"The Jews interpret in a crazy manner." Evaluation of a classical text

The author scrutinizes a text taken from the law of Justinian, 553 A. D., which assigns the Jews a place in the occidental-Christian system of thought. The identity of personal power, whether imperial or papal, and legal text merges the real and the symbolic. That is, authority determines the interpretation of the text. The author designates this the Christian-industrial religion and the Christian-industrial psychology and thereby draws connections with the present. Jewish textual interpretation, in which the text alone yields authority, is nourished--like psychoanalysis--by the tension between reality and fantasy, by the contradiction between power and desire.     

从"死生有命"展开的思考

如果文化真有明确疆界的话,那么每一疆界似乎都应该有一些自己的“界标”。从某种意义上说,那些代表或表达着一个文化传统的最基本的观念的词汇和格言似乎就可以被用做这样的形式上的界标。我们试将“命”这一独特的观念视为中国文化的某种界标,因为从某种意义上说,文化边界意味着一文化之界限,而命恰恰是中国文化中的界限观念。说命可能首先让人想到中国传统的天命观念。但在日常生活中,中国人信的是那个不以“天”为定语的“命”,或者至少也是一个天已由之悄然隐去的命。古语有“安之若命”,今人则说“人不跟命争”或“认命”。这些说法均蕴涵着,命标志着人或人力的限度或边界。而这也就是说,这一意义上的命标志着人本身——人的可能性——的某种限度或边界。边界则意味着     

Preschool children's mathematical knowledge: The effect of teacher "math talk."

This study examined the relation between the amount of mathematical input in the speech of preschool or day-care teachers and the growth of children's conventional mathematical knowledge over the school year. Three main findings emerged. First, there were marked individual differences in children's conventional mathematical knowledge by 4 years of age that were associated with socioeconomic status. Second, there were dramatic differences in the amount of math-related talk teachers provided. Third, and most important, the amount of teachers' math-related talk was significantly related to the growth of preschoolers' conventional mathematical knowledge over the school year but was unrelated to their math knowledge at the start of the school year.     

Instantiated features and the use of "rules."

Classification "rules" in expert and everyday discourse are usually deficient by formal standards, lacking explicit decision procedures and precise terms. The authors argue that a central function of such weak rules is to focus on perceptual learning rather than to provide definitions. In 5 experiments, transfer following learning of family resemblance categories was influenced more by familiar-appearing features than by novel-appearing features equally acceptable under the rule. This occurred both when rules were induced and when rules were given at the beginning of instruction. To model this and other phenomena in categorization, features must be represented on 2 levels: informational and instantiated. These 2 feature levels are crucial to provide broad generalization while reflecting the known peculiarities of a complex world.     

The Cognitive Psychology of Delusions: A Review

Delusions have for a long time been regarded as one of the major signs of mental disorder. Above all else they are cognitive phenomena in that they purport to express ideas about the world or the self. Despite this it is only relatively recently that the ideas and methods of cognitive psychology have been used in the study of delusions, at least in any systematic way. This paper reviews the work carried out so far, which is starting to yield some consistent trends. These include an excessively self-seeking bias in judgments made by people with delusions and a tendency to make judgments on the basis of rather less evidence than controls.     

Analysing Causality: The Opposite of Counterfactual is Factual

Using Jim Woodward's Counterfactual Dependency account as an example, I argue that causal claims about indeterministic systems cannot be satisfactorily analysed as including counterfactual conditionals among their truth conditions because the counterfactuals such accounts must appeal to need not have truth values. Where this happens, counterfactual analyses transform true causal claims into expressions which are not true.     

Weakness as Strength: The Use and Misuse of a "My Hands Are Tied" Ploy in Bargaining

This study was designed to evaluate empirically the notion that in bargaining weakness can be turned into strength. Subjects participated in simulated labor-management negotiations. The results indicate that a "my hands are tied" ploy is effective in eliciting concessions when used to induce an adversary to accept a settlement which is included in the bargaining range. In contrast, the use of the ploy in an effort to settle negotiations outside the bargaining range enhanced the adversary's intransigence. The implications of the differential effects of a "my hands are tied" ploy for the process of negotiations are discussed.     

The Sins of Their Fathers: When Current Generations Are Held to Account for the Transgressions of Previous Generations

When are current generations held accountable for transgressions committed by previous generations? In two studies, we test the prediction that current generations will only be assigned guilt for past atrocities when victim group members perceive high levels of cultural continuity between historical perpetrators and the current generation within the perpetrator group. Japanese participants were presented with information describing the current generation of Americans as either similar or dissimilar in personality to the Americans who were implicated in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. The results of both studies revealed that victim group members assigned more guilt to current Americans when they perceived high (compared to low) outgroup continuity, and they did so relatively independently of the transgressor group's guilt expressions.     

语符“能”，“所”关系中的认识论意韵——索绪尔语言哲学解读

索绪尔的语言学对语符现象以能指与所指关系的分析为基础,展示了蕴含其中的语言的一系列两面性,从认识论的视域解读其学理精要,有助于我们清醒理解当下喧嚣的媒介文化,掌握其思想逻辑.     

There is a problem of change

Impostors are pseudo-problems masquerading as genuine problems. Impostors should be exposed. The problem of change appears genuine. But some, such as Hofweber (2009) and Rychter (2009), have recently denounced it as an impostor. They allege that it is mysterious how to answer the meta-problem of saying what problem it is: for even if any problem is genuinely about change per se, they argue, it is either empirical or trivially dissolved by conceptual analysis. There is indeed an impostor in our midst. But it is the meta-problem of change. I defend the appearance that the problem of change is a genuine metaphysical problem about change. This vindicates philosophers’ lasting interest in it. It also illuminates what makes a problem metaphysical, how metaphysics relates to other inquiries, and how best to respond to attempts to undermine metaphysical problems.     

The Commitment Account of Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is widely thought to be morally objectionable in a way that undermines the hypocrite’s moral standing to blame others. To wit, we seem to intuitively accept the “Nonhypocrisy Condition:” R has the standing to blame S for some violation of a moral norm N only if R’s blaming S is not hypocritical. This claim has been the subject of intensifying philosophical investigation in recent years. However, we can only understand why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and has an effect on standing to blame if we can correctly characterize hypocrisy itself. Unfortunately, some recent discussions fail to do this, which fatally undermines subsequent arguments concerning the effect of hypocrisy on the standing to blame. This paper’s central aim is to develop and defend a better account of hypocrisy. The hope is that with such an account in hand, we can explain and perhaps justify our moral aversion to hypocrisy in general as well as the Nonhypocrisy Condition in particular.