亡羊补牢与未雨绸缪

《科学与无神论》杂志从试刊到现在,整整十年了。这是一本十分独特的杂志。其独特之处不仅在于它在全国期刊之林中是唯一专门宣传无神论的杂志,也不仅在于它长期申请、一朝成功的独特经历,而在于它是一个亡羊补牢的产物。是在“法轮功”坐大成势严重威胁社会安定和国家安全的情况下,使无神论宣传的重要性和迫切性一下子凸显出来,于是上下重视,使杂志在极短的时间内创办起来,并且出了试刊号。     

Output monitoring tests reveal false memories of memories that never existed

Three experiments were conducted to assess participants' beliefs about potential false memories that might have occurred during free recall tests. An input-output monitoring test was administered that required participants to discriminate between items that were studied and recalled, studied and not recalled, or were entirely new. Critical lures from Roediger and McDermott's (1995) paradigm were inserted into this test. The results demonstrated that participants believed erroneously recalled items were both studied and recalled. The intriguing finding was that unrecalled items were believed to have been studied approximately 80% of the time, and half of those were also believed to have been recalled. This result represents a dual false memory effect in which items were believed to have been studied and also to have been recalled. The ramifications of this new procedure are discussed in terms of proposed experiments that might clarify the genesis of these false memories.     

Reading and visual memory: remembering scenes that were never seen.

In Experiment 1 (N = 16), under conditions of high memory load (60 pictures and 50 paragraphs) and a 1-week retention interval, undergraduate subjects reported their memory for photographs of scenes (cued recall and free-recall tasks). Subjects frequently reported memory for photographs that they had actually never seen, but had read about in a brief paragraph. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), the same pattern of results was obtained with immediate testing. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that the likelihood of subjects falsely attributing scene memory (based on reading) to actually having viewed a photograph was reduced when metacognitive awareness of imaging during reading was made salient. Awareness of image creation was induced by requiring subjects to rate the paragraphs with respect to imagery vividness. Although other measures of memory remained the same, subjects in the induced-imagery condition made 50% fewer confusion errors than subjects who read the paragraphs without imagery instructions. The results are discussed in the context of Johnson and Raye's (1981) reality monitoring model.     

Remembering things that never occurred: the effects of to-be-forgotten stereotypical information

Participants, 68 female and male nonpsychology university students, studied stereotypical and nonstereotypical words either with an initially activated social category (immigrant prime) or with no social category (neutral prime). They were then instructed to either forget or remember the studied words. This was followed by a recognition test. Based on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm and stereotype-accessibility research, we anticipated that the participants in the immigrant, but not in the neutral, prime condition would falsely recognize more nonstudied stereotypic attributes under a forget than a remember instruction. The results supported our hypothesis. Implications of the outcome for eyewitness testimony, juridical decision-making, and stereotype maintenance are discussed.     

Never say never

I. An argument is presented for the conclusion that the hypothesis that no one will ever decide a given proposition is intuitionistically inconsistent. II. A distinction between sentences and statements blocks a similar argument for the stronger conclusion that the hypothesis that I have not yet decided a given proposition is intuitionistically inconsistent, but does not block the original argument. III. A distinction between empirical and mathematical negation might block the original argument, and empirical negation might be modelled on Nelson's strong negation, but only on intuitionistically unacceptable assumptions. IV. Intuitionists may have to accept the original argument, and therefore be committed to a dubious view of time on which there cannot be merely inductive evidence for statements about the infinite future.     

爱是永不止息

“不知道前面的路还有多远,不知道多少艰难和危险……”但我们相信——有关河北省赵县希望儿童之家的报道在《天风》杂志刊出后,一封封满载弟兄姊妹爱心和关怀的慰问信源源不断地飞向孤儿院,一声声亲切的问候使人倍感温暖。转眼三年时光过去了,现今,赵县教会的弟兄姊妹是否还在继续自己的爱心奉献?孤儿院孩子们的生活和学习情况又有何新的变化呢?     

