Open peer commentary on the article “A First-Person Analysis Using Third Person-Data as a Generative Method: A Case Study of Surprise in Depression” by Natalie Depraz, Maria Gyemant & Thomas Desmidt. Upshot: Given the claims of Natalie Depraz regarding what she called in 2004 the “practical turn of phenomenology,” I ask the authors how they conceive the research they presented in their 2017 article, particularly regarding transcendental phenomenology.

One of the primary goals of Religious Education is to make students come together with Qur’an text and religious content seamlessly. In order to reach this goal, religious educators usually support students to have the knowledge of the text and sometimes students only memorize the content. But although “knowing” and “memorizing” stages are important for educational processes, they are not functional enough in the long term. For providing a permanent learning, students should also “understand” the text. Besides, students cannot create (...) their own ideas and interpretations by the ways of knowing and memorizing. Because they can achieve to make their “own” senses only by their understanding. For these reasons, setting “understanding” as a goal for RE and defining the bases of an “understanding focused religious education” are an important responsibility of all.There are lots of bases for understanding focused religious education. One of them is “asking question”. Asking question to the religious texts and questioning the content have crucial effects for understanding processes due to their role of being a chance for having a dialogue with the text and its author. Therefore, it is necessary to determine which types of questions are useful for permanent learning and which types of contributions to understanding are limited. In Religious Education which is a social discipline, in order to reveal the meaning, the questions that are convenient to open a field for individual interpretations of the students can be functional. These questions are mostly open-ended questions and high level cognitive questions offering students an opportunity for their ownevaluations. However, students can establish the healthiest communication with Qur’an text and religious content through contextual and existential questions that they will pose to them. (shrink)

"--Brian Greene, Columbia University "This book includes material that is intellectually innovative and comes as a surprise even to specialists in the field.

I start with a detailed but partial analysis of a case regarding grade inflation. The case is inspired by the discussion in Crumbley et al. (2010) and its elaboration in Roberts (2016). I supplement the case description by introducing certain facts that are not in the original discussion. The subsequent analysis is based on this enriched case description. I then raise a number of objections against my analysis. An important metaethical, methodological question emerges while responding to these objections. To what (...) extent are characterizations of moral situations and their descriptions independent from moral commitments? Is there a neutral concept of moral relevance? I argue that we do not have a theory-neutral concept of moral relevance, and that case descriptions essentially presuppose moral commitments. From my moral perspective, as this perspective is reflected in the enriched case description I utilize, the original case description of grade inflation already involves utilizing the wrong moral perspective or theory. (shrink)

The sensation of red light falling on your eyes has something in common with the experience of looking at a cartoon in the New Yorker. The phenomenal quality of the sensation and the funniness of the joke are both properties of your subjective take on an external event and both arise in two steps. With sensations, your brain responds to signals from bodily sense organs with an internalized evaluative response; your mind reads this response and represents what it's like as (...) the subjective property of redness. With jokes, the cartoonist creates a clever drawing; your mind takes in the drawing and represents what it's like as the subjective property of funniness. This analogy -- deliberately deflationary -- helps elucidate the nature of phenomenal consciousness and its neural correlates, and exposes the 'hard problem' as a conceptual error. (shrink)

On evidence of ancient cosmology found in Khmer temple ruins in Sakon Nakhon Province, Thailand.

Die Herrschaft des Behaviorismus in der Psychologie ist gebrochen! Das ist die Ausgangsthese dieses Buches, die im Rahmen des Modells revolutionärer Wissenschaftsentwicklung (Kuhn) als Behauptung eines Paradigmawechsels präzisiert wird. Die Argumentation beschränkt sich nicht nur auf den Nachweis des Niedergangs des Behaviorismus, sondern gibt auch konstruktiv das mögliche neue Paradigma an: als Psychologie des reflexiven Subjekts, das wie der Wissenschaftler (subjektive) Theorien aufstellt, überprüft, bewertet. Der Aufriss einer solchen Psychologie des epistemischen Subjekts unter allgemein-, sozial-, pädagogisch- und klinisch-psychologischem Aspekt thematisiert (...) vor allem: die Rationalität der Reflexionen, Normenkritik und -begründung im Austausch von wissenschaftlichen und naiven Theorien sowie die Berücksichtigung von Reflexivität in der therapeutischen Praxis. Die Rückwendung dieser pychologisch-metatheoretischen Perspektiven auf die Wissenschaftstheorie führt auch zu einer neu. (shrink)

Divine traditions and moral deviation; also social ethics and social aspects in Islam.

Ibn Masarra y su escuela -- El místico Abū-l-ʻAbbās ibn al-ʻArīf de Almería y su "Mahāsin al-Maŷālis" -- Un precursor hispanomusulmán de San Juan de la Cruz.