Nietzsche and decadence: The revaluation of morality

The creation of moralities is necessary for the enhancement of the species, yet, the assigning of values is a sign of decadence. According to Nietzsche, this is the problem of decadence with which human beings (in particular philosophers) must contend: they must place a value on life, but placing a value on life (even on one's individual life) is problematic because it involves fracturing the whole of life into pieces. The primary objective in this paper is to address Nietzsche's own battle with the problem of decadence as it applies to individuals. I will argue that in this battle, Nietzsche carried out a revaluation of decadence and transformed himself into a strong decadent. In calling himself a strong decadent, Nietzsche not only admitted to his own decadence, but also provided himself as an example for how other strong types might contend with the problem of decadence.     

易、庄哲学中“通”的观念及其当代启示

"通"是中国传统哲学与文化中的重要语词之一,也是重要的思想与哲学的概念和观念之一。《周易》哲学中的"穷变通久"观念,庄子哲学中的"道通为一"的观念,都是中国古代哲学的对"通"所作出的智慧性的哲学思考。就学术史而言,章学诚《释通》一文则比较全面地阐释了中国传统文化中"通"的观念,以及"通"与"专"的辩证关系。本文则在传统哲学思想的基础之上,提出了"通性"的哲学思考,希望能以"通"为核心观念建立当代中国哲学的"通"论。     

History and theory in "applied ethics"

Robert Baker and Laurence McCullough argue that the "applied ethics model" is deficient and in need of a replacement model. However, they supply no clear meaning to "applied ethics" and miss most of what is important in the literature on methodology that treats this question. The Baker-McCullough account of medical and applied ethics is a straw man that has had no influence in these fields or in philosophical ethics. The authors are also on shaky historical grounds in dealing with two problems: (1) the historical source of the notion of "practical ethics" and (2) the historical source of and the assimilation of the term "autonomy" into applied philosophy and professional ethics. They mistakenly hold (1) that the expression "practical ethics" was first used in a publication by Thomas Percival and (2) that Kant is the primary historical source of the notion of autonomy as that notion is used in contemporary applied ethics.     

Selection and consolidation of objects and actions

Response selection bottleneck models attribute performance costs under dual-task conditions to the human inability to select more than one response at a time. Consistent with this claim Pashler (1991) found that carrying out a speeded manual choice reaction time (RT) task does not impair the unspeeded report of a cued visual target from a masked display. In contrast, Jolicoeur and DellAcqua (1999, Experiment 2) observed pronounced interference between a speeded manual choice RT task and the unspeeded report of a small number of visually presented letters, a finding they attributed to resource sharing between response selection and stimulus consolidation. We demonstrate that comparable costs are obtained with the same task combination used by Pashler (1991) if only task order is reversed—a manipulation that is likely to increase the necessity of consolidating the target stimulus into working memory. We also found that these costs are not diminished if the location of the target to be reported is cued in advance (reducing demands on spatial focusing) and that they do not vary with the number of target features to be reported. These findings support a consolidation account of costs in dual-task performance.     

The use of interrogative forms in the verbal interaction of three mothers and their children

A classification of interrogatives according to their purposes was devised and applied to four, 100-utterance samples by three mothers to their children when their children had a mean utterance length of (1) two morphemes and (2) four morphemes. The distribution of mothers' utterances into interrogative and noninterrogative types and into the classification of interrogatives by purpose was obtained. Interrogatives comprise from 15 to 33% of mothers' utterances and interrogatives whose purpose is not to ask questions but rather to make suggestions, negative evaluations of the child's behavior, or to make reports occur with all mothers. A study of these mothers' children's interrogatives in the three-morpheme period revealed that at this early period in language development children already use the interrogative form analogously to their mothers for making suggestions and reports. An analysis of the development of this capacity based on the concept of the speech act is given which leads to the conclusion that it is the embeddedness of verbalizations in a particular personal relations, action context which fosters this development.     

