Asymmetries in the perceptual span for Israeli readers

Native Israeli readers read Hebrew and English text as their eye movements were monitored. A window of text moved in synchrony with their eye movements and the window was either symmetrical about the fixation point or offset to the left or right. When subjects were reading Hebrew, the perceptual span was asymmetric to the left and when they were reading English it was asymmetric to the right. The results point out the importance of attentional factors in reading.     

The Suspended Aesthetic: Slavoj Žižek on Eastern European Film

Slavoj iek's writings on Krzysztof Kies´lowski and Andrej Tarkovskij represent direct challenges to the Central and Eastern European tradition of spiritual art and to dominant aesthetic concepts as such. He refuses to separate the solemn films of Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij from popular culture and stresses their import as ethical statements by their directors. Despite this ethical emphasis, iek makes an important contribution to philosophical aesthetics. He implicitly defines art as a suspension of reality which reveals time in its fragility and potentiality. Defining iek's aesthetics in terms of suspension helps to explain his partiality for Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij and bears comparison to the Russian tradition of philosophical aesthetics, in particular Aleksej Losev and Alexander Bakshy.     

Building Communities, Bridging Gaps: Alexander George's Contributions to Research Methods

This article assesses Alexander L. George's seminal contributions in six areas of political psychology and qualitative case study methods. These include George's work on psychological inputs in political processes, the intersection of history and political science, methods of within-case analysis such as process tracing, the use of structured, focused case comparisons (SFCC), the development of typological theories, and the connections among theory, empirical research, teaching, and policy. The article concludes with an analysis of four ongoing dimensions of George's research agenda: the need to integrate theories on purposive, cognitive, social, and motivational dynamics of decision making; the importance of methodological safeguards against our own cognitive biases as researchers; ways of integrating qualitative, quantitative, formal, and experimental research methods; and ways of modeling and testing theories on causal complexity.     

BEAUTY IN THE LIVING WORLD

Almost all admit that there is beauty in the natural world. Many suspect that such beauty is more than an adornment of nature. Few in our contemporary world suggest that this beauty is an empirical principle of the natural world itself and instead relegate beauty to the eye and mind of the beholder. Guided by theological and scientific insight, the authors propose that such exclusion is no longer tenable, at least in the data of modern biology and in our view of the natural world in general. More important, we believe an empirical aesthetics exists that can help guide experimental design and development of computational models in biology. Moreover, because theology and science can both contribute toward and equally profit from such an aesthetics, we propose that this empirical aesthetics provides the foundation for a living synergy between theology and science.     

Delay of gratification in children: The effects of training under fixed,decreasing and increasing delay of reward

The effect of fixed, gradually decreasing, or increasing delay of reward in discimination learning on later delay of gratification was investigated. In discrimination training, employing a correction procedure, a candy reward was delivered either after 0, 10, 20, 40 or 60 sec fixed delay; or after 60 sec in the first block of trials and decreased in successive block; or reward was immediate in the first block of trials and delay was gradually increased to 60 sec. In the delay of gratification tests, subjects could press a button immediately to receive a small reward (one candy or a cheap toy) or delay pressing and receive an increasingly larger reward (more candy or a better toy).Learning was not significantly affected by either fixed or decreasing delays. Increasing delays resulted in faster learning than decreasing delays. The increasing delay group demonstrated superior delay of gratification on both tests. Fixed delay groups did not differ significantly among themselves, nor from the decreasing delay group. The effectiveness of exposure to increasing delays in facilitating delay of gratification was interpreted as due to either the acquisition of coping responses or the extinction of frustration.     

Developmental differences in cognitive mapping: Configurational knowledge of familiar large-scale environments

In order to investigate the development of cognitive mapping of familiar large-scale environments. First-, fifth-, and eighth-grade children were asked to make bearing and distance estimates to six targets from three sighting locations in their school. Correlations between estimated and actual bearings and distances were extremely high at all grade levels, indicating that (a) children at all grade levels could reliably make such estimates, and (b) route knowledge of even the youngest children was quite high. Bearing accuracy increased between first- and fifth-grade and showed little improvement thereafter. Increases in a measure of configurational accuracy were found between first- and fifth-grade and between fifth- and eighth-grade. Differential accuracy as a function of the demands of particular sighting locations was found only for the younger children.     

New Work on Kant's Doctrine of Right

Super-substantivalism is the thesis that space is identical to matter; it is currently under discussion – see Sklar (1977, 221–4), Earman (1989, 115–6) and Schaffer (2009) – in contemporary philosophy of physics and metaphysics. Given this current interest, it is worth investigating the thesis in the history of philosophy. This paper examines the super-substantivalism of Samuel Alexander, an early twentieth century metaphysician primarily associated with (the movement now known as) British Emergentism. Alexander argues that spacetime is ontologically fundamental and it gives rise to an ontological hierarchy of emergence, involving novel properties such as matter, life and mind. Alexander's super-substantivalism is interesting not just because of its historical importance but also because Alexander unusually attempts to explain why spacetime is identical to matter. This paper carefully unpacks that explanation and shows how Alexander is best read as conceiving of spacetime as a Spinozistic substance, worked upon by evolution.     

Recent Consideration of World Government in the IR Literature: A Critical Appraisal

Because recent contributions on world government in the international relations (IR) literature have focused on relatively nebulous issues, they are of limited usefulness for illuminating whether or not an actual world government would advance the human prospect. This question cannot be sensibly addressed unless in the light of a specific institutional proposal. Along the authority-effectiveness continuum separating the relatively ineffectual existent United Nations on the one hand, and the traditional world federalist ideal of the omnipotent world state on the other, there are intermediate possibilities not subject to the respective disadvantages of the extreme endpoints of this continuum.     

Introduction

The papers in this section were given as a panel on Religious Naturalism at the American Academy of Religion in Denver in November 2001. The panelists included Jerome Stone, Gordon Kaufman, Ursula Goodenough, Charley Hardwick, and Donald Crosby. This introduction briefly describes the panelists, lists three questions the panelists were asked to consider, and names other current and past religious naturalists.     

Did John B. Watson Really “Found” Behaviorism?

Developments culminating in the nineteenth century, along with the predictable collapse of introspective psychology, meant that the rise of behavioral psychology was inevitable. In 1913, John B. Watson was an established scientist with impeccable credentials who acted as a strong and combative promoter of a natural science approach to psychology when just such an advocate was needed. He never claimed to have founded “behavior psychology” and, despite the acclaim and criticism attending his portrayal as the original behaviorist, he was more an exemplar of a movement than a founder. Many influential writers had already characterized psychology, including so-called mental activity, as behavior, offered many applications, and rejected metaphysical dualism. Among others, William Carpenter, Alexander Bain, and (early) Sigmund Freud held views compatible with twentieth-century behaviorism. Thus, though Watson was the first to argue specifically for psychology as a natural science, behaviorism in both theory and practice had clear roots long before 1913. If behaviorism really needs a “founder,” Edward Thorndike might seem more deserving, because of his great influence and promotion of an objective psychology, but he was not a true behaviorist for several important reasons. Watson deserves the fame he has received, since he first made a strong case for a natural science (behaviorist) approach and, importantly, he made people pay attention to it.