PRIMATES AND RELIGION: A BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST'S RESPONSE TO J. WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN'S ALONE IN THE WORLD?

For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change.     

WHOM TO BLAME FOR THE CHARGE OF SECULARIZATION?

Abstract. In the last century science and technology have been viewed as guilty of contributing to the modern secularization process and also to a crisis in religion. The extent of this influence is less clear today: while technology is stronger, and an easy target for any kind of social and cultural criticism, science seems weaker than it used to. The aim of this commentary is to examine in a critical way the arguments for and against scientific and technological involvement in the crisis religion faces today. In the end, a revision of the future of religion is called into question, especially in the light of a more “technological theology.”     

INTERNISTS OF THE MIND OR PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUL: DOES PSYCHIATRY NEED A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY?

Although psychiatry is interested in what both body and mind contribute to behavior, it sometimes emphasizes one more than the other. Since the early 1980s, American psychiatry has shifted its interest from mind and psyche to body and brain. Neuroscience and psychopharmacology are increasingly at the core of psychiatry. Some experts claim that psychiatry is no longer interested in problems in living and positive goals such as mental health, happiness, and morality but rather has narrowed its focus to mental disorders addressed with psychotropic drugs. In view of this trend, psychiatry needs to confront two questions in social philosophy. If it is no longer directly concerned with health and happiness, how does it relate to these positive goals? And how does it relate as a medical institution to religious institutions, schools, and other organizations that directly promote health, happiness, morality, and the purposes of life? It is not enough for psychiatry to renounce its moral role; its practices still shape cultural values. Psychiatry should take more responsibility for developing a public philosophy that addresses these issues.     

HOW SHOULD THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION BE WRITTEN? SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE DISCIPLINE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THERECEPTION OF OUR WORK

How should history of education be written? To put the question is far more easier than to provide a concrete answer. In contemporary research, there continue to be pedagogistic complaints about finding answers to present-day educational problems via history. In our view, such an ahistorical utilitarianism as well as the legitimizing and/or mythologizing belief in a particular pedagogical system, in which the history of this field is so rich since the institutionalization of the discipline at the end of the nineteenth century, should be avoided at all costs. But the danger of presentism lurks around the corner as a sine qua non condition in any form of historical research. As can be found out via the comments on our own work, much of the criticism goes back to old conceptions of the discipline, conceived as “historical pedagogy” rather than as history of education. Apparently, in the field of pedagogy people are still convinced that the history of education, even if it does not provide edifying examples and useful lessons, must in any case have a training value for professionals – which in the light of modern, advanced research is rather a difficult idea to defend.     

MATTERING AND MECHANISM: MUST A MECHANISTIC UNIVERSE BE DEPRESSING?

There is an intuition to the effect that, if human actions are explicable in scientific terms – that is, if mechanism holds – then our lives and actions do not matter. “Mattering” depends on successful intentional explanations of human actions. The intuition springs from an intuitive analogy between manipulation and mechanism: just as a manipulated agent's actions are not successfully explained in intentional terms, neither are the actions of a mechanistic agent. I explore ways to avoid the conclusion of this argument. Some of these ways are more promising than others, but all have non‐trivial philosophical consequences.     

A ROLE FOR NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT OF RESPONSE OMISSION IN PUNISHMENT?

This experiment attempted to disentangle response-rate reductions controlled by the direct suppressive effects of a punisher from those due to negative reinforcement of response omission. Key-peck responding of pigeons was maintained by a conjoint variable-interval 3-min schedule of food presentation variable-interval 30-s schedule of response-dependent electric shock presentation. Omission of responses for 5, 10, or 30 s resulted in the possibility of canceling a scheduled shock. Response rates were a function of required pause duration, with lower rates occurring when longer periods of response omission were required for shock cancellation. These results show that, with several parameters of punishment held constant, response rates were controlled by the negative reinforcement contingency. Such a finding argues for renewed consideration of the role of negative reinforcement in punishment contingencies.     

DOES EFFORT PLAY A ROLE IN THE EFFECT OF RESPONSE REQUIREMENTS ON DELAYED MATCHING TO SAMPLE?

The possible role of "effort" in the accuracy of pigeons' performance on a delayed matching-to-sample procedure was investigated by examining the effects of response requirements that accompanied a trial-initiating stimulus and that accompanied a sample stimulus. In the first experiment, the effect of varying the size of a fixed-ratio requirement for responses during an initiating stimulus was compared to that of varying a similar requirement for responses during the sample stimulus. Accuracy increased reliably with increases in the ratio scheduled during the sample stimulus, but was not significantly affected by increases in the ratio scheduled on the key during the initiating stimulus. In another phase of Experiment 1, sample duration was held constant while the ratio requirement was varied during the initiating stimulus. Again, accuracy of matching to sample was not significantly affected by the size of the ratio scheduled during the initiating stimulus. Experiment 2 provided a systematic replication of these results in another group of pigeons and included a more detailed analysis of responding. These results support the view that increases in sample-response requirement facilitate accuracy of delayed matching by increasing the durations of exposure to the sample stimuli, and do not support a role of effort in the sample-response effect. In Experiment 3, the facilitative effect of responses on the sample but not of those on the initiating stimulus was replicated using a simultaneous matching-to-sample procedure. This finding provides further evidence against an interpretation of response-requirement effects that appeals to effort; the finding also suggests that sample exposure might affect initial discrimination of the sample rather than remembering the sample.     

