THE GOLEM LEGEND AND THE ENIGMA OF FACEBOOK

We are easily misguided as to the true nature of Facebook, and tend to treat it simply as a powerful technological instrument in the service of human intentions. We can, however, gain a better picture of it through recourse to the Jewish tradition of the golem, an image of human beings, created by them in a re-enactment of their own creation by God. It turns into a magic servant in modernity with an inherent dynamic running between its human and its subhuman characteristics. This dynamic is the main cause behind its becoming uncontrollable. In like manner, what is subhuman in Facebook serves its masters and functions under their total control, but also empowers Facebook's increasingly human operation, an algorithm-based capability which raises growing doubts about what counts as human. Facebook implies the crisis of humanity which coincides with the “death of God,” that is, the obsolescence of the idea of a divine creator.     

Religion and the Human Rights Idea

Three recent books focus, in different ways, on the idea of human rights and its relation to religion and religious ethics. All three books discussed here address criticisms of the human rights idea and seek to establish the relationship of religion and human rights with regard to the field of policy. The present discussion begins with an overview that places these three books in the larger context of the development of the human rights idea and its historical relationship with religion. It then turns to Little's book, next to the collection of essays edited by Twiss, Simion, and Petersen, which is described internally as a Festschrift for Little, and then to Hogan's book, and in the final section it explores comparisons among the books.     

ON "HUXLEYS EVOLUTION AND ETHICS IN SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE" BY GEORGE C. WILLIAMS

Abstract. I concur with Williams that improving human ethics requires full consideration of the biogenetic facts; but I argue that the understanding of biogenetic facts, and of ethics also, can be improved by a fuller view of nature's mechanism for selecting what is fit, a view recently generated by physical scientists. For me ethics necessarily must fit the evolved genotype, but ethics does not emerge until the rise of cultural evolution, where nature selects a culturetype symbiotic with the genotype. I outline my integrated dynamics of the relation of culturetypes to genotypes and to the laws governing physical systems. The biologist's finding that a living organism is of transient significance compared with its lines of heritage and their consequences, I argue, is constructively important for ethical and theological understanding.     

Assessing the relationship of Type A beliefs to cardiovascular disease risk and psychosocial distress

Investigators have begun to take a multimodal approach to the assessment and treatment of psychosocial risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). For instance, cognitive responses have become the focus of contemporary research along with continued examination of overt Type A behaviors. Price (1982) has outlined a set of beliefs purportedly associated with Type A behavior and subsequent CVD risk. The current study examines the validity of this belief set as represented by a newly developed measure, the Type A Cognitive Questionnaire (TACQ). Subjects were 221 employed adults participating in a worksite CVD risk reduction program. They completed the TACQ as part of a pretreatment CVD risk screening protocol. As hypothesized, TACQ scores were significantly associated with Type A behavior, hostility, physiological mediators of CVD, and psychosocial distress. Discussion addresses continued refinement of the Type A belief construct.     

The Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire: A revised measure of alcohol-related beliefs

Alcohol-related expectancies have been recently proposed as potentially important determinants of drinking behavior. This study describes the development of a New Zealand measure of such beliefs, the Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire (DEQ). Items selected through interviews, literature review, and the modification of other relevant questionnaires were piloted on 333 drinkers in a community sample and 275 college students. Factor analyses of both samples revealed nine alcohol reinforcement domains relating to assertiveness, affective change, sexual enhancement, social enhancement, relaxation, cognitive impairment, dependence, carelessness, and aggression. The potential clinical and research possibilities using this revised expectancy measure are briefly discussed, along with the scale's strength and weaknesses.The financial assistance of the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council of New Zealand in conducting this study is gratefully acknowledged.     

Fallacies

Fallacies are things people commit, and when they commit them they do something wrong. What kind of activities are people engaged in when they commit fallacies, and in what way are they doing something wrong? Many different things are called fallacies. The diversity of the use of the concept of a fallacy suggests that we are dealing with a family of cases not related by a common essence. However, we suggest a simple account of the nature of fallacies which encompasses them all, viz., the term “fallacy” is our most general term for criticizing any general procedure used for the fixation of beliefs that has an unacceptably high tendency to generate false or unfounded beliefs, relative to that method of fixing beliefs. Very different sorts of things called fallacies are examined in the light of this account, e.g., denying the antecedent, circular arguments, so-called informal fallacies, and propositions said to be fallacies. We do not provide a theory of fallacies. Still, on our account pretty much all of those things that have been called fallacies are fallacies, and they have been called fallacies for pretty much the same reasons.     

Comparing the effects of two correction procedures on human acquisition of sequential behavior patterns

Thirty-one college undergraduates learned to touch abstract stimuli on a computer screen in arbitrarily designated “correct” sequential orders. Four sets of seven stimuli were used; the stimuli were arrayed horizontally on the screen in random sequences. A correct response (i.e., touching first the stimulus designated as first) resulted in that stimulus appearing near the top of the screen in its correct sequential position (left to right), and remaining there until the end of the trial. Incorrect responses (i.e., touching a stimulus out of sequence) terminated the trial. New trials displayed either the same sequence as the one on which an error had occurred (same-order correction procedure), or a new random sequence (new-order correction procedure). Whenever all responses occurred in the correct sequence, the next trial displayed a new random sequence. Each phase ended when five consecutive correct response sequences occurred. Initially, the same-order correction procedure increased control by the position as well as by the shape of the stimuli; also, it produced more errors, more total trials, more trials to mastery, and more individual patterns of reacquisition than were produced by the new-order procedure.     

Experimental analysis of individual differences and personality

In psychological studies individual differences that result in variability in data and thus mask the effects under investigation have been reduced or eliminated in two ways: (1) through the use of large numbers of subjects and statistical manipulations, or (2) through extensive and controlled studies of individual subjects. The latter, behavior-analytic, method is scientifically better because it permits identification of the variables that result in individual differences. This paper advocates the direct study of individual differences and personality rather than indirect study through experimental control procedures. Some data are presented showing that individual differences in response patterns have orderly characteristics. Extension of the experimental analysis of behavior to the study of individual differences and personality is likely to be important both scientifically and for the future growth of behavior analysis.     

An interview on energy,Christian theology,and ethics with Larry Rasmussen

An interview with Larry Rasmussen on his and others' work on Christian energy ethics. The introduction to the interview gives a brief outline of Christian energy ethics. Rasmussen then reflects on this body of scholarship, where it has been, where it needs to go, and what perspectives or methods it should draw on.