On the Asymmetry between Twin Earth and Inverted Earth

A crucial disanalogy between Twin Earth and Inverted Earth undermines qualia‐internalism. A recent transplant to Inverted Earth has been equipped with color‐inverting contact lenses, so that she is unable to see the colors of objects whereas a recent transplant to Twin Earth can see twater. It is implausible to think that time alone could rectify this perceptual shortcoming – that the passage of time could alter the contents of her visual perceptions or the meaning of her color terms. Thus, the thought experiment does not refute the close tie between phenomenology and representation in the case of color.     

Grieving the Earth as Prayer

The COVID-19 pandemic is not so much a new kind of crisis as our most recent reminder of the dysfunction of human relations with the world we inhabit. This article argues that transforming our relations with other creatures begins with an examination of the call to be human: understanding the kind of creature we are and therefore how to live alongside other creatures with natures distinct from our own. It critiques the tendency to overemphasize human distinctiveness (anthropocentrism) or creatureliness (biocentrism, ecocentrism) to the detriment of our interpretations of human nature. Employing Jean-Louis Chrétien’s phenomenology of prayer as wounded speech, it proposes that climate/ecological grief mediates the tension of our distance from and intimacy with other creatures. Speech expressing grief over the world therefore re-embeds humans in our finitude and contingency while nevertheless treating human nature as containing a particular call to participate in Christ’s transforming work.     

The Earth is flat when personally significant experiences with the sphericity of the Earth are absent

Participants with personal and without personal experiences with the Earth as a sphere estimated large-scale distances between six cities located on different continents. Cognitive distances were submitted to a specific multidimensional scaling algorithm in the 3D Euclidean space with the constraint that all cities had to lie on the same sphere. A simulation was run that calculated respective 3D configurations of the city positions for a wide range of radii of the proposed sphere. People who had personally experienced the Earth as a sphere, at least once in their lifetime, showed a clear optimal solution of the multidimensional scaling (MDS) routine with a mean radius deviating only 8% from the actual radius of the Earth. In contrast, the calculated configurations for people without any personal experience with the Earth as a sphere were compatible with a cognitive concept of a flat Earth.     

Biting the Bullet on Moral Twin Earth

Abstract

Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons’ Moral Twin Earth thought experiment shows that realist ethical naturalism entails a kind of conceptual relativism about moral predicates. This conceptual relativism implies, further, that Earthlings and Twin Earthlings do not express substantive disagreement with one another. Because this latter implication clashes with considered linguistic intuitions, Horgan and Timmons conclude that we should reject realist ethical naturalism. Against this, several critics recommend that realists ‘bite the bullet’ with respect to Moral Twin Earth: despite our intuitions, we should accept that the speakers do not disagree. These critics argue that the intuitions elicited by the thought experiment are either the result of a failure on the part of readers to appreciate hidden details of the Moral Twin Earth case, or else they are mere artifacts of readers’ epistemic limitations. In this paper, I show that the Moral Twin Earth argument prevails against this line of attack.     

Moore on Twin Earth

In a series of articles, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons have argued that Richard Boyd’s defence of moral realism, utilizing a causal theory of reference, fails. Horgan and Timmons construct a twin Earth-style thought experiment which, they claim, generates intuitions inconsistent with the realist account. In their thought experiment, the use of (allegedly) moral terms at a world is causally regulated by some property distinct from that regulating their use here on Earth; nevertheless, Horgan and Timmons claim, it is intuitive that the inhabitants of this world disagree with us in their moral claims. Since any disagreement would be merely verbal were the alleged moral facts identical to or constituted by different natural facts, the identity or constitution claim must be false. I argue that their argument fails. Horgan and Timmons’ thought experiment is underdescribed; when we fill out the details, I claim, we shall see that the challenge to moral realism fades away. I sketch two possible interpretations of the (apparently) moral claims of the inhabitants of moral Twin Earth. On one interpretation, they fail to disagree with us because they actually agree with us; on the other, they fail to disagree with us because they are not moralizers at all. Which interpretation is true, I argue, will depend on the facts that explain the differences between us and the inhabitants of moral twin Earth.     

The development of scientific knowledge of the Earth

Investigation of children's knowledge of the Earth can reveal much about the origins, content and structure of scientific knowledge, and the processes of conceptual change and development. Vosniadou and Brewer (1992 , claim that children construct coherent mental models of a flat, flattened, or hollow Earth based on a framework theory and intuitive constraints of flatness and support. To examine this account, 62 children, aged 5–10 years, and 31 adults ranked 16 pictures according to how well they were thought to represent the Earth. Even young children showed scientific knowledge of the shape of the Earth. There was little or no evidence of naïve mental models, indicating that any intuitions or constraints must be very weak. Instead, before they acquire the scientific view, children's knowledge of the Earth appears to be incoherent and fragmented.     

“地球人”模式析疑

有人在网上抛出奇文,以易经八卦为论据,创造一个“地球人”模式,极端美化美欧民主自由。本文对其作了简略的评论。     

绝地天通--天地人神的原始本真关系的蜕变

在中国思想观念发展的历史上,有一次极重大的事件,天、地得以隔绝,人、神得以分离,谓之"绝地天通".<尚书孔氏传>说:"帝命羲、和世掌天、地四时之官,使人、神不扰,各得其序,是谓‘绝地天通'."[1]按照传统的说法,"绝地天通"乃是尧舜的伟大业绩,人心得以矫正,礼制得以建立.如蔡沈说:"当三苗昏虐,民之得罪者莫知其端,无所控诉,相与听于神,祭非其鬼,天地人神之典杂揉渎乱,此妖诞之所以兴,人心之所以不正也.在舜当务之急,莫先于正人心.首命重、黎,修明祀典;天子然后祭天地,诸侯然后祭山川;高卑上下,各有分限."[2]因此,"绝地天通"从来都是被作为正面事件、圣人的丰功伟绩来歌颂的.     

A Critique of the Husserlian and Heideggerian Concepts of Earth: Toward a Transcendental Earth That Accords with the Experience of Life

This paper presents an exposition and critical appraisal of the concepts of earth that appear almost simultaneously in essays by Husserl and Heidegger in the mid 1930s (the former in a fragment from 1934 on the ground of all possible experience of motion and rest, and the latter most famously in his 1935–6 essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art”). I argue that while both of these earths are noteworthy insofar as they suggest, each in its own way, the isolation of a non-worldly dimension of disclosure, nevertheless, neither Husserl nor Heidegger succeeds in fully emancipating the earth from the logic of the world. In Husserl's case, the earth is implicated in a fourfold schema involving: the absolute fixity of the world; the horizon of all being, sense, and judgment; the transcendental unity of the world; and the lifeworld as the basis of a common humanity. In Heidegger's case, the earth is construed as the “stream of boundary-setting” that, as the primordial adversary of the world, accomplishes the rising-up of beings into the open of being. The effect of this failure on the part of both philosophers to achieve an adequate ontological segregation of world and earth is to devalue the naïve image of the earth apprehended in the natural attitude even while the earth-dimension is divested of any discernable earthly character, leaving the earth itself barren and abstract, a pure category of thought rather than the horizon of actually lived life.     

Deflationism about the necessary a posteriori and Twin Earth

Some necessary truths are a posteriori. That’s widely agreed and is presumed here. Their existence might appear to show that discoveries about how things are in fact—about how things actually are—can lead to discoveries about all the ways things might be, about the nature of logical space. I detail one way of resisting this conclusion for a number of examples, and the implications of Twin Earth for the issue. Central is the notion of a Cambridge discovery.