The magnitude of binocular disparity modulates search time for targets defined by a conjunction of depth and colour

Nakayama and Silverman (1986) proposed that, when searching for a target defined by a conjunction of color and stereoscopic depth, observers partition 3D space into separate depth planes and then rapidly search each such plane in turn, thereby turning a conjunctive search into a "feature" search. In their study, they found, consistent with their hypothesis, shallow search slopes when searching depth planes separated by large binocular disparities. Here, the authors investigated whether the search slope depends upon the extent of the stereoscopically induced separation between the planes to be searched (i.e., upon the magnitude of the binocular disparity. The obtained slope shows that (1) a rapid search only occurs with disparities greater than 6 min of arc, a value that vastly exceeds the stereo threshold, and that (2) the steepness of this slope increases in a major way at lower disparities. The ability to implement the search mode envisaged by Nakayama and Silverman is thus clearly limited to large disparities; less efficient search strategies are mandated by lower disparity values, as under such conditions items from one depth plane may be more likely to "intrude" upon the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

Seeing through eyes,mirrors, shadows and pictures

I argue that we can see in a great many cases that run counter to common sense. We can literally see through mirrors, in just the same way that we (literally) see through our eyes. We can, likewise, literally see through photographs, shadows, and (some) paintings. Rather than starting with an analysis of seeing, I present a series of evolving thought experiments, arguing that in each case there is no relevant difference between it and the previous case regarding whether we see. In a sense, my arguments can be thought of as akin to the Extended Mind Hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998). But instead of arguing that our minds can extend into the world, I argue that our sensory organs can extend into the world. Among the things that emerge from this discussion are (1) that—contrary to Currie (1995) and Carroll (1996)—seeing an object O doesn’t require being able to locate O with respect to yourself, (2) that—contrary to Sorensen (2008)—we can see objects by seeing their shadows, and (3) that—contrary to Walton (1984)—it doesn’t matter whether the causal relation between O and yourself is mediated by beliefs.     

Frames and images: sequential effects in mental rotation

Recent studies have shown that response time in mental rotation increases with the angular deviation between the current and preceding stimuli, suggesting a frame rotation process in which the intrinsic frame of the previous stimulus is brought into congruence with the coordinates of the current stimulus. In contrast, we show that this process involves image rotation in which the present stimulus is brought into alignment with the orientation of the previous stimulus. Such "backward alignment" succeeds only for shape-preserving sequences (i.e., identical stimuli at different orientations). Four experiments show that the backward alignment process (a) competes with the uprighting process typically found in mental rotation, and the response is determined by the process requiring the shortest rotational path; (b) is related to the tendency to repeat the previous response; (c) is insensitive to the position of the vertical; (d) is indifferent to the representation of the stimulus in long term memory; and (e) is different from the process underlying preparation for a stimulus in a specified orientation.     

Sculpting Present and Future: A Systemic Intervention Model Applied to Psychosomatic Families

We present a therapeutic intervention model for use with psychosomatic families. This method, the result of our extensive research on various psychosomatic disorders, uses family sculptures of the "present" and "future": each family member is requested to represent the family as it now "is," and how it "will be" in the future. We discuss the theoretical reasons for our choice of this method: (a) the opportunity to use a therapeutic language that is similar to the nonverbal language of the psychosomatic symptom, and (b) the usefulness of reinserting temporal dimensions into family systems that seem to have lost their evolutionary potential and to be in a sort of "time lock." Two clinical cases are discussed (a child with chronic asthma and an anorexic adolescent); the use of sculptures in both cases revealed the underlying problems and made positive therapeutic interventions possible. Finally, we point out how the use of sculpture as a therapeutic technique enables therapists to deal with multiple systemic levels.     

Noah Porter's problem and the origins of American psychology

The twin problems facing nineteenth-century American "mental and moral philosophy" of the nature of psychological language and the constraints that religious beliefs placed on possibilities of innovation in a "scientific Psychology" are both highly visible in the work of Noah Porter, who was unable to resolve them. They are also more covertly identifiable in the works of James McCosh and others in this school. It is suggested that the transition to the "New Psychology" of the 1880s and 1890s needs to be rethought in light of this in three respects: (a) ironically, it entailed repressing insights into the psychological language problem, (b) the legacy of the religious factor profoundly affected U.S. Psychology and played a less unambiguously negative role in its fortunes than customarily portrayed, and (c) the transition was itself a more complex and protracted process than is portrayed in traditional "revolutionary" accounts.     

