Socialist religion and the emergence of occultism: a genealogical approach to socialism and secularization in 19th-century France

It is often assumed that the history of 19th-century France was determined by a struggle between anti-religious progressive reformers and Catholic reactionaries, culminating in laïcité. In this process, the role of socialism as a secular force is usually taken for granted. This article will argue that a more complex approach to socialism can contribute to a better understanding of secularization and the emergence of “modern” forms of religion. Firstly, it will be discussed that pre-1848 social reformers were highly religious, despite their depiction in historical narratives influenced by Marxism. Secondly, it will be shown that socialist ideas continued, after 1848, in new religious movements. This will be demonstrated on the basis of the intellectual development of the socialist Alphonse-Louis Constant who, under his pen-name Eliphas Lévi, is regarded as the founder of occultism. An analysis of his writings will help to illuminate the ambiguous relationship between socialism and secularization.     

Dominant Cultural Narratives,Racism, and Resistance in the Workplace: A Study of the Experiences of Young Black Canadians

Although many studies have examined lived experiences of racism and resistance in various contexts, relatively little research has examined such experiences among Black youth within the workplace—particularly in the Canadian context. In this study I use qualitative analyses of narrative interviews with 24 Black Canadian youth and young adults (aged 16–35) to examine the impact of dominant cultural narratives on lived experiences of workplace racism and resistance. Findings are presented using theatrical games as a central conceptual metaphor, suggesting that: (a) dominant cultural narratives have a major impact on relational dynamics of oppression in the workplace; (b) identity performance is a critical strategy for negotiating dominant cultural narratives in the workplace; and (c) panopticism (the internalized gaze) is a significant aspect of internalized oppression. Implications for future research and action are discussed.     

An Elicited‐Production Study of Inflectional Verb Morphology in Child Finnish

Many generativist accounts (e.g., Wexler, 1998) argue for very early knowledge of inflection on the basis of very low rates of person/number marking errors in young children's speech. However, studies of Spanish (Aguado‐Orea & Pine, 2015) and Brazilian Portuguese (Rubino & Pine, 1998) have revealed that these low overall error rates actually hide important differences across the verb paradigm. The present study investigated children's production of person/number marked verbs by eliciting present tense verb forms from 82 native Finnish‐speaking children aged 2;2–4;8 years. Four main findings were observed: (a) Rates of person/number marking errors were higher in low‐frequency person/number contexts, even excluding children who showed no evidence of having learned the relevant morpheme, (b) most errors involved the use of higher frequency forms in lower frequency person/number contexts, (c) error rates were predicted not only by the frequency of person/number contexts (e.g., 3sg > 2pl) but also by the frequency of individual “ready‐inflected” lexical target forms, and (d) for low‐frequency verbs, lower error rates were observed for verbs with high phonological neighborhood density. It is concluded that any successful account of the development of verb inflection will need to incorporate both (a) rote‐storage and retrieval of individual inflected forms and (b) phonological analogy across them.     

SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE: “AMALGAM” NARRATIVES OF POLISH NATURAL SCIENTISTS

This article deals with phenomena occurring at the interface of the existential, the religious, and scientific inquiry. On the basis of in‐depth interviews with Polish physicists and biologists, I examine the role that science and religion play in their narrative of the meaning of the Universe and human life. I show that the narratives about meaning have a system‐related (“amalgam") character that is associated with responses to adjacent metaphysical questions, including those based on scientific knowledge. I reconstruct the typical amalgam questions of Polish scientists and come to a conclusion about the stability of religious and nonreligious amalgams in this group. Critically referring to the thesis concerning the secularizing impact of science, I conclude that science by itself does not have a destructive effect on Polish scientists’ confidence that life and the Universe are meaningful, but is rather an exacerbating factor of the existing worldview system.     

Most evidence for the compensation account of cognitive training is unreliable

Cognitive training and brain stimulation studies have suggested that human cognition, primarily working memory and attention control processes, can be enhanced. Some authors claim that gains (i.e., post-test minus pretest scores) from such interventions are unevenly distributed among people. The magnification account (expressed by the evangelical “who has will more be given”) predicts that the largest gains will be shown by the most cognitively efficient people, who will also be most effective in exploiting interventions. In contrast, the compensation account (“who has will less be given”) predicts that such people already perform at ceiling, so interventions will yield the largest gains in the least cognitively efficient people. Evidence for this latter account comes from reported negative correlations between the pretest and the training/stimulation gain. In this paper, with the use of mathematical derivations and simulation methods, we show that such correlations are pure statistical artifacts caused by the widely known methodological error called “regression to the mean”. Unfortunately, more advanced methods, such as alternative measures, linear models, and control groups do not guarantee correct assessment of the compensation effect either. The only correct method is to use direct modeling of correlations between latent true measures and gain. As to date no training/stimulation study has correctly used this method to provide evidence in favor of the compensation account, we must conclude that most (if not all) of the evidence should be considered inconclusive.     

An Abductive Question-Answer System for the Minimal Logic of Formal Inconsistency $$\mathsf {mbC}$$ mbC

Studia Logica - The aim in this paper is to define an Abductive Question-Answer System for the minimal logic of formal inconsistency $$\mathsf {mbC}$$ . As a proof-theoretical basis we employ the...     

From Body to Language: Gestural and Pantomimic Scenarios of Language Origin in the Enlightenment

Topoi - Gestural and pantomimic accounts of language origins propose that language did not develop directly from ape vocalisations, but rather that its emergence was preceded by an intervening...