Youth violence and the apocalyptic

This paper is a discussion of the apocalyptic themes in contemporary forms of youth violence, especially its totalism and end-of-the-world imagery. At Columbine High, in April 1999, two students chose the apocalyptic date of April 20, Hitler's birthday, to carry out their rampage. That violence connects with a long history of American fascination with the gun, and images of regeneration through violence itself grows out of an urban landscape of despair. The apocalyptic, however, is not simply the result of social crisis. We live with imagery of extinction and cannot fully trust a human future. The apocalyptic, in other words, itself evokes youth violence. These intersecting themes are illustrated with the case of Cliff.     

Balthasar and the Eclipse of Nietzsche

This essay is about Hans Urs von Balthasar’s critical appropriation of Nietzsche as a prophetic and apocalyptic thinker whose thought presents a challenge to a tired European culture and a petrified form of Christianity. But it is also about a particular expiration date for this critical appropriation which can be dated to the 1940s. The bulk of the essay deals with two early texts of Balthasar in which Nietzsche is a dominant figure, that is, Balthasar’s dissertation, Geschichte des eschatologischen Problems in der modernen Literatur (1928) and Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (1939). The centrality of Nietzsche in these texts makes it all the more shocking that by the mid 1940s Balthasar’s engagement has essentially come to an end. The hypothesis put forward is not that the questions raised by Nietzsche have ceased to have pertinence, but that Heidegger, who had also from the beginning been an important figure for Balthasar, essentially takes over Nietzsche’s apocalyptic provocation and thereby eclipses him. Thereafter, Heidegger becomes not only the emblem of the best that Phenomenology can do, but also of a form of Nietzschianism that is more subtle and complex in its negotiations with Christianity and precisely for that reason more dangerous.     

Two Forms of Catholic Apocalyptic Theology

While the emergence and development of apocalyptic forms of theology in Catholicism have been inhibited by particular theological styles as well as the powerful presence of the institutional church, it is the case that from the second half of the twentieth century on Catholicism has seen a number of forms of apocalyptic theology being well received. The two most influential forms have been provided by Johann Baptist Metz and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In this article I bring these two very different forms of apocalyptic into critical conversation with a view to coming to some provisional judgement regarding relative theological adequacy. The crucial issue is whether in the apocalyptic figurations of Metz and Balthasar the church is faithfully represented or undercut. I determine that Balthasar elaborates an apocalyptic form of theology in which the institutional church represents Christ and that Metz fundamentally undercuts the church. Still, the judgement of ‘Catholic’ adequacy or inadequacy is not solely based on the articulation of different views of the church largely because in neither case is the view of the church absolutely free standing. Not only is the conception of the church connected with other conceptions, for example, a view of God, Christ, community and person, but it is also influenced by how one interprets the Bible, understands tradition and engages philosophy. If apocalyptic and the church connect (Balthasar) or fail to connect (Metz), this will be in part due to very different decisions regarding these three features.     

Motor imagery and higher-level cognition: four hurdles before research can sprint forward

Traditionally, higher-level cognition has been described as including processes such as attention, memory, language, and decision-making. However, motor processing and motor imagery are important aspects of cognition that have typically been considered outside of the traditional view. Recent research has demonstrated that there may be a critical functional relationship between motor imagery and other higher-level cognitive processes. Here we present a review of the extant literature on motor imagery and cognition, as well as outline four hurdles that must be addressed before the field investigating the influence of motor-based processes on higher-level cognition can be moved forward. These hurdles include problems distinguishing between visual and motor processes, addressing the differences in tasks and stimuli used to evoke motor imagery, accounting for individual differences in motor imagery ability, and identifying the appropriate neural correlates. It is important that these hurdles are addressed in future research so we can sprint forward and further our knowledge about this interesting relationship.     

Postmodern ontology,anthropology, and religion

This article analyses some changes produced in the contemporary ‘postmodern’ self and its consequences for the anthropological study of religion. In this regard, these changes influence deeply the way we westerners represent our ontological structure, and approach other religious systems and ontologies, due to the current processes of globalisation and transnationalisation, the notion of Self often fluctuates between an old stable, autonomous, maximiser (condensed) self and a dispersed, multivocal one. It is argued here that traditional anthropological analyses of religion lack this critical and reflexive awareness. For that reason, cultural phenomena such as shamanism, sorcery, and many forms of religious and cosmological syncretisms, are frequently approached from a distant, naturalistic viewpoint In this paper a more existential view of religion is proposed; it approaches the observer to the observed, opening up his/her assumptions about the ‘order of things’. A collection of notions, such as critical hermeneutics, critical intersubjectivity, dialectics, and ontological language is discussed, to build a fresh inquiry into the realms of numinous life.     

Mental imagery and fiction

Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination.     

