QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THEOLOGY: JOHN POLKINGHORNE ON THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Abstract Thought experimentation is part of accepted scientific practice, and this makes it surprising that philosophers of science did not seriously engage with it for a very long time. The situation changed in the 1990s, resulting in a highly intriguing debate over thought experiments. Initially, the discussion focused mostly on thought experiments in physics, philosophy, and mathematics. Other disciplines have since become the subject of interest. Yet, nothing substantial has been said about the role of thought experiments in nonphilosophical theology. This paper discusses the role of thought experiments in Christian theology in comparison to their role in quantum physics, as mentioned by John Polkinghorne in Quantum Physics and Theology. We first look briefly at the history of the inquiry into thought experiments and then at Polkinghorne's remarks about the role of thought experimentation in quantum physics and Christian eschatology. To determine the actual importance of thought experiments in Christian theology a number of new examples are introduced in a third step. In the light of these examples, in a fourth step, we address the question of what it is that explains the cognitive efficacy of thought experiments in quantum physics and Christian theology.     

Minimally Creative Thought

Creativity has received, and continues to receive, comparatively little analysis in philosophy and the brain and behavioural sciences. This is in spite of the importance of creative thought and action, and the many and varied resources of theories of mind. Here an alternative approach to analyzing creativity is suggested: start from the bottom up with minimally creative thought. Minimally creative thought depends non‐accidentally upon agency, is novel relative to the acting agent, and could not have been tokened before the time it is in fact tokened, relative to the agent in question. Thoughts that meet these three conditions—agency, psychological novelty, and modal—are what may be called cognitive breakthroughs. Even if such breakthroughs are not necessary to or definitive of richer creativity, they are indeed central to much of creativity. The minimal analysis provides a more workable explanandum for theories of creativity of varied motivation and method.     

Advocacy,brainwashing theories,and new religious movements

Advocacy by scholars in the field of new religious movements emerged during the ‘cult wars,’ which in the U.S. had their peak between 1970 and 1990 and continued in Europe and Japan in subsequent decades. Advocacy focused on the question of whether the ‘cults’ used a persuasion technique known as brainwashing. The idea of brainwashing was born during the Cold War, and originally applied to Communist techniques of indoctrination, but was lately first extended to religion and subsequently used as a tool to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate religions, labeling the latter as ‘cults.’ Prominent psychologists and sociologists were involved in these battles, with most scholars of new religious movements appearing in court in order to criticize the brainwashing theories advocated by psychologist Margaret T. Singer and a handful of anti-cult academics. After the Fishman decision of 1990, which seriously hit the anti-cult camp, advocacy in this field did not disappear but became somewhat less partisan.     

Association splitting of the sexual orientation-OCD-relevant semantic network

There is little research on treating symptoms of sexual orientation-obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD). Semantic networks represent a new cognitive approach for understanding cognitive mechanisms of SO-OCD. Specifically, we tested whether the self-help cognitive technique of association splitting (AS) developed from this approach would be efficacious in reducing SO-OCD symptoms and thought suppression. One hundred and twenty heterosexual undergraduates (82 females, 38 males) were randomly assigned to either the AS or waitlist control group. At baseline and four weeks later, participants completed items assessing SO-OCD symptoms, measures of sexual obsessions and thought suppression, and an association task in which they generated associations to different cue words. Generated associations were coded based on SO-OCD relevance and emotional valence. Results indicated reductions in SO-OCD-relevant associations across levels of emotional valence and SO-OCD-irrelevant negative associations, and increases in SO-OCD-irrelevant positive and neutral associations, only in the AS group. Furthermore, there were reductions in SO-OCD symptoms, sexual obsessions, and thought suppression only in the AS group. Importantly, these findings were obtained with overall large effect sizes. AS appears to be an efficacious self-help technique in reducing SO-OCD symptoms, sexual obsessions, and thought suppression. Clinical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Self‐reported inner speech use in university students

Remarkably little is known regarding what people talk to themselves about (inner speech use) in their everyday lives. Existing self‐directed speech measures (e.g., thought sampling and questionnaires) either uniquely capture inner speech frequency and neglect its content or classify self‐reported thoughts instances in overly simplistic categories determined by the researchers. In the current study, we describe an open‐format thought listing procedure as well as a refined coding scheme and present detailed inner speech content self‐generated by 76 university students. The most frequently self‐reported inner speech activities were self‐regulation (e.g., planning and problem solving), self‐reflection (e.g., emotions, self‐motivation, appearance, behavior/performance, and autobiography), critical thinking (e.g., evaluating, judging, and criticizing), people in general, education, and current events. Inner speech occurred most commonly while studying and driving. These results are consistent with the self‐regulatory and self‐referential functions of inner speech often emphasized in the literature. Future research avenues using the open‐format inner speech listing procedure and coding scheme are proposed.     

Quine's Naturalism and Behaviorisms

This paper investigates the complicated relations between various versions of naturalism, behaviorism, and mentalism within the framework of W. V. O. Quine's thinking. It begins with Roger Gibson's reconstruction of Quine's behaviorisms and argues that it lacks a crucial ontological element and misconstrues the relation between philosophy and science. After getting clear of Quine's naturalism, the paper distinguishes between evidential, methodological, and ontological behaviorisms. The evidential and methodological versions are often conflated, but they need to be clearly distinguished in order to see whether Quine's argument against mentalism is cogent. The paper argues that Quine's naturalism supports only the weakest version of behaviorism, that is, the evidential one, but this version is compatible with mentalistic semantics. Quine's opposition to mentalism is an overreaction against the behaviorist camp. By contrast, Jerry Fodor's objection to José Luis Bermúdez is an overreaction from the opposite direction.     

Three Arguments Against the Expertise Defense

Experimental philosophers have challenged friends of the expertise defense to show that (a) the intuitive judgments of professional philosophers are different from the intuitive judgments of nonphilosophers, and (b) the intuitive judgments of professional philosophers are better than the intuitive judgments of nonphilosophers, in ways that are relevant to the truth or falsity of such judgments. Friends of the expertise defense have responded by arguing that the burden of proof lies with experimental philosophers. This article sketches three arguments which show that both (a) and (b) are probably false. If its arguments are cogent, then shifting the burden of proof is a futile move, since philosophical training makes no difference so far as making intuitive judgments in response to hypothetical cases is concerned.     

Attempted suppression of social threat thoughts: Differential effects for social phobia and healthy controls?

Thought suppression research in the area of social phobia provides conflicting evidence regarding whether individuals demonstrate a general deficit or successful suppression. This paper reports the outcome of two studies using an online thought suppression paradigm measuring activation of target thoughts. Study 1 examined the effects of suppressing social threat stimuli with a healthy control group. Surprisingly, the results showed that participants demonstrated non-suppression of this stimuli class. Study 2 compared individuals with social phobia to a control group using the same stimuli as Study 1. Results revealed that following instructions to suppress social threat stimuli, individuals with social phobia demonstrated successful suppression, whilst the control group, as in Study 1, did not. The lack of suppression of social threat information by the control group may reflect functional impression-management of social threat stimuli. Whereas, successful suppression of these stimuli by individuals with social phobia, may contribute to diminished habituation to such information.     

Selection of Decision Strategies After Conscious and Unconscious Thought

It is commonly assumed that the use of simple, non‐compensatory strategies is especially pronounced in memory‐based decisions, where information costs are high. At the same time, there is evidence that in memory‐based decisions, a compensatory processing of attributes is facilitated when the processing occurs unconsciously rather than consciously. We applied a strategy classification approach—developed in research on non‐compensatory heuristics—to test two key tenets of unconscious thought theory: the capacity principle and the weighting principle. Participants memorized attribute information about cars and were subsequently either directed to or diverted from thinking consciously about their preferences between the cars (conscious versus unconscious thought). Then, participants indicated in pair‐wise choices which car they would prefer and were classified (based on their choices) as using either one of two compensatory strategies (equal weight or weighted additive) or a non‐compensatory strategy (lexicographic heuristic). In line with the capacity principle, the number of participants best described by a compensatory strategy (the equal‐weight strategy) tended to be higher after unconscious thought than after conscious thought, whereas the number of participants best described by the lexicographic heuristic tended to be lower. Inconsistent with the weighting principle, participants in the unconscious thought condition were better described by the equal‐weight strategy than by the weighted‐additive strategy. In Experiment 2, in which participants were not instructed to form an impression while learning the attribute information, the use of the equal‐weight strategy was not more prevalent after unconscious thought. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.