The Attractiveness of Panentheism—a Reply to Benedikt Paul Göcke

In his recent article in Sophia, Benedikt Paul Göcke concluded that ‘as long as we do not have a sound argument entailing the necessity of the world, panentheism is not an attractive alternative to classical theism’ (Benedikt Paul Göcke, ‘Panentheism and Classical Theism’, Sophia 52, no. 1 (2013): 75). As the article progresses, Göcke clarifies his view of what panentheism is, essentially identical to Göcke’s view of classical theism in every way, except in the world’s modal relation to God. This concept is vastly different to many of the panentheistic notions that are more commonly held. While it is not initially made transparent—especially with the label Göcke chooses to use—it becomes increasingly clear that Göcke critiques a God concept of his own making. More common variations of panentheism are contrasted with Göcke’s version, in order to provide a broader and more accurate view of the ancient concept, and to demonstrate that Göcke’s view of panentheism is idiosyncratic. It is finally explained that even if Göcke’s view of panentheism were definitive, he has not successfully argued for the relative unattractiveness of the concept, relative to his view of classical theism.     

Masochism and piety

A recent tract,The Whipping, is parallel in many ways to both Victorian flagellation pornography and medieval flagellation penance movements. The spirituality ofThe Whipping is seen to be basically masochistic. The same trend is easily seen inmuch standard pietistic literature. The question is raised whether the spiritual masochism does not represent a repressed and sublimated sexual masochism. If so, then Christians should ask themselves if they can consistently condemm sexual masochism while advocating its spritual counterpart, or vice versa.     

Culture and collective argumentation

What are the mechanisms underlying the reproduction and change of collective beliefs? The paper suggests that a productive and promising approach for dealing with this question can be found in ontogenetic and cross-cultural studies on ‘collective argumentations and belief systems’; this is illustrated with regard to moral beliefs: After a short discussion of the rationality/relativity issue in cultural anthropology some basic elements of a conceptual framework for the empirical study of collective argumentations are outlined. A few empirical case studies are summarized; the results deliver some empirical evidence to the assumption that as the ‘logic of collective argumentations’ develops in children and adolescent there will be different and increasingly more complex constraints on the kinds of basic moral beliefs that can be collectively accepted. Most importantly, as children approach adolescence they may have acquired a ‘logic of argumentation’ which makes possible a collectively valid distinction between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ of some disputed particular moral issue. A comparison with a land litigation among Trobriands (Papua New Guinea) shows that the ‘logic of argumentation’ and the corresponding basic moral beliefs of Trobriands very much resemble the ‘logic of argumentation’ and moral rationality standards of (German) adolescents.     

Computation of psychophysical thresholds using the probit technique

Probit analysis is a statistical technique that can be used for the computation of psychophysical thresholds, although it was originally developed for the analysis of pharmacological and toxicological data. Probit analysis may be applied to psychophysical data if the method of constant stimuli has been used for data collection. A computer program written in APPLESOFT BASIC that performs probit analyses on such psychophysical data is presented and explained.     

Cautions regarding random number generation on the Apple II

Undocumented characteristics of the pseudorandom number generators in Applesoft BASIC and Apple Pascal are described that cause identical sequences to be generated on different executions of programs written in those languages. Although it is relatively easy for this problem to escape notice, in both cases the problem is easily corrected once its existence is known.     

Introduction to the special issue on visual working memory

Visual working memory is a volatile, limited-capacity memory that appears to play an important role in our impression of a visual world that is continuous in time. It also mediates between the contents of the mind and the contents of that visual world. Research on visual working memory has become increasingly prominent in recent years. The articles in this special issue of Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics describe new empirical findings and theoretical understandings of the topic.     

Aristotle and Confucius on the Socioeconomics of Shame

The sociopolitical significance Aristotle and Confucius attribute to possessing a sense of shame serves to emphasize the importance of its development. Aristotle maintains that social class and wealth are prerequisites for its acquisition, while Confucius is optimistic that it can be developed regardless of socioeconomic considerations. The difference between their positions is largely due to competing views of praiseworthy dispositions. While Aristotle conceives of praiseworthy dispositions as “consistent” traits of character, traits that calcifiy as one reaches adulthood, Confucius offers us an alternative picture, one that affords a greater plasticity to praiseworthy dispositions by treating them as situational character traits. I argue that the Confucian conception of praiseworthy dispositions, combined with several strategies for developing a sense of shame discussed in the Analects, renders Confucius’s optimism defensible.     

