This article considers the application of sexual selection theory to the study of religion by discussing the basic concepts and theories in sexual selection and then outlines possibilities of its application to the study of the evolution of religion. The first section outlines basic principles in the sexual selection account, including the evolution of human mating strategies based on dimorphism, gender differences in human mating strategies, and the role of different cultural activities in mating dynamics. Such an overview may be (...) useful for the readers who are less familiar with the basic assumptions of the sexual selection theory. The remaining sections demonstrate how religion may function as a signal for mating qualities associated with a long-term mating strategy and how different facets of religiosity may help to support long-term mating strategies. The key idea of the article is that there are good reasons to try to explain the evolution of at least some of the components of religion in terms of sexual selection. (shrink)

Robert N. McCauley's new book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (2011) presents a new paradigm for investigating the relationship between science and religion by exploring the cognitive foundations of religious belief and scientific knowledge. McCauley's contention is that many of the differences and disagreements regarding religion and science are the product of distinct features of human cognition that process these two domains of knowledge very differently. McCauley's thesis provides valuable insights into this relationship while not necessarily leading (...) to a dismissive view of theology or religious belief. His paradigm allows the research lens to focus on cognitive differences in processing scientific versus religious information and the important role of automatic, unconscious, and intuitive cognitive processes in understanding both the natural and supernatural worlds. (shrink)

One of the central tenets of Christian theology is the denial of self for the benefit of another. However, many views on the evolution of altruism presume that natural selection inevitably leads to a self-seeking human nature and that altruism is merely a façade to cover underlying selfish motives. I argue that human altruism is an emergent characteristic that cannot be reduced to any one particular evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary processes at work in the formation of human nature are not (...) necessarily in conflict with the possibility of altruism; rather, aspects of human nature are uniquely directed toward the care and concern of others. The relationship between altruism, human nature, and evolution can be reimagined by adopting an emergent view of the hierarchy of science and a theological worldview that emphasizes self-renunciation. The investigation of altruism necessitates an approach that analyzes several aspects of altruistic behavior at different levels in the hierarchy of sciences. This research includes the study of evolutionary adaptations, neurological systems, cognitive functions, behavioral traits, and cultural influences. No one level is able to offer a full explanation, but each piece adds a unique dimension to a much larger puzzle. (shrink)

More particularly, the book evaluates the concept of moral exemplarity and its significance in philosophical and theological ethics as well as for ongoing research programs in the cognitive sciences.

Our research project will investigate the virtue of humility among real world humanitarian exemplars, such as holocaust rescuers and hospice workers. We will use computer technology to analyze interviews with these types of populations to understand the different factors involved in the virtue of humility. Following the work of Aristotle, we believe this virtue is formed as a kind of habit that becomes a natural extension of one’s character. We aim to operationalize and empirically evaluate aspects of the virtue of (...) humility through the computational analysis of implicit semantic processing embedded in the narratives of real world humanitarians. Latent semantic analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, and hierarchical cluster analysis will be used to map self-understanding schemas in these populations and its role in humility while serving others. (shrink)

This volume explores the role of both “mere habits” and sophisticated habitus in the formation of moral character and the virtues, incorporating perspectives from philosophy, theology, psychology, and neuroscience.

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics - the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

This qualitative study describes and interprets the lived experiences of African RomanCatholic Church seminarians. The interpretive lens employed was worldview, a conceptual tool extensively used in African-centred psychology. Sixteen Africanseminarians were purposely selected and interviewed in depthAdditional sources of data were reflexive notes and observation notes. Data were subjected tovarious iterative cycles of analysis. Participants described their difficulty in adjusting in theseminaries where teaching and living predominantly reflects a Western world view. Theyevidenced cognitive dissonance, emotional discomfort and feelings of marginalisation. (...) Thefindings point to the importance of acknowledging the world views and cultural heritage ofseminarians in their training. (shrink)

Social functions and functional explanations play a prominent role not only in our everyday reasoning but also in classical as well as contemporary social theory and empirical social research. This volume explores metaphysical, normative, and methodological perspectives on social functions and functional explanations in the social sciences. It aims to push the philosophical debate on social functions forward along new investigative lines by including up-to-date discussions of the metaphysics of social functions, questions concerning the nature of functional explanations within the (...) social domain, and various applications of functionalist theorising. As such, this is one of the first collections to exclusively address a variety of philosophical questions concerning the nature and relevance of social functions. (shrink)

