Bochenski on Property Identity and the Refutation of Universals

An argument against multiply instantiable universals is considered in neglected essays by Stanislaw Lesniewski and I.M. Bochenski. Bochenski further applies Lesniewski’s refutation of universals by maintaining that identity principles for individuals must be different than property identity principles. Lesniewski’s argument is formalized for purposes of exact criticism, and shown to involve both a hidden vicious circularity in the form of impredicative definitions and explicit self-defeating consequences. Syntactical restrictions on Leibnizian indiscernibility of identicals are recommended to forestall Lesniewski’s paradox.     

Subsumption and Relative Identity

This paper is a modification of Nicola Guarino and Christopher Welty's conception of the subsumption relation. Guarino and Welty require that that whether one property may subsume the other should depend on the modal metaproperties of those properties. I argue that the part of their account that concerns the metaproperty carrying a criterion of identity is essentially flawed. Subsequently, I propose to constrain the subsumption relation not, as Guarino and Welty require, by means of incompatible criteria of absolute identity but by means of incompatible criteria of relative identity. After discussing the benefits of applying relative identity in ontological investigations I provide a formal framework in which to prove a counterpart of the identity criteria constraint.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Courage in The Analects: A Genealogical Survey of the Confucian Virtue of Courage

The different meanings of “courage” in The Analects were expressed in Confucius’ remark on Zilu’s bravery. The typological analysis of courage in Mencius and Xunzi focused on the shaping of the personalities of brave persons. “Great courage” and “superior courage”, as the virtues of “great men” or “shi junzi 士君子 (intellectuals with noble characters)”, exhibit not only the uprightness of the “internal sagacity”, but also the rich implications of the “external kingship”. The prototype of these brave persons could be said to be between Zengzi’s courage and King Wen’s courage. The discussion entered a new stage of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties, when admiration for “Yanzi’s great valor” became the key of various arguments. The order of “the three cardinal virtues” was also discussed because it concerned the relationship between “finished virtue” and “novice virtue”; hence, the virtue of courage became internalized as an essence of the internal virtuous life. At the turn of the 20th century, when China was trembling under the threat of foreign powers, intellectuals remodeled the tradition of courage by redefining “Confucius’ great valor”, as Liang Qichao did in representative fashion in his book Chinese Bushido. Hu Shi’s Lun Ru 论儒 (On Ru) was no more than a repetition of Liang’s opinion. In the theoretical structures of the modern Confucians, courage is hardly given a place. As one of the three cardinal virtues, bravery is but a concept. In a contemporary society where heroes and sages exist only in history books, do we need to talk about courage? How should it be discussed? These are questions which deserve our consideration.     

大学生自我同一性状态与同一性风格、亲子沟通的关系

采用问卷法对594名大学生进行调查,结果发现,大学生自我同一性状态的人数分布中,延缓状态占67.5%,其余三种同一性状态各占10%左右;大学生在四种同一性状态的人数分布上不存在年级差异和性别差异;与其他同一性状态相比,获得状态的大学生在信息风格上得分最高,早闭状态的大学生在规范风格上得分最高,扩散状态的大学生在扩散风格上得分最高;亲子沟通中的开放性和问题既对同一性状态有直接预测作用,又以三种同一性风格为中介间接影响同一性状态。     

同一性地位理论及其扩展模型

Marcia的同一性地位理论及其模型开辟了同一性研究的实证道路。在此基础上产生了诸多扩展模型,主要有Berzonsky的同一性风格模型;Grotevant的同一性探索过程模型;Kerplman的同一性控制模型;Luyckx的四维度模型;Crocetti的三维度模型。该文对这些模型的基本内容、价值与局限进行了简评,并指出了同一性地位理论模型发展的特点及未来趋势。     

The Mediating Effects of Benefit Finding on the Relationship Between the Identity Centrality of Negative Stressful Events and Identity Achievement

Which types of benefit finding in negative events central to identity lead to higher identity achievement? This study examined the relationships between the identity centrality of negative events, benefit finding, and identity achievement, with consideration of differences between benefit-finding domains. Participants included 245 undergraduates, who recalled a previous negative event and completed the Identity Scale, Centrality of Event Scale, and items regarding benefit finding. Path analysis showed that benefit finding regarding personal growth consistently correlated with identity achievement, while the effects of recognizing warmth in others were unstable depending on event category. The findings demonstrated the role of benefit finding regarding personal growth in promoting identity achievement and buffering the original adverse impact of negative events on identity.     

On Similarity Coefficients for 2×2 Tables and Correction for Chance

This paper studies correction for chance in coefficients that are linear functions of the observed proportion of agreement. The paper unifies and extends various results on correction for chance in the literature. A specific class of coefficients is used to illustrate the results derived in this paper. Coefficients in this class, e.g. the simple matching coefficient and the Dice/Sørenson coefficient, become equivalent after correction for chance, irrespective of what expectation is used. The coefficients become either Cohen’s kappa, Scott’s pi, Mak’s rho, Goodman and Kruskal’s lambda, or Hamann’s eta, depending on what expectation is considered appropriate. Both a multicategorical generalization and a multivariate generalization are discussed.     

