Attention can operate on semantic objects defined by individual Chinese characters

Attention can select perceptual objects, but it is less clear whether attention can operate on objects defined by higher level cognition, such as semantic associations. Recent studies have shown that attention may be based on objects defined by Chinese two-character compound words, suggesting that attention can operate on semantic objects. In the present study, object-based attention (OBA) effect was investigated at the level of individual Chinese characters, and the role of character structure and radical order in OBA was explored by using a spatial cueing paradigm. In Experiment 1, we found OBA effect for conditions that had legal radical order, but not for other conditions in which the radical order information was disrupted. Character structure, however, had no influence on the OBA effect. In Experiment 2, we observed OBA effect for all conditions after enhancing the radical order and character structure information by adding perceptual cues. The results extend previous findings of a “semantic object”-based attention effect from the two-character word level to the individual character level. Moreover, we found that radical order but not character structure was important for this semantic OBA effect. We conclude that visual attention can be based on semantic objects at the level of individual characters, and that the development of semantic objects is affected by the perceptual grouping of the radicals.     

DIVINE GLORY IN A DARWINIAN WORLD

Faced with the ambiguities of this world, in which ugliness and suffering co‐exist with beauty, the article rejects the attribution of disvalues to a Fall‐event. Instead it faces God's involvement even in violence and ugliness. It explores the concept of divine glory, understood principally as a sign of the divine reality. This includes both the great theophanies of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus’ glorification in his Passion and Crucifixion. It then considers the contemplation of the natural world, using the terminology of “inscape” and “instress.” Divine glory can be discerned even in events as tragic as the Indian Ocean tsunami or the activity of the malarial mosquito. A full Christian contemplation of these events will include scientific understanding and poetic apprehension, and consideration of soteriology and eschatology as well as the theology of creation. Glory is understood to include God's power and sovereignty, and also the divine humility and sacrifice.     

Contingency Horizon: on Private Events and the Analysis of Behavior

Skinner’s radical behaviorism incorporates private events as biologically based phenomena that may play a functional role with respect to other (overt) behavioral phenomena. Skinner proposed four types of contingencies, here collectively termed the contingency horizon, which enable certain functional relations between private events and verbal behavior. The adequacy and necessity of this position has met renewed challenges from Rachlin’s teleological behaviorism and Baum’s molar behaviorism, both of which argue that all “mental” phenomena and terminology may be explained by overt behavior and environment–behavior contingencies extended in time. A number of lines of evidence are presented in making a case for the functional characteristics of private events, including published research from behavior analysis and general experimental psychology, as well as verbal behavior from a participant in the debate. An integrated perspective is offered that involves a multiscaled analysis of interacting public behaviors and private events.     

ANIMAL SUFFERING,EVOLUTION, AND THE ORIGINS OF EVIL: TOWARD A “FREE CREATURES” DEFENSE

Does an affirmation of theistic evolution make the task of theodicy impossible? In this article, I will review a number of ancient and contemporary responses to the problem of evil as it concerns animal suffering and suggest a possible way forward which employs the ancient Jewish insight that evil—as resistance to God's will that results in suffering and alienation from God's purposes—precedes the arrival of human beings and already has a firm foothold in the nonhuman animal world long before humans are ever tempted to go astray. This theological intuition is conferred renewed relevance in light of the empirical reality of evolutionary gradualism and continuity and in view of the recent findings of cognitive ethology. Consequently, I suggest that taking biological evolution seriously entails understanding “moral evil” as a prehuman phenomenon that emerges gradually through the actions and intentions of “free creatures” which—as evolutionary history unfolded—increasingly possessed greater levels of freedom and degrees of moral culpability.     

On the reception of the concept of the death drive in Germany: expressing and resisting an ‘evil principle’?

With Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud attempted ‘to describe and to account for the facts of daily observation in our field of study’ (1920, p. 7), in particular concerning destructive clinical phenomena that confront us in the analytic situation: traumatic neuroses, melancholic states, negative‐therapeutic reactions, masochism, repetition compulsion and so on. The author demonstrates in the first section how Freud's own resistance – later self‐diagnosed – to recognizing these unwelcome facts was expressed in the terminological and conceptual ambiguities of the death drive hypothesis then introduced, ambiguities that to some extent continue to impede the reception of its clinical usefulness to this day. As soon as Freud had demonstrated the connection with clinical practice more directly in The Ego and the Id (1923), some contemporaries adopted it as a helpful clinical concept, while others believed that they could (and must) refute it. The second part outlines its reception in the 1920s and 1930s, which was part of an international discussion that was, of course, initially conducted mainly in German. The beginnings of an important further development of the death drive hypothesis are described in a separate section because it originated from Melanie Klein's earliest experiences in analysing children in Berlin in the early to mid‐1920s. She referred at that time to an ‘evil principle’, and in 1932 published her view of the death drive hypothesis, which was further developed in subsequent decades by her and her followers in London. In this period, conditions changed dramatically: in Germany Freud's books (among others) were burnt, crimes against humanity were instigated and psychoanalysis ceased to exist in this country. Almost all the analysts who published on the death drive had to emigrate. From then on, entirely different discourses took place in the various regions. In Germany, the death drive hypothesis was (largely) disregarded or rejected for decades after the Holocaust. Frank demonstrates how the uncritical recourse in relevant works to this day to an article by Brun in 1953 that considered the death drive to have been comprehensively refuted on the basis of (apparently) comprehensive literature research can be understood as a symptom. Pursuing some reflections by Beland (1988) and Cycon (1995), the author expounds her thesis that in Germany the clinical usefulness of the death drive hypothesis could not be considered as long as destructive impulses were still an immediate social reality. According to the author's observations, in stating that there had been a ‘definite reaction formation against death drive hypotheses’, Brun had unintentionally made an accurate diagnosis. It was not until the realization of inevitable perpetrator identifications (‘Hitler in us’) in this country became (more widely) possible that a concern with the death drive hypothesis could also resume. In the final section, the author takes up one line of this development and traces how some German analysts in the 1980s came into contact with Kleinian developments that had since occurred and how these found and find their way into their analytic working. She closes by asking whether it might be appropriate to consider Melanie Klein's concept of an evil principle – along with the pleasure and reality principles – as a less ambiguous one for the phenomena under consideration.     

Demons are everywhere: The effects of belief in pure evil,demonization, and retribution on punishing criminal perpetrators

Do preconceived beliefs about evil influence perceptions and punishments of those who harm others? We examined the effects of belief in pure evil (BPE), demonization, and belief in retribution on punishment of a stereotypically (vs. non-stereotypically) evil criminal. Participants punished the stereotypically evil perpetrator more (i.e., greater recommended jail time, opposition to parole, and support for his execution) because of increases in demonization (i.e., greater perceptions of the criminal as wicked, evil, and threatening), but not increases in retributive feelings. However, regardless of the criminal’s exhibited stereotypically evil traits, greater BPE predicted harsher punishment of the perpetrator; both greater demonization and stronger retributive feelings mediated the relationship between BPE and severe punishments. Further, effect sizes indicated BPE (vs. the evilness manipulation) more strongly predicted demonization and punishment. Thus, some individuals naturally see perpetrators as demons, and retributively punish them, whether or not there is more explicit stereotypic evidence of their evil dispositions.     

Genetic Engineering,Virtue-First Enhancement,and Deification in Neo-Irenaean Theodicy

This article seeks to provide a unified explanation to two profound challenges to Christian belief: the existence of evil and Darwin’s theory of natural selection. It is argued that an understanding of the full implications of our evolutionary past in conjunction with the Irenaean theodicy provides us with the best answer to these challenges. The traditional Irenaean theodicy emphasizes the importance of education for soul building. Soul building can benefit from technologically enhancing the biological superstructure of our humanity. In particular, genetic engineering can enhance human virtue. The biological basis of our moral natures can be improved using genetic technologies, including (possibly) somatic and germline engineering. To plan for virtue-first enhancement—the Genetic Virtue Project, which focuses on genetic improvements to our moral natures—is of paramount importance for the neo-Irenaean theodicy.     

NATURAL SELECTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: AN EVOLUTIONARY MODEL WITH APPLICATION TO AN ANCIENT DEBATE

Abstract. Since Darwin, scholars have contemplated what our growing understanding of natural selection, combined with the fact that great suffering occurs, allows us to infer about the possibility that a benevolent God created the universe. Building on this long line of thought, I develop a model that illustrates how undesirable characteristics of the world (stylized “evils”) can influence long‐run outcomes. More specifically, the model considers an evolutionary process in which each generation faces a risk from a “natural evil” (e.g., predation, disease, or a natural disaster) subsequent to a basic resource allocation game. This allows both resource allocation and the natural evil to influence the number of surviving offspring. As the model shows, when the risk from the natural evil can be mitigated through the benevolent behavior of neighbors, the population may have increasing benevolence as a result of (1) greater risk from the natural evil and (2) a greater degree to which selfish individuals transfer resources to themselves in the resource allocation game. The main implication is that a world with evolutionary processes (in contrast to a world of static design) can allow two factors that have traditionally been considered “evils”—namely, the indiscriminate cruelty of the natural world and the capacity for humans to harm each other—to promote desirable long‐run outcomes.     

绝对与人类自由--谢林《自由论》探析

本文集中探讨谢林的《自由论》及其在西方哲学史上的意义,作者在指出这部著作不足的同时,充分肯定谢林对自由及与之相关问题的发问,并认为这是近现代西方哲学对人类自身命运的一次重要思考。     

Review

Book reviewed in this article:
Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics