peace that better respect and preserve human rights. (shrink)

ontology metaontology wright platonism fregean existence epistemology.

The real distinction between mind and body -- Is conceivability a guide to possibility? -- Textbook kripkeanism and the open texture of concepts -- Coulda, woulda, shoulda -- No fool's cold : notes on illusions of possibility -- Beyond rigidification : the importance of being really actual -- How in the world? -- Mental causation -- Singling out properties -- Wide causation -- Causal relevance : mental, moral, and epistemic.

Part/whole is said in many ways: the leg is part of the table, the subset is part of the set, rectangularity is part of squareness, and so on. Do the various flavors of part/whole have anything in common? They may be partial orders, but so are lots of non-mereological relations. I propose an “upward difference transmission” principle: x is part of y if and only if x cannot change in specified respects while y stays the same in those respects.

My goal in this paper 1 is, first, to collect together a number of themes and observations that have usually been kept apart, locked up in their respective disciplines. When these are brought together, some general and far reaching implications become really rather clear. In particular, I want to make a case for the implicit coherence of these themes in the idea that.

According totransmissiontheories of testimony, a listener's belief in a speaker's testimony can be supported by the speaker's justification for what she says. The most powerful objection to transmission theories is Jennifer Lackey'spersistent believercase. I argue that important features about the epistemology of testimony reveal how transmission theories can account for Lackey's case. Specifically, I argue that transmission theorists should hold that transmission happens only if a listener believes a speaker's testimony based on the presumption that the speaker has justification for (...) what she says. If this does not happen in thepersistent believercase, then the case is no counterexample to transmission. If this does happen in thepersistent believercase, then there is an available framework for rejecting the idea that the listener's belief is in fact justified. (shrink)

According to some theories of testimonial knowledge, testimony can allow you, as a knowing speaker, to transmit your knowledge to me. A question in the epistemology of testimony concerns whether or not the acquisition of testimonial knowledge depends on the speaker's testimony being sincere. In this paper, I outline two notions of sincerity and argue that, construed in a certain way, transmission theorists should endorse the claim that the acquisition of testimonial knowledge requires sincerity.

JeeLoo Liu makes two main arguments in her insightful essay “The metaphysical as the ethical.” First, against claims made by Wing-tsit Chan and others, she demonstrates that Wang Yangming’s metaphysics is not a problematic form of subjective idealism but in fact “aligns with commonsense realism.” Second, against both Chan and Chen Lai, she maintains that Wang does not commit a problematic conflation of fact and value. Instead, Liu shows that Wang can be read along lines very similar to contemporary pragmatist (...) metaphysics, which itself resists a hard distinction between fact and value. This essay offers a range of clarifications and cautions against the background of general agreement and ends with a question about how far we can really push the parallel between Wang and pragmatism. (shrink)

In a dense and fascinating article of some ten years ago, Toomas Karmo adds his voice to the chorus of philosophers who deny the possibility of soundly deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is.’ According to Karmo, no derivation containing an ethical conclusion and only non-ethical premises can possibly be sound, where ‘sound’ describes a deductively valid derivation all of whose premises are true. He also suggests that the only valid derivations of ‘ought’ from ‘is’ will be trivial ones. His argument has, to (...) my knowledge, gone unrebutted; on the contrary, it has won recent endorsements, some philosophers evidently believing that he has finally put to rest the issue of the logical autonomy of ethics. Against that trend, I intend to rebut his argument, both by falsifying the taxonomy on which his argument relies and by offering a nontrivial and potentially sound ‘is’-‘ought’ derivation of my own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 72-91 [Access article in PDF] Passing Theories through Topical Heuristics: Donald Davidson, Aristotle, and the Conditions of Discursive Competence Stephen R. Yarbrough Department of English The University of North Carolina at Greensboro What are the conditions of discursive competence? In "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" Donald Davidson explains how it is possible that in practice we can, with little effort, understand and appropriately (...) respond to linguistic anomalies such as the malapropism—anomalies because, by definition, the "language" cannot account for how we understand them. Such anomalies, Davidson concludes, are the exceptions that do not prove but refute the traditional rule that antecedent linguistic systems govern discursive meaning. If that is so, then meanings are not a property of a linguistic system and are not "governed by learned conventions or regularities" (1986, 436); therefore, learning and sharing such conventions, what we traditionally call "language," is not a necessary condition of successful communication. He shows this by arguing that two conditions must be met for successful interlocution and that meeting these sufficiently allows successful interlocution to take place. A third condition—that the interlocutors share a language, an organized set of learned conventions or regularities "learned in advance of occasions of interpretation" (436) for which phenomena such as malapropisms would be anomalous—is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of discursive competence.What I hope to show in this paper is that the two conditions Davidson argues interlocution must meet in order to succeed both involve the interlocutor's implicit knowledge of what since Aristotle the rhetorical tradition has called topical heuristics. Although Davidson himself seems unaware of it, his philosophy places invention in a new light, one that allows us to understand that the invention process is not merely a supplement to discourse, useful only for professional speakers and writers, but intrinsic to all intercourse, and that the topics are not merely formal but pragmatic relations that develop from the processes of our interactions with others and with objects of our common concern in a world we can come to share. [End Page 72] Inferential method Davidson argues that the first condition necessary for successful interlocution is that "the interpreter can learn the semantic role of each of a finite number of words or phrases and can learn the semantic consequences of a finite number of modes of expression" (1986, 437). "For this to be possible," says Davidson, "there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances" (436). Here he is not talking about grammatical systems but about systematic relations between and among the interlocutors' discursive actions and the world with its objects to which their actions refer. As I'll explain more fully shortly, these are topical relations. What makes these relations possible, Davidson argues, is that the interlocutors share, not a set of learned conventions, but a "recursive characterization of the truth conditions of all possible utterances of the speaker" (437).Such a theory of truth can be something like a Tarski truth definition, the explanation of which can be extremely convoluted (see Davidson 1984), but it boils down to saying that an utterance is true if the anticipations raised by a belief in an interpreted utterance are met by the consequences of believing the utterance; or, to put it another way, if the utterance is an answer to the question that solicited it or a solution to the problem to which it responds. Thus, an example of such a truth definition would be "The grass is green (an utterance made by someone, somewhere, somewhen, under certain conditions) is true if and only if the grass is green (to that person, at that place, at that time, under those conditions)." The force of a Tarski truth definition is that to understand what an utterance means is to understand the conditions that make it true (to the speaker). This, in turn, implies that in order for the interpreter to learn the semantic roles of the speaker's words and phrases and the semantic consequences of her modes of expression, the... (shrink)