The Elimination of Self-Reference: Generalized Yablo-Series and the Theory of Truth

Although it was traditionally thought that self-reference is a crucial ingredient of semantic paradoxes, Yablo (1993, 2004) showed that this was not so by displaying an infinite series of sentences none of which is self-referential but which, taken together, are paradoxical. Yablo’s paradox consists of a countable series of linearly ordered sentences s(0), s(1), s(2),... , where each s(i) says: For each k > i, s(k) is false (or equivalently: For no k > i is s(k) true). We generalize Yablo’s results along two dimensions. First, we study the behavior of generalized Yablo-series in which each sentence s(i) has the form: For Q k > i, s(k) is true, where Q is a generalized quantifier (e.g., no, every, infinitely many, etc). We show that under broad conditions all the sentences in the series must have the same truth value, and we derive a characterization of those values of Q for which the series is paradoxical. Second, we show that in the Strong Kleene trivalent logic Yablo’s results are a special case of a more general fact: under certain conditions, any semantic phenomenon that involves self-reference can be emulated without self-reference. Various translation procedures that eliminate self-reference from a non-quantificational language are defined and characterized. An Appendix sketches an extension to quantificational languages, as well as a new argument that Yablo’s paradox and the translations we offer do not involve self-reference.     

青少年自我同一性状态的发展及其与父母教养权威性、同一性风格的关系

采用修订的自我同一性状态问卷、同一性风格问卷和父母教养方式问卷对1233名初中生、高中生和大学生进行调查研究,考察青少年自我同一性状态的发展特点以及父母教养权威性、同一性风格和自我同一性状态之间的关系。结果发现:从初中到高中,青少年的自我同一性状态表现出前进的发展趋势,高中和大学阶段处于四种同一性状态的人数比例不存在明显差异;男大学生比女大学生更多地处于同一性获得状态;父母教养权威性既对同一性状态有直接预测作用,又以同一性风格为中介对其产生间接影响。     

Error is proportional to distance measured by honeybees: Weber’s law in the odometer

Honeybees were trained to fly a specific distance, the same over trials, down a tunnel for a reward. After training, they were tested occasionally with the reward absent. On tests, bees fly to or just past the expected place of reward, then turn around and fly back. After some distance, they turn back again, and may continue turning back and forth a number of times. Past research has shown that distance estimation in this task is based on the retinal flow of visual texture on the walls of the tunnel. Here we measured the errors in distance estimation as a function of training distance. Errors were measured as the standard deviation across trials of the positions of the first two turns (Turn1 and Turn2), and of the Middle (average of Turn1 and Turn2) and Spread (difference between Turn1 and Turn2). All errors were proportional to the training distance, thus obeying Weber’s law. Models of possible mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are discussed. The mean Spread matches the errors in Turn1 and Middle, suggesting that the bee chooses the spread of its search to match the expected odometric error. Received: 28 April 1998 / Accepted after revision: 19 November 1998     

Intersectional Identities,Identity Dimensions,and Academic Contingencies of Self-Worth

Many people rely on academic performance as an important part of their self-concept, or have academic contingencies of self-worth. We compared academic contingencies of self-worth in three groups of participants, who varied in their feelings about two minority identities: sexual minority Asian/Pacific Islanders, straight Asian/Pacific Islanders, and sexual minority Whites. Comparing pairs of groups that shared one marginalized social identity, we confirmed our hypothesis that participants’ feelings about their racial identity related to contingent self-worth differently based on their sexuality; in contrast, participants’ feelings about their sexual identity related to contingent self-worth in the same way regardless of race. The group defined by the intersection of two minority social identities (Asian/Pacific Islander and sexual minority) is of particular interest.     

医生身份建构影响因素的质性分析

运用Nvivo12 Plus软件,通过对25名医生、6.8万字访谈资料三级编码的分析,发现影响医生身份建构的6个因素是：医生人格、身份认同、职业认知、职业成长、职业能力和职业压力。健全的性格心理是医生身份建构的人格要求;高度的身份认同是医生身份建构的心理基础;深刻的职业认知是医生身份建构的起点;持续的职业成长是医生身份建构的路径;突出的职业能力是医生身份构建的核心;应对复杂的职业压力是医生身份建构的策略。医生的身份建构需要从性格心理、情感态度、医学道德、医学教育、终身学习、学科交流、技术能力和尊重能力等方面切入培养。

     

Emerging Christianity and Religious Identity

The issue of religious identity is important for understanding the Emerging Church movement (ECM), which is in our view a religious orientation adopted by individuals and groups with a variety of religious identities. ECM participants are often resistant to religious identity labels, even to the point of being reluctant to identify as part of the ECM itself. Coupling this resistance with the growing millennial embrace of the category “religious none,” we use identity theory to argue that the kind of religious change we see with millennials and the Emerging Church is the product of identity change. Using the results of focus groups with millennials in the southern United States, we argue that the potential for religious change around Emerging Church identities lies in a process of shifting. We also identify the potential for religious change among different Emerging Christian identities, taking Peter Rollins as an example of someone who proposes a concept of Christian identity more radical than those espoused by other Emerging Church figures.     

