Bases for Object Individuation in Infancy: Evidence From Manual Search

Two studies exploited a new manual search methodology to assess the bases on which 10- to 12-month-olds individuate objects. Infants saw 1 or 2 objects placed inside an opaque box, into which they could reach. Across conditions, the information specifying 2 objects differed. The dependent measures reflected persistence of reaching into a box that was empty regardless of whether an object should have remained. Success consists of little reaching after all objects are removed and persistent reaching for an object not yet retrieved. Given spatiotemporal information for 2 objects, both age groups succeeded. Given only property or kind information, only 12-month-olds succeeded. Despite disparate information-processing demands, this pattern converges with looking time data (Xu & Carey, 1996; Xu, Carey, & Welch, 1999), suggesting a developmental change orthogonal to that of executive function. This change may reflect the emergence of kind representations.     

A Psychology of Religious Plurality: From Intra-Religious Dialogue to Intra-Psychic Reality

Panikkar’s (The intra-religious dialogue, 1978) classic, re-issued by Paulist Press in 1999, grapples with the theological challenges in the disciplines of comparative theology and the theology of religions through what he terms, “intra-religious dialogue.” In this psychology of religious plurality, I use works from a variety of disciplines to highlight the achievements of Panikkar’s intra-religious dialogue, as well as to critique his work in the hope of finding categories of understanding that can be profitably used to face the inter-personal crises of the contemporary world, namely religious terrorism.     

从法国马克思主义看基督宗教的价值——试论伽罗蒂的《从诅咒到对话:一个马克思主义者向大公会议说话》

马克思主义与基督宗教之间的对话已经有了很长的历史.在欧洲上个世纪60年代发生了共产党与天主教会的官方对话,两方派谴他们自己的最高知识分子来进行对话.通过伽罗蒂<从诅咒到对话:一个马克思主义者向大公会议说话>(1965年),本文介绍这种对话的历史思想背景,并分析这个对话在理论上所面对的困难.虽然对话在时间上比较短,不过,它有了长远的影响,在理论上有很高的价值.     

Propositions: Individuation and Invirtuation

The pressure to individuate propositions more finely than intensionally—that is, hyper-intensionally—has two distinct sources. One source is the philosophy of mind: one can believe a proposition without believing an intensionally equivalent proposition. The second source is metaphysics: there are intensionally equivalent propositions, such that one proposition is true in virtue of the other but not vice versa. I focus on what our theory of propositions should look like when it's guided by metaphysical concerns about what is true in virtue of what. In this paper I articulate and defend a metaphysical theory of the individuation of propositions, according to which two propositions are identical just in case they occupy the same nodes in a network of invirtuation relations. Invirtuation is here taken to be a primitive relation of metaphysical explanation exemplified by propositions that, in conjunction with truth, defines the notion of true in virtue of. After formulating the theory, I compare it with a view that individuates propositions by cognitive equivalence, and then defend the theory from objections.     

Individuation through immigration to Israel: Psychotherapy with immigrant adolescents

This article focuses on psychotherapy with immigrant university students. It illustrates an earlier theoretical model which views immigration in adolescence in the context of the adolescents' search for autonomy and individual identity. A detailed case presentation is followed by a discussion of some of the pathological manifestations triggered by immigration as well as of some deviations from the normal process of immigration that necessitate therapeutic intervention. Finally some of the psychotherapeutic techniques employed with immigrant students are discussed. It is emphasized that in the majority of cases short term intervention is the treatment of choice, the aim of psychotherapy being to assist patients with their present life crisis and encourage them to resume autonomous coping in the real world as quickly as possible.     

Listening to Dialogue

In accordance with Progressivism, Matthew Lipman, introduced an educational model for renewal and change by means of the child. With his Philosophy for Children programme he wished to offer an alternative for the intellectualistic oriented education which silenced children. The answer to the search for freedom and change, Lipman finds in the symbioses between ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Children’. Philosophy expressed in critical thinking and communication, was the basis to emancipate the child from the oppression of the adult and to cause change. According to Lipman the main purpose of philosophy is to free every individual from determination. This plea is being elaborated by dialogue. The main issue of our paper concerns the question whether Lipman’s alternative ‘Philosophy for Children’ can fulfil the promise of change and freedom. To answer this question we will investigate thoroughly where dialogue and change in Philosophy for Children stand for. Finally we will propose another perspective of dialogue. A dialogue stressed on listening. Listening to how the world appears to us and how we appear to ourselves. Nancy Vansieleghem is working on a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education at the Department of Education at the University of Gent, Belgium. Her main area of research is philosophy of dialogue and public space.     

