Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of "strong" supervenience, I defend a version of "soft" supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism , allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.     

眼睛注视的知觉及其线索效应

对眼睛注视知觉、眼睛注视线索效应及其影响因素等相关研究进行了总结和分析。结果发现:(1)婴儿从一出生就对眼睛注视线索表现出强烈的敏感性,眼睛注视知觉对语言和社会等能力的发展有很大影响;(2)颞上沟是加工眼睛注视线索的特异神经结构,它与实时监控情绪和情感的杏仁核存在神经联结,成为社会认知神经系统的重要组成部分;(3)对眼睛注视线索的早期加工显示出特异的脑电活动模式;(4)眼睛注视线索效应与外周线索的反射式效应相类似,但持续时间较长;(5)眼睛注视线索效应不仅受面部结构信息的影响,也受自上而下加工等高水平认知因素的调节,并显示出明显的个体差异。对眼睛注视线索效应的进一步研究应涉及人格判断、喜好评价和心理理论等高级社会认知活动。     

Knowledge,adequacy, and approximate truth

Approximation involves representing things in ways that might be close to the truth but are nevertheless false. Given the widespread reliance on approximations in science and everyday life, here we ask whether it is conceptually possible for false approximations to qualify as knowledge. According to the factivity account, it is impossible to know false approximations, because knowledge requires truth. According to the representational adequacy account, it is possible to know false approximations, if they are close enough to the truth for present purposes. In this paper, we adopt an experimental methodology to begin testing these two theories. When an agent provides a false and practically inadequate answer, both theories predict that people will deny knowledge. But the theories disagree about an agent who provides a false but practically adequate answer: the factivity hypothesis again predicts knowledge denial, whereas the representational adequacy hypothesis predicts knowledge attribution. Across two experiments, our principal finding was that people tended to attribute knowledge for false but practically adequate answers, which supports the representational adequacy account. We propose an interpretation of existing findings that preserves a conceptual link between knowledge and truth. According to this proposal, truth is not necessary for knowledge, but it is a feature of prototypical knowledge.     

Varieties of the extended self

This article provides an overview and analysis of recent work on the extended self, demonstrating that the boundaries of selves are fluid, shifting across biological, artifactual, and sociocultural structures. First, it distinguishes the notions of minimal self, person, and narrative self. Second, it surveys how philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists argue that embodiment, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and moral character traits can be extended and what that implies for the boundaries of selves. It also reviews and responds to various criticisms and counterarguments against the extended self. The main focus is on the link between the extended mind and extended self, which has received the most attention in recent literature. But accounts of the extended self developed independently of the extended mind are also briefly discussed. This article ends by drawing out some of the conceptual, methodological, and normative implications of the extended self and suggesting some directions for future research.     

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants’ looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo     

Knowing minds: Culture and perceptions of mental state access

How does culture influence the ways in which individuals reflect upon their knowledge of others’ mental states? We addressed this question in a two‐study cross‐cultural investigation examining perceptions of mental state access in the United States and Japan. Study 1 (n = 100) revealed that American participants reported greater mental state access than did Japanese participants. Study 2 (n = 146) showed that both Americans and Japanese perceived greater access to the mental states of a close friend relative to a casual friend and that the observed cultural differences in perceived mental state access to a close friend’s mental states were mediated by how much access was considered appropriate. Overall, the results indicate that culturally variable norms specifying appropriate levels of mental state access play an important role in how individuals estimate their knowledge of other people’s minds in close relationships.     

Exploring psychological factors of mobile phone use while riding among motorcyclists in Vietnam

Mobile phone use while riding is one of the five most common risky behaviors of motorcycle riders in Vietnam. This study investigated motorcyclist’s mobile phone use while riding intention and behavior based on the extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. Based on this framework, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, habits, and health motivation underlying the rider’s mobile phone use while riding intentions and behavior were included in a questionnaire and captured by direct and indirect measurements. Small-displacement motorcycle riders (N = 291) completed the extended TPB based questionnaire. An exploratory factor analysis technique identified the selected factors (e.g., attitude, habit, etc.). Moreover, Structural Equation Modeling results showed moderate to good fits to the observed data. Therefore, the results supported the utilization of extended TPB framework in identifying factors of mobile phone use while riding intention and behavior. Specifically, negative attitude, perceived behavioral control, and mobile phone use while riding habit related to the intention to use a mobile phone while riding of small-displacement motorcyclists. Meanwhile, habit and behavioral intention related to the behavior to use a mobile phone while riding of small-displacement motorcycle riders. Especially, the correlation between behavioral intention and self-reported behavior was very strong. This finding embraced previous research indicating that intention was a major motivational component of behavior. Based on the results, safety intervention implications for small-displacement motorcycle riders were discussed.     

ISOLATING THE INDIVIDUAL: THEOLOGY,THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION,AND THE PROBLEM OF ABSTRACT INDIVIDUALISM

Debates about the theological implications of recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion have tended to focus on the question of theism. The question of whether there is any disagreement about the conceptualization of the individual human being has been largely overlooked. In this article, I argue that evolutionary and cognitive accounts of religion typically depend upon a view of cognition that conceptually isolates the mind from its particular social and physical environmental contexts. By embracing this view of the mind, these accounts also unwittingly embrace an abstract individualist view of individual personhood that Christian theologians have explicitly battled against. Taken as a whole, the field leaves sufficient room for supplementary theories that are compatible with theological accounts of the relational individual, but in practice, no effort has been made to engage, or even to accommodate, any other view of individual personhood.     

“良知坎陷”：牟宗三的思想脉络与理论开展

在牟宗三哲学发展中,"良知坎陷"说有认识论、历史文化论和存有论三义。"良知坎陷"说的理论开展,既表现为存有论意义上的理论综合,也体现在以"道德实践"对"坎陷"所作的理论规定。在"良知坎陷"说中,存在着文化诉求与哲学思考的思想纠结。由于对"坎陷"之辩证义的独特规定,牟宗三存有论意义的"良知坎陷"既不同于黑格尔绝对精神的辩证开展,也改造了康德现象与物自身超越区分的理论架构,展露出"彻底的唯心论"的基本意蕴,具有新的理论意义。     

Understanding of the relationship between seeing and knowing by tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

The ability of four tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to recognize the causal connection between seeing and knowing was investigated. The subjects were trained to follow a suggestion about the location of hidden food provided by a trainer who knew where the food was (the knower) in preference to a trainer who did not (the guesser). The experimenter baited one of three opaque containers behind a cardboard screen so that the subjects could not see which of the containers hid the reward. In experiment 1, the knower appeared first in front of the apparatus and looked into each container; next, the guesser appeared but did not look into any containers. Then the knower touched the correct cup while the guesser touched one of the three randomly. The capuchin monkeys gradually learned to reach toward the cup that the knower suggested. In experiment 2, the subjects adapted to a novel variant of the task, in which the guesser touched but did not look into any of the containers. In experiment 3, the monkeys adapted again when the knower and the guesser appeared in a random order. These results suggest that capuchin monkeys can learn to recognize the relationship between seeing and knowing. Accepted after revision: 10 September 2001 Electronic Publication