Hasil untuk "Philosophy. Psychology. Religion"

Sebastian De Haro, Jeremy Butterfield

This monograph discusses dualities in physics: what dualities are, their main examples--from quantum mechanics and electrodynamics to statistical mechanics, quantum field theory and string theory--and the philosophical questions they raise. Part I first conceptualises dualities and discusses their main roles and themes, including how they are related to familiar notions like symmetry and interpretation. It also discusses the main simple examples of dualities: position-momentum, wave-particle, electric-magnetic, and Kramers-Wannier dualities. Part II discusses advanced examples and their inter-relations: particle-soliton dualities, electric-magnetic dualities in quantum field theories, dualities in string theory, and gauge-gravity duality. This Part ends with discussions of the hole argument, and how string theory counts the microstates of a black hole. Part III is an in-depth discussion of general philosophical issues on which dualities bear: theoretical equivalence (two theories 'saying the same thing, in different words'), scientific realism and the under-determination of theories by data, theory succession and the M-theory programme, explanation, and scientific understanding. It proposes a view of scientific theories that it dubs 'the geometric view of theories'. The book's treatment of the examples is at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level, starting from elementary and progressing to more advanced examples. The discussions of philosophical topics, such as referential semantics, theoretical equivalence, scientific realism and scientific understanding, are both self-contained and in-depth. Thus the book is aimed at students and researchers with an interest in the physical examples and philosophical questions about dualities, and also in how physics and philosophy can fruitfully interact with each other.

Hong Joo Ryoo

Modern physics proposals present deep tensions between seemingly contradictory descriptions of reality. Views of wave-particle duality, black hole complementarity, and the Unruh effect demand explanations that shift depending on how a system is observed. However, traditional models of scientific explanation impose a fixed structure that fails to account for varying observational contexts. This paper introduces context-dependent mapping, a framework that reorganizes physical laws into self-consistent subsets structured around what can actually be observed in a given context. By doing so, it provides a principled way to integrate complementarity into the philosophy of explanation.

Louis Vervoort, Vitaly Nikolaev

We propose a test for abstract causal reasoning in AI, based on scholarship in the philosophy of causation, in particular on the neuron diagrams popularized by D. Lewis. We illustrate the test on advanced Large Language Models (ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Gemini). Remarkably, these chatbots are already capable of correctly identifying causes in cases that are hotly debated in the literature. In order to assess the results of these LLMs and future dedicated AI, we propose a definition of cause in neuron diagrams with a wider validity than published hitherto, which challenges the widespread view that such a definition is elusive. We submit that these results are an illustration of how future philosophical research might evolve: as an interplay between human and artificial expertise.

Matteo Colombo, Michael Cohen

The geometry of the environment can affect numerous psychological, social, and ecological processes. But its roles in social learning and the dynamics of descriptive norms remain unclear. Here we use agent-based modeling to explore how environments with different geometric shapes can influence social learning to produce variations in the extent of universally shared descriptive norms. Our simulations show that an environment with an irregular layout facilitates the emergence of multiple descriptive norms in a population, whereas an environment with a regular grid plan constrains social learning to produce a behaviorally homogeneous population.

B. Deezia, Emeka C. Ekeke

Human beings are inherently symbol-making, and this symbolic capacity is central to African philosophical and religious thought. In African traditions, symbolism is not a mere aesthetic element but a foundational ontological structure through which identity, personhood, and communal belonging are understood. Symbols— manifested in names, rituals, proverbs, totems, and cosmologies—do not merely reflect reality but actively construct it. Personality, in this context, transcends individual psychology; it is a culturally embedded phenomenon shaped by spiritual, communal, and metaphysical dimensions. While much has been written on African symbolism and identity, the symbolic constitution of personality remains underexplored. This paper examines how symbols function in articulatingpersonality within African thought, serving as mediums for ethical expression, metaphysical insight, and communal norms. Drawing on textual and oral traditions, it explores how symbolic forms mediate divine-human relations, encode moral expectations, and sustain social cohesion. The study argues that the African notion of the person is that of homo symbolism-a being whose existence is inseparable from symbolic representation. Amid globalization and cultural homogenization, the resilience of African symbolic systems underscores theirimportance. The paper concludes by calling for the revitalization of indigenous epistemologies through culturally responsive education, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and contextual theologies.

