ABSTRACTFacial stimuli are widely used in behavioural and brain science research to investigate emotional facial processing. However, some studies have demonstrated that dynamic expressions elicit stronger emotional responses compared to static images. To address the need for more ecologically valid and powerful facial emotional stimuli, we created Dynamic FACES, a database of morphed videos from younger, middle-aged, and older adults displaying naturalistic emotional facial expressions. To assess adult age differences in emotion identification of dynamic stimuli and to provide normative ratings (...) for this modified set of stimuli, healthy adults categorised for each video the emotional expression displayed, rated the expression distinctiveness, estimated the age of the face model, and rated the naturalness of the expression. We found few age differences in emotion identification when using dynamic stimuli. On... (shrink)

Appropriate concerns about cost and unequal access to healthcare have resulted in the creation of powerful managed networks seeking to share the risks of high healthcare costs among plans, providers, and patients. Much to their credit, these managed networks have slowed the rise in healthcare spending by as much as 44% in markets with high HMO penetration. However, whether these savings will materially improve access and quality remains to be seen.

ABSTRACT:Although Alasdair MacIntyre has criticized both the market economy and applied ethics, his writing has generated significant discussion within the literature of business ethics and organizational studies. In this article, I extend this conversation by proposing the use of MacIntyre’s account of the virtues to conceive of management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. I proceed in four steps. First, I explain MacIntyre’s account of the virtues in light of his definition of a “practice.” Second, I (...) examine his distinction between “practices” and “institutions.” Third, I explain what I mean by a “domain-relative practice” and defend the claim that it is helpful to conceive of management in those terms. Finally, I highlight several features of practical wisdom as a virtue developed in and integral to standards of excellence within management as a domain-relative practice. (shrink)

Psychophysical scaling models of the form R = f, with R the response and I some intensity of an attribute, all assume that people judge the amounts of an attribute. With simple biases excepted, most also assume that judgments are independent of space, time, and features of the situation other than the one being judged. Many data support these ideas: Magnitude estimations of brightness increase with luminance. Nevertheless, I argue that the general model is wrong. The stabilized retinal image literature (...) shows that nothing is seen if light does not change over time. The classification literature shows that dimensions often combine to produce emergent properties that cannot be described by the elements in the stimulus. These and other effects cannot be adjusted for by simply adding variables to the general model because some factors do not combine linearly. The proposed alternative is that people initially judge the entire stimulus – the object in terms of its environment. This agrees with the constancy literature that shows that objects and their attributes are identified through their relations to other aspects of the scene. That the environment determines judgments is masked in scaling studies where the standard procedure is to hold context constant. In a typical brightness study the essential stimulus might be the intensity of the light or a difference between the light and the background. The two are perfectly confounded. This issue is examined in the case of audition. Judgments of the loudness of a tone depend on how much that tone differs from the previous tone in both pitch and loudness. To judge loudness people first seem to process the stimulus object in terms of differences between it and other aspects in the situation; only then do they assess the feature of interest. Psychophysical judgments will therefore be better interpreted by theories of attention that are based in biology or psychology than those that are based in classical physics. (shrink)

Gregory R. Johnson and David Rasmussen defend their critique of Ayn Rand's views on abortion, arguing that their critics miss its main points. Tibor Machan and Alexander Tabarrok actually depart from Rand's own position under the guise of defending it; they introduce a non-Randian distinction between being a human organism and being a moral person.

I examine the responses to John Caiazza's “Athens, Jerusalem, and the Arrival of Techno‐Secularism” as part of Zygon's forty‐year anniversary symposium. The responses reveal that issues of modernism and postmodernism are central to understanding the dynamic of the current science‐religion/theology dialogue and that the resistance of many of the participants to the influences of postmodernism is a sign not of its backwardness but rather of some of the weaknesses inherent in the postmodern project. This does not mean that the many (...) insights of postmodernism should be rejected. Rather, the science‐religion/theology dialogue may be in an intellectually opportune place to construct successors to the worn label of postmodernism. (shrink)

. Adapted from the introductory chapter of Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences , I here lay out a general approach for a dialogue between theology and cognitive science. Key to this task is an understanding of theology as the science or study of meaning and purpose. I give reasons why theology should be thought of in this sense and the potential fruitfulness of this approach.

Beginning with the End represents an excellent collection of articles devoted to the thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg. This volume includes many of the most important thinkers in the science‐religion dialogue and shows as well the importance and impact of Pannenberg's theology. This response addresses themes that surface in several of the articles: What is religion? What is science? What is theology? What is God? On some of these themes there is agreement, on others sharp disagreement. The conclusion also considers what (...) this volume suggests about the future of Pannenberg's theology. (shrink)

Philip Clayton has put forth a clear and important position regarding the mind-body relationship in terms of supervenient and emergent realities. While I agree with Clayton on many points, I argue that there are important problems with current literature on supervenience and emergence. In particular, I distinguish between closed system emergence and open system emergence, suggesting that Clayton’s position is closer to the latter than the former.

Recent articles by Michael Heller, Carl Helrich, Peter Hodgson, Jeffrey Koperski, and Nicholas Saunders present a challenge to much current thinking on God, divine action, and cosmology. In the process, they also reveal underlying assumptions and current problems, especially in the debate over physics and divine action. In particular, three issues come up that need to be addressed further. First, what is the status of determinism, and what can physics contribute? Second, what kind of divine action are we talking about? (...) Third, what is the relationship between God and time, and how does this affect claims about the personhood of God? While these essays present necessary critiques and interesting, positive proposals, they also reveal unresolved tensions that need to be addressed. (shrink)

GREGORY R. JOHNSON examines the link between Ayn Rand's ethics, which can be broadly characterized as Aristotelian, and her political philosophy, which can be broadly characterized as classical liberalism of the Lockean, natural rights variety. He maintains that Rand's argument for classical liberalism on the basis of the objectivity of values fails because of a reductionistic and excessively intellectualistic conception of human nature. In addition to discussing Rand's arguments, he surveys the Rand-influenced work of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas (...) J. Den Uyl, as well as Tibor R. Machan and Tara Smith. (shrink)

The summa of a distinguished philosopher's career, and full treatment of the temporal in philosophical terms, this volume shows us that by taking time seriously we can discover something essential to almost every question of human concern. Are we IN time? Charles Sherover asks, and in pursuing this question he considers time in conjunction with cognition, morality, action, physical nature, being, God, freedom, and politics. His essays, while drawing upon Royce, Heidegger, Kant, Leibniz, and even Hartshorne and Bergson, defy categorization (...) by method or school; instead, they reveal the diversity and divergence of thinking about time as well as the myriad features and values within the omnipresence of time and change. The volume begins with an overview of the history of thought on time and a clarification of some fundamental conceptual distinctions in temporal ideas. Sherover then offers a critique of Kant, the first thinker to recognize that all human experience has a temporal form. In a series of essays on metaphysics--a valuable corrective to the dominant metaphysical tradition of talking about being as if time does not matter--he pursues temporal responses to such problems as being, internal relations, individuation, mind, and free will. Finally, in essays on time, freedom, and the common good, Sherover argues that these three phenomena are intrinsically related to one another, the fulfillment of each involving the other two. Throughout, these essays brilliantly depict human life and thought thoroughly steeped in time and argue for the significance of the future for human activity. Portraying the openness of the future as the basis for purposiveness and freedom, knowledge and moral action, social life and religious hope, Sherover's work conveys a hopeful message of human finitude that nonetheless allows us a measure of control over events in our own time. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: The authors are to be congratulated for this daring and imaginative attempt to discuss art and aesthetic experience in neurological terms. The core of the argument is the relevance of the peak shift effect to our understanding of aesthetics. The application of this well-known principle of animal discrimination learning certainly does seem plausible and appropriate in the context.

In this paper, I extend contemporary virtue ethics by pointing to a philosophical insight that emerges from Aristotle’s Rhetoric: technical mastery of a discipline or practice involves cultivating the virtue of practical wisdom. After reviewing features of Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, I draw attention to specific virtues identified by MacIntyre while noting the relative absence of the virtue of practical wisdom in his discussion of social practices. I compare and contrast MacIntyre’s virtue ethics with that of Aristotle. Focusing on Aristotle’s (...) Rhetoric, I show how Aristotle suggests that the virtue of practical wisdom is integral to technical mastery in the art of persuasive public speaking. I argue that Aristotle’s insight about the tight connection between practical wisdom and technical mastery is not limited to the art of rhetoric. Retrieving insights from Aristotle’s Rhetoric brings into focus ways in which the virtue of practical wisdom is requisite to technical mastery more generally. (shrink)

