Assumption,Union and Sanctification: Some Clarifying Distinctions

In this article I engage with the notion that Christ ought to be understood to have a fallen human nature because Christ sanctifies human nature, and it is fallen humanity that needs sanctifying. In opposition to this line of thought, I argue that the Son of God assumed an unfallen nature, but with the powers of fallenness operative within it, and that this notion is consistent with a distinct account of sanctification. In support of these claims, I develop distinctions between a conjoining union and a transferring union, and between the Chalcedonian union at the incarnation and the extension of that union on the cross. At the assumption a conjoining union occurred, not a transferring union. Christ sanctified his own nature, prior to a transferring union.     

Charles Darwin: Continuity,Teleology and Ideology

Climate change has mutated from being a physical phenomenon to be studied to an idea to be contested. The sites of adjudication between competing truth claims have therefore moved from the secluded academy and scientific peer review to the vociferous agora and the extended peer community. This move is illustrated here using the case of the shrinking glaciers of Mt Kilimanjaro. Both the British engineer Guy Callendar, in 1944, and the American campaigner Al Gore, in 2006, claimed that the primary cause of this glacial recession was rising world temperature. Both were passionate believers in the reality of human-induced global warming, but they had very different resources at their disposal to advance these beliefs. While Callendar's claim was revealed only to the editor of the science journal Nature, Gore's claims were visible to millions through his film An Inconvenient Truth. While the force of Callendar's claim was weighed and adjudicated by one peer reviewer, the validity of Gore's claim was tested very publicly in the British courts. Both claims about the cause of Kilimanjaro's retreating glaciers were found wanting. The paper argues that this simple, but powerful, comparison between identical claims-making drawn from two different eras of science, yet with contrasting processes of truth-adjudication, illuminates the different ‘post-normal’ world of science climate change now inhabits. The case study is used to reflect on the role of the extended peer community in establishing and validating scientific knowledge about climate change: who participates, how trust is stabilised and whether science is thereby democratised.     

Physicalism, Teleology and the Miraculous Coincidence Problem

I focus on Fodor's model of the relationship between special sciences and basic physics, and on a criticism of this model, that it implies that the causal stability of, e.g., the mental in its production of behaviour is nothing short of a miraculous coincidence. David Papineau and Graham Macdonaldendorse this criticism. But it is far less clear than they assume that Fodor's picture indeed involves coincidences, which in any case their injection of a teleological supplement cannot explain. Papineau's and Macdonald's problem is subtly different from a similar one presented by Adrian Cussins. This is no more effective against Fodor's picture, but the kind of account of the relation between the physical and the psychological which could constitute a solution to Cussins' problem is one which, for independent reasons, a physicalist of Fodor's stripe ought to provide.     

亚里士多德的形而上学:本质主义、功能主义和自然目的论

亚里士多德的形而上学是一个长期引起人们争论和困惑的问题.本文从对<形而上学>T卷开始的一段话的分析入手,在澄清了人们的种种误解之后,表明了亚里士多德的形而上学的以一类特殊的实体亦即不动的动者为研究对象的根本特征.在此基础上,本文从亚里士多德的实体理论出发,通过分析这个理论的本质主义的、功能主义的、目的论的内涵,最终说明亚里士多德的形而上学体系是一个自然目的论的体系.     

权利优先、还是义务优先——对涉及人的生物医学研究中受试者权利与义务关系的理性思考

对“权利与义务”从“公正”方面进行了解读,论述了在涉及人的生物医学研究中,受试者权利与义务之间的复杂关系,提出“受试者权利优先”是平衡两者关系的基本原则;确立了“受试者权利优先”的具体策略：首先尊重受试者的权利（首要性）;当受试者的权利与受试者的义务出现一定矛盾时,应该把尊重受试者的权利放在首位（至上性）;在尊重受试者的权利中,化解两者矛盾。     

知情权 选择权 责任与义务

讨论患者的知情权、选择权与医生的责任义务很有现实意义。病人一旦就医,安全和早日康复是第一位的,当医生面对患者时,救死扶伤不惜一切地去挽救患者的生命是医生的天职,患者一旦推动生命,其他权力都是空话。     

Not All Partial Grounds Partly Ground: Some Useful Distinctions in the Theory of Grounding

The aim of this paper is to argue for some useful distinctions in the theory of grounding. I do so by first introducing the notion of grounding, discussing some of its features, and arguing that grounds must play some role in bringing about what they ground (sec.1). I then argue that there are various distinct roles a fact may play in bringing about another, and more particularly that we should distinguish between three such roles; enablers, partial grounds, and facts that partly ground (sec. 2). Finally, I present two theoretical advantages to incorporating these distinctions into our theory of grounding. Namely, that it reframes, and arguably dissolves, the contingentist-necessitarian debate (sec. 3), and that it helps to elegantly deal with the purported counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding and thus maintain the plausible elements of the assumption that grounding is a transitive relation (sec.4).     

