The grammar of aesthetic intuition: on Ernst Cassirer’s concept of symbolic form in the visual arts

This paper provides a précis of Ernst Cassirer’s concept of art as a symbolic form. It does so, though, in a specific respect. It points to the fact that Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic form” is two-sided. On the one hand, the concept captures general cultural phenomena that are not only meaningful but also manifest the way man makes sense of the world; thus myth, religion, and art are considered general symbolic forms. On the other hand, it captures the formal structures and semiotic tools thanks to which meaning is constructed within each general symbolic form (Cassirer called these structures “modes of objectivation”); thus, in art, perspective or the golden section are well-known examples of symbolic forms, now in a narrow sense, i.e. they are means to configure parts into an organized, meaningful whole. The paper will comment on art along both these two dimensions, but its main goal is to provide with concrete examples of aesthetic symbolic forms in the narrow sense in order to show how conceptual meaning can be inscribed in the space of aesthetic intuition.     

Toward a Psychology of Converting in the People’s Republic of China

Pastoral Psychology - The focus of this paper is the nature of converting processes in the People’s Republic of China. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the issues to be considered...     

Western Psychology and Muslim Psychology in Dialogue: Comparisons Between a Qura’nic Theory of Personality and Freud’s and Jung’s Ideas

In this paper, comparisons are made between a newly developed Qura’nic theory of personality and the Freudian and Jungian theories of the mind. Notable similarities were found between the Freudian id, ego, superego and neurosis and the Qura’nic nafs ammarah besoa’ (evil-commanding psyche), a’ql (intellect), al-nafs al-lawammah (the reproachful psyche) and al-nafs al-marid’a (the sick psyche), respectively. Noteworthy resemblances were detected also between the Jungian concepts collective unconscious, archetypes, Self and individuation and the Qura’nic constructs roh (spirit), al-asmaa’ (the names), qalb (heart), and al-nafs al-mutmainnah (the serene psyche), respectively. These parallels, as well as the departure points, between the models are thoroughly discussed and analyzed. The comparisons performed in this paper open new avenues for dialogue between western models of the psyche and their Muslim counterparts, a dialogue that can enrich both perspectives and advance the field of psychology.     

Community Narrative as a Borderlands Praxis: Anzaldúa’s Mestiza Consciousness as Explored in Cortez’s Sexile

Journal of Medical Humanities - I apply Gloria Anzaldúa’s “borderlands theory” to Jamie Cortez’s Sexile, an HIV/AIDS prevention publication created as a...     

What Is Engagement? Proactivity as the Missing Link in the HEXACO Model of Personality

We tested the hypothesis that proactivity represents the engagement vector in the HEXACO model of personality. Questionnaire data were obtained in five studies, three of which consisted (mostly) of students: Study 1 (N = 188, M_age = 20.0, 89.4% women), Study 3 (N = 315, M_age = 20.4, 80.6% women), and Study 4 (N = 309 self‐ratings, M_age = 20.0, 78.3% women; N = 307 other‐ratings, M_age = 24.5, 62.2% women). Participants in the other two studies came from an ISO‐certified representative community panel: Study 2 (N = 525, M_age = 51.2, 52.0% women) and Study 5 (N = 736, M_age = 42.2, 48.0% women). Proactive Personality and Proactivity were positively related to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, but only weakly related or unrelated to Honesty‐Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness, supporting the alignment of Proactive Personality/Proactivity with the hypothesized HEXACO engagement vector. Additionally, Proactivity explained incremental variance in self‐rated job performance on top of the HEXACO facets that were most closely associated with Proactive Personality/Proactivity, that is, Social Boldness (an Extraversion facet), Diligence (a Conscientiousness facet), and Creativity (an Openness to Experience facet), but not in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Proactivity is the missing engagement link in the HEXACO model of personality. The results are discussed in light of higher‐order factors (e.g., general factor of personality and Alpha and Beta) of personality and bandwidth‐fidelity controversies.     

Family Cohesion and Adaptation in Pediatric Chronic Conditions: The Missing Link of the Family’s Condition Management

The quality of family functioning has been considered an important predictor of adaptation in children with chronic conditions and their parents. Previous research suggests that beyond general family functioning, the specific experience of the family’s condition management is paramount for understanding family members’ adaptation. This study’s first goal was to compare family functioning and parents’ and children’s adaptation outcomes across four chronic conditions: asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, and obesity. Secondly, we explored the mediating role of family life difficulties and parental mutuality, as two potential paths through which family cohesion is linked to family members’ adaptation. A total of 263 parents of children (3–19 years old) with asthma (n = 77), obesity (n = 79), epilepsy (n = 52) and diabetes (n = 55) completed self-report measures of family cohesion, family life difficulty, parental mutuality, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and their children’s health-related quality of life (HrQoL). The results showed that families of children with diabetes, obesity, and epilepsy were at higher risk of experiencing family difficulties and children’s deteriorated HrQoL when compared to families of children with asthma. With regard to the links among study variables, although family cohesion had both a direct and indirect relationship with parental depressive symptoms, its links with parental anxiety symptoms and children’s HrQoL were only indirect, through family life difficulty. These associations were consistent across the four clinical groups. These findings emphasize the relevance of family-centered interventions aimed at promoting family cohesion, parents’ mutuality, and effective coping with the demands of pediatric chronic conditions.     

