This study investigates whether the conscious awareness of action is based on predictive motor control processes, or on inferential “sense-making” process that occur after the action itself. We investigated whether the temporal binding between perceptual estimates of operant actions and their effects depends on the occurrence of the effect (inferential processes) or on the prediction that the effect will occur (predictive processes). By varying the probability with which a simple manual action produced an auditory effect, we showed that both the (...) actual and the predicted occurrence of the effect played a role. When predictability of the effect of action was low, temporal binding was found only on those trials where the auditory effect occurred. In contrast, when predictability of the effect of action was high, temporal binding occurred even on trials where the action produced no effect. Further analysis showed that the predictive process is modulated by recent experience of the action-effect relation. We conclude that the experience of action depends on a dynamic combination of predictive and inferential processes. (shrink)
. Remarks made by Lutheran leaders in Africa indicate that the churches have not been responding to the crisis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic sufficiently. In this essay I ask how the churches would be better prepared to act and also, more broadly, how the churches act to begin with. The dialogue between religion and science can assist us with both tasks as we consider the challenge of HIV/AIDS as a focus for this dialogue. First, analysis by social scientists can uncover (...) what problems face any effort to motivate churches to actâand, for that matter, any individual member of a church group. I argue, further, that we can discover the difficulties associated with producing action by religious communities by looking not at abstract theological ideas but by investigating the way those ideas are conveyed in worship. I explore the worship patterns of Lutherans to show what sort of view is actually produced by the week-to-week messages of liturgical texts. I contend that a different approach both to worship and to action can be produced by reconsidering our views of reality as seen through the eyes of contemporary science. (shrink)
. The articles in this section were presented at the conference âToward a Theology of Diseaseâ sponsored by the Zygon Center in October, 2002. This was a second conference designed to address the question of what the science-religion dialogue could contribute to the larger discussion of the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. The conference brought a wide range of perspectives to this question from different religious traditions. I draw them together here around the idea that Philip Hefner introduced in his keynote (...) address: our fragmented experience of the world. The notion of fragmentation opens the door for both a recognition of several possible approaches to building a theology of disease and the pluralism of religious traditions, as well as providing a framework for integrating our full awareness that HIV/AIDS is a problem without solutions and requiring a level of humility in posing any real answers. The essays clearly suggest that the question remains perplexing but that our efforts do show that a multifaith, multidisciplinary religion-science dialogue can contribute significantly to the larger discussion. (shrink)
This paper has two aims. The first is to criticize epistemological externalism in a way different from most other criticisms. Most criticisms claim externalism fails because it does not adequately explicate ordinary notions of knowledge and justification. Such criticisms are often unhelpful to the externalist because he may not even intend his theory to be such an explication. The criticism presented here avoids this difficulty. The other aim, achieved en route to this criticism, is to explode a dogma of contemporary (...) epistemology — that the primary end of epistemic endeavors is truth — and to bring to light the many other important goals there are for such endeavors in addition to truth. Several of these goals pertain to the power of knowledge in social contexts. The criticism ultimately made of externalism is that externalist knowledge is defective because it fails to achieve these extra-verific goals of epistemic endeavors. (shrink)