Imperialism,Progress, Developmental Teleology,and Interdisciplinary Unification

In a previous article in this journal, we examined John Dupré's claim that ‘scientific imperialism’ can lead to ‘misguided’ science being considered acceptable. Here, we address criticisms raised by Ian J. Kidd and Uskali Mäki against that article. While both commentators take us to be offering our own account of scientific imperialism that goes beyond that developed by Dupré, and go on to criticise what they take to be our account, our actual ambitions were modest. We intended to ‘explicate the sense in which the term is used by Dupré’ and to ‘identify the normative content of his critique of scientific imperialism’. We made no claim to have developed our own account of scientific imperialism that went further than what was implicit in Dupré's work already. However, that said, the discussions presented by both Kidd and Mäki raise important general issues about how the idea of scientific imperialism should be understood and framed. Here, we offer our considered responses to Kidd's and Maki's discussions of scientific imperialism.     

The Tripartite Foundations of Temporal Psychological Distance: Metaphors,Ecology, and Teleology

What is psychological distance? Why do events sometimes seem “close” yet other times seem “ages away?” We propose a tripartite model of the foundations of psychological distance in which: (a) people use spatial distance as a metaphor for psychological distance; (b) the ecology of subjective experiences that coincide with changes in objective distance define, and hence, influence psychological distance; (c) psychological distance is shaped in the service of people's ultimate goals, or teleological considerations, of successfully navigating through time. This model implies that the subjective experiences that are typically associated with reductions in objective temporal distance should reduce temporal psychological distance–the subjective sense of how close or far away events are. We review evidence indicating that emotional arousal, attention, fluency, and motivational considerations all reduce psychological distance. This model also implies a temporal asymmetry in which people prioritize thinking about the future, which approaches in time, over thinking about the past, which recedes in time. Consequently, the future is psychologically closer than the past, people attend more to the future than to the past, and people feel more emotionally aroused about the future than about the past. These findings help advance understanding of psychological distance as a distinct psychological construct.     

Teleology and the intentions of supernatural agents

Teleological beliefs about the natural world often exist implicitly, and there is a positive relationship between teleological endorsement and belief in supernatural agents. In the current study, participants judged a series of scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations of biological organisms and natural non-living objects, under speeded or un-speeded instructions. After controlling for belief in the existence of supernatural agents, rates of implicit (speeded) and explicit (un-speeded) teleological endorsement were moderated by the belief that supernatural agents intentionally interact with the world. Amongst non-religious individuals, rates of implicit endorsement were significantly higher than explicit endorsement, whereas for highly religious individuals the difference was non-significant. This interaction was driven predominantly by explanations of natural non-living objects. These results are consistent with an intention-based theory of teleology, and help to reconcile the finding of a positive relationship between teleological endorsement and belief in supernatural agents, with the those of an enduring teleological bias.     

论“逻辑在先”的哲学意义

黑格尔曾经指出要进入并研究哲学"需要一种特殊的能力和技巧"[1];柏格森更为明确地讲"研究哲学,就在于扭转思想活动的习惯方向."[2]进而言之,这一扭转乃是进人哲学研究的"门槛",只有跨越了这一门槛,才有可能登堂入室.这一门槛就是:从时间在先转向逻辑在先.     

On the Priority of Agent-Based Argumentative Norms

This paper argues against the priority of pure, virtue-based accounts of argumentative norms [VA]. Such accounts are agent-based and committed to the priority thesis: good arguments and arguing well are explained in terms of some prior notion of the virtuous arguer arguing virtuously. Two problems with the priority thesis are identified. First, the definitional problem: virtuous arguers arguing virtuously are neither sufficient nor necessary for good arguments. Second, the priority problem: the goodness of arguments is not explained virtuistically. Instead, being excellences, virtues are instrumental in relation to other, non-aretaic goods—in this case, reason and rationality. Virtues neither constitute reasons nor explain their goodness. Two options remain for VA: either provide some account of reason and rationality in virtuistic terms, or accept them as given but non-aretaic goods. The latter option, though more viable, demands the concession that VA cannot provide the core norms of argumentation theory.     

论公共决策的优先性价值

公共决策关涉价值,且负荷优先性价值。在思想史的维度上,众多学者认同公平是公共决策的优先性价值。在学理层面上,公共决策的公共性和政府的服务性决定公平是公共决策的优先性价值。处于市场经济条件下的政府必须以公共决策的优先性价值为基础正确把握公平与效率的辩证关系。     

The Paradox of Deontology and Agent-Centered Restrictions

Philosophia - The paradox of deontology, as the name suggests, is generally thought to pose a problem for deontological theory, particularly for agent-centered restrictions. I argue that it is...