Utopias and Comparative Assessments of Justice

When we make public policy choices, is it helpful to know how utopia (that is, the perfectly just institutional design) would look? Amartya Sen argues that it is neither necessary, nor sufficient, nor even contributory. He claims that before making a policy choice one should compare several feasible institutional designs to see which promotes justice most (a “comparative assessment” of justice), and that it is misleading to use the perfect design as a standard in those comparisons. Principles of justice are the proper standard. The present article contends that the perfect design has nevertheless an important role to play in the prior task of identifying and refining our principles of justice. It also shows that the perfect design—in at least one sense of this term—may be a legitimate long‐term goal for present policy choices.     

Using Personality Item Characteristics to Predict Single‐Item Internal Reliability,Retest Reliability,and Self–Other Agreement

The use of reliability estimates is increasingly scrutinized as scholars become more aware that test–retest stability and self–other agreement provide a better approximation of the theoretical and practical usefulness of an instrument than its internal reliability. In this study, we investigate item characteristics that potentially impact single‐item internal reliability, retest reliability, and self–other agreement. Across two large samples (N = 6690 and N = 4396), two countries (Estonia and The Netherlands), and two personality inventories (the NEO PI‐3 and the HEXACO‐PI‐R), results show that (i) item variance is a strong predictor of self–other agreement and retest reliability but not of single‐item internal reliability; (ii) item variance mediates the relations between evaluativeness and self–other agreement; and (iii) self–other agreement is predicted by observability and item domain. On the whole, weak relations between item length, negations, and item position (indicating effects of questionnaire length) on the one hand, and single‐item internal reliability, retest reliability, and self–other agreement on the other, were observed. In order to increase the predictive validity of personality scales, our findings suggest that during the construction of questionnaire items, researchers are advised to pay close attention especially to item variance, but also to evaluativeness and observability. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism

ABSTRACT

Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?     

Primal seduction, matricial space and asymmetry in the psychoanalytic encounter

Wishing to highlight the asymmetric dimension that characterizes ethics as 'responsibility toward the other' in Levinas's philosophy, the author presents as an introduction three related concepts of Levinas's thinking: the caress, the face, the saying. Following some poetic narrative reflections offered as 'interlude' moments, the author seeks to bring together her concept of 'matricial space' inspired by Levinas's conception of ethics and the Laplanchian concept of 'primal seduction', both based on asymmetry. She suggests adding to Laplanche's proposition of two kinds of transference (filled-in transference and hollowed-out transference) a third kind: the matricial-space transference. She argues that together with the hollowed-out transference, which is related to the primal seduction, the matricial-space transference, which relates to the matricial position in the parent/analyst, is provoked by the analyst. If the hollowed-out transference assures the moving-on of the analysis, the matricial-space transference, in combination with the hollowed-out transference, is prerequisite for transformation to occur and may be deciphered specifically in 'impasse' situations, at what she coined 'subjectal moments'. As a conclusion, while insisting on the need for asymmetry in the analytic encounter, she suggests the existence in the human neonate of a need for ethics, and she questions the origin of the human capacity to be responsible toward the other. She illustrates her argument using clinical material from her own work alongside that of other authors.     

Primo Levi’s bearing witness and the reinterpreted past: post‐truth and the authoritarian other

The stark realism of Primo Levi’s experiences of the Shoah is considered in light of the current political climate in which the authoritarian other induces a divergence between reality, a state of things as they actually exist or existed, and truth, that which to some extent accords to reality. In this paper I will consider how truth becomes divorced from reality by considering Giegerich’s interpretation of Plato’s Parable of the Cave, arguing that truth is affected by perception and belief. After addressing ‘truth’ in justice, analytic work and the family, the post‐truth phenomenon is discussed and defined as a force erosive to reason and sensibility; its general purpose is to avoid doubt and anxiety. The past is interpreted and re‐interpreted to advance multiple geopolitical interests. Levi warned, in 1976, that the authoritarian state considers it quite permissible to alter the perception of what is true.     

The Problem of Other Minds

This paper reimagines the traditional problem of other minds. On a Cartesian view, the problem involves humans’ inability to perceive other persons’ minds. Similarly, Gilbert Ryle claims that we cannot directly access another’s mind. The paper’s rethinking of the problem of other minds moves beyond these questions of perceptibility and accessibility. It asks whether there are certain groups of people whose minds are systematically misinterpreted, or even denied mentality. It argues that there are. This claim builds off recent work in philosophy and social psychology on epistemic injustice and the role of social categories in mental state attribution. The paper proposes the Problem of the Other’s Mind: the phenomenon of a (relatively) socially privileged person’s inability or lack of desire to understand the mind of a (relatively) socially underprivileged person.     

Personal and parents’ life stories in patients with borderline personality disorder

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display disturbances in understanding self and others. We examined whether these disturbances extended to how patients described their personal and parents’ life stories and to measures of identity, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Thirty BPD patients and 30 matched control participants described personal and parents’ life stories and completed measures of identity disturbance, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Compared to the controls, patients with BPD described their personal and their parents’ life stories more negatively and with fewer themes of agency and communion fulfillment. Patients and controls showed equally complex reasoning about their personal life stories, but patients displayed less complexity and more self‐other confusion, when reasoning about their parents’ stories. Patients also differed from controls on identity disturbance, alexithymia, and empathy. The results suggest that patients’ storied understanding of themselves and others are disturbed and should be taken into account to better understand BPD.     

人际距离调节自我-他人的神经表征：来自oFRN的证据

为考察人际距离对自我-他人表征的影响, 采用金钱博弈任务检测了在自己操作、观察朋友操作和观察陌生同学操作时的脑电成分反馈相关负波(FRN)。结果发现, 观察任务产生了类似于自我操作时输钱反馈的负偏向, 即观察者反馈负波(oFRN); 在观察条件下, 被试自评与朋友的亲近程度高于同学(p<0.001), 两者引起的oFRN达到边缘显著性水平(p = 0.062), 亲近程度与oFRN呈显著相关(p = 0.041)。前者说明自我和他人具有相似表征, 后者则反映了自我对他人信息表征的替代性体验可能受人际距离所调节。     

恋爱受挫对自我—他人工作模型的影响

摘 要 该研究使用内隐联想测验（IAT）考察了成人依恋的主要表现形式恋爱关系中,恋爱受挫对被试自我—他人工作模型的影响。结果表明：（1）虽然实验组与控制组在依恋焦虑、依恋回避得分上均无显著差异,但IAT结果发现,组别、依恋类型在IAT效应（自我积极—他人消极模型指标）上的主效应显著,其交互作用也显著。除了回避型被试,安全型和焦虑型实验组的IAT效应显著高于控制组。（2）控制组中,焦虑型被试相容部分反应时显著大于不相容部分,回避型被试则相容部分反应时显著小于不相容部分,安全型被试无显著差异。