Ann Taves’s Religious Experience Reconsidered is a sign of a global apocalypse that will kill us all

According to Ann Taves, many humanist scholars of religion are afraid of science. In particular, they object to scientific reductionism because reductive explanations violate taboos that prohibit reducing religion to something else. This essay will analyze how Taves and other proponents of cognitive approaches to religious studies fashion a kind of secular praxis in which breaking taboos is a crucial attribute of scholarly integrity and intellectual heroism. I will argue that this equation between reason and profanation reproduces the discursive logic that legitimates the global expansion of a constellation of overlapping secular scientific, economic, political, and religious institutions.     

Smash Temples, Burn Books :Comparing Secularist Projects in India and China

The paper discusses problems inherent in the secularist project,by an examination of secularisms in India and China.Different motives,historical backgrounds,political situations and cultural considerat...     

Religion–state relations and public opinion: norms,institutions and social consensus

ABSTRACT

Are levels of religion–state regulation associated with cross-national variation in attitudes related to the place of religion in public life? Data sources measuring both the institutional relationship between religion and state and public opinion on the political role of religion have significantly improved in recent years, but scholars have just begun to examine relationships between political institutions and public attitudes. This contribution tests several potential examples of such links by exploring the relationship between religion–state institutions and norms of religion and politics, both between and within countries. The contribution first develops theoretical expectations regarding the institutional correlates of public opinion, then conducts initial tests of these expectations by blending data from the Religion and State project with comparative survey data drawn from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey. Analysis demonstrates modest links between institutions and aggregate public views, a relationship between institutions and social consensus, and, most robustly, consistent variation in institutional effects across political regime type.     

Creative compromise: Syrian television makers between Secularism and Islamism

Dramatic television serials produced in Syria reach vast audiences in the Arab world and beyond, via a growing number of pan-Arab satellite stations owned by wealthy, religiously conservative Gulf Cooperation Council states and citizens. Drama creators must now accommodate new markets and numerous censors. Privatization and the rise of a star system have spurred transformations within the industry that reflect the wider social and political context. The demise of Ba‘th socialism, the failures of nationalism, and the growing strength of Islamism affect both production and consumption of television programs, and transform relations within the industry. This paper explores how the television drama industry both accommodates and resists the Islamist currents that seek to provide alternatives to discredited nationalist and socialist projects.

The protestant secular in the study of American religion: reappraisal and suggestions

This article provides a theoretical and historiographical overview of secularism in the study of American religion. It focuses on how scholars have used the concept of the ‘Protestant secular’ in works on law, politics, and culture. Although it has been useful, we argue that this concept has lost some of its analytical utility in the effort to explain secularism predominantly in terms of its Protestant nature. In turn, this article looks to literature on secularism globally in order to suggest ways forward. Refocusing on secularism as a strategy of state governance ought to bring precision to both ‘Protestantism’ and ‘the secular,’ as well as shift attention toward state power and the high stakes of classification. An analysis of this strategy requires investigation into how states produce and police the category ‘religion’ and its neighboring concepts – for example, the ‘secular’ and the ‘superstitious’ – in order to render, manage, and colonize various populations.     

Amygdala upregulation of NCAM polysialylation induced by auditory fear conditioning is not required for memory formation, but plays a role in fear extinction

There is much interest to understand the mechanisms leading to the establishment, maintenance, and extinction of fear memories. The amygdala has been critically involved in the processing of fear memories and a number of molecular changes have been implicated in this brain region in relation to fear learning. Although neural cell adhesion molecules (NCAMs) have been hypothesized to play a role, information available about their contribution to fear memories is scarce. We investigate here whether polysialylated NCAM (PSA-NCAM) contributes to auditory fear conditioning in the amygdala. First, PSA-NCAM expression was evaluated in different amygdala nuclei after auditory fear conditioning at two different shock intensities. Results showed that PSA-NCAM expression was increased 24 h post-training only in animals subjected to the highest shock intensity (1mA). Second, PSA-NCAM was cleaved in the basolateral amygdaloid complex through micro-infusions of the enzyme endoneuraminidase N, and the consequences of such treatment were investigated on the acquisition, consolidation, remote memory expression, and extinction of conditioned fear memories. Intra-amygdaloid cleavage of PSA-NCAM did not affect acquisition, consolidation or expression of remote fear memories. However, intra-amygdaloid PSA-NCAM cleavage enhanced fear extinction processes. These results suggest that upregulation of PSA-NCAM is a correlate of fear conditioning that is not necessary for the establishment of fear memory in the amygdala, but participates in mechanisms precluding fear extinction. These findings point out PSA-NCAM as a potential target for the treatment of psychopathologies that involve impairment in fear extinction.     