Panentheism has received widespread support among theologians involved in the religion‐science dialogue, due in no small part to the success with which panentheism addresses a range of issues. Nevertheless, panentheism as a theological premise needs continued development and elucidation. Panentheism is often presented as a theoretical model of the God‐world relationship, yet the supporting arguments rely on metaphors that are varied and open‐ended. Analogy from the mind‐body relationship leads to a “weak” panentheism that emphasizes the presence of God, while whole‐part (...) analogies suggest a “strong” panentheism that emphasizes some level of identity between God and the world. In turn, these analogies and metaphors bear nontrivial similarities to early Trinitarian and Christological debates in their treatment of God and world as distinct substances. This similarity suggests the importance of panentheistic approaches. Nevertheless, panentheists need to further clarify the relation of theory and metaphor in their work, as well as more precisely develop the central claim that God is in the world. (shrink)

The structural view of rational acceptance is a commitment to developing a logical calculus to express rationally accepted propositions sufficient to represent valid argument forms constructed from rationally accepted formulas. This essay argues for this project by observing that a satisfactory solution to the lottery paradox and the paradox of the preface calls for a theory that both (i) offers the facilities to represent accepting less than certain propositions within an interpreted artificial language and (ii) provides a logical calculus of (...) rationally accepted formulas that preserves rational acceptance under consequence. The essay explores the merit and scope of the structural view by observing that some limitations to a recent framework advanced James Hawthorne and Luc Bovens are traced to their framework satisfying the first of these two conditions but not the second. (shrink)

No one has a well developed solution to Duhem's problem, the problem of how experimental evidence warrants revision of our theories. Deborah Mayo proposes a solution to Duhem's problem in route to her more ambitious program of providing a philosophical account of inductive inference and experimental knowledge. This paper is a response to Mayo's Error Statistics (ES) program, paying particular attention to her response to Duhem's problem. It turns out that Mayo's purported solution to Duhem's problem is very significant to (...) her project, for the epistemic license claimed by ES and the philosophical underpinnings to her account of experimental knowledge depend on this solution. By introducing the partition problem, I argue that ES fails to solve Duhem's problem and therefore fails to provide an adequate account of experimental knowledge. (shrink)

GREGORY R. JOHNSON and DAVID RASMUSSEN argue that Rand's defense of abortion on demand is inconsistent with her own fundamental metaphysical, epistemological, and moral principles, namely that everything that exists has a determinate identity, that the concept of man refers to all of man's characteristics, not just his essential characteristics, and that there is no gap between what an organism truly is and what it ought to be.

Gregory R. Johnson argues, contra Barry Vacker, that reductionist thinking and nonlinear aesthetics are not mutually exclusive, and that the passages in The Fountainhead cited by Vacker actually support the mastery of nature thesis. Johnson also addresses some miscellaneous criticisms offered by William Thomas, who wrote a review of Johnson's "Liberty and Nature" (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 1999) that appeared in Navigator.

Theology and philosophy have traditionally assumed a radical split between human beings and the rest of creation. Philosophically, the split is usually justified in terms of a locus humanus, some one cognitive trait that human beings possess and nonhuman animals do not. Theologically, this trait is usually identified as that which makes us in the image of God. Research in animal cognition, however, suggests that we are not unique in as many respects as we think we are. This suggests that (...) we rethink the idea of the image of God. In light of this, I propose that we think of nature itself as being in the image of God, with humankind as part of the broader natural and theological process. (shrink)

Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric (...) of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This volume presents the methodological and theoretical foundations for economic personalism through a detailed investigation of human action from two different, yet complementary perspectives: from the personalist perspective of Karol Wojtyla in the Acting Person , and the free-market perspective of Ludwig von Mises in Human Action . By comparing and contrasting the viewpoints of Wojtyla and Mises, the authors develop a comprehensive praxeology capable of analyzing human action from moral and economic perspectives. Beyond Self-Interest illustrates how a unified praxeology could encourage more sustained analysis of the moral dimensions of economic activity while simultaneously softening the utilitarian prejudice of contemporary economic analysis. (shrink)

