Der Beitrag stellt die exemplarische Untersuchung eines Psychotherapiegesprächs mit Hilfe der »szenisch-narrativen Mikroanalyse« (SNMA) vor. »Jetzt-Momente« (»Now Moments«) und »Begegnungsmomente« (»Moments of Meeting«) im Sinne von Daniel Stern und der Boston Change Process Study Group wurden von unabhängigen geschulten Ratern identifiziert und in einer systematischen, psychoanalytisch interpretierenden Konsentierung evaluiert. Ziel des Verfahrens ist es, durch die Nutzung von Parallelprozessen die Übertragungs-Gegenübertragungs-Bewegung im Therapiedialog zu verdeutlichen und dadurch ein wesentliches Agens in (nicht nur) psychoanalytischen Psychotherapien nachzuweisen.

Russell's 1913 manuscript Theory of Knowledge was not published until 1984. He supposedly abandoned the main part of the manuscript, while publishing the first six chapters as articles in The Monist, due to Wittgenstein's criticisms of his “multiple relation” analysis of belief. There have been numerous unsuccessful and erroneous attempts to interpret the manuscript, including those of D. Pears and G. Landini. The paper explores the Russell‐Wittgenstein “controversy” and shows the radical way Russell altered his earlier versions of his analysis (...) of belief and the connections the changes had to his new, and very important, analyses of relational order, of truth as correspondence, and of propositions. Russell's analysis of relational order reveals the first recognition by a correspondence theorist of a fundamental problem the correspondence theory faces as well as a long overlooked and unappreciated application Russell made of his theory of definite descriptions. (shrink)

The paper considers recent proposals by Armstrong, Dretske, and Tooley that revive the view that statements of laws of nature are grounded by the existence of higher order facts relating universals. Several objections to such a view are raised and an alternative analysis, recognizing general facts, is considered. Such an alternative is shown to meet a number of the objections raised against the appeal to higher order facts and it is also related to views of Hume and Wittgenstein. Further objections (...) are then raised to all the non-Humean "realist" attempts to provide special facts to ground the laws of nature. (shrink)

This volume contains ten essays on Seneca the Younger. Approaching the Roman writer from various angles, the authors endeavor both to illuminate individual aspects of Seneca's enormous output and to discern common themes among the different genres practiced by him.

Because it is often argued that surrogacy should not be treated as contractual, the question arises in which terms this practice might then be couched. In this article, I argue that a phenomenology of surrogacy centering on the notion of trust provides a description that is illuminating from the moral point of view. My thesis is that surrogacy establishes a complex and extended reproductive unit––the “surrogacy triad” consisting of the surrogate mother, the child, and the intending parents––whose constituents are bound (...) together by mutual trustful commitments. Even though a trust-based approach does not provide an ultimate answer to whether surrogacy should be sanctioned or prohibited, it allows for at least some practical suggestions. In particular, I will argue that, under certain conditions, surrogacy is tenable within familial or other significant relationships, and I will stress the necessity of acknowledging the new relationships and moral commitments that result from this practice. (shrink)

Developmental psychology currently faces a deep puzzle: most children before 4 years of age fail elicited-response false-belief tasks, but preverbal infants demonstrate spontaneous false-belief understanding. Two main strategies are available: cultural constructivism and early-belief understanding. The latter view assumes that failure at elicited-response false-belief tasks need not reflect the inability to understand false beliefs. The burden of early-belief understanding is to explain why elicited-response false-belief tasks are so challenging for most children under 4 years of age. The goal of this (...) article is to offer a pragmatic framework whose purpose is to discharge this burden. (shrink)

This book is presumably a collection of essays delivered at a conference, though it's hard to say. There is no cover description and the editors' introduction, where this information might have been found, is missing from the volume (at least from my copy) in spite of being listed in the table of contents. A curious editorial slip. In fact, from an editorial perspective this book is a disaster. Not only is the format reminiscent of those camera ready volumes that jammed (...) our libraries in the late Eighties, when word processors began to spread and people started using them to produce entire books without knowing how to handle line spacing and hyphenation -- not to mention orphans and widows, footnotes, tabs, apostrophes, etc. There are also lots of typos, English infelicities, punctuation disorders. Obviously nobody checked the page proofs. There are even formulas that were not properly converted from the original files and have been printed with the infamous boxes in place of the logical symbols. Publishing academic books in analytic philosophy is becoming increasingly difficult and not every publisher can afford serious copy editing. But charging 74 euros for such a poorly manufactured item is appalling. (shrink)

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his (...) Lectures and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

