层次,形式与实在

20世纪的科学对哲学所产生的最重要的成就是提供了一种层次的世界观,即世界的结构是多层次的。物理科学在宏观和微观两个方向的探索和目前已经取得的成就使我们确信,我们的世界是多层次的,世界具有层次的结构。对世界层次结构的分析对形而上学和整体的哲学具有明显的意义。如果说中国哲学界过去曾经讨论过世界层次结构和物质是否无限可分的辩证法含义,那么本文将从分析哲学的角度来探讨世界层次结构在本体论和认识论上的非还原论意义。本文提出形式实在论,这可以看作是中国科学哲学界1995年前后对关系实在论讨论的继续。一、夏法尔论基础主…     

证言、理由与局部还原论

社会知识论的一个核心议题是解释基于证言的信念是如何能被辩护的。根据局部还原论,证言的成熟听者应当具备关于自己所接受的证言是否可靠的正面理由,否则无法获得被辩护的证言信念。这一理论面临两大诘难,即“正面理由不足问题”和“双重标准反驳”。根据前者,在一些日常情境中,即便主体没有正面理由来支持所接受的证言的可靠性,也可以获得在直觉上得到辩护的证言信念,甚至知识;由此,局部还原论的要求过强。根据“双重标准反驳”,局部还原论者针对成人和儿童的证言信念提出了不同的规范性要求,而这样的双重标准是站不住脚的。然而,经过分析可以发现,这两类反驳并不成立。不仅如此,局部还原论在解释除证言信念以外的其他命题态度(即“置信度”)方面具备非还原论所没有的重要理论优势。因此,局部还原论是比较合理的证言辩护理论。     

费耶阿本德、伪狄奥尼修斯与实在的不可言说性

本文探讨了伪狄奥尼修斯(即德尼斯)对费耶阿本德的影响,认为后期费耶阿本德从德尼斯那里吸收了一种形而上学主张,意在支持认识多元论。本文介绍了两者共同的认识论关切,即对人类获得关于终极实在的知识的可能性的否认;随后,考察了德尼斯在《神圣名称》中关于上帝"不可言说性"的论证;在此基础上探讨了费耶阿本德如何把德尼斯关于神的不可言说性解释引入他自己的形而上学,以便为认识多元论提供新颖论证;同时,说明充分了解德尼斯的影响对我们理解费耶阿本德有着重要意义。本文得出的结论是:德尼斯对后期费耶阿本德具有重要影响,但这种影响却被忽视了。     

幼儿非形式推理能力的发生与发展

针对在儿童非形式推理能力发生研究中评价标准不一和研究结果中发生年龄不同的问题,在论证并提出幼儿非形式推理发生评价标准的基础上,采用提示访谈法对333名3-6岁幼儿的非形式推理做了考察。结果显示:幼儿的我方推理普遍在3岁3个月～3岁9个月发生;他方推理普遍在4岁～4岁6个月发生;反驳推理普遍在4岁9个月～6岁发生。幼儿在推理过程中提出的理由数量随年龄的增长而增多,年龄差异显著,但无显著性别差异。研究中建立的评价指标体系可以有效测量幼儿非形式推理的发生和发展。     

小学生非形式推理能力的发展

文章在提出非形式推理评价指标体系的基础上,采用提示访谈法考察了小学生非形式推理能力的发展.结果显示:少数1、2年级小学生处于理由推理水平,多数能够进行反驳推理,3至6年级小学生都能做出反驳推理;三种理由的数量都存在显著的年级差异,功能性理由的数量随年级增长而增多;高年级学生的反驳次数都显著多于低年级学生;低年级学生的推理中断次数和推理错误总次数显著多于高年级,并随年级的增长呈下降趋势.     

恩格斯与唯物主义

唯物主义认为存在或发生的一切都是物质的,可以用纯粹自然的术语来描述和理解,不必求助于神圣创造者或非物质的心灵。这种哲学是自然科学方法的基础。但恩格斯强调,将这种一般的哲学观与特定思想家在特定时期提出的特定形式区别开来是重要的。唯物主义往往作为狭隘的、机械论的和还原论的哲学出现,恩格斯称这种形式的唯物主义为"机械"唯物主义,如今它通常被冠以"物理主义"之名。在恩格斯看来,这并非唯物主义的唯一形式。恩格斯致力于发展一种非机械论的、非还原性的哲学的唯物主义,这种唯物主义是原创性的,并且具有重要的当代哲学意义。     

