Rehearsal capacity and dimensional independence in retardates

Retardate use of retention strategies and the independence of color and form retention were compared with predictions of the Attention-Retention theory of retardate discrimination learning. Lists of two-choice discrimination problems were increased in length from one to capacity, which was defined through criterion retention across a 20-sec interval. It was demonstrated that (a) capacity and rate of adjustment of retentional strategy were directly related to intelligence, (b) at capacity limits the retention of problems in one dimension interfered with retention in a second dimension, and (c) results consistent with a capacity allocation strategy were obtained. The results were interpreted as reflecting short-term memory capacity constraints on the use of rehearsal.     

CLIMATE CHANGE,LAUDATO SI', CREATION SPIRITUALITY,AND THE NOBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST'S VOCATION

This exploration into spirituality and climate change employs the “four paths” of the creation spirituality tradition. The author recognizes those paths in the rich teachings of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si' and applies them in considering the nobility of the scientist's vocation. Premodern thinkers often resisted any split between science and religion. The author then lays out the basic archetypes for recognizing the sacredness of creation, namely, the Cosmic Christ (Christianity); the Buddha Nature (Buddhism); the Image of God (Judaism); the “Primordial Man” (Hinduism), as well as the premodern universal teaching of “God as Beauty.” He addresses the subject of evil which deserves serious attention in the face of the realities posed by climate change and the resistance to addressing them. In the concluding section, the author speaks of a new Order of the Sacred Earth that was launched in fall 2017 to gather persons of whatever spiritual tradition or none to devote themselves to preserving Mother Earth.     

CAN SCIENCE AND RELIGION RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

With the challenge of communicating climate science in the United States and making progress in international negotiations on climate change there is a need for other approaches. The moral issues of ecological degradation and climate justice need to be integrated into social consciousness, political legislation, and climate treaties. Both science and religion can contribute to this integration with differentiated language but shared purpose. Recognizing the limits of both science and religion is critical to finding a way forward for addressing the critical challenges of climate change. How we value nature and human–Earth relations is crucial to this. We need a broader environmental ethics in dialogue with the science of climate change.     

Gerard Manley Hopkins on Planet Earth

Nineteenth-century Jesuit priest and poet, Gerd Manley Hopkins (1844–89), produced poems on natural themes which were not only revolutionary for their structure and style but also disctinctive and forward-looking for their treatment of the environment. In these poems, he presents nature as intrinsically (rather than instrumentally) valuable, God as concerned with the salvation not only of humans but of the environment, and humankind as responsible noy only for polluting the Earth but for participating in its salvation. Christian poets of the twenty-first century need to hees and follow Hopkin's example.     

Can Robert Adams Survive Moral Twin Earth?

Richard Boyd and Robert Adams have both developed semantic accounts of moral terms based on Hilary Putnam's causal regulation theory for natural kind terms, according to which the terms in question refer to the properties which predominantly causally regulated the terms. However, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have mounted an objection to Boyd's semantics—their Moral Twin Earth argument. If this argument is successful against Boyd then it might be thought that it should also be successful against Adams, given the similarity between their semantic accounts. I will argue in this essay that Adams's semantics is sufficiently different from Boyd's to enable him to survive Moral Twin Earth, but that he is vulnerable to a modified version of Moral Twin Earth that I describe.     

LAME SCIENCE? BLIND RELIGION?

In Consecrating Science, Lisa Sideris argues that an anthropocentric and science‐based cosmology encourages human arrogance and diminishes a sense of wonder in human experience immersed in the natural world, as found in diverse cultural and religious traditions. I agree with her that science elevated to a commanding worldview, scientism, is a common and contemporary mistake, to be deplored, a lame science. But I further argue that science has introduced us to the marvels of deep nature and vastly increased our human appreciation of nature as a wonderland at levels great and small. Sideris is right to fear consecrating science. She—and the humanists, sages, and saviors—need also to fear blindness to what science has to teach us about cosmogenesis and wonderland Earth.     

Evangelism Challenges the Church's Identity

The gospel of Christ has spread to hundreds of linguistic and cultural communities. Christian churches have come face to face with an extraordinarily positive but nevertheless perplexing problem: Can the churches find the common core message of the holistic gospel or will the actual content of faith become relativized into the interpretation of interpretations? Despite the many different definitions of evangelism/evangelization, evangelism always leads to consideration of the basic questions of faith: its profound understanding and its reception. Evangelism involves the questions of what I believe or believe in, and of what I commit to. In the midst of the constant flow of information and the hectic tempo of life, evangelism challenges the church again and again to reconsider how the gospel can be expressed compactly, but in a rich, understandable, and true‐to‐life way. In the ecumenical discussion, the concept of “witness” as a form of evangelism is becoming increasingly important, because it comprises all the essential dimensions of the whole gospel. Evangelism challenges churches and their members to boldly bear witness by word and deed to Jesus Christ.     

Children judge "perspective" transformations of letterlike forms as different from prototypes

Children from 5 to 11 years old made same-different judgments of prototypes of letterlike forms paired with transforms of these prototypes generated on a dimension either critical or noncritical for object identification. For compression transformations (noncritical: as in perspective shift), frequency of correct “different” judgments increased as the degree of compression in the transform increased. This result challenges the view that dimensions irrelevant in object identification are ignored or not detected in graphic discrimination.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cosmic Commons: Contact and Community

Abstract

As we Homo sapiens on planet Earth prepare for possible contact with extraterrestrial life (ET)—especially extraterrestrial intelligent (ETI) life—we need to consider ethics. What will be the ethical posture we adopt as Earth meets space? This article advocates an ethic of praxis based upon the concept of a Cosmic Commons. Intelligent extraterrestrial beings, from their experiences in biotic and abiotic environments, should share with us a universal regard for intelligence (intellilife), respect for biotic evolution, and a sense of responsibility for shared common space in our places in the universe. As we venture from Earth into space, what will be required? Not anxiety over human dis-placement to new worlds; nor should we invest our efforts in irresponsibly exploiting the natural goods of other planets. Rather, we need an ethical transformation of terrestrial human thought and conduct prior to, during, and as a consequence of extraterrestrial explorations and engagements. We need an anticipatory Cosmic Charter.