What is a Natural Conception of the World?

Continental philosophers such as Heidegger and Nicolai Hartmann and analytic philosophers such as Ryle, Strawson, and Jennifer Hornsby may be interpreted as using competing intellectual strategies within the framework of one and the same research programme, the programme of developing a natural conception of the world. They all argue that the Manifest Image of the world (to use Sellars's terminology) is compatible with, or even more fundamental than, the Scientific Image. A comparative examination of these strategies shows that Hartmann's strategy of stratification is superior to those of Heidegger, Ryle, and Strawson.     

What is a writing group? Dilemmas of the leader

A writing group can serve to reinforce literary and therapeutic goals. The model outlined here assumes a leader with literary and clinical training, including expertise in group dynamics. The group format is adapted to support exploration of the writer's main problem, the absence of the reader at the moment of writing. The group modifies the writer's "mythical" reader through member interactions with writer and writing. Giving and receiving feedback are central to the group process. The leader's dilemma in a bifocal form like this is to know when and how far to interpret group members' psychological issues. The best rule is to interpret "toward" the group (i.e., to bring up material that can be safely and readily processed there), but to be cautious about interpretation of patterns of early character formation.     

What is a Seminar? Two Views of the Same Course

This article presents a methodology for a feminist theology of education based on reflection of women's educational experience in light of historical and contemporary theological works, especially the writing of Julian of Norwich. It argues for hospitality as a metaphor for theological education and suggests an understanding of the student, teacher, and environment of education that can create hospitality in the classroom.     

What is the probability of replicating a statistically significant effect?

If an initial experiment produces a statistically significant effect, what is the probability that this effect will be replicated in a follow-up experiment? I argue that this seemingly fundamental question can be interpreted in two very different ways and that its answer is, in practice, virtually unknowable under either interpretation. Although the data from an initial experiment can be used to estimate one type of replication probability, this estimate will rarely be precise enough to be of any use. The other type of replication probability is also unknowable, because it depends on unknown aspects of the research context. Thus, although it would be nice to know the probability of replicating a significant effect, researchers must accept the fact that they generally cannot determine this information, whichever type of replication probability they seek.     

What is the “front” of a simple geometric form?

A total of 670 undergraduate Ss were tested in three studies conducted in an attempt to define a set of cues that minimally specify perceived “frontness” and “backness” of objects. In Experiment I, Ss were instructed to identify the “front” and “back” of printed squares to which no, one, or two circles were attached. In Experiment II, different Ss made the same kind of judgment to a wider range of geometric forms. In Experiment III, different Ss judged the direction of “imagined” movement of forms from Experiment I. The results indicated that the “front” and “back” are asymmetric opposite sides, with “front” the side most different from the rest and the side toward which the form is imagined to be moving.     

What is the prevalence of adult ADHD? Results of a population screen of 966 adults

To provide a better estimate of the prevalence of ADHD in adulthood, the authors complete a telephone survey of 966 randomly selected adults. They compute two diagnoses from the survey data. Participants meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) criteria for both childhood and adulthood are defined as narrow ADHD. Broad ADHD adds to that definition those meeting subthreshold criteria. Cronbach's alpha is .90 for the 18 DSM-IV symptoms in childhood and .88 when rated for current symptoms in adulthood. No one item unduly influences the reliability of the total score. The authors find similar results in separate analyses of hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive symptoms. They estimate prevalences of 2.9% for Narrow ADHD and 16.4% for Broad ADHD. Having ADHD is associated with lower levels of education and employment status. These findings suggest that adult ADHD is a common disorder associated with impaired functioning.     

What is learning? On the nature and merits of a functional definition of learning

Learning has been defined functionally as changes in behavior that result from experience or mechanistically as changes in the organism that result from experience. Both types of definitions are problematic. We define learning as ontogenetic adaptation—that is, as changes in the behavior of an organism that result from regularities in the environment of the organism. This functional definition not only solves the problems of other definitions, but also has important advantages for cognitive learning research.     

What is the Meaning of Greening? Cultural Analysis of a Southern Baptist Environmental Text

Scholars and journalists alike interpreted “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change”, a document released in 2008 by a group of American Southern Baptists, as evidence that American evangelicals were becoming increasingly concerned about the environment. Using the tools of textual analysis, I show that this was not the only interpretation of the document at play. While journalists and scholars understood the Declaration as addressing the need to halt climate change, for a group of key Southern Baptist signatories, the document expressed a need for Southern Baptists to engage more actively in the public environmental discourse, lest they relinquish this domain to secular and liberal voices. Critically, the latter group viewed the Declaration as compatible with climate scepticism. My analysis shows how cultural context informs climate change attitudes, while also suggesting socio-historical factors—particularly evangelicals’ embattled mentality—that may support climate change scepticism in Southern Baptist circles.     

