"Knowledge by acquaintance" and "Knowledge-about": A psychometrical demonstration

In two studies, students were asked to rate their knowledge of a number of different topics, extracurricular as well as drawn from their textbooks of the history of psychology and philosophy. The score distributions on a scale from "unknown" to "well known" were in all cases distinctly U-formed, as if knowledge were a question of either/or, rather than one of degree. However, when knowledge was rated on a scale from "know nothing about" to "know much about", the U-pattern failed to appear, and the students tended generally to give more cautious ratings. The differences are interpreted as evidence for the philosophical and linguistic distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance" (German: "kennen", French: "connaître") and "knowledge-about" (German: "wissen", French: "savoir").     

"EVERYMAN'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT": A DISSIDENT VERSION

We must agree, I think, with Frank Ebersole that there is something preposterous in supposing that the God of religious belief, the God who handed down tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai, etc., should be proven to exist by the ontological argument. Indeed, when we place the one, the ontological argument, by the side of the other, the God of religious belief, there seems hardly to be any connection between them. But if we agree to this perception of things, what sense can we make of the ontological argument, for example, the “pull” that it sometimes exerts on us?     

性善:一种引导性的概念--孟子性善论的哲学意蕴与方法内涵

长期以来,学术界把孟子的性善观念理解为一种先验性的学说,但是,本文认为。先验／经验的范畴归属于认知性的哲学(cognitive philosophy),其论证功能更多的指向理论。而不是规范。而孟子的性善说却以对于“以故言性”的认知性的人性理论的批判为其出发点,后者所导致的理论结果往往是“以情才代性”,也就说,认知性的人性论触及的总是“情”与“才”,而不是真正的“性”。而孟子本人的性善论不是对于人性所表现出来的经验性事实的理论解释,其功能主要是规范性的,可以将之理解为一种引导性(orientative)的概念,它的主旨不在于获得某种知识理论,而是在实现人与世界的某种转化。     

"Cognitive Resources and Leadership Performance": A Rejoinder

I feel very honoured by the distinguished group of colleagues who consented to comment on my paper. All raised thought-provoking questions which merit a detailed reply. I only regret that the strict space limitation imposed by the editor restricts my response to points on which my paper was unclear, and to a few important substantive issues. It would have been very satisfying to explore the many constructive and highly intriguing insights contained in the commentators' contributions.     

"Reflexive Embodied Empathy": A Phenomenology of Participant-Researcher Intersubjectivity

In this article, I advocate a research process that involves engaging, reflexively, with the embodied intersubjective relationship researchers have with participants. I call this practice reflexive embodied empathy. First, I explicate the concept of empathy through exploring ideas from the philosophical phenomenological literature. I then apply this theory to practice and offer examples of reflexive analysis of embodied empathy taken from various hermeneutic phenomenological research projects. Three interpenetrating layers of reflexivity are described, each involving different but coexisting dimensions of embodied intersubjectivity. The 1st layer-connecting-of-demonstrates how people can tune into another's bodily way of being through using their own embodied reactions. The 2nd layer-acting-into-focuses on empathy as imaginative self-transposal and calls attention to the way existences (beings) are intertwined in a dynamic of doubling and mirroring. The 3rd layer-merging-with-involves a "reciprocal insertion and intertwining" of others in oneself and of one in them (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968, p. 138), where self-understanding and other-understanding unite in mutual transformation. Through different examples of reflexive analysis from my research, I have tried to show how intersubjective corporeal commonality enables the possibility of empathy and how, in turn, empathy enables understanding of the Other and self-understanding. I discuss how the coexisting layers of empathy and the resultant understandings can be enabled through hermeneutic reflection and collaborative research methods.     

Ferenczi's "Teratoma": A Result,not a Process

In Martin Stanton's 1990 monograph Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention , one of six exegetical chapters was titled "Teratoma", using Ferenczi's own word for malformations of (psychic) development. Since then, there has been a tendency in the larger Ferenczi literature to use "teratoma" as a metaphor, leading to the creation of many odd readings and contexts for this very specific, medical, anatomic term. When Stanton becomes expansive in viewing the teratoma as a "transitional object" which "negotiates a relationship between the growth of ideal-ego ideas in oneself and the outside 'influence' of inner systems of thought" (p. 176), he is entering the play-space that opened between Ferenczi and Groddeck during the 20s as Ferenczi's relationship with Freud became increasingly constricted. What this misses is that Ferenczi was a physician, as was Groddeck. For all their fanciful explorations of mind and body relatedness, for both Ferenczi and Groddeck there would be a shared background of certain basic terminology. In that medical terminology, "teratoma" refers to variable numbers of primordial germ cells in the embryo, which in the course of development become displaced, sequestered and grotesquely overgrown; they can never become the tissues they were meant to be. Their potential is forever squandered. "Monsters" they may be; "doubles" they may seem; but they are utterly non-viable. In his metaphorical application of the term "teratoma" to the natural history of (psychic) trauma, Ferenczi proposes a biological and psychological isomorphism that is both clinically illuminating and intuitively prophetic of the course of treatment of trauma, which he was discovering. Clinical and literary material are used to explore the gap between the anatomic teratoma and the psychic teratoma.     

从逻辑学角度看墨子的"非乐"思想

墨子的非乐主张,是建立在严密的逻辑论证的基础上的。相比之下,儒者对墨子的批评,倒像是一种立场批评,而不是逻辑反驳。现代学人评价墨子的非乐,也大都用一种立场批评的方法,而不对其论证进行逻辑分析。其实,墨子的推理,是严密而有效的。而且,对于这种建立在严密逻辑论证基础上的主张,不管听起来如何奇怪,也应从逻辑的角度去破解,而不应当只是进行立场上的批评。     

从“思想实验”到“科学实验”:道德研究的新路向

传统哲学借助哲学家的“思想实验”对道德进行研究,新近兴起的实验伦理学采用“科学实验”范式来探索伦理问题,特别是致力于道德判断、道德行为、道德责任和道德价值的心理模式与认知机制研究.作为一种用实证方式探索伦理问题的有益尝试,“科学实验”的应用能够拉近“应该”与“是”的距离,使科学与人文走向合流.