Ian M. Church

Experimental philosophy of religion is the project of taking the tools and resources of the human sciences—especially psychology and cognitive science—and bringing them to bear on issues within philosophy of religion toward explicit philosophical ends. This paper introduces readers to experimental philosophy of religion. §2 explores the contours of experimental philosophy of religion by contrasting it with a few related fields: the psychology of religion and cognitive science of religion, on the one hand, and natural theology, on the other. §3 offers a brief history of experimental philosophy of religion. The goal in this section is to highlight the ancient pedigree of this emerging area of research; as the contemporary experimental philosophy of religion literature expands and proliferates, it's important to remember that this field has deep historical roots. Then, §4 focuses on the following questions: Why should we care about experimental philosophy of religion? And why is it needed?

P. J. E. Peebles

I argue that research in physics operates under an implicit community philosophy, and I offer a definition I think physicists would accept, by and large. I compare this definition to what philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science, with physicists, say we are doing.

Sergi Blanco-Cuaresma

This study explores the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze text comments from Reddit users, aiming to achieve two primary objectives: firstly, to pinpoint critical excerpts that support a predefined psychological assessment of suicidal risk; and secondly, to summarize the material to substantiate the preassigned suicidal risk level. The work is circumscribed to the use of "open-source" LLMs that can be run locally, thereby enhancing data privacy. Furthermore, it prioritizes models with low computational requirements, making it accessible to both individuals and institutions operating on limited computing budgets. The implemented strategy only relies on a carefully crafted prompt and a grammar to guide the LLM's text completion. Despite its simplicity, the evaluation metrics show outstanding results, making it a valuable privacy-focused and cost-effective approach. This work is part of the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych) 2024 shared task.

OLĂRESCU Valentina, DICU Adriana

This article delves into the psychological literature concerning divorce and its impact on the personality development of preadolescents aged 9-12. Researchers in this field emphasize the significant role of family and socio-cultural environments in shaping a child’s personality, considering personality as a system embedded within a matrix of socio-cultural systems. The Millon Pre-Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MPACI) test was employed to identify personality disorders among preadolescents affected by parental separation. The underlying hypothesis posits that preadolescents with divorced parents would exhibit personality disorders, and significant differences would emerge in the personality patterns between preadolescents from divorced families and those from intact families. Statistical analysis of the results corroborated this hypothesis, shedding light on the nuanced effects of divorce on preadolescent personality development.

Håkan Lagerberg, James F. Boswell, Michael J. Constantino et al.

[Background] Deliberate Practice (DP), which underscores the importance of expert mentorship, personalized learning objectives, feedback, and repetition, has been suggested as a method to enhance the effectiveness of therapists. [Method] The study tested the efficacy of an eight-week, structured, group-based online course, enriched with peer feedback, for 37 Cognitive Behavioral Therapists. The goal was to assess whether this intervention could boost the quality of therapist-patient alliances, as compared to a control group. To measure this, therapists had their patients anonymously fill out the Session Alliance Inventory both before and after the course. The trial encompassed 120 patient alliance ratings at baseline and 64 at the post-course measurement. The DP course was comprised of a 75-minute remote video workshop each week for eight weeks, supplemented by related study materials. Each workshop focused on a specific skill, such as responding to client resistance, and included 55 minutes of concentrated role-play activities, providing ample opportunities for repetition and feedback. [Results] Using a linear mixed model we did not find an effect on patient alliance ratings. However, we observed a trend (p = .054) indicating that the DP group decreased their alliance ratings (Cohen’s d = -0.40), while the control group demonstrated an increase in their scores (d = 0.49). [Conclusion] This pilot study did not find support for DP leading to better patient-rated alliance compared to a waitlist control. However, the study had several methodological limitations. Further and more rigorous investigation of the effects of DP on patient outcomes is recommended.

Benyamin Ghojogh, Morteza Babaie

We propose the concepts of philomatics and psychomatics as hybrid combinations of philosophy and psychology with mathematics. We explain four motivations for this combination which are fulfilling the desire of analytical philosophy, proposing science of philosophy, justifying mathematical algorithms by philosophy, and abstraction in both philosophy and mathematics. We enumerate various examples for philomatics and psychomatics, some of which are explained in more depth. The first example is the analysis of relation between the context principle, semantic holism, and the usage theory of meaning with the attention mechanism in mathematics. The other example is on the relations of Plato's theory of forms in philosophy with the holographic principle in string theory, object-oriented programming, and machine learning. Finally, the relation between Wittgenstein's family resemblance and clustering in mathematics is explained. This paper opens the door of research for combining philosophy and psychology with mathematics.

