THE MIND AND THE 'SHEN-MING'a IN XUNZI

In Plan 21 of the Xunzi , the essay Dubs titles The Removal of Prejudices¹ and Watson calls Dispelling Obsession², there is a sentence one's eyes slide over rather easily until one tries to fit it into its context and that of the Xunzi generally. Dubs translates it The mind is the ruler of the body and the master of the spirit (p. 269); Watson shows a slight discomfort with the second clause when he gives The mind is the ruler of the body and the master of its god-like intelligence [whatever that is] (p. 129) Koester³ raises a few more doubts with his Das Herz nimmt im Koerper die Stelle des Herrschers ein, es ist der Gebieter ueber die shen-ming (Geister, die im Koerper wohnen) (p. 277). Interestingly enough, the commentatorial tradition seems to have felt no difficulties: Yang Liang's comment is merely a paraphrase of the sentence following, and Wang Xian-jian and Liang Qi-xiong simply quote him⁴.     

成年个体的心理理论与执行功能

为了说明成年个体心理理论与执行功能的发展及两者的关系,在匹配了智商和教育水平条件下,采用心理理论故事理解任务、失言理解任务和威斯康星卡片分类任务分别探察了30名62~77岁的老年人和30名19~25岁青年人的心理理论和执行功能。结果表明,老年人和青年人在2种心理理论任务上的得分与卡片分类任务的得分都不存在显著相关,老年人在失言任务上的得分显著低于青年人,在心理理论故事理解任务上和威斯康星卡片分类任务上,老年人的表现与青年人没有显著差异。结合已有的研究结果提示：心理理论与执行功能的相关模式在成年和学前阶段是不同的。     

逻辑与自我：西方思想发生一些危机之后

获得此奖是莫大的荣幸,并且,事实上对我而言更荣幸的是与卡萨里教授分享这一奖项。但是我非常清醒,在这里我们首先是缅怀朱利奥·普雷蒂教授。通过一些以英、法文出现的论文,非常具体地说,是通过佩鲁齐教授的一篇富有启发性的论文,我有限地接触了朱利奥·普雷蒂的思想。     

CHANGE AND THE ETERNAL PART OF THE MIND IN SPINOZA

Spinoza insists that we can during the course of our lives increase that part of the mind that is constituted by knowledge, but he also calls that part of the mind its eternal part. How can what is eternal increase? I defend an interpretation on which there is a sense in which the eternal part of the mind can become greater without changing intrinsically at all.     

宗教多元性与认同性危机

现代末期的宗教及其未来在新千年降临之际 ,宗教正在经历某些彻底的变革 :首先一个变革就是世俗化过程[1] 对于各种传统宗教产生的巨大影响 ,这种世俗化以各种不同的形式从基督教开始 ,在今天和未来将依然这样进行下去 ,但它并不干预作为一个制度和公共因素的宗教的没落 ,更不必说作为一个私人现象的信仰的没落。我们正在经历的 ,毋宁说是伴随社会 文化的深刻变形而发生的作为私人领域的宗教信仰和作为制度因素的宗教的一个巨大变革和适应过程 (利翁 ,2 0 0 2 )。这种变革的两个主要因素是 ,大众传媒和消费社会的胜利以及全球化过程 (库尔…     

MIND AND ITS TREATMENT

On the basis of mother-baby observations and analytic experience, it is argued that a trauma during infancy leads to a psychic functioning where the early defensive manoeuvres of non-integration described by Eugenio Gaddini cannot be given up in fear of a repetition of the catastrophe, already experienced once in early infancy, of losing the self. This state of non-integration can be seen in a traumatized girl's missing feminine symbolizations as well as in her false self. A girl is described who had to stick to a transitional object, which seems to represent concretization, an inablity to symbolize, instead of being able to use a transitional phenomenon supporting healthy development. A case of a hysteric woman illustrates the state of non-integration due to an evident early trauma. For women, as in this case, the female inner-genitality has to be filled with pregenital drive-contents. The binding functions as well as the symbolization function are paralysed due to integration-anxiety. In analysing the resistance of my patient, I have found an active use of imitation for the purpose of self-defense within the transference against receiving the analyst's understanding, empathy or interpretations. This state of non-integration, possibly typical of hysteria, is what Gaddini calls imitative identity.     

CAUSALITY, INTENSIONALITY AND IDENTITY: MIND BODY INTERACTION IN SPINOZA

According to Spinoza mental events and physical events are identical. What makes Spinoza's identity theory tempting is that it solves the problem of mind body interaction rather elegantly: mental events and physical events can be causally related to each other because mental events are physical events. However, Spinoza seems to deny that there is any causal interaction between mental and physical events. My aim is to show that Spinoza's apparent denial of mind body interaction can be reconciled with the identity theory. I argue that Spinoza had both an extensional and an intensional concept of cause and when Spinoza seems to deny mind body interaction he is having in mind the intensional concept of cause. This intensional concept of cause corresponds to that of causal explanation. I will argue that Spinoza anticipated Donald Davidson's view that even though mental events cannot be explained by referring to physical events and vice versa, mental and physical events are causally related to each other.     

GENES, MIND AND CULTURE

Abstract. The 1981 book Genes, Mind and Culture by Edward O. Wilson and Charles J. Lumsden attempts to offer a comprehensive theory of the linkage between biological and cultural evolution. In the following 21 May 1982 radio broadcast, produced by Julian Brown under the auspices of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wilson is joined by a philosopher, a geneticist, and a religion scholar in a discussion of "gene culture co-evolution" and of other issues raised by sociobiology. The discussion is introduced and chaired by the editor of Nature , John Maddox.     

EMPATHY AND THE EXTENDED MIND

I draw upon the conceptual resources of the extended mind thesis (EM) to analyze empathy and interpersonal understanding. Against the dominant mentalistic paradigm, I argue that empathy is fundamentally an extended bodily activity and that much of our social understanding happens outside of the head. First, I look at how the two dominant models of interpersonal understanding, theory theory and simulation theory, portray the cognitive link between folk psychology and empathy. Next, I challenge their internalist orthodoxy and offer an alternative "extended" characterization of empathy. In support of this characterization, I analyze some narratives of individuals with Moebius syndrome, a kind of expressive deficit resulting from bilateral facial paralysis. I conclude by discussing how a Zen Buddhist ethics of responsiveness is helpful for articulating the practical significance of an extended, body-based account of empathy.     

THE ARTIFICIALIZATION OF MIND AND WORLD

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to renewed ambitions of developing artificial general intelligence. Alongside this has been a resurgence in the development of virtual and augmented reality (V/AR) technologies, which are viewed as “disruptive” technologies and the computing platforms of the future. V/AR effectively bring the digital world of machines, robots, and artificial agents to our senses while entailing the transposition of human activity and presence into the digital world of artificial agents and machine forms of intelligence. The intersection of humans and machines in this shared space brings humans and machines into ontological continuity as informational entities in a totalizing informational environment, which subsumes both cyber and physical space in an artificially constructed virtual world. The reconstruction of mind (through AI) and world (through V/AR) thus has significant epistemological, ontological, and anthropological implications, which constitute the underlying features in the artificialization of mind and world.