INTRODUCTION: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUMPTIONS IN LIGHT OF COGNITIVE DISABILITY

Abstract: This Introduction to the collection of essays surveys the philosophical literature to date with respect to five central questions: justice, care, agency, metaphilosophical issues regarding the language and representation of cognitive disability, and personhood. These themes are discussed in relation to three specific conditions: intellectual and developmental disabilities, Alzheimer's disease, and autism, though the issues raised are relevant to a broad range of cognitive disabilities. The Introduction offers a brief historical overview of the treatment cognitive disability has received from philosophers, and explains the specific challenges that cognitive disability poses to philosophy. In briefly summarizing the essays in the collection, it highlights the distinctive contributions the collection makes to ethics, political philosophy, bioethics, and the philosophy of disability. We hope that the richness of the topics explored by these essays will be a spur to further investigation.     

Aggression in Tilapia affects immunocompetent leucocytes

Social interactions are typical behavioral patterns serving to regulate life in a group. These interactions may develop into aggression, which causes stress in the defeated animal. We used Tilapia, a commercially important fish which is aggressive, to examine how this behavior affects them and whether it induces alterations in leucocytes. Compared to dominant fish, subordinate ones had elevated glucose levels and hemolytic blood sera. In addition, cells from blood and pronephros of subordinates, when compared to dominant fish, showed qualitative changes characterized by granulocytosis and lymphopenia. Furthermore, leucocytes revealed cytoplasmic and karyoplasmic vacuolation, indicating cellular disintegration. These morphological alterations were also accompanied by impaired leukocyte function and thus may increase susceptibility to diseases and neoplasia.     

Christ’s Love amid Pandemic

In 2022, the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches is to take place in Karlsruhe, Germany, at a time when nations are searching for the strength to rise out of the ashes of COVID-19. The assembly theme, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity,” reflects God’s vision for creation. The focus on Christ’s love and its inherent power to move the world to reconciliation and solidarity is necessary, as the assembly will gather amid perplexity, anxiety, and fundamental existential, structural, and societal questions. These questions are related to humanity’s place in creation: how we inhabit the earth and make sense of our own lives and the lives of other creatures and how we seek to develop collective human conscience to live justly and peacefully together in God’s world.     

The 1920 Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Proposal for a “League of Churches”

In January 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued an encyclical – “Unto all the Churches of Christ Wheresoever They Be” – which has played a key role in the history of the ecumenical movement and the engagement of the Orthodox Church in it. The document was prepared by a group of theologians of the Ecumenical Patriarchate headed by Metropolitan Germanos (Strenopoulos). At the time of its publication, it had an official English version; however, it is usually referenced according to its later revised translation, undertaken in 1959 by W. A. Visser ’t Hooft. A significant difference is that the 1920 translation did not include what has come to be seen as the central feature of the 1920 encyclical: that is, the proposal to create a “League of Churches.” The article explores whether the revision is a more accurate translation of the Greek original or rather an interpretation of the encyclical that enshrines in the text its key concept – which was, however, not contained in the original document.     

From horror to ethical responsibility: Carl Gustav Jung and Stephen King encounter the dark half within us,between us and in the world

This paper explores the experience of horror. The term is usually understood collectively to refer to experiences of terrorism, racism and other conflicts; however, the paper explores the equal horror for the individual of facing deep and painful psychic contents and traumatic experiences. The paper explores the way that both C.G. Jung, through analysis of the psyche, and the author Stephen King, through his horror novels, have accepted and explored the experience of encountering ‘the dark half’ or ‘It’ that is the other within themselves, forming images and symbols capable of linking their personal experience to that of the collective. This encounter is transformed, as far as Jung is concerned by analytical psychology and for King by fiction, through an attitude of active imagination. This led both men to developing an ethical responsibility towards the images of the unconscious, as well as the personal and collective contents of human life. The paper depicts how encountering the ‘dark half’, through Jung and King can provide a Jungian analyst with a special attitude with which to deeply explore and ethically process the experience of horror in different fields, including therapeutic practice, analytical training and in the traumatic and conflictual facing of the other, with which, today as always, the world presents us.     

