Hans Penner, Horatio and the Terminator: a review essay of Radical Interpretation in Religion

Adaptations of Donald Davidson’s meta-methodology of “radical interpretation” by Hans Penner and colleagues create more problems than they solve. Penner’s affirmation of both holistic and naturalistic approaches to the study of religion ring true. But, making the inclusion of ‘superhuman beings’—those “that do things you and I cannot do”—sufficient to the definition of religion. It is alternately counterfactual (Theravada, Chan or Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Jainism and others), or not restrictive enough (does every such being qualify? viz. Schwarzenegger’s Terminator?), or logically ‘uninteresting’—is reference to superhuman beings alone what makes a discourse religious, or is it their being ‘worshipful’?     

Liberalism, the First Amendment and Religious Studies: a review of Stanley Fish's The Trouble With Principle

In The Trouble with Principle Stanley Fish argues that (1) there are no neutral principles; (2) that liberalism is intolerant, anti-religious and amoral; (3) that only politics, ideology and rhetoric ‘exist’ and that in politics and rhetoric, as in war, ‘anything goes’; (4) that the principles embodied in the First Amendment stand in the way of political responsibility; and (5) that religion, the primary victim of liberalism, should reassert itself in the public sphere and in academe by putting on the full armour of rhetoric and politics. Although in his book Fish distinguishes between professional experts and true believers, he recently has given up this distinction and instead advocates the creation of departments of religious studies staffed by ‘true believers’. Disagreeing with all of these positions, the reviewer argues that Fish's antifoundational attack on liberalism and advocacy of a neo-foundational fideism bespeak a singular lack of political wisdom.     

Approaches to the study of media and religion: Notes from the Editors of the Journal of Media and Religion with recommendations for future research

As the Journal of Media and Religion (JMR) begins its seventh year, the editors pause to reflect on research directions and make recommendations for future research. Based on studies in JMR and other sources, three research approaches are identified: (1) The Proliferation of Mediated Religion, or the idea that media are creating multiple places of worship beyond the physical walls of traditional congregations, (2) Religious Audiences as Interpretive Communities, where shared interpretations of popular media content are increasingly important in understanding religious groups, and (3) Media Criticism drawing on the cultural aspects of religion in critiquing media genres and texts.A dominant theme across the three approaches is that individuals are increasingly willing to have religious experiences through media of popular culture. The numinous is recommended as an integrative concept to facilitate research of new forms of mediated religion.     

The Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis: A critical examination of the comprehensive case presented in Kanazawa's The Intelligence Paradox

Kanazawa (2012b) has recently presented the most comprehensive case yet for his Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, intelligence is a domain-specific adaptation which has been selected for as humans have moved away from the (evolutionarily familiar) Savanna. As such, ability in ‘evolutionarily novel’ tasks and ‘evolutionarily novel’ preferences are positively correlated with high IQ. This article will present a critical examination of the hypothesis, arguing that there is a strong case against anchoring human nature on the Savanna, the hypothesis predicts contradictory findings, there is empirical evidence against it, it is not falsifiable, and it is not necessary to explain that data which Kanazawa presents.     

Knowing what, where, and when: Event comprehension in language processing

We investigated the retrieval of location information, and the deployment of attention to these locations, following (described) event-related location changes. In two visual world experiments, listeners viewed arrays with containers like a bowl, jar, pan, and jug, while hearing sentences like “The boy will pour the sweetcorn from the bowl into the jar, and he will pour the gravy from the pan into the jug. And then, he will taste the sweetcorn”. At the discourse-final “sweetcorn”, listeners fixated context-relevant “Target” containers most (jar). Crucially, we also observed two forms of competition: listeners fixated containers that were not directly referred to but associated with “sweetcorn” (bowl), and containers that played the same role as Targets (goals of moving events; jug), more than distractors (pan). These results suggest that event-related location changes are encoded across representations that compete for comprehenders’ attention, such that listeners retrieve, and fixate, locations that are not referred to in the unfolding language, but related to them via object or role information.     

The Study of Values: Construction of the fourth edition

Some forty years after its initial publication, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values (SOV) was the third most cited non-projective measure of personality in the field of psychology. However, by the early 1980s the measure had fallen into disuse, in large part—we argue—due to its increasingly archaic content, lack of religious inclusiveness, and dated language. We describe the development of an updated version of the SOV that incorporates modifications to 15 out of the 45 original items. One hundred and seventy-nine students completed both the original and updated versions (counter-balanced for order). Psychometric properties of the updated and original scales were comparable and acceptable. Rationales for use of the updated version in research and practice are advanced.     

The Flynn effect,group differences,and g loadings

Flynn effect gains are predominantly driven by environmental factors. Might these factors also be responsible for group differences in intelligence? Group differences in intelligence have been clearly shown to strongly correlate with g loadings. The empirical studies on whether the pattern of Flynn effect gains is the same as the pattern of group differences yield conflicting findings. We present new evidence on the topic using a number of datasets from the US and the Netherlands. Score gains and g loadings showed a small negative average correlation. The general picture is now that there is a small, negative correlation between g loadings and Flynn effect gains. It appears that the Flynn effect and group differences have different causes.     

Daniel A. Dombrowski,Analytic Theism,Hartshorne, and the Concept of God

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

A kinematic approach to the conceptual representations of this and that

The Italian demonstrative pronouns questo/a (‘this_[mas/fem]’) and quello/a (‘that_[mas/fem]’) implicitly convey information about objects’ distance with respect to the speaker. Our study investigated the referents of questo/a (‘this_[mas/fem]’) and quello/a (‘that_[mas/fem]’) by analysing their influence on reach-to-grasp actions towards objects located near to (12 cm) or far from (30 cm) the participant. Upon acoustic instruction containing one or the other pronoun, participants had to reach for and grasp a target object. Results showed an effect of pronoun on movement planning. When the object was in the far position, reaction times were faster for the congruent pronoun quello/a, whereas when it was in the near position they were faster for the congruent pronoun questo/a. Interactions between implied and real target distance suggest that the conceptual spaces of questo/a and quello/a do not map onto a strict distinction between peripersonal and extrapersonal space.     

Causes of young children's confusion of same and different

Three experiments are reported that explore 3-year-olds' and adults' understanding of the words, same and different. In the first, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same color as” or “a different color from” a target bead. In the second, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same in some way as” or “different in some way from” a target bead. Contrary to results reported previously, the majority of consistent responders chose a bead identical with the target in response to the different instruction in both experiments. The rates of both incorrect different responding and incorrect same responding were greater in Experiment II than in Experiment I. In Experiment III, adults chose objects that were “the same as” or “different from” a target; unlike the children, they never chose a target-identical object in response to different instructions. It is argued that children and adults treat same and different differently, and that children's task performance is influenced by three factors: semantic, pragmatic, and nonlinguistic.     

新修订《安徽省宗教事务条例》 着力解决宗教领域新情况新问题

2019年12月21日,安徽省第十三届人大常委会第十四次会议通过了修订后的《安徽省宗教事务条例》(以下简称《条例》),自2020年3月1日起施行。关于《条例》修订背景,一是贯彻中央宗教工作决策部署的重要举措。2016年,党中央、国务院召开全国宗教工作会议,习近平总书记发表重要讲话,从党和国家事业发展全局的高度,提出了许多新思想新观点新要求,为做好新形势下宗教工作提供了根本遵循。安徽省委也就加强新形势下我省宗教工作作出了重要部署。