Jungian Psychology, the Body, and the Future

Impressive reaffirmation of Jung's archetypal hypothesis has come from developments in behavioural biology (Tinbergen 1951; Cosmides 1985), psycholinguistics (Chomsky 1965), structural anthropology (Lévi-Strauss 1967), developmental psychology (Bowlby 1969), dream research (Jouvet 1975). neuroscience (MacLean 1976), sociobiology (Wilson 1978), and evolutionary psychiatry (Gardner 1988; Gilbert 1989). A close correspondence exists between Jungian theories of dreaming in human beings and modern biological theories of dreaming in animals. A paradigm shift is under way in the direction of a growing cross-disciplinary awareness that all human sciences are about archetypal manifestations and that these apply as much to the body as to the mind. Jungian psychology must keep abreast of these developments if it is not to be sidelined and superseded by less humane therapeutic philosophies.     

PATRIOTISM AND POLITICAL OBLIGATION

Arguments aimed at undermining certain accounts of the grounds of political obligations—no matter how successful they may be—fall far short of demonstrating that there are no such obligations. Doubts about the efficacy of these arguments in this latter regard seem even more justified when it is recognized that parallel lines of reasoning can be developed in the area of filial obligations (and probably obligations of friendship and others as well), which arguments provide rather less than conclusive reasons for denying that there are filial obligations (obligations of friendship, and so forth). Furthermore, we have good reason to believe that there are political obligations if patriotism is a virtue, and also that patriotism is indeed a virtue. We therefore have a basis on which to affirm the existence of political obligations—a basis whose soundness is independent of the acceptability of particular accounts of the grounds of political obligation. Hence, even if standard accounts of the grounds of political obligations are problematic in certain respects, we should not regard this consideration as capable by itself of establishing that there are no such obligations.     

A COMMENTARY ON POPULAR ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

This essay examines certain popular assumptions made about political discourse. Five common criticisms of political talk are examined: (1) politicians too frequently emphasize their images at the expense of issues; (2) politicians' personal inadequacies render their remarks corrupt or incompetent; (3) all political talk is a chimera, totally incapable of ameliorating human conditions: (4) political leaders use verbal masks to hide the deceptions they foist upon their constituencies: and (5) because public dialogue rarely fosters true understanding, it cannot bring about rapprochement. While there is some truth in each of these criticisms, each makes too bold a denunciation of political discourse. The author advocates another perspective—reificationism—and suggests why it has both practical and theoretical advantages over its rivals.     

EQUAL POLITICAL LIBERTIES

Formal guarantees of political equality are compatible with inequalities in the value of political liberties, as individuals may convert their socioeconomic advantages into political advantages. Perhaps the predominant strategy for limiting substantive political inequalities recommends limiting inequalities in the means of acquiring political power for private gain – most notably, economic means. I express a worry that measures instituted to restrict economic inequalities may do more to frustrate the cause of political equality than to further it. I argue that attempts to decrease individuals' means to capture political power will systematically increase their motives to capture political power.     

Selective attention,diffused attention,and the development of categorization

How do people learn categories and what changes with development? The current study attempts to address these questions by focusing on the role of attention in the development of categorization. In Experiment 1, participants (adults, 7-year-olds, and 4-year-olds) were trained with novel categories consisting of deterministic and probabilistic features, and their categorization and memory for features were tested. In Experiment 2, participants’ attention was directed to the deterministic feature, and in Experiment 3 it was directed to the probabilistic features. Attentional cueing affected categorization and memory in adults and 7-year-olds: these participants relied on the cued features in their categorization and exhibited better memory of cued than of non-cued features. In contrast, in 4-year-olds attentional cueing affected only categorization, but not memory: these participants exhibited equally good memory for both cued and non-cued features. Furthermore, across the experiments, 4-year-olds remembered non-cued features better than adults. These results coupled with computational simulations provide novel evidence (1) pointing to differences in category representation and mechanisms of categorization across development, (2) elucidating the role of attention in the development of categorization, and (3) suggesting an important distinction between representation and decision factors in categorization early in development. These issues are discussed with respect to theories of categorization and its development.     

A Comparison of the Legitimacy of Power Between Confucianist and Legalist Philosophies

The concept of legitimacy is at the heart of the theory of power. It is essential to understand how a political power is built and how obedience is obtained among the population. We examine here the legitimacy of power for two of the most important political philosophies of classical China: Confucianism and Legalism. We show how a specific group of the population, the scholar-officials, play a specialised role in the two systems, acting as a legitimisation group. We further compare rites and laws as a way to obtain social order, and morality vs punishments as a way to obtain obedience. We conclude that the Confucianist system is less fragile than the Legalist, but also more oppressive, since it allows fewer personal choices to individuals.     

Dissociations between categorization and similarity judgments as a result of learning feature distributions

A dissociation between categorization and similarity was found by Rips (1989). In one experiment, Rips found that a stimulus halfway between a pizza and a quarter was categorized as a pizza but was rated as more similar to a quarter. Smith and Sloman (1994) discussed these results in terms of the role of necessary and characteristic features. In two experiments, participants had to learn to categorize novel artificial shapes composed of a nonsalient necessary feature combined with a salient characteristic feature. Participants categorized stimuli on the basis of a necessary feature, whereas their similarity judgments relied on characteristic features. The role of deep (essential) features in dissociations is considered. Results are discussed in terms of the differences between requirements of categorization and similarity judgments.     

