Presentism and Diversity in the History of Psychology

Providing an entry on the history of psychology for the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia has proved to be more problematic than one might expect. In particular, someone who goes under the internet name, ‘Jagged_85’ inserted claims to the effect that most of the major developments in the history of psychology have their origins in the medieval Arab world. Similar claims and at least one attempt to challenge those claims have appeared in the professional literature. A special issue of the online newsletter, Advances in the History of Psychology devoted to this topic has also appeared under the title, “Presentism in the Service of Diversity?” The term, “presentism” has several meanings but it usually refers to projecting the views of the present onto the past instead of making a serious attempt to understand how historical figures themselves understood the world. The present paper endorses the view that the claims of authors like ‘Jagged_85’ constitute presentism in the usual sense of the term. It also offers suggestions for how diversity without this type of presentism might be achieved.     

Indigenous Psychologies: The Meaning of the Concept and its Assessment: Introduction

La signification des concepts de psychologie indigoène et d'indigoénisation, les processus par lesquels ils se réalisent, est exploré dans les quatres premiers articles de ce numéro spécial. Les concepts sont examinés tout d' abord à partir des perspectives plus larges de la psychologie sociale des sciences (Adair) et la psychologie interculturelle (Poortinga), ainsi que dans deux applications concrètes des approches de psychologie indignée au Mexique (Díaz-Loving) et en Corée (Kim, Park, et Park). Dans la seconde partie, trois articles rendent compte des recherches empiriques évaluant l'ampleur du développement indignée en Turquie, ex-URSS, au Venezuela, et Porto-Rico. Cette introduction au numéro spécial résume quelques uns des points communs et des différences dans les contributions.
The meaning of the concepts of indigenous psychologies and of indigenisation, the process by which they are achieved, are explored within the first four articles of this special issue. The concepts are examined initially in the abstract from the broader perspectives of the social psychology of science (Adair) and cross-cultural psychology (Poortinga), and in two concrete applications of indigenous psychology approaches in Mexico (Díaz-Loving) and Korea (Kim, Park, & Park). In the second part of this special issue, three articles report on empirical research assessing the extent of indigenous development that has occurred in Turkey, the former USSR, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. This introduction summarises some of the commonalities and differences among the contributions.     

The Search for Indigenous Psychologies: Data From Turkey and the Former USSR

On a analysé le contenu de 152 articles du Turkish Journal of Psychology et de 261 articles de la revue Soviet Psychology dans le but d'évaluer le degré d' «indigénisation>> des psychologies turque et soviétique. Il est apparu que la psychologie turque ne présentait aucune tendance à l'indigénisation vu que les théories et perspectives nord-américaines y étaient largement exploitées. Par contre, on a constaté que la psychologie soviétique était l'un des rares exemples de psychologie indigéne.
Articles in the Turkish Journal of Psychology (n = 152), and in the journal Soviet Psychology (n = 261) were content analysed to determine the degree of indigenisation in Turkish and Soviet psychology. The results indicated that there was no tendency towards indigenisation in Turkish psychology, and North American theories and perspectives were widely used. Soviet psychology was found to be one of the rare examples of an indigenous psychology.     

Psychology,Science, and Culture: Cross-Cultural Analysis of National Psychologies

Although psychology is assumed to be a value-free, universal, and objective branch of science, in actual practice it is deeply enmeshed with Euro-American cultural values that champion rational, liberal, and individualistic ideals. In North America, the free exchange of ideas is valued, and ideas are purportedly evaluated through public and competitive avenues. This belief affects how conferences are organized, research collaborations are developed, research is funded, and publications are accepted. In East Asia, human relationships that can be characterized as being “virtue-based” rather than “rights-based” occupy the centre stage. Individuals are considered to be linked in a web of inter-relatedness and ideas are exchanged through established social networks. Establishing trust and cordial working relationships are prerequisites for the active exchange of ideas. Psychological science is a cultural enterprise that must examine its implicit assumptions and integrate with other world views in developing a truly universal psychological science.     

Interbehavioral Perspectives: On Act Psychologies and the Psychological Nouns

In a recent paper, Lee contrasted “act psychologies” with cognitive psychology, alleging that the former are incomplete in their coverage of what most people consider really psychological. By including the contextual interactionist approach of J. R. Kantor with B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism under the “act psychology” umbrella, Lee has shown that she is unfamiliar with the fact that Kantor, during his 60-odd years of active writing, covered virtually every aspect of psychology. She is particularly concerned about the neglect of those psychological nouns that are meaningful abstractions without being aware that contextual interactionism (interbehavioral psychology) uses the very terms which she mentions as long as they are used in reference to interactions and not to faculties or other psychic entities.

     

Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context

There is growing recognition that psychological theories and principles developed in the West may not accurately reflect those found in other cultures. The newly published book entitled Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context has made an important contribution in expanding the scope of psychology. The contributing authors depicted their ultimate goal of developing a universal psychology. The purpose of this article is to review the book from a transpersonal psychology perspective with the hope of facilitating this process. Basing our thoughts on the theoretical framework of perennial psychology and positive psychology, we will suggest practical steps through which future psychologists may work collaboratively to bring about global moral transformation that is crucial to the survival of our planet.     