Fengdan Shen, Fengdan Shen, Linling Liang et al.

This study aimed to examine the factors that potentially impact the self-directed use of mobile English learning resources (MELR). The participants were 206 Chinese undergraduate EFL learners at Yangzhou University in Mainland China. Applying and modifying the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study involved six constructs, including students’ performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, perceived playfulness, and behavioral intention to use MELR. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was adopted to analyze the data collected from the questionnaire. The findings showed that facilitating conditions acted as the most significant predictor of behavioral intention to adopt MELR, followed by effort expectancy, perceived playfulness, and performance expectancy. However, social influence did not have significant effects on students’ use of MELR. Pedagogical implications for teachers and students were also presented in the end.

Juan Antonio Carrasco-Bahamonde

Existe consenso en torno a que la disciplina sociológica brindó un marco para comprender las relaciones entre los sistemas educativos y los contextos sociales más amplios en que se emplazan. No obstante, los retratos que ha esbozado aquella tradición en torno a la escuela, adquieren significados contrastantes. Las perspectivas que explora este articulo surgen como una respuesta a la obsolescencia de los modelos determinísticos del cambio educativo y su dificultad para explicar aquellos procesos de cambio que tienen lugar en la escuela. El presente artículo ofrece una reflexión teórica en torno a la cuestión de la diversidad sociocultural, a partir de la distinción entre los órdenes instrumental y expresivo en la escuela, delimitando la diversidad como un ámbito problemático y brindando herramientas conceptuales a partir de las aportaciones de Durkheim y Bernstein. El abordaje propuesto está anclado a la distinción entre los modelos de relaciones integrativas basadas en la solidaridad orgánica y mecánica, presentando un esfuerzo sistemático de teorización en torno al ámbito de prácticas educativas. Finalmente, se concluye que las políticas educativas se enfrentan a un dilema entre la exigencia de rendimientos especializados y un conjunto de competencias, valores y creencias basales en el contexto de sociedades que se complejizan y diversifican aceleradamente y aspiran a una coexistencia entre las dinámicas de cambio tecnológico y profundización democrática.

Thanujeni Pathman, Lina Deker, Puneet Kaur Parmar et al.

Abstract Free-recall paradigms have greatly influenced our understanding of memory. The majority of this research involves laboratory-based events (e.g., word lists) that are studied and tested within minutes. This literature shows that adults recall events in a temporally organized way, with successive responses often coming from neighboring list positions (i.e., temporal clustering) and with enhanced memorability of items from the end of a list (i.e., recency). Temporal clustering effects are so robust that temporal organization is described as a fundamental memory property. Yet relatively little is known about the development of this temporal structure across childhood, and even less about children’s memory search for real-world events occurring over an extended period. In the present work, children (N = 144; 3 age groups: 4–5-year-olds, 6–7-year-olds, 8–10-year-olds) took part in a 5-day summer camp at a local zoo. The camp involved various dynamic events, including daily animal exhibit visits. On day 5, children were asked to recall all the animals they visited. We found that overall recall performance, in terms of number of animals recalled, improved steadily across childhood. Temporal organization and recency effects showed different developmental patterns. Temporal clustering was evident in the response sequences for all age groups and became progressively stronger across childhood. In contrast, the recency advantage, when characterized as a proportion of total responses, was stable across age groups. Thus, recall dynamics in early childhood parallel that seen in adulthood, with continued development of temporal organization across middle to late childhood.

Olanrewaju Tahir Aduragba, Alexandra I. Cristea, Pete Phillips et al.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Church closed its physical doors for the first time in about 800 years, which is, arguably, a cataclysmic event. Other religions have found themselves in a similar situation, and they were practically forced to move online, which is an unprecedented occasion. In this paper, we analyse this sudden change in religious activities twofold: we create and deliver a questionnaire, as well as analyse Twitter data, to understand people's perceptions and activities related to religious activities online. Importantly, we also analyse the temporal variations in this process by analysing a period of 3 months: July-September 2020. Additionally to the separate analysis of the two data sources, we also discuss the implications from triangulating the results.

