Descartes and the Dissolution of Life

I argue that Descartes is not a reductionist about life, but dissolves or eliminates the category entirely. This is surprising both because he repeatedly refers to the life of humans, animals, and plants and because he appears to rely on the category of life to construct his physiology and medicine. Various attempts have been made in the scholarship to attribute a principled concept of life to Descartes. Most recently, Detlefsen (2016) has argued that Descartes “is a reductionist with respect to explanation of life phenomena but not an eliminativist with respect to life itself” (143). I show that all these attempts either result in arbitrariness or force Descartes's wider philosophical project into incoherence. I argue that Descartes's ontological commitments make a principled concept of life impossible, that he does not need such a concept, and that his project ends up more coherent without one.     

The return of the nativist

Radical Concept Nativism (RCN) is the doctrine that most of our concepts are innate. In this paper I will argue in favour of RCN by developing a speculative account of concept acquisition that has considerable nativist credentials and can be defended against the most familiar anti-nativist objections. The core idea is that we have a whole battery of hard-wired dispositions that determine how we group together objects with which we interact. In having these dispositions we are effectively committed to an implicit conceptual scheme and acquiring concepts is a matter of labelling the elements of that scheme.     

生活,需要科学和理性

半月前的某一天,笔者有兴来到蔡甸区蔡正街某路口,老远就看见两个“和尚”分两处依次在人行道旁的“瞎子算命”处坐着、坐着,从口里发出招呼声:“施主,结个善缘吧,才两元钱。”一会儿过去了,有位青年男士走到某一和尚处,向他手中投放了两枚硬币,于是就得到一根竹签。解签后,和尚看了看男士的手相,又看了看他的衣冠,说道:“我很为你惋惜,从你手中那条线看,你很聪明,可惜旁边有一条杂线破坏了你的运程,否则,早就从名牌学府里毕业了。”这青年听完后二话没说就走了。后来我得知,这位青年男士,就是我区某中专的外语教师,学历已是硕士。位处武汉…     

Dealing with Diversity: On the Uses of Common Sense in Descartes and Montaigne

This essay attempts to retrieve the notion of ‘common sense’ within the writings of Descartes and Montaigne. I suggest that both writers represent distinct traditions in which the notion is employed. Descartes represents a modernist tradition in which common sense is understood to be a cognitive faculty, while Montaigne represents a humanist tradition in which common sense is understood as a political virtue. I also suggest that both writers work with the notion as a way of responding to diversity in the world. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the notion of common sense employed by Descartes and Montaigne emerges out of the scholastic tradition and the assertion that both writers are responding to the educational consequences of scholasticism. I also discuss how the reconstruction of Descartes in this paper can provide some ground for raising new questions about the Cartesian project and educational philosophy. Finally, I gesture toward the idea that the humanist tradition with its understanding of common sense as political virtue can provide benefit for contemporary responses to diversity.     

How Norms (Might) Guide Belief

Abstract

Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.     

Norms of judgement,naturalism, and normativism about content

David Papineau [1999. “Normativity and Judgement.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 73 (Sup. Vol.): 16–43.] argues that norms of judgement pose no special problem for naturalism, because all such norms of judgement are derived from moral or personal values. Papineau claims that this account of the normativity of judgement presupposes an account of content that places normativity outside the analysis of content, because in his view any accounts of content that place normativity inside the analysis of content cannot explain the normativity of judgement in the derivative way he proposes. Furthermore, he argues that normative accounts of content along those lines are independently problematic. In this paper I aim to respond to both objections, by arguing that normative accounts of content can be seen as naturalist accounts, even if they place normativity inside the analysis of content; and that normative accounts of content are compatible with a derivative account of norms of judgement of the sort Papineau advocates.     

教师期望的改变对初中生自我价值感及动机信念影响的实验研究

以84名初中二年级学生为被试,采用单因子协变量分析对教师期望的改变对初中生自我价值感及动机信念的影响进行研究。结果表明:(1)教师期望的改变对初中生总体自我价值感、个人取向一般自我价值感及个人取向特殊自我价值感有显著影响。(2)教师期望的改变对初中生逃避型自我取向及社会效能—同学社会效能—老师有显著影响。     

How misinformation taints our belief system: A focus on belief updating and relational reasoning

This commentary complements Stanley et al.'s (2022) target article by concentrating on the process of false belief construction and its associated cognitive mechanisms. It also concurs with the target article that a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which consumers revise their truth judgments in view of new evidence is needed. Specifically, this essay develops two main dimensions: the first about what we know from the actual construction of truth judgments; the second about what we know from the cognitive mechanisms by which truth judgments are constructed. Particularly on this second dimension, I develop the idea that relational reasoning is key to understanding how individuals integrate new information within their internal belief systems. These two dimensions are both process-minded, yet one is about how beliefs evolve over time, whereas the other is about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie belief construction. Overall, an understanding of these two elements is crucial to finding behavioral interventions that may curb the spread of misinformation.     

The simple constitutivist move

A common feature of all versions of constitutivism is the “simple constitutivist move” to the effect that engagement in any enterprise requires respecting the constitutive standards of the enterprise on pain of failing to engage in it. The move is both trivial and powerful in addressing skeptical challenges. I argue that this move only helps transmitting the robust authority of standards that are externally grounded, even when applied to functional items or constitutive aims. This is not a problem for modest versions of constitutivism, but more ambitious constitutivists seems to require supplementation to ground robust or authoritative normativity. Unfortunately, the usual appeal to inescapability is at best a defensive move. Ambitious constitutivism needs to look elsewhere in its search for a positive explanation of the source of robust normativity. The simple constitutivist move, even when combined with inescapability, is indeed too simple.     

