Online research in philosophy

Sarah Waller proposes that cognitive therapists and philosophical counselors ought to consider the feelings of the client of paramount importance in belief system change rather than the rationality of the belief system. I offer an alternative strategy of counseling that reinstates the place of rational belief revision while still respecting the importance of emotions. Waller claims that, because of the problem of under-determination, the counseling goal of rational belief revision can be trumped by the goal of improved client affect. I (...) suggest that, if we consider a different ontology for the domain of counseling - one whose objects are dialogues (the goal of counseling becomes greater information of dialogues), we can accommodate a place for emotions in rational belief revision. I then note some limitations of the new proposal and the possibility of incommensurability in the comparison of our different views. (shrink)

It has been claimed that cognitive therapists endorse sets of uplifting beliefs BECAUSE the client feels better believing them: not because they lead towards greater verisimilitude, a purported cognitivists’ hallmark of rational choice. Since standard cognitive therapists sometimes ask us to choose sets of beliefs that interpret evidence on the basis of greater individual happiness (all other things being equal), this suggests that the basis of choice goes beyond rationality. I contend that the case against the rationality of cognitive therapy (...) is not made if one allows a broadening of what to count as rational cognitive therapy. The rationality of therapy consists in how well it achieves its goal. My claim is that at least one goal is, or ought to be, greater information value of the client’ dialogues. Among other things, information values encode affect. Understanding reason in this way effectively transforms our understanding of rationality in a way that may be incommensurable with the standard view. If these radically divergent approaches to cognitive therapy are incommensurable, there is no way to discover that we are still talking about the same thing. So, a challenge for this competing view is to say on what basis the term cognitive therapy may be projectable. I identify some constraints on this project and sketch a possible solution. (shrink)

Ontic Therapy is briefly defined. I discuss the early context within which the development of Ontic Therapy unfolds and provide the reader some preliminary heuristic tools for engaging in this novel therapy.