A realist view of numbers often rests on the following thesis: statements like ‘The number of moons of Jupiter is four’ are identity statements in which the copula is flanked by singular terms whose semantic function consists in referring to a number (henceforth: Identity). On the basis of Identity the realists argue that the assertive use of such statements commits us to numbers. Recently, some anti-realists have disputed this argument. According to them, Identity is false, and, thus, we may deny (...) that the relevant statements commit us to numbers. The present paper argues that the correct linguistic analysis of the relevant number statements supports the anti-realist view that Identity is false. However, as will further be shown, pace the anti-realist, this analysis does not establish that such statements do not commit us to numbers after all. (shrink)

Katharina D. Giesel befasst sich mit den Fragen, was in den verschiedensten Sozialwissenschaften unter Leitbildern verstanden wird, wie diese Kategorie konzeptionell in Forschungs- und Handlungskonzepte eingebunden wird und inwiefern ...

Humility holds a modest but important place among the judicial virtues. But in spite of its growing popularity, it does not yet have a place on the ‘central judicial virtues’ lists. This paper provides an argument that judicial humility, especially institutional judicial humility, should be considered a necessary judicial virtue at least in common-law jurisdictions. This is because it is a necessary ingredient in precedent-based decisions that are fully justified from the point of view of the law and of political (...) morality. Further, while it is sufficient that individual judges make decisions that a humble judge would have made, the judicial community must in fact be humble in order to produce fully justified common-law decisions – humility is therefore necessary as a community-virtue. (shrink)

Platonism, in its most recent and seemingly most cogent form, has rested on (a) the supposed indispensability of descriptive predicate terms in so-called "improved," or "clarified," or "perspicuous" languages; (b) the distinction between subject and predicate terms based on the asymmetry of the predication relation; and (c) the claimed ontological significance of the different categories of terms implied by (a) and (b). Nominalism, in one of its most pervasive recent forms, has involved the denial of the criterion of ontological commitment (...) embedded in (c) by explicitly or implicitly adopting the criterion expressed in Quine's formula "to be is to be the value of a variable." To avoid the obvious charge that nominalists merely ignore abstract entities by the arbitrary ploy of changing the rules, i.e. denying that ontological commitments are made by the inclusion of primitive predicates in schemata of certain kinds by simply employing a different criterion of commitment, some nominalists have sought to argue for their criterion by pointing to the distinction between singular and general terms and the radically different roles such terms play. The distinction between singular and general terms becomes the premise for an argument that purportedly supports Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. This criterion, in turn, provides the basis for the nomin'alist's use of primitive predicates, as general terms, without ontological commitment to abstract entities. In this paper I shall argue that the nominalist's gambit is inadequate in that the distinction between singular and general terms, as employed by a philosopher like Quine, merely provides a way of stating the nominalist's position and does not provide a reason for holding such a position. To put it another way, if we consider the contemporary nominalist to argue from the distinction between singular and general terms to the cogency of nominalism, since the former provides a ground for Quine's criterion of ontological commitment which, in turn, provides the basis for the latter, then the line of thought is question begging. It is so in that the very way the nominalist draws the distinction presupposes a nominalistic view, since a careful statement of that distinction amounts to a restatement of the nominalistic position. (shrink)

