Patriotism,Orthodox religion and education: empirical findings from contemporary Russia

In recent years, an objective of some Russian Orthodox activists and Church leaders has been the introduction of religious education in state schools which was established in Russia in 2012, following a 2009 Presidential Directive. Today, however, there are two different strands in religious education. On the one hand, there is the state’s emphasis on the bonds between Orthodox Christianity and Russian history, culture and identity. Based on this so-called culturological understanding of religion, the Russian state hopes to use Orthodoxy in nation- and institution-building and in the strengthening of patriotism. On the other hand, while the culturological language is also used in the Church’s official discourse, in practice there are many attempts by Orthodox clergymen and activists to use religious education for the purposes of evangelisation.     

The Undepleted Ego: Self-Regulatory Adaptation in Multiple Task Sequences

Working on a task that requires strong self-regulation can deteriorate performance in a subsequent task also involving high self-regulatory demands. Several studies suggest that the consumption of limited self-regulatory resources may account for this effect known as ego depletion. We investigated the influence of expectations about upcoming tasks on self-regulatory performance in two experiments, contrasting tasks with high and low self-regulatory demand. We manipulated expectations by informing participants about the number of tasks to be worked on (Experiment 1) and by varying the number of tasks (Experiment 2). With the expectation of highly demanding tasks no ego-depletion effect occurred. Results show that expecting a continuation of high self-regulatory demand in a sequence of several tasks actually improved performance.     

Negativity bias in defeasible reasoning

In defeasible reasoning, initially drawn conclusions can be withdrawn in light of new information. In this paper, we examine how the conclusions drawn from conditionals describing positive or negative situations can be defeated by subsequent negative or positive information, respectively. Participants were confronted with conditionals of the form “If [situation], then I am happy/sad” which were either followed by no additional information or by additional information describing situations of the same or the opposite valence. The participant's task was to decide on a question asking for a possible conclusion (“Am I happy?” vs. “Am I sad?”). We found a negativity bias in defeasible reasoning: negative information defeated positively charged conclusions more strongly than positive information defeated negatively charged conclusions. We discuss our results in relation to the new psychology of reasoning.     

Home environment and cognitive development of black infants in impoverished South African families

This study examined the interrelationships between home environment, mental and psychomotor development, growth, and educational and occupational indices of socioeconomic status among an urban sample of 305 African infants aged 2 to 30 months. The infants were assessed on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and the Home Screening Questionnaire, and their heights and weights were recorded. Information regarding the family's socioeconomic status was obtained during interviews with caretakers. No significant relationships were found between parental education and occupation and infant cognitive development, but quality of the home environment was positively correlated with these indices of parental socioeconomic status. On the other hand, home environment scores were found to be significantly related to mental development, independent of parental education and occupation. There was considerable variation in home environments in the sample, which was drawn from generally impoverished urban communities. These findings from an African cultural group support the generalizability of the importance of the quality of the home environment for infant development.     

Wittgensteinian Foundationalism

The idea that there is such a thing as Wittgensteinian foundationalism is a provocative one for two reasons. For one thing, Wittgenstein is widely regarded as an anti-foundationalist. For another, the very word `foundationalism' sounds like the name of a theory, and Wittgenstein famously opposed the advancing of theories and theses in philosophy. Nonetheless, in his book Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty, Avrum Stroll has argued that Wittgenstein does indeed develop a foundationalist view in his final work, On Certainty. On this basis, Stroll goes on to argue against a number of contemporary views, including forms of relativism and scientism. In what follows I will examine what Stroll calls Wittgenstein's foundationalism (in Section 1) and argue that Stroll's reading of Wittgenstein, though original and interesting, is misguided in important ways and so cannot be used against the views he opposes (in Section 2). Finally, in Section 3, I offer a brief summary of the reading of Wittgenstein that I recommend.