THE VARIETIES AND REVISIONS OF ATHEISM

Abstract. The philosopher Antony Flew has argued for decades that theistic arguments cannot meet criteria of truth. In this essay I respond to Flew's recent announcement that research into the emergence of DNA provides grounds for rational belief in an intelligent orderer, a “God.” Flew's theistic turn is important for philosophers of religion and the wider science‐and‐religion dialogue. It becomes apparent, however, that Flew's “conversion” is not as decisive as one might imagine. While he admits growth in scientific and philosophical understanding, he rejects the idea of growth in religious understanding. Further, he endorses a version of “theoretical theism” while denying the practical importance of belief. Such denial of practical conviction is part of a modernist mindset that separates freedom from the embeddedness of human beings in the natural world. I conclude by noting that the entanglement of human action and wider physical processes, an entanglement seen emblematically in the environmental crisis, requires not only considering the importance of intelligence and order in the emergence of life but also the significance of human agency in claims about the divine and the natural world.     

对心理学危机论的探析

目前学术界对心理学是否存在危机这个问题,存在很多争议。有的学者认为,心理学的发展存在危机;有的学者认为心理学发展不存在危机,并各自对他们的观点进行了论证。鉴于这个问题,心理学应探索更科学化的出路。     

Using temporal logics of knowledge for specification and verification—a case study

Temporal logics of knowledge are useful for reasoning about situations where the knowledge of an agent or component is important, and where change in this knowledge may occur over time. Here we use temporal logics of knowledge to reason about the game Cluedo. We show how to specify Cluedo using temporal logics of knowledge and prove statements about the knowledge of the players using a clausal resolution calculus for this logic. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using this logic to specify and verify the game Cluedo and describe related implementations.     

Perceptual processing affects conceptual processing

According to the Perceptual Symbols Theory of cognition ( Barsalou, 1999 ), modality-specific simulations underlie the representation of concepts. A strong prediction of this view is that perceptual processing affects conceptual processing. In this study, participants performed a perceptual detection task and a conceptual property-verification task in alternation. Responses on the property-verification task were slower for those trials that were preceded by a perceptual trial in a different modality than for those that were preceded by a perceptual trial in the same modality. This finding of a modality-switch effect across perceptual processing and conceptual processing supports the hypothesis that perceptual and conceptual representations are partially based on the same systems.     

Determining who owns what: do children infer ownership from first possession?

A basic problem of daily life is determining who owns what. One way that people may solve this problem is by relying on a ‘first possession’ heuristic, according to which the first person who possesses an object is its owner, even if others subsequently possess the object. We investigated preschoolers’ use of this heuristic in five experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 3- and 4-year-olds inferred that an object was owned by the character who possessed it first, even though another character subsequently possessed it. Two-year-olds also showed this bias, but only when the object was placed between the characters when children were asked about ownership. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that children’s bias to select the first possessor results from a tendency to select the character first associated with the object. Experiment 4 showed that 3- and 4-year-olds have difficulty disregarding the first possession heuristic, even when provided with evidence that the character who first possessed an object is not its owner. But Experiment 5 found that children can disregard the heuristic in at least some situations. These five experiments suggest that the first possession heuristic guides children’s ownership inferences. The findings provide the first evidence that preschoolers can infer who owns what, when not explicitly told, and when not reasoning about objects with which they are personally acquainted.     

A Puzzle for Particulars?

In this paper we examine a puzzle recently posed by Aaron Preston for the traditional realist assay of property (quality) instances. Consider Socrates (a red round spot) and red₁—Socrates’ redness. For the traditional realist, both of these entities are concrete particulars. Further, both involve redness being `tied to’ the same bare individuator. But then it appears that red₁ is duplicated in its ‘thicker’ particular (Socrates), so that it can’t be predicated of Socrates without redundancy. According to Preston, this suggests that a concrete particular and its property instances aren’t genuinely related. We argue that Preston’s proffered solution here—to treat property instances as “mental constructs”—is fraught with difficulty. We then go on to show how, by fine-tuning the nature of bare particulars, treating them as abstract modes of things rather than concrete particulars, the traditional realist can neatly evade Preston’s puzzle.

A Comparative Study on the Information Ethics of Junior High School Students Cognition and Behavior between Taiwan and China: Kaohsiung and Nanjing Regions Used as Examples

A great deal of progress has been made on information ethics. Which portion is not sufficient? That might be the comparison from countries to countries. The purpose of this study was closely examined using the cross-cultural method for comparison. To determine the ethics cognitions and behaviors of the students, a comprehensive survey was distributed. The questionnaire for the study used Mason’s four essential factors in information ethics that included Privacy, Accuracy, Property and Accessibility (PAPA). The samples were comprised of Kaohsiung Taiwan and Nanjing China, junior high school students in 2006. The sample and the survey were obtained from two stages of random sampling that was conducted using an Internet website. Students could read the online questionnaire in the computer laboratory and then send immediate feedback to the website server. The result of the experiment showed the divergence of information ethics in cognition and behavior between Kaohsiung and Nanjing school children. The effects of background and correlation are from cognition and behavior between two regions.     

What's in a name? Typicality and relatedness effects in children

We studied how category typicality and out-of-category relatedness affect speeded category verification (vote "yes" if pictured object is clothing) in typically developing 4- to 14-year-olds and adults. Stimuli were typical and atypical category objects (e.g., pants, glove) and related and unrelated out-of-category objects (e.g., necklace, soup). Typical and unrelated out-of-category objects exhibited preferential processing (faster reaction times and fewer errors). Variations in typicality and relatedness disproportionately influenced children's performance, with developmental improvement associated with both verbal and nonverbal factors. Underextension versus overextension errors seemed to be associated with independent factors, namely multifaceted maturational factors versus receptive vocabulary skill, respectively. Errors were infrequent, suggesting spontaneous taxonomic classification by all participants. An experiment with printed words in adults replicated results, indicating that typicality and relatedness effects reflected organizational principles of the semantic system, not picture-related processes. This research establishes the viability of an online approach to assessing automatic components of semantic organization in children.     

Children Apply Principles of Physical Ownership to Ideas

Adults apply ownership not only to objects but also to ideas. But do people come to apply principles of ownership to ideas because of being taught about intellectual property and copyrights? Here, we investigate whether children apply rules from physical property ownership to ideas. Studies 1a and 1b show that children (6–8 years old) determine ownership of both objects and ideas based on who first establishes possession of the object or idea. Study 2 shows that children use another principle of object ownership, control of permission—an ability to restrict others’ access to the entity in question—to determine idea ownership. In Study 3 , we replicate these findings with different idea types. In Study 4 , we determine that children will not apply ownership to every entity, demonstrating that they do not apply ownership to a common word. Taken together, these results suggest that, like adults, children as young as 6 years old apply rules from ownership not only to objects but to ideas as well.