Individuation and paideia

This article attempts to discover an important historical precedent for the concept of individuation in the idea of paideia , which today, mistakenly, is often understood to have been simply the form of 'education' practised in ancient Greece. Paideia , however, was not limited to the instruction of youth and was based on no fixed programmes. It was conceived as continuing throughout the life of the individual, and as a development of natural, in-born potential. Paideia articulated a notion of 'inner culture', or cultura animi , which has since receded from Western civilization, with its anti-psychological emphasis on progress, specialization and extra-version, and with its notion that a civilization's 'culture' is primarily defined by its social structures and material tools. Present-day interest in the Jungian concept of individuation can thus be seen as a return of the repressed. An analysis of the Telemachy - the opening cantos of the Odyssey - in which Odysseus' son, Telemachus, accomplishes his passage to adulthood, reveals the need for the realization of natural potential to be an innate and archetypal ideal. Homeric poetry is then seen to have furnished a unified canon for the whole human being, whereas the subsequent course of European civilization, starting with the Greek Sophists and an ever more specialized notion of philosophy, is seen to have fostered a unilateral mode of maturation. It is argued that nostalgia for paideia indirectly reasserts itself through the widespread cultural interest in the idea of individuation.     

Individuation of women

The period between 30 and 40 years of age is probably the normal time developmentally for women to complete the individuation from their mothers. Because of the change of object from the primary object (mother) to the secondary object (father), as well as the lack of a narcissistic triumph over the mother comparable to that of a boy's penis, a woman's psychosexual development is more difficult and prolonged. The girl must resolve her attachment to the omnipotent mother and work through her Oedipus complex by deidealizing the father, recognizing that her anal-sadistic impulses do not castrate men, before she can completely individuate. Only then does she become an autonomous, complete woman. Passive-dependency in women is not a mature adult state, as several authors hold, but a partially resolved individuation from the mother, now transferred onto men. Becoming attached to men, idealizing them, they devalue themselves in order not to regress to the omnipotent preoedipal mother. Adulthood (30-40 years) is the time when this resolution can occur because there have been sufficient narcissistic achievements for the woman, enough distance from the actual preoedipal mother, and an opportunity to observe that their own anal-sadistic impulses toward men have not castrated or destroyed them, as well as an opportunity to see men as fallible and human. This is a reason so many woman return to school and begin careers in their 30s. This incomplete resolution is also a reason for fewer original discoveries and creative contributions by women than by men during the course of history. As society changes, this special difficulty for women to individuate may change as well, but I would predict that such change would not be as much as one might expect because of the unique psychosexual development of women.     

Individuation in Marriage

This is an outline of marriage as a relationship which may facilitate continued personal growth and individuation (Jung's concept for the process of selfhood). Seeing marriage, including their own, in this fashion guides the authors in psychotherapy of marital partners and of the relationship.     

Individuation and relationship violence

Abstract

This paper examines relationship dynamics of couples in which the man has been violent toward the woman. The thesis offered here, from a systemic perspective, is that violence in intimate couple relationships is, in part, a distance-regulating mechanism that maintains a balance between separateness and connectedness in the relationship. The individual developmental process that allows a balance to be maintained without violence or other “distance regulators” is individuation. Some of the theoretical positions taken by previous authors that clarify the connection between individuation and relationship dynamics are presented. Next, the link between lack of individuation and relationship violence is explored using the work of other scholars to support our thesis and the “voices” of women who have experienced date violence. The “voices” come from a multiple case study using qualitative methods and analyses conducted by the second author. Finally, therapeutic intervention when relationship violence is viewed from the perspective suggested here is discussed.     

Concepts and Epistemic Individuation

Christopher Peacocke has presented an original version of the perennial philosophical thesis that we can gain substantive metaphysical and epistemological insight from an analysis of our concepts. Peacocke's innovation is to look at how concepts are individuated by their possession conditions, which he believes can be specified in terms of conditions in which certain propositions containing those concepts are accepted. The ability to provide such insight is one of Peacocke's major arguments for his theory of concepts. I will critically examine this "fruitfulness" argument by looking at one philosophical problem Peacocke uses his theory to solve and treats in depth.
Peacocke (1999, 2001) defines what he calls the "Integration Challenge." The challenge is to integrate our metaphysics with our epistemology by showing that they are mutually acceptable. Peacocke's key conclusion is that the Integration Challenge can be met for "epistemically individuated concepts."A good theory of content, he believes, will close the apparent gap between an account of truth for any given subject matter and an overall account of knowledge. I shall argue that there are no epistemically individuated concepts, and shall critically analyze Peacocke's arguments for their existence. I will suggest more generally that the possession conditions of concepts and their principles of individuation shed little light on the epistemology or metaphysics of things other than concepts. My broader goal is to shed light on what concepts are by showing that they are more fundamental than the sorts of cognitive and epistemic factors a leading theory uses to define them.¹     

A Setback to the Dialogue: Response to Huston Smith

Huston Smith's book, Why Religion Matters , offers an eloquent evocation of mystical sensibility. Unfortunately, along the way, he offers a strongly negative and often inaccurate account of the scientific worldview, the claim being that the science is laying siege to the spiritual.