Foreword Large parts of Monroe Beardsley's production in the field of aesthetics treat literature, the theory of meaning, and the philosophy of language. ...

The knower paradox states that the statement ‘We know that this statement is false’ leads to inconsistency. This article presents a fresh look at this paradox and some well-known solutions from the literature. Paul Égré discusses three possible solutions that modal provability logic provides for the paradox by surveying and comparing three different provability interpretations of modality, originally described by Skyrms, Anderson, and Solovay. In this article, some background is explained to clarify Égré’s solutions, all three of which hinge on (...) intricacies of provability logic and its arithmetical interpretations. To check whether Égré’s solutions are satisfactory, we use the criteria for solutions to paradoxes defined by Susan Haack and we propose some refinements of them. This article aims to describe to what extent the knower paradox can be solved using provability logic and to what extent the solutions proposed in the literature satisfy Haack’s criteria. Finally, the article offers some reflections on the relation between knowledge, proof, and provability, as inspired by the knower paradox and its solutions. (shrink)

Signed utterances are densely packed with pointing signs, reaching a frequency of one in six signs in spontaneous conversations (de Vos, 2012; Johnston, 2013a; Morford & MacFarlane, 2003). These pointing signs attain a wide range of functions and are formally highly diversified. Based on corpus analysis of spontaneous pointing signs in Kata Kolok, a rural signing variety of Bali, this paper argues that the full meaning potentials of pointing signs come about through the integration of a varied set of linguistic (...) and extralinguistic cues. Taking this hybrid nature of pointing phenomena into account, it is argued that pointing signs may become an intrinsic aspect of sign language grammars through two mechanisms: morphemization and syntactic integration. Although not entailed in this research, this approach could implicate that some highly systematized pointing systems of speaking communities may to a degree be grammatical as well. (shrink)

Homesign is a visual–gestural form of communication that emerges between deaf individuals and their hearing interlocutors in the absence of a conventional sign language. I argue here that homesign conversations form a perfect testcase to study the extent to which pragmatic competence is foundational rather than derived from our linguistic abilities.

Background In the ethical and clinical literature, cases of parents who want treatment for their child to be withdrawn against the views of the medical team have not received much attention. Yet resolution of such conflicts demands much effort of both the medical team and parents. Objective To discuss who can best protect a child9s interests, which often becomes a central issue, putting considerable pressure on mutual trust and partnership. Methods We describe the case of a 3-year-old boy with acquired (...) brain damage due to autoimmune-mediated encephalitis whose parents wanted to stop treatment. By comparing this case with relevant literature, we systematically explored the pros and cons of sharing end-of-life decisions with parents in cases where treatment is considered futile by parents and not (yet) by physicians. Conclusions Sharing end-of-life decisions with parents is a more important duty for physicians than protecting parents from guilt or doubt. Moreover, a request from parents on behalf of their child to discontinue treatment is, and should be, hard to over-rule in cases with significant prognostic uncertainty and/or in cases with divergent opinions within the medical team. (shrink)

Milgram’s series of obedience experiments and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment are probably the two best-known psychological studies. As such, they can be understood as central to the broad process of psychologization in the postwar era. This article will consider the extent to which this process of psychologization can be understood as a simple overflow from the discipline of psychology to wider society or whether, in fact, this process is actually inextricably connected to the science of psychology as such. In so (...) doing, the article will argue that Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s studies are best usefully understood as twin experiments. Milgram’s paradigm of a psychology which explicitly draws its subject into the frame of its own discourse can be said to be the precondition of Zimbardo’s claim that his experiment offers a window onto the crucible of human behaviour. This will be analysed by drawing on the Lacanian concepts of acting out and passage à l’acte. The question then posed is: if both Milgram and Zimbardo claim that their work has emancipatory dimensions — a claim maintained within mainstream psychology — does a close reading of the studies not then reveal that psychology is, rather, the royal road to occurrences such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? The drama of a psychology which is fundamentally based on a process of psychologization is that it turns its subjects into homo sacer of psychological discourse. (shrink)

A comparison is made between the scientific receptions of three proposed new members of the hominin phylogenetic tree: the first finds of Neanderthal Man, those of Homo erectus, and those of Homo floresiensis. In each case, the leading scientists of the moment of discovery heavily debated the finds and neglected the meaning of those finds. At least it took/will take one generation before the meaning of those finds were/will be accepted.

Wer Fichtes Programm der Wissenschaftslehre in der Ersten Einleitung betrachtet, in der er sie als Lehre des Grundes »des Systems der vom Gefühle der Nothwendigkeit begleiteten Vorstellungen« beschreibt, kann über die Verwendung des Begriffs der Notwendigkeit in 1812 nur erstaunt sein. Denn in diesem Vortrag verwendet Fichte in seinen Diskussionen mit Spinoza und Schelling, aber auch schon in 1811, den Begriff der Notwendigkeit - vielleicht bloß scheinbar - metaphysisch als bezogen auf das Absolute selbst. Die erstgenannten Bemerkungen und die weiteren (...) Bestimmungen im Rahmen der Wissenschaftslehren zeigen, daß sich Fichte zeitlebens über die Bedeutung der Modalkategorien durchwegs im klaren war. Dennoch stellt sich später folgende Frage: Wenn die Modalkategorien auf das Absolute bezogen werden, erneuert Fichte dann in seiner letzten Schaffensphase eine Metaphysik des Absoluten, oder betrachtet er diese Diskussion der vormaligen Metaphysik nur deshalb, um in einer negativen Folie seine eigene Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre als Sicherscheinung des Absoluten klarzumachen? (shrink)

The Florilegium Coislinianum, from which we are editing the chapter dealing with words beginning with the letter ?, is a large Byzantine anthology, dating back to the 9th-10th cent. Its manuscript tradition has been exhaustively explored for the first time in this article and our edition is based on 11 manuscripts, dated from the 10th to the 14th cent. We also compared the Florilegium Coislinianum with the Sacra Parallela and the Loci Communes.

The lives of non-human animals, their ways of being and seeing, their experiences and knowledge, and their relationships with each other, continue to be ignored, discounted, written over and destroyed by anthropocentric practices and endeavours. Within the vestiges of colonialism, this silence and occlusion co-opts and consumes animals, physically and culturally, into the servitude of human interests, and selective narratives of history and progress. Decolonising Animals brings together critical interrogations, case studies and creative explorations that identify and examine how non-human (...) animals are affected by and respond to colonial structures and processes. Included in this collection are the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, artists and activists and the ways in which they have questioned colonial ways of knowing, engaging with and representing animals. Importantly, the book presents suggestions for how humans can decolonise their relationships with non-human animals and with each other. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid’s psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This (...) allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to Homo sacer, to use Giorgi Agamben’s term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated. (shrink)

Byun et al. describe how deaf signers deal with communication problems in first encounters with signers of different languages. They show that the basic Conversation Analytic repair mechanisms for dealing with verbal troubles are largely reproduced in gesture and sign, including details of turn‐taking structure, timing and form. This underlines the role of repair as a basic resource for linguistic and interactional creativity across modalities.

The long standing reign of psychology as the privileged partner of education has, arguably, now been superseded by the neurosciences. Given that this helped to drive the emergent field of neuroeducation, it is crucial to ask what changes in education, if anything does in fact change, when the hitherto hegemonic psychologising discourse is substituted for a neurological one. The primary contention of this paper is that with the neuro-turn a process of “neurologisation” has also been initiated, which can be analysed (...) by taking into account its genealogical predecessor, psychologisation. In doing so, I argue, one ultimately discerns a primordial incompatibility between education and neuroscience, one that can be traced back to the fundamental and problematic reflexivity of modern subjectivity itself, which the discipline of psychology was never able to wholly resolve. From here, I proceed with the argument that while the eagerness of the psy-sciences to embrace neuroscience testifies to how much psychology needs neurology, the neurosciences are structurally incapable of disconnecting from the paradigms of the psy-sciences. Following on from this proposition, other strong/weak factors are brought into the equation: strong/weak nature, strong/weak culture, strong/weak subjectivity and, most pertinently, strong/weak education. Finally, the critical question becomes: if education in itself needs to take recourse to both the psy-sciences and the neurosciences, then how can we begin to account for the fact that these sciences invariably end up becoming captured within educational discourses themselves; that is, the fact that teachers, parents, and pupils themselves are taught the key insights of neuropsychology. (shrink)

Wer Fichtes Programm der Wissenschaftslehre in der Ersten Einleitung betrachtet, in der er sie als Lehre des Grundes »des Systems der vom Gefühle der Nothwendigkeit begleiteten Vorstellungen« beschreibt, kann über die Verwendung des Begriffs der Notwendigkeit in 1812 nur erstaunt sein. Denn in diesem Vortrag verwendet Fichte in seinen Diskussionen mit Spinoza und Schelling, aber auch schon in 1811, den Begriff der Notwendigkeit - vielleicht bloß scheinbar - metaphysisch als bezogen auf das Absolute selbst. Die erstgenannten Bemerkungen und die weiteren (...) Bestimmungen im Rahmen der Wissenschaftslehren zeigen, daß sich Fichte zeitlebens über die Bedeutung der Modalkategorien durchwegs im klaren war. Dennoch stellt sich später folgende Frage: Wenn die Modalkategorien auf das Absolute bezogen werden, erneuert Fichte dann in seiner letzten Schaffensphase eine Metaphysik des Absoluten, oder betrachtet er diese Diskussion der vormaligen Metaphysik nur deshalb, um in einer negativen Folie seine eigene Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre als Sicherscheinung des Absoluten klarzumachen? (shrink)

Introduction. Eating Disorders (EDs) are serious psychiatric disorders, impacting physical and psychosocial functioning, often with a chronic course and high mortality rates. The two continua model of mental health states that mental health is a complete state, that is not merely the absence of mental illness, but also the presence of mental health. This model was studied among ED patients by comparing the levels of well-being to the Dutch general population and by examining the of well-being and psychopathology. Method. A (...) total of 468 female ED patients participated in this study during application and intake at a specialized ED treatment centre in the Netherlands. They filled out questionnaires about well-being (MHC-SF), general psychopathology (OQ-45), and ED psychopathology (EDE-Q). Categorical and mean well-being levels were calculated. Also, the correlates of these variables were examined with Pearson correlation and multiple hierarchical regression analysis. Results. ED patients showed lower levels of emotional, psychological and social well-being on average compared to the general population. About 26% of the ED patients experienced low levels of well-being (languishing). However, also 13% experienced high levels of well-being (flourishing), varying between 9% in Anorexia Nervosa to 25% in Binge Eating Disorder. ED psychopathology and general well-being showed a moderate negative correlation. For patients with Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder however no such correlation was found. Lower general psychopathology, not having a history of hospitalization for the ED, and adaptive personal functioning were correlated with well-being among ED patients. Conclusion This study shows initial support for the two continua model of mental health among ED patients. Psychopathology and well-being should be considered as related, but distinct dimensions of mental health in ED patients. Further research should focus on the possible reciprocal relationships between psychopathology and well-being during recovery. It is recommended to monitor well-being during treatment and to implement interventions for well-being to realize complete recovery for those patients with inadequate levels of well-being. (shrink)

»Das möglicherweise machtvollste Streitgespräch über Prinzip und Methode der Ersten Philosophie ist im 19. Jahrhundert ausgeblieben.«.