CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

The consequences for memory of imagining in another person’s voice

Subjects listened to and imagined words and then attempted to discriminate words they had heard from words they had imagined. Discrimination was better when subjects imagined themselves saying the words (Experiments 1 and 2) than when subjects imagined the words in the speaker’s voice. Subjects also had more difficulty discriminating imagined from perceived words when they imagined in the speaker’s voice than when they imagined words in a voice other than their own or the speaker’s (Experiment 1). The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring is affected by the degree of similarity in sensory characteristics of memories derived from perception and from imagination (Johnson & Raye, 1981).     

Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals

Japanese bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to 20 English and 20 Japanese cue words. US monolinguals were cued with 40 English words. All participants reported one earliest memory. Japanese bilinguals retrieved more memories and earlier memories when cued with Japanese words. They also retrieved more memories when the cue language matched either the language of memory encoding or the language of first thought. Although English cues elicited equivalent numbers of English and Japanese memories in the more fluent speakers of English, Japanese words elicited significantly larger numbers of Japanese memories in all Japanese-English bilinguals. The average age of cued autobiographical memories was significantly earlier for US than for Japanese students but age of the earliest memory did not differ.     

Ritual Education and Moral Development: A Comparison of Xunzi and Vygotsky

Xunzi’s 荀子 advocacy for moral education is well-documented; precisely how his program bolsters moral development, and why a program touting study of ritual could be effective, remain subjects of debate. I argue that these matters can be clarified by appealing to the theory of learning and development offered by Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky posited that development depends primarily on social interactions mediated by sociocultural tools that modify learners’ cognitive architecture, enabling increasingly sophisticated thought. Vygotsky’s theory is remarkably similar to Xunzi’s account of how studying and practicing ritual restructures learners’ moral psychology. Specifically, both Vygotsky and Xunzi offer nonnativist accounts of psychosocial development that emphasize the centrality of sociocultural tools for learning. This comparison yields a more nuanced and empirically supported interpretation of Xunzi’s account of moral education, as well as an account that has applications in contemporary work in moral education and development.     

Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals

Japanese bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to 20 English and 20 Japanese cue words. US monolinguals were cued with 40 English words. All participants reported one earliest memory. Japanese bilinguals retrieved more memories and earlier memories when cued with Japanese words. They also retrieved more memories when the cue language matched either the language of memory encoding or the language of first thought. Although English cues elicited equivalent numbers of English and Japanese memories in the more fluent speakers of English, Japanese words elicited significantly larger numbers of Japanese memories in all Japanese-English bilinguals. The average age of cued autobiographical memories was significantly earlier for US than for Japanese students but age of the earliest memory did not differ.     

Reality monitoring in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

People who report either repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may have deficits in reality monitoring--the process whereby one discriminates memories of percepts from memories of images. Using signal detection methods, the authors found that adults reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA were less able to discriminate between words they had seen from words they had imagined seeing than were adults reporting either never having forgotten their CSA or adults reporting no history of CSA. Relative deficits in the ability to discriminate percepts from images (i.e., low d') were apparent on only some tests. The groups did not differ in their criterion--response bias--for affirming having seen versus imagined stimuli.     

Dreams and reality monitoring

Experiment 1 tested the counterintuitive prediction that memories for one's own dreams should not be particularly easy to discriminate from memories for someone else's dreams. Pairs of people reported dreams to each other that they had either dreamed, read, or made up the night before. On a test requiring subjects to discriminate events they had reported from those reported by their partner, subjects had more difficulty with real dreams than with dreams they read or made up. Experiment 2 provided evidence that real dreams do not simply produce overall weaker memories; the deficit for dreams was eliminated with more time to respond and with more detailed cues. In addition, subjects' ratings of various characteristics of their memories (e.g., vividness, personal relevance) indicated that dreams were not generally weaker or impoverished. The results are interpreted within the framework for reality monitoring described by Johnson and Raye (1981): Memories for real dreams are proposed to be deficient in conscious cognitive operations that help identify the origin of information generated in a waking state. At the same time, real dreams are embedded in a network of supporting memories that can be drawn on for reality monitoring decisions under appropriate circumstances. Finally, a comparison of recognition and recall indicated that dreams may leave persisting memories that are difficult to access via free recall.     

