在知识系统与行动系统之间——哈贝马斯对法律与道德的分析

建立在交往理性基础之上的法律体系与公共领域交往产生的普遍主义道德具有同源性,即都产生于交往实践这一过程.同时法律体系的合法性核心依旧采自交往理性中的道德维度,其余维度在事实经验中都要经受道德维度的检验.如果说普遍主义的道德世界涵盖了所有自然人而超越时空,具有永恒性特征的话,法律体系则是具有独立性的权利主体为实现实践自决、自我组织而创建的行动规范.     

Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person

Research has shown that preschoolers prefer to learn from individuals who are a reliable source of information. The current study examined whether the past reliability of a person's emotional signals influences infants’ willingness to imitate that person. An emotional referencing task was first administered to infants in order to demonstrate the experimenter's credibility or lack thereof. Next, infants in both conditions watched as the same experimenter turned on a touch light using her forehead. Infants were then given the opportunity to reproduce this novel action. As expected, infants in the unreliable condition developed the expectation that the person's emotional cues were misleading. Thus, these infants were subsequently more likely to use their hands than their foreheads when attempting to turn on the light. In contrast, infants in the reliable group were more likely to imitate the experimenter's action using their foreheads. These results suggest that the reliability of the model influences infants’ imitation.     

Memory Processing of a Serial List By Young Infants

Serial list learning is thought to be beyond the capabilities of infants before the end of their 1st year. In separate experiments with 3- and 6-month-olds, we studied infants' memory for a serial list using a modified serial probe recognition procedure that was originally developed for monkeys and a precuing procedure that was previously used with human adults. Infants were trained with a three-item list. One day later, they were precued with one list member and tested for recognition of another. When the precue specified valid order information, infants of both ages recognized the test item; when the precue specified invalid order information, infants of neither age did. These findings reveal that even very young infants can learn and remember the order of items on a serial list.     

Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants’ looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo     

Coarsening a Knowledge Structure

This paper describes an assessment procedure which does not deal explicitly with the whole knowledge structure, but rather operates on a faithful summary of the structure. The summary is achieved through the notion of coarsening of a structure, where the knowledge states are grouped into equivalence classes. We first define a stochastic assessment procedure running on the coarsening. Then we specify a set of possible properties for the equivalence relation. In particular, we define a notion of convexity for a knowledge structure. The results are justified by a simulation study.     

Infants remember the order of words in a spoken sentence

The ability to remember sequential order information is an important component in the learning and mastery of many complex cognitive skills. Notably, it is critical for learning language. This study investigated whether infants are capable of remembering the order of words in an English sentence and, especially, whether the structure afforded by natural sentential prosody enhances their ability to do so. This study compares 2-montholds' abilities to detect changes in word order, after a 2-min delay, for sequences spoken as a well-formed sentence versus as two unrelated, but well-formed, sentential fragments. The results indicate that infants exposed to the single sentences were able to detect changes in word order. By comparison, infants exposed to the sentential fragments showed no tendency to detect the same word order changes. Thus, even at two months of age, infants are able to remember the order of spoken words when they are embedded within the coherent prosodic structure of a single well-formed sentence.     

For a Humanism Amid Hypermodernity: From a Society of Knowledge to a Critical Knowledge of Society

The reflection on science seems to be linked today with the concept of hypermodernity which refers to a society of excesses without any global alternative model. In this article, my aim is to show how the modernisation of our societies was connected with scientific development, and what place science may be expected to occupy in hypermodern societies—societies built around the notion of risk. After presenting the concept of hypermodernity, I propose an analysis of the inherent risks involved by the development of technology in our societies, and what limits may be desirable in order to prevent an excessive or partial valorisation of a “society of knowledge,” a notion itself not without its problems. Finally, I remind of the possible contribution humanities and social sciences can make to maintain balance in what is today called a knowledge economy.     

Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task

In 2 experiments the authors demonstrated that adaptive locomotion can involve means-ends problem solving. Sixteen-month-old toddlers crossed bridges of varying widths in the presence or absence of a handrail. Babies attempted wider bridges more often than narrow ones, and attempts on narrow bridges depended on handrail presence. Toddlers had longer latencies, examined the bridge and handrail more closely, and modified their gait when bridges were narrow and/or the handrail was unavailable.Infants who explored the bridge and handrail before stepping onto the bridge and devised alternative bridge-crossing strategies were more likely to cross successfully. Results challenge traditional conceptualizations of tools: Babies used the handrail as a means for augmenting balance and for carrying out an otherwise impossible goal-directed task.     

