God,Information, and Complexity: From Descriptive to Explorative Metaphysics

Abstract

Information and complexity have become central concepts in our contemporary worldview. On this background, it is discussed in which sense concepts of information and complexity may apply to theology proper. While the inherited axiom of divine simplicity forbids complexity and plurality as features of divine nature, an argument is developed for the presence of information and complexity in divine life. Three forms of information are proposed as relevant for a contemporary concept of God: Information as difference (Information1), information as form and relational structure (Information2) and semantic information (Information3). It is argued that features of these forms of information must be internal to divine life, if God can properly be said to facilitate and value the complex world of creation, to allow embodied creates to participate in divine life, and to communicate with creatures. In this light, the notion of divine simplicity will have to be redefined as the divine self-identity throughout temporal flux.     

Children's and adolescents' intuitive judgements about distributive justice: Integrating need,effort, and luck

This study investigated the principles that children and adolescents rely on when allocating a resource fairly. In a series of three experiments, 51 Swiss children (aged 7 and 9 years) and 309 German children (aged 6, 9, and 15 years) participated. A different situational context was presented in each experiment, where luck, need and effort of two protagonists were systematically varied. Primary-school children relied mainly on need when making distributive justice judgements. Effort became more prominent as the allocation principle in adolescence. Equality occurred rarely in all age groups. Integrational capacity and the ability to differentiate between the three situational contexts increased from childhood to adolescence. The data suggest the conclusion that the development of distributive justice decisions has both generalized and context-specific components.     

Cascading effects: the influence of attention bias to threat on the interpretation of ambiguous information

Both attention bias to threat and negative interpretive bias have been implicated in the emergence and maintenance of anxiety disorders. However, relations between attention and interpretive biases remain poorly understood. The current study experimentally manipulated attention bias to threat and examined the effects of attention training on the way ambiguous information was interpreted. Results suggest that the preferential allocation of attention towards threat affects the manner in which ambiguous information is interpreted. Individuals trained to attend to threat were more likely than individuals in a placebo training group to interpret ambiguous information in a threat-related manner. These data suggest that perturbations in the initial stages of information processing associated with anxiety may lead to a cascade of subsequent processing biases.     

Information seeking by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Animal metacognition is an active, growing research area, and one part of metacognition is flexible information-seeking behavior. In Roberts et al. (2009), pigeons failed an intuitive information-seeking task. They basically refused, despite multiple fostering experiments, to view a sample image before attempting to find its match. Roberts et al. concluded that pigeons’ lack of an information-seeking capacity reflected their broader lack of metacognition. We report a striking species contrast to pigeons. Eight rhesus macaques and seven capuchin monkeys passed the Roberts et al. test of information seeking—often in their first testing session. Members of both primate species appreciated immediately the lack of information signaled by an occluded sample, and the need for an information-seeking response to manage the situation. In subsequent testing, macaques demonstrated flexible/varied forms of information management. Capuchins did not. The research findings bear on the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition across the vertebrates, and on the underlying psychological requirements for metacognitive and information-seeking performances.     

Virtualizing intimacy: information communication technologies and transnational families in therapy

Information communication technologies (ICTs) are a ubiquitous feature of immigrant family life. Affordable, widely accessible, and highly adaptable ICTs have transformed the immigrant experience into a transnational process with family networks redesigned but not lost. Being a transnational family is not a new phenomenon. Transnationalism, however, has historically been reserved for the wealthier professional and political immigrant class who were able to freely travel and use expensive forms of communication before the emergence of accessible technologies. This paper systematically reviews the research literature to investigate the potential impact of ICTs on the lives of transnational families and how these families utilize them. The wide penetration of ICTs also puts into question some of the ways in which scholars have conceptualized the immigrant experience. The appropriate use of technology in family therapy should strengthen culturally competent and equity-based approaches to address the needs of these families. A family therapy with a transnational family illuminates some of the potential that these technologies introduce in the practice of relational clinicians.     

What remains on your mind after you are done?: Flexible regulation of knowledge accessibility

The accessibility of stored knowledge has been found to decline over time after activation without further stimulation. A special case is goal pursuit; goal-related knowledge remains accessible until goal completion, and then its accessibility declines rapidly. We hypothesized that after goal completion the decline in accessibility of goal-related knowledge would be especially rapid for strong promotion-focused individuals because their motivation to eagerly advance beyond the status quo would make accessibility of this knowledge an irrelevant detriment. We hypothesized an opposite effect for strongly prevention-predominant individuals because their motivation to vigilantly maintain a satisfactory state would make accessibility of this knowledge continually relevant. The results of two studies supported both these predicted moderators of accessibility change. Indeed, we found that for strongly prevention-predominant participants, knowledge accessibility actually increased over time after goal completion. We discuss how even basic cognitive mechanisms, like changes in accessibility, can be affected by general motivational concerns.     

Information quality in personality judgment: The value of personal disclosure

We examined the relative quality of different types of information and its effects on accuracy in personality judgment. Three hundred and forty-four unacquainted undergraduates participated in a small group round-robin rating scheme. In one condition, participants were asked to disclose three things that were very important to them in life. In a second condition, participants were asked to disclose three distinctive personal facts: things that differentiated them from others. We found that (a) people believed values information was more personality-relevant than facts information and (b) although there was no clear advantage for one condition over the other in terms of generalized accuracy, there were some differences across conditions for specific traits. Implications for the study of information quality in personality judgment are discussed.     

Basic Information Processing Abilities at 11 years Account for Deficits in IQ Associated with Preterm Birth

Although it is well established that preterms as a group do poorly relative to their full-term peers on tests of global cognitive functioning, the basis for this relative deficiency is less understood. The present paper examines preterm deficits in core cognitive abilities and determines their role in mediating preterm/full-term differences in IQ. The performance of 11-year-old children born preterm (birth weight < 1750 g) and their full-term controls were compared on a large battery of 15 tasks, covering four basic cognitive domains — memory, attention, speed of processing and representational competence. The validity of these four domains was established using latent variables and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Preterms showed pervasive deficits within and across domains. Additionally, preterm deficits in IQ were completely mediated by these four cognitive domains in a structural equation model involving a cascade from elementary abilities (attention and speed), to more complex abilities (memory and representational competence), to IQ. The similarity of findings to those obtained with this cohort in infancy and toddlerhood suggests that preterm deficits persist — across time, across task, and from the non-verbal to the verbal period.     

Digit ratio (2D:4D), academic performance in computer science and computer-related anxiety

Being able to use information communication technology (ICT) effectively has become an essential element of participation within an increasingly digital culture. However, there are differences in participation within this digital culture. Prenatal testosterone exposure is thought to influence the development of numeric capabilities and relate to levels of anxiety, both of which contribute towards engagement with ICT. This study examined whether an index of prenatal exposure to testosterone, digit ratio (2D:4D), is related to successful involvement within a computer-technology context - performance in a Java programming course. Three studies (N = 73,75,65) identified a consistent negative correlation between 2D:4D digit ratio and attainment (r ≈ −0.2). A fourth study (N = 119) found that 2D:4D digit ratio positively correlated with two indices of computer-related anxieties, as well as anxiety sensitivity (r = 0.32/0.51). These results suggest that males and females who have been exposed to higher levels of testosterone within the womb perform better upon academic assessments of Java-related programming ability within computer science education, and have lower levels of computer-related anxieties outside computer science education. Thus, the 2D:4D index of prenatal testosterone exposure correlated with the two factors that directly impact upon ICT engagement, which is increasingly essential to effectively participate within educational and occupational environments.