This commentary serves as a reply to Hoffart and Johnson’s article contending that psychodynamic psychotherapy (PDT) models cannot be examined with regard to mechanism of change or represent within-person causal relationships. Hoffart and Johnson cite purportedly paradigmatic examples of PDT and cognitive therapy and examine them with respect to Kazdin’s requirements for investigation of mechanisms of change. We highlight inaccuracies in Hoffart and Johnson’s representation of PDT and, in doing so, provide reasoning in support of the empirical examinability of PDT. (...) We conclude by recommending a metatheoretical system (i.e., functionalism) and empirical methodologies that clinical scientists may consider when investigating mechanisms of PDT in the future. (shrink)

BackgroundPeople with upper extremity amputations report receiving insufficient information about treatment options. Furthermore, patients commonly report not knowing what questions to ask providers. A question prompt sheet, or list of questions, can support patient-centered care by empowering patients to ask questions important to them, promoting patient-provider communication, and increasing patient knowledge. This study assessed information needs among people with UE amputations about UE vascularized composite allotransplantation and developed a UE VCA-QPS.MethodsThis multi-site, cross-sectional, mixed-methods study involved in-depth and semi-structured interviews with (...) people with UE amputations to assess information needs and develop a UE VCA-QPS. Qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis; quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistics. The initial UE VCA-QPS included 130 items across 18 topics.ResultsEighty-nine people with UE amputations participated. Most were male, had a mean age of 46 years, and had a unilateral and below-elbow amputation. Participants desired information about UE VCA eligibility, evaluation process, surgery, risks, rehabilitation, and functional outcomes. After refinement, the final UE VCA-QPS included 35 items, across 9 topics. All items were written at a ≤ 6th grade reading level. Most semi-structured interview participants reported being ‘completely’ or ‘very’ likely to use a UE VCA-QPS.ConclusionPeople with UE amputations have extensive information needs about UE VCA. The UE VCA-QPS aims to address patients’ information needs and foster patient-centered care. Future research should assess whether the UE VCA-QPS facilitates patient-provider discussion and informed decision-making for UE VCA. (shrink)

In 1955 the fi rst Danish chair in education was set up at the University of Copenhagen and Knud Grue-Sørensen – Doctor of Philosophy – became appointed as holder of the chair. In 1965 the chair had an institute,Institute of Educational Th eory, connected to it.The following deals with the nineteen years in which Grue-Sørensen worked as a professor of educationat the university. The assumption upon which the essay rests is that his main ambition during theseyears was to lay the (...) scientific foundations of educational theory as a an autonomous discipline in its own rightnext to neighbouring disciplines like, say, psychology and sociology. Although well acquainted with those disciplineshe nevertheless consequently subjected their research results to critical examination of their relevanceto the solution of educational problems. Infl uenced in general by a strong interest in language matters andby English philosophers in particular he practiced a method of ordinarylanguage analysis and applied it to bring to light important language nuances often overlooked in empiricalresearch. Convincingly, he demonstrated this method in his analysis of the concept of learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal RecurrenceAnthony K. JensenLawrence J. Hatab. Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York-London: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xix + 191. Paper, $24.95.In his latest book, Lawrence Hatab brings together several threads from his previous writing into an elegant expression that examines a wide range of Nietzsche's thought through the single prism of his notoriously obscure conception of "Eternal (...) Recurrence." The opening chapters establish the affirmation of becoming and the "tragic" view of the world (which Nietzsche had already articulated in his earliest book) as central to the entire spectrum of his writing. Chronological shifts in Nietzsche's expression away from this tragic outlook are not suggestive of stringently exclusive temporal periods in his thought but, in themselves, illustrate an "agonistic perspectivism" wherein certain thought postures perform a corrective or delimiting role meant to expand the dialectical character of Nietzsche's thought. Hatab believes that the cosmological presentation of the Eternal Recurrence found in Nietzsche's later notebooks should thus be received as one "perspectival participant" in the more encompassing question of the value-of-life affirmation within the ceaseless repetition of our tragic existence.Hatab's detail of the Eternal Recurrence in chapters 4 and 5 is his richest philosophical presentation and his most original contribution to Nietzschean scholarship. Although rather conventional in his emphasis on the existential-force of the Eternal Recurrence (i.e., its meaning for the way we live our existence), Hatab is more creative in attempting to overcome the problem raised for such existentialist projects of self-instantiation. Even if a "factually true" cosmological conception of Eternal Recurrence is impossible, as has often been demonstrated, we readers of Nietzsche must listen seriously to his "call to affirm Eternal Recurrence." Hatab's move is to uphold Recurrence as not "factually" valid but as "literally" true. Readers should approach Eternal Recurrence with about the same degree of conceptual criticism as the Greeks would have done in listening to their dramatic performances: we ought to "suspend our disbelief" in a moment of "mimetic identification" with the "literal," if not "factual," truth of the drama. We readers should believe Eternal Recurrence as a "quasi-religious revelation," in the same manner Nietzsche himself claims to have been convinced.The call to affirm the literal truth of Recurrence is not a mandate to "approve" the eternal repetition of every event, irrespective of how morally repugnant that event may be. Contrary to some interpreters, affirming the perpetual re-occurrence of the holocaust does not imply the desire for the holocaust to recur, for in affirming the recurrence of that event, we also affirm our attitude of moral repugnance to it. To affirm the tragic world of becoming, we must affirm agonistic (or competitive) tensionalities between opposing values without reducing those tensions to any one-sided resolution. So construed, Nietzsche's Will to Power appears not as a drive to destroy or invalidate alterity, but as a call to embrace otherness as the condition of this competitively-structured life itself. Hatab's Nietzsche does not oppose otherness, but only the effort to place it in a binary scheme of opposition with the intention of nullifying the value of alterity as a part—even if a terrible part—of life.In chapter 6, there is a useful, if oversimplified, classification of the various articulations of Eternal Recurrence, ranging from the historical positions of Löwith and Heidegger to the contemporary presentations of Magnus and Soll. Hatab's assessment of the "Existentialist" reading here would have been helpful earlier in the book, as it only now demarcates the line between those readings and Hatab's own emphasis on the "existentialist call and test" of Eternal Recurrence. That line is drawn when conventional "existentialist" interpretations abandon the "literal" truth of Eternal Recurrence, which, in doing so, deflate the efficacy of Eternal Recurrence as a life-altering doctrine. Chapter 7 analyzes certain philosophical issues regarding the compatibility of Recurrence with Nietzsche's conceptions of creativity and the nature of truth. Particularly important, though, again—and this should at least have been mentioned earlier—is Hatab's illumination of Nietzsche... (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions concerning the (...) mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Forms of thought are involved whenever we name, describe, or identify things, and whenever we distinguish between what is, might be, or must be the case. It appears to be a distinctive feature of human thought that we can have modal thoughts, about what might be possible or necessary, and conditional thoughts, about what would or might be the case if something else were the case. Even the simplest thoughts are structured like sentences, containing referential and predicative elements, and studying (...) these structures is the main task of philosophical logic. This clear and accessible book investigates the forms of thought, drawing out and focusing on the central logical notions of reference, predication, identity, modality and conditionality. It will be useful to students and other interested readers in epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and philosophical logic. (shrink)

