The Oneness of Objective Reality and Spiritual Truth

Spirituality and science discover that they are both motivated by the desire to know, and realize that mere sensory perception does not guarantee the truth of knowledge. The concepts that emerge in the new sciences show a striking similarity to the ideas that come to the mind of spiritually intuitive persons, giving rise to the hope that with the recognition that at the bottom objective reality and spiritual truth are one, the historic opposition (or feud) between science and spirituality can at last be overcome.     

The Obligation Dilemma

I motivate a dilemma to show that nothing can be obligatory for anyone regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism (the falsity of determinism) is true. The deterministic horn, to which prime attention is directed, exploits the thesis that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise. Since determinism precludes such freedom, it precludes obligation too. The indeterministic horn allows for freedom to do otherwise but assumes the burden of addressing whether indeterministically caused choices or actions are too much of a matter of luck to be obligatory for anyone. I critically discuss a response to the deterministic horn that invokes the distinction between alternatives compatible with determinism (weak alternatives) and those incompatible with determinism (strong alternatives).     

过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘治疗的统一性与整体观

过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘是常见的上下气道联合炎性疾病。尽管其治疗手段多样,效果良好,但由于目前对过敏性鼻炎的认识及重视程度不够,治疗现状并不乐观。从哲学上辩证统一的认识过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘的治疗,并以现代整体医学的观点分析两者的同一性,为临床实践中针对两者进行整体治疗提供理论依据。     

过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘治疗的统一性与整体观

过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘是常见的上下气道联合炎性疾病.尽管其治疗手段多样,效果良好,但由于目前对过敏性鼻炎的认识及重视程度不够,治疗现状并不乐观.从哲学上辩证统一的认识过敏性鼻炎和支气管哮喘的治疗,并以现代整体医学的观点分析两者的同一性,为临床实践中针对两者进行整体治疗提供理论依据.     

The Irreducibility of Personal Obligation

It is argued that claims about personal obligation (of the form “s ought to ϕ”) cannot be reduced to claims about impersonal obligation (of the form “it ought to be the case that p”). The most common attempts at such a reduction are shown to have unacceptable implications in cases involving a plurality of agents. It is then argued that similar problems will face any attempt to reduce personal obligation to impersonal obligation.     

The Convergence-Divergence Hypothesis

I propose a hypothesis, called the systems convergence-divergence hypothesis, which attempts to explain how the existence and evolution of supraindividual systems (social, political or economic) might be predicted from an analysis of the basic structures that make up their individual entities (molecules and cells) and how, reciprocally, study of these individuals and of their evolution might be approached from knowledge of such systems.     

The Logic of Knowledge Based Obligation

Deontic Logic goes back to Ernst Mally’s 1926 work, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens [Mally. E.: 1926, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz], where he presented axioms for the notion ‘p ought to be the case’. Some difficulties were found in Mally’s axioms, and the field has much developed. Logic of Knowledge goes back to Hintikka’s work Knowledge and Belief [Hintikka, J.: 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions, Cornell University Press] in which he proposed formal logics of knowledge and belief. This field has also developed quite a great deal and is now the subject of the TARK conferences. However, there has been relatively little work combining the two notions of knowledge (belief) with the notion of obligation. (See, however, [Lomuscio, A. and Sergot, M.: 2003, Studia Logica 75 63–92; Moore, R. C.: 1990, In J. F. Allen, J. Hendler and A. Tate (eds.), Readings in Planning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA]) In this paper we point out that an agent’s obligations are often dependent on what the agent knows, and indeed one cannot reasonably be expected to respond to a problem if one is not aware of its existence. For instance, a doctor cannot be expected to treat a patient unless she is aware of the fact that he is sick, and this creates a secondary obligation on the patient or someone else to inform the doctor of his situation. In other words, many obligations are situation dependent, and only apply in the presence of the relevant information. Thus a case for combining Deontic Logic with the Logic of Knowledge is clear. We introduce the notion of knowledge based obligation and offer an S5, history based Kripke semantics to express this notion, as this semantics enables us to represent how information is transmitted among agents and how knowledge changes over time as a result of communications. We consider both the case of an absolute obligation (although dependent on information) as well as the (defeasible) notion of an obligation which may be over-ridden by more relevant information. For instance a physician who is about to inject a patient with drug d may find out that the patient is allergic to d and that she should use d′ instead. Dealing with the second kind of case requires a resort to non-monotonic reasoning and the notion of justified belief which is stronger than plain belief, but weaker than absolute knowledge in that it can be over-ridden. This notion of justified belief also creates a derived notion of default obligation where an agent has, as far as the agent knows, an obligation to do some action a. A dramatic application of this notion is our analysis of the Kitty Genovese case where, in 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while 38 neighbours watched from their windows but did nothing. The reason was not indifference, but none of the neighbours had even a default obligation to act, even though, as a group, they did have an obligation to take some action to protect Kitty. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conferences SEP-2004, and DALT-2004.     

