A Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion – or A Philosophy of Wittgensteinian Religion?

I evaluate the plausibility of how broadly 'Wittgensteinian' approaches to the philosophy of religion: looking in the first half of the essay at the account such approaches give of the meaning of religious utterances, and in the second half at the account given of the required justification for believing such utterances. As regards the meaning of religious utterances I distinguish weak and strong Wittgensteinian theses, supporting the former but refuting the latter. Turning to Wittgensteinian approaches to the justification of religious beliefs I argue that although some beliefs are 'groundless' in a way that makes them an unquestionable feature of our conceptual landscape, anything as interesting as a religious belief can not be 'groundless' in the relevant sense (of being invulnerable to attack). Finally I argue that only Wittgensteinian approaches can capture the meaning and justificatory requirements of religious beliefs for a minority of 'believers': but that this minority is important.     

Media use and school achievement – boys at risk?

In work done at the German Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) various methods have been used to investigate how specific inappropriate media usage patterns affect academic performance in children and adolescents. The findings are paralleled by current international research indicating a negative relationship between these two variables. Based on a cross‐sectional survey of 5,529 fourth grade students and a longitudinal panel study with 1,157 primary schoolchildren, a key finding can be demonstrated: the more time students spend on consuming media and the more violent its contents are, the worse are their marks at school, even when controlling for vital factors such as family, educational, or immigrant background. In particular, boys who gender‐specifically are better equipped with electronic media devices, who partially have extensive media usage times and who strongly prefer violent media content, are at the risk of showing poor school performance. In fact, a decrease in academic performance of boys can be observed in German school statistics. By presenting first results of a school‐based intervention programme, a promising approach to the reduction of detrimental effects of electronic media use on school performance is introduced.     

What Facilitates Cultural Entrepreneurship? – A Study of Indian Cultural Entrepreneurs

The importance of a ‘cultural industry’ to a national economy and the development of a “creative society” has grown increasingly. However, research on cultural entrepreneurship is in its early stages and is yet to catch the attention of mainstream entrepreneurship and creativity scholars. In this article the objective is to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the key aspects that cultural entrepreneurs find facilitating their entrepreneurship. Studying Indian cultural entrepreneurs and applying a qualitative method, this paper identifies seven such aspects: cultural value creation, intrinsic motivation and external recognition, minimized risk, contextual understanding, innovation and learning, perseverance and ethical pursuit of cultural activity, and social networks.     

Freud's “A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism (1892–1893)”: An Uncommon Therapy?

Freud's first reported successful treatment by hypnosis included suggestions that have much in common with some recent developments in family systems therapy. The case is discussed within the context of the evolution of psychoanalytic and family systems theories with the view that intrapsychic and contextual forces are not mutually exclusive. The author agrees with Haley in his recent book, Uncommon Therapy, regarding the value of viewing psychiatric symptoms as manifestations of a disturbance in family relations, occurring especially at transitional stages of family development. However, the emphasis on behavior change and symptom removal restricts the potentiality of the family approach to that of psychoanalysis in 1895, when it was a naive, simplistic, and mechanistic therapy.     

Modern health worries – the dark side of spirituality?

Modern health worries (MHWs) are widespread in modern societies. MHWs were connected to both negative and positive psychological characteristics in previous studies. The study aimed to investigate the relationships among intuitive‐experiential information processing style, spirituality, MHWs, and psychological well‐being. Members of the Hungarian Skeptic Society (N = 128), individuals committed to astrology (N = 601), and people from a non‐representative community sample (N = 554) completed questionnaires assessing intuitive‐experiential information processing style, spirituality, modern health worries (MHWs), and psychological well‐being. Astrologers showed higher levels of spirituality, intuitive‐experiential thinking, and modern health worries than individuals from the community sample; and skeptics scored even lower than the latter group with respect to all three constructs. Within the community sample, medium level connections between measures of spirituality and the experiential thinking style, and weak to medium level correlations between spirituality and MHWs were found. The connection between MHWs and experiential thinking style was completely mediated by spirituality. Individuals with higher levels of spirituality are particularly vulnerable to overgeneralized messages on health related risks. Official communication of potential risks based on rational scientific reasoning is not appropriate to persuade them as it has no impact on the intuitive‐experiential system.     

Becoming a high‐fidelity – super – imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

In contrast to other primates, human children's imitation performance goes from low to high fidelity soon after infancy. Are such changes associated with the development of other forms of learning? We addressed this question by testing 215 children (26–59 months) on two social conditions (imitation, emulation) – involving a demonstration – and two asocial conditions (trial‐and‐error, recall) – involving individual learning – using two touchscreen tasks. The tasks required responding to either three different pictures in a specific picture order (Cognitive: Airplane→Ball→Cow) or three identical pictures in a specific spatial order (Motor‐Spatial: Up→Down→Right). There were age‐related improvements across all conditions and imitation, emulation and recall performance were significantly better than trial‐and‐error learning. Generalized linear models demonstrated that motor‐spatial imitation fidelity was associated with age and motor‐spatial emulation performance, but cognitive imitation fidelity was only associated with age. While this study provides evidence for multiple imitation mechanisms, the development of one of those mechanisms – motor‐spatial imitation – may be bootstrapped by the development of another social learning skill – motor‐spatial emulation. Together, these findings provide important clues about the development of imitation, which is arguably a distinctive feature of the human species.     

Karl Barth and the concursus Dei – A Chalcedonianism Too Far?

Abstract:  This article considers the account in the work of Karl Barth of the concursus Dei – that part of the doctrine of providence which deals with the fatherly lordship of God as it accompanies the free activity of the creature. In recent Barth literature, the term 'Chalcedonian' has regularly been used to describe Barth's construal of the concursus Dei , on the basis of the christocentric derivation of his doctrine of providence. Nevertheless, this article suggests that this particular use of christological vocabulary is unhelpful, and concludes that, on historical, material and methodological grounds, the term 'Chalcedonian' in this context should be avoided.     

‘Who is my Jung?’ The progressive,though sometimes ambivalent,expansion of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious: from an ‘unconscious humanity’ to – in all but name – the soul of the world

This paper discusses Jung's idea of myth as a projection of the collective unconscious, suggesting that the term ‘projection’ separates human beings from nature, withdrawing nature's life into humanity. Jung's discovery of a realm independent of consciousness – in conversations with his soul in The Red Book, and in synchronicity, began a dialogue which finally brought him, through the Alchemical Mercurius, closer to the idea of a world‐soul.