Hope in Africa? Social representations of world history and the future in six African countries

Data on social representations of world history have been collected everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa. Two studies using open-ended data involving university students from six African countries fill this gap. In Study 1, nominations from Cape Verde and Mozambique for the most important events in world history in the past 1000 years were dominated by war and politics, recency effects, and Western-centrism tempered by African sociocentrism on colonization and independence. The first three findings replicated previous research conducted in other parts of the world, but the last pattern contrasted sharply with European data. Study 2 employed a novel method asking participants how they would begin the narration of world history, and then to describe a major transition to the present. Participants most frequently wrote about the evolution of humanity out of Africa, followed by war and then colonization as a beginning, and then replicated previous findings with war, colonization, and technology as major transitions to the present. Finally, when asked about how they foresaw the future, many participants expressed hope for peace and cooperation, especially those facing more risk of collective violence (Burundi and Congo). A colonial/liberation narrative was more predominant in the data from former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau) than from former Belgian colonies (Burundi and Congo).     

Is logic in the mind or in the world?

The paper presents an outline of a unified answer to five questions concerning logic: (1) Is logic in the mind or in the world? (2) Does logic need a foundation? What is the main obstacle to a foundation for logic? Can it be overcome? (3) How does logic work? What does logical form represent? Are logical constants referential? (4) Is there a criterion of logicality? (5) What is the relation between logic and mathematics?     

Mythic perspectives for a world in distress∗

In a series of books and articles published over the past two decades, the authors have developed a five‐stage system for identifying and modifying the mythic structures that guide individual development. In this essay, they draw upon the integral relationship between personal and collective myths in applying this five‐stage model to contemporary social issues. They focus, in particular, on the mythic conflicts that underlie the tensions between progress and sustainability and between individualism and community. Based on the contradictory designs inherent in a prevailing myth and in an emerging myth, the authors present a dialectical model that is formulated to lead to a new myth that incorporates the most functional elements of old and emergent forces, while transcending their limitations. The essay closes with a discussion of social actions that may embed a new myth within a culture, along with the conditions that are required to effectively reinforce and maintain it.     

Do experiments in the virtual world effectively predict how pedestrians evaluate electric vehicle sounds in the real world?

New laws stipulate that electric vehicles must emit additional sounds to alert pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach to prevent potential collisions. These new sounds will also influence pedestrians’ impression of the vehicle brand. A methodology has been developed to evaluate electric vehicle (EV) sounds in a virtual-world environment by assessing; (a) detectability and recognisability to ensure pedestrians’ safety, and (b) emotional evaluation of the sound quality to determine its impact on the perception of the vehicle brand. This experimental study examines external validity of the methodology. Fourteen participants evaluated an EV, emitting three sounds, in a traffic scenario in a real-world and a virtual-world environment. The traffic scenario involved a pedestrian ‘standing’ at a residential road junction while the EV travelled at 12 mph from behind the pedestrian, arriving at the junction at one of two pre-set times. Results show that the presented virtual-world methodology accurately predicts pedestrians’ evaluation of detectability of EV sounds and powerfulness and pleasantness of the vehicle brand in the corresponding real-world scenario. It also predicts the ranked order of sounds in the real-world for detection distance and recognisability. Arguably, for similar methods and setups, virtual-worlds would effectively predict pedestrians’ evaluation in the real-world. Interestingly, varying a vehicle’s arrival time, just like a real-world scenario, is found to affect pedestrians’ detection rate. Unlike experiments in the real-world, the presented methodology for experiments in virtual-world benefits from being reliable, quick, easy to implement, with more experimental control and options to easily manipulate any experiment variables.     

Intrusions in preschoolers’ recall of traumatic childhood events

We investigated the presence of intrusions in preschoolers’ memories for traumatic incidents by examining 30-, 36-, and 48-month-olds’ initial and 6-month recall of traumatic events that required emergency room treatment. The basic findings were (1) the number of preschoolers who produced an intrusion at the 6th month’s interview declined with age, (2) only the youngest preschoolers produced reliably more intrusions at 6 months than initially, (3) the amount of intruded information did not vary with age, and (4) the amount of information correctly recalled about the target traumatic event increased with age and was not affected by the presence of intrusions at any age. That preschoolers were able to recall considerable information concerning the target event, regardless of whether they did or did not produce intrusions, has implications for the veracity of their memories of trauma in real-life situations over extended retention intervals.     