Symbols to grow on

The importance of symbols in the communication of religious traditions is considered in order to develop a critique for enhancing their potential for facilitating integration and wholeness. Four questions are proposed: 1) What precise segment of one's experience comes into focus through the symbol employed? 2) How is this experience related to the person? 3) What does the symbol contribute to self-identity? 4) How does the symbol reorient the person? In conclusion, an example is suggested from contemporary changes in the Roman Catholic Eucharistic liturgy.     

How to never be wrong

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Human beliefs have remarkable robustness in the face of disconfirmation. This robustness is often explained as the product of heuristics or motivated reasoning....     

我永远不会去天堂——亚伯拉罕·林肯的宗教怀疑主义

本文通过亚伯拉罕·林肯的家人、亲属、邻居、朋友及政治伙伴等不同人的回忆和口述,呈现出了林肯个人在生活中和政治生涯中对于宗教信仰所持的怀疑的态度和做法,勾勒出林肯作为一个非宗教信仰者的人生轨迹.     

Frege Puzzles and Mental Files

This paper proposes a novel conception of mental files, aimed at addressing Frege puzzles. Classical Frege puzzles involve ignorance and discovery of identity. These may be addressed by accounting for a more basic way for identity to figure in thought—the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. This manifests itself in rational inferences that presuppose the identity of what the beliefs are about. Mental files help to provide a functional characterization of a mind capable of this presupposition, but more must be said to show how it may be rational. I argue that this can be done by drawing out the way in which mental files interact with a thinker's motivational states and so come to have normative functional properties. I show how this theory works better than some other treatments of mental files.     

The Metaphysics of Mental Files

There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these transitivity failures most obviously occur because mental files can merge or undergo fission. In this paper I argue that this problem is easily resolved once mental files are properly construed as continuants, whose metaphysics is analogous to that of persons or physical objects. All continuants can undergo fission or fusion, leading to similar transitivity problems, but there are well-established theories of persistence that accommodate this. I suggest that, in particular, the stage theory best suits the purposes of a continuant theory of MOPs.     

"It was never that bad": biased recall of grief and long-term adjustment to the death of a spouse

At 6 months following the death of their spouse, 37 participants reported their grief-related symptoms and thoughts, and then, approximately 4.5 years later, they attempted to recall how they felt at the time of the 6-month report. Although participants were far less distressed at recall than initially, they recalled their 6-month grief rather accurately. Participants did however overestimate prior grief-related intrusive ideation. Participant's current level of grief predicted what they recalled slightly better than the actual initial grief. Conversely, what they recalled predicted current levels of grief across various measures. Participants whose grief diminished relatively little over time tended to overestimate prior grief more. The retrospective reappraisal that one's past grief was not severe may indicate effective coping.     

Detail-oriented cognitive style and social communicative deficits,within and beyond the autism spectrum: Independent traits that grow into developmental interdependence

At the heart of debates over underlying causes of autism is the “Kanner hypothesis” that autistic deficits in social reciprocity, and a cognitive/perceptual ‘style’ favouring detail-oriented cognition, co-vary in autistic individuals. A separate line of work indicates these two domains are normally distributed throughout the population, with autism representing an extremity. This realisation brings the Kanner debate into the realm of normative co-variation, providing more ways to test the hypothesis, and insights into typical development; for instance, in the context of normative functioning, the Kanner hypothesis implies social costs to spatial/numerical prowess. In light of this growing body of research, we review relevant factor analytic and correlational, behavioural studies. Findings are then synthesised into three themes: an alternative triad of primary autistic trait categories – Social Interaction Deficits, Cognitive Inflexibility, and Sensory Abnormalities – that more accurately reflects the factor structure of autistic traits; continuity between clinical and non-clinical autism-spectrum trait presentation; and indications that although social and non-social autistic traits may be initially independent, Kanner-like co-variance emerges behaviourally from dynamic trait interactions over the course of development. A dynamic developmental model subsuming these patterns is offered, and its advantages demonstrated in a novel account of ritualistic behaviours: as developmentally emergent, compensatory mechanisms for interactions between cognitive inflexibility and sensory abnormalities. We conclude with the broader imperative that behavioural scientists appealing for directly and exclusively genetic links may instead benefit from a developmental framing within their own discipline.