The emergence of the ecological mind in Hua‐Yen/Kegon Buddhism and Jungian psychology

The complexity associated with deep interconnectedness in nature is beginning to be articulated and elaborated in the field of ecological studies. While some parallels to the psyche have been made and the field of Eco‐psychology has been developing, Jung's explicit contribution by way of the image of rhizomes has not been considered in detail. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze acknowledges borrowing the term from Jung, though he disagreed with Jung's Empedoclean use of the term. The paper presents some fundamental properties of rhizomes along with contemporary scientific research on mycorrhizal (fungal) networks. Comparisons are made, first with classical symbolic forms, demonstrating some overlap but also some differences. Then comparison of rhizomal networks is made to those found both in mammalian brains and in recent images of the ‘cosmic web’. While no hard conclusions can be drawn from these images, their remarkable similarities are suggestive of a need to reconsider what is meant by ‘intelligence’. The cosmic web is one of the largest structures in the known universe (clusters of galaxies which form into filaments and walls) with empty spaces in between. Exploration of the structure of this web leads to a discussion of dark matter and dark energy, current hot topics in science, probing into the mysteries of our ‘Big‐Bang’ cosmology. An additional comparison of the emerging image of the universe as a whole with the ancient Chinese Buddhist cosmological vision from the Hua‐Yen School (Kegon in Japan) again reveals profound parallels. The potential convergence of aspects of subjective, or meditative, explorations with objective scientific constructions is striking and offers links between East and West, as well as potential confirmation of the objective aspects of empathy.     

EXPERIENCING AND INTERPRETING NATURE IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. I trace three paths from nature to religious interpretation. The first starts from religious experience in the context of nature; examples are drawn from nature poets, reflective scientists, and exponents of creation spirituality. The second,„Natural Theology”uses scientific findings concerning cosmology or evolution to develop an argument from design–or alternatively to defend evolutionary naturalism. The third,„Theology of Nature”starts from traditional religious beliefs about God and human nature and reformulates them in the light of current science. I point to examples of each of these paths in papers by other participants in this symposium, and suggest that all three paths can contribute to the task of relating science and religion today.     

THEOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE WARS: WHO OWNS HUMAN NATURE?

Lluís Oviedo examines in his article the current conflict over human nature and the role of the sciences in the debate, suggesting that there may be a role for theology to play as well. In this essay I examine and respond to some aspects of Oviedo's article and suggest that the nature of the conflict needs to be nuanced to understand it as a conflict not between scientific and philosophical/social‐scientific views of human nature but among scientists, social scientists, and philosophers over the role of science in thinking about human nature. I analyze some of the obstacles for theology's becoming involved and propose that thinking about what are distinctively theological questions as opposed to scientific ones may be an appropriate starting point.     

An examination of the new age movement: Who is involved and what constitutes its spirituality

Through substantial new quantitative research, I have found that participants of the New Age Movement are not young and not especially well‐off, but tend to be middle‐aged or older, and are represented throughout the entire economic spectrum. Moreover, their spirituality encompasses a wide variety of influences drawn from all religious traditions and spiritual concerns. While a great deal of social and spiritual common focus seems to exist in the Movement as a whole, my findings show that there is no one specific type of person who might be considered as being particularly active in the New Age. Furthermore, because of the wide variety of spiritual influences and the individual nature of participants’ spiritual quests, there does not appear to be a strong leaning to any one type of spirituality from which a more formalised New Age religious institution might arise. Through this new research, many claims about who is involved in the New Age Movement and what form their spirituality might take have been reviewed and I demonstrate that there are sizeable inaccuracies among the reports of some commentators.     

Strong Necessitarianism: The Nomological Identity of Possible Worlds

Dispositional essentialism, a plausible view about the natures of (sparse or natural) properties, yields a satisfying explanation of the nature of laws also. The resulting necessitarian conception of laws comes in a weaker version, which allows differences between possible worlds as regards which laws hold in those worlds and a stronger version that does not. The main aim of this paper is to articulate what is involved in accepting the stronger version, most especially the consequence that all possible properties exist in all worlds. I also suggest that there is no particularly strong reason for preferring the weaker to the stronger version. For example, Armstrong's instantiation condition on universals entails that according to strong necessitarianism every property is instantiated in all possible worlds. But first we do not need to accept Armstrong's instantiation condition, in part because his arguments for it are forceful only for a contingentist about laws and properties. Secondly, even if we do accept the condition, the consequence that all properties are instantiated is not itself contradictory, so long as any form of necessitarianism holds. Strong necessitarianism is prima facie counter‐intuitive. But for that matter so is weak necessitarianism. Accepting either weak or strong necessitarianism requires denying the force of intuition in this area. And indeed we have every reason to deny the force of intuition and its primary source, imagination, concerning modal facts.     

