Ordinary Talk Research Articles

The very idea of a folk Psychology.

Three arguments are proposed against the idea that ordinary talk about the mind constitutes a folk psychology, a sort of prescientific theory which explains human behaviour and which is ripe for replacement by a neurological or computational theory with better scientific credentials. First, not all talk of the mind is introduced to explain in the way assumed by those who think that mental talk hypothesizes inner processes to explain behaviour. Second, the individuation of the behaviour which is explained by the inner processes itself requires reference to ‘mental’ states such as intentions or desires. Consequently the project is circular. Finally, scientific theory is a practice with a history which may be matched in the case of ordinary talk of the mind. Certainly ordinary talk of motives, intentions, and thoughts may be infected by the theorizing of economists and sociologists et al., but it is impossible that all talk of the mind should be theoretical in this way.

Interactive features in Yucatec Mayan narratives

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how Yucatec Mayan people conceive of conversations. Special attention is given to the role of narrator, respondent, and audience in those speech arts which utilize conversational genres. The conversational genres of ordinary talk, storytelling, and myth-telling in Yucatec Mayan are all dialogues. One field-recorded narrative is analyzed in detail in order to illustrate the distribution and scope of narrator and respondent speech. (Ethnography of speaking, Middle American native language use, discourse analysis, mythology and folklore performance.)

Clinical Thanatology and Psychotherapy: Some Reflections on Caring for the Dying Person

The relationships between “ordinary psychotherapy” and clinical thanatology – the latter relating to working with dying patients and their survivors – are explored. The two authors had, in print in the last year, quite independently asked the question: “Is it (clinical thanatology) psychotherapy?” As background, this paper delineates four kinds of verbal interaction: Conversation or ordinary talk; hierarchical exchanges; psychotherapy; and thanatological exchanges. The main part of the paper is an explication of eight special characteristics of thanatological exchanges. They include comments on time, transference, aspirations and empathy, among others. It is felt that clinical thanatology deserves a special emphasis and a separate designation.

Clinical thanatology and psychotherapy: Some reflections on caring for the dying person

The relationships between “ordinary psychotherapy” and clinical thanatology - the latter relating to working with dying patients and their survivors - are explored. The two authors had, in print in the last year, quite independently asked the question: “Is it (clinical thanatology) psychotherapy?” As background, this paper delineates four kinds of verbal interaction: Conversation or ordinary talk; hierarchical exchanges; psychotherapy; and thanatological exchanges. The main part of the paper is an explication of eight special characteristics of thanatological exchanges. They include comments on time, transference, aspirations and empathy, among others. It is felt that clinical thanatology deserves a special emphasis and a separate designation.

Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 235 necessary conditions of one's actions, while human choice rests with the application of the principle of sufficient reason. The interpretation would bring into the open yet another aspect of Leibniz's affinity with Spinoza's doctrine: that a man is free to the extent that he is active (in the sense of the term as defined in Spinoza's Ethics). W. VON LEYDEN 'University o] Durham Berkeley: The Philosophy o] Immaterialism. By I. C. Tipton. (London: Methuen; New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Pp. 397) This is a careful and extended examination of Berkeley's immaterialism, primarily as expressed in the Principles and Three Dialogues. Tipton tries to make sense of the central features of Berkeley's doctrine and where he finds an argument weak, he says so. Thus we are given a sensitive and critical presentation of Berkeley's position interwoven with much of the twentieth-century commentary material. Such material is itself subjected to rigorous crutiny. The net result is a book which will be of use to all who are troubled by Berkeleian problems. It will be used as a guide both to Berkeley and to the critical literature. Although Tipton aims for, and often achieves, a truly remarkable level of fairness in treating Berkeley and his commentators, I found myself worrying about such a goal. The risk in attempting to present fairly and equitably all sides of several discussions is that one will lose sight of Berkeley's own concerns. Yet it is a risk one must take if one intends to present so much of the literature. And that is what Tipton has opted to do. Students of Berkeley must be grateful to him for providing so dispassionate, objective, and judicious art account. There are what seem to this reviewer to be occasional lapses. For example, Tipton rejects (pp. 242ff.)the argument that from the differing perceptions of a thing's extension as perceived by a man and a mite it follows that we cannot determine the real extension of the object. Tipton thinks that this sort of sceptical argument can be dismissed when each party to the dispute spells out "his standard of reference." Berkeley was much too sensitive to sceptical arguments for that move. He was challenging the thesis that we can determine the real extension of an object when we have conflicting perceptual claims. Of course one can formulate a "standard of reference." But such a standard must be justified. If it is a "mere assumption" then it does not help establish the real extension-even if the man and the mite resolve their disagreement. Sextus Empiricus, Bayle, and the sceptics generally, provided a myriad of difficulties with criteria and their establishment . Berkeley's own account of the real was formulated with these precise difficulties in mind. I call this a lapse because although Tipton is sympathetic to much of the discussion of 'sense' and 'sensations' since the advent of the "linguistic turn" in English philosophy, he has also sought to understand both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Berkeley's strategy to eliminate its philosophical leverage. There is another area where the "majority" view held by modern commentators may have made it difficult for Tipton to get at the Berkeleian texts, i.e., that of the serf or spirit. Despite Luce's efforts to provide a corrective, most interpreters of Berkeley-especially those (like Bennett) who are cavalier with the historical data--base their readings on a set of supposedly Lockean steps. The assumption in our culture that some form of behavioral analysis of mind is common-sensical and is reflected in our ordinary talk, has undoubtedly made it easier to read Berkeley as operating within (and, of course, failing within) a Lockean framework. And yet Berkeley gives many clues to his commitment to something very like Cartesian dualism. Unlike Locke, Berkeley (1) takes scepticism seriously enough to try to refute it; (2) maintains that ideas have a necessary 236 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY relation to minds; (3) speaks sympathetically of innate idea doctrines; (4) rejects abstractionist theories of concept formation; (5) holds that the mind always thinks; (6) takes his Principles to establish the natural immortality of the soul. I suspect that...

