Explanation,Contrast, and the Primacy of Practice

Abstract: The common practice of giving (comparing, rejecting and inferring) explanations of phenomena is at the root of articulate learning, including the enterprises we collect under the noun ‘science’. The way that practice privileges a single item from the myriad relevant to any phenomenon tells us something about articulateness itself.     

Descartes and the Primacy of Practice: The Role of the Passions in the Search for Truth

This paper argues that Descartes conceives of theoretical reason in terms derived from practical reason, particularly in the role he gives to the passions. That the passions serve — under normal circumstances — to preserve the union of mind and body is a well-known feature of Descartes's defense of our native make-up. But they are equally important in our more purely theoretical endeavors. Some passions, most notably wonder, provide a crucial source of motivation in the search after truth, and also serve to reinforce memory. Our cognitive successes and failure scan also be tracked by passions and trains of passions.     

Conceptual Art,Ideas, and Ontology

Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens have recently articulated the Idea Idea, the thesis that “in conceptual art, there is no physical medium: the medium is the idea.” But what is an idea, and in the case of works such as Duchamp's Fountain, how does the idea relate to the urinal? In answering these questions, it becomes apparent that the Idea Idea should be rejected. After showing this, I offer a new ontology of conceptual art, according to which such artworks are not ideas but artifacts imbued with ideas. After defending this view from objections, I briefly discuss some implications it has for the ontology of art in general.     

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone,The Primacy of Movement

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

Family therapists and scholars increasingly adopt poststructural and postmodern conceptions of social reality, challenging the notion of stable, universal dynamics within family members and families and favoring a view of reality as produced through social interaction. In the study of gender and diversity, many envision differences as social constructed rather than as “residing” in people or groups. There is a growing interest in discourse or people's everyday use of language and how it may reflect and advance interests of dominant groups in a society. Despite this shift from structures to discourse, therapists struggle to locate the dynamics of power in concrete actions and interactions. By leaving undisturbed the social processes through which gendered and other subjectivities and relations of power are produced, therapists may inadvertently become complicit in the very dynamics of power they seek to undermine. In this article, we argue that discourse analysis can help family therapy scholars and practitioners clarify the link between language and power. We present published examples of discourse analytic studies of gender and sexism and examine the relevance of these ideas for family therapy practice and research.     

胃部恶性肿瘤临床实践中的医疗艺术

医学是一门讲求艺术性的科学.随着社会的发展,医疗艺术在整个医学临床实践中的重要性越来越突出.医疗艺术体现了医生对生命的尊重和伦理的理解.讲求医疗艺术对于建立和谐的医患关系具有重要意义.因此,如何在过硬的现代医学技术基础上提高临床医疗的艺术性,是医学教育和临床实践领域都应该思考的问题.本文以胃部恶性肿瘤的临床实践为例,从态度、语言、表情以及医患互动等细节方面入手,探讨在初诊、术前、康复以及面对晚期临终患者的不同情况中应该如何提高医疗艺术.     

Mathematical Practice,Fictionalism and Social Ontology

From the perspective of mathematical practice, I examine positions claiming that mathematical objects are introduced by human agents. I consider in particular mathematical fictionalism and a recent position on social ontology formulated by Cole (2013, 2015). These positions are able to solve some of the challenges that non-realist positions face. I argue, however, that mathematical entities have features other than fictional characters and social institutions. I emphasise that the way mathematical objects are introduced is different and point to the multifaceted role that relations and interconnections play in this context. Finally, I argue that mathematical entities can be considered to be pragmatically real.

     

Primacy effects in psychophysical judgements

In the first of a series of three experiments, two groups of 10 subjects judged either the bottom half or the top half of a series of 16 squares according to their size. After two presentations with the pretraining series, 10 trials with the total series followed. The initial judgments of the pretraining stimuli showed a marked tendency to persist all through the experiment, thus demonstrating a primacy effect. The effect was not completely removed by instructions to modify the judgment scale (Experiment 2). In the third experiment, the number of categories was varied. With a larger number of categories the primacy effect tended to wear off after a few postshift trials. The results are interpreted as providing an alternative explanation of the frequency effect and the number-of-categories effect discovered by Parducci. The present paper considers the frequency effect a special case of the primacy effect. The explanation is based on the fact that ordinarily stimulus frequency and time of first occurrence are confounded.     

Sheets-Johnstone,M. The Primacy of Movement

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences -     

Proverb Comprehension: The Primacy of Literal Meaning

According to the multistage model of figurative language understanding, literal meanings must be developed before figurative meanings. Although the model implies that figurative understanding should take longer than literal understanding, Kemper (1981) reported that figuratively biased proverbs were processed more quickly than literalized proverbs. By contrast, in the present study the results from six experiments yielded the opposite conclusion. These results support the multistage model and the conceptual base theory of proverb comprehension (Honeck, 1997; Honeck & Temple, 1994; Honeck, Voegtle, Dorfmueller, & Hoffman, 1980) which incorporates it. Discrepancies between studies that have examined the multistage model may crucially depend on methodological factors such as type of experimental design, materials, and, as apparent in the present case, the task and dependent measure used.     

The Perspectives and Challenges of Primacy and Synodality in the Orthodox Church Today

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016 should be perceived and received as a genuine manifestation of synodality at the beginning of the 21st century. It has reminded us that it is within the exercise of primacy and synodality at the universal level that the unity and the orthodoxy of the church is guaranteed. Its message referred to the proposal for the Holy and Great Council to become a regular institution to be convened every seven or ten years. By saying this, the Holy and Great Council has perhaps inaugurated a new era of synodality in the Orthodox Church on the universal level. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Holy and Great Council in an era of globalization, when the pastoral problems encountered by each local autocephalous church, due to a growing secularization of the world, are very similar and need a common synodal response.