Grammaticality,Acceptability, and Probability: A Probabilistic View of Linguistic Knowledge

The question of whether humans represent grammatical knowledge as a binary condition on membership in a set of well‐formed sentences, or as a probabilistic property has been the subject of debate among linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for many decades. Acceptability judgments present a serious problem for both classical binary and probabilistic theories of grammaticality. These judgements are gradient in nature, and so cannot be directly accommodated in a binary formal grammar. However, it is also not possible to simply reduce acceptability to probability. The acceptability of a sentence is not the same as the likelihood of its occurrence, which is, in part, determined by factors like sentence length and lexical frequency. In this paper, we present the results of a set of large‐scale experiments using crowd‐sourced acceptability judgments that demonstrate gradience to be a pervasive feature in acceptability judgments. We then show how one can predict acceptability judgments on the basis of probability by augmenting probabilistic language models with an acceptability measure. This is a function that normalizes probability values to eliminate the confounding factors of length and lexical frequency. We describe a sequence of modeling experiments with unsupervised language models drawn from state‐of‐the‐art machine learning methods in natural language processing. Several of these models achieve very encouraging levels of accuracy in the acceptability prediction task, as measured by the correlation between the acceptability measure scores and mean human acceptability values. We consider the relevance of these results to the debate on the nature of grammatical competence, and we argue that they support the view that linguistic knowledge can be intrinsically probabilistic.     

神经营养因子发现的启示

本文对神经营养因子的发现,生理作用及意义进行了回顾研究,综合自然辨证法的基本原理得出在科学研究中的两点启示：一在科学研究中要牢记事物是普遍联系的;二是科学研究中要勇于接受新观点。     

Peer and teacher bullying/victimization of South Australian secondary school students: Prevalence and psychosocial profiles

This study examined the nature and prevalence of bullying/victimization by peers and teachers reported by 1,284 students (mean age = 15.2 years) drawn from a representative sample of 25 South Australian government and private schools. Students completed a self‐report survey containing questions relating to teacher and peer‐related bullying, measures of psychosocial adjustment, and personality. The results showed that students could be clearly differentiated according to the type of victimization they had experienced. Students reporting peer victimization typically showed high levels of social alienation, poorer psychological functioning, and poorer self‐esteem and self‐image. By contrast, victims of teacher victimization were more likely to be rated as less able academically, had less intention to complete school and were more likely to be engaged in high‐risk behaviours such as gambling, drug use and under‐age drinking. Most bullying was found to occur at school rather than outside school and involved verbal aggression rather than physical harm. Boys were significantly more likely to be bullied than girls, with the highest rates being observed amongst boys attending single‐sex government schools. Girls were more likely to be subject to bullying if they attended coeducational private schools. The implications of this work for enhancing school‐retention rates and addressing psychological distress amongst adolescent students are discussed.     

Values Voters: The Conditional Effect of Income on the Relationship Between Core Values and Political Attitudes and Behavior

The postmaterialism thesis contends that newer cultural and social justice issues will supplant traditional, class‐based economic concerns as societies become increasingly wealthy. Although macrolevel evidence broadly supports this prediction, individual‐level evidence for the theory in the United States has been sparse. Moreover, alternative theories predict that postmaterialism will not travel well to the American context because religious cleavages that divide the major parties will be most salient. We test the postmaterialism thesis at the individual level using unique data that enable us to evaluate citizens' value‐preference structures across income levels, as well as the conditional effect of income on the relationship between individuals' ranked value preferences and political attitudes and behavior. Consistent with the theory, greater income strengthens the association between egalitarianism and ideology, partisanship, evaluations of President Obama, and presidential vote choice, and weakens the relationship between moral traditionalism and these same variables. However, income does not moderate the association between economic security and individuals' identities, evaluations, or behavior. Additionally, value‐preference hierarchies are quite similar across income groups after controlling for partisanship and ideology. The results lend insight into the nature of value‐ and income‐based cleavages in American politics.     

