一节阐明教内外关系的经文——中国基督教第八次代表会议闭幕礼拜的证道

我们感谢赞美天父的眷顾、救主耶稣基督的恩待和圣灵的引导,使我们中国基督教第八次代表会议圆满完成各项议程,胜利闭幕了.刚才我们所读的经文,可以作为会议所通过的工作报告和各项决议的圣经依据,证明会议所指明的方向、所坚持的原则、所提出的任务,都是正确的,天经地义的.     

喀纳斯湖口的顿悟

新疆的喀那斯,对于任何一个旅行者来说,都是一个难以抵御其诱惑力的名字,在蒙古语中,喀纳斯是峡谷中的神秘湖的意思。其实,喀纳斯的魅力之所在,恰恰不是她的神秘,而是她的绝伦之美。我是由贾登峪徒步进入喀纳斯的,尽管那80公里险峻的山路间,空旷的河谷、葱郁的草原、悠远的雪山和茂密的原始森林,已     

神学思考与讲台供应

讲台的侍奉乃是教会最根本最神圣的侍奉。作为神话语的传讲者,我们当如何将神的心意向这个时代的人传明?如何按着正意分解真理的道去造就会众建立健全他们的生命?使他们因见神的面而满足快乐,因听神的话而有力量活出见证?由此足以证明讲台的责任十分重大.本期我们讨论的话题是关注讲台侍奉.     

此岸与彼岸:文学人类学视域中的文学与信仰

文学是人类特有的精神现象,以文学人类学的眼光站在文学之外重新审视文学,将文学当作人类存在的一种方式且放在与人类另一种独有的精神现象--信仰的关系中考察,将会发现文学和信仰在神话中就开始结下不解之缘:文学使生存于此岸的人类在达至于彼岸的过程中可以亲切地感受到信仰之光的照耀,文学也因此具有了内外两重意义并成为人们可以苦心经营的一种信仰.在这个信仰危机的时代,文学还有助于感性的方式重新唤回人们对信仰的执著和对意义的追求.文学和信仰因共同的超越性品质而成为人类生存的不可或缺的精神家园.     

灵修心语

正一我们原可达到的成就因为没有求索而会失去,我们原可承载的祝福也会因为德行不济而丧失。祝福需要宏大的容器承载,恩典需要高贵的品格配对。二成功或许是偶然中碰撞出的火花,但去碰撞火花的过程绝非偶然。所有的收获都是持续成长的结果。三上帝赐福一个人手中的工作,但不会赐福一双不工作的手。     

草人

拥有了一个淳朴的名字,便滋生了一份淡泊的心境。在没有月光和星星的夜晚,虔诚地借一点萤火的光亮,把自己点燃。我的路很小,仅仅有一粒萤火的光芒就足够了。我不会把奢望的目光焦灼地投向远方的夜空,期待阳光把我周围的事物照得清澈透明。我     

多么奇妙的更新

正"你是位奇妙的神,你是位奇妙的神,你创造了山林你创造大海,你使雀鸟在天空自由自在。你是位奇妙的神……"傍晚,疲惫的我点出手机里的这首赞美诗,合上眼睛,听着六岁的小孩子歌唱。这是他在主日学里学的第一首歌,旋律优美,宛如天籁。当时我录制下来,并且设了自动重复。听着听着,仿佛《诗篇》里的音律和叹息,渐渐拂     

杯水人生

一杯水,静静地立在桌子上。玻璃的杯子,清澈透明。氤氲的热气在杯子上方盘旋,似奔涌的激情,更是向上的力量。微卷的茶叶正被开水的温度与热情浸泡开来,慢慢地舒展自己的身姿,在一杯水里开始生命的舞蹈。有了温度,有了热情,就有     

遇见

一粒种子被风吹起,如果落在肥沃的原野上,来年定会开出绚烂的花朵;如果被抛在荒凉的沙漠中,必会寂寞一生。小鸡破壳而出的刹那间,如果面对的是母亲守候的翅膀,得到的定是温暖的呵护;如果面对的是花猫贪婪的目光,后果将不堪设想。     

郎庄面塑的文化内涵

作为鲁西北地区面塑艺术的代表,郎庄面塑具有独特丰富的文化内涵:一是面老虎名称中的镇宅消灾的观念与图腾神秘意识;二是它的题材中所折射出的对生命的讴歌和对幸福吉祥的追求;三是它的功能、造型、色彩中所包含的人们的基本审美意识.     

