Madness Decolonized?: Madness as Transnational Identity in Gail Hornstein’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Agnes’s Jacket</Emphasis>

The US psychologist Gail Hornstein’s monograph, Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness (2009), is an important intervention in the identity politics of the mad movement. Hornstein offers a resignified vision of mad identity that embroiders the central trope of an “anti-colonial” struggle to reclaim the experiential world “colonized” by psychiatry. A series of literal and figurative appeals makes recourse to the inner world and (corresponding) cultural world of the mad as well as to the ethno-symbolic cultural materials of dormant nationhood. This rhetoric is augmented by a model in which the mad comprise a diaspora without an origin, coalescing into a single transnational community. The mad are also depicted as persons displaced from their metaphorical homeland, the “inner” world “colonized” by the psychiatric regime. There are a number of difficulties with Hornstein’s rhetoric, however. Her “ethnicity-and-rights” response to the oppression of the mad is symptomatic of Western parochialism, while her proposed transmutation of putative psychopathology from limit upon identity to parameter of successful identity is open to contestation. Moreover, unless one accepts Hornstein’s porous vision of mad identity, her self-ascribed insider status in relation to the mad community may present a problematic “re-colonization” of mad experience.     

Identity Theories of Truth and the Tractatus

The paper is concerned with the idea that the world is the totality of facts, not of things – with what is involved in thinking of the world in that way, and why one might do so. It approaches this issue through a comparison between Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the identity theory of truth proposed by Hornsby and McDowell. The paper's positive conclusion is that there is a genuine affinity between these two. A negative contention is that the modern identity theory is vulnerable to a complaint of idealism that the Tractatus can deflect.     

Brief report: Relativism and identity crisis in young adulthood

This study investigated the relationship between epistemological world views and identity formation. Forty college students, aged 17 to 23 years, were presented with a paradigm belief scale (Social Paradigm Belief Inventory; SPBI), an identity status questionnaire, and an indepth interview about a conflict they had recently experienced. It was hypothesized that a relativistic world view would be related to a moratorium identity status because relativistic thought processes involve a questioning of the objectivity of knowledge and authority structures and hence an awareness of the variety of alternative and potentially conflicting roles and choices. Results indicated that relativism was the most common world view used when responding to questions about a personal conflict and that relativistic scores on the SPBI were predictive of the moratorium status. Relativistic scores on the SPBI were also negatively related to identity achievement, as were mechanistic scores. Females experienced moratorium to a greater extent than males but were not more relativistic. Results are discussed in terms of linkages among cognitive development, psychosocial development, gender, and the type of measures used to assess world view status.     

Perceived Benefits and Challenges of a Multiethnic-Racial Identity: Insight From Adults With Mixed Heritage

The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the lived experiences of multiethnic-racial individuals (i.e., individuals with parents from different ethnic-racial groups). In-depth interviews were conducted with 29 adults from the United States with mixed ethnic-racial backgrounds ranging in age from 18 to 52 (female n = 20, male n = 9). We identified a number of themes related to perceived benefits (e.g., pluralistic world views, stronger sense of self) and challenges (e.g., identity tensions, communal concerns) of having a mixed heritage. Findings are discussed in terms of four considerations for ethnic-racial identity of individuals with mixed ethnic-racial backgrounds: emphasizing constellations of experiences, life-span and developmental considerations of identity, (mixed) ethnic-racial identity as constituted in interactions, and the potential promise of pluralistic world views.     

On the structural similarities between worlds and times

In the debate about the nature and identity of possible worlds, philosophers have neglected the parallel questions about the nature and identity of moments of time. These are not questions about the structure of time in general, but rather about the internal structure of each individual time. Times and worlds share the following structural similarities: both are maximal with respect to propositions (at every world and time, either p or ～p is true, for every p); both are consistent; both are closed (every modal consequence of a proposition true at a world is also true at that world, and every tense-theoretic consequence of a proposition true at a time is also true at that time); just as there is a unique actual world, there is a unique present moment; and just as a proposition is necessarily true iff true at all worlds, a proposition is eternally true iff true at all times. In this paper, I show that a simple extension of my theory of worlds yields a theory of times in which the above structural similarities between the two are consequences.     

Vagueness as a Modality

I present a modal conception of vagueness and vague objects, according to which a vague object is a transworld object which coincides with one precise object in one world and with another precise object in another world. Such worlds are called precisifications; they are modal, worldly counterparts of the precisifications postulated in supervaluationism. I criticize Evans' argument against vague objects, admitting the validity of the argument, but rejecting its basic assumption that if there are vague objects, certain identity statements must be indefinite in truth value. I distinguish identity from coincidence, and claim that if there are vague objects, some statements of coincidence will be indefinite in truth-value, not statements of identity. To establish this point, I compare vagueness with temporal modality.     