大学生优秀辩手与非辩手的非形式推理能力比较

为考察大学生优秀辩手与非辩手非形式推理能力的差异,运用"提示访谈法"对大学生中的优秀辩手与非辩手的普通大学生进行了比较研究。结果表明:大多数优秀辩手达到间接反驳推理水平,而多数非辩手处在直接反驳推理水平。优秀辩手不论在功能性和条件性理由的数量上,还是在理由领域广度上都显著优于普通大学生。在反驳式推理过程中,优秀辩手的间接反驳次数显著多于非辩手。研究表明大学生优秀辩手的非形式推理能力显著优于非辩手。     

孩子,你如此“自虐”为哪般?——从马斯洛需求层次理论谈青少年的非自杀性自伤行为

咨询室里的他深深地低着头,蓬乱的头发,黑色的口罩遮住了大半张脸,紧握的双手有些颤抖,蜷缩在沙发的角落里,满眼的阴郁。手臂上一条条纵横交错的刀疤似乎在帮助着沉闷的他诉说着一个个不为人知的故事,苍凉而悲伤。他不是一个特殊的来访者,而是众多青少年来访者的真实写照。近年来,青少年的非自杀性自伤行为渐渐地走进了大众的视野.     

中学生非形式推理能力的发展及环境影响因素

为了考察中学生非形式推理能力的发展以及家庭和学校有关环境因素对中学生非形式推理的影响,该研究采用提示访谈和问卷调查考察了7-9年级中学生非形式推理能力的发展及其与家庭和学校教育环境因素的关系。结果表明:(1)中学生一般具有了反驳水平的非形式推理能力,7年级学生多处于直接反驳水平,8、9年级学生多处于间接反驳水平。(2)我方和他方推理的理由数量随年级的增高而上升,反驳次数亦随年级的增高而增多。(3)中学生在我方推理中提出的理由数量与同伴影响、教师鼓励和家长引导有一定线性因果关系。     

Normative realism and ontology: reply to Clarke-Doane,Rosen, and Enoch and McPherson

In response to comments on my book, Being Realistic about Reasons, by Justin Clarke-Doane, David Enoch and Tristram McPherson, and Gideon Rosen, I try to clarify my domain-based view of ontology, my understanding of the epistemology of normative judgments, and my interpretation of the phenomenon of supervenience.     

BETWEEN PHYSICALISM AND MENTALISM: PHILIP CLAYTON ON MIND AND EMERGENCE

Abstract. Philip Clayton's work on emergence is a valuable contribution to the fields of religion, science, and philosophy. I focus on three narrow but extremely important areas of Clayton's work. First, Clayton deems that Terrence Deacon's emergence theory is difficult to accept because it is constructed from thermodynamics, thereby rendering it unable to address phenomenological issues. I examine Deacon's theory and show that development from a physics base is warranted. Furthermore, Clayton does not convincingly demonstrate that such a constructive approach is necessarily incapable of attending to mental phenomena or offer an alternative that explains the causal power of a physically nonconstructible mental realm. Second, I argue that Clayton's notion of emergentist supervenience for comprehending the mental/physical relation is unnecessarily redundant and problematic in relation to causal power. Third, I explore Clayton's alternative use of agent causation to make sense of mental properties having causal power in the world. His effort to resolve emergence difficulties by appealing to phenomenology receives primary attention. Clayton's use of emergence theory is an important contribution to the religion‐and‐science community, and I encourage further dialogue on the exchange that Clayton commences.     

Kim’s Supervenience Argument and Nonreductive Physicalism

The aim of this paper is to show that Kim’s ‚supervenience argument’ is at best inconclusive and so fails to provide an adequate challenge to nonreductive physicalism. I shall argue, first, that Kim’s argument rests on assumptions that the nonreductive physicalist is entitled to regard as question-begging; second, that even if those assumptions are granted, it is not clear that irreducible mental causes fail to␣satisfy them; and, third, that since the argument has the overall structure of a reductio, which of its various premises one performs the reductio on remains open to debate in an interesting way. I shall finally suggest that the issue of reductive vs. nonreductive physicalism is best contested not in the arena of mental causation but in that in which the issues pertaining to theory and property reduction are currently being debated.     

The Price of Non-reductive Moral Realism

Non-reductive moral realism is the view that there are moral properties which cannot be reduced to natural properties. If moral properties exist, it is plausible that they strongly supervene on non-moral properties- more specifically, on mental, social, and biological properties. There may also be good reasons for thinking that moral properties are irreducible. However, strong supervenience and irreducibility seem incompatible. Strong supervenience entails that there is an enormous number of modal truths (specifically, truths about exactly which non-moral properties necessitate which moral properties); and all these modal truths must be explained. If these modal truths can all be explained, then it must be a fundamental truth about the essence of each moral property that the moral property is necessarily equivalent to some property that can be specified purely in mental, social and biological terms; and this fundamental truth appears to be a reduction of the moral property in question. The best way to resist this argument is by resorting to the claim that mental and social properties are not, strictly speaking, natural properties, but are instead properties that can only be analysed in partly normative terms. Acceptance of that claim is the price of non-reductive moral realism.     

