Restructuring Interreligious Dialogue from the Bottom Up through the Lenses of Deep Solidarity and the Multitude

Social movements and liberation theologies have addressed various forms of oppression and exploitation along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and other factors, not without tensions. What might bring them closer together without erasing differences? Addressing this question has important implications for fresh approaches to interreligious dialogue. In this contribution, notions of deep solidarity and of the multitude point the way toward restructured interreligious engagements.     

发展性阅读障碍与小脑异常：小脑的功能和两者的因果关系

发展性阅读障碍(下文简称为"阅读障碍")不仅会影响个人的终身发展,还会对社会造成沉重的经济负担,深入探讨相关的神经机制,对实现阅读障碍的早期预测和干预十分重要。以往关于阅读障碍神经机制的模型多集中于大脑,近些年的研究发现,阅读障碍也与小脑异常有关,但到目前为止我们仍不清楚两者的关系。通过总结最新的研究进展,我们发现小脑在阅读障碍中可能发挥着多种功能,且小脑异常与阅读障碍可能互为因果。在此基础之上,我们提出了"阅读中小脑与大脑的功能映射假说",旨在从一个全新的角度揭示小脑与阅读的关系,以及两者与大脑的关系。相关内容对全面揭示阅读障碍的神经机制,以及小脑在高级认知加工中的作用,具有重要的启示意义。     

Prenatal auditory experience and its sequelae

Towards the end of the second trimester of gestation, a human fetus is able to register environmental sounds. This in utero auditory experience is characterized by comprising strongly low-pass-filtered versions of sounds from the external world. Here, we present computational tests of the hypothesis that this early exposure to severely degraded auditory inputs serves an adaptive purpose—it may induce the neural development of extended temporal integration. Such integration can facilitate the detection of information carried by low-frequency variations in the auditory signal, including emotional or other prosodic content. To test this prediction, we characterized the impact of several training regimens, biomimetic and otherwise, on a computational model system trained and tested on the task of emotion recognition. We find that training with an auditory trajectory recapitulating that of a neurotypical infant in the pre-to-postnatal period results in temporally extended receptive field structures and yields the best subsequent accuracy and generalization performance on the task of emotion recognition. This strongly suggests that the progression from low-pass-filtered to full-frequency inputs is likely to be an adaptive feature of our development, conferring significant benefits to later auditory processing abilities relying on temporally extended analyses. Additionally, this finding can help explain some of the auditory impairments associated with preterm births, suggests guidelines for the design of auditory environments in neonatal care units, and points to enhanced training procedures for computational models.     

Between the Christ of Deep Incarnation and The African Jesus of Tinyiko Maluleke: An Improvised Dialogue

All differences considered, the Christ of deep incarnation and the African Jesus of Tinyiko Maluleke share at least one fundamental dimension: they both stand out as signs of God's radical embodiment in the world of creation/of African culture(s). Put crudely, while the deep incarnation theologians extend Jesus’ body into social and cosmic bodies, Maluleke locates Jesus’ body in the bodies of his fellow Africans. This study first identifies major convergences and tensions between these two christological perspectives and, second, posits that the scandal of reciprocity, seen as a characteristic feature of African christologies, can be translated into a twofold guiding principle for approaching and assessing African Christianity theologically.     

THE ENTANGLED TRINITY,QUANTUM BIOLOGY,AND DEEP INCARNATION

By utilizing the concept of quantum decoherence, augmented by the novel theory of quantum Darwinism, to understand the transition from the quantum to the classical worlds, the scaling up of the concept of quantum entanglement2018 to the biological level offers a fascinating metaphor for the presence of the creative spirit in nature and the “flesh” of Incarnation. This in turn provides helpful theological metaphors for articulating divine presence at the level of life in theistic evolution, partially addressing the issue of evolutionary theodicy by supporting the concept of deep Incarnation. The point of understanding the Incarnation as deeply entangled enfleshment is that it brings the suffering of creation into the life of the Redeemer as well as the Creator, facilitating redemption and hope through the divine life.     

The self in deep ecology: A response to Watson

ABSTRACT

Richard Watson maintains that deep ecology suffers from an internal contradiction and should therefore be rejected. Watson contends that deep ecology claims to be non-anthropocentric while at the same time is committed to setting humans apart from nature, which is inherently anthropocentric. I argue that Watson’s objection arises out of a fundamental misunderstanding of how deep ecologist’s conceive of the ‘Self.’ Drawing on resources from Buddhism, I offer an understanding of the ‘Self’ that is fully consistent with deep ecology, and does not lead to the anthropocentric contradiction that Watson identifies. The paper will proceed as follows: First, I articulate Watson’s objection, and briefly discuss the traditional deep ecology position. Next, I turn to a discussion of the ‘Self’ and show that there are conceptions of human nature that are not separate from ‘Nature.’ It will thus be shown that deep ecology is not inconsistent and need not be rejected.