India, the world's largest democracy of 1 billion people, went to the polls in September 1999. In this article the director of the Evangelical Fellowship of India Commission on Relief and Development offers a critical reading of India's journey in building a nation state, and the challenge this represents to evangelicals to present a public face for the Christian faith in such a context. The article is a prelude to a larger and longer study he is undertaking, which the editors (...) hope to include a future issue of Transformation. (shrink)

These guide-lines were produced for the Social Concern Track at Lausanne II. Their aim is to enable people who are engaged in evangelism in social action ministries to write up their experiences so that they and others can reflect on the theology underlying their approach. The guide-lines have since been widely used by people in different parts of the world. The findings of the case studies at Lausanne II were published in Transformation, January 1990.

Knowledge of mechanisms is critical for causal reasoning. We contrasted two possible organizations of causal knowledge—an interconnected causal network, where events are causally connected without any boundaries delineating discrete mechanisms; or a set of disparate mechanisms—causal islands—such that events in different mechanisms are not thought to be related even when they belong to the same causal chain. To distinguish these possibilities, we tested whether people make transitive judgments about causal chains by inferring, given A causes B and B causes C, (...) that A causes C. Specifically, causal chains schematized as one chunk or mechanism in semantic memory led to transitive causal judgments. On the other hand, chains schematized as multiple chunks led to intransitive judgments despite strong intermediate links. Normative accounts of causal intransitivity could not explain these intransitive judgments. (shrink)

We consider various curious features of general relativity, and relativistic field theory, in two spacetime dimensions. In particular, we discuss: the vanishing of the Einstein tensor; the failure of an initial-value formulation for vacuum spacetimes; the status of singularity theorems; the non-existence of a Newtonian limit; the status of the cosmological constant; and the character of matter fields, including perfect fluids and electromagnetic fields. We conclude with a discussion of what constrains our understanding of physics in different dimensions.

Varieties of Ethical Reflection brings together new cultural and religious perspectives—drawn from non-Western, primarily Asian, philosophical sources—to globalize the contemporary discussion of theoretical and applied ethics.

Intertheoretic reduction in physics aspires to be both to be explanatory and perfectly general: it endeavors to explain why an older, simpler theory continues to be as successful as it is in terms of a newer, more sophisticated theory, and it aims to relate or otherwise account for as many features of the two theories as possible. Despite often being introduced as straightforward cases of intertheoretic reduction, candidate accounts of the reduction of general relativity to Newtonian gravitation have either been (...) insufficiently general or rigorous, or have not clearly been able to explain the empirical success of Newtonian gravitation. Building on work by Ehlers and others, I propose a different account of the reduction relation that is perfectly general and meets the explanatory demand one would make of it. In doing so, I highlight the role that a topology on the collection of all spacetimes plays in defining the relation, and how the selection of the topology corresponds with broader or narrower classes of observables that one demands be well-approximated in the limit. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

This paper is concerned with counterfactual logic and its implications for the modal status of mathematical claims. It is most directly a response to an ambitious program by Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne (2018), who seek to establish that mathematics is committed to its own necessity. I claim that their argument fails to establish this result for two reasons. First, their assumptions force our hand on a controversial debate within counterfactual logic. In particular, they license counterfactual strengthening— the inference from ‘If A (...) were true then C would be true’ to ‘If A and B were true then C would be true’—which many reject. Second, the system they develop is provably equivalent to appending Deduction Theorem to a T modal logic. It is unsurprising that the combination of Deduction Theorem with T results in necessitation; indeed, it is precisely for this reason that many logicians reject Deduction Theorem in modal contexts. If Deduction Theorem is unacceptable for modal logic, it cannot be assumed to derive the necessity of mathematics. (shrink)

2. The equal status mentioned in Thesis 2 need not mean, "equally concrete" or "inclusive," but only, "equally real," where "real" means having a character of its own with reference to which opinions can be true or false. But becoming or process is alone fully concrete or inclusive, since if A is without becoming, and B becomes, then the togetherness of AB also becomes. A new constituent means a new totality. In this sense, becoming is the ultimate principle.

