Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: What’s the Question?

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis.     

The perceptual determinants of person construal: reopening the social-cognitive toolbox

Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people's propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of categorical thinking.     

Bioethics and Christian Theology

The authors of this essay suggest that the field of bioethics and Christian theology have a great deal to offer to each other. The authors first argue that representatives from both fields must first make sure that they fully and correctly represent their respective position. In other words, scientists, ethicists, and theologians alike must make sure that they present their fields and not use their knowledge merely for personal gain at the stake of misguiding people. Once this is established, the authors then proceed to show the intimate relationship between Christianity and medicine that has existed throughout the ages. It is a call for a continuation of such a relationship that the authors suggest between bioethics and theology. Through an integration of bioethics and Christian theology, both scientists/physicians and theologians are able to gain greater insight into the human person—a focus in both fields.     

Concordant Spiritual Orientations as a Factor in Physician--Patient Spiritual Discussions: A Qualitative Study

Objectives: To understand the impact of physicians and patients religious/spiritual orientation on discussions of spiritual issues. Methods: We performed semi-structured interviews of 10 Missouri family physicians and 10 patients of these physicians, selecting subjects nonrandomly to represent a range of demographic factors, practice types, and chronic or terminal illness. We coded and evaluated transcribed interviews for themes. Results: Respondents expressed that similar belief systems facilitate patient–physician spiritual interactions and bring confidence to their relationships. Those holding dissimilar faiths noted limited ability to address spiritual questions directly. They cited significant barriers to spiritual interaction but considered that ecumenism, use of patient-centered care, and negotiation skills lessen these barriers. Conclusions: Our respondents view spirituality similarly to other aspects of the physician–patient relationship involving differing viewpoints. Where discordance exists, cross-cultural, patient-centered, diplomatic approaches facilitate spiritual discussions.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pintele Yid to Racenjude</Emphasis>: Chaim Zhitlovsky and racial conceptions of Jewishness

The Russian Jewish intellectual, Chaim Zhitlovsky (1865–1943), a leading architect of secular Jewish culture and thought, was a central figure in the progressive Jewish intelligentsia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In an essay written in 1927, Yidn un Yiddishkayt (Jews and Jewishness), he sought to define the secular essence of what he calls Yiddishkayt. This essay is not the first in Zhitlovskys long publicistic career in which he searches for new, secular definitions of Jewish identity and culture. But this essay differs, since it is marked by Zhitlovskys use of contemporary social scientific notions of race and racial traits to conceptualize what he believes constitutes Jewishness in a non-religious context, along with his adoption of the mystical Jewish concept of the pintele yid, the theory of an innate Jewishness embodied by a Jewish spark. Zhitlovskys desire to craft a truly secular theory of Jewish identity led him ironically to accept models of Jewish identity at odds with his stated larger vision. In turning to contemporary racial theory, as well as long nurtured mystical models of Yiddishkayt, Zhitlovsky reveals the wide range of ideological discourses that led him to innovative and controversial notions of modern Jewish identity.     

The look of love: gaze shifts and person perception

Gaze direction is a vital communicative channel through which people transmit information to each other. By signaling the locus of social attention, gaze cues convey information about the relative importance of objects, including other people, in the environment. For the most part, this information is communicated via patterns of gaze direction, with gaze shifts signaling changes in the objects of attention. Noting the relevance of gaze cues in social cognition, we speculated that gaze shifts may modulate people's evaluations of others. We investigated this possibility by asking participants to judge the likability (Experiment 1) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2) of targets displaying gaze shifts indicative of attentional engagement or disengagement with the participants. As expected, person evaluation was moderated by the direction of gaze shifts, but only when the judgment under consideration was relevant to participants. We consider how and when gaze shifts may modulate person perception and its associated behavioral products.     

The<Emphasis Type="Italic">remember</Emphasis> response: Subject to bias,graded, and not a process-pure indicator of recollection

Recognition memory judgments have long been assumed to depend on the contributions of two underlying processes: recollection and familiarity. We measured recollection with receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) data and remember-know judgments. Under standard remember-know instructions, the two estimates of recollection diverged. When subjects were told they might need to justify theirremember responses to the experimenter, the two estimates were more likely to agree. The data support the conclusion thatremember responses are generally based on a continuous underlying process but that specific task instructions can produce data that appear consistent with a high-threshold recollective process. Models based on signal detection theory provide a better account of these data than does the dual-process model (Yonelinas, 1994) or process-pure interpretations.     

Development of subtype selective GABAA modulators

Drugs modulating gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) transmission via the benzodiazepine (BZ) site on the gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor have been in widespread use for more than 40 years to treat anxiety, epilepsy, and sleep disorders. These drugs have been shown to be safe, well tolerated, and effective although the mechanism by they produce a myriad of pharmacologic effects remains elusive. In recent years it has been discovered that, although the GABAA receptor is widely distributed in the brain, the substructure and composition of the receptor differs from between brain regions. Termed "GABAA receptor subtypes" their discovery leads to speculation that different subtypes may mediate specific effects of BZs such as anxiety or sedation. The phenotypic analysis of transgenic knock-in and knock-out mice in which particular GABAA receptors were rendered insensitive to the effects of BZ while others were unaffected confirmed this speculation. Subsequently, subtype-specific GABAA ligands were developed that, for example, retained the anxiolytic effects of BZs but were devoid of their sedative effects. Therefore, it may be possible to develop effective anxiolytic compounds that have a much reduced side-effect profile compared with existing drugs.