How Infants Learn About the Visual World

The visual world of adults consists of objects at various distances, partly occluding one another, substantial and stable across space and time. The visual world of young infants, in contrast, is often fragmented and unstable, consisting not of coherent objects but rather surfaces that move in unpredictable ways. Evidence from computational modeling and from experiments with human infants highlights three kinds of learning that contribute to infants' knowledge of the visual world: learning via association, learning via active assembly, and learning via visual-manual exploration. Infants acquire knowledge by observing objects move in and out of sight, forming associations of these different views. In addition, the infant's own self-produced behavior-oculomotor patterns and manual experience, in particular-are important means by which infants discover and construct their visual world.     

海纳百川为我所用

2007年7月21日至23日,本刊邀请了马来西亚、印度、德国和台湾、香港以及内地的20多名学者,于山西省太原市举行"卫生保健体制改革比较研讨会".     

认识性信任：学龄前儿童的选择性学习

人类个体对外界知识的获取很大程度上依赖于沟通, 即他人的证言。对儿童来说尤其如此。发展心理学家最近致力于研究学龄前儿童对他人证言的信任。一方面, 学龄前儿童往往会盲目地接受他人所告知的信息, 表现为轻信偏差; 另一方面, 儿童在知识学习上又会表现出高度的胜任力, 他们会借助一系列线索保证获取更为可靠的信息, 包括知识性线索和社会性线索。正如有关婴儿是否存在心理理论尚有争论, 儿童认识性信任的潜在机制也存在两种不同的取向, 涉及儿童是否理解信息者的心理状态。尽管对儿童知识性信息的研究取得了大量的成果和发现, 未来仍有许多问题值得探讨。     

A Common Earth Religion: World Religions from an Ecological Perspective

On the basis of a critical analysis of the place of world religions in an era of globalization, and drawing on the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, this paper argues for the need for a shift in perspective from a world economy to an earth economy, and for world religions to become earth religions. Here the anthropocentrism of the modern world is overcome and humanity is viewed as an integrated element in planet earth as a whole. This view implies that the world religions need to give back to the earth the virtues they have projected onto the world beyond, and abandon their denial of life and their capacity for violence. In secular terms, this means that world religions need to engage with the ecological perspective and start by applying it to themselves. For if the earth can no longer support life, that means the end of the human world, and the end of world religions.     

Religion in the Twenty-First-Century World Society

This article presents the main theoretical approaches to the religious phenomenon: functionalism, constructivism, civil religion, invisible religion, diffused religion, rational choice, vicarious religion, and so on. It is difficult to accumulate empirical data that in general are considered too weak. The state of the art of sociology of religion seems promising because of the presence of new generations of sociologists who are deeply involved in their work. For the future a specific theory on migration mobility is necessary. Another necessity is a wider development of qualitative analysis for a better knowledge of religious dynamics.     

Why and How to Learn Why: Analysis-based Generalization of Procedures

Max Wertheimer, in his classic Productive Thinking, linked understanding to transfer: Understanding is important because it provides the ability to generalize the solution of one problem to apply to another. Recent work in human and machine learning has led to the development of a new class of generalization mechanism, called here analysis-based generalization, which can be used to provide a concrete account of the linkage Wertheimer suggested: these mechanisms all, in different ways, use understanding of examples in the generalization process. In this paper I review this class of mechanism, and describe a method for causal attribution that can produce the analyses of examples that the generalization methods require, in the domain of simple procedures in human-computer interaction. This causal analysis method is linked with analysis-based generalization to form EXPL, an implemented model which is a concrete, though limited, instontiation of Wertheimer s scheme. EXPL constructs an understanding of an example procedure and generalizes it on the basis of that understanding. Results of an empirical study suggest that some of EXPL's attribution heuristics are used by people, and that while a subclass of analysis-based methods, called superstitious methods, seem to provide a more plausible account of people's generalization under the conditions of the study than a contrasting class of rationalistic methods, at least some participants appear to use methods from both classes. The results also show that explanation-based methods, which rely on comprehensive domain theories, must be used in conjunction with a means for extending the domain theory. If thus enhanced, explanation-based methods are able to mimic the effects of other analysis-based methods, and can provide a good account of the data, though combinations of other methods must also be considered. Finally, I return to Wertheimer s ideas to argue that none of the current analysis-based generalization methods fully captures Wertheimer s notion of understanding. Proper choice among different possible analyses of an example is crucial for Wertheimer, but I argue that this problem may be beyond the reach of learning systems.     