This paper discusses why integration is important in doing research for developing policy and practice of sustainable environmental management. The imperative of integration includes environmental, social, economic, and other disciplinary considerations, as well as stakeholder interests. However, what is meant by integration is not always clear. While the imperative is being increasingly enunciated, the challenges it presents are difficult and indicate a long term pursuit. This paper clarifies the different dimensions of integration, as an important preliminary step toward advancing mutual (...) understanding and the development of approaches. The paper identifies the driving forces for integration, discusses when integration is required, categorises forms of integration, and proposes principles to inform research programs and projects. (shrink)

Neuronal growth and remodelling are guided by both intracellular gene programs and extracellular stimuli. The growth cone is one site where the effects of these extrinsic and intrinsic factors converge upon the mechanical determinants of cell shape. We review the growth cone as a transduction device, converting extracellular signals into mechanical forces. A variety of soluble, extracellular matrix and membrane bound molecules control growth cone behavior. In addition, GAP‐43 is discussed as a possible component of the Intraneuronal gene program which (...) modulates growth cone activity. The GTP‐binding protein, Go, is a major growth cone membrane protein that may transduce signals not only from outside the cell, but from within as well. This may provide a molecular site in the growth cone for the coordination of a genetic growth program with environmental signals. (shrink)

Some argue that individuals and organizations doing business in countries where corruption is prevalent should not be expected to adhere to strict standards of ethical practice. The basis for such arguments is faulty. Ethics, unlike etiquette, has a universal basis; it is fundamentally the same all over the world. Even in a practical sense, there are long range advantages to be gained by ethical behavior in these situations. Engineering employees of companies operating in areas where corruption is common are sometimes (...) forced to make very difficult decisions. The focus in this paper is on the ethical aspects of the problem. Laws applying to companies doing business abroad, for example the US Corrupt Practices Act, are not discussed. (shrink)

Critics of survival research often claim that the survival hypothesis is conceptually problematic at best, and literally incoherent at worst. The guiding intuition behind their skepticism is that there’s an essential link between the concept of a person (or personality or experience) and physical embodiment. Thus (they argue), since by hypothesis postmortem individuals such as ostensible mediumistic communicators have no physical body, there’s something wrong with the very idea of a postmortem person, personality or experience. However, critics can’t simply beg (...) the question and assert that physical embodiment is essential to personhood, personality, or experience, because the evidence suggesting survival is a prima facie challenge to the contrary. On the other hand, defenders of ostensible mediumistic communication need to explain how postmortem awareness and knowledge of the current physical world can occur without a physical body that experiences the world and represents it accurately enough to ground veridical postmortem reports. This paper will fi rst consider why survivalists face potentially serious problems in trying to make sense of apparent postmortem perception. Then it will consider a plausible—and arguably the only—way to deal with the issues. However, that solution turns out to be a double-edged sword. Ironically, the best way to deal with the problem of perspectival postmortem awareness may render the survival hypothesis gratuitous. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of equal opportunity. I argue that equal opportunity occurs where two or more persons with equal natural abilities and willingness to work hard have chances at various jobs that are in the aggregate of equal value. I then argue that equal opportunity is neither valuable nor something that the government ought to pursue. First, it is not clear why we should value opportunities rather than outcomes. Second, the value of equal opportunity rests on (...) the value of interest satisfaction. However, if interest satisfaction is relatively constant across different jobs and different job opportunities, then the concern for interest satisfaction will not ground the value of equal opportunity. Third, equalizing opportunities is not in itself valuable because persons are not equally valuable. Fourth, even if equal opportunity were valuable, the government can pursue it only by trespassing on individual rights. (shrink)