This qualitative study describes and interprets the lived experiences of African Roman Catholic Church seminarians. The interpretive lens employed was world view, a conceptual tool extensively used in African-centred psychology. Sixteen African seminarians were purposely selected and interviewed in depth. Additional sources of data were reflexive notes and observation notes. Data were subjected to various iterative cycles of analysis. Participants described their difficulty in adjusting in the seminaries where teaching and living predominantly reflects a Western world view. They evidenced cognitive (...) dissonance, emotional discomfort and feelings of marginalisation. The findings point to the importance of acknowledging the world views and cultural heritage of seminarians in their training. (shrink)

Gestures and speech are clearly synchronized in many ways. However, previous studies have shown that the semantic similarity between gestures and speech breaks down as people approach transitions in understanding. Explanations for these gesture–speech mismatches, which focus on gestures and speech expressing different cognitive strategies, have been criticized for disregarding gestures’ and speech's integration and synchronization. In the current study, we applied three different perspectives to investigate gesture–speech synchronization in an easy and a difficult task: temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and (...) complexity matching. Participants engaged in a simple cognitive task and were assigned to either an easy or a difficult condition. We automatically measured pointing gestures, and we coded participant's speech, to determine the temporal alignment and semantic similarity between gestures and speech. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis was used to determine the extent of complexity matching between gestures and speech. We found that task difficulty indeed influenced gesture–speech synchronization in all three domains. We thereby extended the phenomenon of gesture–speech mismatches to difficult tasks in general. Furthermore, we investigated how temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and complexity matching were related in each condition, and how they predicted participants’ task performance. Our study illustrates how combining multiple perspectives, originating from different research areas (i.e., coordination dynamics, complexity science, cognitive psychology), provides novel understanding about cognitive concepts in general and about gesture–speech synchronization and task difficulty in particular. (shrink)

Psillos has recently argued that van Fraassen’s arguments against abduction fail. Moreover, he claimed that, if successful, these arguments would equally undermine van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism, for, Psillos thinks, it is only by appeal to abduction that constructive empiricism can be saved from issuing in a bald scepticism. We show that Psillos’ criticisms are misguided, and that they are mostly based on misinterpretations of van Fraassen’s arguments. Furthermore, we argue that Psillos’ arguments for his claim that constructive empiricism itself (...) needs abduction point up to his failure to recognize the importance of van Fraassen’s broader epistemology for constructive empiricism. Towards the end of our paper we discuss the suspected relationship between constructive empiricism and scepticism in the light of this broader epistemology, and from a somewhat more general perspective. (shrink)

The theories of inclusive fitness and multilevel selection provide alternative perspectives on social evolution. The question of whether these perspectives are of equal generality remains a divisive issue. In an analysis based on the Price equation, Queller argued (by means of a principle he called the separation condition) that the two approaches are subject to the same limitations, arising from their fundamentally quantitative-genetical character. Recently, van Veelen et al. have challenged Queller’s results, using this as the basis for a broader (...) critique of the Price equation, the separation condition, and the very notion of inclusive fitness. Here we show that the van Veelen et al. model, when analyzed in the way Queller intended, confirms rather than refutes his original conclusions. We thereby confirm (i) that Queller’s separation condition remains a legitimate theoretical principle and (ii) that the standard inclusive fitness and multilevel approaches are indeed subject to the same limitations. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene por objeto dar una versión diferente y más breve del poema que contiene una demanda morisca de ayuda al Imperio Otomano, poema estudiado por James Monroe en Al-Andalus XXXI, 281-303. Esta versión indica que había habido otra demanda similar por parte de los moriscos al sultán mameluco de El Cairo, y que ésta era la original. El artículo contiene: 1) un análisis comparativo de las versiones de la casida dirigidas a los mamelucos y a los otomanos, (...) 2) el marco histórico de las relaciones entre los reinos cristianos y musulmanes de la Península Ibérica por un lado y los territorios mameluco y otomano por otro, y 3) una discusión de la fecha de las dos versiones de la casida, así como su autoría. Parece probable que el autor de la casida perteneciera a círculos de musulmanes granadinos que habían formado parte de las clases dirigentes de Granada y que luego habían aceptado puestos en la administración cristiana de la ciudad, como son, por ejemplo, varios miembros de la familia al-Baqannī, algunos de los cuales habían emigrado con Ibn al-Azraq al Norte de África, pero regresaron para integrarse en los grupos dirigentes mudéjares. (shrink)

