Close to the Truth

Philosophia - We often think or say that someone was wrong about something but almost right about it or close to the truth. This can mean more than one thing. Here, I propose an analysis of the...     

You Are Requested to Close the Eyes

Freudian, Lacanian, and Kohutian approaches to the subject of seeing another and being seen by the other are reviewed and critiqued. The mirroring metaphor, so often invoked in psychoanalysis, is brought under scrutiny and concluded to be naive to the complexity of interaction actually occurring when one is seeing oneself being seen. Utilizing infant research findings and currents in Continental philosophy, a case is made for a reading of Winnicott's mirroring conception as a relational event: embodied and embedded in an intersubjective matrix of prereflective immediacy. Breaking with analytic rigidity emphasizing opacity and abnegation, Winnicott embraced the visual rather than inherently mistrusting it, advancing the dark analyses of vision beyond their pessimistic appraisals of the impossibility of an encounter with alterity.     

Close Strangers

Nationalism is normally directed against closest neighbors. This simple fact -- The Hated Neighbor Truism -- has important consequences, mostly overlooked in moral debates on nationalism. First, it undercuts the defense of nationalism based on the (alleged) moral worth of proximity: since nationalists hate closest neighbors, they cannot consistently rely upon such defense. Second, it blocks the usual theoretical contrast of nationalism with cosmopolitanism: the main enemies of the nationalist are not indiscriminate cosmopolitans, but the neighbor-lovers, call them macro-regionalists. Finally, it suggests that the proper response to nationalism is a graded, region-sensitive moderate cosmopolitanism.     

Close Encounter

No abstract available for this article.     

关注肝炎的"过度医疗"

肝炎诊疗领域存在的过度医疗现象是最具代表性的,集中体现为过度使用联合治疗、过度进行化验等辅助检查、过度使用新特药物、虚假广告泛滥等等,肝炎患者承担了额外风险,不但身心受损,而且经济支出严重超标,因病返贫、因病致贫的现象比比皆是.过度医疗是目前不规范的经济大环境的必然产物,救死扶伤、人道主义本应是医疗工作的准则,现在拜金主义、经济效应第一成为医疗活动的目的,过度诊疗在所难免.另外患者的无知和盲目,以及尚不规范的市场环境加剧了过度医疗现象.制定行业规范,建立社会监督机制,与国际肝炎诊疗指南接轨,是克服和纠正诊疗过度的有效方法.     

肿瘤临床治疗中应关注肝脏

抗肿瘤细胞毒性药物有不同程度毒副作用,有些严重毒副反应是限制药物剂量或使用的直接原因。肝脏是药物代谢的主要器官,也是药物损伤的主要靶器官。随着临床肿瘤治疗关注治疗带来的副作用与关注疗效同等重要的发展,本文对抗肿瘤细胞毒性药物与肝损伤、发生机制、诊断、分型和临床治疗进展进行了阐述。     

Larger reward values alone are not enough to entice more cooperation

Two experiments using an iterated prisoner's dilemma game examined under which conditions participants' cooperation rates would either change due to monetary value changes (e.g., 3 cents to 3 dollars) or not change due to numeric value changes (e.g., 3 dollars to 300 cents). A total of 102 university students played the game against a computer that employed one of four strategies across blocks. Results showed high rates of cooperation when participants played against a tit-for-tat strategy and low rates of cooperation against a random strategy. There was no change in cooperation rates due to changes in numeric value alone and a decrease in cooperation rates when large monetary values were at stake. Cooperation rates were higher and cooperation responses slower at earlier stages of the game. I argue that people's ability to strategize plays a key role in the changing rates and speed of cooperative behaviour in the prisoner's dilemma.     

肿瘤临床治疗中应关注肝脏

抗肿瘤细胞毒性药物有不同程度毒副作用.有些严重毒副反应是限制药物剂量或使用的直接原因.肝脏是药物代谢的主要器官,也是药物损伤的主要靶器官.随着临床肿瘤治疗关注治疗带来的副作用与关注疗效同等重要的发展,本文对抗肿瘤细胞毒性药物与肝损伤、发生机制、诊断、分型和临床治疗进展进行了阐述.     

Are generic predictions enough?

Summary and conclusions I have argued not that economics has no predictive content, but that it is limited, or at least has so far been limited to generic predictions. Now this is an important kind of prediction, and almost certainly a necessary preliminary to specific or quantitative predictions. But if the sketch of an important episode in the twentieth century history of the subject I have given is both correct and representative, then economics seems pretty well stuck at the level of generic prediction. And at least some influential economists and philosophers of economics seem well satisfied with stopping at the point of generic prediction. Or at least they give no other reason than its power to produce such predictions as a justification for the character of economic theory. But this leads to the question that is the title of my paper, is generic prediction enough?     

Inaugural lecture: Philosophy enough

Abstract

This inaugural lecture was delivered at the Howard College Campus of UKZN on 2 April 2008. In it I do three things. First I sketch some arguments in favour of a naturalist conception of philosophy. The conclusions that I’m after are that philosophy is not an autonomous enterprise, so that it had better be continuous with scientific enquiry if it is to get anywhere. A supplementary claim I defend briefly is that the natural and social sciences should be viewed as more integrated than they usually are. Second, I offer some reasons for rejecting all identifiable forms of social constructivism about knowledge. Finally, I say something about what ‘African Scholarship’ might mean, given the preceding considerations. There I briefly defend the claim that there is no epistemically interesting sense in which there is such a thing as African knowledge.