Why does the problem of free will seem so intractable? I surmise that in large measure it does so because the free will debate, at least in its modern form, is conducted in terms of a mistaken approach to causality in general. At the heart of this approach is the assumption that all causation is fundamentally event causation. Of course, it is well-known that some philosophers of action want to invoke in addition an irreducible notion of agent causation, applicable only (...) in the sphere of intelligent agency. But such a view is generally dismissed as incompatible with the naturalism that has now become orthodoxy amongst mainstream analytical philosophers of mind. What I want to argue is that substances, not events, are the primary relata of causal relations and that agent causation should properly be conceived of as a species of substance causation. I shall try to show that by thus reconceiving the nature of causation and of agency, the problem of free will can be made more tractable. I shall also argue for a contention that may seem even less plausible at first sight, namely, that such a view of agency is perfectly compatible with a volitionist theory of action. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe; The problem of the many and the vagueness of constitution, Analysis, Volume 55, Issue 3, 1 July 1995, Pages 179–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/.

The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'. The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the Epicurean (...) definition of pleasure was based. To present this case Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised, with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship of the last forty years. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe; Are the natural numbers individuals or sorts?, Analysis, Volume 53, Issue 3, 1 July 1993, Pages 142–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/53.3.142.

Say that a ‘practical decision’ is a momentary intentional mental action of intention formation. According to what I’ll call the ‘Decisional Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘DPIT’), each practical decision is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. DPIT is entailed by the following widely endorsed thesis that I’ll call the ‘General Prior Intention Thesis’ (‘GPIT’): each intentional action is intentional at least partly in virtue of the representational content of some previously acquired intention. (...) Alfred Mele argues that a certain kind of case impugns DPIT. I defend DPIT from Mele’s argument by showing that his focal case is impossible. I then develop a new argument for an important portion of DPIT – viz., the thesis that, necessarily, if at t you decide to A, then just before t you have an intention whose representational content enables it to play an intentionality-grounding role relative to an act of deciding to A. The defense of DPIT and argument for the indicated portion of it jointly foreground and shed new light on the phenomenon of practical unsettledness – i.e. the felt unsettledness about what to do that precedes a practical decision. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Soon after receiving Bouvet's interpretation of the hexagrams of the I ching as binary numbers, Leibniz communicated this application of his binary arithmetic to Hans Sloane in a letter published here for the first time. The letter also included a report on the observations of the variable star in the neck of the Swan by Gottfried Kirch. Sloane sent a copy of the scientific parts of the letter to Flamsteed.