The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution

Science undermines the certitude of non-naturalistic answers to the question of whether human life has meaning. I explore whether evolution can provide a naturalistic basis for existential meaning. Using the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett and scientist Ursula Goodenough, I argue that evolution is the locus of the possibility of meaning because it has produced intentionality, the matrix of consciousness. I conclude that the question of the meaning of human life is an existentialist one: existential meaning is a product of the individual and collective tasks human beings undertake.     

On Classification of Scientific Revolutions

The question whether Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions could be applied to mathematics caused many interesting problems to arise. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether there are different kinds of scientific revolution, and if so, how many. The basic idea of the paper is to discriminate between the formal and the social aspects of the development of science and to compare them. The paper has four parts. In the first introductory part we discuss some of the questions which arose during the debate of the historians of mathematics. In the second part, we introduce the concept of the epistemic framework of a theory. We propose to discriminate three parts of this framework, from which the one called formal frame will be of considerable importance for our approach, as its development is conservative and gradual. In the third part of the paper we define the concept of epistemic rupture as a discontinuity in the formal frame. The conservative and gradual nature of the changes of the formal frame open the possibility to compare different epistemic ruptures. We try to show that there are four different kinds of epistemic rupture, which we call idealisation, re-presentation, objectivisation and re-formulation. In the last part of the paper we derive from the classification of the epistemic ruptures a classification of scientific revolutions. As only the first three kinds of rupture are revolutionary (the re-formulations are rather cumulative), we obtain three kinds of scientific revolution: idealisation, re-presentation, and objectivisation. We discuss the relation of our classification of scientific revolutions to the views of Kuhn, Lakatos, Crowe, and Dauben. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Inférences émotionnelles et compréhension de textes narratifs : lorsque la perspective du lecteur diverge de celle du protagoniste

This study deals with the emotional inferences readers generate during the reading of narrative texts. The objective was to show that the accessibility of the representation of the emotional state of the protagonist depends on the reader's and the protagonist's knowledge of the situation. In the texts we used, the reader and the protagonist either shared the same amount of knowledge of the situation, or the protagonist was described as being ignorant of relevant situational information. The main result indicated that, in the presence of a difference between the protagonist and the reader, regarding their situational knowledge, the accessibility of the representation of the protagonist's emotion slowed down. In other words, the protagonist's emotion was more accessible when it was coherent with the situational knowledge of both the reader and the protagonist.     

Ethics and science: Educating the public

This article looks at the public debate which took place in the first half of the twentieth century and has repercussions to the present day. It was about the ethical stance of scientists, and how science should be organized. In particular, it examines the positions taken by Professor F. Soddy, F.R.S. and Nobel Laureate, who stressed the responsibility of scientists for the uses made of their research, Professor Michael Polanyi, F.R.S., who emphasised the obligation of scientists to the truth and the essential role of morality in the organization of science, and Professor J.D.Bernal, F.R.S., who insisted that science was practised for utilitarian reasons and should be consciously developed for the good of society.     

The initial representation in reasoning towards an interpretation of conditional sentences

All accounts of human reasoning (whether presented at the symbolic or subsymbolic level) have to reckon with the temporal organization of the human processing systems and the ephemeral nature of the representations it uses. We present three new empirical tests for the hypothesis that people commence the interpretational process by constructing a minimal initial representation. In the case of if A then C the initial representation captures the occurrence of the consequent, C, within the context of the antecedent, A. Conditional inference problems are created by a categorical premise that affirms or denies A or C. The initial representation allows an inference when the explicitly represented information matches (e.g., the categorical premise A affirms the antecedent “A”) but not when it mismatches (e.g., “not-A” denies A). Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that people tend to accept the conclusion that “nothing follows” for the denial problems, as indeed they do not have a determinate initial-model conclusion. Experiment 3 demonstrated the other way round that the effect of problem type (affirmation versus denial) is reduced when we impede the possibility of inferring a determinate conclusion on the basis of the initial representation of both the affirmation and the denial problems.     