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL? A CASE STUDY IN THE EVOLUTION OF LATE MEDIEVAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

This paper aims at a partial rehabilitation of E. A. Moody's characterization of the 14th century as an age of rising empiricism, specifically by contrasting the conception of the natural science of psychology found in the writings of a prominent 13th-century philosopher (Thomas Aquinas) with those of two 14th-century philosophers (John Buridan and Nicole Oresme). What emerges is that if the meaning of empiricism can be disengaged from modern and contemporary paradigms, and understood more broadly in terms of a cluster of epistemic doctrines concerned with the methodology of knowing, it characterizes very appropriately some of the differences between the ways in which late-medieval thinkers both understood and practised the science of psychology. In particular, whereas Aquinas thinks psychology is about reasoning demonstratively to the real nature of the soul from its evident operations (thereby assimilating psychology to metaphysics), Buridan and Oresme, both of whom doubt whether real animate natures can be known empirically, focus on giving detailed accounts of those operations themselves (thereby assimilating psychology to physics).     

HOW RADICALLY CAN GOD BE RECONCEIVED BEFORE CEASING TO BE GOD? THE FOUR FACES OF PANENTHEISM

Panentheism has often been put forward as a means for bringing theology and science into dialogue, perhaps even resolving some of the major tensions between them. A variety of “faces” of panentheism are distinguished, including conservative, metaphysical, apophatic, and naturalist panentheisms. This series of increasingly radical panentheisms is explored, each one bringing its own core commitments, and each describing very different relationships between religion and science. We consider, for example, the diverse ways that the radical panentheisms construe emergent phenomena in the natural world. In the end, comparing the increasingly radical forms of panentheism yields a new understanding of the state of the religion/science dialogue today.     

“FROM THE UTTER DEPTH OF DEGRADATION TO THE APOGEE OF BLISS”: THE GENDERINGS OF DIASPORIC ZIONISM AND JEWISH HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

This article examines some of the memories of the Holocaust produced in Holocaust education in a selection of Jewish high schools in Melbourne and New York at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is being suggested here that the narratives about the Holocaust being taught in these schools are in part shaped by a gendered Zionist outlook. This article takes up the question of why this is, and in doing so provides an explanation of these types of narratives. In particular, this article explores the ways that this pedagogy places the story of the creation of the sovereign Jewish State of Israel at the end of a unit of study on the Holocaust, thus linking these two “events” in an important way. This article also explores what it is that makes these narratives gendered, and what work such narratives, and collective memories, do in the formulation of particular notions of diasporic Zionist thinking.     

ARE SCIENCE AND HUMANISM SUITED TO ENTER THE ANCIENT QUEST OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY? A RESPONSE TO LLUÍS OVIEDO

This response reverses the title of Lluís Oviedo's essay (2006) while retaining the structure. In the pendulum swing between science and humanism, theology finds its uniqueness not in refuting either but in subverting them: subverting the scientific quest for certainty without denying its pursuit, and subverting the humanist quest for the unique dignity of the human by reducing it to the most despoiled creature, yet finding in it the presence of the divine. Theological pursuit is about reason and its limits, about brokenness and glory in it. Yet the engagement is unavoidable, for without the scientific pursuit of certainty, incompleteness could never be established; without the humanist search for the uniqueness of the human, its admixed and impure character would not be recognized. The concept of hybridity tries to convey that and is presented in three instantiations: the conflation of the human with machine (cyborg), of humans and other animals (oncomouse), and of the human and the divine. Following these ontological cases of hybridity, at the epistemological level theology becomes hybrid “science” in search of the mythos in the midst of logos, and conversely it is hybrid humanism, for it locates God in the greatest depravity of mammalian existence.     

THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION: IMPLICATIONS FOR THEISM?

Abstract. Although the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), a current approach to the scientific study of religion, has exerted an influence in the study of religion for almost twenty years, the question of its compatibility or incompatibility with theism has not been the subject of serious discussion until recently. Some critics of religion have taken a lively interest in the CSR because they see it as useful in explaining why religious believers consistently make costly commitments to false beliefs. Conversely, some theists have argued for the compatibility of religious belief with basic CSR results. In this article, we contribute to the incipient discussion about the worldview relevance of the CSR by arguing that while a theistic reading of the field only represents one interpretative option at most, antitheistic claims about the incompatibility of the CSR with theism look like they may be harder to maintain than first appearances might suggest.     

DOES SLEEPTIGHT WORK? A BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SLEEPTIGHT FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF INFANT COLIC

We evaluated the effectiveness of SleepTight in the management of infant colic. SleepTight is a device that vibrates the infant's crib to simulate the action of a car traveling at 55 mph. A multiple baseline design across 6 infants was used. Data were collected on infant crying, parental use of SleepTight, and parental satisfaction. The application of SleepTight was associated with reduction in crying in 4 of the 6 infants. These outcome data notwithstanding, consideration of reported nonrecording of severe episodes and mixed reports of satisfaction suggests that SleepTight may not be a viable means of managing infant colic.