Ghost and self: Jung's paradigm shift and a response to Zinkin

Abstract :  Zinkin's lucid challenge to Jung makes perfect sense. Indeed, it is the implications of this 'making sense' that this paper addresses. For Zinkin's characterization of the 'self' takes it as a 'concept' requiring coherence; a variety of abstract non-contextual knowledge that itself has a mythical heritage. Moreover, Zinkin's refinement of Jung seeks to make his work fit for the scientific paradigm of modernity. In turn, modernity's paradigm owes much to Newton's notion of knowledge via reductionism. Here knowledge or investigation is divided up into the smallest possible units with the aim of eventually putting it all together into 'one' picture of scientific truth. Unfortunately, 'reductionism' does not do justice to the resonant possibilities of Jung's writing. These look forward to a new scientific paradigm of the twenty-first century, of the interactive 'field', emergence and complexity theory. The paper works paradoxically by discovering Zinkin's 'intersubjective self' after all, in two undervalued narratives by Jung, his doctoral thesis and a short late ghost story. However, in the ambivalences and radical fictional experimentation of these fascinating texts can be discerned an-Other self, one both  created and found .     

Seeing close others as we see ourselves: One’s own self-complexity is reflected in perceptions of meaningful others

Although past research has established a correspondence between the content of knowledge about the self and close others, the current work evaluated the prediction that the self-concept also influences the structure of these perceptions. Specifically, we expected greater correspondence in the complexity of mental representations between the self and others included in the self. In Study 1, we found that self-complexity was related to the perceived complexity of a close other and that this outcome did not reflect a general tendency to perceive the world in a systematically complex or simple fashion (i.e., cognitive complexity). In Study 2, we found that the correspondence between self-complexity and complexity of representations of others increased for individuals more included in the self. Finally in Study 3, we observed that experimentally manipulating inclusion of other in the self resulted in perceived structural similarity between representations of the self and others. Implications of self-concept representation for social relationships are discussed.     

The Conceptual Complexity of Central Bankers and the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper examines the impact of the conceptual complexity of central bankers on exchange rate volatility during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Theoretically, this paper develops a framework to study the cognitive style of individual central bankers in conjunction with the institutional features of the central banks they head. The paper also controls for a variety of other common explanations for exchange rate volatility during this time period, including the number of veto players representing the political system and underlying structural features of the Asian economies. Empirically, the cross-sectional time-series analysis finds that more conceptually complex central bankers were able to reduce exchange rate volatility during the crisis years, especially when they inhabited highly independent central banks. This paper concludes that linking the study of key individuals to macroeconomic outcomes in the global political economy is a promising area of research.     

The Big-5 ± 2? The impact of cognitive complexity on the factor structure of the five-factor model

Despite the popularity and prevalence of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality, numerous questions regarding its psychometric properties have yet to be investigated. One issue of particular concern is the underlying premise that these five personality factors are universally shared by all individuals. The present study examined the impact of cognitive complexity on the FFM by directly assessing whether individuals with higher or lower levels of cognitive complexity have personalities comprised of a greater or lesser number of factors, respectively, than the five widely accepted factors outlined by the FFM. Results indicated that individuals with lower levels of cognitive complexity have personalities best described by a three-factor model, whereas individuals with higher levels of cognitive complexity have personalities best described by a seven-factor model. In light of these findings, the appropriateness of universally applying the FFM to individuals of differing levels of cognitive complexity is discussed.     

复杂性对倾斜汉字识别的影响

以字的复杂性探查汉字心理旋转方式与识别的加工方式,字的复杂性是以笔画数和部件可分性标志的。同时,它们构成两个独立的实验。每个实验中,字的倾斜角度变量,以４５°的间隔渐增,共有８个变式角度,即０°、４５°、９０°、１３５°、１８０°、－４５°、－９０°和－１３５°。实验的因变量为命名反应时。结果发现,字的复杂性标志,无论是笔画数或部件可分性都与倾斜角度变量有交互作用。这意味着,心旋与识别加工方式中的整字－成分的混合模型得到支持。     

Emergence of Life

Discussions of the origin of life usually assume that there is a specific event, however improbable, by which dead matter became a living entity. Naturalistic accounts, although in seeming opposition to theistic explanations of the apparent design of even the simplest cells, often share the assumption that there is a specific line to be crossed. If the problem is recast as one of a process of emergence of biochemistry from protobiochemistry, which in turn emerged from the organic chemistry and geochemistry of primitive earth, the resources of the new sciences of complex systems dynamics can provide a more robust conceptual framework within which to explore the possible pathways of chemical complexification leading to life. In such a view the emergence of life is the result of deep natural laws (the outlines of which we are only beginning to perceive) and reflects a degree of holism in those systems that led to life. Further, there is the possibility of developing a more general theory of biology and of natural organization from such an approach. The emergence of life may thus be seen as an instance of the broader innate creativity of nature and consistent with a possible natural teleology.     

C. S. PEIRCE,G. W. F. HEGEL,AND STUART KAUFFMAN'S COMPLEXITY THEORY: A RESPONSE

Stuart Kauffman's work on complexity and self‐organization echoes ideas found in writings of C. S. Peirce and G. W. F. Hegel. Included in these common threads are the understanding of science as historical narrative, the recognition of emergence as a phenomenon associated with complex systems, and the appreciation of agency as an emergent property that serves as both a creative and determining force in evolution.     

Heuristics in learning classifiers: The acquisition of the classifier system and its implications for the nature of lexical acquisition

Classifiers are like nouns in that they classify entities in the world into lexical categories. However, the lexical nature of the classifier system is very different from that of nouns. We discuss how Japanese and Chinese children learn the meanings of classifiers. We focus on two specific questions: How classifier acquisition is different from noun acquisition; and what the prerequisites are for spontaneously extracting the meanings of classifiers. It is shown that children are very conservative in assigning meaning to classifiers. The pace of learning largely depends on semantic complexity, across languages and within each language. Furthermore, we suspect that learning the meanings of classifiers requires a certain cognitive ability – an ability to synthesize pieces of partial knowledge and form them into a cohesive whole. It may be only when children have developed such an ability that they are able to extract the complex semantic rules of classifiers on their own. We conclude that children take very different routes in learning nouns and classifiers: Unlike noun acquisition, classifier acquisition is guided by a slow, bottom-up process.     

The Dependency Structure of Coordinate Phrases: A Corpus Approach

Hudson (1990) proposes that each conjunct in a coordinate phrase forms dependency relations with heads or dependents outside the coordinate phrase (the “multi-head” view). This proposal is tested through corpus analysis of Wall Street Journal text. For right-branching constituents (such as direct-object NPs), a short-long preference for conjunct ordering is observed; this is predicted by the multi-head view, under the assumption that structures resulting in shorter dependencies are preferred. A short-long preference is also observed for left-branching constituents (such as subject NPs), which is less obviously accommodated by the multi-head view but not incompatible with it. The repetition of determiners was also examined (the dog and cat versus the dog and the cat), and a stronger preference was found for repetition with singular count nouns as opposed to mass or plural nouns; this accords well with the multi-head view, under the reasoning that single-determiner constructions require crossing dependencies with count nouns but not with plural or mass nouns.