Doing it again: Obsessions

This paper gives three readings of psychoanalysis based on differing understandings of the repetition compulsion as instanced in the case of Freud's rat man. the first reading is an interpretation of Freud's official analytic theory and practice and can be called the ordinary or naive reading. the second reading brackets the natural standpoint assumed by the first reading, hence requiring scare quotes over the word ‘psychoanalysis'. the second reading is constructed from the perspective of the structuralist and quasi-existential orientation of Lacan. the third and final reading is a sketch of the rat man as if seen through the anasemic lens of Nicolas Abraham. the title of this paper - ‘Doing it again' - refers to our ‘numbers' or symptoms, i.e. the compulsive and repetitive ways in which we relate to others and the potential of each of these psychoanalytic approaches to enable us to catch ourselves at it.     

Mythological Underpinnings of Feminine Development

In the manner of Oedipus Rex, the myth of Myrrha—a story about a daughter's initiation of sex with her father—promises to divulge insights about feminine development. Given parallels between these two myths, the author asks why Jung identified Electra rather than Myrrha as the feminine counterpart to Oedipus, and revisits Freud's and Jung's differing interpretations of the incest theme in personality development. To break open the metaphor of Myrrha's incest, the author analyzes a similar account of incest in the Old Testament story of Lot and his wife and finds that they share a theme of female bitterness related to wounding of the mother and its arresting effect on the daughter's maturation. The article then considers the Demeter-Persephone myth, a tale not of incest but rape in Persephone's initiation into womanhood. In contrast to Myrrha, Persephone's development unfolds with strong maternal support tempered by the opposing claims on her by the masculine. The article draws these stories together to illuminate the archetypal forces that drive feminine development as well as the human affairs that resist and complicate them. The article concludes with a case study of a client whose developmental “stuckness” follows the contours of the Myrrha myth.     

Characteristics of the Force Applied to a Pedal During Human Pushing Efforts: Emergent Linearity

The force seated humans exert on a translationally fixed pedal (foot force) may be directed at any angle because the fixed distance between the seat and the pedal axis kinematically constrains the lower limb. The authors' objective in the present work was to characterize such force. Participants (N = 7) generated force with their lower limb by pushing against the pedal in the most comfortable manner. Pushing efforts were repeated randomly 3 times at each of 97 sagittal-plane pedal axis positions and 10 additional times in 9 of those positions (2,895 total pushes). In 87% of the pushes, the measured sagittal-plane force exerted on the pedal by the foot changed magnitude and direction through time, such that the path of the head of the force vector traced a straight line. The linearity of the foot force paths reflected directional invariance in the changes of the foot force vector as the magnitude of the vector increased. The orientation of those linear force paths varied with limb posture in a similar manner across participants. The authors conclude mat the emergent linearity of the force path is consistent with minimization of path length in foot force space. Alternatively, the linearity of the force paths suggests a motor control strategy that simplifies the control to a monoparametric form.     

Alief and Explanation

This article critiques the much‐discussed notion of alief recently introduced by Tamar Gendler. The narrow goal is to show that the notion is explanatorily unnecessary; the broader goal is to demonstrate the importance of making explicit one's explanatory framework when offering a philosophical account of the mind. After introducing the concept of alief and the examples Gendler characterizes in terms of it, the article examines the explanatory framework within which appeal to such a concept can seem necessary. This framework, it argues, is a generalization of the belief‐desire account of action. Although Gendler introduces the notion of alief in an attempt to move beyond the belief‐desire account, it argues that she nevertheless works within a generalized version of its explanatory structure. Once the framework is made explicit, we find no explanatory need that requires introducing the notion of alief into our account of the mind.     

Probabilistic Cause and the Thirsty Traveler

In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the first variation the first enemy emptied the canteen and the second enemy threw it away. On this variation, the act of neither enemy comes out, on the analysis employed here, as causally relevant to, and thus not as a cause of, the fact that the traveler died, but the conjunction of the two acts is a cause of it. This version is a case of mutual preemption. I argue that it has the same structure as the voting paradox, which thus has an analogous solution. In the standard version, in which the first enemy added poison to the water in the traveler's canteen, the act of the second enemy (who threw the canteen away) comes out, on the analysis used here, as causally relevant to and as a cause of the fact that the traveler died, but the act of the first enemy comes out as neither. I also make a comparison with Lewis' accounts, and discuss alternative treatments of the puzzle such as those of Hart and Honore and of Gavison, Margalit, and Ullmann-Margalit.