For many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins. In its most commonly cited form, scientism consists in claiming that science is the only source of real knowledge and, therefore, that what science does not discover does not exist. Because the charge of scientism is frequently levied, it is important to be clear about what exactly is being claimed in its name. I argue that scientism can best be understood as a fallacy, specifically as a kind (...) of category mistake. Being clear about this requires an examination of the relationship of scientism to the question of demarcation between science and nonscience, a question that has potential implications for theology. (shrink)

Wentzel van Huyssteen's book Alone in the World? provides a thoughtful and nuanced account of human evolution from a theological perspective. Not only does his work provide what is perhaps the only sustained theological reflection specifically on human evolution, but his working through of many of the issues, particularly on the image of God literature in theology, has few parallels. Despite this, I focus on what I consider to be several weaknesses of the text, including areas of theological method, theological (...) interpretation, and the central topic of human uniqueness. Addressing these weaknesses will, I propose, improve van Huyssteen's argument and lead in new and fruitful directions. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan's The Really Hard Problem provides a rich source of reflection on the question of meaning and ethics within the context of philosophical naturalism. I affirm the title's claim that the quest to find meaning in a purely physical universe is indeed a hard problem by addressing three issues: Flanagan's claim that there can be a scientific/empirical theory of ethics (eudaimonics), that ethics requires moral glue, and whether, in the end, Flanagan solves the hard problem. I suggest that he (...) does not, although he provides much that is of importance and useful for further reflection along the way. (shrink)

People cannot make independent judgements of stimulus attributes and so (Lockhead 1992, p. 551) rather than in terms of stimulus features. The new commentaries here further this statement and also support the observations in the target article that psychophysical scaling methods allow us to measure (1) how context determines judgments and (2) what people remember about prior stimuli.

Much ink has been spilled on the claim that morality and religion have evolutionary roots. While some attempt to reduce morality and religion to biological considerations, others reject any link whatsoever. Any full account, however, must acknowledge the biological roots of human behavior while at the same time recognizing that our relatively unique capacity as cognitive agents requires orienting concepts of cosmic and human nature. While other organisms display quasi‐moral and proto‐moral behavior that is indeed relevant, fully moral behavior is (...) only possible for organisms that attain a higher level of cognitive ability. This, in turn, implies a significant role for religion, which has traditionally provided an orientation within which moral conduct is understood. (shrink)

Religions are complex, and any attempt at defining religion necessarily falls short. Nevertheless, any scholarly inquiry into the nature of religion must use some criteria in order to evaluate and study the character of religious traditions across contexts. To this end, I propose understanding religion in terms of an orienting worldview. Religions are worldviews that are expressed not only in beliefs but also in narratives and symbols. More than this, religions orient action, and any genuine religious tradition necessarily is concerned (...) with normative behavior, whether ethical or religious in character. Such an understanding of religion has several advantages, one of which is its natural relation to current forms of the science‐religion dialogue. Not only can the findings of cognitive science and related areas inform us about the nature of religion; scientific discoveries also prove to be important for any religious synthesis that attempts to construct a worldview for the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

Palmer describes a “subjective barrier” that limits knowledge of others' experience. We discuss how this barrier extends to all knowledge, becoming less distinct as theoretical constructs are strengthened. We provide evidence for isomorphic experience, among individuals with similar physiologies, by showing that perceived relations between colors are as similar when viewing pigments as when viewing subjective colors caused by flickering bars.

_Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_, Immanuel Kant's book on Emanuel Swedenborg, has mystified readers since its publication in 1766 during Swedenborg's lifetime. The unusual style and content of _Dreams_ have given rise to two opposing interpretations. Most Kant scholars regard the work as a skeptical attack on Swedenborg's mysticism. Other critics, however, believe that Kant regarded Swedenborg as a serious philosopher and visionary, and that _Dreams_ both reveals Kant's profound debt to Swedenborg and coneals that debt behind the mask of irony. (...) In addition, Dr. Gregory R. Johnson provides selections from other Kantian writings that mention Swedenborg and also contemporary reviews of _Dreams_, showing that Kant himself was ambivalent about Swedenborg's claims and that readers of his day questioned his position. With its extensive notes, this work is an invaluable resource for students of Kant and of Swedenborg. (shrink)