The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies conservative versus liberal aspects of religious ideology. The MRI focuses on recurring features of ideology rooted in innate moral instincts while capturing salient differences in the ideological profiles of distinct groups and individuals. The MRI highlights how religious ideology differs from political ideology while maintaining a robust grounding in the social psychology of ideology generally. Featuring three major dimensions (religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious morality) and eight (...) subdimensions, the MRI is sensitive enough to generate novel insights into religious ideology across demographic groups and individual differences. The MRI is also summative, yielding a single quantitative measurement of left–right religious ideology with good scale and test–retest reliability. Analysis of 839 respondents across two studies confirmed the widespread assumption that religious ideology is a parallel construct to political ideology, emerging from similar foundations but following a distinct set of rules. The MRI shows the importance of conceptualizing ideology in ways that access the full spectrum of real-world ideological convictions—an important reminder, given the salience of religious factors for influencing ideology generally. (shrink)

Exposure of man to chemical agents can occur intentionally, as in the treatment of disease, or inadvertently because the environment contains a wide range of synthetic or naturally occurring chemicals. The alkylating agents are a diverse group of compounds (Fig. 1) and comprise a good example of such xenobiotics, since much is known about their occurrence, and their biological effects include carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, toxicity and teratogenicity.Exposure to potentially carcinogenic alkylating agents such as nitrosamines may occur occupationally, from cigarette smoke, from (...) certain foodstuffs and even endogenously through the ingestion of the appropriate precursor chemicals.1 At the other extreme, the cytotoxic effects of agents such as the chloroethylating nitrosamides or mustards have been exploited in the design of certain antitumour drugs.2 The effectiveness of antitumour agents and the other, mostly adverse, biological effects of alkylating agents have been ascribed to their ability to damage cellular macromolecules, in particular DNA. This review concentrates on investigations carried out over the past two years on the role of DNA damage in carcinogenesis, but we shall see how recent advances in this area of research have also led to a better understanding of the mechanisms of the cytotoxic effects of alkylating antitumour agents. (shrink)

Business managers regularly employ metaphorical violent rhetoric as a means of motivating their employees to action. While it might be effective to this end, research on violent media suggests that violent rhetoric might have other, less desirable consequences. This study examines how the use of metaphorical violent rhetoric by business managers impacts the ethical decision making of employees. We develop and test a model that explains how the use of violent rhetoric impacts employees’ willingness to break ethical standards, depending on (...) the source of the rhetoric. The results of two experiments suggest that the use of violent rhetoric by a CEO at a competing company increases employees’ willingness to engage in ethical violations while the use of violent rhetoric by employees’ own CEO decreases their willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Furthermore, we find that participants who made less ethical decisions motivated by violent rhetoric used by a competitor’s CEO did not view their decisions as less ethical than the other participants in the experiments. The results of these studies highlight potentially harmful unintended consequences of the use of violent rhetoric, providing knowledge that should be useful to managers and academics who want to increase employee motivation without increasing a willingness to engage in unethical behavior. (shrink)

Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural evolutionary processes integrated non-adaptive cognitive byproducts into coherent networks of supernatural beliefs and ritual that encouraged in-group cooperativeness, while adaptationist models assert that the cognitive and behavioral foundations of religion have been selected for at more basic levels. Here, (...) we survey these differing approaches, noting their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then advance a novel model that centers on the ability of language to generate alternative worlds independent of immediate empirical facts, and thus highlight the similarities between religious belief and the modes of cognition that underlie institutions in general. The institutional cognition model of religion accounts for some of the shortcomings of extant approaches and draws attention to the human ability to create non-empirical worlds; that is, worlds that are imaginary. Both religious beliefs and institutional facts—such as jurisdictional borders—are non-empirical assertions, yet they are socially accepted as truths and reified through ritual and behavior. One type of non-empirical, linguistically generated belief—supernatural agent belief—is particularly effective for stabilizing systems of arbitrary norms by rooting them in deontic rather than utilitarian reasoning. The evolutionary roots and continued persistence of religion are thus functions of the capacity for humans to generate cognitive alternatives to empirical reality, and the need to stably coordinate those alternative conceptions. (shrink)

The cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion offer a standard model of religious representations, but no equivalent paradigm for investigating religiously interpreted altered states of consciousness (religious ASCs). Here, I describe a neo‐Durkheimian framework for studying religious ASCs that centralizes social predictive cognition. Within a processual model of ritual, ritual behaviors toggle between reinforcing normative social structures and downplaying them. Specifically, antistructural ritual shifts cognitive focus away from conventional affordances, collective intentionality, and social prediction, and toward physical affordances and behavioral (...) motivations that make few references to others’ intentional states. Using synchrony and dance as paradigmatic examples of antistructural ritual that stimulate religious ASCs, I assemble literature from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of language to offer fruitful empirical predictions and opportunities for testing based on this framework. Among the empirical predictions is that antistructural ritual may provide for cultural change in religions when religions are construed as complex adaptive systems. (shrink)

Both Mehr et al.'s credible signaling hypothesis and Savage et al.'s music and social bonding hypothesis emphasize the role of multilevel social structures in the evolution of music. Although empirical evidence preferentially supports the social bonding hypothesis, rhythmic music may enable bonding in a way uniquely fitted to the normative and language-based character of multilevel human societies.

The course of German Idealism, which lasted from Kant to Schelling, is one of the most important and influential periods in the history of philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of German Idealism_ is a superb resource for all students and scholars of the movement. Its twelve specially commissioned thematic chapters, all written by experts in the area, cover the essential aspects of German idealism, including Knowledge, nature, freedom and morality, law, history, religion, art and the European legacy of German idealism. In (...) addition to providing essential background to the thought of the period’s most important philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling, it also covers philosophers such as Herder, Holderlin, and Schleiermacher. Clearly written, it is accessible to any student of philosophy as well as those in other disciplines with an interest in German idealism, nineteenth century philosophy and continental philosophy. (shrink)

The course of German Idealism, which lasted from Kant to Schelling, is one of the most important and influential periods in the history of philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of German Idealism_ is a superb resource for all students and scholars of the movement. Its twelve specially commissioned thematic chapters, all written by experts in the area, cover the essential aspects of German idealism, including Knowledge, nature, freedom and morality, law, history, religion, art and the European legacy of German idealism. In (...) addition to providing essential background to the thought of the period’s most important philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling, it also covers philosophers such as Herder, Holderlin, and Schleiermacher. Clearly written, it is accessible to any student of philosophy as well as those in other disciplines with an interest in German idealism, nineteenth century philosophy and continental philosophy. (shrink)

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar, are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, cross-cultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial (...) trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a male religious trance role. The model reproduces these patterns under plausible parameter configurations. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 834-849, September 2021.

In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely effective—even when policymakers rationally update (...) on all evidence available to them. As we elaborate, this model helps illustrate the conditions under which the tobacco strategy is particularly successful. In addition, we show how journalists engaged in ‘fair’ reporting can inadvertently mimic the effects of industry on public belief. 1Introduction2Epistemic Network Models3Selective Sharing4Biased Production5Journalists as Unwitting Propagandists6ConclusionAppendix. (shrink)

Intersectionality theory explores the special sorts of disadvantage that arise as the result of occupying multiple disadvantaged demographic categories. One significant methodological problem for the quantitative study of intersectionality is the difficulty of acquiring data sets large enough to produce significant results when one is looking for intersectional effects. For this reason, we argue, simulation methods may be particularly useful to this branch of theorizing because they can generate precise predictions and causal dependencies in a relatively cheap way, and can (...) thus guide future empirical work. We illustrate this point through models which show that intersectional oppression can arise under conditions where social groups are disadvantaged in the emergence of bargaining norms. As we show, intersectional disadvantage can arise even when actors from all social categories are completely identical in terms of preferences and abilities. The conditions necessary to derive such disadvantage are relatively minimal. And when actors behave in ways that reflect stronger intersectional identities, the potential for disadvantage increases. (shrink)

