寻求最佳说明的推理——访彼得·理普顿教授

彼得·理普顿是当代科学哲学领域内的著名学者。他在牛津大学获得哲学学士和博士学位,现任汉斯·罗森教授席位,剑桥大学科学史和科学哲学系主任,国王学院荣誉成员。同时,他也是研究生命伦理的努费尔德委员会成员,并主持其中的生物基因研究小组。他的哲学兴趣集中在科学中的说明和推理、科学进步、社会认识论、科学与宗教之间的关系以及生物医学伦理等。著有《最佳说明的推理》(1991年第1版,2004年第2版),该书于2004年获得了英国皇家学会讲座的梅达沃奖。作者就当代科学哲学领域内的一些问题,尤其是有关最佳说明的推理问题对他做了一次专访。…     

Interpretation of Poverty in St. Louis County,Minnesota

The paper analyzes subjective poverty in St. Louis County, Minnesota with the methods of systematic data collection. The initial hypothesis states that American people blame the individuals for their poor living conditions. Based on the Easterlin paradox, the next hypothesis states that subjective and absolute poverty lines are independent. Taking into account that the USA is a developed country, subjective wellbeing is supposed to be associated with relative deprivation. The paper concludes that the items most related to poverty are “no job”, “no access to basic needs” and “addiction”. The main causes of poverty are “cycle of poverty”, “no job” and “addiction”. The main consequences of poverty are “no access to basic needs”, “poor health” and “minimum education”. The results revealed that the most important items related to poverty and the main causes and consequences of poverty cannot be classified unambiguously as being individualist, structural or fatal. The analysis showed that subjective poverty line is different from the objective lines. This result supports the Easterlin paradox and implies that people can be dissatisfied with their lives even when they are above the poverty line according to the official statistics. Elimination of absolute poverty may therefore not be enough to improve subjective well-being. The evidence that relative income assessment is not correlated with subjective well-being implies that people are not concerned with their relative income position.     

Jewish pioneers on Canada’s prairies: The Lipton Jewish agricultural colony

This article offers a detailed analysis of the forces that shaped the Lipton colony in its 50-year existence, one of several dozen attempts to establish Jewish agricultural settlement on Canada’s Western prairies. Comparing both the particularities and the common features of Lipton with those of other colonies will allow strengthening some of the commonly accepted generalizations regarding these colonies, while at the same time showing other assumptions to be questionable or even myth. * A detailed discussion of the Jewish agricultural colonies in Western Canada may be found in Yossi Katz and John C. Lehr, The Last Best West: Essays on the Historical Geography of the Canadian Prairies (Jerusalem, 1999). Other sources discussing the colonies and the reasons for their establishment and ultimate disappearance are: Louis Rosenberg, “Jewish Agriculture in Canada” YIVO Annual of Social Sciences 5 (1950), 205–215; Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of the Jews of Canada in the 1930s (Montreal, 1931); Abraham J. Arnold, “The Contribution of the Jews to the Opening and Development of the West” Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society Series 3 no. 3, (Winnipeg, 1968–’69).     

M. M. Bakhtin and the German proto-Romantic tradition

Studies in East European Thought - This paper seeks to explore the relationship between Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s theoretical apparatus and ideas of the immediate precursors of the Jena...