TWINNING, INORGANIC REPLACEMENT, AND THE ORGANISM VIEW

In explicating his version of the Organism View, Eric Olson argues that you begin to exist only after twinning is no longer possible and that you cannot survive a process of inorganic replacement. Assuming the correctness of the Organism View, but pace Olson, I argue in this paper that the Organism View does not require that you believe either proposition. The claim I shall make about twinning helps to advance a debate that currently divides defenders of the Organism View, while the claim I shall make about inorganic replacement will help to put the Organism View on a par with its rival views by allowing it to accommodate a plausible intuition that its rivals can accommodate, namely, the intuition that you can survive a process of inorganic replacement. Both claims, I shall also argue, are important for those who are interested in the identity condition of a human organism, even if they do not hold the view that you are essentially an organism.     

Magic feathers, Wittgensteinian boxes and the politics of deeming

Religious Experience Reconsidered offers an “attribution theory of religion” which builds out from Emile Durkheim’s intuition that the sacred is just some aspect of the world that has been set apart. Despite this theoretical pedigree, however, the book violates the central Durkheimian insight when it goes on to ask whether some things are more likely to be set apart than others. I argue that this impulse is motivated by an unfortunate metaphysical desire to determine if some things really are special. Throwing my hat in with Durkheim, I maintain that the academic study of religion should rest content with analyzing the contested politics of “deeming” something special.     

Nation,State and the Incarnation in the Political Writings of Vladimir Solov'yev: The Transfiguration of Politics

Introduction A great volume of popular literature produced by Islamists strives to demonstrate the universal validity of the Islamic political principles and their applicability in any time and place. Although there is an agreement on certain characteristics of a government in a Muslim society, the debate reflects quite varied interpretations and some essential theoretical differences. The controversy stems largely from the conditions that scholars live in. Regarding the revived interest in creating a state based on Islamic political and moral guidelines, it is possible to encounter various interpretations and different standpoints. For instance, one point of view asserts that ‘the undemocratic nature of Islamic political ideology, popularised in the present times by fundamentalist ideologues, commends it to regimes which have no popular support and need to find some measure of legitimacy’ (Tibi, 1998). With the failure of man-made ideologies and withdrawal of imperialist western powers, according to another standpoint, the inhabitants of the Third World countries were led to revitalise their own sociopolitical values and institute their own political systems. In the case of the Islamic world, the idea of a state based on Islamic political principles, envisaged in the latter perspective, is ’the rekindling of the typical Islamic political ethos‘; in that Islam unifies the spiritual and social realms, it is therefore impossible to divorce politics from religion (Sulaiman, 1987). There is a wide range of contributions and critiques on the issue of Islamic principles guiding the constitutional aspects of a state, particularly since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The interest in this matter has increased since the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, coinciding with a rising interest in such issues as Islamic social order and so-called Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless, most of these writings are popular and sensational; analytical studies are few. This article aims to fill the gap in scholarly inquiry into such an important matter by exploring the political ideas of major contemporary Muslim thinkers, and by identifying some essential characteristics for a state based on Islamic political principles in the light of the views of these scholars.     

The incidence of false memories in native and non-native speakers

The current study consisted of four experiments that utilised a novel approach to investigating false memories. Each of the experiments in the current study investigated individuals with varying experience with different languages. Experiment 1 tested participants in both their native and secondary languages as well as monolingual English speakers, while Experiment 2 assessed native Spanish speakers using both English and Spanish associative lists. Experiment 3 examined the illusory memories in monolingual Spanish speakers in both English and Spanish, while Experiment 4 investigated false memories in monolingual English speakers in both English and Spanish. Results indicated that memory for list items and critical lures was greatest when the lists were presented in the participants' primary language. Results can be explained by either activation-based or fuzzy-trace theories.     

Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood

This article presents an assessment of the relative influences of time spent participating in organized sports and informal sports during childhood with respect to the development of general creativity. In this study, 99 upper-division undergraduate and graduate students completed a comprehensive childhood leisure activities questionnaire and the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. According to the results of the joint generalized least-squares regression analysis, hours spent in organized sport settings was negatively related to creativity as an adult; time spent in unstructured sport settings was found to be positively related to adult creativity. The findings also point to the importance of balancing participation across organized and unstructured settings. The most creative individuals in the sample were those who spent roughly half of their sport participation time in each setting, as opposed to individuals with below-average creativity, who spent upwards of 3/4 of their sport participation time in organized settings. Therefore, fostering creative development through sport may not require a dramatic reorientation from current youth sport development models, but only a shift toward a more balanced distribution of time spent playing in both organized and unstructured settings. Future experiments are needed to test this relationship.     

Athletic Identity and Conformity to Masculine Norms Among College Football Players

Sport represent an influential institution of masculinity socialization that impacts the psychosocial development of many men in American society. In order to examine this dynamic, we investigated conformity to masculine norms among 523 college football players. Results indicated that participants’ conformity to traditional masculine norms was influenced by year in school, on-field position played, and athletic identity. Results of this interdisciplinary endeavor between the fields of sport psychology and the psychological study of men and masculinity can assist sport psychologists in designing interventions to help football players better understand messages of masculinity conveyed within the unique socialization context of football.     

Sport-Type Differences in Alcohol Use Among Intercollegiate Athletes

Prior research has found that (a) intercollegiate athletes are especially “at-risk” for excessive alcohol consumption (e.g., Nelson & Wechsler, 2001 Nelson, T. F. and Wechsler, H. 2001. Alcohol and college athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 33: 43–47. [INFOTRIEVE][CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and (b) sport-type differences exist among college athletes in terms of yearly drinking prevalence rates (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2001 National Collegiate Athletic Association. 2001. NCAA study of substance use habits of college student-athletes, Indianapolis, IN: Author.  [Google Scholar]). No studies, however, have examined sport-type differences on more specific measures of alcohol consumption (e.g., drinks per week), or examined potential mediators of the relationship between sport type and alcohol consumption. In the present study, data were analyzed on 298 intercollegiate athletes from two different universities. Resuls indicated significant sport type differences on alcohol consumption variables, with athletes from the sports of swimming and diving reporting the highest levels of alcohol consumption. Results provided partial support for the role of positively reinforcing drinking motives in mediating the sport type–alcohol consumption relationship. Findings are discussed in light of prior research in the area of college student–athlete alcohol consumption.