Keep making sense

In a number works Jerry Fodor has defended a reductive, causal and referential theory of cognitive content. I argue against this, defending a quasi-Fregean notion of cognitive content, and arguing also that the cognitive content of non-singular concepts is narrow, rather than wide.     

Precarious and model minorities: Sikh identities in the ‘new’ global politics of religion

ABSTRACT

In many parts of the world, Sikhs have come to be perceived as a ‘model' minority – so much so that some have critiqued the Sikh community for taking up positions that are perceived as assimilationist. Such critiques, however, gloss over the sense of precarity, and the litany of hardships, racial discrimination and legal battles in which Sikhs have been forced to be engage in a post-9/11 world. Ultimately, this discrimination is enabled and justified by historical western notions of the incommensurability of the sacred and secular. Engaging with recent critical debates over the on-going meanings of the sacred and the secular, this paper argues that the contemporary moment requires a cosmopolitan religious outlook. Such debates reveal the separation between the public and the private, and between the sacred and the secular, to be ‘zombie categories' that fail to capture contemporary realities. Hence, conceptualizing Sikh identities as precarious, vulnerable ‘model minorities' in a post-Brexit/Trump era allows us to explore a Sikh ethics underpinned by the universal message of SGGS Ji. This is so because such ethics have never been conceptualized as simply being ‘other-worldly’, but rather as precisely grounded in the world that has been entrusted to us.     

Interoceptive fear conditioning as a learning model of panic disorder: an experimental evaluation using 20% CO(2)-enriched air in a non-clinical sample

Despite the role afforded interoceptive fear conditioning in etiologic accounts of panic disorder, there are no good experimental demonstrations of such learning in humans. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the interoceptive conditioning account using 20% carbon dioxide (CO(2))-enriched air as an interoceptive conditioned stimulus (CS) (i.e., physiologically inert 5-s exposures) and unconditioned stimulus (US) (i.e., physiologically prepotent 15-s exposures). Healthy participants (N=42) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a CS-only, contingent CS-US pairings, or unpaired/non-contingent CS and US presentations. Electrodermal and self-report (e.g., distress, fear) served as indices of conditioned emotional responding. Results showed greater magnitude electrodermal and evaluative fear conditioning in the paired relative to the CS-only condition. The explicitly unpaired condition showed even greater electrodermal and evaluative responding during acquisition, and marked resistance to extinction. The latter results are consistent with the possibility that the unpaired procedure constituted a partial reinforcement procedure in which CO(2) onset was paired with more extended CO(2) exposure on 50% of the trials. Overall, the findings are consistent with contemporary learning theory accounts of panic.     

Personal Identity and the Importance of One's Own Body: A Response to Derek Parfit

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irreducible ambiguities of human embodiment in order to show the presuppositions and the limitations of Parfit's view. Of interest is the conception of time and the model of continuity that is appropriate to an embodied subject's life. I employ Paul Ricoeur's concept of 'human time' to argue that the reflective character of human experience demands a model of temporality and continuity that differs significantly from the one Parfit employs.     

Post-genomics, between reduction and emergence

It is frequently said that biology is emerging from a long phase of reductionism. It would be certainly more correct to say that biologists are abandoning a certain form of reductionism. We describe this past form, and the experiments which challenged the previous vision. To face the difficulties which were met, biologists use a series of concepts and metaphors - pleiotropy, tinkering, epigenetics - the ambiguity of which masks the difficulties, instead of solving them. In a similar way, the word “post-genomics” has different meanings, depending upon who uses it. Which of these meanings will become dominant in the future is an open question.     

Diversity in unity: practical unity and personal boundaries

In the spirit of the discussion in Daniel Kolak’s I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundation for Global Ethics, I consider the way in which divisions that we usually think of as borders between distinct people occur within a single life. Starting with the dispute between constructionist and non-constructionist views of persons, I argue for a view that places the unity of persons in the dynamic generated by simultaneously taking a constructionist and non-constructionist view of oneself. In order to unify ourselves as agents we need to treat past and future selves as others, but to motivate this endeavor we need to think of ourselves as temporally extended agents, and so identify with past and future selves. Understanding this dynamic illuminates the structure of our agency and the unity of the self.     

