A note on the sociological eye and the discovery of a new Durkheim text

The text consisting of recently discovered student notes taken during Émile Durkheim's 1883–1884 lycée lectures on philosophy bears few signs of the social realist perspective with which Durkheim's later work has been identified. Though some scholars have argued that Durkheim's thought was sociological almost from the start, the lectures suggest that Durkheim's sociological eye did not develop until well after the completion of his schooling at the École Normale Supérieure in 1882. This finding is consistent with accounts of Durkheim's intellectual development that stress the importance of his exposure to German scholarship, as well as his consideration of the work of Comte and Rousseau, in the years following 1885. However, these accounts have generally failed to distinguish between the development of Durkheim's philosophy of social realism and the unfolding of the practical worldview that constituted his sociological perspective. This failure is not unique to Durkheimian scholarship, as there exists no general theory of the sociological eye on which historians of ideas can draw. This short essay makes the case that Durkheim's lycée lectures should be used to help develop such a theory. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Proof is in the Pudding: Commentary on Papers Updating Anna Freud’s Diagnostic Profile

ABSTRACT

This fine collection of articles documents efforts to bring Anna Freud’s diagnostic profile (1965) up to date by integrating more recent theory and research in attachment theory, inter-subjective theory, and theories deriving from the work of Bion on the process of “containing” (Bion, 1988). While some of the articles present the theoretical context for this integrative effort, Melandri’s (this issue) thoughtful and comprehensive clinical case shows us how an updated diagnostic profile can be put to work in the consulting room.     

Self-prioritization and perceptual matching: The effects of temporal construal

Recent research has revealed that self-referential processing enhances perceptual judgments — the so-called self-prioritization effect. The extent and origin of this effect remains unknown, however. Noting the multifaceted nature of the self, here we hypothesized that temporal influences on self-construal (i.e., past/future-self continuity) may serve as an important determinant of stimulus prioritization. Specifically, as representations of the self increase in abstraction as a function of temporal distance (i.e., distance from now), self-prioritization may only emerge when stimuli are associated with the current self. The results of three experiments supported this prediction. Self-relevance only enhanced performance in a standard perceptual-matching task when stimuli (i.e., geometric shapes) were connected with the current self; representations of the self in the future (Expts. 1 & 2) and past (Expt. 3) failed to facilitate decision making. To identify the processes underlying task performance, data were interrogated using a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) approach. Results of these analyses revealed that self-prioritization was underpinned by a stimulus bias (i.e., rate of information uptake). Collectively, these findings elucidate when and how self-relevance influences decisional processing.     

Medical disorder,harm, and damage

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis (HDA) of medical disorder is an influential hybrid of naturalist and normative theories. In order to...     

Forcing and the Universe of Sets: Must We Lose Insight?

Journal of Philosophical Logic - A central area of current philosophical debate in the foundations of mathematics concerns whether or not there is a single, maximal, universe of set theory....     

Assessing a retrieval account of the generation and perceptual-interference effects

A number of memory phenomena are modulated by experimental design, with the effect (e.g., of bizarreness, generation, or perceptual interference) occurring in recall for mixed-list, but not pure-list designs. These effects have other similarities and have been treated in common theoretical frameworks, some focusing on encoding and others on retrieval. The typical paradigm for examining design effects confounds encoding and retrieval contexts, making it difficult to compare these accounts. Using a new paradigm, McDaniel, Dornburg, and Guynn (2005) concluded that retrieval processes contribute to the bizarreness effect. We applied this paradigm to the related perceptual-interference and generation effects. Participants were presented with two pure study lists and later recalled the lists separately (inducing pure retrieval sets) or together (inducing a combined or mixed retrieval set) in a single test. In four experiments, the combined recall condition consistently failed to enhance the size of the generation or perceptual-interference effect. Two additional experiments verified that perceptual interference and generation enhanced recognition memory, as predicted by the standard encoding accounts. The results provide no support for the retrieval account of these two variables but generally are consistent with an encoding locus.     

Faces, flowers and football boots: capacity limits in distractor processing

While visual attention can be attracted by task-irrelevant stimuli, questions remain regarding how many irrelevant items can be processed simultaneously and whether capacity limits are equivalent for all types of stimuli. To explore these issues, participants were required to classify verbal stimuli that were flanked by either one or two response-matching or response-mismatching faces (Expts. 1 and 2) or objects (Expt. 2). The results revealed that when stimulus categorization was sufficient to trigger flanker interference, distractor processing was insensitive to the number of irrelevant stimuli. When, however, stimulus identification was needed to drive flanker interference, distractor processing was attenuated when two task-irrelevant items were presented. The theoretical implications of these findings are considered.     

Appropriate Spiritual Care by Physicians: A Theological Perspective

It is argued that when spiritual care by physicians is linked to the empirical research indicating the salutary effect on health of religious beliefs and practices an unintended degradation of religion is involved. It is contended that it is much more desirable to see support for the patient’s spirituality as part of holistic care. A proposal for appropriate spiritual care by physicians is offered.