民族本质论对民族认同和刻板印象的影响

The simple understanding of ethnicity by lay people is called the lay people’s theory of ethnicity, two theories are used to interpret the ethnicity by lay people in their everyday life. One of the theories contends that ethnicity is determined by nonmalleable, deep-seated essence and the essence would give rise to stable personality traits and abilities across situations, this is called the essentialist theory of ethnicity. The other theory, however, denies the real existence of ethnic essence, ethnicity is a social construction that is arbitrarily created due to social and political reasons in historical contexts, which is termed the social constructivist theory. Some western studies have shown that people have different interpretation about ethnicity cause different group perceptions and group relations. It is necessary to test and extend these results in another social background, like the Chinese one. First, 351 students from different ethnic groups participated in Study 1. They completed a questionnaire aimed at assessing their attitudes towards inter-group perception, ethnic identity, lay people’s theory of ethnicity, and out-group contact attitude. The results showed that: (1) the stronger essentialist belief a participant has, the more sensitive he or she is about group difference; (2) essentialist theory affects people’s inter-group identity, i.e. the deeper one believes in essentialism, the tenser he or she feels about in-group identity and bias, the more passive attitude is hold towards out-group contact. Second, 104 Han students participated in Study 2. An experimental method was used to test stereotyping differences against the minorities in relationship to lay people’s ethnic theories. Participants were randomly assigned to read the article advocating the essentialist view of ethnicity or the article advocating the social constructionist view of ethnicity. The result illustrates that: participants in the essentialist ethnicity condition showed stronger stereotyped impressions, especially negative stereotyping than did those in the social constructionist condition, but participants in the two conditions did not differ significantly on their positive stereotyping. In conclusion, the essentialist theory of ethnicity has a great influence on ethnic identity and ethnic stereotyping. Practical implications of these results imply that lay people’s theory of ethnicity can be used as a vehicle for reducing prejudice. Specifically, we can teach people to hold more social constructivist belief and less essentialist belief.     

Identity Processes and Environmental Threat: the Effects of Nationalism and Local Identity upon Perception of Beach Pollution

This study examines the importance of local and national identity processes in predicting the perception of a threat to the local environment: pollution of British beaches defined in terms of European Union (EU) regulations concerning cleanliness. Place identity and social identity theories would predict that English people would exhibit positive discrimination when evaluating both their local and national beaches and would allow ingroup preferences to influence their estimates of beach pollution. The study involved administering questionnaires to 347 English students drawn from secondary schools in six seaside resorts (three with ‘polluted’ beaches, and three with ‘unpolluted’ beaches according to the EU criteria). It was hypothesized that degree of both local and national identification would predict variance in perceived levels of pollution independently of either the EU categorization or the physical evidence of pollution available. On the whole, results confirmed this main hypothesis: subjects who were more attached to their town or their nation tended to perceive their local and national beaches as less polluted. Traditional predictors of environmental evaluation (such as socio-demographic variables, environmental concern, use of the environment) did not play an important role in predicting beach pollution perception. Denial of physical assessments of pollution was interpreted as a strategy used to cope with the threat to place identity posed by the labelling of local beaches by a powerful outgroup (the EU).     

Physicalism as an attitude

It is widely noted that physicalism, taken as the doctrine that the world contains just what physics says it contains, faces a dilemma which, some like Tim Crane and D.H. Mellor have argued, shows that “physicalism is the wrong answer to an essentially trivial question”. I argue that both problematic horns of this dilemma drop out if one takes physicalism not to be a doctrine of the kind that might be true, false, or trivial, but instead an attitude or oath one takes to formulate one’s ontology solely according to the current posits of physics.     

Harun al-Rashid and the Terrorists: Identity Concealed, Identity Revealed

The assumption of false identities is a frequent theme in history, fiction, and current events. Spies and criminals are among those who pretend to be other than they are, although the strategy is not restricted to them. Harun al-Rashid, medieval Caliph of Baghdad, was described in the Thousand and One Nights as disguising himself in order to detect and punish evildoers. One distinctive feature of his adventures is that at some point he threw off the disguise and revealed his true identity. This paper recounts similar self-exposures by spies and terrorists (including those of 9/11) in situations where such an act could spell disaster for them. It further explores a number of explanations for the "Harun al-Rashid motive," suggests a way to measure it, and discusses ways in which counterterrorism agencies could build upon it for their own purposes.