Reducing reductionism: on a putative proof for Extreme Haecceitism

Nathan Salmon, in his paper Trans-World Identification and Stipulation (1996) purports to give a proof for the claim that facts concerning trans-world identity cannot be conceptually reduced to general facts. He calls this claim ‘Extreme Haecceitism.’ I argue that his proof is fallacious. However, I also contend that the analysis and ultimate rejection of his proof clarifies the fundamental issues that are at stake in the debate between the reductionist and haecceitist solutions to the problem of trans-world identity. These issues hinge on the ability of modal logic and possible worlds semantics to draw a hard and fast distinction between the logic and the metaphysics of modal logic. I shall claim that the considerations in this paper call into question the viability of such a distinction.

Fear generalization in humans: Impact of verbal instructions

Fear generalization lies at the heart of many anxiety problems, but little is known about the factors that can influence this phenomenon. The present study investigated whether verbal instructions about specific stimulus features can influence conditioned fear generalization. All participants were fear conditioned to a yellow triangle, using an electric shock. Participants had received pre-experimental instructions saying that the shapes (or colours) of the stimuli were informative for the occurrence of shock (group Shape and group Colour, respectively). Next, generalization was tested to presentations of a blue triangle (same shape) as well as a yellow square (same colour). Fear reactions were measured through skin conductance and online ratings of shock-expectancy. The results showed strongest generalization to the same shape stimulus in group Shape, versus the same colour stimulus in group Colour. Hence, the same learning experience can have opposite effects in terms of fear generalization, depending on verbally transmitted information about the relative importance of individual stimulus features.     

Fear of storms and hurricanes in Antillean and Belgian children

The present study assessed fear of hurricanes in children who had been confronted with this natural event (i.e., Antillean children, n=161). Their fear levels were compared to those of children who are unfamiliar with such an event (i.e., Belgian children, n=185). Antillean children reported significantly higher levels of fear of storms than Belgian children did, thus providing support for the notion that exposure to dangerous events promotes children's fears of those events. Surprisingly, however, Antillean children had lower scores on the 'Hurricanes' item than Belgian children. Plausibly, differences in how children interpreted this item may have accounted for this unexpected finding. That is, ratings of Antillean children were probably based on actual experiences with hurricanes, whereas scores of Belgian children presumably reflected appraisal of threat in case they would be confronted with such an event. Implications of this finding for the assessment of childhood fears are briefly discussed.     

Noradrenergic enhancement of associative fear memory in humans

Ample evidence in animals and humans supports the noradrenergic modulation in the formation of emotional memory. However, in humans the effects of stress on emotional memory are traditionally investigated by declarative memory tests (e.g., recall, recognition) for non-associative emotional stimuli (e.g., stories, pictures). Given that anxiety disorders are thought to originate from associative learning processes and are characterized by distressing emotional responses, the existing literature seems to be inconclusive for the understanding of these disorders. Here, we tested whether noradrenaline strengthens the emotional expression of associative fear memory by using a differential fear conditioning procedure in humans. Stimulation of the noradrenergic system by the administration of yohimbine HCl (20 mg) during memory formation did not directly augment the differential startle fear response 48 h later. Yet, the other retention tests uncovered that the administration of yohimbine HCl contrary to placebo pill extensively delayed the process of extinction learning and generated a superior recovery of fear (i.e., reinstatement and reacquisition). Conversely, the yohimbine HCl manipulation did not affect the skin conductance responding and the US expectancy ratings, emphasizing the concept of multiple memory systems. To our knowledge this is the first demonstration in humans that increased noradrenaline release during or shortly after a stressful event strengthens the formation of associative fear memory traces. The present findings suggest that noradrenaline may play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders.     

恐惧记忆习得与消退的性别差异及其神经机制

大多数人在其一生中都会经历创伤事件,但只有少数人会发展成为创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）。焦虑障碍的易感性和保护因素成为一个重要议题。基于恐惧记忆习得与消退模型的研究发现女性个体表现出“易习得、难消退”的特点。在恐惧相关脑区的脑生理结构、功能/结构连接性、以及大脑可塑性的性别差异可能是该特征的根本原因。性激素作为一种焦虑障碍的保护因素,可以调节这种性别差异,这种调节效应可能是通过影响大脑结构形态（如神经细胞的形态和数量）、调控与记忆相关基因的表达（如HDAC4）而实现的。雌性激素水平的不稳定性可能是女性易感焦虑障碍的重要原因。未来对性别差异的深入研究将有助于推进个性化医疗。