What in the world is weakness of will?

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one’s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors.     

Playing God? Moral agency in an emerging world

Arguments against intervening in nature's ways have been used against many new technologies in the last century. Many of these arguments have employed the metaphor of "playing God." In this essay I briefly review the use of the term "playing God" in recent decades. I then examine the cosmology that lies implicit in this language. My thesis is that the language of "playing God" (or not) overlooks the dynamic, evolutionary nature of world process--the role played by the interdeterminacy of statistical probabilities. I review the notion of "emergent probability" (Lonergan) in order, in the end, to advocate an ethic of risk that both recognizes the dangers of hubris and includes an open and emergent view of creation.     

Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless.     

Safety–critical events in everyday cycling – Interviews with bicyclists and video annotation of safety–critical events in a naturalistic cycling study

Research in cycling safety seeks to better understand bicycle-related crashes and injuries. The present naturalistic cycling study contributes to this research by collecting data about bicyclists’ behavior and impressions of safety–critical situations, information unavailable in traditional data sources (e.g., accident databases, observational studies). Naturalistic data were collected from 16 bicyclists (8 female; M = 39.1 years, SD = 11.4 years) who rode instrumented bicycles for two weeks. Bicyclists were instructed to report all episodes in which they felt uncomfortable while riding (subjective risk perception), even if they didn’t fall. After data collection, the bicyclists were interviewed in detail regarding their self-reported safety–critical events. Environmental conditions were also recorded via video (e.g., road surface, weather). In total, 63 safety–critical events (56 non-crashes, 7 crashes) were reported by the bicyclists, mainly due to interactions with other road users – but also due to poorly maintained infrastructure. In low-visibility conditions, vehicle-bicycle and bicycle-bicycle events were the most uncomfortable for the bicyclists. Self-reported pedestrian–bicycle events primarily consisted of pedestrians starting to cross the bicycle path without looking. With one exception, all crashes found in the study belonged to poorly maintained road and infrastructure. In particular, construction work or obstacles in the bicycle path were reported as uncomfortable and annoying by the bicyclists. This study shows how naturalistic data and bicyclists’ interviews together can provide a more informative picture of safety–critical situations experienced by the bicyclist than traditional data sources can.     

What is happening in the world of therapeutic communities?

This overview of the contributions to the special edition illustrates something of how the collection of papers reflects the marginal nature of therapeutic communities, and makes parallels as to how they are forever struggling to survive, yet generate a passion of ideas and intellectual resilience that no project-managed health service can extinguish. It briefly describes the theoretical and geographical terrain covered, and signals how the cross-disciplinary incorporation of congruent ideas can be added to the traditional bedrock of therapeutic community practice. It ends by stating the context of the new, and seemingly successful, organization which assembled these contributions into its inaugural conference – and suggests that the journey could, and ultimate should, go further.     

Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy

With the recent revival of moral intuitionism, the work of W. D. Ross has grown in stature. But if we look at some recent well-regarded histories, anthologies and companions of analytic philosophy, Ross is noticeably absent. This discrepancy of assessments raises the question of Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy. Hans-Johann Glock has recently claimed that Ross is not an analytic philosopher at all, but is instead a ‘traditional philosopher’. In this article, I will identify several undeniable features of analytic philosophy that Ross’s work bears: a focus on linguistic analysis, great respect for pre-theoretical thoughts, the conviction that philosophy is a collaborative, piecemeal enterprise and so on. Such an investigation, I claim, reveals two historically significant results: Ross was the first ethicist to fully draw from commonsense beliefs about morality in light of characteristic analytic considerations to secure his theory. Two, concerning the matter of whether the notions ‘right’ and ‘good’ are reducible to other notions, Ross appears to have been right: ‘right’ and ‘good’ are irreducible notions. The classical analytic metaethicists, who based their entire research programme on the promise of finding suitable reductive semantic analyses of ‘right’ and ‘good’, were wrong. These results, I believe, suffice to secure W. D. Ross a high place in the history of analytic philosophy.     

