LOOKING TO CHARLES TAYLOR AND JOSEPH ROUSE FOR BEST PRACTICES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

People discussing science and religion usually frame their conversations in terms of essentialist assumptions about science, assumptions requiring the existence (but not the specification) of criteria according to which science can be distinguished from other forms of inquiry. However, criteria functioning at a level of generality appropriate to such discussions may not exist at all. Essentialist assumptions may be avoided if science is understood within a broader context of human practices. In a philosophy of practices, to label a practice as “scientific” is to make a practically motivated provision for a way of speaking. Charles Taylor and Joseph Rouse have produced complementary philosophies of practice that promote this kind of understanding. In this essay I review the work of Taylor and Rouse, identify apparent residues of essentialism that each seems to harbor, and offer a resolution to some of their disagreements. I also criticize a form of essentialism commonly employed in Christian circles and outline an anti‐essentialist view of science that may be helpful in science‐and‐religion discussions.     

Exploring Gender in South-Asian Cultural Memory Through Artistic Process

Abstract

My artistic inquiries draw from gender and sexuality in public space and use performance as process. In inspiration, the works emerge as aesthetic responses to post-colonial, gendered public identities and as negotiations with the cultural politics of modernity. Dwelling on the interaction of Indian modernity with cultural memory through myth, ritual, traditions and colonial histories, I hope to touch upon multiple influences of the Indian public sphere. Through a fragmented contemplation on guiding impulses, this discussion propositions the production of works as potentials to re-eroticise the public sphere.     

Longer,smaller, faster,stronger: On skills and intelligence

ABSTRACT

How does practice change our behaviors such that they go from being awkward, unskilled actions to elegant, skilled performances? This is the question that I wish to explore in this paper. In the first section of the paper, I will defend the tight connection between practice and skill and then go on to make precise how we ought to construe the concept of practice. In the second section, I will suggest that practice contributes to skill by structuring and automatizing the motor routines constitutive of skilled actions. I will cite how this fact about skilled action has misled many philosophers to conclude that skills are mindless or bodily. In the third section of the paper, I will challenge this common misconception about automaticity by appealing to empirical evidence of motor chunking. This evidence reveals that there are two opposing processes involved in the automaticity of skilled action: one process that is largely associative, which I will call “concatenation,” and a second which is a controlled cognitive process, which I will call “segmentation.” As a result of this evidence, we will be in a position to see clearly why skills are minded and intelligent not merely during their acquisition and not simply in virtue of their connection to intentional states but, rather, in their very nature. I will end by reflecting on some theoretical reasons for why this is exactly what we should expect to be the case when it comes to skilled action.     

Exploring the effect of testing on forgetting in vocabulary learning: an examination of the bifurcation model

ABSTRACT

Research on the testing effect demonstrated a stronger decrease in performance for repeated studying compared to repeated testing. The bifurcation model attributes this test-delay interaction to different distributions of item memory strength. The present study tested the assumptions of the bifurcation model for learning foreign language vocabulary. We hypothesised an elimination or reduction of the interaction in a test/feedback condition because feedback prevents the bifurcation of item memory strength. Our experiment based on a 3 (Learning Method within: Test, test/feedback, copy)?×?3 (Retention Interval between: Immediate, 1-week, 2-weeks) mixed factorial design with a sample of N = 122. The greatest long-term retention was achieved in the test/feedback condition. The bifurcation model was supported by a reduced test-delay interaction for the test/feedback condition. Further evidence for the bifurcation model is needed as interpretations on the dropout rates of items with different recall success were limited due to a floor effect.     

Cross-fertilization versus transmission: Recommendations for developing a bidirectional approach to psychotherapy dissemination research

Psychotherapy researchers are increasingly engaged in collaborations with clinical practitioners and mental health administrators. Each party brings its own perspectives, values, and agendas to bear in these encounters. Viable research—practice collaborations depend on understanding and negotiating some of the tensions in these relationships. In this article, we discuss the contexts that prevail for various participants in a psychotherapy dissemination study as well as the values, goals, costs, and benefits related to research participation. This article is a collaboration among the researchers, mental health administrators, therapists, and clients involved in an ongoing treatment dissemination study. Our recommendations for research—practice collaborations are based on our experiences and dialogues over the course of this study.     

Critical incident sparks critical incident sparks critical incident: an ‘aresolutionist’ method

In this article the authors propose a concept of aresolutionism and outline an aresolutionist method/ology which emerged from reflective practice research. This research was prompted by an event that occurred during a tutorial and the outlined methodology is illustrated by an account of subsequent events and processes. The authors draw on poststructuralist theorizing and methods such as writing as inquiry to counter the resolutionism that permeates dominant approaches to research and reflective practice. In their own research, the authors’ aim shifted from solving a pedagogic problem to analyzing the event as a complex assemblage and exploring the discourses that circled their discussions about the event. A problem to solve had become an object of curiosity.