Synergy between Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology? Reflections on Barriers and Pathways

There are points of convergences between Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology. But we do have to cross many barriers and travel some distance on converging pathways for the potential synergies between these fields to manifest. There are indicators in the global literature that Positive Psychology is maturing as an approach but this is yet to become very evident in the Indian research on Positive Psychology. Systematic efforts at discovering convergences between Indian Psychology and Positive Psychology can go a long way in enriching our understanding of well being.     

Commentary on Wolford,Taylor, and Beck: The conjunction fallacy?

AlthoughP(A&B|X) can never exceedP(A|X) (the conjunction rule), it is possible forP(X|A&B) to exceedP(X|A). Hence, people who rankA&B as more probable thanA are not necessarily violating any normative rule if the ranking is done in terms of the probability of these events to yield an eventX. Wolford, Taylor, and Beck (1990) have argued that this indeed is what happens in some problems (e.g. Tversky& Kahneman’s [1983] Linda problem). The claim made here is that the Linda problem is hard to reconcile with this interpretation; that there is little if any evidence that subjects utilize this interpretation; and that in any case, representativeness can account for all Linda problem results.     

A brief scoring method for voice stress analysis

The Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE) detects inaudible frequency changes in the human voice, and it is claimed that the pattern of these changes can provide a measure of psychophysiological arousal. A few studies have given some support to this hypothesis, but further clarifica tion is needed. One major technical problem in this research is that the traditional scoring esyStem is unreliable unless considerable numbers of scores are taken and averaged , The paper presents a conveniently brief scoring system which has fair reliahility, and which correlates significantly with a measure of Critical Flicker Fusion Threshold.     

Children with AIDS in the public schools: The ethical issues

The question of whether to allow children with AIDS to attend public school generates explosive emotions and has wide-reaching consequences. This paper focuses on the perspective of parents of well children who may be asked to attend school with children who have AIDS. These parents are poised at the heart of the dilemma: they are the ethical “bottom line,” and an argument that fails to satisfy them ought not to satisfy anyone. The conflicting commitments these parents face are first to the parentchild covenant which requires them to act in their child's best interests, and second, to the principles of beneficence and justice, which require them not to further burden a sick child with ostracism and isolation. Almost exact parallels exist between this issue and that of proxy consent by parents for children's participation in low-risk, non-therapeutic research. The lengthy and important debate between Paul Ramsey and Richard McCormick on this question is analyzed, concluding that McCormick's position in favor of thoughtful proxy consent is the more compelling. Returning to the question of allowing children with AIDS to attend school, the essay shows why the parallels are persuasive. On the ethical level, the apparent conflict of obligations is almost exactly the same; on the pragmatic level, the essay shows why sharing a classroom with a child who has AIDS is comparable to the “low-risk” category that the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects found acceptable in its 1978 guidelines. The essay concludes that parents of healthy childrenmay and ought to accept the presence of children with AIDS in the public school.     

The Relation of Self-Supporting Personality,Big Five Personality and Depression

Self-supporting personality (SSP) is an indigenous Chinese personality concept. It is assumed to be a protective personality factor with regard to depression. In the present study, self-supporting personality traits are assumed to be similar to Big Five personality traits or facets of the Five Factor Model to a considerable degree, but also to contain some tendencies or dispositions which are related to depression in ways that go beyond either the Big Five factors or their sub-factors. The relation of self-supporting personality, Big Five personality, and depression was examined in a sample of 439 Chinese undergraduate students using the Self-Supporting Personality Scale for Adolescent Students (SSPS-AS), the Mandarin Chinese version of Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R), and the Chinese Version of Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). Results from the correlation analysis revealed that most SSP traits were significantly correlated with the Big Five personality dimensions and sub-dimensions, but the correlation between personal flexibility and either the Big Five dimensions or their sub-dimensions were modest at best. Results from the hierarchical linear regression analyses showed that interpersonal responsibility, interpersonal openness, and personal independence negatively predicted depression, even after controlling for demographic variables and the Big Five personality, however, the explained variance decreased sharply. These results support the hypothesis that despite some overlap with the Big Five personality, self-supporting personality is related to depression in additional ways that the Big Five personality dimensions or their sub-dimensions are not.     