宗教和理性如何"调和"?

据曹卫东先生《在雅典与耶路撒冷之间》(《读书》2004年第5期)一文评介,2004年新春伊始,在慕尼黑天主教神学院院长舒勒先生主持下,德国现代哲学家哈贝马斯教授和“天主教神学指路人”拉辛格主教分别代表世俗学界和神圣学界,面对面地就“启蒙和宗教”阐述各自的立场。     

Special Divine Action and How to Do Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

One popular line of argument put forward in support of the principle that the right is prior to the good is to show that teleological theories, which put the good prior to the right, lead to implausible normative results. There are situations, it is argued, in which putting the good prior to the right entails that we ought to do things that cannot be right for us to do. Consequently, goodness cannot (always) explain an action’s rightness. This indicates that what is right must be determined independently of the good.

In this paper, I argue that these purported counterexamples to teleology fail to establish that the right must be prior to the good. In fact, putting the right prior to the good can lead to sets of ought statements which potentially conflict with the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. I argue that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right independently of a notion of value or goodness. Every plausible ethical theory needs a mapping from goodness to rightness, which implies that right cannot be prior to the good.     

How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model

Books reviewed:
Mikael Stenmark, How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model. Reviewed by Lincoln Harvey King's College, London     

Citizens of the World and their Religion

Abstract

The notion of a ‘cosmopolites’ has diverged quite far from its philosophical origins, but may eventually serve a similar function. The hope of a global peace or any sort of global management is probably better fulfilled in a federation or complex network of self-governing communities than in a global empire. With or without such an empire though we need some widely shared ‘morale’ or ‘religion’ that will sustain cooperation and obedience to the common good. There are many such competing ‘religions’ and utopian ideals, such that an ongoing global war between superficially distinct but also alarmingly similar power blocks (as described by Orwell) may seem inevitable. A more hopeful future would be one where bourgeois values, a new respect for other terrestrial life, and an awareness of the vastness and strangeness of the cosmos provide a backdrop for such cooperation, on Earth or out among the stars, as we can manage. The rules of trade and transport in such a future may be in the hands of something like Kipling’s Aerial Board of Control, staffed by a new sort of cosmopolitan, subject to occasional popular rebuke. Whether such an order would avoid division must be doubtful still.     

当代世界中的宗教与政治

一 本文将首先描述马克思的宗教理论,然后以此探究宗教在当代政治中所起的作用。近来,这种作用已达到空前的水平。马克思的著作如何才能帮助我们理解这点并对此作出回应呢？     

Anchoring Religion in the World: A Southern African History of Comparative Religion

This essay focuses upon a single object, a shipwrecked anchor that was washed ashore on the eastern Cape coast of southern Africa. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, European travellers, missionaries, and magistrates cited this anchor as evidence of religion among indigenous people in the region. By the end of the century, however, this same anchor was being used by metropolitan theorists as a classic piece of evidence for the origin of religion. By recounting the strange story of this anchor, I hope to recover a history (or prehistory) of the study of religion in three phases—frontier, imperial and apartheid—that have defined the practice of comparative religion from a southern African perspective.     

Religion,Health, and the Psychology of Religion: How the Research on Religion and Health Helps Us Understand Religion

An increasing replication of studies find a correlation between religious belief and practice and mental and physical health and longevity. This paper discusses some of the implications of this research for the ways in which religion might understood psychologically. Most interpretations of this data focus on the presence of one or more mediating variables. This paper argues that the presence of these mediating factors helps us understand more precisely some of the ways in which religion actually does impact on human life and in what the psychological uniqueness of religion actually consists.