THE SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF PHILIP HEFNER'S “CREATED CO‐CREATOR”

Philip Hefner's understanding of humans as “created co‐creators” has played a key role in the science and religion field, particularly as scholars consider the implications of emerging technologies for the human future. Hefner articulates his “created co‐creator” framework in the form of scientifically testable hypotheses supporting his core understanding of human nature, adopting the structure of Imre Lakatos's scientific research programme. This article provides a brief exposition of Hefner's model, examines his hypotheses in order to assess their scientific character, and evaluates them against the relevant findings of contemporary science. While Hefner's model is largely commensurate with contemporary science, he at times makes claims that cannot be scientifically falsified or corroborated. Hefner's accomplishments in demonstrating the scientific compatibility of many theological notions is admirable; however, his overall position would be strengthened with a more tacit acknowledgment of the limitations of scientific knowledge. His anthropology draws also from extrascientific commitments and is all the richer for it.     

Essentialism and the Necessity of the Laws of Nature

In this paper I discuss and evaluate different arguments for the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I conclude that essentialist arguments from the nature of natural kinds fail to establish that essences are ontologically more basic than laws, and fail to offer an a priori argument for the necessity of all causal laws. Similar considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints on property identity across possible worlds. None of my arguments preclude the possibility that the laws may turn out to be metaphysically necessary after all, but I argue that this can only be established by a posteriori scientific investigation. I therefore argue for what may seem to be a surprising conclusion: that a fundamental metaphysical question – the modal status of laws of nature – depends on empirical facts rather than purely on a priori reasoning.     

REALISM WITHOUT TRUTH: A REVIEW OF GIERE'S SCIENCE WITHOUT LAWS AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVISM

An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is that of science as action—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially‐coordinated communities. Scientists are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme, the science‐as‐social‐process view can be taken to imply that science is no different from any other human activity, and therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding science that finds a middle ground between these extremes. He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical context, and that scientific models are constructions designed and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however, scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position, perspectival realism, shares important common ground with Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should be brought to bear on the process of science. The two approaches offer different but complementary perspectives on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a comprehensive understanding of science.     

Toward a Eucharistic Missiology

The Orthodox churches were drawn into contemporary missiological discussions primarily through the modern ecumenical movement. Since there are fundamental differences of approach between the East and the West on this matter, particularly because the Western concept and method of mission is perceived to be still carrying, rather imperceptibly, the old imperial‐colonial baggage, the Orthodox are always ill at ease in these discussions dominated by the Western Protestant churches. The Orthodox theologians have, however, made huge efforts within the framework of the World Council of Churches to enunciate their vision of the missionary nature of the church from patristic and liturgical perspectives. This article pleads for a shifting of paradigm from an anthropocentric and possessive mode of mission to non‐possessive hospitality, eucharistic (thanksgiving) intercessory care for creation, and self‐giving inner pilgrimage to the source of light that enlightens all. Mission as gift and not simply as task would be essential for the shaping of a new human civilization. What is needed is a change of human civilizational paradigm and not simply some aspects of the conventional Christian mission models. In Asia, we had the Buddhist mission before Christ and the East Syrian Christian mission in the first millennium, which gave us some alternate models of doing peaceful and non‐acquisitive mission.     

SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND METAPHYSICS

The tendency to take scientific realism to be a richer metaphysical view than it ought to be stems from the fact that there are two ways in which we can conceive of reality. The first is to conceive of reality as comprising all facts and the other is to conceive of it as comprising all and only fundamental facts. I argue that scientific realism should be committed to the factualist view of reality and not, in the first instance, to the fundamentalist. An anti‐fundamentalist conception of reality acts as a constraint on scientific realism, but it is a further and (conceptually) separate issue whether or not a scientific realist should come to adopt a fundamentalist view of reality. I argue that scientific realism is independent of physicalism and non‐Humeanism and that the concept of truth is required for a sensible understanding of the metaphysical commitments of scientific realism.     

Training and disseminating family interventions for schizophrenia: developing family intervention skills with multi‐disciplinary groups

Family interventions for psychosis are not routinely available, in spite of a robust evidence base, clear policies and guidelines, and requests from service recipients. The reasons for this are complex involving three key groups: service recipients, clinicians and organizations. This paper first of all identifies barriers to implementation in relation to each of these groups. It then outlines a range of strategies that may be employed at a number of levels to bring about change in each of these systems. The strategies are drawn from current research in the area, and from experiences over a seven‐year period in the Meriden West Midlands Family Programme.     

