The Enlightenment That Won't Go Away: Modernity's Crux

The Critical Process unleashed by the Enlightenment and endlessly resharpening itself to this day has mortally wounded the God of Deism, maybe also of theism, even of Christianity. A temptation of Christian theology is to retreat in denial into an updated version of Deism, seemingly granting full license to modern science but only so long as it does not impugn God's love. The alternative here proposed is to ride out The Critical Process, in fact to encourage it, all the way into modernity's crux: How can a design that is not benign still be divine? The Christian reply is: through a real death of God and of ourselves as well, and through resurrections beginning now, thus freeing The Critical Process from the illusion of insuring our survival and, instead, for the honest Enlightenment task of merely telling the truth.     

The Neuropsychological Basis of Religions, or Why God Won't Go Away

By the end of the eighteenth century, the intellectual elite generally believed that religion would soon vanish because of the advent of the Higher Criticism and the scientific method. However, two hundred years later, religions and the concept of God have not gone away and, in many instances, appear to be gaining in strength. This paper considers the neuropsychological basis of religion and religious concepts and tries to develop an understanding of why religion does not go away so easily. In general, religion appears to serve two major functions—it is a system of self-maintenance and a system of self-transcendence. Since both of these functions bear directly on human survival and adaptability, the neuropsychological mechanisms that underlie religions appear to have become thoroughly ingrained in the human gene pool and ultimately human experience. This paper reviews these two functions of religions from a neuropsychological perspective to try to explain why religion continues to thrive. Finally, we consider the conclusions regarding reality and epistemology that a neuropsychological analysis of religious experience suggests.     

Why Compositionality Won't Go Away: Reflections on Horwich's 'Deflationary' Theory

Paul Horwich argues for a 'deflationary'account of compositionality, according to which, '. . . the compositionality of meaning imposes no constraint at all on how the meaning properties of words are constituted'. We have arrived at a tentative diagnosis, which is that Horwich fails to enforce several distinctions that turn out to be crucial. For example, sometimes he puts his main conclusion in the way we just quoted but sometimes, even on the following page, he puts it like this: 'understanding one of oneÕs own complex expressions (non-idiomatically) is, by definition, nothing over and above understanding its parts and knowing how they are combined'. We propose, in what follows, to consider how Horwich's deflationary account of compositionality fares if the distinction between theories of meaning and theories of understanding is properly attended to. Here's how we think it all turns out:
– Horwich is right to claim that compositionality is neutral with respect to the metaphysics of understanding expressions when 'understanding' refers to a (merely) dispositional state; but not when it refers to an occurrent state.
– Horwich is right strictu dictu to claim that compositionality is neutral with respect to the character of lexical meanings, but only strictu dictu.
– Compositionality taken, together with other constraints that semantic theories are required to satisfy, reduces the options in the theory of lexical meaning to a bare minimum.
The first part of the paper is about compositionality and understanding, the second part is about compositionality and lexical meaning.     

Walton's Quasi‐Emotions Do Not Go Away

The debate about how to solve the paradox of fiction has largely been a debate between Kendall Walton and the so‐called thought theorists. In recent years, however, Jenefer Robinson has argued, based on her affective appraisal theory of emotion, for a noncognitivist solution to the paradox as an alternative to the thought theorists’ solution and especially to Walton's controversial solution. In this article, I argue that, despite appearances to the contrary, Robinson's affective appraisal theory is compatible with Walton's solution, at the core of which lies the thesis that there are quasi‐emotions. Moreover, since Robinson's theory is compatible with Walton's solution, I show how it can be used as a model to empirically test whether quasi‐emotions exist.     

Rain,Rain Go Away! A Diary Study on Morning Weather and Affective Well-Being at Work

Weather determines a number of affective experiences in everyday life. Although affective events theory positions environmental features such as the weather as important in determining affective well-being also at work, research in this regard has mainly focused on predictors within the person or work context. Addressing this gap, we studied how daily morning weather relates to day-specific affective well-being at work. Specifically, we examined vigor and job satisfaction as positive well-being states, and negative affect and burnout as negative well-being states. Additionally, we examined individual weather sensitivity and positive/negative affectivity as person-level moderators of the daily weather–well-being relationship. Using data gathered in a diary study with 115 employees reporting on 457 workdays, we found morning weather to be related to state vigor and job satisfaction, but not to negative affect and burnout. Positive affectivity moderated the relationships between morning weather and job satisfaction as well as burnout. Weather sensitivity moderated the relationship between morning weather and vigor, while negative affectivity did not moderate any relationship between morning weather and well-being at work. Our results contribute to the understanding of affective well-being at work by pointing at the role environmental factors such as weather conditions can play.     

Explaining Away Incompatibilist Intuitions

The debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists depends in large part on what ordinary people mean by ‘free will’, a matter on which previous experimental philosophy studies have yielded conflicting results. In Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner (2005, 2006) , most participants judged that agents in deterministic scenarios could have free will and be morally responsible. Nichols and Knobe (2007) , though, suggest that these apparent compatibilist responses are performance errors produced by using concrete scenarios, and that their abstract scenarios reveal the folk theory of free will for what it actually is—incompatibilist. Here, we argue that the results of two new studies suggest just the opposite. Most participants only give apparent incompatibilist judgments when they mistakenly interpret determinism to imply that agents’ mental states are bypassed in the causal chains that lead to their behavior. Determinism does not entail bypassing, so these responses do not reflect genuine incompatibilist intuitions. When participants understand what determinism does mean, the vast majority take it to be compatible with free will. Further results indicate that most people’s concepts of choice and the ability to do otherwise do not commit them to incompatibilism, either, putting pressure on incompatibilist arguments that rely on transfer principles, such as the Consequence Argument. We discuss the implications of these findings for philosophical debates about free will, and suggest that incompatibilism appears to be either false, or else a thesis about something other than what most people mean by ‘free will’.     

启蒙的吊诡与启蒙的反思——以中国现代思想中的"启蒙反思"论说为中心

17-18世纪兴起于西欧北美的启蒙运动,是人类发展史上一座划时代的里程碑.启蒙思想家接续在欧洲中世纪社会内部所萌蘖的文艺复兴、宗教改革以及实验科学等异端思潮,进一步高扬理性、人权、自由、平等、民主、法治、科学、进步等价值理念,对禁锢人们头脑的神学教条和束缚人们身心的王权制度进行了深刻批判乃至猛烈抨击,在观念领域发生了极大的祛蔽作用和解放效应.     

Explaining Away Excellence: The Biased Assault on Private-School Research

Research favoring private education runs counter to the agenda of some researchers and policy makers. Consequently, the ameliorative role of private school is apt to be explained away on methodological grounds. Dr. Erickson offers reasons for the effectiveness of private education beyond what can be accounted for by skimming superior students. Moreover, Dr. Erickson suggests how these explanatory features can enlighten all education—public education included.     

Giving Psychological Science Away: The Role of Applications Courses

ABSTRACT— The applicability of basic research in psychological science is obvious to those in the field, but too often underappreciated outside of it. In this article, I suggest some reasons for that gap, including confusion between the relevance of psychological science and its actual application, which can lead to hype; the interdisciplinary nature of applied science, which can obscure the credit due to the field; and the considerable difficulty of moving basic research into application, including the potential for resistance to the products we deliver. I suggest that our own students constitute a relatively underutilized audience for demonstrating that psychological science has been critical to applications, and I describe an applied cognitive science course that is intended to make the case to them.     

Jobs You Won't Find in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles

This article, although written in a whimsical style, points out the value-laden nature of our premier source of occupational information, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Other than legal occupations, jobs that are remunerative can be placed into three categories: (a) illegal occupations, (b) underground or counterculture occupations, and (c) occupations “in limbo.”