Elmer John Thiessen; Two Concepts or Two Phases of Liberal Education?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 223–234, https.

We live in polarizing times. In this book Elmer Thiessen dares to suggest that the solution to the deep divides in our contemporary world and in the church is not to be found in more information, more education, more rationality, or more critical thinking. Instead, we need to cultivate intellectual virtues, such as the love of knowledge and truth, intellectual humility, and committed openness. The penultimate chapter treats intellectual virtues that are more relational in nature--intellectual forbearance, fairmindedness, and intellectual (...) courage. The book explores the biblical and theological grounding of each intellectual virtue and reveals its practical importance for our fractious times, making use of concrete examples throughout. Each of the central chapters begins with a questionnaire aimed at promoting self-examination and stimulating reflection about the virtues and vices under consideration. This is a book for the thoughtful Christian reader aimed at transforming the way we think. (shrink)

Infant and adult learners are able to identify word boundaries in fluent speech using statistical information. Similarly, learners are able to use statistical information to identify word–object associations. Successful language learning requires both feats. In this series of experiments, we presented adults and infants with audio–visual input from which it was possible to identify both word boundaries and word–object relations. Adult learners were able to identify both kinds of statistical relations from the same input. Moreover, their learning was actually facilitated (...) by the presence of two simultaneously present relations. Eight-month-old infants, however, do not appear to benefit from the presence of regular relations between words and objects. Adults, like 8-month-olds, did not benefit from regular audio–visual correspondences when they were tested with tones, rather than linguistic input. These differences in learning outcomes across age and input suggest that both developmental and stimulus-based constraints affect statistical learning. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob und wie der universale Geltungsanspruch der Menschenrechte sich mit dem Pluralismus der Religionen und Kulturen vermitteln läßt, ist ein zentrales Thema innerhalb der gegenwärtigen Menschenrechtsdebatte. Die Kantische Philosophie kann einen Beitrag zu dieser Debatte leisten, indem sie dazu verhilft, einige vielfach beschworene Dichotomien kritisch auszuräumen, durch die die interkulturelle Verständigung über Menschenrechte nicht selten schon im Ansatz blockiert wird. Nach Kant zielt eine kosmopolitische rechtliche Rahmenordnung nicht auf globale Uniformierung, sondern auf die politisch-rechtliche Gestaltung der faktisch erreichten (...) und vermutlich irreversiblen politischen und wirtschaftlichen Globalisierung. Wenn menschenrechtliche Freiheit jedem einzelnen Menschen zukommt, so steht der darin implizierte Individualismus als ein genuin ethischer Individualismus keineswegs, wie oft behauptet, in Gegensatz zu kommunitären Ansprüchen auf Solidarität, sind doch Menschenrechte an der der Würde des Menschen als der inneren Quelle jeder moralischen Solidarität orientiert. Schließlich widerspricht die in der sittlichen Autonomie begründete Menschenwürde zwar einem politisch-rechtlich durchsetzbaren materialen Gottesrecht; sie ist gleichwohl aber offen für theologische Ausdeutungen der Menschenwürde über die anthropozentrische Perspektive hinaus. (shrink)

Transgenic mice constitute an entirely new dimension of mammalian molecular genetics. They allow us to observe genes at work in the intact organism. Virtually every sector of biomedical research is likely to be affected.

This book is the first to explore in detail the role that symbolic representation plays in the architecture of Kant's philosophy. Symbolic representation fulfills a crucial function in Kant's practical philosophy because it serves to mediate between the unconditionality of the categorical imperative and the inescapable finiteness of the human being. By showing how the nature of symbolic representation plays out across all areas of the practical philosophy - moral philosophy, legal philosophy, philosophy of history and philosophy of religion - (...) Heiner Bielefeldt offers a unique perspective on how these various facets of Kant's philosophy cohere. (shrink)

According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with (...) varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n= 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r= 0.50,p= 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r= 0.46,p= 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r= 0.43,p= 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r= 0.30,p= 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis. (shrink)

Why do religious people attempt to persuade others of their beliefs? What are the current objections to the religious practice of proselytizing? Is proselytizing an ethically defensible practice? Are there kinds of proselytizing activities that are ethically questionable? Elmer John Thiessen responds to questions like these in an effort to provide a philosophical defense of proselytization, or religious persuasion, as an ethical practice. Thiessen examines and refutes current cultural and academic objections to religious proselytizing and offers a thorough (...) ethics of evangelism. (shrink)

Understanding why individuals opt out of living donation is crucial to enhancing protections for all living donors and to identify modifiable barriers to donation. We developed an ethical approach to conducting research on individuals who opted out of living kidney donation and applied it in a small-scale qualitative study at one US transplant centre. The seven study participants had varied reasons for opting out, the most prominent of which was concern about the financial burden from lost wages during the postoperative (...) period. Several reported feeling alone during their decision-making process. Although no participants used an alibi, a centre-provided statement of non-eligibility to donate, all believed that centres should offer alibis to help preserve donor autonomy. Given the complexity of participants' decisions and the emotions they experienced before and after deciding not to donate, we suggest approaches for independent living donor advocates to support this population. This study demonstrates that research on individuals who opt out of donation is feasible and yields valuable insight into methods to improve the evaluation experience for potential living donors. (shrink)

This book defends Christian nurture and education against the frequently made charge of indoctrination. It argues that Christian education is fully compatible with a liberal education.