The place of the conditioned reflex in psychology and psychiatry: Reply to reese,dykman, and peters

Razran’s “The Place of the Conditional Reflex in Psychology and Psychiatry” delivered at GAP Symposium No. 9 traced historically the influence of Russian physiology on American behavior systems, first in the classical Watson period and then in present-day Neobehaviorism. The address collated Pavlovianism and Behaviorism, and mentioned recent Soviet emphasis of interoceptive, semantic, and compound-stimulus conditioning. Within the limits of time, it dealt with group developments and not with individual contributions. And it assumed that a behavior system comprises both normal and abnormal aspects; that is, the basics of both psychology and psychiatry. The assertion by Reese, Dykman and Peters that “Psychiatrists tend to avoid contributions of experimental psychologists and vice versa” is not shared by Razran, nor, he believes, by American psychiatry and experimental psychology as such. And the assertion is contrary to the Pavlovian tradition. Pavlov’s first, 1903, publication on conditioned reflexes was entitled “Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology in Animals” which he later renamed “the physiology and pathology [or pathophysiology] of higher nervous activity.”     

A defense of indeterminate distinctness

On the one hand, philosophers have presented numerous apparent examples of indeterminate individuation, i.e., examples in which two things are neither determinately identical nor determinately distinct. On the other hand, some have argued against even the coherence of the very idea of indeterminate individuation. This paper defends the possibility of indeterminate individuation against Evans’s argument and some other arguments. The Determinacy of Identity—the thesis that identical things are determinately identical—is distinguished from the Determinacy of Distinctness—the thesis that distinct things are determinately distinct. It is argued that while the first thesis holds universally and there is no case of indeterminate identity, there are reasons to think that the second thesis does not hold universally, and that there are cases of indeterminate distinctness.     

An evaluation of Unix in the psychology computer laboratory

Psychology users of the Unix operating system responded to questionnaire items concerning the use of Unix, the ease of learning and using Unix, and the value and quality of the system for their research needs. The data suggest that Unix is poor according to human-factors criteria, but good according to programming and systems criteria.     

The role of masculinity and femininity in depression and social satisfaction in elderly females

Several recent meta-analyses indicate a relation between masculinity and psychological adjustment, but there is little correlation between femininity and adjustment. The present study examined the generalizability of this finding in a sample of elderly women. Thirty women ranging in age from 68 to 97 years were administered a battery of questionnaires including the Personal Attributes Questionaire, the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Hopelessness Scale, and three subscales from the Self-Evaluation of Life Function Scale. Consistent with previous meta-analytic results, correlational analyses revealed significant negative relations between masculinity and the cognitive measures of depression (i.e., hopelessness and self-esteem), and no correlation between femininity and these same cognitive measures. Femininity, however, was correlated with social satisfaction and symptoms of aging. Masculinity was unrelated to these social and physical indices of depression. The implications of these findings for the androgyny and masculinity models of mental health are discussed with particular reference to the role that femininity may play in potentiating or exacerbating depression.     

Species-specific defense reactions and avoidance learning

Bolles (1970) proposed a theory of avoidance learning, the species-specific defense reaction (SSDR) hypothesis, which emphasized innate constraints on the response repertoire of rats in aversive situations and minimized the role of reinforcement in avoidance learning. The present paper describes Bolles’ (1970, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1978) development of SSDR theory and reviews the empirical tests of its assumptions and predictions. It is concluded that the SSDRs described by Bolles, along with some others, are highly probable in aversive situations but that the response repertoire is not limited to them. Further, there is strong evidence for reinforcement effects in the establishment and maintenance of at least some avoidance responses.