Beyond Ecclesiocentricity: Navigating between the Abstract and the Domesticated in Contemporary Ecclesiology

In this article I seek to explore how ecclesiology might be apocalyptic, with all the ‘otherness’ and invisibility that implies, while at the same time properly concrete. In engaging the contemporary debate about ecclesiocentricity I suggest that an account of historical participation in the history of Jesus Christ by the Spirit will benefit from both a mimetic ontology and a christologically disciplined approach to the marks of the church. According to such an approach, the church is more clearly discerned as a eucharistic and dispossessive sociality.     

Disturbing Politics: Neo‐Paulinism and the Scrambling of Religious and Secular Identities

Abstract : One of the most remarkable characteristics of recent cultural theory is its obsession with the early Christian apostle Paul. With this interest in Paul as contemporary cultural theory, a panoply of modern identities find themselves obsolesced, scrambled, or otherwise useless. This essay attempts to find new points of orientation within those scrambled identities that have appeared with this new Paul, and the essay does so by exploring the idea that we are now repeating a Pauline moment of kairos, that apocalyptic moment in which meaningful transformation of the world may occur.     

Putting the Image Back in Imagination

Despite their intuitive appeal and a long philosophical history, imagery-based accounts of the imagination have fallen into disfavor in contemporary discussions. the philosophical pressure to reject such accounts seems to derive from two distinct sources. First, the fact that mental images have proved difficult to accommodate within a scientific conception of mind has led to numerous attempts to explain away their existence, and this in turn has led to attempts to explain the phenomenon of imagining without reference to such ontologically dubious entities as mental images. Second, even those philosophers who accept mental images in their ontology have worried about what seem to be fairly obvious examples of imaginings that occur without imagery. In this paper, I aim to relieve both these points of philosophical pressure and, in the process, develop a new imagery-based account of the imagination: the imagery model.     

Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension

There is mounting evidence that language comprehension involves the activation of mental imagery of the content of utterances ( Barsalou, 1999 ; Bergen, Chang, & Narayan, 2004 ; Bergen, Narayan, & Feldman, 2003 ; Narayan, Bergen, & Weinberg, 2004 ; Richardson, Spivey, McRae, & Barsalou, 2003 ; Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001 ; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002 ). This imagery can have motor or perceptual content. Three main questions about the process remain under‐explored, however. First, are lexical associations with perception or motion sufficient to yield mental simulation, or is the integration of lexical semantics into larger structures, like sentences, necessary? Second, what linguistic elements (e.g., verbs, nouns, etc.) trigger mental simulations? Third, how detailed are the visual simulations that are performed? A series of behavioral experiments address these questions, using a visual object categorization task to investigate whether up‐ or down‐related language selectively interferes with visual processing in the same part of the visual field (following Richardson et al., 2003 ). The results demonstrate that either subject nouns or main verbs can trigger visual imagery, but only when used in literal sentences about real space—metaphorical language does not yield significant effects—which implies that it is the comprehension of the sentence as a whole and not simply lexical associations that yields imagery effects. These studies also show that the evoked imagery contains detail as to the part of the visual field where the described scene would take place.     

Imagery and argumentation in apologetics: a case study

This essay explores aspects of the relationship between imagery and thought in the work of the English apologist G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), focusing on the language and imagery of energy and of vision in his work. It attempts to assess both the strengths and the weaknesses of the ways in which imagery and other aspects of this writer's use of language relate to his argumentation. It also explores the possibility that Chesterton's work can shed light on one of the philosophical dimensions of apologetics, namely, apologists’ attempts to present concepts that cannot be explicitly stated, as part of a defence of Christianity. In considering this issue, it brings Chesterton's use of imagery into dialogue with certain images in the work of the philosopher Mary Midgley and the apologist C.S. Lewis. Finally, it draws certain tentative conclusions concerning the role of imagery in relation to argumentation, within the field of apologetics.     

Emotional Mental Imagery as Simulation of Reality: Fear and Beyond—A Tribute to Peter Lang

This article pays tribute to the seminal paper by Peter J. Lang (1977; this journal), “Imagery in Therapy: Information Processing Analysis of Fear.” We review research and clinical practice developments in the past five decades with reference to key insights from Lang’s theory and experimental work on emotional mental imagery. First, we summarize and recontextualize Lang’s bio-informational theory of emotional mental imagery (1977, 1979) within contemporary theoretical developments on the function of mental imagery. Second, Lang’s proposal that mental imagery can evoke emotional responses is evaluated by reviewing empirical evidence that mental imagery has a powerful impact on negative as well as positive emotions at neurophysiological and subjective levels. Third, we review contemporary cognitive and behavioral therapeutic practices that use mental imagery, and consider points of extension and departure from Lang’s original investigation of mental imagery in fear-extinction behavior change. Fourth, Lang’s experimental work on emotional imagery is revisited in light of contemporary research on emotional psychopathology-linked individual differences in mental imagery. Finally, key insights from Lang’s experiments on training emotional response during imagery are discussed in relation to how specific techniques may be harnessed to enhance adaptive emotional mental imagery training in future research.     