Both and agree that there are universals—that qualities are universals. To say that the quality white is a universal is to say, in part, that one and the same thing is connected in some way to both Plato and Socrates and accounts for the truth of the sentences "Plato is white" and "Socrates is white." To put it another way, the term "white" in both sentences refers to the same entity. What arguments are there for such a view? Russell elegantly (...) put forth the classic argument in "On the Relations of Universals to Particulars." To deny universals is to assert that the quality attributed to Socrates is not one and the same with the quality attributed to Plato. The quality "in" each is numerically distinct and, furthermore, no one thing accounts for these distinct qualities being of the same kind. [I mention this latter point since one might, on a version of, hold that there are particular qualities as well as universal qualities. The former account for the whiteness of particular patches; the latter for such particular whitenesses being just that.] One must then hold that such particular qualities are related in some way, since they are the entities in virtue of which we truly assert that both things are white. One must then specify such a relation. The obvious point is that such a relation will either be taken as a universal or a particular instance. If a particular then the original problem recurs when we introduce a third white patch or a pair of black patches. If admitted as a universal then the view finally accepts universals, albeit relational ones. No other alternative can answer the original question—to account for Socrates and Plato having the same color. That is, no alternative acknowledging only individuals—that denies the two patches are connected, in some way, to one and the same entity—can prevent the recurrence of exactly the same kind of question we started out with. Let us consider the case of particulars. One may argue that just as universals account for the sameness of quality, something must account for the difference of two patches which, conceivably, have all their nonrelational qualities in common. This something, the ground of numerical difference, is considered to be a substratum which stands in a unique relation or connection with universals to form or constitute facts and the things we started out with, Plato and Socrates. These ordinary things are thought of as composed of a substratum and universals connected together. Facts about such things may be composed of the substratum and one universal. The facts are about the things since the same substratum is a constituent of both sorts of entities. Such substrata account for the difference of the two patches; for there being two and not one thing. These substrata, in turn, are held to be simply different. At this point one may balk. If substrata are held to be simply different, why bother with them at all? Why not hold that Socrates and Plato are composites, not classes, of universals, and that they are different composites of the same universals? They just simply differ. If substrata can simply differ, why may not composites of universals simply differ? The proponent of substrata must retort that since Plato and Socrates are composite entities they cannot simply differ but must be held to differ in a constituent. Only simple entities can simply differ. Let me call this assertion the axiom of difference. The first point to note is that it is a necessary assumption in the argument to establish the need for substrata in an adequate ontology. We must then inquire why some accept, implicitly or explicitly, such an axiom. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the debate about the strawman fallacy. It is the received view that strawmen are employed to fool not the arguer whose argument they distort, but instead a third party, an audience. I argue that strawmen that fool their victims exist and are an important variation of the strawman fallacy because of their special perniciousness. I show that those who are subject to hermeneutical lacunae or who have since forgotten parts of justifications they have provided earlier (...) are especially vulnerable to falling for strawmen aimed at their own positions or arguments. Adversarial argumentation provides especially fertile ground for strawmen that fool their own victims, but cooperative argumentation is no fail-safe protection from them either. (shrink)

In educational hypermedia environments, students are often confronted with potential sources of distraction arising from additional information that, albeit interesting, is unrelated to their current task goal. The paper investigates the conditions under which distraction occurs and hampers performance. Based on theories of volitional action control it was hypothesized that interesting information, especially if related to a pending goal, would interfere with task performance only when working on easy, but not on difficult tasks. In Experiment 1, 66 students learned about (...) probability theory using worked examples and solved corresponding test problems, whose task difficulty was manipulated. As a second factor, the presence of interesting information unrelated to the primary task was varied. Results showed that students solved more easy than difficult probability problems correctly. However, the presence of interesting, but task-irrelevant information did not interfere with performance. In Experiment 2, 68 students again engaged in example-based learning and problem solving in the presence of task-irrelevant information. Problem-solving difficulty was varied as a first factor. Additionally, the presence of a pending goal related to the task-irrelevant information was manipulated. As expected, problem-solving performance declined when a pending goal was present during working on easy problems, whereas no interference was observed for difficult problems. Moreover, the presence of a pending goal reduced the time on task-relevant information and increased the time on task-irrelevant information while working on easy tasks. However, as revealed by mediation analyses these changes in overt information processing behavior did not explain the decline in problem-solving performance. As an alternative explanation it is suggested that goal conflicts resulting from pending goals claim cognitive resources, which are then no longer available for learning and problem solving. (shrink)

The book contains the first systematic study of the ontology and metaphysics of Gustav Bergmann, tracing their development from early (1940s) criticisms of Carnap's semantical theories in Introduction to Semantics, to their culmination in his 1992 New Foundations of Ontology. This involves a detailed study of the implicit metaphysical doctrines in Carnap's important, but long neglected, 1942 book and their connection to his influential views on reference, truth and modality, (including, contrary to current opinion, Carnap's initiating the development of predicate (...) modal logic) that culminated in Meaning and Necessity. In dealing with various fundamental issues in ontology and metaphysics, the book discusses relevant views of major philosophers, such as Russell, Moore, Bradley, Wittgenstein, Meinong, Brentano, Husserl, Broad, McTaggart, and Quine, and of contemporary and recent figures, including D. M. Armstrong, D. Lewis, S. Kripke, J. Searle, W. Sellars, D. Davidson, J. J. C. Smart, and H. Feigl. Building on the critical studies of Bergmann, Carnap and such other philosophers, the author argues for a form of Logical Realism derived from important, but long misunderstood and ignored, aspects of Russell's theories of descriptions, reference and truth. (shrink)

