False Paradigm Research Articles

The Precedence of EU Law from the Perspective of Constitutional Pluralism

The position of EU law in the national legal order – Precedence of EU law – Relationship between legal orders – Foundation of precedence – Autonomous precedence v. precedence based on national constitutional law – The concept of an integrated or composed legal order as a false paradigm – The value of constitutional pluralism to explain the relationship between EU law and national law

Introduction to a Special Section of Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience

The articles in this special section offer a sample of the state of the art in an exploding new field. Noninvasive neuroimaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalograms (EEG), and functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), are increasingly being used to study development in infants, children, adolescents, and adults. Applying these tools to the study of social cognitive development, in particular, is a very new development. Consequently, in this commentary, we wish to step back and consider the new intersection of neuroscience and social cognitive development. What do these new fields have to offer each other, theoretically and pragmatically? What pitfalls can we expect to encounter along the way? Even in adults, a neuroscience of social cognition is a new invention. Traditional neuroscientific techniques were applied to the brains of nonhuman animals, to study how brains see, hear, feel, move, and remember. Uniquely human cognitive capacities, such as language and social cognition, could not be studied in nonhuman animals. When neuroimaging techniques were first applied to human adults, the key test of these technologies was replication, in humans, of functions known from nonhuman animals. Thus, early neuroimaging focused on the human homologues of known regions from other primates: early visual cortex, the motion perception region (MT), early sensory, and motor cortices. Soon, though, human neuroimaging led to fascinating novel discoveries. The human brain contains many cortical regions, previously unknown or little studied, which have apparently social functions. The fusiform face area (FFA) is involved in perceiving human faces (Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997). The extrastriate body area is involved in perceiving human bodies (Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001). The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is involved in perceiving and analyzing human actions (Pelphrey, Viola, & McCarthy, 2004). The right temporo–parietal junction (RTPJ) is involved in reasoning about people’s thoughts (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003). The medial precuneus and posterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortices are involved in other aspects of higher level social cognition (Amodio & Frith, 2006). With the exception of the pSTS (Perrett et al., 1985), these regions were unknown from the studies of nonhuman animals. The discovery of these regions provides an exciting challenge for neuroscientists, and a role for developmental psychology. For neuroscientists, the key questions are: How are high-level social functions implemented in neurons? How do brain regions with these functional roles arise, phylogenetically and ontogenetically? Ideas, experimental paradigms, and data from developmental psychology may help to pose and to address these questions. For example, neuroimaging studies of action representation in the pSTS have been modeled on studies of infants’ action perception (Vander Wyk, Hudac, Carter, Sobel, & Pelphrey, in press); and most early studies of the RTPJ’s role in thinking about thoughts used versions of the false belief paradigm originally developed for studying children (e.g., Fletcher et al., 1995; Gallagher et al., 2000). In the future, we expect that neuroscientists will continue to benefit greatly from the theoretical concepts and paradigms generated within developmental psychology. We express our deepest gratitude to the outstanding reviewers who generously gave of their time in order to help us select the articles for this special section. Kevin Pelphrey and Rebecca Saxe are each supported by awards from the John Merck Scholars Fund and grants from the Simons Foundation. Additionally, a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health supports Kevin Pelphrey. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rebecca Saxe, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, MIT 46-4019, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 or to Kevin Pelphrey, Child Study Center, Yale University, 230 South Frontage Rd., New Haven, CT 06520. Electronic mail may be sent to saxe@mit.edu or to kevin.pelphrey@yale.edu. Child Development, July/August 2009, Volume 80, Number 4, Pages 946–951

Renewing the Church for Mission: A Holistic Understanding of Renewal for Korean Protestant Churches

As Protestant churches in Korea navigate their own problems in the midst of stagnation and even decline, they are increasingly inquisitive about their own identity, understanding of renewal, and ways of evangelism. The purpose of this paper is mainly focused on how to renew Korean Protestant churches through a holistic paradigm of renewal that moves beyond the reigning false dualistic paradigm. First, I will discuss a holistic understanding of renewal for the Korean church, tracing two foundations: an ecological understanding of church, and a holistic understanding of conversion. Then, I will explore one successful model (Wesley) and one failing model (the Western church's cultural captivity) in the history of Christianity, asking why the reigning, falsely dualistic paradigm is so problematic and why a holistic paradigm for renewal is so essential to the churches in Korea. These will lead to my thesis: vitalizing energy for renewal comes from holding a holistic understanding of renewal. As a conclusive remark, I shall propose three renewal tasks for the future of Korean Protestant churches and insert a case study to exemplify these models in the context of Korea.