Conducted 2 experiments with undergraduates which demonstrated that, in a recognition memory task, Ss recognized the negated antecedent and consequent propositions of previously encountered counterfactual conditionals significantly more often than control items, the latter effect being distinctly stronger (Exp I, n = 110). A similar result was obtained for causals related to previously encountered counterfactual conditionals and counterfactual conditionals related to previously encountered causals, the latter being the stronger effect (Exp II, n = 92). Results are discussed in the context (...) of the observation that a counterfactual conditional (a) presupposes the negation of its antecedent proposition, (b) strongly suggests the negation of its consequent proposition, and (c) is intimately related to a causal in which (a) and (b) are conjoined, with (a) taken as the grounds for (b). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2000 APA, all rights reserved) (unassigned). (shrink)

We argue that C. Darwin and more recently W. Hennig worked at times under the simplifying assumption of an eternal biosphere. So motivated, we explicitly consider the consequences which follow mathematically from this assumption, and the infinite graphs it leads to. This assumption admits certain clusters of organisms which have some ideal theoretical properties of species, shining some light onto the species problem. We prove a dualization of a law of T.A. Knight and C. Darwin, and sketch a decomposition result (...) involving the internodons of D. Kornet, J. Metz and H. Schellinx. A further goal of this paper is to respond to B. Sturmfels’ question, “Can biology lead to new theorems?”. (shrink)

A theoretical structure for multiattribute decision making is presented, based on a dynamical system for interactions in a neural network incorporating affective and rational variables. This enables modeling of problems that elude two prevailing economic decision theories: subjective expected utility theory and prospect theory. The network is unlike some that fit economic data by choosing optimal weights or coefficients within a predetermined mathematical framework. Rather, the framework itself is based on principles used elsewhere to model many other cognitive and behavioral (...) data, in a manner approximating how humans perform behavioral functions. Different, interconnected modules within the network encode (a) attributes of objects among which choices are made, (b) object categories, (c) and goals of the decision maker. An example is utilized to simulate the actual consumer choice between old and new versions of Coca-Cola. Potential applications are also discussed to market decisions involving negotiations between participants, such as international petroleum traders. (shrink)

Spirituality is a universal human experience. Within the process of development, the role of spirituality as a developmental asset is understudied in general and especially within majority world contexts. In this article, we frame advances in spirituality research and practice with youth around three pillars: (a) theory, (b) measurement, and (c) research about and evaluations of positive youth development (PYD) programs in low- and middle-income countries. We place PYD programs as associated with dynamic, relational developmental systems (RDS)-based models of human (...) development, describe spirituality and the “Big Three” features of effective PYD programs as aligning to promote thriving, and discuss spirituality as a strength, as a key asset, in the lives of youth. We discuss advances in developmental methods and measures for describing, explaining, and promoting spirituality and PYD and offer a case study that responds to a United States Agency for International Development call for action and evaluations of spirituality within the context of a PYD program in the majority world. Considerations for future research about spirituality and youth development are discussed. (shrink)

There is a puzzling tension in contemporary scientific attitudes towards human nature. On the one hand, evolutionary biologists correctly maintain that the traditional essentialist conception of human nature is untenable; and moreover that this is obviously so in the light of quite general and exceedingly well-known evolutionary considerations. On the other hand, talk of human nature abounds in certain regions of the sciences, especially in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. In this paper I articulate a conception of human nature that (...) a) captures how cognitive and behavioral scientists tend to deploy the notion whilst, b) evading standard evol-utionary objections, and c) allowing human nature – and theories thereof – to fulfill many of their traditional theoretical roles. (shrink)

Theories of free will are often measured against how well they capture everyday intuitions about free will. But what are these everyday intuitions, and what theoretical commitments do they express? Empirical methods have delivered mixed messages. In response, some free will theorists have developed error theories to undermine the credentials of countervailing intuitions. These efforts are predicated on the idea that people might misunderstand determinism in any of several ways. This paper sheds light on the comprehension problem. We first discuss (...) recent efforts to explain systematic errors in how people interpret determinism. Then, we present the alarming results of two new preregistered studies exploring three types of comprehension failure: (a) epiphenomenal bypassing, (b) fatalistic bypassing, and (c) indeterministic intrusion. Our findings suggest that misunderstanding runs deeper than others have supposed. This casts doubt on existing models of commonsense thinking about free will. Unless and until researchers properly control for the kinds of misunderstandings we identify, research on free will intuitions cannot shed light on whether ordinary thinking reflects commitments to compatibilism or incompatibilism. (shrink)