Acute consolidation stress enhances reality monitoring in healthy young adults

Source monitoring refers to cognitive processes involved in making attributions about the origins of memories, knowledge, and beliefs. One particular type of source monitoring with ample practical significance is reality monitoring, i.e., the ability to discriminate between internally vs. externally generated memories. Abundant evidence indicates that exposure to acute stress enhances declarative memory consolidation. To date, no study has looked at whether exposure to acute stress during the consolidation phase may promote reality monitoring performance. The authors examined this by administering cold pressor stress (CPS) or a control procedure to participants (N = 80) after they had either performed or only imagined performing simple motor acts, and assessing reality monitoring 24 h later. When compared with the control condition, CPS significantly elevated salivary free cortisol concentrations and enhanced reality monitoring. Stress-induced cortisol responses, however, were found not to be related to improved reality monitoring performance. Our findings are consistent with the view that post-learning stress hormone-related activity may modulate source memory consolidation.     

Memory confusions for real and imagined completions of symmetrical visual patterns

In Experiment 1, subject ratings indicated that it was easier to imaginally complete half of a symmetrical form when the form was symmetrical about the vertical axis than when the form was rotated so that it was symmetrical about the horizontal axis. In Experiment 2, new subjects saw these same forms, some presented as wholes and some presented as halves. Compared with controls, subjects who were instructed to imagine the vertically symmetrical half forms as complete had more difficulty remembering which forms had been presented as wholes and which had been presented as halves. Imagery and control groups did not differ in ability to discriminate half from whole horizontally symmetrical forms. The results are consistent with predictions from Johnson and Raye’s (1981) reality monitoring model that discriminating memories of imagined and perceived events should be a function of the amount of cognitive operations included in the memory.     

Metamemory and reality monitoring

Metamemory judgements and reality monitoring judgements were compared for real and imagined stimuli. Line drawings of everyday items were either perceived or imagined in differing ratios, to (a) investigate people's ability to predict the class of item that would be better recalled (Judgements of Learning, JOL), and the class of item which would be better sourced (Judgements of Source, JOS) in a future recall test, and (b) test the hypothesis that participants would show a bias towards calling remembered items real when the source had been forgotten. Although participants' JOLs indicated that they believed real items would be more memorable than imagined, in both experiments a larger proportion of items from either class (real or imagined) was only recalled when presentation modality was less frequent for that class. By contrast, JOSs were no different for real or imagined items, even though source attribution was more accurate for real than imagined items. An attribution of memories to real rather than to imagined events that often occurs when participants are unsure about the source (labelled a ‘bias towards the real’) was due to phenomenological qualities of the memories. The results are discussed in terms of Johnson and Raye's ( 1981 ) reality‐monitoring model. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Kant on the normativity of taste: The role of aesthetic ideas

For Kant, the form of a subject's experience of an object provides the normative basis for an aesthetic judgement about it. In other words, if the subject's experience of an object has certain structural properties, then Kant thinks she can legitimately judge that the object is beautiful—and that it is beautiful for everyone. My goal in this paper is to provide a new account of how this ‘subjective universalism’ is supposed to work. In doing so, I appeal to Kant's notions of an aesthetic idea and an aesthetic attribute, and the connection that Kant makes between an object's expression of rational and the normativity of aesthetic judgements about it.     

ON THE VERY IDEA OF AN ONTOLOGY OF COMMUNION: BEING,RELATION AND FREEDOM IN ZIZIOULAS AND LEVINAS

The present article examines the theology of John Zizioulas with a view to understanding its coherence and viability for ecclesiology. Instead of treating his trinitarian theology, or his historical claims, I focus upon the basic themes of his personalistic ontology, especially the relationship between the ‘hypostasis’ and its ‘nature.’ I argue that Zizioulas's central concept of freedom rests upon an equivocation: he affirms both that freedom and being are identical, and that they are mutually exclusive. In conversation with the philosophy of Levinas, I further argue that Zizioulas's proposal, as an ontology of communion, falls prey to the same reduction of being to thought that forms the central tenet of Western conceptions of subjectivity. In conclusion, I argue that both of these problems trade on a basic inability to account for grace as the fundamental reality of communion. Throughout my basic concern is to inquire into just what function the category of ‘being’ has in Zizioulas's theology, and to point out its surprising obscurity.     

An Ethics of Propriety: Ritual,Roles, and Dependence in Early Confucianism

This study examines the normative foundations of early Confucian ethics and suggests that rather than attempting to understand Confucian ethics in the language of ‘morality’ a more productive way would be to appreciate Confucianism as an ethics of propriety that can be articulated in terms of social roles, ritual decorum, and relational dependence. I argue that Western notions of ‘morality’ betray a thicker, more culturally loaded concept that possesses a limited utility in regard to comparative study. We can appeal to a kind of methodological charity where we not only maximize the sense of the text or subject's sayings but also privilege the categories of thought that are native to the text's or speaker's lexicon. With this in mind, we can understand Confucian ethics as an ethics of propriety that departs substantially from Western moral systems, including virtue ethics, and challenges our received views on justice, autonomy, and personal identity.     

Vygotsky's Theory of Creativity

In Educational Psychology (1997/1926), Vygotsky pleaded for a realistic approach to children's literature. He is, among other things, critical of Chukovsky's story "Crocodile" and maintains that this story deals with nonsense and gibberish, without social relevance. This approach Vygotsky would leave soon, and, in Psychology of Art (1971/1925), in which he develops his theory of art, he talks about connections between nursery rhymes and children's play, exactly as the story of Chukovsky had done with the following argument: By dragging a child into a topsy-turvy world, we help his intellect work and his perception of reality. In his book Imagination and Creativity in Childhood (1995/1930), Vygotsky goes further and develops his theory of creativity. The book describes how Vygotsky regards the creative process of the human consciousness, the link between emotion and thought, and the role of the imagination. To Vygotsky, this brings to the fore the issue of the link between reality and imagination, and he discusses the issue of reproduction and creativity, both of which relate to the entire scope of human activity. Interpretations of Vygotsky in the 1990s have stressed the role of literature and the development of a cultural approach to psychology and education. It has been overlooked that Vygotsky started his career with work on the psychology of art.     

Nishida on God,Barth and Christianity1

Despite the central role that the concept of God played in Kitarō Nishida's philosophy—and more broadly, within the Kyoto School which formed around Nishida—Anglophone studies of the religious philosophy of modern Japan have not seriously considered the nature and role of God in Nishida's thought. Indeed, relevant Anglophone studies even strongly suggest that where the concept of God does appear in Nishida's writings, such a concept is to be dismissed as a ‘subjective fiction’, a ‘penultimate designation’, or a peripheral Western intrusion with no genuine relationship to the core of Nishida's thought. However, a careful study of Nishida's own writings reveals that for Nishida, in his own words, God is ‘that which is indispensable and decisive’. For the first time in English, this present study reveals Nishida's view of God, especially examining Nishida's debt to the theologian Karl Barth and Christianity.     

Cognitive control and word recognition speed influence the Stroop effect in bilinguals

Bilinguals have been shown to be less susceptible to Stroop interference in their first language than monolinguals, though the cause is currently being debated. In two experiments, we explored how cognitive control and word recognition contribute to the Stroop effect by contrasting cognitive control (via a Simon arrow task), word recognition speed (via a Chinese/English word recognition task) and Stroop susceptibility (via a verbal Stroop task) between proficient and non‐proficient Chinese–English bilinguals. Compared to non‐proficient bilinguals, proficient bilinguals showed better cognitive control at inhibiting irrelevant information, and they were slower at recognising Chinese words but quicker at recognising English words. Critically, we also showed that proficient bilinguals showed a smaller Stroop effect than non‐proficient bilinguals in Chinese but a comparable Stroop effect as non‐proficient bilinguals in English. The results cannot be accounted for by cognitive control or word recognition speed alone; instead, they are best accommodated by assuming that cognitive control and word recognition speed jointly determine the Stroop effect. Thus, we conclude that enhanced cognitive control and delayed word recognition combine to reduce Stroop effect in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals.     

Dissimilation,differential assimilation and social identity

Studied the behaviour of subjects in a ‘normalization’ experiment: when a consistent confederate adopts the subject's norms (adoption situation); when the consistent response of the confederate deviates from the subject's norm (distance situation). We had three conditions for each of these two modes of response: we manipulated the C's image (C was always similar to the subject), and the image of a reference population: C and S were both either very similar (C and S in the majority) or very dissimilar (C and S in the minority) to the population. Or there was no image manipulation. Sixty male subjects participated in this experiment: 10 subjects in each of the six experimental conditions. In two adoption conditions (no image, C and S in the majority) the subjects changed their responses when the confederate adopted their norm. Our hypothesis on the resistance to influence in one of the distance condition (C and S in the minority) was not verified. Thus we have shown that a phenomenon of differential dissimilation exists, but our previous results on differential assimilation are not replicated. These results are coherent with the social differentiation and originality theory which stresses the quest for social identity and distinctiveness by actors who do not ‘react’ but who, in certains situations, elaborate strategies.     

IDENTITY,RELATION R,AND WHAT MATTERS

This paper offers a challenge to Derek Parfit's thesis that one ought to have no preference between these two otherwise identical situations: 1. I continue to go on living as before, and 2. I do not survive, but am replaced by a duplicate, psychologically continuous to my present self (i.e. an R-related duplicate). I point out that virtually all psychologically normal persons regard some inanimate objects as being ‘irreplaceable’ (such that no copy could adequately substitute). I then propose that in every such case, this judgment is based on the subject's regarding some person as likewise irreplaceable. It would follow that any such subject would have to reject Parfit's thesis.