Religious education,a matter of understanding? reflections on the final report of the Commission on Religious Education

In this article we offer reflections on the final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) that was published in England in 2018. We expose and problematise the prominent place of understanding in the report, not only as an educational method, but also the underlying world view of the report itself, a world view which we characterise as ‘hermeneuticism’. We raise educational, theological and political concerns about the particular approach taken in the report. We propose instead that religious education (RE) should be considered first of all in terms of what it means to live with a religious or non-religious orientation, conceived in existential terms rather than in terms of beliefs or practices or objectified world views. Educationally we show that what we term a non-hermeneutic way of viewing our humanity would open different possibilities for RE and its future.     

Use of the recognition heuristic depends on the domain’s recognition validity,not on the recognition validity of selected sets of objects

According to the recognition-heuristic theory, decision makers solve paired comparisons in which one object is recognized and the other not by recognition alone, inferring that recognized objects have higher criterion values than unrecognized ones. However, success—and thus usefulness—of this heuristic depends on the validity of recognition as a cue, and adaptive decision making, in turn, requires that decision makers are sensitive to it. To this end, decision makers could base their evaluation of the recognition validity either on the selected set of objects (the set’s recognition validity), or on the underlying domain from which the objects were drawn (the domain’s recognition validity). In two experiments, we manipulated the recognition validity both in the selected set of objects and between domains from which the sets were drawn. The results clearly show that use of the recognition heuristic depends on the domain’s recognition validity, not on the set’s recognition validity. In other words, participants treat all sets as roughly representative of the underlying domain and adjust their decision strategy adaptively (only) with respect to the more general environment rather than the specific items they are faced with.     

Reflecting on – traditions,ceremony, and the formation of bachelor-prepared nurses

In this article, we explore the ways that the traditional nursing oath ceremony might serve as a reflective transformative moment for first-year students as they take their first tentative steps in a developmental journey of being and becoming registered nurses. Traditions in professional programs act as a rite of passage and hold the promise of an invitation and a new sense of belonging. This discussion explores the possibilities that exist within reflective transformative learning moments. The discussion unfolds through our eyes as nursing faculty teaching in an undergraduate nursing program. We recall our experience of practicing with first-year nursing students, and discuss the age-old debate: is the focus of teaching delivering content, or the formation of practitioners?     

Nonsense on Stilts? Wittgenstein,Ethics, and the Lives of Animals

Wittgenstein is often invoked in philosophical disputes over the ethical justifiability of our treatment of animals. Many protagonists believe that Wittgenstein's philosophy points to a quantum difference between human and animal nature that arises out of humans' linguistic capacity. For this reason – its alleged anthropocentrism – animal liberationists tend to dismiss Wittgenstein's philosophy, whereas, for the same reason, anti‐liberationists tend to embrace it. I endorse liberationist moral claims, but think that many on both sides of the dispute fail to grasp the import of Wittgenstein's philosophy. My argument proceeds through close engagement with Michael Leahy's Against Liberation, which makes extensive use of Wittgenstein's ‘notion of language‐games’ as an ‘essential methodological aid’ in its defence and justification of the moral status quo. Leahy's understanding and application of that method exemplifies an entrenched interpretative stance in the wider Wittgensteinian scholarship which I seek to counter. This enables me to show that far from entailing conservatism, as some of his critics and followers contend, Wittgenstein's philosophical method is just as conducive to radical moral and political critique as it is to any other normative position.     

Is the Medium the Message? A Study of the Effects of Media,Communicator, and Message Characteristics on Attitude Change1

The present study examined the interactive effects of type of media, communicator, and position of message on persuasiveness of the communication. Subjects received a communication over television, radio (audio tape), or written medium, which either agreed with a position they held or strongly disagreed with it. The communicator was either a newscaster or a candidate for political office. The results indicated that subjects felt the newscaster to be more trustworthy than the candidate. In line with previous research, there was no main effect of media on persuasiveness. However, media interacted with the other variables so that when the communication disagreed with the audience, television was the most persuasive medium with the newscaster but the least persuasive with the untrusted candidate. There was no effect for media when the message agreed with the audience. Further, the candidate taking a position congruent with the audience's was rated as more attractive but less trustworthy than a candidate taking the opposite position. It was suggested that television may be the most involving medium and that either a counterargument theory or reactance theory could explain why it was not effective with the candidate.     