Masanao Ozawa, Andrei Khrennikov

The aim of this paper is to promote quantum logic as one of the basic tools for analyzing human reasoning. We compare it with classical (Boolean) logic and highlight the role of violation of the distributive law for conjunction and disjunction. It is well known that nondistributivity is equivalent to incompatibility of logical variables -- the impossibility to assign jointly the two-valued truth values to these variables. A natural question arises as to whether quantum logical nondistributivity in human logic can be tested experimentally. We show that testing the response replicability effect (RRE) in cognitive psychology is equivalent to testing nondistributivity -- under the prevailing conjecture that the mental state update generated by observation is described as orthogonal projection of the mental state vector (the projective update conjecture of Wang and Busemeyer). A simple test of RRE is suggested. In contrast to the previous works in quantum-like modeling, we proceed in the state-dependent framework; in particular, distributivity, compatibility, and RRE are considered in a fixed mental state. In this framework, we improve the previous result on the impossibility to combine question order and response replicability effects by using (von Neumann-Lüders) projective measurements.

Kosolapova, Larisa Alexandrovna, Myasnikova, Diana Igorevna

Introduction. The conducted research is aimed at identifying the methodological foundations, content, methods and mechanisms for organizing the patriotic education in adolescents and "Z generation" youth. The article defines the essential characteristics of the education processes and creation of juvenile media, and substantiates the possibility and potential of integrating these processes. Theoretical analysis. The scientific novelty lies in the development and theoretical justification of the Model of organizing the patriotic education in the “Generation Z” youth with the involvement of the juvnile media resource, which includes methodological, target-oriented, activity and result blocks, and which is based on a combination of humanistic, personal, activity, and integrative approaches to the process of educating adolescents, allowing to ensure the integrity and functionality of the Model. The mechanism of education is the pedagogical support of the value-semantic self-determination of a young person at each stage of a young media journalist work on media material. In the process of creating media material, a chain of upbringing methods is used (according to Z. I. Vasilyeva): goal-setting – informational and educational – evaluative. Conclusion. As a result of the study, the possibility of using the potential of juvenile media in the process of patriotic education in generation Z teenagers is substantiated: the purpose, the main mechanism, the content and methods of the upbringing process, the structure and indicators of the result of the patriotic upbringing of adolescents and the "Generation Z" youth with the involvement of the juvenile media resource.

Despina Oikonomou, Artemis Alexiadou

Voice syncretism is widely attested crosslinguistically. In this paper, we discuss three different types of Voice syncretism, under which the same morpheme participates in different configurations. We provide an approach under which the same Voice head can convey different interpretations depending on the environment it appears in, thus building on the notion of allosemy. We show that, in all cases under investigation, allosemy is closely associated with the existence of idiosyncratic patterns. By contrast, we notice that allosemy and idiosyncrasy are not present in analytic passive and causative constructions across different languages. We argue that the distinguishing feature between the two types of constructions is whether the passive and the causative interpretation comes from the Voice head, thus forming a single domain with the vP or whether passive and causative semantics are realized by distinct heads above the Voice layer, thus forming two distinct domains.

Grazyna Kmita, Grazyna Kmita, Eliza Kiepura et al.

Postpartum depression is more prevalent in mothers and fathers of preterm infants compared to parents of full-term infants and may have long-term detrimental consequences for parental mental health and child development. The temperamental profile of an infant has been postulated as one of the important factors associated with parental depressiveness in the first months postpartum. This study aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between depressive symptoms and perceived infant temperament at 3 months corrected age, and depressive symptoms at 6 months corrected age among mothers and fathers of infants born preterm. We assessed 59 families with infants born before the 34th gestational week using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EDPS) and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised. We found that mothers’ scores on EPDS and infants’ Orienting/regulation at 3 months corrected age predicted mothers’ EPDS scores at 6 months corrected age. In particular, higher depressive scores were related to higher depressive symptoms at 6 months corrected age, whereas higher infant Orienting/regulation was related to lower depressive symptoms at 6 months corrected age. Due to the low internal consistency of EPDS at 6 months for fathers, we were unable to conduct similar analyses for fathers. Our results point to the importance of considering both early indices of maternal mood as well as mother-reported measures of preterm infant temperament in the attempts to predict levels of maternal depressiveness in later months of an infant’s life. Further studies are urgently needed in order to better understand the associations between depressiveness and infant temperament in fathers, and with more consideration for the severity of the effects of infant prematurity.

Rini Susilowati, Erni Furwanti, Panji Nurul Fath