Animal cognition + optimal choice = behavior: A review of adaptive behavior and learning, 2nd Ed., by J. E. R. Staddon

Staddon discusses a vast array of topics in comparative psychology in this book. His view is that adaptive behavior in most cases is the result of optimal choice acting on an animal's knowledge about the world. Staddon refers to this as a functional teleonomic approach inasmuch as it attempts to understand an animal's behavior in terms of goals. He builds mathematical models based on this idea that are designed to reproduce specific sets of empirical observations, usually qualitatively. A natural consequence of Staddon's approach is that many models are developed, each of which applies to a specific set of observations. An alternative to functional teleonomy is a functional approach that builds on prior principles. In most cases, this approach favors a single‐theory account of behavior. Prior principles can be understood as functional stand‐ins for antecedent material causes, which means that these accounts are closer to mechanistic theories than are goal‐based teleonomic accounts. An ontological perspective, referred to as supervenient realism, is a means of understanding the relationship between functional theories and the material world. According to this perspective, the algorithmic operation of a successful functional theory may be understood to supervene on the material operation of the nervous system.     

SPECIES OF EMERGENCE

Abstract. The category of emergence has come to be of considerable importance to the science‐and‐religion dialogue. It has become clear that the term is used in different ways by different authors, with important implications. In this article I examine the criteria used to state that something is emergent and the different interpretations of those criteria. In particular, I argue similarly to Philip Clayton that there are three broad ranges of interpretation of emergence: reductive, nonreductive, and radical. Although all three criteria have their place, I suggest that the category of radical emergence is important both for science and theology.     

Rights: Foundations, Contents, Hierarchy

It would seem that we in the West are suffering from an increasing glut of rights. To the sixty-odd human rights that the Universal Declaration and its Covenants have long given us, must now be added the particular rights claims of an increasing number of ‘oppressed’ minorities, claims to compensation rights for just about every conceivable harm done and claims to ever more trivial things. This tendency is harmful insofar as it trivialises rights and devalues the coverage of rights. Human rights are fundamental and ought to be protected from these tendencies. Using an analysis of the foundations of human rights, and their function in maintaining autonomy in particular, this article analyses the content of rights – what must be fulfilled in order for a right to be protected – as a means of demonstrating the possibility of reducing the volume of rights without reducing rights coverage and of creating a defensible hierarchy.     

Nancey Murphy's Nonreductive Physicalism

This essay examines Nancey Murphy's commitment to downward causation and develops a critique of that notion based upon the distinction between the causal relevance of a higher-level event and its causal efficacy. I suggest the following: (1) nonreductive physicalism lacks adequate resources upon which to base an assertion of real causal power at the emergent, supervenient level; (2) supervenience's nonreductive nature ought not obscure the fact that it affirms an ontological determination of higher-level properties by those at the lower level; and (3) the notion of divine self-renunciation, while consonant with Murphy's claim of supervenient, divine action, is nonetheless problematic. Throughout, I claim that the question of the causal efficacy of a level is logically independent from the assertion of its conceptual or nomological nonreducibility.     

Complexity,Progress, and Hierarchy in Evolution

In this article I suggest a view of evolution characterized as a progressive process toward successively higher levels of complexity. In this approach, complexity is defined by means of an operational definition giving the possibility of its measurement by means of a procedure in which development has a crucial role. Furthermore, the concept of competition applied in the complexity space explains the cumulative emergence of new species as well as the presence of stagnant species. In this process, species are formed in a hierarchical order in which the human species is situated on the highest level. This view of evolution, thus also embracing human cultural evolution, is depicted in a diagram of complexity versus time, thus forming a new kind of a Tree of Life. The purpose of the suggested interpretation of evolution is to make it more readily acceptable for common people.     

Charity, Supervenience, and Skepticism

In a number of articles Donald Davidson has argued that the charitable nature of his method of radical interpretation rules out the possibility of massive error and thus refutes Cartesian skepticism. The diversity of such arguments and the suggestions that are all being made under the name of the principle of charity have prompted a large body of conflicting responses, adding only to the obscurity of the issues that are generally associated with the question of skepticism. In this paper I propose to consider the debate in a new light by reconstruing the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint on belief attribution. This would help explain some of the puzzling features of Davidson's arguments, like the idea of an omniscient interpreter, and the ensuing commentaries. Having provided an analysis of the limitations of Davidson's arguments, I shall then suggest an alternative explanation of the purported necessity of the principle of charity. Finally, having construed the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint, I shall examine what consequences this construal has for the logical status of the principle itself and its alleged epistemic potentials.