Beyond the heritability of life satisfaction – The roles of personality and twin-specific influences

In a behavior genetic design, we investigated individual differences in life satisfaction and its relation to personality with respect to both internal and external influences. We questioned the absence of shared environment and examined the specific contribution of additive and non-additive genetic influences. We also tested for twin-specific environmental influences in a total sample of 1308 dyads including identical and fraternal twins, siblings, mother–child and grandparent–child pairs. The results showed substantial shared environmental influences on life satisfaction that varied between twins and non-twins, supporting twin-specific environmental influences. Additive and non-additive genetic influences on life satisfaction were completely shared with personality. The remaining variance could be explained by unique non-shared environmental influences for life satisfaction independent of personality.     

On What There is—Infinitesimals and the Nature of Numbers

Abstract

This essay will be divided into three parts. In the first part, we discuss the case of infintesimals seen as a bridge between the discrete and the continuous. This leads in the second part to a discussion of the nature of numbers. In the last part, we follow up with some observations on the obvious applicability of mathematics.     

Can Beck's theory of depression and the response style theory be integrated?

There are obvious similarities between the cognitive constructs of A. T. Beck's (1976) cognitive theory and the response style theory (S. Nolen-Hoeksema & J. Morrow, 1991). Different propositions of J. A. Ciesla and J. E. Roberts (2007) and S. Lyubomirsky and S. Nolen-Hoeksema (1993, 1995) concerning associations of 2 response styles, brooding and reflection, with constructs of Beck's cognitive theory (schemata, cognitive errors, cognitive triad, automatic thoughts) were tested. Model comparisons were based on a 4-week study in which 397 participants completed self-report instruments at 2 time points. A model allowing schemata to influence brooding and reflection that influence the other cognitive variables of Beck's cognitive theory fits the data better than the other integrated models. However, although schemata were significant predictors of both response styles, neither response style did significantly predict other cognitive variables. A comparison of the integrated model with Beck's original cognitive theory revealed that Beck's original theory fits the data better than the integrated model, whereas both models explain about the same amount of variance. Thus, an integration of Beck's theory and the response style theory are not supported.     

Who Discovered the Binary System and Arithmetic? Did Leibniz Plagiarize Caramuel?

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is the self-proclaimed inventor of the binary system and is considered as such by most historians of mathematics and/or mathematicians. Really though, we owe the groundwork of today’s computing not to Leibniz but to the Englishman Thomas Harriot and the Spaniard Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606–1682), whom Leibniz plagiarized. This plagiarism has been identified on the basis of several facts: Caramuel’s work on the binary system is earlier than Leibniz’s, Leibniz was acquainted—both directly and indirectly—with Caramuel’s work and Leibniz had a natural tendency to plagiarize scientific works.     

The bundle theory and the substratum theory: deadly enemies or twin brothers?

In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of ‘equivalent’ to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps: first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it’s precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing.

Beyond the fragments of the two Victoires: A fictionalised and incomplete memoir of the two women murdered by Pierre Rivière – His sister and his mother

This paper focuses on gendered spaces in which Pierre Rivière carried out the murder of his mother, his sister and his brother. The archival work of Foucault et al. provides multiple accounts of these family murders, including the very evocative memoir written by Pierre Rivière himself in prison. The position and perspectives of the women in that text, particularly those in his immediate family, are obscured, being seen very much through the eyes of men in general, and Pierre and his father specifically. Here we attempt to cut through that obscuration with a reflexive feminist excavation of fragments from this parricide case. We borrow from multiple sources including historical literature on women at that time, changing laws relating to equality and freedom, literary ways of coming to know the perspective of another through writing, magical realist strategies fostered in arts-based social research, and therapeutic strategies for remembering traumatic events. From these Victoire and her daughter are brought to life in a womanist reading that makes Victoire's position both imaginable and supportable. Specific historical material is confined to footnotes, so maintaining its coherence whilst allowing the foregrounding of the various narratives (from the research process, from original testimonies, and from attempts to write into the spaces left by those testimonies).     

Slavoj Žižek and the Real Subject of Politics

Slavoj ?i?ek's refusal to sketch an alternative to the global liberal-capitalist order, combined with his claim that there is an urgent need for a repolitization of, most of all, the economy, raises the question of the possibility of radical political thought and action. Considering fundamentalisms and politically correct multiculturalism not as oppositional, but as correlative to the “depolitization” of post-modern societies, ?i?ek invokes the emancipatory legacy of Europe in an attempt to reinvent Marxism in a way similar to what Lenin, thrown into an open situation, had to do in 1917 between the revolutions. A single question confronts political philosophy today: is liberal-capitalist democracy the ultimate horizon of our political practice, or is it possible to open up the space for another political articulation? The key to a repolitization is to identify with the “symptom” of the existing global order's false claim to Universality, with the excluded “part of no part” who politicizes it's predicament by claiming to stand for the real universal. In order not to discard political struggle as “unrealistic”, today's cynical “realist” consensus must be broken. Taking things as they “really are” has become the dominant ideological mode that keeps people from thinking about alternatives. The remedy is to show that things never are “really” as they are.

     

Measuring Abuse Sequelae: Validating and Extending the Trauma Symptom Checklist–40

This study used the Trauma Symptom Checklist–40 (TSC–40) to index both childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and childhood physical abuse (CPA) in a college student sample of both men and women (N = 441). Although the TSC–40 was designed as a measure of CSA trauma, this study concludes the measure is appropriately reliable for indexing the traumatic sequelae of CPA as well as CSA in nonclinical samples. This study also explored the effects of gender and abuse severity on resulting symptomatology, finding that women and severely abused individuals report the most negative sequelae. Both CSA and CPA emerged as significant explanatory variables in TSC–40 scale scores beyond gender, supporting its validity for indexing traumatic sequelae in nonclinical samples.     

‘Beyond the oedipal complex’: Freud and lacan revisited

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore the position that the mother occupies in both Freud's and Lacan's accounts of oedipalization. Both authors' work will be addressed with reference to contemporary feminist critiques of their accounts. The aim will be to query the belief that the mother must be repudiated in order for the child to move into culture. It will be suggested that both Lacan's and Freud's accounts may ironically perpetuate both the ‘interminable’ nature of analysis and a relationship with the maternal in which the mother will continue to haunt, beckon and terrify until some attempt is made at reparation.     

The Presence of the Real: Jalarāmkathā and the Experience of the Transcendent

International Journal of Hindu Studies - Rarely is the presence of the Gujarati saint Jalarām Bāpā (1799–1881) felt more immediately, and indeed collectively, by his devotees...     

Realism,Reliabilism, and the ‘Strong Programme’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens’s proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme’s principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme’s sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein’s rule‐following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief’s seeming reliable and its being reliable.

?Ich setzte

?den Fuß in die Luft,

?und sie trug.

?(Hilde Domin)     

Jungian theory of dreaming and contemporary dream research – findings from the research project ‘Structural Dream Analysis’

The research method ‘Structural Dream Analysis’ (SDA) is described which allows for systematic and objective analysis of the meaning of dreams produced by patients in Jungian psychotherapies. The method focuses especially on the relationship between the dream ego and other figures in the dream and the extent of activity of the dream ego. Five major dream patterns were identified which accounted for the majority of the dreams. The clients’ dream series were dominated by one or two repetitive patterns which were closely connected to the psychological problems of the dreamers. Additionally, typical changes in the dream series’ patterns could be identified which corresponded with therapeutic change. These findings support Jung's theory of dreams as providing a holistic image of the dreamer’s psyche, including unconscious aspects. The implications for different psychoanalytic theories of dreaming and dream interpretation are discussed as well as implications for the continuity hypothesis.     

Time to retire the concept of brand personality? Extending the critique and introducing a new framework

In consumer behaviour literature, there is a growing concern about the construct validity of brand personality. We extend this critique and introduce a new approach for the conceptualisation and measurement of human brand associations (HBA). A qualitative study of free associations to six brands in different categories and cultures reveals that brand personality traits, as defined in the literature, are practically non‐existent in real associative networks for brands. The responses are, however, in line with the new HBA framework. The findings suggest that consumer researchers should retire the concept of brand personality and use the new approach instead.