Reconciliation and Mission

This article discusses the message and ministry of reconciliation with a view to both its biblical content and its contemporary missional application. Within a salvation historical framework of missio Dei, the article outlines the biblical narrative about human beings created in the image of God for personal relationships with God, self, other people, and nature; the fall in sin and the human predicament that necessitate reconciliation; the historical reconciliation provided by God through the incarnation, atoning death, and victorious resurrection of Christ (the first stage); the message of reconciliation in the mission of the church; the present reception of reconciliation through faith in that message (the second stage); and the results of reconciliation both in relation to God (“vertical reconciliation”) and among human beings in the church and in the world (“horizontal reconciliation”), with an emphasis on peace, unity, love, forgiveness, righteousness, and freedom. Christ’s victory over and subjugation of all evil spirit powers are described as “cosmic reconciliation.” Because reconciliation may be partial in this world where sin still exists and evil powers are active, the eschatological hope is for a final reconciliation where the relationships to God, to other human beings, and to a recreated world are renewed and consummated.     

Archetypes and the ‘Impoverished Genome’ argument: updates from evolutionary genetics

Throughout his career, Jung felt the psyche had ‘ancestral layers’ that contained elements of an individual’s species history, and clinical experience has shown that this idea can be an aid to psychological healing and emotional well-being. Thus, some later thinkers have attempted to link such theoretical constructs to the genome, as Jung had little knowledge of genetics in his day. But in the early 2000s, genome studies suggested that the genome might contain too little content to be capable of encoding symbolic information. This opinion gave rise to an oft-repeated ‘impoverished genome’ argument, i.e. that the genome could not provide a significant contribution to the collective unconscious, prompting theorists to propose other sources for it, or to argue that it doesn’t exist. Today, however, developments in evolutionary neurogenetics calls the impoverished genome argument into question for a number of independent reasons. These developments re-open the idea that the genome may be worth reconsidering as the biological substrate for the collective unconscious.     

Regression I. Experimental approaches to regression

The concept of regression is considered with an emphasis on the differences between the positions of Freud and Jung regarding its significance. The paper discusses the results of experimental analyses of individual experience dynamics (from gene expression changes and impulse neuronal activity in animals to prosocial behaviour in healthy humans at different ages, and humans in chronic pain) in those situations where regression occurs: stress, disease, learning, highly emotional states and alcohol intoxication. Common mechanisms of regression in all these situations are proposed. The mechanisms of regression can be described as reversible dedifferentiation, which is understood as a relative increase of the representation of low-differentiated (older) systems in the actualized experience. In all of the cases of dedifferentiation mentioned above, the complexity of the systemic organization of behaviour significantly decreases.     

Displacement as trauma and trauma as displacement in the experience of refugees

This paper investigates the relations between displacement, home, trauma and the self in the experience of refugees, which has become an issue of unexpected and far-reaching proportions in recent times. It questions to what extent and under what conditions displacement in the world may be traumatic and how trauma may be considered the effect of an inner displacement. Refugees’ lives are marked by forced migration that is related to a certain suffering due to the changes in their family, relational, social and cultural lives. The paper explores the extent to which these changes can represent a break so significant as to be traumatic. It outlines the way in which traumatic experiences can produce an inner displacement and reorganization of one’s mental life that leads to a focus on traumatic complexes. Under the most severe traumatic conditions, this can be understood as a displacement of the central axis of Self, in which the ego complex yields its position to other complexes, with a deep change in the organization and functioning of self. The experience of refugees highlights the way in which we live in a matrix of conscious and unconscious links between inner and outer worlds that need deeper and simultaneous consideration to understand their implications and mutual resonances for the psyche. Clinical cases of refugees will illustrate some aspects of these interconnections.