Statistical learning refers to the ability to identify structure in the input based on its statistical properties. For many linguistic structures, the relevant statistical features are distributional: They are related to the frequency and variability of exemplars in the input. These distributional regularities have been suggested to play a role in many different aspects of language learning, including phonetic categories, using phonemic distinctions in word learning, and discovering non-adjacent relations. On the surface, these different aspects share few commonalities. Despite this, (...) we demonstrate that the same computational framework can account for learning in all of these tasks. These results support two conclusions. The first is that much, and perhaps all, of distributional statistical learning can be explained by the same underlying set of processes. The second is that some aspects of language can be learned due to domain-general characteristics of memory. (shrink)

Elmer J Thiessen; Indoctrination and Doctrines, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 3–17, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

Human females are generally reserved in their sexuality, in keeping with their heavy investment in reproduction. Males tend to be less reserved. Relative to males, however, females demonstrate more variability in sexuality and are more likely to inhibit or express high levels of sexuality. The heightened variability may in part originate with genetic mechanisms that predispose females toward greater variability. Menarche, menstrual cycles, menopause, food reactions, responses to living conditions, reactions to cultural factors, and responses to sexual stimuli and potential (...) mates are unique to or are more variable among females than males. There is a correlation between the variation expressed and female reproductive potential—females tend to shift dramatically from sexual inhibition to sexual expression. Females apparently track the quality of the environment and link their sexuality to reproductive opportunities. Successful male reproduction depends less on quality environments and more on the availability of females. In short, females track the environment; males track the females. (shrink)

: The paper discusses the concepts of obligation and moral evidence in Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s prize essays. I argue that Mendelssohn departs in significant ways from Christian Wolff’s position, and that Kant intends to overcome Wolffian philosophy with Newtonian methodology while still owing a lot to Wolff and to the project of an ethics within the limits of metaphysics. Although quite akin to Francis Hutcheson’s philosophy, it becomes clear that Kant intended to lay the foundation of an innovative concept of (...) obligation, which shares some similarities with Christian August Crusius’s interpretation of it. (shrink)

It is often argued that religious schools and colleges promote intolerance, divisiveness, and fanaticism and that they violate the principle of academic freedom. Some writers also suggest that economic support for religious schools by the state violates the principle of the separation of church and state. Elmer Thiessen provides a philosophical defence of religious schools and colleges against these and other standard objections. He concludes with a radical proposal: a pluralistic educational system will better prepare students for citizenship in (...) pluralist liberal democracies than a monopolistic state-maintained school system. In placing his argument within the context of liberal-democratic values Thiessen gives concrete examples of objections to religious schools and offers practical suggestions that follow from the philosophical treatment of the problem. In Defence of Religious Schools and Colleges bridges the gap between philosophical argument and educational practice. It will be of interest not only to philosophers and educational theorists but also to practitioners in education. Academics, policy makers, political theorists, lay-people, teachers, administrators, and parents – those who object to religious schools and colleges and those who find themselves trying to answer the objections – will benefit from reading this book. (shrink)

Following Snyderman and Rothman, we surveyed expert opinions on the current state of intelligence research. This report examines expert opinions on causes of international differences in student assessment and psychometric IQ test results. Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education, wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim (...) world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma, and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the survey. (shrink)

The 1000-year-old novel The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu around 1002 CE, shows the operation of general principles of sociobiology. Isolated from western influences and cloaked in Japanese traditions, the common traits associated with reproductive processes are clearly evident. The novel depicts the differential investment of males and females in offspring, male competitive behaviors, and concerns for paternity, kin selection, reciprocal social exchange, species-typical emotional expression, female mate choice, positive assortative mating, and acknowledgment of hereditary transmission of physical (...) and psychological traits. The nature of human behavior in Genji’s time seems little different than now and has all the attributes of species-specific and universal traits. Indeed, it can be argued that the fundamental characteristics of Homo sapiens have never changed, being influenced only in form by culture. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of ancient texts is a strong methodology for understanding the invariant nature of human behavior. (shrink)

