Shaping the Field of Theology and Science: A Critique of Nancey Murphy

Nancey Murphy is a key second-generation figure in the field of religion and science. Through a variety of responsibilities, some of which are reviewed here, she has worked as a discipline builder over the last fifteen years. After trying to convey the general spirit of Murphy's work, the author focuses on five areas where readers might resist her conclusions, including her "postmodern" theory of scientific (and religious) knowledge and truth, her treatment of theology and science as "separate but equal," and her defense of physicalism.     

定量运动负荷后间隔不同时间的肘关节动觉方位准确性

该研究以过去研究中发现的定量运动负荷可以显著提高肘关节动觉方位准确性为基础,试图讨论这种定量运动负荷后间隔不同时间的肘关节动觉方位准确性。     

Life-Prolonging Killings and their Relevance to Ethics

What makes killing morally wrong? And what makes killing morally worse than letting die? Standard answers to these two questions presuppose that killing someone involves shortening that person's life. Yet, as I argue in the first two sections of this article, this presupposition is false: Life-prolonging killings are conceivable. In the last two sections of the article, I explore the significance of the conceivability of such killings for various discussions of the two questions just mentioned. In particular, I show why the conceivability of life-prolonging killings renders Frances M. Kamm's attempt to provide an answer to the second question problematic.     

Grammer and Social Interaction in Japanese and Anglo-American English: The Display of Context, Social Identity and Social Relation

This paper employs conversation analysis to examine the inter-connection between grammar and displays of contextual understanding, social identity, and social relationships as well as other activities clustering around turn-endings in Japanese talk-in-interaction, while undertaking a restricted comparison with the realisation of similar activities in English. A notable feature of turn-endings in Japanese is the particular salience of grammatical construction on the interactional activities they accomplish. Complete turns which are also syntactically complete are shown to be associated with the explicit display of contextual features, whereas syntactically incomplete turns are designed to circumvent or minimise such displays. The explicit or implicit display of one's social and contextual relationship to the interactional environment is therefore seen to be an integral part of the performance of social actions in Japanese. On the other hand, in English, it is more difficult to establish a clear association between grammar and the inclusion or avoidance of contextual displays.     

How to Identify Negative Actions with Positive Events

It is often assumed that, while ordinary actions are events, ‘negative actions’ (omissions, refrainments, etc.) are absences of events. I claim that a negative action is an ordinary, ‘positive’ event that plays a certain role. I argue that my approach can answer standard objections to the identity of negative actions and positive events.     

Right Action as Virtuous Action

I argue in favour of the central claim of virtue-ethical accounts of right action: that right action is virtuous action. First, I disambiguate this claim and argue for a specific interpretation of it. Second, I provide reasons to prefer target-centred over both agent-centred and motive-centred accounts of virtuous action. Third, I argue that an action is right if, only if, and because it is overall virtuous. Finally, I respond to important arguments to the contrary.     

The Mental Representation of Human Action

Various theories of moral cognition posit that moral intuitions can be understood as the output of a computational process performed over structured mental representations of human action. We propose that action plan diagrams—“act trees”—can be a useful tool for theorists to succinctly and clearly present their hypotheses about the information contained in these representations. We then develop a methodology for using a series of linguistic probes to test the theories embodied in the act trees. In Study 1, we validate the method by testing a specific hypothesis (diagrammed by act trees) about how subjects are representing two classic moral dilemmas and finding that the data support the hypothesis. In Studies 2–4, we explore possible explanations for discrete and surprising findings that our hypothesis did not predict. In Study 5, we apply the method to a less well‐studied case and show how new experiments generated by our method can be used to settle debates about how actions are mentally represented. In Study 6, we argue that our method captures the mental representation of human action better than an alternative approach. A brief conclusion suggests that act trees can be profitably used in various fields interested in complex representations of human action, including law, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence.     

La dynamique du système capacitaire Identité, action et projet

This study aims at illustrating the interest of a methodology of exploration of identity dynamics, the IMIS(Zavalloni & Louis-Guerin, 1984), for the elaboration of the professional project. Psychosocial identity is a system of representations of oneself and the world animated by the paradox of being identical and distinct at the same time. This system justifies ways of thought and action, that are retrieved in identity strategies. Action is presented as a medium-term project, endowed with a function of regulation of identity and capability representations that it conveys and validates(Costalat-Founeau, 2008). The project therefore leans upon the cognitive substrate of experience. Action doesn’t follow the project, both are interwoven in a common perspective defined by intentional objectives(Young & Valach, 2006).     

Religion,Religious Tradition,and Nationalism: Jewish Revival in Poland and “Religious Heritage” in Québec

This article uses and develops Martin Riesebrodt's distinction between religion and religious tradition to shed light on the making of various articulations of religious identities and political projects. Based on extensive research on the Polish and Québécois cases, I show how social and state actors in these societies reactivate past religious traditions to respond to current social transformations and articulate societal projects and advance political agendas in the present. In both cases, religion and religious tradition are juxtaposed to articulate new national identities or fortify older ones, and to respond more specifically to the challenges posed by “pluralism.” I suggest that sociologists who work at the intersection of religion and politics can contribute to our understanding of the various registers through which religion, religious action, and religious tradition are rendered meaningful to social actors, used for different goals (religious and not) and transformed in the process.     

Acquisition of social referencing via discrimination training in infants

This experiment investigated social referencing as a form of discriminative learning in which maternal facial expressions signaled the consequences of the infant's behavior in an ambiguous context. Eleven 4- and 5-month-old infants and their mothers participated in a discrimination-training procedure using an ABAB design. Different consequences followed infants' reaching toward an unfamiliar object depending on the particular maternal facial expression. During the training phases, a joyful facial expression signaled positive reinforcement for the infant reaching for an ambiguous object, whereas a fearful expression signaled aversive stimulation for the same response. Baseline and extinction conditions were implemented as controls. Mothers' expressions acquired control over infants' approach behavior for all participants. All participants ceased to show discriminated responding during the extinction phase. The results suggest that 4- and 5-month-old infants can learn social referencing via discrimination training.