Al-Ghazali’s Position on the ‘Second Proof’ of the ‘Philosophers’ for the Eternity of the World,in the First Discussion of the Incoherence of the Philosophers

In the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) raised objections against the doctrine of the ‘philosophers’ (represented chiefly by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina) on 20 specific points. In the first, and longest discussion, he examines and rebuts four of their proofs of the pre-eternity of the world—that is, that the universe as a whole had no beginning but extends perpetually into the past. Al-Ghazali rejects that doctrine. But his own position on the issue does not become clear until he discusses the philosophers’ ‘second proof.’ In this paper, I will examine the relevant text of the Incoherence of the Philosophers, in order to clarify the nature of Al-Ghazali’s position in relation to the second proof. I will explain why Al-Ghazali cannot adopt what I refer to as the ‘naïve’ theological position, according to which God temporally preceded the world. Instead, Al-Ghazali concurs with the philosophers that time is the measure of motion, but he asserts that time was created with the world, both having a beginning before which there was no time. God, on the other hand, is not temporally prior to the world, but neither is he simultaneous, as the second proof supposes. As timelessly eternal, God bears no temporal relation to the world at all. In conclusion, I describe what I refer to as a naïve philosophical position, which is entailed by the second proof, but distinct from both Al-Ghazali’s position and that adopted by Ibn Rushd in his critique of Al-Ghazali in the Incoherence of the Incoherence. I argue that this naïve philosophical position (and thus, the second proof) is incoherent.     

What's the difference? Insider perspectives on the importance,content, and meaning of interpersonal differences

This study presents a new approach to examine how team members experience interpersonal differences. This approach offers a way to examine how team members experience their differences with specific other individuals, and how these differences are related to the amount of perceived conflict with these individuals in an organizational context. Data from a non‐profit governmental institution in The Netherlands were analysed, including 80 participants from 15 diverse teams. Five types of differences were salient to the individuals in this sample: differences related to extraversion; work pose; approach to work; task‐related expertise; and seniority. Furthermore, individuals tend to contrast positive and negative evaluations of differences related to extraversion and approaches to work, but to conceptualize positive and negative evaluations of task‐related expertise, seniority, and work pose as more mutually independent phenomena. Moreover, we found that differences related to task‐related expertise were negatively related to both task and relationship conflict. In contrast, differences related to extraversion were positively related to both task and relationship conflict. Finally, the approach‐to‐work cluster was positively related to only task conflict.     

The closer the relationship, the more the interaction on facebook? Investigating the case of Taiwan users

This study argues for the necessity of applying offline contexts to social networking site research and the importance of distinguishing the relationship types of users' counterparts when studying Facebook users' behaviors. In an attempt to examine the relationship among users' behaviors, their counterparts' relationship types, and the users' perceived acquaintanceships after using Facebook, this study first investigated users' frequently used tools when interacting with different types of friends. Users tended to use less time- and effort-consuming and less privacy-concerned tools with newly acquired friends. This study further examined users' behaviors in terms of their closeness and intimacy and their perceived acquaintanceships toward four different types of friends. The study found that users gained more perceived acquaintanceships from less close friends with whom users have more frequent interaction but less intimate behaviors. As for closer friends, users tended to use more intimate activities to interact with them. However, these activities did not necessarily occur more frequently than the activities they employed with their less close friends. It was found that perceived acquaintanceships with closer friends were significantly lower than those with less close friends. This implies that Facebook is a mechanism for new friends, rather than close friends, to become more acquainted.     

Effects of the KiVa Anti-bullying Program on Adolescents’ Depression, Anxiety, and Perception of Peers

The present study investigated the effects of the KiVa antibullying program on students’ anxiety, depression, and perception of peers in Grades 4–6. Furthermore, it was investigated whether reductions in peer-reported victimization predicted changes in these outcome variables. The study participants included 7,741 students from 78 schools who were randomly assigned to either intervention or control condition, and the program effects were tested with structural equation modeling. A cross-lagged panel model suggested that the KiVa program is effective for reducing students’ internalizing problems and improving their peer-group perceptions. Finally, changes in anxiety, depression, and positive peer perceptions were found to be predicted by reductions in victimization. Implications of the findings and future directions for research are discussed.     

Parallel,additional or alternative histories of philosophy? Questions on the theory and methodology of the history of philosophy

ABSTRACT

Methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy are particularly relevant today due to the abounding challenges to the discipline that have emerged: e.g. the problem concerning the precise mode of the inclusion of non-Western philosophies in the history of philosophy, the response to postcolonial considerations at large, the transformative impact of new media and the question whether the history of philosophy is primarily a philosophical, rather than merely historical, enterprise. À propos the relative scarcity that is to be witnessed in explicit articulations of methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy, in this note I focus on certain spontaneous, rather than theoretically planned, responses that have emerged to the above challenges – in particular, Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps – and in conclusion, as an example of methodological development, I touch on some of the problems we encounter in the case of the inclusion of Byzantine philosophy in the history of philosophy.     

Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception

ABSTRACT— Current theories of emotion perception posit that basic facial expressions signal categorically discrete emotions or affective dimensions of valence and arousal. In both cases, the information is thought to be directly "read out" from the face in a way that is largely immune to context. In contrast, the three studies reported here demonstrated that identical facial configurations convey strikingly different emotions and dimensional values depending on the affective context in which they are embedded. This effect is modulated by the similarity between the target facial expression and the facial expression typically associated with the context. Moreover, by monitoring eye movements, we demonstrated that characteristic fixation patterns previously thought to be determined solely by the facial expression are systematically modulated by emotional context already at very early stages of visual processing, even by the first time the face is fixated. Our results indicate that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context at early perceptual levels.     

