The development of automatic associative processes and children’s false memories

We investigated children’s ability to generate associations and how automaticity of associative activation unfolds developmentally. Children generated associative responses using a single associate paradigm (Experiment 1) or a Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM)-like multiple associates paradigm (Experiment 2). The results indicated that children’s ability to generate meaningful word associates, and the automaticity with which they were generated, increased between 5, 7, and 11 years of age. These findings suggest that children’s domain-specific knowledge base and the associative connections among related concepts are present and continue to develop from a very early age. Moreover, there is an increase in how these concepts are automatically activated with age, something that results from domain-general developments in speed of processing. These changes are consistent with the neurodevelopmental literature and together may provide a more complete explanation of the development of memory illusions.     

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: CATEGORIZING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES USING TWELVE ARCHETYPES

Abstract: Comparative political philosophy can be stimulated by imposing a categorization scheme on possible varieties of political philosophies. This article develops a categorization scheme using four essential features of political philosophies, resulting in twelve archetypal political philosophies. The four essential features selected are a political philosophy's views concerning human nature, the proper function of morality, the best form of society, and the highest responsibility of citizenship. The twelve archetypal political philosophies range from the communal (Rousseau), the democratic (J. S. Mill), the representative (Aristotle), the aristocratic (Plato), and the autocratic (Calvin), along with seven more archetypes: the aloof anarchy, social anarchy, contractarian, progressive, natural law, sage ruler, and tyrannical political forms. A wide variety of Western political philosophers are assigned their places within this categorization scheme to illustrate its utility and comprehensiveness.     

Happiness Prospers in Democracy

An econometric analysis of a happiness function, based on a surveyof 6,000 persons in Switzerland, indicates that:(1) the more developed the institutions of direct democracy, the happier the individuals are;(2) people derive procedural utility from the possibility of participating in the direct democratic process over and above a more favorable political outcome;(3) the unemployed are much less happy than the employed, independent of income;(4) higher income is associated with higher levels of happiness.The consideration of institutional differences in cross-regional data offers important new insights into happiness research.     

Religion and Democratic Commitment: A Unifying Motivational Framework

There is no easy answer to the question of whether religiosity promotes or hinders commitment to democracy. Earlier research largely pointed to religiosity as a source of antidemocratic orientations. More recent empirical evidence is less conclusive, however, suggesting that the effect of religiosity on democratic commitment could be positive, negative, or null. We review the existing approaches to the study of religiosity and democratic commitment, focusing on support for the democratic system, political engagement, and political tolerance, by distinguishing accounts that examine a single dimension of religiosity from accounts that adopt a multidimensional approach. We show that multidimensional approaches, while effective in accounting for the effect of religiosity on discrete democratic norms, fall short of accounting for some of the inconsistencies in the literature and in identifying the mechanisms that may be responsible for shaping how religiosity affects endorsement of democratic norms as a whole. To fill this gap, we propose the Religious Motivations and Expressions (REME) model. Applying theories of goal constructs to religion, this model maps associations between three religious expressions (belief, social behavior, and private behavior) and the religious motivations that underly these expressions. We discuss how inconsistent associations between religiosity and elements of democratic commitment can be rendered interpretable once the motivations underlying religious expressions, as well as contextual information, are accounted for. We contend that applying goal constructs to religion is critical for understanding the nature of the religion-democracy nexus.     

Abstraction and Finitude: Education, Chance and Democracy

Education in the west has become a very knowing business in which students are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and meta-cognitive skills in pursuit of a kind of perfection. The result is the evasion of contingency and of the consciousness of human finitude. The neo-liberalism that makes education a market good exacerbates this. These tendencies can be interpreted as a dimension of scepticism. This is to be dissolved partly by acknowledging that we are obscure to ourselves. Such an acknowledgement is fostered by the mythic dimension of experience, which also recommends a degree of humility to the citizens of democratic states.     

Democracy as a Way to Social Compromise

In modern society, democracy as a symbol of social civilization and progress is cherished. Any government or organization, whether truly democratic or not, will claim that it is democratic while its opponents are not. However, as a historical notion, democracy does not possess the quality of absoluteness. In my view, democracy, in its original meaning, should be understood as a way to social compromise, whose aim is to guarantee a relatively fair political life. Translated from New Eyesight, 2004(3) by Dong Lihe     

(STILL) DISAGREEING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

Why does climate change continue to be a forceful idea which divides people? What does this tell us about science, about culture, and about the future? Despite disagreement, how might the idea of climate change nevertheless be used creatively? In this essay I develop my investigation of these questions using four lines of argument. First, the future risks associated with human‐caused climate change are severely underdetermined by science. Scientific predictions of future climates are poorly constrained; even more so the consequences of such climates for evolving human socio‐technological and natural ecosystems. Second, I argue that to act politically in the world, people have to pass judgments on the facts of science; facts do not speak for themselves. Third, because these judgments are different, the strategic goals of policy interventions developed in response to risks associated with future climate change are inevitably multiple and conflicting. Finally, reconciling and achieving diverse goals requires political contestation. “Moving forward” on climate change then becomes a task of investing in the discursive and procedural preconditions for an agonistic politics to work constructively, to enable ways of implementing policies when people disagree.     

PARRHESIA,PHAEDRA, AND THE POLIS: ANTICIPATING PSYCHOANALYTIC FREE ASSOCIATION AS DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE

This essay explores the mostly unexamined analogy of psychoanalytic free association to democratic free speech. The author turns back to a time when free speech was a matter of considerable discussion: the classical period of the Athenian constitution and its experiment with parrhesia. Ordinarily translated into English as “free speech,” parrhesia is startlingly relevant to psychoanalysis. The Athenian stage—in particular, Hippolytus (Euripides, 5th century BCE)—illustrates this point. Euripides's tragic tale anticipates Freud's inquiries, exploring the fundamental link between free speech and female embodiment. The author suggests that psychoanalysis should claim its own conception of a polis as a mediated and ethical space between private and public spheres, between body and mind, and between speaking and listening communities.     

Conflict,consensus, and liberty in J. S. Mill’s representative democracy

The relationship between representative democracy and conflict in John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy has been interpreted in very different ways. While some scholars claim that Millian democracy is incompatible with political conflict, others identify in Mill a radical political agonism that would offer a non-consensual model of deliberative democracy. This paper argues that neither of these views is exactly accurate: although he highlights the centrality of conflict in political life, Mill believes that democratic deliberation presupposes a minimal level of consensus regarding the formal value of democracy’s basic principles, viz. the principles of individual freedom and equality. Initially, I shall reconstruct the relationship between conflict and consensus in Mill’s conception of representative democracy. I shall then investigate his association of representation and advocacy and show that Mill’s encomium on political conflict was influenced by Guizot’s work. Finally, I shall explain how a democratic debate riven with conflict is conducive to individual freedom.