POLITICAL LIBERALISM WITHOUT SCEPTICISM

Political liberalism famously requires that fundamental political matters should not be decided by reference to any controversial moral, religious or philosophical doctrines over which reasonable people disagree. This means we, as citizens, must abstain from relying on what we believe to be the whole truth when debating or voting on fundamental political matters. Many critics of political liberalism contend that this requirement to abstain from relying on our views about the good life commits political liberalism to a kind of scepticism: we should abstain from relying on our views about the good life because we should be uncertain about the truth of those views. But this kind of scepticism is itself a controversial epistemic position which many reasonable people reject, thus apparently making political liberalism internally incoherent. This is the sceptical critique of political liberalism. This paper shows the sceptical critique to be false. The paper argues that the epistemic restraint required of citizens in political liberalism does not assume or imply any version of scepticism about our ability to know the good life. Liberal neutrality is motivated not by scepticism about our own views, but rather by a desire to justify fundamental political principles to others. ¹ 1 I would like to thank Rebecca Stone, Steve De Wijze, and an anonymous referee for many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The paper was completed while I was a visiting Faculty Fellow at The Murphy Institute's Center for Ethics & Public Affairs at Tulane University, and I gratefully acknowledge the Murphy Institute's support, as well as the generous support of Washington & Lee University, which housed the Center after hurricane Katrina.
     

Reactions to Social Categorization: Evaluating One Argument Against Affirmative Action1

One argument made against affirmative action is that it is undesirable or inappropriate to treat people on the basis of their group membership. The present study attempts to evaluate college students' opinions about this type of social categorization. Two variables were manipulated: type of social group (i.e., one based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or college major), and the purpose of the categorization (to identify, to form a social group, to form a political group, or for affirmative action purposes). Results indicated that students were, in general, opposed to such social categorizations. The presence of interaction effects, however, suggests that opposition to affirmative action is not uniform across different target groups and is not based solely on objections to social categorization. Implications are discussed.     

Why Barack Obama is black: a cognitive account of hypodescent

We propose that hypodescent-the assignment of mixed-race individuals to a minority group-is an emergent feature of basic cognitive processes of learning and categorization. According to attention theory, minority groups are learned by attending to the features that distinguish them from previously learned majority groups. Selective attention creates a strong association between minority groups and their distinctive features, producing a tendency to see individuals who possess a mixture of majority- and minority-group traits as minority-group members. Two experiments on face categorization, using both naturally occurring and manipulated minority groups, support this view, suggesting that hypodescent need not be the product of racist or political motivations, but can be sufficiently explained by an individual's learning history.     

Influence of familiar features on diagnosis: instantiated features in an applied setting

Medical diagnosis can be viewed as a categorization task. There are two mechanisms whereby humans make categorical judgments: "analytical reasoning," based on explicit consideration of features and "nonanalytical reasoning," an unconscious holistic process of matching against prior exemplars. However, there is evidence that prior experience can also operate at the level of individual "instantiated" features (Brooks & Hannah, 2006). The present studies examined instantiated features in medical diagnosis. Four "pseudopsychiatric" conditions, each described by four characteristic features, were taught to undergraduate psychology students. They practiced on additional cases, then were tested on new cases with features from two conditions. In Experiment 1, diagnoses associated with familiar features presented one or three times during practice were assigned a higher probability than those with novel features. Experiment 2 showed that the impact of feature frequency was dependent on its consistency with the case diagnosis. Experiment 3 showed that the effect of feature familiarity was not confined to cases with two equiprobable diagnoses. Experiment 4 showed that the effect remained after a 24 hour delay. These four studies demonstrated that features seen in practice have a greater influence on diagnosis than novel synonyms. In fact, seeing a feature once within the appropriate context (a patient case in which it is a member of the primary diagnosis) was sufficient to form a diagnostic association equivalent to instantiations seen four times in a different context. The results of these studies have implications for theories of categorization and for teaching clinical reasoning.     

THE STRUCTURE OF JUSTIFICATION IN POLITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Abstract: In this article the author develops the view, held by some, that political constructivism is best interpreted as a pragmatic enterprise aiming to solve political problems. He argues that this interpretation's structure of justification is best conceived in terms of two separate investigations—one develops a normative solution to a particular political problem by working up into a coherent whole certain moral conceptions of persons and society; and the other is an empirically based analysis of the political problem. The author argues that the empirically based analysis can generate criteria for assessing whether the normative theory successfully works out a solution, thereby developing a functionalist structure of justification. He further argues that this interpretation overcomes a longstanding criticism of constructivism, namely, that the use of substantive moral concepts in the hypothetical choice procedure biases the defense of principles in a particular direction and therefore begs important philosophical questions.     

Measures of similarity in models of categorization

This paper concerns the use of similarities based on geometric distance in models of categorization. Two problematic implications of such similarities are outlined. First, in a comparison between two stimuli, geometric distance implies that matching features are not taken into account. Second, missing features are assumed not to exist. Only nonmatching features enter into calculations of similarity. A new model is constructed that is based on the ALCOVE model (Kruschke, 1992), but it uses a feature-matching similarity measure (see, e.g., Tversky, 1977) rather than a geometric one. It is an on-line model in the sense that both dimensions and exemplars are constructed during the categorization process. The model accounts better than ALCOVE does for data with missing features (Experiments 1 and 2) and at least as well as ALCOVE for a data set without missing features (Nosofsky, Kruschke, & McKinley, 1992). This suggests that, at least for some stimulus materials, similarity in categorization is more akin to a feature-matching procedure than to geometric distance calculation.     

Object recognition and segmentation by a fragment-based hierarchy

How do we learn to recognize visual categories, such as dogs and cats? Somehow, the brain uses limited variable examples to extract the essential characteristics of new visual categories. Here, I describe an approach to category learning and recognition that is based on recent computational advances. In this approach, objects are represented by a hierarchy of fragments that are extracted during learning from observed examples. The fragments are class-specific features and are selected to deliver a high amount of information for categorization. The same fragments hierarchy is then used for general categorization, individual object recognition and object-parts identification. Recognition is also combined with object segmentation, using stored fragments, to provide a top-down process that delineates object boundaries in complex cluttered scenes. The approach is computationally effective and provides a possible framework for categorization, recognition and segmentation in human vision.     

ESCHATOLOGY IN THE POLITICAL THEORY OF MICHAEL WALZER

This essay examines the relevance of eschatological themes to the political theory of Michael Walzer. A distinctive eschatological hope is identified, which functions as a guide to thought throughout Walzer's writings, even though he seldom expresses it (and sometimes denies it). This analysis of Walzer's work demonstrates that eschatology is relevant to the contemporary discussion of justice, and conversely, that contemporary political theory can be a guide for the construction and evaluation of theological doctrines of eschatology. Any eschatology that enters into political debate in a modern, pluralistic society like the United States, however, must have at least one important characteristic: it must be informed by a profound sense of limitation.     

RAWLS AND THE STATUS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

Abstract:  In his late work, Rawls makes strong claims about the status of political liberty. These claims, if accepted, would have significant implications for the content of "justice as fairness." I discuss the nature of these claims, clarifying Rawls's fair value guarantee of the political liberties and critically discussing the arguments that he and others have given for assigning special importance to the political liberties. I conclude that justice as fairness, properly understood, is not a deeply democratic conception of justice.     

Inhibition and cognitive development: object,number, categorization,and reasoning

In the early 1990s, the concept of inhibition sparked a new surge of interest in cognitive psychology, both in North America and in Europe. In the framework of that research trend, it is proposed here that cognitive development cannot be reduced to the coordination–activation of structural units (as in Jean Piaget's structuralist theory and in the neo-structuralist models), but that development also often involves inhibiting a competing structure or scheme. This approach, which views the processes of selection–inhibition as age- and domain-specific, is illustrated by four experimental examples (from infancy to adulthood): object construction, number, categorization, and reasoning.     

Errors, efficiency, and the interplay between attention and category learning

Learning to identify objects as members of categories is an essential cognitive skill and learning to deploy attention effectively is a core component of that process. The present study investigated an assumption imbedded in formal models of categorization: error is necessary for attentional learning. Eye-trackers were used to record participants’ allocation of attention to task relevant and irrelevant features while learning a complex categorization task. It was found that participants optimized their fixation patterns in the absence of both performance errors and corrective external feedback. Optimization began immediately after each category was mastered and continued for many trials. These results demonstrate that error is neither necessary nor sufficient for all forms of attentional learning.     

The development of features in object concepts

According to one productive and influential approach to cognition, categorization, object recognition, and higher level cognitive processes operate on a set of fixed features, which are the output of lower level perceptual processes. In many situations, however, it is the higher level cognitive process being executed that influences the lower level features that are created. Rather than viewing the repertoire of features as being fixed by low-level processes, we present a theory in which people create features to subserve the representation and categorization of objects. Two types of category learning should be distinguished. Fixed space category learning occurs when new categorizations are representable with the available feature set. Flexible space category learning occurs when new categorizations cannot be represented with the features available. Whether fixed or flexible, learning depends on the featural contrasts and similarities between the new category to be represented and the individuals existing concepts. Fixed feature approaches face one of two problems with tasks that call for new features: If the fixed features are fairly high level and directly useful for categorization, then they will not be flexible enough to represent all objects that might be relevant for a new task. If the fixed features are small, subsymbolic fragments (such as pixels), then regularities at the level of the functional features required to accomplish categorizations will not be captured by these primitives. We present evidence of flexible perceptual changes arising from category learning and theoretical arguments for the importance of this flexibility. We describe conditions that promote feature creation and argue against interpreting them in terms of fixed features. Finally, we discuss the implications of functional features for object categorization, conceptual development, chunking, constructive induction, and formal models of dimensionality reduction.