Visual search, visual streams, and visual architectures.

Most psychological, physiological, and computational models of early vision suggest that retinal information is divided into a parallel set of feature modules. The dominant theories of visual search assume that these modules form a "blackboard" architecture: a set of independent representations that communicate only through a central processor. A review of research shows that blackboard-based theories, such as feature-integration theory, cannot easily explain the existing data. The experimental evidence is more consistent with a "network" architecture, which stresses that: (1) feature modules are directly connected to one another, (2) features and their locations are represented together, (3) feature detection and integration are not distinct processing stages, and (4) no executive control process, such as focal attention, is needed to integrate features. Attention is not a spotlight that synthesizes objects from raw features. Instead, it is better to conceptualize attention as an aperture which masks irrelevant visual information.     

The Separation of Action and Perception and the Issue of Affordances

Michaels's (2000) reassessment of the relation between action and perception is endorsed. In alignment with Milner and Goodale (1995), she proposed a separation between action (i.e., control of movement) and perception (i.e., the explicit knowledge of environmental properties, including animal-referential ones), the separation being based on the reliance on different optical variables. However, how should the concept of affordances be incorporated into this scheme? We present data showing that affordances, both when perceived and acted on, are not susceptible to optical illusions. Because action and perception are distinguished on the basis of information used, but are also proposed to interact, it is hypothesized that, dependent on the task goal, "information for action" may be used in perception, and "information for perception" may be used in action. Participants may become more attuned to information for action when perception serves to acquire explicit knowledge about what the environment affords for action.     

Ideal Epistemic Situations and the Accessibility of Realist Truth

There is a widespread opinion that the realist idea that whether a proposition is true or false typically depends on how things are independently of ourselves is bound to turn truth, in Davidson's words, into something to which humans can never legitimately aspire. This opinion accounts for the ongoing popularity of epistemic theories of truth, that is, of those theories that explain what it is for a proposition (or statement, or sentence, or what have you) to be true or false in terms of some epistemic notion, such as provability, justifiability, verifiability, rational acceptability, warranted assertibility, and so forth, in some suitably characterized epistemic situation. My aim in this paper is to show that the widespread opinion is erroneous and that the (legitimate) epistemological preoccupation with the accessibility of truth does not warrant the rejection of the realist intuition that truth is, at least for certain types of propositions, radically nonepistemic.     

Body-part metaphors: a cross-cultural survey of the perception of translatability among Americans and Japanese

What kinds of linguistic resources do people utilize when they try to translate metaphors into a foreign language? This investigation of the perception of translatability of body-part metaphors examined the effects of the following factors: the similarity between the human body part and the metaphorical expression (e.g., "eye" in "electric eye") in appearance and function; the frequency of the use of the metaphor in the native language; and the perceived distance between the first language and the target language. The results of a survey of American (n = 151) and Japanese (n = 116) university students showed that both Similarity in Appearance and Similarity in Function correlated positively with Translatability, while the effect of the former was stronger than the latter. Frequency correlated positively with Translatability for the Americans, although the correlation was weaker when the target language is "distant" (Japanese or Chinese) than when the target language is "close" (Spanish). Among the Japanese, Frequency did not correlate with translatability regardless of the target language.     

The singularity of being: Lacan and the immortal within

Drawing on the work of Eric Santner, Slavoj ?i?ek, and Alenka Zupan?i?, this paper constructs a theory of subjective singularity from a Lacanian perspective. It argues that, unlike the "subject" (who comes into existence as a result of symbolic prohibition), or the "person" (who is aligned with the narcissistic conceits of the imaginary), the singular self emerges in response to a galvanizing directive arising from the real. This directive summons the individual to a "character" beyond his or her social and intersubjective investments. Consequently, singularity expresses the individual's nonnegotiable distinctiveness, eccentricity, or idiosyncrasy at the same time as it prevents both symbolic and imaginary closure. It opens to layers of rebelliousness that indicate that there are components of human life that exceed the realm of normative sociality. Indeed, insofar as singularity articulates something about the "undead" pulse of jouissance, it connects the individual to a paradoxical kind of immortality. This does not mean that the individual will not die, but rather that he or she is capable of "transcendent" experiences, such as heightened states of creativity, that (always momentarily) reach "outside" the parameters of mortal life. Such experiences allow the individual to feel "real" in ways that fend off symbolic abduction and psychic death.     

Norms of assertion and communication in social networks

Epistemologists can be divided into two camps: those who think that nothing short of certainty or (subjective) probability 1 can warrant assertion and those who disagree with this claim. This paper addressed this issue by inquiring into the problem of setting the probability threshold required for assertion in such a way that that the social epistemic good is maximized, where the latter is taken to be the veritistic value in the sense of Goldman (Knowledge in a social world, 1999). We provide a Bayesian model of a test case involving a community of inquirers in a social network engaged in group deliberation regarding the truth or falsity of a proposition $p.$ p . Results obtained by means of computer simulation indicate that the certainty rule is optimal in the limit of inquiry and communication but that a lower threshold is preferable in less idealized cases.     

Aging, body image, and body shape

Participants were 25 older men (M age = 72 years, SD = 10 years) and 27 older women (M age = 71 years, SD = 8 years) who examined multiple line-drawing figures of babies, children, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. Participants picked a number on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (very thin) to 9 (very obese) in response to questions including "Which is the most attractive?" and "Which figure would you most like to look like?" They also completed questionnaires about their body image and body shape. In response to the age-specific line drawings (e.g., those depicting older men and older women), older women endorsed thinner figures (e.g., picked smaller numbers) than did men. Likewise, older women reported thinking more about their body shape and appearance than did men and perceived their body image as "a little too big" in comparison with the older men who perceived their body image as "just the right size." However, a breakdown of normal and overweight women in this sample revealed that for some overweight elderly women, obesity could become a satisfactory way of life. Much as with college-aged women, the endorsement of a thinner body image by many of the older adult female participants appeared to persist into late adulthood and suggests that research into body image issues with older adults is relevant and necessary.     

The formalin test and the opioid nature of stress-induced analgesia

Exposure to electric shock produces an analgesic reaction (SIA) that is reversed by opiate antagonists ("opioid" SIA) under some conditions but not under other conditions ("nonopioid" SIA). A number of studies using tail-flick to radiant heat as the measure of pain sensitivity have found that a small number of shocks lead to nonopioid SIA, while a large number of shocks produce opioid SIA. In contrast, a small number of shocks have been reported to produce opioid SIA when the Formalin test was used to measure pain reactivity. However, the Formalin test involves administering a chronic pain stimulus (injection of Formalin into the paw) for an extended period before the shocks. Here it is reported that this "preexperimental" stress is sufficient to convert the SIA after a small number of shocks measured by tail-flick to the opioid form.     

Favoritism,Bias, and Error in Performance Ratings of Scientists and Engineers: The Effects of Power,Status, and Numbers

In this paper we argue that the sociostructural position of groups must be taken into consideration along with motivational and cognitive processes to explain evaluations received and made by women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. With this framework, we analyze performance ratings for a sample of 2,445 scientists and engineers from 24 U.S. companies and find that (a) there is more evidence of in-group favoritism than of out-group derogation; (b) high status, dominant, and majority group members enjoy favoritism expressed as a global prototype of them as competent; and (c) subordinate, minority group members overshoot in opposite ways toward other groups depending on their status and the status level of the target group. We find these effects even after controlling for self-reported productivity and for various errors inherent in the evaluation process.     

Ambiguous novel compounds and models of morphological parsing.

This paper reports on two experiments that investigated the activation of morphemes in English novel compounds. All experiments employed stimuli that we have called "ambiguous novel compounds." These words (e.g., clamprod) have two interpretable parses (e.g., clam + prod or clamp + rod) and thus offer an opportunity to investigate which parses are preferred, whether both possible parses are computed, and whether parsing procedures "divide" words into their morphological constituents or "extract" constituent representations. The results suggest that morphological parsing does not simply divide a word into its constituents, but rather generates multiple representations that are subsequently evaluated.