Mel Gibson’s Big Gamble: <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Passion of Christ</Emphasis>

Mel Gibsonrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s film is a creative reworking of opportunities provided by migrating to Australia as a boy and a life-long desire to be reconciled to his father, Hutton Gibson. If the film is read as a study in psychology and biography, then biblical and theological critiques, along with contemporary politically correct stances towards what Gibson did, can be set temporarily aside in search of a larger trajectory of meaning implicit in the film. The embodied nature of the film, along with other violent films in which Gibson starred in the past three decades, points to wellsprings of rc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">power in the blood.rc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> Violence becomes an idiom of reconciliation with authority. Gibsonrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s relationship to his father plays a major role in such a reading of the film. A continuous reconciliation with his father is evident not only in thematic continuities over the course of Mel Gibsonrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s professional acting career and starring roles. It also structures the directorrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s construction of Christrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s Passion. A desire rc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">not to be forsakenrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> gives rise to this idiosyncratic and controversial film, itself a cinematic statement about Gibsonrc="/content/n57615424527t2x9/xxlarge8217.gif" alt="rsquo" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">s own personal spiritual torment.Richard A. Hutch is Director of Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Reader in Religion and Psychological Studies in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia 4072.     

From Knowledge-based Programs to Graded Belief-based Programs,Part I: On-line Reasoning<Superscript>*</Superscript>

Knowledge-based programs (KBPs) are a powerful notion for expressing action policies in which branching conditions refer to implicit knowledge and call for a deliberation task at execution time. However, branching conditions in KBPs cannot refer to possibly erroneous beliefs or to graded belief, such as “if my belief that φ holds is high then do some action α else perform some sensing action β”. The purpose of this paper is to build a framework where such programs can be expressed. In this paper we focus on the execution of such a program (a companion paper investigates issues relevant to the off-line evaluation and construction of such programs). We define a simple graded version of doxastic logic KD45 as the basis for the definition of belief-based programs. Then we study the way the agent’s belief state is maintained when executing such programs, which calls for revising belief states by observations (possibly unreliable or imprecise) and progressing belief states by physical actions (which may have normal as well as exceptional effects). ^* A premliminary and shorter version of this paper in the Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-04), pp. 368–372 (Laverny and Lang 2004).     

Modulation of recognition and temporal order memory retrieval by dopamine D1 receptor in rats

The present study examines the effects of SKF 81297, a selective D1 agonist, on information retrieval in recognition and temporal order memory for objects, using three different tasks. Separate groups of rats were trained in each task and then given an intraperitoneal injection of saline or the D1 agonist (0.03, 0.3 mg/kg), before the memory testing trial in an object recognition, object location, and object temporal order memory tasks. We show that SKF 81297, at high dose (0.3 mg/kg), facilitates information retrieval after a long delay (4 h) in the three memory tasks whereas both high and low doses of D1 agonist impair recognition memory after a short delay (15 min). These results indicate a significant role of dopamine D1 receptors in recognition memory for both familiarity and place of objects in addition to object temporal order memory.     

The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: a comparison between handwriting and typing

A large body of data supports the view that movement plays a crucial role in letter representation and suggests that handwriting contributes to the visual recognition of letters. If so, changing the motor conditions while children are learning to write by using a method based on typing instead of handwriting should affect their subsequent letter recognition performances. In order to test this hypothesis, we trained two groups of 38 children (aged 3-5 years) to copy letters of the alphabet either by hand or by typing them. After three weeks of learning, we ran two recognition tests, one week apart, to compare the letter recognition performances of the two groups. The results showed that in the older children, the handwriting training gave rise to a better letter recognition than the typing training.     

Thought-Contents and the Formal Ontology of Sense

This paper articulates a formal theory of belief incorporating three key theses: (1) belief is a dyadic relation between an agent and a property; (2) this property is not the belief's truth condition (i.e., the intuitively self-ascribed property which the agent must exemplify for the belief to be true) but is instead a certain abstract property (a rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">thought-contentrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">) which contains a way of thinking of that truth condition; (3) for an agent a to have a belief rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">aboutrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> such-and-such items it is necessary that a possesses a language of thought, M _a , and that a (is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms a sentence of M _a in which there are terms that denote those objects.Employing an extended version of E. Zalta's system ILAO, the proffered theory locates thought-contents within a typed hierarchy of rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">sensesrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> and their rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">modes of presentationrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">, the provisional definitions of which (suppressing complications added later to accommodate the contents of beliefs about beliefs) are as follows. A mode of presentation of e is a ternary relation of the sort [rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge955.gif" alt="lambda" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">xyz z is a name in M _y that denotes x, and D _e yz] in which D _e is an e-determiner – a relation between agents and their mental expressions imposing a syntactico-semantic condition sufficient for such an expression to denote e therein. A sense of an entity e is an abstract property that rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">containsrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> a mode of presentation R _e of e by dint of encoding its property-reduct [rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge955.gif" alt="lambda" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">x(rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8707.gif" alt="exist" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">y)(rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8707.gif" alt="exist" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">z)R _e xyz]. In particular, a thought-content is a sense T of an ordinary first-order property P containing a mode of presentation whose P-determiner D _P is such that, for any y and z, D _P yz entails that z is a rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge955.gif" alt="lambda" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0">-abstract [ rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge955.gif" alt="lambda" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0"> v S] of M _y in which S is a sentence whose non-logical parts stand in appropriate semantic relations to the constituents of T's (some of which may themselves be senses).Where I _a is agent a's dedicated self-demonstrative and |T| is the mode of presentation contained in a thought-content T, the belief relation itself is then characterized as obtaining between a and T iff a( is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms the substitution instance S(I _a / v) of a sentence S in M _a such that |T|(P,a,[rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge955.gif" alt="lambda" align="BASELINE" BORDER="0"> v S]). The aforementioned rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">constituentsrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> and rc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8220.gif" alt="ldquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0">appropriate semantic relationsrc="/content/q0m768w18vj1w8r8/xxlarge8221.gif" alt="rdquo" align="MIDDLE" BORDER="0"> are formally characterized so as to permit a system of canonical descriptions for thought-contents of arbitrary complexity. These canonical descriptions are then employed to chart the nature and interrelations of belief de re, de dicto and de se and to identify the source of opacity in belief ascription.     