The Scientific Fallacy of the Human Biological Concept of Race

Key Words: Physical anthropology, forensic anthropology, evolution, Linnaeus, Darwin, Broca, Blumenbach, Carleton Coon, Cavalli-Sforza, F. Boas, Margaret Mead, Ashley Montagu, R. Lewontin, S. J. Gould, L. Lieberman, dismantling race, nazi-fascist racism. A Wrong Approach Modern science try to understand the phenomena of nature through the formulation of hypotheses and their subsequent empirical control by comparing predictions and observations. If a scientific hypothesis receive the empirical validation then it become part of the construction of a paradigm; otherwise, the hypothesis must be simply rejected if falsified by experimental results (Popper 1934; Kragh 1987). That was not the case of the construction of the anthropological dogma of human biological concept of race. Physical anthropology originated as an independent scientific discipline during the eighteenth century, and has been affected by an epistemological error from the very beginning. In fact, the existence of races was considered the basic principle of physical anthropology instead of just being a hypothesis amenable to empirical investigation, and therefore for about two centuries physical anthropologists refused to be led by the only criterion of truth that natural sciences recognize, namely empirical validation. However, all scholars who dedicated themselves to that futile classificatory exercise unintentionally contributed to demonstrate that they were involved in a false paradigm, because of the problematic aspects in explaining human biological variability using the taxonomic sub-specific category of race. This difficulty in identifying human races was proved by the high number of subdivisions suggested, which included two to sixty-three races, and differences in the traditional definition of race: Race as synonymous of sub-species, ethnic group, population, and so on (Darwin 1871; Count 1950; Biasutti 1967; Could 1981; Brace 1982). Why did so many physical anthropologists refuse to test the hypothesis of whether human biological variability could be neatly subdivided according to the taxonomic sub-specific categories of race? Why did so many physical anthropologists accept the racial paradigm? Three main constrains, two external and one internal to the scientific process, contributed to this serious error in scientific logic. First, the history of the cultural context from which physical anthropology originated. Second, the history of the social context in which physical anthropologists formulated the concept of race. Third, the broad process of construction of theories within Biological Sciences. The Cultural Context which Conditioned Physical Anthropologists The first reason emerged from a western culture idea that biological and ethnic diversity is very ancient. This concept developed in Egypt during the second millennium B.C., and represented a deep change in perspective. In fact, before then not only humanity but the whole world was considered as a unit. The Egyptians subdivided humankind into four groups, one of which was made up by themselves. They in fact called themselves Remet which simply means man. In their paintings of the fifteenth century B.C. they were portraid in red, while the Asiatics named Aamu in yellow, the populations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Nubians named Nehesyu, in black, and the Libyans, as well as some western populations named Tjemehu, with yellow hair and blue eyes (Bresciani et al. 1993; Gardiner 1947). Still in ancient times, the father of history Herodotus (490/480430/420 B.C.) gave a physical description to a great number of people in his Historie, and Pliny the Elder (23-79) in his Naturalis historic explained physical differences between Africans and Europeans as a direct consequence of climate. After Herodotus all long-distance travellers, up to the origin of physical anthropology, left descriptions of the peoples they met (Daumas 1957; Duchet 1971; Geymonat 1973). …

Unwanted thought: age differences in the correction of social judgements.

This study use a false information paradigm to study age differences in the correction of social judgments. Younger and older adults read 2 criminal reports, with true information printed in black and false information in red. Following the reports, all participants were asked to recommend prison terms among other ratings. Age differences in baseline measures were also assessed by corresponding control groups who read only true information. Compared with younger adults under full attention, older adults under full attention and younger adults under divided attention were reliably influenced by the nature of the false statements (either extenuating or exacerbating the severity of the crimes). When contrasted with their relevant control groups, older adults under full attention and younger adults under divided attention failed to correct their social judgments. This study lends support to a processing resource explanation for age differences in the correction process for social judgments.

The Destructive Nature of the TermRace: Growing Beyond a False Paradigm

Originally based on a system of folk taxonomies, the term race has been used to group people by physical appearance, often with disruptive and harmful social consequences. Given that many national and international scientific groups have diminished their use of the termracein the classification of people, it is time for mental health professionals to seriously discuss the role and assess the usefulness of the termrace.We recommend that the profession follow the lead of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1950/1978) in taking steps to question the use of the term, which UNESCO views as implying biological significance. In light of the lack of support to retain the termraceas a scientific concept, and given the development of a no race position by anthropologists and geneticists, it is time for mental health professionals to become more active in addressing the use of this term. Specifically, although counselors in training are taught to use the termraceto refer to cultural aspects of different groups of people, we believe the term itself is passé. In our opinion, the term, in varying degrees, contributes to the formation of false perceptions about various groups of people. These false perceptions are encountered by counselors when working with clients, professionals, and systems.

Aging, source, and decision criteria: when false fame errors do and do not occur.

Two experiments investigated the influence of decision criteria on source memory performance of older adults and younger adults. Experiment 1 used the false fame paradigm, which encourages people to use relatively loose decision criteria when making what are, in essence, source judgments. Consistent with previous research, older adults made more false fame errors than younger adults. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that the fame judgments were made with the traditional source task format that encourages relatively stringent decision criteria when making source judgments: Possible sources were listed, and participants categorized names in terms of their source. In contrast to Experiment 1, older adults reduced their false fame errors to the level of younger adults. Encouraging older adults to use relatively stringent decision criteria when making source discriminations can reduce age differences in source misattributions.