Many legal, social, and medical theorists and practitioners, as well as lay people, seem to be concerned with the harmfulness of discriminative practices. However, the philosophical literature on the moral wrongness of discrimination, with a few exceptions, does not focus on harm. In this paper, I examine, and improve, a recent account of wrongful discrimination, which divides into a definition of group discrimination, and a characterisation of its moral wrong-making feature in terms of harm. The resulting account analyses the wrongness (...) of discrimination in terms of intrapersonal comparisons of the discriminatee’s actual, and relevantly counterfactual, well-being levels. I show that the account faces problems from counterfactuals, which can be traced back specifically to the orthodox - comparative, counterfactual, welfarist - concept of harm. I argue that non-counterfactual and non-comparative harm concepts face problems of their own, and don’t fit easily with our best understanding of discrimination; hence they are unsuitable to replace the orthodox concept here. I then propose a non-orthodox - comparative, counterfactual, hybrid - concept of harm, which relies on counterfactual comparisons of ways of being treated. I suggest how such a concept can help us handle the problems from counterfactuals, at least for my account of discrimination. I also show that there are similar proposals in other harm-related debates. An upshot of the paper is thus to corroborate the case for a non-orthodox, hybrid concept of harm, which seems better able to fulfil its functional roles in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

When facing a choice between saving one person and saving many, some people have argued that fairness requires us to decide without aggregating numbers; rather we should decide by coin toss or some form of lottery, or alternatively we should straightforwardly save the greater number but justify this in a non-aggregating contractualist way. This paper expands the debate beyond well-known number cases to previously under-considered probability cases, in which not (only) the numbers of people, but (also) the probabilities of success (...) for saving people vary. It is shown that, in these latter cases, both the coin toss and the lottery lead to what is called an awkward conclusion, which makes probabilities count in a problematic way. Attempts to avoid this conclusion are shown to lead into difficulties as well. Finally, it is shown that while the greater number method cannot be justified on contractualist grounds for probability cases, it may be replaced by another decision method which is so justified. This decision method is extensionally equivalent to maximising expected value and seems to be the least problematic way of dealing with probability cases in a non-aggregating manner. (shrink)

Several decades of research converge on the formulation that individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder exhibit negative biases in their processing of emotional information. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that traditional between-group comparisons have obscured the substantial heterogeneity of cognitive and affective dysfunction that is associated with depressive symptomatology. In this article, we review the findings of research examining attention to and memory for negative emotional information using a more dimensional perspective on depression. Specifically, we explore studies that assess (...) cognitive biases along a continuum of depressive symptom severity and consider the influence of co-occurring dimensions of functioning, in particular the severity of anxiety symptoms. Finally, we identify critical empirical questions and issues in this growing literature. (shrink)

When evaluating the arguer instead of the argument, we soon find ourselves confronted with a puzzling situation: what seems to be a virtue in one argumentative situation could very well be called a vice in another. This paper will present the idea that there are in fact two sets of virtues an arguer has to master—and with them four sometimes very different roles.

A constructive, highly professional relationship between tax authorities and taxpayers is essential for tax compliance. The aim of the present paper was to explore systematically the determinants of this relationship and related tax compliance behaviors based on the extended slippery slope framework. We used in-depth qualitative interviews with 33 self-employed taxpayers and 30 tax auditors. Interviewees described the relationship along the extended slippery slope framework concepts of power and trust. However, also novel sub-categories of power (e.g., setting deadlines) and trust (...) (e.g., personal assistance) were mentioned. Furthermore, also little-studied categories of tax behavior emerged, such as accepting tax behavior, e.g., being available to the tax authorities, or stalling tax behavior, e.g., the intentional creation of complexity. The results comprehensively summarize the determinants of the tax relationship and tax compliance behaviors. Additionally, results highlight future research topics and provide insights for policy strategies. (shrink)

The article considers, in a historical setting, the links between varieties of nominalism—the extreme nominalism of the Quine-Goodman variety and the trope nominalism current today—and types of idealism. In so doing arguments of various twentieth century figures, including Husserl, Bradley, Russell, and Sartre, as well as a contemporary attack on relations by Peter Simons are critically examined. The paper seeks to link the rejection of realism about universals with the rejection of a mind-independent “world”—in short, linking nominalism with idealism.

In this paper, we argue that ‘good care’ in residential nursing homes is enacted through different care practices that are either inspired by a ‘professional logic of care’ that aims for justice and non-maleficence in the professional treatment of residents, or by a ‘relational logic of care’, which attends to the relational quality and the meaning of interpersonal connectedness in people’s lives. Rather than favoring one care logic over the other, this paper indicates how important aspects of care are constantly (...) negotiated between different care practices. Based on the intricate everyday negotiations observed during an ethnographic field study at an elderly nursing home in Germany, the paper puts forth the argument that care is always a matter of tinkering with different, sometimes competing ‘goods’. This tinkering process, which unfolds through ‘intuitive deliberation’, ‘situated assessment’ and ‘affective juggling’ is then theorized along the conceptualization of a ‘practical ethics of care’: an ethics which makes no a priori judgments of what may be considered as good or bad care, but instead calls for momentary judgments that are pliable across changing situations. (shrink)