RIGHT TURNS AND WRONG TURNS

"Michelle is driving down the street. As she approaches the Intersection she slows the car down, glances in her rear-view mirror, raises her arm out the window, and then turns the car into the near lane."     

BUCK-PASSING AND THE RIGHT KIND OF REASONS

The 'buck-passing' account equates the value of an object with the existence of reasons to favour it. As we argued in an earlier paper, this analysis faces the 'wrong kind of reasons' problem: there may be reasons for pro-attitudes towards worthless objects, in particular if it is the pro-attitudes, rather than their objects, that are valuable. Jonas Olson has recently suggested how to resolve this difficulty: a reason to favour an object is of the right kind only if its formulation does not involve any reference to the attitudes for which it provides a reason. We argue that despite its merits, Olson's solution is unsatisfactory. We go on to suggest that the buck-passing account might be acceptable even if the problem in question turns out to be insoluble.     

BIOLOGY AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is.     

REASONS AND MOTIVATION—NOT A WRONG DISTINCTION

This paper responds to Susan Hurley's attempt to undermine the adequacy of the distinction at the heart of the internalism-externalism debate about reasons for action. The paper shows that Hurley's argument fails and then, more positively, indicates a neat way to characterize the distinction.     

中国人的左右利手分布

在利手与大脑语言优势半球的研究中,尚缺乏中国人左右利手的基本数据。本研究从全国各地调查了18,593名男女正常人和1,748名神经精神病患者的利手分布。正常人包括幼儿园、小学、中学、大学学生,同卵和异卵双生子,以及各种职业的成人。同时还调查了七个少数民族的利手分布。调查结果表明,中国人的左利率仅为0.23％,远远低于西方国家的左利手数值。     

儿童左右概念发展的实验研究

儿童正确地掌握左右概念要經过长期而复杂的发展道路。不同年龄儿童掌握左右概念的水平、反映出各該年龄儿童思維发展的水平。前人的研究指出:儿童对左右方向的辨别,开始是以他自身的左右为推算的出发点,构成感性推算系統。然后在这基础上,形成感性推算系統和有关的詞——“左”“右”的联     

BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract. The sciences may be conceptualized as a hierarchy ranked by level of organization (e.g., many-body physics ranks above particle physics). Each science serves as an antidiscipline for the science above it; that is, between each pair, tense but creative interplay is inevitable. Biology has advanced through such tension between its subdisciplines and now can serve as an antidiscipline for the social sciences—for anthropology, for example, by examining the connection between cultural and biological evolution; for psychology, by addressing the nature of learning and the structure of the unconscious; for economics, by examining economically irrational behavior and by comparing economic activity in humans and other species. Sociology, concerned mainly with advanced literate societies, is relatively remote from the genetic basis of human social behavior. However, moving between biological and social levels of organization generates richness and points to new and unexpected principles.     

基诺族左右利手分布的再调查

1981年,全国利手研究协作组对基诺族的左右利手分布作了首次调查。这次调查的结果是,基诺族全部是强右利手。这是一个非常特殊的结论。为此,一九八九年我们对基诺族的左右利手分布又作了一次调查。调查发现,基诺族并不都是强右利手,他们当中既有一般的右利手,也有混合利手,还有左利手,甚至有1.79％的强左利手。基诺族的左利率高于汉族,但与其他少数民族接近。基诺族的左利率偏高占其传统文化有关。全国利手研究协作组的调查结果应该修正。