It is shown, assuming the linear case of Schinzel's Hypothesis, that the first-order theory of the structure $\langle \omega; +, P\rangle$ , where P is the set of primes, is undecidable and, in fact, that multiplication of natural numbers is first-order definable in this structure. In the other direction, it is shown, from the same hypothesis, that the monadic second-order theory of $\langle\omega; S, P\rangle$ is decidable, where S is the successor function. The latter result is proved using a general (...) result of A. L. Semenov on decidability of monadic theories, and a proof of Semenov's result is presented. (shrink)

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method (...) was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled. (shrink)

This conceptual paper explores the relationship between an organization’s exclusive talent management practices, employees’ perceptions of the fairness of exclusive TM practices, and the corresponding impact on employee engagement. We propose that in organizations pursuing exclusive TM programs, employee perceptions of organizational justice of the exclusive TM practices may affect their employee engagement, which may influence both organizational and employee outcomes. Building on extant research, we present a conceptual framework depicting the relationship between exclusive TM practices, organizational justice and employee (...) engagement, with social exchange theory and equity theory as the framework’s foundation. The propositions in the framework are each supported by the respective literature. The perceived organizational justice and potential ramifications of exclusive TM practices for employees who are not included in corporate talent pools is an under-researched topic. The paper considers the perspectives of employees not included in corporate talent pools and explores how exclusive TM practices, as inputs, could lead to negative employee engagement outputs. In unpacking how exclusive TM practices could impact on employee engagement, the implications for organizations are underlined. The ethics and perceived fairness of exclusive TM practices, which have the potential to marginalize employees and lead to their disengagement, are considered. (shrink)

Food pantries play a growing role in supporting households facing or at risk of food insecurity in the United States. They also support emergency response and recovery following disasters and extreme weather events. Although food pantries are often placed in close proximity to communities with the highest rates of poverty and risk of food insecurity, access to these facilities can be disrupted during and after extreme events. Decreased access to food pantries following disasters can be particularly problematic as the need (...) for these services is also likely to grow after such events. Despite the vast body of research on food retail access and food environments, relatively little research has utilized spatial analysis to understand food pantry access, particularly after extreme events. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we characterize changes in access to food pantries following flooding events in Harris County, Texas—a highly populated and flood prone region with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. Specifically, our study models disruptions in road networks due to flooding and assesses the impacts of these disruptions on proximity to food pantries. The results reveal that much of Harris County sees only small increases in travel distance to food pantries due to extreme flooding, but some areas may be unable to access food pantries at all. This research highlights the potential and some of the limits of private food assistance networks to support emergency response efforts. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to situate imagination within consciousness complete with its own pre-cognitive, cognitive, and meta-cognitive domains. In the first sections we briefly review traditional philosophical and psychological conceptions of the imagination. The majority have viewed perception and imagination as separate faculties, performing distinct functions. A return to a phenomenological account of the imagination suggests that divisions between perception and imagination are transcended by precognitive factors of sense of reality and non-reality where perception and imagination play an indivisible (...) role. In fact, both imagination and perception define sense of reality jointly according to what is possible and not possible. Absorption in a possible world depends on the strengths of alternative possibilities, and the relationship between core and marginal consciousness. The model may offer a parsimonious account of different states and levels of imaginal consciousness, and of how “believed-in imaginings” develop and become under some circumstances “lived-in experiences.”. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed endpoint, we nonetheless go on to argue (...) that the metaethical apparatus Kitcher constructs around this creative metaethical proposal simply cannot do the work that he demands of it. The prospect of fundamental conflict between different functions of the ethical project requires Kitcher to appeal to a particular normative stance in order to judge specific changes in the ethical project to be genuinely progressive, and we argue that the virtues of continuity and coherence to which he appeals can only specify rather than justify the normative stance he favors. We conclude by suggesting an alternative approach for ethical naturalists that seems to us ultimately more promising than Kitcher’s own. (shrink)