Given the extraordinary influence of the DSM-III and its successors, the DSM-III-R and the DSM-IV, it behooves humanistically oriented practitioners to appraise these new manuals most carefully. Toward this end, we discuss the goals that have guided the manuals' development and provide an overview of their basic structure. This is followed by a phenomenologically based critique, evaluating the claim that these manuals are "descriptive" and "atheoretical." We conclude with a discussion of five guiding principles for phenomenological diagnosis and assessment.

Frege and Russell were the most significant influences on the young Wittgenstein, but the relative weight of their impacts is less clear. Some interpreters have claimed for Frege an influence far surpassing that of Russell. I cast doubt on this claim, by reviewing the evidence we have of Wittgenstein's pre‐Tractatus understanding of Frege. Wittgenstein did eventually come to some views more like Frege's than Russell's; I suggest it was his own thinking rather than direct influence from Frege that led him (...) in this direction. (shrink)

O presente trabalho retrata os resultados de uma pesquisa realizada nos moldes da observação participante e da etnobiografia com o objetivo de compreender a dinâmica existente entre o ensino e aprendizagem e os valores civilizatórios inerentes às práticas cotidianas de uma comunidade tradicional afro-brasileira. O estudo foi realizado por meio da observação e participação de atividades litúrgicas de um terreiro de Umbanda e Candomblé – o “Ilè Asè Tobi Babá Olòrigbìn” - localizado na cidade de Ituiutaba, MG. O ensinar como (...) uma responsabilidade partilhada, a reafirmação de princípios éticos/civilizatórios (como a circularidade, a ancestralidade, a corporalidade, a conduta), a centralidade da oralidade e as relações entre a vida comunitária e uma singularidade que se funda no coletivo foram aspectos percebidos como características de uma dimensão formativa que orienta os aprendizados no interior desse grupo. Considerando que o modelo praticado por essas comunidades seja um modelo de sucesso (que tem resistido ao tempo e a um histórico de opressão), destacamos o grande desafio de aprender com os ensinamentos dos territórios afro-brasileiros e encontrar maneiras de incorporá-los às nossas práticas educativas, para que assim, vislumbremos uma escola mais diversa e humanizada. (shrink)

Enriched by the methods and insights of social history, the history of mentalites, linguistics, anthropology, literary theory, and art history, intellectual and cultural history are experiencing a renewed vitality. The far-ranging essays in this volume, by an internationally distinguished group of scholars, represent a generous sampling of these new studies.".

What can be said about that which, at rock-bottom, is most fundamental in a contact that transforms us? Whether in psychotherapy, in a long-term relationship or in a spontaneous moment shared suddenly and unexpectedly with a stranger? What is more primary than theory and technique, rules or guidelines, in meeting the other and seeking a contact that fosters a shifting in boundaries that brings with it the possibility of being receptive to a more direct experiencing of life and others simply (...) as they are? Even when this brings with it, inevitably, a more direct confrontation with and acknowledgment of pain and frustration, and the disappointments and difficulties that are inherent in this change. Even when this means bearing what seems utterly unbearable. Perhaps the answer, as simple as it is difficult to grasp or allow in its simplicity, is love. Drawing from the process of a long-term therapy, the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Marbery (2008), the work of Martin Buber as well as of philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, this article seeks to articulate the centrality of love in the moments of our life that transform. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

The philosopher Rudolf Carnap, although not himself an originator of mathematical advances in logic, was much involved in the development of the subject. He was the most important and deepest philosopher of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, or, to use the label Carnap later preferred, logical empiricists. It was Carnap who gave the most fully developed and sophisticated form to the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth: the view that the truths of mathematics and logic do not describe (...) some Platonistic realm, but rather are artifacts of the way we establish a language in which to speak of the factual, empirical world, fallouts of the representational capacity of language. Carnap was also the thinker who, after Russell, most emphasized the importance of modern logic, and the distinctive advances it enables in the foundations of mathematics, to contemporary philosophy. It was through Carnap's urgings, abetted by Hans Hahn, once Carnap arrived in Vienna as Privatdozent in philosophy in 1926, that the Vienna Circle began to take logic seriously and that positivist philosophy began to grapple with the question of how an account of mathematics compatible with empiricism can be given.A particular facet of Carnap's influence is not widely appreciated: it was Carnap who introduced Kurt Gödel to logic, in the serious sense. Although Gödel seems to have attended a course of Schlick's on philosophy of mathematics in 1925–26, his second year at the University, he did not at that time pursue logic further, nor did the seminar leave much of a trace on him. In the early summer of 1928, however, Carnap gave two lectures to the Circle which Gödel attended, or so I surmise. At these occasions, Carnap presented material from his manuscript treatise, Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik, that is, “Investigations into general axiomatics”, which dealt with questions of consistency, completeness and categoricity. Carnap later circulated this material to various people including Gödel. (shrink)

This text provides a straightforward, lively but rigorous, introduction to truth-functional and predicate logic, complete with lucid examples and incisive exercises, for which Warren Goldfarb is renowned.