Obligation and Aspect

‘Fred must open the door’ concerns Fred’s obligations. This obligative meaning is turned off by adding aspect: ‘Fred must have opened/be opening/have been opening the door’ are one and all epistemic. Why? In a nutshell: obligative ’must’ operates on procedural contents of imperative sentences, epistemic ‘must’ on propositional contents of declarative sentences; and adding aspect converts procedural into propositional content.     

责任的误读与责任理性的恢复

当前,"责任政府"不仅是国民心中热切的政治期待,而且也正式成为政府的政治承诺.然而,为什么目前会出现"责任政府"的提法?责任在我国是否已经构成为问题?何谓责任?责任的重要意义是什么?责任与价值观之间的内在联系是什么?建立"责任政府"的具体含义是什么?……正是在提出上述问题并希望予以合理回答的过程中,我们发现,在有关责任的问题上,我们原有的认识是远远不够的,而且更为甚者,我们已在不自觉中陷入到因误读而形成的预设性责任幻觉之中.本文并不打算探讨一般的责任理性问题,而仅想在追问责任的内涵、意义、价值观特征等方面为责任理性的恢复做些概念上的准备.     

道教"守一"修持法之源起及其演变

"守一"之说源自<老子·十章>的"载营魄抱一",是指专注于内在之魂魄,使形体不离,与道相合为一.到了汉末六朝,以"守一"来做为修仙养生之法,而所守者,则为三丹田的三一,头部九宫的雄一、雌一,以及守身中诸神徊风混合的帝一.到了唐宋以后,更由于内丹修炼之盛行,因而也有人将内丹修炼之方式,引入"守一"中,于是守一即是炼化精、气、神,使三者合一.     

Oneness Experience: Looking Through Multiple Lenses

This article defines healthy oneness experience and establishes the progressive, life enhancing components of the experience. The author clarifies the paradox that a cohesive, well-integrated self allows unitive, non-self-definitional experiences. The author attempts to work the cultural/clinical border by exploring oneness phenomena as they occur in art, religion, literature and the clinical consulting room. The author uses psychoanalytic tools to understand non-clinical experiences of oneness. Through compelling accounts of such experiences as described by artists, writers and meditators, psychoanalytic theorizing about oneness is illumined further.     

The Innateness Hypothesis and Mathematical Concepts

In historical claims for nativism, mathematics is a paradigmatic example of innate knowledge. Claims by contemporary developmental psychologists of elementary mathematical skills in human infants are a legacy of this. However, the connection between these skills and more formal mathematical concepts and methods remains unclear. This paper assesses the current debates surrounding nativism and mathematical knowledge by teasing them apart into two distinct claims. First, in what way does the experimental evidence from infants, nonhuman animals and neuropsychology support the nativist hypothesis? Second, granting that infants have some elementary mathematical skills, does this mean that such skills play an important role in the development of mathematical knowledge?