The traditional Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) mind-based model suggests that humans understand the world through ontological categories and make socially strategic inferences to avoid threats and focus on utility. This study used an image choice task to test three key factors – category templates, threat, and utility – believed to influence people’s preferences within the CSR framework. The study had three main goals: (1) to refine previous CSR research by providing a more accurate, empirically scaled measure of these three (...) factors using the image choice task; (2) to assess how each factor affected participants’ image preferences; and (3) to explore any interactions between these factors. In a pilot study, we first quantified the threat and utility levels for each image stimulus. Our main study found that, contrary to some previous findings, category templates significantly influenced image preferences, though not in the hierarchy proposed by traditional CSR models. Threat and utility also had independent, significant effects on preferences. However, category templates had the strongest influence on participant choices. The effects of threat and utility varied depending on whether the influence of category templates was accounted for. These findings support certain CSR theories but challenge the proposed hierarchical structure. We also confirmed some previous findings, clarified the relative impact of the three factors, and provided empirical measures of template typicality, utility, and threat for future research. (shrink)

Many aspects relating to the conduct of mediation are left to mediator choice, but mediators often lack adequate guidance on how their discretion ought to be exercised. In this book, Omer Shapira identifies the ethical norms that govern mediators' conduct. Adopting a professional ethics perspective on the basis of role-morality and applying it to a core definition of mediators' role, Shapira argues that all mediators are placed in ethical relationships with mediation parties, the mediation profession, the public, and their employers (...) or principals that produce ethical obligations. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal high school students’ perceptions of COVID-19 and schools in the pandemic process through metaphors. In the study, phenomenology research design based on the qualitative research method was used. The study was carried out with the participation of 134 students at all grade levels from high school. The data were analyzed by content analysis. The metaphors were categorized according to their similarities, and their frequency values were calculated. Seventy-six metaphors and eight categories about COVID-19 were reached, (...) and “flu,” “prison,” and “snake” are the metaphors that have the highest frequency values. They explained the metaphors by making associations with the disease, fast-spreading and damaging things. In the COVID-19 process, 78 metaphors and eight categories were found out for the school. Based on the metaphors created by the students, suggestions were made depending on the research results. It was determined that students had negative perceptions about the COVID-19 pandemic and the school in this process, and it was suggested that this could be eliminated again with educational activities. (shrink)

This paper discusses the D-N model of scientific explanation. It is suggested that explanation is a part of assertive discourse where certain principles must be observed. Then use is made of the relation between the informative content and logical content of a sentence (as shown, for instance, by Popper) to draw some of the conditions necessary for a sound model. It is claimed that the conditions of the model proposed in the present paper exhaust the insights of the papers in (...) the literature, solve the difficulties encountered by other authors, but have some damaging consequences on the D-N model of scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this note, I provide an axiomatic characterization of the relative utilitarian bargaining solution to Nash bargaining problems. The solution is obtained when Nash’s independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom is replaced by the weak linearity axiom, while retaining the other three axioms. RU maximizes the sum of proportional gains, or, equivalently, minimizes the sum of proportional losses. RU is scale invariant and compared to the Nash and Kalai and Smorodinsky solutions, it is ex ante efficient when the bargaining problem is (...) considered as a lottery of future bargaining problems. (shrink)

I Das Grenzland Im Jahre 1772 annektierte das Habsburgerreich im Süden Polens gelegene Gebiete und gliederte sie als „Königreich Galizien und Lodomerien“ in seinen Herrschaftsbereich ein. Nach dem Zusammenbruch der Habsburger Monarchie im I. Weltkrieg wurde Galizien 1918 Teil des erneut unabhängigen Polen. In Ostgalizien gründeten ukrainische Nationalisten eine kurzlebige „West-Ukrainische Republik“. Im Anschluss weiterer Kampfhandlungen zwischen Polen, Ukrainern und Sowjets annektierte Polen dann ganz Ostgalizien, das von den Polen „Kleines Ostpolen“ genannt wurde, einschließlich der nördlichen Gebiete Wolhyniens und Polesiens. (...) Die im Gefolge des Kriegsendes neu entstandenen Grenzen wurden 1923 international anerkannt. Ostgalizien und Wolhynien wurden 1939 von der UdSSR annektiert und der ukrainischen Sowjetrepublik angegliedert. Während der deutschen Besatzung zwischen 1941–1944 war Ostgalizien Teil des von den Deutschen kontrollierten Generalgouvernements Polen. Im Anschluss an die Befreiung dieser Gebiete durch die Rote Armee kam Ostgalizien wiederum an die ukrainische Sowjetrepublik. Seit der ukrainischen Unabhängigkeit 1991 ist es Teil der West-Ukraine. Das ehemalige ostgalizische Grenzlandgebiet erstreckt sich von der im Norden gelegenen Kreishauptstadt L'viv bis zu der im Süden gelegenen, der ehemaligen österreichischen Provinz Bukowina zugehörigen Stadt Chernivtsi, von der Bergkette der Karpaten im Westen bis zum Fluss Sbrutsch und zu den Ebenen von Podolien im Osten. Es handelt sich um ein Gebiet, das berühmt, aber durchaus auch berüchtigt ist. (shrink)

We propose that food-related uncertainty is but one of multiple cues that predicts harsh conditions and may activate “incentive hope.” An evolutionarily adaptive response to these would have been to shift to a behavioral-metabolic phenotype geared toward facing hardship. In modernity, this phenotype may lead to pathologies such as obesity and hoarding. Our perspective suggests a novel therapeutic approach.

Interiority and Law presents a groundbreaking reassessment of a medieval Jewish classic, Baḥya ibn Paquda's Guide to the Duties of the Hearts. Michaelis reads this work anew as a revolutionary intervention in Jewish law, or halakha. Overturning perceptions of Baḥya as the shaper of an ethical-religious form of life that exceeds halakha, Michaelis offers a pioneering historical and conceptual analysis of the category of "inner commandments" developed by Baḥya. Interiority and Law reveals that Baḥya's main effort revolved around establishing a (...) new legal formation - namely, the "duties of the hearts" - which would deal entirely with human interiority. Michaelis takes up the implications of Baḥya's radical innovation, examining his unique mystical model of proximity to God, which he based on an increasingly growing fulfillment of the inner commandments. With an integrative approach that puts Baḥya in dialogue with other medieval Muslim and Jewish religious thinkers, this work offers a fresh perspective on our understanding of the interconnectedness of the dynamic, neighboring religious traditions of Judaism and Islam. Contributing to conversations in the history of religion, Jewish studies, and medieval studies on interiority and mysticism, this book reveals Baḥya as a revolutionary and demanding thinker of Jewish law. (shrink)

Based on extensive archival work, this essay assesses the contribution of a Palestinian liberation theology to a comprehensive view of peacebuilding that involves not only liberation from oppressive occupation but also a holistic vision and strategy for attaining just societal structures. Emerging out of the victim's viewpoint, a PLT is consistent with a multiperspectival approach to justice. It articulates a call for a holistic transformation of the interrelations between Jews and Palestinians, envisioning a just peace that must entail a re-framing (...) of geopolitical structures as well as ideological discourses that vindicate systemic and symbolic violence against the Palestinians. However, the author shows that a PLT is asymmetrical: while it challenges the theopolitical affinities between Christian and Jewish Zionists and the structural injustices and social mechanisms they endorse, it refrains from contesting the symbolic boundaries of a Palestinian national identity. This bears important implications for the broader debate concerning the role of religion in peacebuilding. The author argues that the limits of a PLT as a peacebuilding framework relate to its conceptual reliance on an unreconstructed secularist interpretation of a future Palestinian state and on its elective affinity with a supersessionist and theological orientation that, by definition, hermeneutically de-Zionizes the Bible and its interpretations. (shrink)

In economic history value theory is simply one paradigm amongst others. It refers to an ensemble of economic ideas developed by classical political economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In the works of Karl Marx, however, value theory takes on a new meaning. It is charged with political significance and relates directly to class struggles in modern society. In this paper we will explore some aspects of Marx’s critique of capitalism as interpreted by Harry Cleaver, Isaak Illich Rubin, (...) Roman Rodolsky and several other scholars. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an overview of Aristotle’s account for his belief that honeybees reproduce without copulation. Following this, we draw the three following implications: First, that Aristotle’s position on this question is quite unconventional, and undercuts many traditional and “Aristotelian” hierarchies; secondly, that the method that requires him to hold this unconventional position is largely dialectical; and finally, that the lineage behind this method is Socratic. In this sense, Aristotle’s biological work may be seen as taking up where (...) young Socrates left off according to his autobiographical remark in Plato’s Phaedo 95E-99E. (shrink)