Visions and Ethics in Current Discourse on Human Enhancement

Since it is now broadly acknowledged that ethics should receive early consideration in discourse on emerging technologies, ethical debates tend to flourish even while new fields of technology are still in their infancy. Such debates often liberally mix existing applications with technologies in the pipeline and far-reaching visions. This paper analyses the problems associated with this use of ethics as “preparatory” research, taking discourse on human enhancement in general and on pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement in particular as an example. The paper will outline and discuss the gap between the scientific and technological state of the art and the ethical debates, pointing out epistemic problems in this context. Furthermore, it will discuss the future role of genuine ethical reflection in discourse on human enhancement, arguing also that such discourse needs to include a technology assessment—in the broad sense of the term—which encompasses, inter alia, anthropological perspectives and aspects of social theory.     

Pain and Sacrifice: Experience and Modulation of Pain in a Religious Piercing Ritual

Fascinating pain-related rituals have been observed throughout the world, but so far no systematic evidence exists to support previous ethnographic reports of analgesic states and dissociative symptoms during these events. To address this issue, we combined quantitative and qualitative measures with the aim of investigating pain experience and modulation of pain during the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual in Mauritius. In Study 1, results indicated low levels of pain intensity during the ritual, and regression analyses showed that expectations of pain were significantly predictive of actual pain intensity ratings. In Study 2, the meanings surrounding the ritual were found to generate expectations of low pain and a positive outcome, and intense prayer was reported as the main coping strategy. In addition, most participants expressed symptoms of dissociation (including amnesia, absorption, and depersonalisation) during Thaipusam, and a high prevalence of these symptoms was associated with low levels of pain.     

Archaic ontology and white shamanism

John D. Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century, (Religion in North America), Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991. xxi, 168 pp., $19.95. ISBN 0 253 33517 5.

Felicitas D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990. xii, 242 pp., ISBN 0 253 20566 2.     

Attention during adaptation weakens negative afterimages of perceptually colour-spread surfaces

The visual system can complete coloured surfaces from stimulus fragments, inducing the subjective perception of a colour-spread figure. Negative afterimages of these induced colours were first reported by S. Shimojo, Y. Kamitani, and S. Nishida (2001). Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of attention on the duration of these afterimages. The results showed that shifting attention to the colour-spread figure during the adaptation phase weakened the subsequent afterimage. On the basis of previous findings that the duration of these afterimages is correlated with the strength of perceptual filling-in (grouping) among local inducers during the adaptation phase, it is proposed that attention weakens perceptual filling-in during the adaptation phase and thereby prevents the stimulus from being segmented into an illusory figure.     

Paradoxical Results in Multidimensional Item Response Theory

In multidimensional item response theory (MIRT), it is possible for the estimate of a subject’s ability in some dimension to decrease after they have answered a question correctly. This paper investigates how and when this type of paradoxical result can occur. We demonstrate that many response models and statistical estimates can produce paradoxical results and that in the popular class of linearly compensatory models, maximum likelihood estimates are guaranteed to do so. In light of these findings, the appropriateness of multidimensional item response methods for assigning scores in high-stakes testing is called into question.     

Dynamismus und atomismus-die beiden systeme der physik in der 1. H?lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts

Ohne ZusammenfassungVortrag beim Kolloquium Zur Struktur und Entwicklung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien am 23. November 1975 in München.     

Temporal order judgment criteria are affected by synchrony judgment sensitivity

Synchrony perception for audio-visual stimulus pairs is typically studied by using temporal order judgment (TOJ) or synchrony judgment (SJ) tasks. Research has shown that estimates of the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) obtained using these two methods do not necessarily correspond. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that the PSS estimate obtained in a TOJ task is shifted in the direction of the most sensitive part of the synchrony judgment curve, as obtained in an SJ task. The results confirm that criterion shifts in the TOJ task move the PSS toward regions of the audio-visual temporal interval continuum where discriminations are most sensitive.     

Religion is natural,atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong

After discussing evidence of irreligion and the rise of the so called “New Atheism”, the authors refute the claim that this poses a problem for the cognitive science of religion and its hypothesis that religion is natural. The “naturalness hypothesis” is not deterministic but probabilistic and thus leaves room for atheism. This, the authors maintain, is true of both the by‐product and adaptationist stances within the cognitive science of religion. In this context the authors also discuss the memetic or “unnaturalness” hypothesis, i.e. that religion is a “virus of the mind”. The authors criticize accounts of atheism offered by cognitive scientists of religion as being based on unfounded assumptions about the psychology of atheists, and object to the notion that the natural aspects of religion by corollary make atheism unnatural. By considering human cognition in a semiotic framework and emphasizing its natural ability to take part in semiotic systems of signs, atheism emerges as a natural, cognitive strategy. The authors argue that to reach a fuller account of religion, the cognitive (naturalness) and memetic (unnaturalness) hypotheses of religion must be merged. Finally, a preliminary analysis of the “New Atheism” is offered in terms of semiotic and cognitive dynamics