Topics on the bordergrounds of action∗

The psychological conceptualization of phenomena involves characteristic explanations of animal movement. Conscientious attention to this fact results in a kind of behaviorism I call ‘conceptual epiphenomenalism’. This doctrine at once explains the characteristic ‘opacity’ of psychological predicables and helps to show the way around difficulties opacity is felt to create, and it also frees our thinking from the tyranny of the distinction between necessity and contingency, too often misapplied to facts rather than to things said or thought. An important challenge to conceptual epiphenomenalism is to account for the facts of introspective certainty and privileged testimony. This challenge can be met by identifying the nature of and displaying the behavioral conditions for the various grades of self‐consciousness or reflective knowledge. The methodology of conceptual epiphenomenalism is schematically applied to elucidate first the general conception of animal action and then a variety of phenomena plausibly thought to be exponible by reference to the conception of action, specifically the broader category of animal behavior, intention, and hoping and wishing.     

Satiation or availability? Effects of attention,memory, and imagery on the perception of ambiguous figures

The prolonged-inspection technique has been used to demonstrate effects of satiation on the perception of ambiguous figures. We propose that the inspection phase, in which subjects view an unambiguous version of the stimulus prior to observing the ambiguous figure, does not create neural fatigue but rather provides a context in which the alternative percept is apprehended and gains perceptual strength through processes such as imagination or memory. The consequent availability of the alternative organization drives the perceptual phenomena that have been thought to reflect satiation. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that (1) preexperimental exposure to the target figures and (2) allocation of attention to the-inspection figures-were both necessary in order to obtain results similar to those predicted by the satiation model. In Experiment 2, we obtained similar results, finding that effects of prior inspection were greater the greater the amount and availability of information regarding the alternative percept during the inspection phase. Subjects who generated visual images of the noninspected alternative during inspection yielded results comparable to those from subjects to whom both versions were presented isuaily.     

Influence of contractibility on the acquisition ofBe: Substantial,meager, or unknown?

Data from longitudinal and cross-sectional samples are reported in regard to Brown's (1973) hypothesis that uncontractiblebe is an earlier acquisition than contractiblebe. It is concluded that this may not be so and that the discrepancy in the literature between Brown's findings and those of the Villiers and de Villiers (1973) is probably due to sampling variables. Problems with scoring speech samples in regard to the distinction between contractiblebe and uncontractiblebe are also discussed, as are the implications of these problems.This article is based on a part of the author's Ph.D. dissertation done at the University of Minnesota under the guidance of Michael Maratsos.     

Mirror,mirror on the wall,which form of narcissist knows self and others best of all?

We examined the relationships of narcissism and its various facets with measures of cognition, such as perspective-taking/theory of mind, emotional intelligence, empathy, and systemizing, in a non-clinical sample of 368 undergraduate students. Social and physical causal reasoning was assessed using a novel procedure, which allowed for a thorough examination of participants’ attributions of causes to social and non-social events. Results revealed that individuals high in grandiosity scored higher on measures of social reasoning, emotional intelligence, perspective-taking, systemizing, and empathy. Other facets of narcissism, as well as the overall construct of narcissism, were negatively associated with emotional intelligence, empathy, and perspective-taking. These results suggest that the facets of narcissism may differ considerably in their associations with various aspects of social cognition, which should prompt researchers to further examine the heterogeneous nature of narcissism.     

The Perspective of Psychosomatic Medicine on the Effect of Religion on the Mind–Body Relationship in Japan

Shintoism, Buddhism, and Qi, which advocate the unity of mind and body, have contributed to the Japanese philosophy of life. The practice of psychosomatic medicine emphasizes the connection between mind and body and combines the psychotherapies (directed at the mind) and relaxation techniques (directed at the body), to achieve stress management. Participation in religious activities such as preaching, praying, meditating, and practicing Zen can also elicit relaxation responses. Thus, it is time for traditional religions to play an active role in helping those seeking psychological stability after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the ongoing crisis related to the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, to maintain a healthy mind–body relationship.     

The sacred,the holy,the numinous – and religion: on the emergence and early history of a terminological constellation

ABSTRACT

At the turn of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, the sacred (Durkheim, Mauss, Callois), holiness/the holy (Söderblom, Otto) and the numinous (Otto) emerged as key terms in the nascent field of religious studies. These terms set up a discursive space for the study of religion that acknowledged its reality and relevance for modern societies and individuals, but that proceeded independent of confessional theologies and sought to transcend Western-Christian ethnocentrism. By providing a close reading of the works of the above-mentioned scholars, in particular Durkheim, this article revisits the emergence of these terms. In particular, it looks at the different ways in which the sacred, the holy and the numinous were related to religion. The article discusses some differences between the scholars of the sacred and the scholars of the holy in terms of their agendas, aims, and preconditions.