God is not a person (an argument via pantheism)

This paper transforms a development of an argument against pantheism into an objection to the usual account of God within contemporary analytic philosophy (’Swinburnian theism’). A standard criticism of pantheism has it that pantheists cannot offer a satisfactory account of God as personal. My paper will develop this criticism along two lines: first, that personhood requires contentful mental states, which in turn necessitate the membership of a linguistic community, and second that personhood requires limitation within a wider context constitutive of the ’setting’ of the agent’s life. Pantheism can, I argue, satisfy neither criterion of personhood. At this point the tables are turned on the Swinburnian theist. If the pantheist cannot defend herself against the personhood-based attacks, neither can the Swinburnian, and for instructively parallel reasons: for neither doctrine is God in the material world; in the pantheist case God is identical with the world, in the Swinburnian case God transcends it. Either way both the pantheist and the Swinburnian are left with a dilemma: abandon divine personhood or modify the doctrine of God so as to block the move to personhood.

     

How to operationalize a person

The notion of operationally defining a person is absurd, but no more so than other uses of “operationalization”. ‘Persons’ make that absurdity particularly clear because there is no sense in which persons can be directly observed, nor defined in terms of what might be observable, and thereby exposes the emptiness of the idea of operationalization more broadly.On the other hand, persons can be modeled, and their ontology investigated, within frameworks that can address the processes and organizations that actually constitute persons.     

Decomposing person and occasion-specific effects: an extension of latent state-trait (LSI) theory to hierarchical LST models

An extension of latent state-trait (LST) theory to hierarchical LST models is presented. In hierarchical LST models, the covariances between 2 or more latent traits are explained by a general 3rd-order factor, and the covariances between latent state residuals pertaining to different traits measured on the same measurement occasion are explained by 2nd-order latent occasion-specific factors. Analogous to recent developments in multitrait-multimethod methodology, all factors are interpreted in relation to factors taken as comparison standards. An empirical example from test anxiety research illustrates how estimates of additive variance components due to general trait, specific trait, occasion, state residual, method, and measurement error can be obtained using confirmatory factor analysis. Advantages and limitations of these models are discussed.     

Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person

Research has shown that preschoolers prefer to learn from individuals who are a reliable source of information. The current study examined whether the past reliability of a person's emotional signals influences infants’ willingness to imitate that person. An emotional referencing task was first administered to infants in order to demonstrate the experimenter's credibility or lack thereof. Next, infants in both conditions watched as the same experimenter turned on a touch light using her forehead. Infants were then given the opportunity to reproduce this novel action. As expected, infants in the unreliable condition developed the expectation that the person's emotional cues were misleading. Thus, these infants were subsequently more likely to use their hands than their foreheads when attempting to turn on the light. In contrast, infants in the reliable group were more likely to imitate the experimenter's action using their foreheads. These results suggest that the reliability of the model influences infants’ imitation.     

Using person matching to predict career specialty choice

Person matching promotes career exploration and choice by linking persons to persons in occupations based on inventory profile score similarity. We examined the efficacy of the procedure for career specialty choice. Medical students (N = 196 women, 224 men) responded to the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) in their first year of training. After graduating and selecting a medical residency, members of a reference subgroup (n = 62) of the total sample were matched with members of a criterion subgroup (n = 358) based on 16PF score equivalencies determined by the D² statistic. Person matching predicted medical specialty choice 43-60% of the time. Using broader specialty group categories and adding criterion persons increased the number of specialty matches. Additional refinement and analysis should enhance the efficacy of this idiographic approach as an alternative to nomothetic P-E matching for career exploration. Future research should examine person matching in terms of consequential validity.     

Spirituality of the developing person according to Maslow

Traditionally, children have generally been considered as developmentally immature, and unable to experience spirituality. The results of more recent studies, however, show that children have an inborn spiritual nature, which seems to be a natural and integral aspect of human development and cannot be studied in isolation, ignoring the other dimensions of one's being. This article aims to (1) reflect on how spirituality evolves among children; (2) explore Maslow's view on the Developing Person's Spirituality; and (3) Critically review Maslow's theory of the Spirituality of the Developing Person.     

Empathy and transformative experience without the first person point of view (a reply to L. A. Paul)1

Abstract

In her very interesting ‘First-personal modes of presentation and the problem of empathy’ (2017, 315–336), L. A. Paul argues that the phenomenon of empathy gives us reason to care about the first person point of view: that as theorists we can only understand, and as humans only evince, empathy by appealing to that point of view. We are skeptics about the importance of the first person point of view, although not about empathy. The goal of this paper is to see if we can account for empathy without the ideology of the first person. We conclude that we can.     