真之同一论与单称命题

麦道的哲学试图抹去心灵与世界之间的本体论间隙。为了实现这一哲学计划,麦道需要接受某种真之同一论。本文认为,麦道所需要的是真之坚实同一论,并且承诺关于罗素式单称命题。本文首先论证真之同一论论题,然后更进一步,在麦道的哲学计划下辩护真之坚实同一论,认为真命题与世界中的事实同一。本文并非要给出一个对同一论或坚实同一论的完整理论,而是试图在麦道的哲学计划下给出一个对坚实同一论的辩护,认为坚实同一论是可行的。     

La dynamique du système capacitaire Identité, action et projet

This study aims at illustrating the interest of a methodology of exploration of identity dynamics, the IMIS(Zavalloni & Louis-Guerin, 1984), for the elaboration of the professional project. Psychosocial identity is a system of representations of oneself and the world animated by the paradox of being identical and distinct at the same time. This system justifies ways of thought and action, that are retrieved in identity strategies. Action is presented as a medium-term project, endowed with a function of regulation of identity and capability representations that it conveys and validates(Costalat-Founeau, 2008). The project therefore leans upon the cognitive substrate of experience. Action doesn’t follow the project, both are interwoven in a common perspective defined by intentional objectives(Young & Valach, 2006).     

Monkey business: Children’s use of character identity to infer shared properties

Children’s toys provide a rich arena for investigating conceptual flexibility, because they often can be understood as possessing an individual identity at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, many dolls (e.g., Winnie-the-Pooh) and action figures (e.g., Batman) can be construed either as characters from a fictional world or as physical objects in the real world. In two experiments, 72 4- and 5-year-olds took part in a property extension task, the results of which provide evidence of an understanding that (1) two representations of a character share certain properties in virtue of their shared character identity, and this sharing does not stem simply from having the same name, and (2) one representation of a character is more likely to share properties with another representation of the character if the properties were acquired by the character than if they were acquired by the representation. Children’s understanding of a representational object’s abstract character identity thus enabled them to transcend using its unique spatio-temporal history as a sole basis for inferring its idiosyncratic properties.     

The flip side of the other‐race coin: They all look different to me

Poorer recognition of other‐race faces than own‐races faces has been attributed to a problem of discrimination (i.e., telling faces apart). The conclusion that ‘they all look the same to me' is based on studies measuring the perception/memory of highly controlled stimuli, typically involving only one or two images of each identity. We hypothesized that such studies underestimate the challenge involved in recognizing other‐race faces because in the real world, an individual's appearance varies in a number of ways (e.g., lighting, expression, hairstyle), reducing the utility of relying on pictorial cues to identity. In two experiments, Caucasian and East Asian participants completed a perceptual sorting task in which they were asked to sort 40 photographs of two unfamiliar identities into piles such that each pile contained all photographs of a single identity. Participants perceived more identities when sorting other‐race faces than own‐race faces, both when sorting celebrity (Experiment 1) and non‐celebrity (Experiment 2) faces, suggesting that in the real world, ‘they all look different to me'. We discuss these results in the light of models in which each identity is represented as a region in a multidimensional face space; we argue that this region is smaller for other‐race than own‐race faces.     

Symbols of Diaspora Jewish identity: An international survey and multi-dimensional analysis

Symbols are important in representing religious and ethnic identity, particularly in the postmodern age. Using a case study of Jewish adolescents, this article explores the use of symbols in expressing identity. A structural typology of symbols is developed, based on responses to a list of 20 symbols of Jewish identity by over 40,000 Jewish youth from around the world, who were surveyed during educational tours to Israel. The multi-dimensional smallest space analysis (SSA) technique is used to develop the typology by graphically representing the correlations between the symbols. Symbols representing the struggle of the weak against the strong are at the core of the typology. This core is surrounded by sets of symbols related to religion, family, Israel, the Holocaust, justice, and contribution to world culture. A parallel centre–periphery structure indicates that people are more central symbols than places or objects. Sub-populations of self-defined “religious” and “non-religious” Jewish youth are compared in relation to this typology of symbols by introducing them into the SSA as “external variables”. Applications of the typology of symbols to other ethnic and religious groups are explored.     

Why Leibniz thinks Descartes was wrong and the Scholastics were right

The bundle theory is a theory about the internal constitution of individuals. It asserts that individuals are entirely composed of universals. Typically, bundle theorists augment their theory with a constitutional approach to individuation entailing the thesis ‘identity of constituents is a sufficient ground for numerical identity’ (CIT). But then the bundle theory runs afoul of Black’s duplication case—a world containing two indiscernible spheres. Here I propose and defend a new version of the bundle theory that denies ‘CIT’, and which instead conjoins it with a structural diversity thesis, according to which being separated by distance is a sufficient ground for numerical diversity. This version accommodates Black’s world as well as the three-spheres world—a world containing three indiscernible spheres, arranged as the vertices of an equilateral triangle. In this paper, I also criticize Rodriguez-Pereyra’s alternative attempt to defend the bundle theory against Black’s case and the case of the three-spheres world.     