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are still much with us. What appears to be the definitive edition was published by Professor Norman Kemp Smith in 1935 with a learned introduction which, among other things, assembled a mass of evidence pointing to the conclusion that Philo is to be identified with Hume himself, and that Hume in the Dialogues is deliberately trying to undermine the religious hypothesis. Though these conclusions have been widely accepted, Dr. B. M. Laing, in the April issue (...) of Philosophy , strenuously attacked them in an ingenious argument based in part on his already published thesis that Hume's fundamental philosophy is not really the scepticism so long assigned him. Dr. Laing takes the opportunity in passing to indicate his sympathy with the recent position of a distinguished British poet that Voltaire, also, has been traditionally abused in the assumption that on the question of religion he wrote with his tongue in his cheek. The present examination is not designed to inquire into this new mode of making the wicked pious; nor to push the question back from the Dialogues to Hume's basic philosophy; nor to press the writer's conviction [“The Enigma of Hume,” Mind , XLV pp. 334–349] that not only is Philo to be identified as Hume, but in addition, Cleanthes as Joseph Butler, and Demea as Samuel Clarke. The present purpose is solely to indicate certain unhistorical bases of Dr. Laing's attack on the more traditional view so ably championed by Professor Norman Kemp Smith. (shrink)

This paper addresses a common challenge with computational cognitive models: identifying parameter values that are both theoretically plausible and generate predictions that match well with empirical data. While computational models can offer deep explanations of cognition, they are computationally complex and often out of reach of traditional parameter fitting methods. Weak methodology may lead to premature rejection of valid models or to acceptance of models that might otherwise be falsified. Mathematically robust fitting methods are, therefore, essential to the progress of (...) computational modeling in cognitive science. In this article, we investigate the capability and role of modern fitting methods—including Bayesian optimization and approximate Bayesian computation—and contrast them to some more commonly used methods: grid search and Nelder–Mead optimization. Our investigation consists of a reanalysis of the fitting of two previous computational models: an Adaptive Control of Thought—Rational model of skill acquisition and a computational rationality model of visual search. The results contrast the efficiency and informativeness of the methods. A key advantage of the Bayesian methods is the ability to estimate the uncertainty of fitted parameter values. We conclude that approximate Bayesian computation is (a) efficient, (b) informative, and (c) offers a path to reproducible results. (shrink)

Review of Leigh Eric Schmidt, Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation,.

Hume'sDialogues Concerning Natural Religion are still much with us. What appears to be the definitive edition was published by Professor Norman Kemp Smith in 1935 with a learned introduction which, among other things, assembled a mass of evidence pointing to the conclusion that Philo is to be identified with Hume himself, and that Hume in the Dialogues is deliberately trying to undermine the religious hypothesis. Though these conclusions have been widely accepted, Dr. B. M. Laing, in the April issue of (...) Philosophy, strenuously attacked them in an ingenious argument based in part on his already published thesis that Hume's fundamental philosophy is not really the scepticism so long assigned him. Dr. Laing takes the opportunity in passing to indicate his sympathy with the recent position of a distinguished British poet that Voltaire, also, has been traditionally abused in the assumption that on the question of religion he wrote with his tongue in his cheek. The present examination is not designed to inquire into this new mode of making the wicked pious; nor to push the question back from the Dialogues to Hume's basic philosophy; nor to press the writer's conviction [“The Enigma of Hume,” Mind, XLV pp. 334–349] that not only is Philo to be identified as Hume, but in addition, Cleanthes as Joseph Butler, and Demea as Samuel Clarke. The present purpose is solely to indicate certain unhistorical bases of Dr. Laing's attack on the more traditional view so ably championed by Professor Norman Kemp Smith. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical.