Collins’s incorrect depiction of Dreyfus’s critique of artificial intelligence

Harry Collins interprets Hubert Dreyfus’s philosophy of embodiment as a criticism of all possible forms of artificial intelligence. I argue that this characterization is inaccurate and predicated upon a misunderstanding of the relevance of phenomenology for empirical scientific research.

中文新异组合概念的解释及影响因素

通过分析600名中国大学生对32个概念组成的160个新异组合概念的解释,考察了中文名词-名词组合概念的解释策略及影响因素。结果表明：⑴关系解释和属性解释是两种主要的解释策略;⑵第一个子概念具有显著属性的组合概念得到更多的属性解释;⑶子概念之间相似性的高低不影响属性解释出现的比率,但影响关系解释出现的比率;⑷生物组合概念比人造物组合概念得到更多的属性解释。其中的新发现既不支持关系竞争理论,也不支持双重加工理论,引出了有待研究的新问题。     

论海德格尔对康德实践哲学的解读

海德格尔对康德实践哲学的解读是他阐释康德哲学的重要组成部分。本文围绕着道德情感、实践理性、实践自由等问题分析了海德格尔在这一方面的解读内容,并且指出海德格尔的解读是定向于存在论的,属于基础存在论筹划,人的存在问题是关注的核心。他力图发掘康德思想中的存在论-生存论的内涵,这反而丧失了原初的伦理学意义。     

Elephants painting? Selfness and the emergence of self states as illustrated in conceptual art

Abstract :  The traditional view of the self is that of a singular entity whose ground is an inherent function of the mind. The more recent conception of the self is moving toward the social constructionist concept that its ground is the discourses of the particular culture into which one is born. These two divergent views have created an irresolvable binary of inner/outer that limits their explanatory power. To resolve this dilemma I suggest that the abstract noun 'selfness', indicating a  general  state, should replace the representational noun 'self', that indicates a  specific  state. I will propose that 'selfness' is indeed the 'ground' from which our unique self states emerge. I will illustrate this with examples from conceptual art and will discuss its relevance to analytic theory and treatment.     

Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality.     

A heuristic method for the comparison of related structures

By extending a technique for testing the difference between two dependent correlations developed by Wolfe, a strategy is proposed in a more general matrix context for evaluating a variety of data analysis schemes that are supposed to clarify the structure underlying a set of proximity measures. In the applications considered, a data analysis scheme is assumed to reconstruct in matrix form the given data set (represented as a proximity matrix) based on some specific model or procedure. Thus, an evaluation of the adequacy of reconstruction can be developed by comparing matrices, one containing the original proximities and the second containing the reconstructed values. Possible applications in multidimensional scaling, clustering, and related contexts are emphasized using four broad categories: (a) Given two different reconstructions based on a single data set, does either represent the data significantly better than the other? (b) Given two reconstructions based on a single data set using two different procedures (or possibly, two distinct data sets and a common method), is either reconstruction significantly closer to a particular theoretical structure that is assumed to underlie the data (where the latter is also represented in matrix form)? (c) Given two theoretical structures and one reconstruction based on a single data set, does either represent the reconstruction better than the other? (d) Given a single reconstruction based on one data set, is the information present in the data accounted for satisfactorily by the reconstruction? In all cases, these tasks can be approached by a nonparametric procedure that assesses the similarity in pattern between two appropriately defined matrices. The latter are obtained from the original data, the reconstructions, and/or the theoretical structures. Finally, two numerical examples are given to illustrate the more general discussion.     

REALISM AND OPENNESS IN SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Abstract. Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field-theories of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis-temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust.     

先天聋人的语音、正字法意识和概念知识结构

先天聋人对书面词语基本没有语音意识。他们主要采用视知觉策略识别书面词语,其词语词法技能发展滞后。由于缺乏语音经验,他们大脑皮层的发育受到严重影响,概念知识结构也呈现不对称性。尽早实施手语教育和正字法教育,不仅有助于提高聋儿童的手语语音意识和书面词语识别技能,也能促进他们的认知能力正常发展     

Philosophy in Mediis Rebus

Philosophy should begin in the middle of things. I distinguish two ways in which I think that philosophy should begin in the middle of things, and then I describe the two dominant approaches to analytic philosophy today: scientific pragmatism and conceptual analysis (or, more broadly, "a priorism"). After giving reasons for dissatisfaction with both of these dominant approaches, I set out my own view – Practical Realism – and argue for the merits of its methodological and metaphysical components.     

The Church and the World: Are There Theological Resources for a Common Conversation?

Abortion is an especially salient issue for considering thegeneral problematic of religiously based conversation in thepublic square. It remains deeply divisive, fully thirty-fouryears after Roe v. Wade. Such divisiveness cannot be interpretedas merely an expression of profound differences between "secular"and "religious" voices, because differences also emerge amongChristian denominations, reflecting different sources of moralauthority, different accounts of moral discernment, and differentjudgments about the appropriate relations between law and moralityin the context of pluralism. As this paper explores, however,despite those differences, a generally identifiable "Christian"position concerning the moral status of abortion can be distinguishedfrom secular philosophical judgments on the issue, which isimportant for Christian engagement with public policy debate.     

Can there be a science of the symbolic?

Science means not just 'knowing', but knowing verified by replicability. Science is particularly hard to bring to depth psychology because the individual uniquenesses that can't be repeated are what make people most deeply themselves. Everyone, including the analytic investigator, however, has a science, in the sense of a world-view that is replicated by experience. Jung offered hermeneutics as an alternative mode to science for getting to know the psychological subject. But as Heidegger emphasized, hermeneutics always begins with the projection of a world-view, i.e., the science of the would-be interpreter. In the analytic situation, dialogue is available to test the world-view and enlarge its horizon, in accord with Gadamer's expansion of hermeneutics, 'the classical discipline concerned with the art of understanding texts', into a method of inquiry open to the possibilities of otherness. An example is given from an analytic training seminar, in which the author began by projecting his version of the theory of psychological types onto the dream material a candidate offered in response to the seminar. A dialogue with the candidate ensued which enabled the teacher to correct his original, somewhat rigid, application of his scientific viewpoint. In such a dialogue, psyche emerges as the final interpreter of what is, generating hypotheses that can fruitfully be applied to the understanding of other cases.     

Legal Practices and the Reason of the Law

Legal argumentation, like argumentation generally, occurs against a background of shared understanding and competence. This view, inspired by Kuhn's understanding of scientific reasoning, is in stark contrast to more traditional rule-following accounts of legal argumentation. Below I consider reasons to reject the more traditional view of legal reasoning in favor of a roughly Kuhnian account of legal reasoning and conclude by raising skeptical questions about the cogency of legal reasoning when the tacitly accepted background conditions that make it possible are not critically examined.     

现实理性：一个理解经济行为的框架

该将人类理性的现实表现作为理解经济行为的框架。该框架强调,主观上人类有效用最大化的追求,但由于感知觉和思维加工能力的缺陷,行为表现经常偏离理论理性。章从认知心理学的角度介绍Kahneman和Tversky的主要研究成果,包括影响最大的前景理论,其他有关算法式和偏误的研究,以及决策和情绪的关系。章的最后还介绍对Kahneman和Tversky的批评。