Scientific representation: A long journey from pragmatics to pragmatics Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9465-5 Authors James Ladyman, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd, Bristol, BS8 1TB UK Otávio Bueno, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA Mauricio Suárez, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain Bas C. van Fraassen, Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA Journal Metascience (...) Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

Clahsen proposes two distinct processing routes, for regularly and irregularly inflected forms, respectively, and thus is apparently making a psychological claim. We argue that his position, which embodies a strictly linguistic perspective, does not constitute a psychological processing model.

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

In a brief but remarkable section of the Inquiry into the Human Mind, Thomas Reid argued that the visual field is governed by principles other than the familiar theorems of Euclid—theorems we would nowadays classify as Riemannian. On the strength of this section, he has been credited by Norman Daniels, R. B. Angell, and others with discovering non-Euclidean geometry over half a century before the mathematicians—sixty years before Lobachevsky and ninety years before Riemann. I believe that Reid does indeed have (...) a fair claim to have discovered a non-Euclidean geometry. However, the real basis of Reid’s geometry of visibles is subtle and easy to misidentify. My main aim in what follows is to make clear what the real basis is, separating it from several fallacious or irrelevant considerations on which Reid may seem to be relying. A secondary aim is to air the worry that Reid’s case for his geometry can succeed only at the cost of compromising the achievement for which Reid is best known—his direct realist theory of perception. (shrink)

James Van Cleve here shows why Thomas Reid (1710-96) deserves a place alongside the other canonical figures of modern philosophy. He expounds Reid's positions and arguments on a wide range of topics, taking interpretive stands on points where his meaning is disputed and assessing the value of his contributions to issues philosophers are discussing today. -/- Among the topics Van Cleve explores are Reid's account of perception and its relation to sensation, conception, and belief; his nativist account of the (...) origin of the concepts of space and power; his attempt to clear the way for the belief that the things we directly perceive are external things, not ideas in our minds; his stand on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities; his account of his externalist reply to philosophical skepticism, his volitional theory of action, his use of the distinction between event causation and agent causation to understand freedom of the will, and his criticism of Hume and anticipation of Moore on the analysis of moral judgment. -/- The most comprehensive work on Reid in a quarter century, this book will be welcomed by students of early modern philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of perception, and the philosophy of action. (shrink)

Written by renouned professionals in the fields of information and communication technologies, this volume explores the subject matter through the discussion of theory and field studies as well as insights from other research. Students and researchers alike will appreciate this rare look into the world of technology and society.

Most foundationalists allow that relations of coherence among antecedently justified beliefs can enhance their overall level of justification or warrant. In light of this, some coherentists ask the following question: if coherence can elevate the epistemic status of a set of beliefs, what prevents it from generating warrant entirely on its own? Why do we need the foundationalist's basic beliefs? I address that question here, drawing lessons from an instructive series of attempts to reconstruct within the probability calculus the classical (...) problem of independent witnesses who corroborate each other's testimony. Starred section headings indicate sections omitted here, but available on the author's USC website. (shrink)

This book offers an examination of volunteerism, philanthropy, and people-centered caring behaviors both individually and collectively. It discusses the positive contributions of individuals and a corporate capitalistic society through a variety of forms which help others meet their social and economic needs.

Despite its basically syllogistic character, Richard Whately's Elements of logic presents the subject in a modern theoretical setting. Whately, for instance, regarded logic as an abstract science, and defined the syllogism as a purely formal device to be used as a means of determining the validity of all arguments. In this paper, I argue that such instances of abstractive ascent place Whately's theory in closer proximity to later 19th-century developments than to the work of his 17th-century predecessors. In addition to (...) discussing the theory itself, other sections deal with its historical setting, and various reactions to it. (shrink)