On the Possibility of Presentism with Occurrents

Philosophia - This paper defends the possibility of admitting occurrents in a presentist ontology. Two ways of doing so are proposed, the first one involves Meinongian presentism. By using the...     

本土心理学特征论析

本土心理学作为一种研究取向,具有五个基本特征：取向人文性;文化契合性;范式多样性;内含普适性;心理学研究独立化和自由化的表现。其中文化契合性是主导特征。     

Presentism and the Non-Present

In this paper I argue that presentism has a problem accounting forthe truth of statements whose truth conditions seem to require therebe relations that hold between present and non-present objects. Imotivate the problem and then examine several strategies for dealingwith the problem. I argue that no solution is forthcoming, and thispresents a prima facie problem for presentism.     

本土自觉:心理学本土化的边际人格困境及其超越

心理学本土化运动热潮渐退,这可能是由于本土化进程中移植性格与民族情结冲突、矛盾,导致本土化面临边际人格困境所致。从学科史的视角考察,心理学本土化运动是在文化自觉的背景下被动展开的,其边际人格困境的本质是主体意识的缺失。同时,文化多元化观念与全球化进程破坏了文化的时空意义,也割裂了文化的整体性,使得心理学本土化研究面临文化混搭、个体自觉的新常态。新困境、新常态呼唤心理学本土化主体意识的自觉,亟需转变现有的被动本土化处境以实现心理学本土化的自觉发展,即,本土自觉。     

Presentism and the Notion of Existence

The aim of this paper is to make presentism a dynamic view of reality by basing it on a notion of dynamic existence, that is, on a notion of existence which has a dynamic character. The paper shows that both of the notions of existence which are used in metaphysical theories of time (in presentism and eternalism) have a static character and, while such a notion is useful for eternalists, it is useless for presentists if they want to make their view able to remain in agreement with our everyday experience and self-consistent. It is demonstrated that both empirical and theoretical arguments indicate that the presentist should replace the notion of this static existence with the notion of a dynamic existence and that this maneuver allows the presentist to treat his/her existential thesis as equivalent to the thesis that time flows. Not only does this strategy allow us to express presentism in a simple, homogenous way which remains in agreement with our experience, but also permits us to solve some of the difficult problems which presentism faces, such as, for example, the objection of triviality and the question about the rate of time passage. Moreover, such an approach to presentism allows us to solve fundamental metaphysical problems concerning time such as the problem of the openness of the future and the fixity of the past, direction of causation, and relations between presentism and persistence through time by endurance.     

Presentism and the Myth of Passage

Presentism is held by most to be the intuitive theory of time, due in large part to the view's supposed preservation of time's passage. In this paper, I strike a blow against presentism's intuitive pull by showing how the presentist, contrary to overwhelming popular belief, is unable to establish temporal change upon which the passage of time is based. I begin by arguing that the presentist's two central ontological commitments, the Present Thesis and the Change Thesis, are incompatible. The main problem is that satisfying the Change Thesis to establish passage requires the existence of more than one moment. This conflicts with the Present Thesis that only the present moment exists. The presentist's response is to appeal to surrogates to stand proxy for the past, so as to account for the difference between what does exist and what did exist. I argue that, for this surrogate strategy to be successful, the proposed surrogates must track what actually happened. I demonstrate that there is no guarantee that this is the case. As a result, the presentist's preservation of temporal change fails, which means that there is no passage in presentism. In the end, we should rethink just how intuitive presentism happens to be.     

Presentism and the Triviality Objection

Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is obviously false if read as saying that everything that has existed, exits or will exist is present. If eternalism is taken as the negation of presentism, it is also either trivially false or obviously true. In this paper, I try to respond to the triviality objection on behalf of presentism. In second section, I will examine how the argument proceeds. In third section, I will reflect on three possible ways to respond but will argue that none of them succeeds in giving a satisfactory solution. I will then try to clarify the core idea of presentism and to suggest that if we characterise presentism accurately, the problem will disappear. In fourth section, I will offer a plausible definition of presentism and will show how it can avoid the triviality objection and demonstrate why it is advantageous to accept the version of presentism I offer.     

对西方心理学历史的重建--评<西方心理学的历史与体系>

心理学起源于西方,可上溯至古希腊。1879年,德国的威廉·冯特建立了世界上第一个心理学实验室,培养出一大批一流的心理学家,使心理学脱离哲学而成为一门独立的学科。对于我国来说,心理学是一门“引进”的学科,与发达国家心理学的总体发展水平相比,我国的心理学比较落后。因此,为更好地发展我国的心理学,有必要出版有关西方心理学史方面的书籍,让从事心理学及有关学科工作、研究的人了解西方心理学发展的历史和现状,吸收。借鉴西方心理学中有价值的研究成果。一方面用于指导我国心理学的研究,丰富我国心理学的研究成果,另一方面…     

中国本土心理学研究中需关注的几个问题

本土心理学尽管以深厚的本土文化资源作为其发展的后盾,充分体现了文化契合性特征,在获致本土文化资源的滋养下,彰显出极强的生命力,但是,不可否认的是。始生之物的本土心理学还缺失一定的发展规范,理念上还有较为混乱和易混淆的地方,这都成为本土心理学健康发展的障碍。深入地澄清和剖析本土心理学的某些概念和发展上的理念,已经成为促进本土心理学研究的当务之急。