Repeated Interrogations –Stretching the Deception Detection Paradigm

In real life, suspects are often subjected to repeatedinterrogations. Psycho-legal research on deception has neglectedthis fact. To remedy this mismatch a series of studies wasconducted mapping how repeated interrogations affectlie-catchers' judgemental processes, deception detectionperformance, and meta-assessments. In two experiments we foundthat lie-catchers given access to consecutive statements from onesuspect did not perform better than lie-catchers given access toone statement only. In addition, access to repeatedinterrogations inflated the lie-catchers' confidence in thecorrectness of their veracity judgement, which had a detrimentaleffect on the accuracy-confidence relation. As the basis forassessing veracity was changed from one to several statements thelie-catchers, to a large extent, seemed to trust the `consistencyheuristic'. The assumption underlying this heuristic is thatinconsistency implies deception and consistency implies truth.The data show that (a) people tend to disagree as to whether aparticular set of consecutive statements is consistent or not,and (b) deceptive statements are at least equally consistent astruthful statements. In order to explain the latter finding a`repeat vs. reconstruct' hypothesis was suggested, assuming thatliars try to repeat their initial statement, whereastruth-tellers try to reconstruct a previously experienced event.The low predictive accuracy found for the `consistency heuristic'strongly questions beliefs held by professional lie-catchers,opinions expressed in the psycho-legal literature andrecommendations found in applied interrogation manuals.     

Patterns of argumentation in Galileo's Discorsi

In this contribution I intend to reconstruct and evaluate one of Galileo's famous arguments given in the Discorsi against a well‐entrenched thesis of Aristotelian physics. It will be shown that Galileo's reduction‐to‐the‐absurd type of counterargument is, although seemingly cogent, after all fallacious. I ascribe Galileo's committing of this fallacy to his looking at the Aristotelian physics through the (Kuhnian type) paradigmatic “spectacles” of his own new physics.     

Hemispheric dominance in schizophrenics as determined on extrapyramidal side effects of neuroleptics

Phenomena observed during treatment with neuroleptics were clinically measured in an attempt to determine the difference in vulnerability of the two hemispheres and the relation between this difference and schizophrenic diseases. In the group of systematic schizophrenias the increase in tonus was significantly higher in the dominant hemisphere. This finding is considered a verification of the nosological hypothesis of schizophrenias.     

Effects of reiteration,hindsight bias,and memory on realism in eyewitness confidence

This study investigated the effects of repetition, memory, feedback, and hindsight bias on the realism in confidence in answers to questions on a filmed kidnapping. In Experiment 1 the participants showed overconfidence in all conditions. In the Repeat condition (‘how confident are you now that your previous answers are correct’) overconfidence was reduced as a consequence of the decrease in confidence in both correct and incorrect answers compared with the Repeat condition when the participants received feedback on their answers and were asked to remember their initial confidence, the confidence level was higher for correct and lower for incorrect answers. In Experiment 2, recalled confidence (the Memory condition) increased compared with the original confidence both for correct and incorrect answers; the effect of this was increased overconfidence. The Hindsight condition showed a decrease in confidence in incorrect answers. The results suggest that a unique hindsight effect may be more clearly present for incorrect than for correct answers. Our study gives further evidence for the malleability of the realism in eyewitness confidence and we discuss both the theoretical and forensic implications of our findings. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Personality Profiles in the Longitudinal Relationship Between Work-related Well-being and Life Satisfaction Among Working Adults in Switzerland

Drawing on the concept of spillover between work and life domains and using a person-centred approach, the present study examined the role of Big Five personality trait profiles in moderating the relationship between work-related well-being and life satisfaction over a 1-year period in a sample of working adults in Switzerland (N = 1204). Latent profile analysis was first carried out to derive and compare alternative latent personality profile models. Subsequently, a two-wave cross-lagged structural equation model using three personality profiles (resilient, average, and oversensitive) as moderators was tested. Work stress and job satisfaction were used as negative and positive indicators of work-related well-being. The results showed that in the overall sample, only Time 1 life satisfaction predicted Time 2 job satisfaction. We found a moderating role for the personality profiles, where the effect of Time 1 work stress on Time 2 life satisfaction became salient in the oversensitive profile, while a significant effect of Time 1 life satisfaction on Time 2 work stress was found in the resilient profile. The current study showed that different combinations of personality traits may determine the way in which work-related well-being and general well-being relate to each other. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology