An Eastern Orthodox Theological Basis for Interplanetary Environmental Ethics

As a result of our technological advances in space exploration, human enterprise is no longer limited to the confines of planet Earth. Although several philosophical approaches to environmental ethics have already been advocated for human encounters with other planets such as Mars, it may be argued that various religious worldviews will significantly influence these suggested value systems. In this article, we present an Eastern Orthodox Christian interpretation of Creation and explore the theological meaning of the human vocation as Priests of Creation. An appropriate application of these two principles provides a theological basis for an interplanetary eco-praxis.     

The Motive of the Incarnation in Christian Theology: Consequences for Modern Cosmology,Extraterrestrial Intelligence and a Hypothesis of Multiple Incarnations

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the question of the possibility of multiple species-specific incarnations of God in the societies of extraterrestrial beings (if they exist) on exoplanets, proposed for the debate in a recent volume on Astrlotheology. It gives a scientific, philosophical and theological assessment of some of its claims and concludes by formulating the position of the author on multiple incarnations in the context of modern cosmology and Orthodox theology.     

The Role of Probability and Intentionality in Preschoolers' Causal Generalizations

Three experiments examined whether preschoolers recognize that the causal properties of objects generalize to new members of the same set given either deterministic or probabilistic data. Experiment 1 found that 3- and 4-year-olds were able to make such a generalization given deterministic data but were at chance when they observed probabilistic information. Five-year-olds reliably generalized in both situations. Experiment 2 found that 4-year-olds could make some probabilistic inferences, particularly when comparing sets that had no efficacy with sets in which some members had efficacy. Children had some difficulty discriminating between completely effective sets and stochastic ones. Experiment 3 examined whether 3- and 4-year-olds could reason about probabilistic data when provided with information about the experimenter's beliefs about causal outcomes. Children who were more successful on standard false-belief measures were more likely to respond as if the data were deterministic. These data suggest that children's probabilistic inferences develop into early elementary school, but preschoolers might have some understanding of probability when reasoning about causal generalization.     

How Children Learn the Ins and Outs: A Training Study of Toddlers' Categorization of Animals

Young children are able to categorize animals on the basis of unobservable features such as shared biological properties (e.g., bones). For the most part, children learn about these properties through explicit verbalizations from others. The present study examined how such input impacts children's learning about the properties of categories. In a training study with thirty-six 2.5-year-olds (M_age = 2;9), we tested the prediction that a relatively small amount of input highlighting the importance of unobservable properties would lead to a gradual shift in children's use of these properties for categorization. Children with no initial categorization bias were trained to categorize either on the basis of shared unobservable properties or shared observable properties. During 3 days of training, children gradually developed a categorization bias in the direction of the property type for which they received training and sustained this bias more than a week after training. Also, a set of children who exhibited an initial perceptual bias showed an abrupt change in how they categorized after only 1 training session.     

Empathy and feedback processing in active and observational learning

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the P300 have been related to the processing of one’s own and other individuals’ feedback during both active and observational learning. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of trait-empathic responding with regard to the modulation of the neural correlates of observational learning in particular. Thirty-four healthy participants completed an active and an observational learning task. On both tasks, the participants’ aim was to maximize their monetary gain by choosing from two stimuli the one that showed the higher probability of reward. Participants gained insight into the stimulus–reward contingencies according to monetary feedback presented after they had made an active choice or by observing the choices of a virtual partner. Participants showed a general improvement in learning performance on both learning tasks. P200, FRN, and P300 amplitudes were larger during active, as compared with observational, learning. Furthermore, nonreward elicited a significantly more negative FRN than did reward in the active learning task, while only a trend was observed for observational learning. Distinct subcomponents of trait cognitive empathy were related to poorer performance and smaller P300 amplitudes for observational learning only. Taken together, both the learning performance and event-related potentials during observational learning are affected by different aspects of trait cognitive empathy, and certain types of observational learning may actually be disrupted by a higher tendency to understand and adopt other people’s perspectives.     

LEO-II and Satallax on the Sledgehammer test bench

Sledgehammer is a tool that harnesses external first-order automatic theorem provers (ATPs) to discharge interactive proof obligations arising in Isabelle/HOL. We extended it with LEO-II and Satallax, the two most prominent higher-order ATPs, improving its performance on higher-order problems. To explore their usefulness, these ATPs are measured against first-order ATPs and built-in Isabelle tactics on a variety of benchmarks from Isabelle and the TPTP library. Sledgehammer provides an ideal test bench for individual features of LEO-II and Satallax, revealing areas for improvements.     

Enhanced mental rotation ability in time-space synesthesia

Time-space synesthesia is a variant of sequence–space synesthesia and involves the involuntary association of months of the year with 2D and 3D spatial forms, such as arcs, circles, and ellipses. Previous studies have revealed conflicting results regarding the association between time-space synesthesia and enhanced spatial processing ability. Here, we tested 15 time-space synesthetes, and 15 non-synesthetic controls matched for age, education, and gender on standard tests of mental rotation ability, spatial working memory, and verbal working memory. Synesthetes performed better than controls on our test of mental rotation, but similarly to controls on tests of spatial and verbal working memory. Results support a dissociation between visuo-spatial imagery and spatial working memory capacity, and suggest time-space synesthesia is associated only with enhanced visuo-spatial imagery. These data are consistent with the time-space connectivity thesis that time-space synesthesia results from enhanced connectivity in the parietal lobe between regions supporting the representation of temporal sequences and those underlying visuo-spatial imagery.     

Negative valence can evoke a liberal response bias in syllogistic reasoning

Recently, studies have demonstrated that negative valence reduces the magnitude of the belief-bias effect in syllogistic reasoning. This effect has been localized in the reasoning stage, in the form of increased deliberation on trials where validity and conclusion believability are incongruent. Here, using signal detection theory, we show that the attenuation of belief bias observed when valence was negative can also be evoked by a liberal response bias at the decision stage. Indeed, when valence was negative participants adopted a more liberal criterion for judging syllogisms as “valid,” and were overconfident in their judgments. They also displayed less sensitivity in distinguishing between valid and invalid syllogisms. Our findings dovetail with recent evidence from memory research suggesting that negative valence can evoke a liberal response bias without improving performance. Our novel contribution is the demonstration that the attenuating effect of negative valence on belief bias can take multiples routes—by influencing the decision stage as was the case here, the reasoning stage as has been demonstrated elsewhere, and potentially both stages.     

Priming the mental time-line: effects of modality and processing mode

The notion of a mental time-line (i.e., past corresponds to left and future corresponds to right) supports the conceptual metaphor view assuming that abstract concepts like “time” are grounded in cognitively more accessible concepts like “space.” In five experiments, we further investigated the relationship between temporal and spatial representations and examined whether or not the spatial correspondents of time are unintentionally activated. We employed a priming paradigm, in which visual or auditory prime words (i.e., temporal adverbs such as yesterday, tomorrow) preceded a colored square. In all experiments, participants discriminated the color of this square by responding with the left or the right hand. Although the temporal reference of the priming adverb was task irrelevant in Experiment 1, visually presented primes facilitated responses to the square in correspondence with the direction of the mental time-line. This priming effect was absent in Experiments 2, 3, and 5, in which the primes were presented auditorily and the temporal reference of the words could be ignored. The effect, however, emerged when attention was oriented to the temporal content of the auditory prime words in Experiment 4. The results suggest that task demands differentially modulate the activation of the mental time-line within the visual and auditory modality and support a flexible association between conceptual codes.