Habit and time in nineteenth-century French philosophy: Albert Lemoine between Bergson and Ravaisson

This paper shows how reflection on habit leads in nineteenth-century French philosophy to Henri Bergson’s idea of duration in 1888 as a non-quantifiable dimension irreducible to time as measured by clocks. Historically, I show how Albert Lemoine’s 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct was crucial, since he holds – in a way that is both Ravaissonian and Bergsonian avant la lettre – that for the being capable of habit, the three elements of time are fused together. For that habituated being, Lemoine claims, it is not true to say that the past is no longer, nor even that the future is not yet. This historical link between Ravaisson and Bergson, however, only sharpens the philosophical question of how a dynamic conception of habit involves and requires a conception of real duration, of a temporality more original than clock-time, and, conversely, of how reflection on duration prior to clock-time involves a notion of habit. With reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper concludes by showing that there is an internal connection between these two grand philosophical themes of nineteenth- and then twentieth-century French thought: habit and time.     

Inheritance,Originality and the Will: Bergson and Heidegger on Creation

Abstract

In the work of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger we find different responses to traditional ideas of ‘creation’. Bergson advances a philosophy of creation, wherein ‘creation’ is presented as the production of a ‘radical’ or ‘absolute’ novelty, not only in art, but in all forms of human experience and biological life. Heidegger, in contrast, comes to criticise ideas of ‘creation’ in art as the expression of an alienated ‘humanism’ and ‘subjectivism’ essential to the modern age. This paper illuminates this divergence by showing how Bergson and Heidegger, despite appearances, grapple with the question of art-production – and with the attendant issues of inheritance and originality – in similar ways. It is only in recognising this proximity, I argue, that it is possible to perceive adequately what essentially distinguishes their approaches: Bergson’s conception of creation as a function of the will.     

Natures,Human Nature,Genes and Souls: Reclaiming Theological Anthropology Through Biological Structuralism

Abstract : Within the field of Theology and Science, discussions regarding the relationship between biology and theological anthropology have tended to focus on the themes of ‘human uniqueness’ and ‘human nature’. These ideas have continued among theologians and anthropologists despite the widespread agreement among neo‐Darwinian evolutionary biologists that such general or universal accounts of ‘natures’ in general, or ‘human nature’ in particular, have no proper place within the neo‐Darwinian evolutionary framework. In view of this neo‐Darwinian rejection of universal human nature and the subsequent undermining of theological anthropologies based on such, Biological Structuralism is proposed as an alternative theoretical framework through which to construct a theological anthropology in light of evolution. Within the Structuralist framework scientific resources are provided which facilitate fresh perspectives on ancient theological discussions regarding the nature of the soul and the place of nonhuman animals within theological anthropology.     

Executive functioning and processing speed in age-related differences in time estimation: a comparison of young,old, and very old adults

Age-related differences in time estimation were examined by comparing the temporal performance of young, young–old, and old–old adults, in relation to two major theories of cognitive aging: executive decline and cognitive slowing. We tested the hypothesis that processing speed and executive function are differentially involved in timing depending on the temporal task used. We also tested the assumption of greater age-related effects in time estimation in old–old participants. Participants performed two standard temporal tasks: duration production and duration reproduction. They also completed tests measuring executive function and processing speed. Findings supported the view that executive function is the best mediator of reproduction performance and inversely that processing speed is the best mediator of production performance. They also showed that young–old participants provide relatively accurate temporal judgments compared to old–old participants. These findings are discussed in terms of compensation mechanisms in aging.     

Emotion,Decision, and Risk: Betting on Gambles versus Betting on People

We examined the effects of two emotions, fear and anger, on risk‐taking behavior in two types of tasks: Those in which uncertainty is generated by a randomizing device (“lottery risk”) and those in which it is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person (“person‐based risk”). Participants first completed a writing task to induce fear or anger. They then made choices either between lotteries (Experiment 1) or between actions in risky two‐person decisions (Experiments 2 and 3). The experiments involved substantial real‐money payoffs. Replicating earlier studies (which used hypothetical rewards), Experiment 1 showed that fearful participants were more risk‐averse than angry participants in lottery‐risk tasks. However—the key result of this study—fearful participants were substantially less risk‐averse than angry participants in a two‐person task involving person‐based risk (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 offered options and payoffs identical to those of Experiment 2 but with lottery‐type risk. Risk‐taking returned to the pattern of Experiment 1. The impact of incidental emotions on risk‐taking appears to be contingent on the class of uncertainty involved. For lottery risk, fear increased the frequency of risk‐averse choices and anger reduced it. The reverse pattern was found when uncertainty in the decision was person‐based. Further, the effect was specifically on differences in willingness to take risks rather than on differences in judgments of how much risk was present. The impact of different emotions on risk‐taking or risk‐avoiding behavior is thus contingent on the type, as well as the degree, of uncertainty the decision maker faces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personal attitudes toward time: The relationship between temporal focus,space‐time mappings and real life experiences

What influences how people implicitly associate “past” and “future” with “front” and “back?” Whereas previous research has shown that cultural attitudes toward time play a role in modulating space‐time mappings in people's mental models (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache & Casasanto, 2014), we investigated real life experiences as potential additional influences on these implicit associations. Participants within the same single culture, who are engaged in different intermediate‐term educational experiences (Study 1), long‐term living experiences (Study 2), and short‐term visiting experiences (Study 3), showed their distinct differences in temporal focus, thereby influencing their implicit spatializations of time. Results across samples suggest that personal attitudes toward time related to real life experiences may influence people's space‐time mappings. The findings we report on shed further light on the high flexibility of human conceptualization system. While culture may exert an important influence on temporal focus, a person's conceptualization of time may be attributed to a culmination of factors.     

One country,two cultures: Implicit space–time mappings in Southern and Northern Vietnamese

What determines how people implicitly associate the “past” and “future” with “front” and “back”? According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), people's cultural attitudes toward time influence their implicit space–time mappings. However, previous research mainly used cross‐cultural comparison in which the cultures compared differ not only in attentional focus on temporal events, but may also differ in other cultural values. Thus, the specific role of cultural attitudes toward time has not been tested. In the current study, we compared Southern and Northern Vietnamese who have many aspects in common but demonstrate cultural differences in attitudes toward the past and future. The results showed that the two groups of participants tended to think about time according to their temporal focus. Taken together, this pattern of results showed that within‐cultural differences in temporal focus can also predict variation in space–time mappings, which provides further supporting evidence for the TFH.     

Unbalanced triangle in the social dilemma of trust: Internet studies of real‐time,real money social exchange between China,Japan, and Taiwan

Using a dyadic game theory paradigm, three experiments on the social dilemma of trust were conducted over the Internet in real time, involving real money. It was predicted and found that in‐group favouritism in trusting behaviour was contingent on historical relationships between societies. In the China–Japan experiment, mainland Chinese but not Japanese trusted and made fair allocations to in‐group members more than out‐group members, and out‐group trust was best predicted by positive stereotypes of the out‐group for Chinese and identity for Japanese. In the China–Taiwan experiment, Taiwanese but not Mainland Chinese trusted in‐group members more than out‐group members, and in‐group trust for Taiwanese was best predicted by perceptions of current realistic threats. In the Taiwan–Japan experiment, there were slight in‐group favouring tendencies in trust, and positive stereotypes of the out‐group were the best predictors of out‐group trust. Japanese were unique in not displaying in‐group favouring behaviour at all, whereas both Chinese and Taiwanese were context specific in their in‐group favouritism. Stereotypes, social identities, perceptions of realistic threat, and historical anger made significant contributions to predicting trusting behaviour, but overall these survey measures only accounted for small and inconsistent amounts of variance across the three experiments.