Brown

In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein discusses a number of puzzling propositions about brown, e.g. that it cannot be pure and that there cannot be a brown light. He does not actually answer the questions he asks, and the status of his projected ‘logic of colour concepts’ remains unclear. I offer a real definition of brown from which the puzzle propositions follow logically. It is based on two experiments from Helmholtz. Brown is shown to be logically complex in the sense that the concept of brown can be ‘unpacked’ or resolved into simpler concepts. If my solutions to Wittgenstein's puzzles are the right ones, then science does bear upon the ‘logic of colour concepts’, and the contrast between logic and science which Wittgenstein sets up is a false one. At best it will appear as the contrast between the demands of logic and the demands of a particular kind of scientific theory and a particular mode of scientific theorizing. The solutions to the puzzles about brown are distinguished from psychological explanations, and the paper ends by suggesting what it was in his own doctrine that prevented Wittgenstein from answering the questions he had set himself.     

人体棕色脂肪的临床意义

饮食增加和运动减少使肥胖及其相关代谢疾病患病率逐年升高,尤其是许多与肥胖相关的疾病,如2型糖尿病、高血脂、心脑血管疾病等已成为威胁健康的重要因素,且目前缺乏有效、安全的防治策略。研究证实人体内存在棕色脂肪／米色脂肪,参与机体的物质代谢,在维持能量平衡方面有重要作用,因此成为增加能量消耗方面颇具吸引力的一个研究靶点。本文将对棕色脂肪及其对人体的影响做一综述,并讨论其作为治疗肥胖及相关代谢性疾病新靶点的可行性。     

The Ecclesial Hermeneutic of Raymond E. Brown

Against the background of some positions taken up in a recent document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the article studies Raymond Brown's attempt to combine mainstream historical-critical exegesis of the Bible with a Roman Catholic theological pre-understanding. Particular reference is made to his handling of issues connected with the virginal conception of Jesus. Some of his religious presuppositions such as those concerning the relation between faith and reason, and the development of doctrine, are presented. Biblical criticism in Brown's understanding is an essentially historical discipline which has as its principal object the literal sense of the text, that is, what the text meant when it was written. His religious presuppositions make the practice of the discipline ineliminable in an integral hermeneutic. From an analysis of his treatment of the virginal conception, it is argued that Catholic pre-understanding and historical criticism, when combined, inevitably result in a two-stage hermeneutic. In a first stage appeal is made to presuppostions common to all practitioners of historical criticism. In a second stage religious presuppostions come into play. The distinction between these two stages is seen as more fundamental than Brown's better known distinction between the literal and more-than-literal senses of the text. It is argued that the relation between the two stages is to be understood in chalcedonian terms as exemplifying the dialectic of faith and reason: they must be distinguished, but cannot be separated. Brown's grasp of an incarnational economy of salvation is presented in terms of David H. Kelsy's concept of a discrimen, and emerges as fundamental for an ecclesial hermeneutic of the Bible. Questions about the place of the historical-critical method, the promise of alternative approaches and the role of hermeneutical theory can only be adequately addressed in terms of it.     

Commentary on Paper by Lawrence J. Brown

Brown's historical overview of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis traces key steps in the evolving and diverse practice of working in the psychoanalytic situation while regarding it as a two-person field. The Barangers' “The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field” is central to his narrative. I develop my understanding of the originality of their contribution in theorizing a situational unconscious, and of their continuing relevance for thinking about analytic listening and intersubjective collaboration. Brown presents a countertransference dream of his own along with the dream of a patient as an example of the Barangers' concept of the “shared unconscious fantasy” of the analytic couple. A detailed alternative reading of Brown's clinical vignette reveals an absence of fit with the Barangers' views on collaboration in the analytic situation. Some uses of Bion's “dreaming” and “becoming” are implicitly questioned as they risk encouraging the idealization of special states over process.     

Brown on Mackie: Echoes of the Lottery Paradox

In “The possibility of morality,” Phil Brown considers whether moral error theory is best understood as a necessary or contingent thesis. Among other things, Brown contends that the argument from relativity, offered by John Mackie—error theory’s progenitor—supports a stronger modal reading of error theory. His argument is as follows: Mackie’s is an abductive argument that error theory is the best explanation for divergence in moral practices. Since error theory will likewise be the best explanation for similar divergences in possible worlds similar to our own, we may conclude that error theory is true at all such worlds, just as it is in the actual world. I contend that Brown’s argument must fail, as abductive arguments cannot support the modal conclusions he suggests. I then consider why this is the case, concluding that Brown has stumbled upon new and interesting evidence that agglomerating one’s beliefs can be epistemically problematic—an issue associated most famously with Henry Kyburg’s lottery paradox.     

Thomas Brown on the philosophy and psychology of perception

Thomas Brown's theory of perception is set in its philosophical context, and the influence of George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid on Brown is discussed. Destutt de Tracy, who appears to have been an unacknowledged source for Brown's ideas, is also discussed. Brown's theory of perception is elaborated, and he is categorized both as a sense-datum theorist and as a phenomenalist.     

Colour language and colour cognition: Brown and Lenneberg revisited

We report two experiments that revisit the question raised by Brown and Lenneberg (1954) concerning the degree to which colours that are easier to name are also easier to communicate and to remember. Much subsequent research has suggested that such effects depend on context and task demands. In the present experiments communication accuracy and recognition memory were compared, varying the distractor array for items that are either best examples (focal) of the eight basic chromatic categories named in English, or peripheral (nonfocal) examples of them. Focal targets were communicated faster, more accurately, and with fewer words than nonfocal targets, irrespective of array. However, they were not recognized more accurately under all conditions. With a randomized array of distractors, more akin to real scenes outside the lab, there was no recognition advantage for those colours that are easiest to code and communicate. We conclude that focal colours are not inherently more memorable.