心理虐待与忽视对志愿投入的影响:链式中介效应分析

本研究根据道德认同模型与亲社会行为理论,以808名大学生志愿者为被试,通过问卷调查探索心理虐待与忽视对志愿投入的影响机制。结果发现:心理虐待与忽视对志愿投入的影响主要由公正世界信念与道德认同的中介作用来实现。本研究揭示了心理虐待与忽视与志愿投入的关系及内在机制,丰富了公正世界信念和道德认同的相关研究。     

始成年期自我同一性发展特点及影响因素

Erikson将自我同一性看作是终生发展的过程并把18~25岁作为发展的关键时期, Arnett根据后现代社会的现实环境将这一阶段命名为“始成年期”。始成年期自我同一性对情感、工作、世界观等自我同一性发展领域的关注度相对青少年期更广泛与深入, 发展任务的繁杂使始成年期自我同一性的发展更具波动性, 并随着个体逐渐成熟而更多处于同一性的高级状态。后现代社会属性是始成年期自我同一性问题的根本, 原生家庭持续影响始成年期自我同一性的发展, 同时学校与工作单位这样的社会机构构成近端环境直接作用于始成年期自我同一性, 自主性在始成年期个体与其家庭及所处社会机构的交互作用中对自我同一性起到关键性调节作用。     

From Four‐ to Five‐Dimensionalism

Philosophers have long noticed the similarity of identity over time and identity across worlds. Despite this similarity, analogous views on these matters are not always taken equally seriously. Four‐dimensionalism is one of the most well‐known accounts of identity over time. There is a clear modal analogue of four‐dimensionalism, on which objects are modally extended and their trans‐world identity is a matter of having distinct modal parts located in different possible worlds. Yet this view, which we might call ‘five‐dimensionalism,’ is rarely discussed or defended, in comparison to its temporal counterpart. I argue that five‐dimensionalism is at least as plausible as four‐dimensionalism and deserves serious consideration as an account of trans‐world identity. The strategy is to show that arguments typically used in defence of four‐dimensionalism can be adapted to defend five‐dimensionalism as well. A powerful consideration in favour of four‐dimensionalism is the fact that it provides an elegant and unified solution to a variety of puzzles concerning material coincidence. I show that such puzzles come in equally troubling modal varieties and that five‐dimensionalism provides an equally unified and elegant solution to them. 1     

Is symmetry identity?

Wigner found unreasonable the "effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences". But if the mathematics we use to describe nature is simply a carefully coded expression of our experience then its effectiveness is quite reasonable. Its effectiveness is built into its design. We consider group theory, the logic of symmetry. We examine the premise that symmetry is identity; that group theory encodes our experience of identification. To decide whether group theory describes the world in such an elemental way we catalogue the detailed correspondence between elements of the physical world and elements of the formalism. Providing an unequivocal match between concept and mathematical statement completes the case. It makes effectiveness appear reasonable. The case that symmetry is identity is a strong one but it is not complete. The further validation required suggests that unexpected entities might be describable by the irreducible representations of group theory.     

A model of global citizenship: Antecedents and outcomes

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, exposure to global cultures affords individuals opportunities to develop global identities. In two studies, we examine the antecedents and outcomes of identifying with a superordinate identity—global citizen. Global citizenship is defined as awareness, caring, and embracing cultural diversity while promoting social justice and sustainability, coupled with a sense of responsibility to act. Prior theory and research suggest that being aware of one's connection with others in the world (global awareness) and embedded in settings that value global citizenship (normative environment) lead to greater identification with global citizens. Furthermore, theory and research suggest that when global citizen identity is salient, greater identification is related to adherence to the group's content (i.e., prosocial values and behaviors). Results of the present set of studies showed that global awareness (knowledge and interconnectedness with others) and one's normative environment (friends and family support global citizenship) predicted identification with global citizens, and global citizenship predicted prosocial values of intergroup empathy, valuing diversity, social justice, environmental sustainability, intergroup helping, and a felt responsibility to act for the betterment of the world. The relationship between antecedents (normative environment and global awareness) and outcomes (prosocial values) was mediated by identification with global citizens. We discuss the relationship between the present results and other research findings in psychology, the implications of global citizenship for other academic domains, and future avenues of research. Global citizenship highlights the unique effect of taking a global perspective on a multitude of topics relevant to the psychology of everyday actions, environments, and identity.