Exploring the informational sources of metaperception: the case of Change Blindness Blindness

Perceivers generally show a poor ability to detect changes, a condition referred to as “Change Blindness” (CB). They are, in addition, “blind to their own blindness”. A common explanation of this “Change Blindness Blindness” (CBB) is that it derives from an inadequate, “photographical” folk-theory about perception. This explanation, however, does not account for intra-individual variations of CBB across trials. Our study aims to explore an alternative theory, according to which participants base their self-evaluations on two activity-dependent cues, namely search time and perceived success in prior trials. These cues were found to influence self-evaluation in two orthogonal ways: success-feedback influenced self-evaluation in a global, contextual way, presumably by recalibrating the norm of adequacy for the task. Search time influenced it in a local way, predicting the success of a given trial from its duration.     

A Jungian contribution to a dynamic systems understanding of disorganized attachment

This panel emerged from shared clinical concerns when working with adult patients whose presentation style was reminiscent of a disorganized (Type D) infant attachment pattern. Psychotherapeutic work with such patients poses complicated transference and countertransference dilemmas which are addressed by all four panellists via theory and clinical vignettes. In common is an interest in contemporary attachment, neuroscience and trauma theories and their relationship to analytical psychology. Intergenerational trauma seems to be a salient factor in the evolution of fragmented and fragmenting interactions that lead to failures in self-coherence and healthy interpersonal relationships. Such early relational trauma is compounded by further episodes of abuse and neglect leading to failure in a core sense of self. These clinicians share how they have integrated theory and practice in order to help dissociated and disorganized patients to transform their dark and extraordinary suffering through implicit and explicit experiences with the analyst into new, life giving patterns of relationship with self and others. The alchemy of transformation, both positive and negative, is evident in the case material presented.     

Attentional processes and meditation

Visual attentional processing was examined in adult meditators and non-meditators on behavioral measures of change blindness, concentration, perspective-shifting, selective attention, and sustained inattentional blindness. Results showed that meditators (1) noticed more changes in flickering scenes and noticed them more quickly, (2) counted more accurately in a challenging concentration task, (3) identified a greater number of alternative perspectives in multiple perspectives images, and (4) showed less interference from invalid cues in a visual selective attention task, but (5) did not differ on a measure of sustained inattentional blindness. Together, results show that regular meditation is associated with more accurate, efficient, and flexible visual attentional processing across diverse tasks that have high face validity outside of the laboratory. Furthermore, effects were assessed in a context separate from actual meditation practice, suggesting that meditators’ better visual attention is not just immediate, but extends to contexts separate from meditation practice.     

Principlism,Pragmatism, or Reconstructionist Confucianism? —Some Comments on Ni Peimin’s English Translation of the Analects

This essay provides a few critical points of view on Ni Peimin’s recent English translation of the Analects. It shows that his translations of ren into “human-heartedness” and of li into “ritual propriety” may indicate a willingness to recast these Confucian concepts in the modern ideology of western subjectivism or individualism, whereas Confucianism is not in the direction of such ideologies. Moreover, while Ni seems to offer a “no-rule” view of Confucian virtue ethics, he cannot deny the existence of moral rules and principles in the Confucian system. It is insufficient for him to emphasize the importance of Confucian “instructions” or “methods” as he does without explicating their relations to Confucian rules. Additionally, Ni’s gongfu Confucianism provides a necessary and healthy step back from the contemporary principlism that has been dominant and popular in contemporary politics, ethics, and applied ethics, but Ni goes too far in denying the importance of the moral rules and principles that are implicit or explicit in the Confucian ritual practices and upheld in Confucius’s Analects.     

Intentionalism and Change Blindness

According to reductive intentionalism, the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is constituted by the experience's intentional (or representational) content. In this article I attempt to show that a phenomenon in visual perception called change blindness poses a problem for this doctrine. Specifically, I argue that phenomenal character is not sensitive, as it should be if reductive intentionalism is correct, to fine-grained variations in content. The standard anti-intentionalist strategy is to adduce putative cases in which phenomenal character varies despite sameness of content. This paper explores an alternative antiintentionalist tack, arguing, by way of a specific example involving change blindness, that content can vary despite sameness of phenomenal character.

MUSLIM PERSPECTIVES ON STEM CELL RESEARCH AND CLONING

In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascertain equity and justice for all of humanity. Research in Islam must be linked to the broad ethical base set forth in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Whether embryonic stem cell research or cloning is ethically acceptable in Islam depends on the benefits derived from such applications. What is most important for the scholars is to adhere to the concepts of compassion, mercy, and benefit to everyone.     

Can’t We All Just be Compatibilists?: A Critical Study of John Martin Fischer’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">My Way</Emphasis>

My aim in this study is not to praise Fischer's fine theory of moral responsibility, but to (try to) bury the “semi” in “semicompatibilism”. I think Fischer gives the Consequence Argument (CA) too much credit, and gives himself too little credit. In his book, The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer gave the CA as good a statement as it will ever get, and put his finger on what is wrong with it. Then he declared stalemate rather than victory. In my view, Fischer’s view amounts to sophisticated compatibilism. It would be nice to be able to call it by its right name. In The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer develops his own version of Consequence Argument, which turns on two principles, one of which is the fixity of the past. FP: For any action Y, agent S and time t, if it is true that is S were to do Y at t, some fact about that past relative to t would not have been a fact, then S cannot at t do Y at t. I argue that the equipment needed to reject FP (and thereby defend the most plausible version of compatibilism) is needed to deal with the problem of fatalism. In addition, I argue that the rejection of FP is compatible with Fischer’s approach to Frankfurt cases and with his account of transfer principles.     

The facilitative effect of positive stimuli on 3-year-olds’ flexible rule use

This study examined the effect of emotional stimuli on 3- to 4-year old children's flexible rule use, as measured by the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS). In Experiment 1, children in two countries (Canada and China) were given 2 versions of the DCCS. The Standard version required children to sort red and blue boats and rabbits first by shape and then by color (or vice versa); the Emotional Faces version required children to sort happy and sad male and female faces first by emotion and then by gender (or vice versa). Children performed significantly better on the Emotional Faces version, and performance on the 2 versions was related. Order in which dimensions were presented had no effect. Experiment 2 examined which aspects of the emotional faces were responsible for the facilitation of children's performance. Performance on the Standard version was compared to performance on three contextual faces versions, in which children were shown happy, sad, or neutral faces and required to sort them by age (child versus adult) and then by gender (or vice versa). Facilitation was only seen in the context of happy faces. Results are consistent with the suggestion that positive stimuli promote cognitive flexibility, perhaps by increasing dopamine levels in prefrontal cortex.     

对我国《人体器官移植条例》的伦理审视

《人体器官移植条例》已经颁布实施,人体器官移植是一种公认的涉及敏感伦理问题的外科手术。通过分析《条例》是否充分体现了国际通行的生命/医学伦理原则,研究了人体器官移植进行进一步伦理规范的必要性,提出了人体器官移植应遵循的具体医学伦理原则。特别强调了其中的"公正"实体原则和"伦理审查"程序原则。