When is the infrahumanization to a threatening outgroup higher? Effects of the ambiguity of situation and the empathy with ingroup

Infrahumanization researchs have shown that people attribute their ingroup exclusively human features, for example, the ability to experience secondary emotions. This bias lead people to deny this ability to outgroup and, consequently, to infrahumanize them. However, it would have conditions in which the infrahumanization is intensified. The aim of this study is to determine if there are characteristics in a threatening situation that influence in the level in which ingroup infrahumanize the outgroup. Two histories were constructed; in them, the outgroup committed a violent action against the ingroup, and as the degree of certainty about the perpetration, so the level of empathy with the victim were manipulated. The results show that when there are empathy with the victim and ambiguity about the perpetration, the infrahumanization to outgroup is higher.     

What is the Good/ Good of the FORM of the GOOD?

‘Good’ is nothing specific but is transcendentally or generally applied over specific, and specified, ‘categories’. These ‘categories’ may be seen—at least for the purposes of this note—as under Platonic Forms. The rule that instances under a category or form need a Form to be under is valid. It may be tautological: but this is OK for rules. Not being specific, however, ‘good’ neither needs nor can have a specifying Form. So, on these grounds, the Form of the Good is otious. Any rule of the kind, ‘Everything needs a Form, so good needs a Form of the Good’ is mistaken, in that good is not a kind, but a transcendental. To give a Form to the transcendental ‘good’ is a mistake: it is a Rylian category mistake. And the Form of the Good either does no work, or works unprofitably in any but an aesthetic sense.     

`Funda-Mentality': is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe?

Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant `physicalists' who view consciousness as an emergent property of the brain's neural networks. On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, `funda-mentalists'). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's `objective reduction' (OR), a self-organizing `collapse' of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of space-time geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff model of `orchestrated objective reduction' (Orch OR), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons. The basic thesis is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.     

Who is a homosexual? A critique of the heterosexual‐homosexual dimension

Abstract

The heterosexual‐homosexual distinction as a construction inhibits appreciation of the diversity of sexual experience by encouraging use of static labels to classify people's continually evolving sexual histories. Distinguishing sexual preference may expedite comprehension of sexual acts, but is counterproductive when considering whole persons. We question the need for biological explanations of homosexuality and propose that “coming out” as homosexual is a personal choice to be celebrated, not a biological abnormality. We perceive sexuality as merely one aspect of per‐sonhood. When people instead see self‐proclaimed homosexuals as “homosexuals and only homosexuals” sexual behavior overshadows other salient individual characteristics, and sexual desire becomes inseparable from personality style.     

Visual adaptation of the perception of “life”: Animacy is a basic perceptual dimension of faces

One critical component of understanding another’s mind is the perception of “life” in a face. However, little is known about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this perception of animacy. Here, using a visual adaptation paradigm, we ask whether face animacy is (1) a basic dimension of face perception and (2) supported by a common neural mechanism across distinct face categories defined by age and species. Observers rated the perceived animacy of adult human faces before and after adaptation to (1) adult faces, (2) child faces, and (3) dog faces. When testing the perception of animacy in human faces, we found significant adaptation to both adult and child faces, but not dog faces. We did, however, find significant adaptation when morphed dog images and dog adaptors were used. Thus, animacy perception in faces appears to be a basic dimension of face perception that is species specific but not constrained by age categories.     

What is the point of helping?

Philosophical Studies - In some cases, a group of people can bring about a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference with respect to bringing that outcome...     

What is the upper part of the lattice of bimodal logics?

We define an embedding from the lattice of extensions ofT into the lattice of extensions of the bimodal logic with two monomodal operators ₁ and ₂, whose ₂-fragment isS5 and ₁-fragment is the logic of a two-element chain. This embedding reflects the fmp, decidability, completenes and compactness. It follows that the lattice of extension of a bimodal logic can be rather complicated even if the monomodal fragments of the logic belong to the upper part of the lattice of monomodal logics.Presented byWolfgang Rautenberg