诺贝尔奖获得者医学创新的原动力探析

诺贝尔奖获得者医学创新的原动力,几乎都是他们对自然现象的好奇心、求知欲、兴趣和责任感等非功利化的因素.这些科学家对科学的好奇心、求知欲和兴趣,虽在产生时间上先后不一,但都是他们心理层面的科学创新原动力.这些科学家在医学创新行为中,无不表现出高于个人责任感的社会责任感、无处不在的集体责任感和作为最高层次的人类责任感,这些责任感是他们精神层面的科学创新原动力.     

Moral Knowledge Without Knowledge of Moral Knowledge

The Journal of Ethics - Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of...     

Experimental Evidence From Newborn Chicks Enriches Our Knowledge on Human Spatial–Numerical Associations

Núñez and Fias raised concerns on whether our results demonstrate a linear number‐space mapping. Patro and Nuerk urge caution on the use of animal models to understand the origin (cultural vs. biological) of the orientation of spatial–numerical association. Here, we discuss why both objections are unfounded.     

Testimony as a Social Foundation of Knowledge

Testimony is the mainstay of human communication and essential for the spread of knowledge. But testimony may also spread error. Under what conditions does it yield knowledge in the person addressed? Must the recipient trust the attester? And does the attester have to know what is affirmed? A related question is what is required for the recipient to be justified in believing testimony. Is testimony‐based justification acquired in the same way as testimony‐based knowledge? This paper addresses these and other questions. It offers a theory of the role of testimony in producing knowledge and justification, a sketch of a conception of knowledge that supports this theory, a brief account of how trust of others can be squared with critical habits of mind, and an outline of some important standards for intellectual responsibility in giving and receiving testimony.     

Infants use social context to bind actions into a collaborative sequence

Eye tracking was used to show that 18‐month‐old infants are sensitive to social context as a sign that others’ actions are bound together as a collaborative sequence based on a joint goal. Infants observed five identical demonstrations in which Actor 1 moved a block to one location and Actor 2 moved the same block to a new location, creating a sequence of actions that could be considered either individual actions or collaboration. In the test phase, Actor 1 was alone and sitting so that she could reach both locations. The question was whether she would place a new block in the location she had previously (individual goal) or in the location that could be considered the goal of collaboration (joint goal). Importantly, in the Social condition, the actors were socially engaged with each other before and during the demonstration, while in the Non‐Social condition, they were not. Results revealed that infants in the Social condition spontaneously anticipated Actor 1 placing her block in the joint goal location more often than those in the Non‐Social condition. Thus, the social context seems to allow infants to bind actions into a collaborative sequence and anticipate joint rather than individual goals, giving insight into how actions are perceived using top‐down processing early in life.     

媒体与婴儿的认知发展

随着电视、网络、DVD视频等媒体设备的普及,媒体对婴儿发展的影响越来越受到父母和研究者的关注。电视等媒体与婴儿注意、语言和学习的相关研究是婴儿媒体研究中非常重要的内容。婴儿期对电视的注意随着年龄的增长而增长;婴儿的语言发展依赖于他们收看的电视节目类型及自身特征;当将视频学习和现实中等价学习进行比较时,非常年幼的儿童从视频中学习得更少。媒体对婴儿发展产生的影响是积极还是消极,缺少一个权威性的答案。鉴于这一点,本文从关注媒体的内容和形式、新的研究视角、以及国内研究现状等方面提出未来研究的趋势。     

知道一个意义理论?

哲学家和语言学家普遍认为,语言能力的获得要求说话者具有语言知识。按乔姆斯基及其追随者的观点,此类知识是一套有先天内容的句法规则系统;而达米特等哲学家则认为,说话者知道戴维森式的意义理论,更准确地说,说话者对戴维森式的意义理论公理具有隐知识。此论文首先简要阐述达米特的基本思路;然后我会论证,心理化戴维森进路的核心论点存在几个方面的困难。     

Surprise! Infants consider possible bases of generalization for a single input example

Infants have been shown to generalize from a small number of input examples. However, existing studies allow two possible means of generalization. One is via a process of noting similarities shared by several examples. Alternatively, generalization may reflect an implicit desire to explain the input. The latter view suggests that generalization might occur when even a single input example is surprising, given the learner's current model of the domain. To test the possibility that infants are able to generalize based on a single example, we familiarized 9‐month‐olds with a single three‐syllable input example that contained either one surprising feature (syllable repetition, Experiment 1) or two features (repetition and a rare syllable, Experiment 2). In both experiments, infants generalized only to new strings that maintained all of the surprising features from familiarization. This research suggests that surprise can promote very rapid generalization.