In modern discourse about the history of science, it seems to be widely accepted that at the end of the nineteenth century, Germany was one of the leading countries in the production of science. In the past, historians of science tried to trace back a specific ‘German style’ of science that—in combination with other factors—determined this German dominance around 1900, especially in the life sciences. Considering the theoretical concept of ‘national styles’, it has to be kept in mind that around (...) 1900, contemporaries already proclaimed ‘national styles’ of science as representations of national identity. Thus, the question arises as to how far existing historiographical conceptions of national styles may include earlier claims and prejudices. Careful reconstructions of contemporary discourses on national styles and inquiries into the ‘stylisation’ of a dominant, successful ‘German style’ are necessary. One of the contemporary critics of a ‘German style’ of science was the physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924), who emigrated to the USA in 1891. Loeb corresponded regularly with the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Ernst Mach can be considered Loeb's intellectual father with whom he corresponded about strategic, philosophical, and epistemological questions. Using the Loeb–Mach correspondence, the aim of the paper is to reconstruct Loeb's conception of a ‘German style’ of science and its differences to an ‘American style’. Changes in his views are discussed as well as the roots of his views and some of their consequences. Finally, Loeb's ideas on national styles and his working profiles before and after his emigration are compared to historiographical analyses of ‘American’ or ‘German’ styles of science around 1900. (shrink)

Twenty-first century agoras, unlike their historical counterparts, are not comprised of villages populated by individuals who know each other and share the same past, environment, and culture. Contemporary agoras are diverse and global. Their dialogue is often conducted across geographical and cultural boundaries. Additionally, they often address challenges and issues that are far more complex than those of the early agoras. This article seeks to identify such challenges and summarize a variety of appropriate dialogue methodologies.

Human rights make a universal claim that has often been suspected of expressing western cultural imperialism. Yet even a mere perusal of the history of human rights in Europe and North America reveals that human rights cannot be characterized as the obvious crystallization of occidental culture as a whole. Instead they were first propounded during the modernity as a response to the normative crises occasioned by Christian religious division in a society of developing pluralism. Human rights formulated the basis for (...) a new social contract between free and equal holders of rights in opposition to religiously motivated civil wars and the accumulation of absolutist dominion.Since pluralism and multi-culturalism in a more closely knit world order has become an inescapable reality, the idea of human rights, understood as the recognition of plurality and differences on the basis of equal freedom, could be the foundation for international orientation. Human rights could provide the foundation for consensus, however, only if the limits of their normative claim are clear. As the ethos of freedom inherent to human rights is oriented toward political-legal standards, it is not intended to replace the plurality of any developed religious or cultural ethos. But as human rights secure political-legal equality of rights to express and develop differing ideas and cultural forms, they do affect internal individual recognition of religious and cultural societies, from which they demand openness toward reform and willingness to communicate. Menschenrechte machen einen universalen Anspruch geltend, der indes oft als Ausdruck eines westlichen Kulturimperialismus verdächtigt wird. Ein Blick auf die Geschichte der Menschenrechte in Europa und Nordamerika zeigt freilich, daß Menschenrechte gerade nicht als selbstverständlicher Ausfluß der abendländischen Kultur im ganzen angesehen werden können. Vielmehr sind sie erst in der Neuzeit aufgekommen, und zwar als Antwort auf die normativen Krisen in der im Gefolge der christlichen Glaubensspaltung pluralistisch werdenden Gesellschaft. Gegen religiös motivierte Bürgerkriege wie gegen die Anmaßung absolutistischer Herrschaft formulieren die Menschenrechte die Grundlage eines neuen Gesellschaftsvertrages zwischen freien und gleichen Rechtsgenossen.Da Pluralismus und Multikulturalismus in der immer stärker vernetzten Weltgesellschaft vielerorts unausweichliche Realität geworden sind, vermag die menschenrechtliche Leitidee, nämlich die Anerkennung von Pluralität und Differenz auf der Basis gleichberechtigter Freiheit, heute auch international zur Orientierung zu dienen. Menschenrechte können indes nur dann konsensstiftend wirken, wenn ihr normativer Anspruch auch in seinen Grenzen deutlich wird: Da sich das menschenrechtliche Freiheitsethos vornehmlich auf politisch-rechtliche Standards richtet, zielt es nicht darauf ab, die Pluralität der gewachsenen religiösen oder kulturellen Ethosformen zu ersetzen. Indem Menschenrechte die gleichberechtigte Äusserung und Entfaltung unterschiedlicher Überzeugungen und Kulturformen politisch-rechtlich sichern, wirken sie freilich auch auf die innere Selbstwahrnehmung religiöser und kultureller Gemeinschaften zurück, denen sie Reformoffenheit und Kommunikationsbereitschaft abverlangen. (shrink)

Die Menschenrechte bezeichnen eine Kategorie von Rechten, die dem Menschen schlichtweg aufgrund seines Menschseins zukommen und deshalb in jedem Menschen gleichermaßen respektiert werden müssen. Dies macht den normativen Universalismus aus, der die Menschenrechte im Unterschied zu partikularen Rechten auszeichnet. Sie gelten unabhängig von individuellen Vorleistungen, Funktionen, Dokumenten, Mitgliedschaften usw. und haben ihren Grund in der Würde des Menschen.