The emulation theory of representation: motor control, imagery, and perception

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language.     

The roles of imagery,language, and metamemory in cross-modal transfer in children

Summary The relative strengths of association of imagery, language, and metamemory to cross-modal transfer were evaluated in 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds. Children were administered either tactual-visual or visual-tactual cross-modal transfer tasks, as well as two visual imagery tasks (spatial recall and mental rotation), two language competence tasks (vocabulary and word usage), metamemory questions, and a general intelligence task. With intelligence and handedness controlled, only visual imagery related significantly to cross-modal transfer. These findings suggest that mental imagery, as opposed to language competence or metamemory, is a principal component of cross-modal transfer, and they are consistent with the observation that preverbal human infants and infrahuman primates exhibit cross-modal transfer.     

9/11 as a new temporal phase for Islam

Since the bombing of the twin towers, ‘Islam’ as a cultural narrative has entered a new temporal phase which in many ways signifies the re-imagining of a religion through the visual imagery of 9/11 and the global events which have unfolded since the apocalyptic images were first witnessed by the world. The distant proximity of 9/11 and the relocation of the perceived Islamic ‘resurgent atavism’ within the heartlands of power in Western soil constitute the formation of a new sociological imagination of Islam and 9/11 as a new liminal temporality. The association of the religion with a new category of risks in urban sites and the constant state of insecurity in seemingly secure spaces represents a new narrative phase of geo-politics in which the locus of this re-imagining mediated through ICTs, is one that happens not just in faraway places but within the ‘ontological securities’ of Western modernity, posing a liquid threat which is impervious to territorially bounded spheres.     

THE ATHENIAN ALTAR AND THE AMAZONIAN CHATBOT: A PAULINE READING OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND APOCALYPTIC ENDS

This article explores questions about chatbots in particular and artificial intelligence (AI) in general from a Pauline, that is, a Christian theological perspective. It does so in a way that focuses on a particular scene in the New Testament: Paul in the Athenian Areopagus, considering an altar to an “unknown God,” quoting Greek poets and philosophers, and sharing curious theology as he dialogues with Stoic and Epicurean thinkers (Acts 17:16–34). By examining the sociohistorical nuances of this scene and their philosophical and theological implications, this article shows how the altar Paul considers philosophically and theologically becomes the focal point for an important dialogue about apocalyptic ends, or ideas about who we are, where we are going, and who or what is responsible for that who‐ness and where‐ness. In turn, this can teach us how to ask practical questions, which can uncover the unsuspected apocalyptic ends represented by, or even contained within, common technological objects such as chatbots.     

On Post‐apocalyptic and Doomsday Prepping Beliefs: A New Measure,its Correlates,and the Motivation to Prep

Post‐apocalyptic scenarios provide the basis for popular television shows, video games, and books. These scenarios may be popular because people have their own beliefs and visions about the apocalypse and the need to prepare. The prevalence of such beliefs might also hold societal relevance and serve as a type of projective test of personality. However, there are no quantitative accounts of post‐apocalyptic or prepping beliefs. As such, we conducted seven studies (N_total = 1034) to do so. In Studies 1 and 2, we developed a post‐apocalyptic and prepping beliefs scale, explored its correlates, and confirmed its structure and psychometric properties. In Study 3, we attempted to activate a ‘prepper’ mindset and further explore the correlates of the new scale. In Studies 4 and 5, we investigated covariations in daily feelings, thoughts, and events, and prepping beliefs. In Studies 6a and 6b, we compared scores from ‘real’ preppers and to a non‐prepping group. Overall, we found that post‐apocalyptic concerns and prepping beliefs are predictive of low agreeableness and humility, paranoia, cynicism, conspiracy mentality, conservatism, and social dominance orientation. We also found that increased belief in the need to prep is associated with God‐belief, negative daily experiences, and global political events. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Theories and Theoria of the Atonement: A Proposal

This article traces the origins of language about ‘theories’ of the atonement in Friedrich Schleiermacher and F.C. Baur’s historicization of Protestant theology in Germany. It follows the growth and promulgation of this conceptualization as it spread to America and Great Britain in the later nineteenth century. This approach contributed to the growth and development of the doctrine and its history, while severely limiting it in important ways. I note four dangers implicit within uncritical use of ‘theory’ language in studies of the history of the doctrine of the atonement, and conclude by arguing that a more fitting approach lies in the ancient and medieval concept of theoria, or contemplation, which serves as the broader telos for appreciating the riches we have in the work of Christ, within which modest contemporary notions of theory can and should play a role.     

Religious roots of antisemitism

In agreement with Freud, the author characterizes the unconscious structure of ecclesiastic and of contemporary racist anti-Semitism as paranoid projections of unconscious guilt feelings and of profound narcissistic injury. Chasseguet-Smirgel's thesis concerning the perverse character of anti-Semitism and Ostow's attempt to relate anti-Semitism to apocalyptic ideas are discussed as well.