Are older adults in Hong Kong “living in history” in their autobiographical memories?

Transition theory posits that autobiographical memories are organized by major life transitions, which is often supported by the Living-in-History effect that occurs when people frequently refer to public events to support their date estimates of personal events. In the present study, 52 Chinese older adults in Hong Kong recalled autobiographical events using cue-word method and justified the date estimates of the events. They also reported the most important events and assessed their impacts. Results showed that participants referred to public events only when estimating the date of 5.5% of word-cued events and reported a few public events as personally important, suggesting an absence of the Living-in-History effect. Nonetheless, word-cued events and important events accumulated around major life transitions to form a transition bump; the material change that important events brought about predicted whether the important events were used to organize autobiographical memory, thereby providing new evidence for the transition theory.     

Peacemaking at home in the world: grounding children’s spirituality in peace

Peace is both a religious and non-religious proposition. Religiously it is articulated within doctrinal categories. In non-religious terms, it is pursued within national and international interests. Non-religious pursuits to peace were often framed within political and some cultural considerations involving adult participants. However, numerous spiritual considerations to peacemaking have traditionally identified children’s dispositions as a material for inquiry. This paper described how children’s perspectives on peace and peacemaking essentially projected aspects of children’s spirituality on peace using some 296 children’s essays and drawings on peace. Results showed how peculiar traits of children’s spirituality grounded on peace were strategically nested on domestic order, the world and environment. Peacemaking is homemaking; it is peacemaking at home in the world.     

Meaning making in mothers’ and children's narratives of emotional events

Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers’ narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than children's narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers’ and children's narrative meaning making.     

Is history important for a historical argument in religious studies?

This review article addresses the historical argument of Norenzayan's Big Gods. It questions the claim that there is enough historical evidence to support the thesis that gods, who are observing human behaviour from high, enable societies to grow beyond the stage of face-to-face groups.     

Perceived changes in ordinary autobiographical events’ affect and visual imagery colorfulness

We examined the extent to which the perceived changes in visual imagery colorfulness impact on the affect intensity associated with ordinary autobiographical events across time. We garnered support for the hypothesis that recent events become memorial phenomena via an emotion regulation process such that positive events retained their affective pleasantness longer than negative events retained affective unpleasantness because, in part, across 2 weeks the former retained their imagery colorfulness longer than the latter events did. A similar but distinct model was unsupported. We discuss the significance of imagery colorfulness and affect intensity in the context of memory for everyday autobiographical events.     

Who will win Wimbledon? The recognition heuristic in predicting sports events

Goldstein and Gigerenzer ( 2002 ) described the recognition heuristic as a fast, frugal, and effective decision strategy. However, most studies concerning the recognition heuristic have been conducted in static domains, that is, in domains where it could plausibly be argued that relevant variables stay relatively constant. Yet the question is whether the heuristic would also work in dynamic environments where the quality of the actors rises and falls, such as in sports. We tested performance of the recognition heuristic in a dynamic environment and used it to predict the outcomes of tennis matches in Wimbledon 2003. Recognition data of amateur tennis players and laypeople was used to build recognition rankings. These rankings correlated with official rankings and led to at least as good predictions. Simulations of individual choices showed high recognition validities of both amateurs (0.73) and laypeople (0.67). In a second study the recognition heuristic correctly predicted 90% of actual individual choices. Overall, the recognition heuristic may be effectively generalized to dynamic environments. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who remembers best? Individual differences in memory for events that occurred in a science museum

Individual differences in memory and suggestibility were assessed in an experiment involving 1989 people who attended the Exploratorium, a science museum located in San Francisco. Subjects watched a brief film clip of an assault and later answered questions about it. Approximately half received misinformation about some critical items. Four demographic variables (gender, educational level, age, and occupation) were examined to determine their impact on memory performance. The principle of discrepancy detection predicts that, compared to individuals with a good memory, people who have poor memory to begin with will be relatively suggestible (that is susceptible to misinformation). Some of our findings were consistent with this principle. For example, children (5–10 years) and elderly (over 65) were relatively inaccurate and also relatively suggestible. Other findings were not consistent with the principle, for example the finding that artists and architects were relatively accurate, but they were also highly suggestible.