Is Science Eliminating Ordinary Talk?

Discussions dealing with natural science, philosophy and common sense are bound to draw on long-standing debates dealing with realism, methodology of science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, theories of meaning, and other topics. Instead of presenting a broad overview of these main trends, which will necessarily be superficial, I will do a kind of case study. The aim is to present just one particular debate which is of relevance to current research. The presentation is meant to give a taste of how these various long-standing debates are brought to bear on a specific issue. In this way, the very practice of engaging in a particular area of philosophy of science will serve as a platform from where the major areas can be seen in actual operation. The paper has four sections: the nature of ordinary talk; the ontological implications of this; the recently proposed account of the mental; an evaluation.

Paul Green: Five Plays by Paul Green (review)

1963 BOOK REVIEWS 327 For Shuman this is evidence of "Odets as a mature and well-developed artist rather than as a radical playwright who wishes to use the stage as a soapbox_" (p. 144) As a compilation of critical opinion about Odets' plays, Mr. Shuman's book serves a useful purpose. But to call it, as the author does, a full-length study, would seem to be promising more than is actually delivered. As the author himself says, in the Preface, "This book has done little to trace the literary and philosophical influences which motivated Odets in his writing, because speculation on such points would necessarily be based upon spurious assumptions." Yet a study of an author's works must, if it is to be more than superficial, consider "literary and philosophical influences." JOHN H. KELsON Eastern Montana College PAUL GREEN: FIVE PLAYS, Paul Green, Hill and Wang, Inc., New York, 1963, 320 pp. Price $4.50. These five plays, two of them one acts, are the work of a minor playwright who takes his cues from social conditions "somewhere in the southern part of the United States." Predictably, they treat such issues as Negro illiteracy and blind groping (In Abraham's Bosom), miscegenation ("White Dresses"), perversion of justice ("Hymn to the Rising Sun"), and decay of the cotton aristocracy (The House of Connelly). The fifth play, Johnny Johnson, falls somewhat outside this local perimeter, but it is nevertheless an assault play, an attack on the shibboleths of war and the stupidities of war lords. Like most playwrights who draw inspiration from social problems, Green has to feel his material intensely, as he obviously does the plight of the convicts in "Hymn to the Rising Sun," before his dialogue becomes charged and vibrant. When intensity of feeling deserts him, the dialogue is labored and flat, even dull, a marked defect of his exposition which is just so much trudging ahead. The most successful characterizations in these plays are the poor whites and the Negroes. Unlike Faulkner, for example, Green does not see the southern Negro as an "obverse reflection" of his white master. He gives him a separate identity. But like the greater writer, Green's white aristocrats, descendants of planters, are anemic and proud but ineffectual because of legendizing and guilt heritage. This theme informs The House Of Connelly, the best of the plays, and gives the playwright's vision some depth. Throughout his career, and in these selections especially, Green shows a wholesome contempt for the conventions of the realistic stage. Though he employs literal details, he prefers to take the action out-of-doors into the fresh air, out of the box set which Mary McCarthy has called a coffin with corpses inside. He makes liberal use of music, song, and dance-pageantry-resources of the theater which literal realism discourages. The use of folksongs to establish mood and underscore sentiment is a characteristic mannerism and relieves the monotony of ordinary talk. Such experiments are commendable and undoubtedly led Green in the direction of symphonic outdoor historical drama, his current interest. And the value of his collection, to my way of thinking, is not what the plays achieve but the direction they point: toward a theater of the people, not of a metropolitan few; toward a lyrical, imaginative stage and a poetic rendering of experience. 328 MODERN DRAMA December Unfortunately, Green himself is no poet, as these five plays demonstrate, and he is only a middling dramatist. But I suspect he may be an important pathfinder. ARTHUR WILLS University of Alaska THORNTON WILDER, by Rex Burbank, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1961, 156 pp. Price $3-50. In this study of Thornton Wilder's development as a writer, the author proposes "to clear away some of the critical platitudes that have obscured him, to measure his achievements against his total artistic intent, and to place him in the American tradition." Of the three aims, the first one could have been fulfilled only with firmer critical interpretations than Mr. Burbank has been able to provide. Nevertheless, one appreciates the sympathetic portrait of a mature American writer who is equally at home in the drama and the novel, whose...

My Own Free Will

The words “free will” have uses in ordinary talk as in “free will offering” and, most commonly, in the expression “of my (your, etc.) own free will.” We all know what states of affairs make this expression applicable, and its standard use is defined by this application. Yet philosophers discuss, or used to discuss, whether the will is free, libertarians saying that it is and determinists denying this. Are they, or were they, asking whether anyone ever acts of his own free will? If so, the question asked was absurd.