心理贫穷感对决策的影响

“贫穷感”是个体与金钱相关的、相对稳定的内心感受,包含不安全感、焦虑感、厌恶感、不满足感和金钱关注五个维度,用以描述个体与金钱相关的认知和情绪上的差异。其概念内涵由28位心理学专家和社会学专家共同界定。贫穷感自评量表是一个15题5点Likert量表。通过问卷法对420位社会人员测量发现,贫穷感与生命史Mini-K测量结果显著负相关。贫穷感越高的个体越倾向于生命史快策略。     

关于城市居民心理凝聚感与压力源关系的研究

使用问卷测试方式对城市居民的心理凝聚感和压力源之问的关系进行研究。结果发现,在7种压力源因子和压力源总分中,经济收支和工作压力、家庭生活事件、知识技能更新3个压力源因子和压力源总分在三个级别的心理凝聚感组之间存在显著差异,心理凝聚感水平高的被试,对外界工作生活事件产生了最低的压力评价。职业、经济收入不同的群体在心理凝聚感的得分上存在显著的差异,经济收入高的个体有较高的心理凝聚感。说明不同心理凝聚感水平的被试面对相同的工作生活压力,其压力认知评价存在差异。     

RELIGION AS A CONTROL GUIDE: ON THE IMPACT OF RELIGION ON COGNITION

Religions commonly are taken to provide general orientation in leading one's life. We develop here the idea that religions also may have a much more concrete guidance function in providing systematic decision biases in the face of cognitive‐control dilemmas. In particular, we assume that the selective reward that religious belief systems provide for rule‐conforming behavior induces systematic biases in cognitive‐control parameters that are functional in producing the wanted behavior. These biases serve as default values under uncertainty and affect performance in any task that shares cognitive‐control operations with the religiously motivated rule‐conforming behavior the biases were originally developed for. Such biases therefore can be unraveled and objectified by means of rather simple tasks that are relatively well understood with regard to the cognitive mechanisms they draw on.     

哲学性向、生活事件与精神信仰关系的研究

该文从实证的角度,探讨哲学性向、生活事件与精神信仰的关系。研究表明:1)哲学性向对宗教、神灵、金钱、家族崇拜起负向作用;对政治、国家和民族主义起正向作用。2)生活事件对神灵、生命和家庭起负向预测作用;生活事件通过与哲学性向的交互作用对民族信仰起预测作用。     

Sense of Divine Involvement and Sense of Meaning in Life: Religious Tradition as a Contingency

This study examines the association between sense of divine involvement and sense of meaning in life. Then it proceeds to assess how this association varies by religious tradition. Using a random and national sample from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, this study finds that sense of divine involvement is associated with greater odds of having a sense of meaning in life. In addition, religious affiliation modifies this association. Specifically, the positive association between sense of divine involvement and the odds of having a sense of meaning in life is observed only among evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics, but not among other religionists and religious nones. I discuss how the results make contributions to knowledge about the link between religious beliefs, religious tradition, and mental health.     

Maintaining faith in agency under immutable constraints: cognitive consequences of believing in negotiable fate

Negotiable fate refers to the idea that one can negotiate with fate for control, and that people can exercise personal agency within the limits that fate has determined. Research on negotiable fate has found greater prevalence of related beliefs in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe and English-speaking countries. The present research extends previous findings by exploring the cognitive consequences of the belief in negotiable fate. It was hypothesized that this belief enables individuals to maintain faith in the potency of their personal actions and to remain optimistic in their goal pursuits despite the immutable constraints. The belief in negotiable fate was predicted to (a) facilitate sense-making of surprising outcomes; (b) increase persistence in goal pursuits despite early unfavorable outcomes; and (c) increase risky choices when individuals have confidence in their luck. Using multiple methods (e.g., crosscultural comparisons, culture priming, experimental induction of fate beliefs), we found supporting evidence for our hypotheses in three studies. Furthermore, as expected, the cognitive effects of negotiable fate are observed only in cultural contexts where the fate belief is relatively prevalent. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the intersubjective approach to understanding the influence of culture on cognitive processes (e.g., Chiu, Gelfand, Yamagishi, Shteynberg, & Wan, 2010), the sociocultural foundations that foster the development of a belief in negotiable fate, and an alternative perspective for understanding the nature of agency in contexts where constraints are severe. Future research avenues are also discussed.     

Descartes on the Identity of Passion and Action

According to the standard Aristotelian doctrine of the identity of passion and action (I_pa), a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a distinction of reason, and both passion and action are located in the patient. Descartes has recently been interpreted by some scholars to be rejecting I_pa in favor of a view that throws into contention a dualistic interpretation of his philosophy of mind. This article contends that Descartes did hold I_pa, albeit expressed in his own metaphysical vocabulary of substance and mode. On this interpretation, (1) a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a conceptual distinction or distinction of reason and (2) the passion and the action constitute one and the same mode which is locatedin the patient. This result is significant first, because it shows Descartes's retention of a fundamentally Aristotelian understanding of the metaphysical categories of passion and action and second, because it removes some of the support for recent interpretations on which Descartes is seen in the Passions of the Soul to diverge from a dualistic view of mind and body.