Internalized Misogyny as a Moderator of the Link between Sexist Events and Women’s Psychological Distress

This study examined the relationship between internalized misogyny and two other forms of internalized sexism, self-objectification and passive acceptance of traditional gender roles. In addition, it examined the moderating role of internalized misogyny in the link between sexist events and psychological distress. Participants consisted of 274 heterosexual women who were recruited at a large southern university in the United States and completed an online survey. Results indicated that internalized misogyny was related to, but conceptually distinct from self-objectification and passive acceptance. Findings also indicated that greater experiences of sexist events were associated with higher levels of psychological distress. In addition, internalized misogyny intensified the relationship between external sexism and psychological distress.     

The priority of “symbolism” over language in Cassirer’s philosophy

Synthese - This essay reconstructs the steps by which Cassirer moved from the philosophy of language in the early 1920s to his more general theory of symbolism. The linguistic turn in philosophy...     

Parkinson’s Disease as a Disconnection Syndrome

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a major neurodegenerative disorder that is usually considered in terms of midbrain and basal ganglia dysfunction. Regarding PD instead as a disconnection syndrome may prove beneficial to understanding aspects of cognition, perception, and other neuropsychological domains in the disease. PD is usually of unilateral onset, providing evidence of intrahemispheric dissociations and an imbalance in the usual relative strengths of the right and left hemispheres. Hence, in order to appreciate the neuropsychology of PD, it is important to apply to this disease our understanding of hemispheric lateralization effects and within-hemisphere circuitry from brainstem to higher-order association cortex. The focus of this review is on the relevance of PD-related disconnections among subcortical and cortical structures to cognition, perception, emotion, and associated brainstem-based domains such as sleep and mood disturbance. Besides providing information on disease characteristics, regarding PD as a disconnection syndrome allows us to more completely understand normal brain-behavior relations in general.     

Psychology is About Persons: On Brinkmann’s Expansion of Harré’s Hybrid Psychology

Brinkmann has recently put forward an integrative theory of the mind by expanding Harré’s hybrid psychology. The theory is integrative because it establishes that in order for one to gain a full understanding of the mind—which is represented as a set of dispositions—one has to take into account theories about the brain, the body, social practices, and technological artifacts. All of these are said to be ‘mediators’ upon which the mind depends. An important claim underlying the theory is that in psychology the basic ontological unit is the person. We agree with Brinkmann both on this and on the dispositional nature of the mind. Still, he does not make a strong case for the latter. Furthermore, we believe the concept of mediation is by no means helpful to produce an integrative view in psychology, not only because the theoretical job of such a concept is unclear but also because qua unifying concept it may end up undermining the ontological primacy of the person (in psychology). In this paper we refer to these issues and suggest some ideas that may help improve Brinkmann’s (and Harré’s) proposal.     

Peirce’s ‘Prescision’ as a Transcendental Method

Abstract

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions.     

What’s in a Purse? Maybe a Woman’s Reputation

Does a woman’s reputation suffer when others discover condoms in her possession? Fifty-two male and female predominantly white undergraduates from a small, private, Catholic university in the northeast USA examined the contents of a purse to formulate an impression of its owner. Unflattering inferences were drawn about the character of the target when her purse contained condoms. A follow-up study with 55 comparable participants confirmed that these inferences were indeed uncomplimentary. The results are discussed in terms of the multi-dimensional price women pay when assuming responsibility for their sexual health.     

Believing in one’s equal rights: Self-respect as a predictor of assertiveness

In the present research self-respect is defined as a person’s ability to see the self as someone who has the same basic rights and dignity as others. Self-respect fills a gap in previous theorizing on the self because unlike other self-concepts it can be linked to assertiveness and claim making. Self-respect was empirically distinguished from self-competence and self-confidence (Study 1) as well as from psychological entitlement, self-esteem and self-acceptance (Study 2). Self-respect predicted assertive responses above and beyond these other self-scales in two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 3) and one experiment (Study 2). As predicted, self-respect was not related to aggressive responses, but psychological entitlement was (Studies 2 and 3). Implications for future research are discussed.     

Psychology, epistemology, and skepticism in Hume’s argument about induction

Since the mid-1970s, scholars have recognized that the skeptical interpretation of Hume’s central argument about induction is problematic. The science of human nature presupposes that inductive inference is justified and there are endorsements of induction throughout Treatise Book I. The recent suggestion that I.iii.6 is confined to the psychology of inductive inference cannot account for the epistemic flavor of its claims that neither a genuine demonstration nor a non-question-begging inductive argument can establish the uniformity principle. For Hume, that inductive inference is justified is part of the data to be explained. Bad argument is therefore excluded as the cause of inductive inference; and there is no good argument to cause it. Does this reinstate the problem of induction, undermining Hume’s own assumption that induction is justified? It does so only if justification must derive from “reason”, from the availability of a cogent argument. Hume rejects this internalist thesis; induction’s favorable epistemic status derives from features of custom, the mechanism that generates inductive beliefs. Hume is attracted to this externalist posture because it provides a direct explanation of the epistemic achievements of children and non-human animals—creatures that must rely on custom unsupplemented by argument.