Identifying between‐person and within‐person factors to enhance understanding of observed score profiles

This study aims to reparameterize ordinary factors into between‐ and within‐person factor effects and utilize an array of the within‐person factor loadings as a latent profile which encapsulates all score responses of individuals in a population. To illustrate, the Woodcock–Johnson III (WJ‐III) tests of cognitive abilities were analysed and one between‐ and two within‐person factors were identified. The scoring patterns of individuals in the WJ‐III sample were interpreted according to the within‐person factor patterns. Regression analyses were performed to examine how much the within‐person factors accounted for the person scoring patterns and criterion variables. Finally, the importance and applications of the between‐ and within‐person factors are discussed.     

Going where the action is to conceptualize the person

Contemporary psychology is highly structured in terms of conventional and traditional methodological practices, including fragmenting, objectifying, and aggregating. Such practices sometimes impede understanding and investigating the person in terms of what he/she does as an integrated active individual who develops. The goal of this paper is to outline a systems conceptualization of the person as a developing individual who acts in relation to others in cultural practices. Such action is conceptualized as emerging through multiple and interrelated individual, social, and cultural processes, as well as in terms of multiple and interrelated domains of functioning that develop. This conceptualization is applicable to a wide range of issues in psychology as a whole. Moreover, starting with an overall conceptualization of action provides ways to overcome some limitations of conventional practices, and also provides a basis for conducting systematic and integrative research on the person.     

Doing the opposite to what another person is doing

The three studies presented here aim to contribute to a better understanding of the role of the coordinate system of a person's body and of the environment in spatial organization underlying the recognition and production of gestures. The paper introduces a new approach by investigating what people consider to be opposite gestures in addition to identical gestures.     

Using HyperCard to teach person perception and attribution concepts

HyperCard stacks were used to present and illustrate concepts in person perception and attribution theory. Active participation of learners was maintained through the use of interactive tutorials and simulations requiring frequent learner input. Scanned photographs, cartoons, animations, and diagrams were used to increase learner interest. Two groups of college students were tested after interaction with either the HyperCard stacks or textual materials that presented these concepts to discover the relative effectiveness of the stacks. The HyperCard group scored significantly better on an information test after a 2-h exposure to the material. The same group expressed enthusiasm, enjoyed the study experience, and voiced a desire to have more computer-assisted learning experiences, while the other group found the interaction with textual materials boring and did not look forward to a similar experience in the future.     

Second person thought

There are modes of presentation of a person in thought corresponding to the first and third person pronouns. This paper proposes that there is also thought involving a second person mode of presentation of another, which might be expressed by an utterance involving ‘you’, but need not be expressed linguistically. It suggests that co-operative activity is the locus for such thought. First person thought is distinctive in how it supplies reasons for the subject to act. In co-operative action there is first person plural intending and judging. So there is a way of thinking of another, when openly co-operating with him or her, which plays the distinctive role of giving reason for contribution to the co-operative activity. In slogan form, ‘you’ is ‘we minus I’. The way children learn to use second and third person pronouns is naturally explained on this view. Contrasting less sophisticated kinds of co-operative activity with more sophisticated forms, and considering some issues about common knowledge and common purpose, help to fill out the proposal.     

Understanding person perception

Bruce and Young's (1986) theoretical framework was actually a synthesis of ideas contributed by several people. Some of its insights have stood the test of time - especially the importance of using converging evidence from as wide a range of methods of enquiry as possible, and an emphasis on understanding the demands that are made by particular face perception tasks. But there were also areas where Bruce and Young failed to obey their own edicts (emotion recognition), and some topics they simply omitted (gaze perception). We discuss these, and then look at how the field has been transformed by computing developments, finishing with a few thoughts about where things may go over the next few (25?) years.     

Effect of person

The role of the experimenter in the behavioral study, although recognized by Darwin, Pavlov, psychiatrists and others, has not been adequately evaluated in terms of the quantitative measures of the CR. Our study in this paper concerns especially the cardiac changes induced by “Person” in normal and pathological animals—monkey, dog, cat, opossum, guinea pig and rabbit. Owing to the greater sensitivity of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, these are more reliable and delicate measures than the usual somatic muscular ones. The Person can be used as an unconditional stimulus on the basis of which conditional reflexes are formed. Person has an especially pronounced effect on neurotic animals—shown often in a more pronounced way in the cardio-respiratory responses than in the more superficial behavioral ones. This Effect of Person may provide insights into the production of neurosis as well as some of the beneficial effects of therapy, e.g., the personal factor of the therapist. Reprinted from Conditional Reflex, Vol. 1, No. 1, January–March 1966