Underdetermination,realism and empirical equivalence

Are theories ‘underdetermined by the evidence’ in any way that should worry the scientific realist? I argue that no convincing reason has been given for thinking so. A crucial distinction is drawn between data equivalence and empirical equivalence. Duhem showed that it is always possible to produce a data equivalent rival to any accepted scientific theory. But there is no reason to regard such a rival as equally well empirically supported and hence no threat to realism. Two theories are empirically equivalent if they share all consequences expressed in purely observational vocabulary. This is a much stronger requirement than has hitherto been recognised—two such ‘rival’ theories must in fact agree on many claims that are clearly theoretical in nature. Given this, it is unclear how much of an impact on realism a demonstration that there is always an empirically equivalent ‘rival’ to any accepted theory would have—even if such a demonstration could be produced. Certainly in the case of the version of realism that I defend—structural realism—such a demonstration would have precisely no impact: two empirically equivalent theories are, according to structural realism, cognitively indistinguishable.     

The psychometric properties of The Religious Status Inventory—‘Being Ethical’ subscale among Northern Irish adolescents

There are few self‐report measures of morality. The Religious Status Inventory—‘Being Ethical’ subscale represents one approach. However, at present there is limited information on the psychometric properties of either the original 20‐item version (RSInv‐20) or the shortened embedded 10‐item version (RSInv‐S10). The aim of the present study was to provide psychometric data on the internal reliability of these two versions of the ‘Being Ethical’ subscale. As part of a larger study, 595 Northern Irish adolescents, drawn from both Grammar and Secondary schools, completed the RSInv‐20. An unsatisfactory level of internal reliability was found for the RSInv‐20 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.42), but a satisfactory level of internal reliability was found for the RSInv‐S10 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.70). Subsequent item analysis produced an alternative 10‐item version (RSInv‐A10) that provided the optimum level of internal reliability for a 10‐item measure in the present sample (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74). In addition, on all three versions of the measure (RSInv‐20, RSInv‐S10, and RSInv‐A10), differences were found in levels of internal reliability among Grammar and Secondary school respondents, with the former producing higher levels of internal reliability.     

PHYSICAL REALISM

Physical realism is the thesis that the world is more or less as present‐day physical theory says it is, i.e. a mind‐independent reality, that consists fundamentally of physical objects that have causal powers, are located in space and time, belong to natural kinds, and interact causally with each other in various natural kinds of ways. It is thus a modern form of physicalism that takes due account of the natural kinds structure of the world. It is a thesis that many present‐day scientific realists would surely accept. Indeed, some might say that physical realism just is scientific realism, but under another name. However, the argument that is presented for physical realism is not the standard one for scientific realism. It is not a two‐stage argument from the success of science to the truth of scientific theories to the reality of the entities postulated in these theories. It is more powerful than this, because it is more direct, and its premisses are more secure. It is more direct, because it develops what is basically a physicalist ontology as the only plausible metaphysical explanation of the new scientific image of the world. It is more secure, in that it does not depend, as the standard argument does, on any doubtful generalisations about the nature or role of scientific theory.     

Theory-based Bayesian models of inductive learning and reasoning

Inductive inference allows humans to make powerful generalizations from sparse data when learning about word meanings, unobserved properties, causal relationships, and many other aspects of the world. Traditional accounts of induction emphasize either the power of statistical learning, or the importance of strong constraints from structured domain knowledge, intuitive theories or schemas. We argue that both components are necessary to explain the nature, use and acquisition of human knowledge, and we introduce a theory-based Bayesian framework for modeling inductive learning and reasoning as statistical inferences over structured knowledge representations.     

An evaluation of the overjustification effect across multiple contingency arrangements

The overjustification effect suggests that external rewards may decrease intrinsically reinforced behaviors; however, this conclusion is often drawn from pre‐ and post‐assessment data. The majority of studies published in this area do not take repeated measures of behavior. In addition, previous research has not distinguished between the use of rewards and reinforcers by demonstrating a reinforcement effect; hence, it is possible that the occurrence of the overjustification effect varies depending on the nature of the stimuli that are used. This study extended previous research by evaluating whether the overjustification effect was relevant to the use of non‐reinforcing stimuli, reinforcers, or both. The effects of verbal praise were also evaluated in relation to the overjustification effect. Results indicated that behavior did not decrease below baseline levels following the contingent delivery of non‐reinforcing stimuli, reinforcers, or verbal praise. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.