History of science as a formal and autonomous field of research crosses over disciplinary boundaries. For this reason, both its production and its working materials are difficult to classify and catalog according to discipline-based systems of organization of knowledge. Three main problems might be pointed out in this regard: the disciplines themselves are subject to a historical process of transformation; some objects of scientific inquiry resist constraint within rigid disciplinary grids but, rather, extend across several disciplinary boundaries; and the so-called (...) digital revolution has replaced spatial with temporal display sequences and shifted the traditional emphasis on knowledge to user-oriented approaches. The first part of this essay is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the various approaches to the organization of knowledge formulated over time, whereas the second considers the new possibilities afforded by a faceted model of knowledge organization compatible with user-oriented relational databases to the research materials and production of history of science. (shrink)

In 1943, a distinguished child psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University, Leo Kanner, published what would become a landmark article: a description of 11 children who suffered from a distinct disorder he called ‘infantile autism’. While initially quite obscure, in the early 1950s Kanner’s report garnered much attention, as clinicians and researchers interpreted these case studies as exemplifying the ill-effects of maternal deprivation, a new theory that rapidly gained currency in the United States. Sensory deprivation experiments, performed in the mid-1950s, further (...) complicated the picture, as experts debated whether maternal deprivation was unique or simply a form of environmental stimulation. As experts strove to make sense of this new disorder, they relied on concepts of maternal and sensory deprivation, both to promote their own theories and to critique or refute those of their colleagues. This interplay between the two theories also informed new forms of intervention, including ‘rage reduction therapy’, which served as a precursor for controversial forms of therapy today termed as the ‘attachment therapies’. This article sheds light on a little-known aspect of the history of autism, and examines the far-reaching effect popular etiological theories have in shaping debates over emerging medical concerns. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek, alongside Quinton Meillassoux, takes up the position that correlationism – the idea that one can only know the world as it appears for one’s subjective perception of it – fails to account for its own articulation, and thus depoliticizes the formal space from which it can arise. Through his reading of Hegel and locating of the Kantian thing-in-itself within reality, Žižek claims that he can subvert Kantian correlationism and its consequent political ‘celebration of failure’. [i] This paper, however, (...) argues that Žižek’s Hegelian move, with its corresponding notion of the Act, fails to politicize the formal space that he criticizes Kantianism and the contemporary left for failing to consider. That is, Žižek’s alternative, his use of Marxism to delineate and politicize the formal Real space of capital, falls short. His Marxist construction and analysis of capital, since it relies upon the labor theory of value, which Žižek himself criticizes, results in an unwarranted speculation. Without a plausible construction, his claim to avoid Kantian impotence has little ground to stand on. The left is forced back to the drawing board; without Žižek’s alternative it is forced to revise Žižek’s concept of the Act, Marxist construction, or re-confront the political limits of Kantian finitude and correlationism. [i] Žižek, Enjoyment as a political Factor, xii, xvii. (shrink)

The system whose only predicate is identity, whose only nonlogical vocabulary is the abstraction operator, and whose axioms are all first-order instances of Frege's Axiom V is shown to be undecidable.

The intention of the present paper is to resettle the importance of the Comte’s thought to the philosophy of science. To do so, we discard certain prejudices about positivism and reassess certain comtean’s concepts, such as the three states law, the science’s classification and the role of hypotheses in order to restore its relevance in the background of the history of the philosophy.

This article examines the current state of end-of-life care in internal medicine wards in Israel, through an analysis of medical practice and the existing legal framework. The authors demonstrate the processes that lead chronically ill, elderly patients to perceive death as an unexpected phenomenon that is to be avoided at all costs. This perception stems, among other things, from the lack of public debate on questions relating to the end of life and the dominant cultural expectation that physicians provide curative (...) interventions. This results in a dearth of palliative care for the elderly along with a growing number of medical interventions that are of questionable value. The authors propose an alternative approach that highlights individual well-being and that demonstrates the potential areas of intervention by which death can be transformed into an expected and acceptable occurrence for the old and infirm. This approach allows patients to avoid unnecessary interventions and to reduce the burden of responsibility on family members and physicians, who are currently being called on to make end-of-life choices under exigent circumstances. We present these dilemmas by focusing on typical cases of incompetent elderly patients when there is no clear documentation of their wishes regarding treatment, and when their families do not have a coherent perception of what they may have wanted or of the care that would be most appropriate for them. We conclude with a call to action that highlights the need for greater awareness—through public discourse and private discussions—of end-of-life medical choices before the onset of ill-health and incompetence. (shrink)