I. Professor Narveson's utilitarianism

Collingwood's theory of presuppositions has never been taken very seriously. But critics have completely overlooked its significance as a theory or model of inquiry intimately tied to certain aspects of discourse in a context of investigation. Viewed this way, Collingwood's theory is on very strong ground, especially when it is reconstructed with the aid of a formal language. The reconstruction shows what is essential to the theory and what is not, allowing us to disregard those of Collingwood's extravagant claims which have frustrated an understanding of his theory's real strength. The reconstruction also provides a general framework within which recent discussion of presuppositions can be unified.     

Sensitivity to relative and absolute motion.

The threshold of sensitivity to movement could be governed by mechanisms that are sensitive either to change in spatial position, or directly to the movement itself. The use of spatially complex patterns (random-dot patterns) has been suggested to eliminate the former strategy allowing examination of the movement detecting mechanisms in isolation. By means of such a technique, thresholds for directional judgements were determined for patterns which underwent either a simple displacement or a shearing displacement. Thresholds for shearing motion were found to be around one half of those for simple motion, suggesting that relative, rather than absolute, motion governs performance for small displacements. This contrasts with previous experiments which showed that absolute motion governs performance for much larger displacements.     

Gravity as a monocular cue for perception of absolute distance and/or absolute size.

When the motion of an object is influenced by gravity (eg free fall, pendulum, wave motion), that influence may provide a cue to computing the absolute distance and/or size of the object. Formal analysis supports the claim that the distance and size of moving objects are generally computable with reference to the gravitational component of motion. Informal evidence from judgments of realism in films is consistent with this gravity-cue hypothesis.     

Relationship between absolute body-fluid deficits and fluid intake in the rat.

Acute absolute body-fluid deficits were induced in rats by injection of the diuretic drug furosemide, which caused up to 20% reduction of extracellular fluid volume and up to 2% reduction of intracellular fluid volume. Water and .3 M NaCl were subsequently made available to allow the rats to replace their body fluids by drinking. The rats increased their intake of both fluids, but replaced less than half of the total deficit, thereby tolerating larger and larger voluntary body-fluid deficits as the size of the diuretic fluid loss increased. Plasma measures showed that the rats sustained hypovolemia after drinking, while intracellular fluid volume was apparently restored. Fluid-depleted rats drank normally in response to intracellular dehydration induced by a sodium chloride load. Incomplete restoration of body-fluid balance after body-fluid depletion is due to a failure to drink in response to extracellular dehydration.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of absolute versus relative spatial frequency.

Observers indicated whether a stimulus presented to one visual field or the other consisted of two sine-wave gratings (the baseline stimulus) or those same two gratings with the addition of a 2 cycle per degree (cpd) component. When the absolute spatial frequencies of the baseline stimulus were low (0.5 and 1.0 cpd), there was a left visual field-right hemisphere (LVF-RH) advantage in reaction time (RT) to respond to the baseline stimulus which disappeared when the 2 cpd component was added (i.e., the stimulus consisted of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 cpd components). When the absolute spatial frequencies of the baseline stimulus were moderate to high (4.0 and 8.0 cpd), a right visual field-left hemisphere advantage in RT to respond to the baseline stimulus approached significance and shifted to a significant LVF-RH advantage when the 2 cpd component was added (i.e., the stimulus consisted of 2.0, 4.0, and 8.0 cpd components. That is, adding the same 2 cpd component caused opposite shifts in visual laterality depending on whether 2 cpd was a relatively high or relatively low frequency compared to the baseline.     

Levels of the absolute in Husserl

Continental Philosophy Review - Edmund Husserl’s ultimate aim was to give an overall philosophical explanation of the totality of Being. In this endeavour, the term “absolute” was...     

Training the absolute identification of pitch

Two methods for training the absolute judgment of pitch, reference training and series training, were studied. Reference training concentrated during training on the identification of three reference tones in a set of nine pure tones, while series training gave equal weight during training to the identification of all nine tones. Results of pre- and posttraining tests, scored for the number of correct judgments, showed that reference training was more effective than series training for listeners with musical experience. In addition, discriminability (d′) scaling of pre- and posttest performance indicated that reference training was particularly effective for training listeners with musical experience when the nine tones of a set were grouped into three pitch classes—high, medium, and low pitch. Listeners without musical experience benefited from both training methods, but their overall improvement was less than that for musical listeners.     

III. On the concept of attitude

Evaluation is, as J. R. Maze has recently suggested, central to the concept of attitude. But it is argued that Maze's noncognitivist analysis of evaluation yields an inadequate account of our ordinary concept of attitude. A criteriological account of evaluation is sketched which allows for an objective dimension to evaluation and hence to attitudes. In the case of attitudes, it is argued that some criteria will be chosen at least in part for their consequences, and hence will not be chosen solely on the basis of interest, preference or affect.     

现象学与实在论--与索科拉夫斯基教授的对话

索科拉夫斯基(Sokolovsky),美国天主教大学哲学教授,卢汶大学博士,英语世界著名现象学家。主要著作有:《现象学导论》(2000)、《胡塞尔构造观念的构成》(1970)、《胡塞尔与现象学传统》(1988)、《胡塞尔的沉思:语言如何呈现事物》(1974)、《胡塞尔逻辑研究的结构与内容》以及《胡塞尔与弗雷格》。我于2004年在华盛顿做访问学者时,多次拜访了索科拉夫斯基教授,现将这些对话整理成文刊发,供读者参考。高:现象学是否属于现代主体主义传统,或者是反对主体主义传统而属于古代的实在论传统,仍然是一个需要澄清的问题。你曾说,胡塞尔的某些论证和…     

III. Kantian intuitions

By way of a reply to Charles Parsons's paper in the Nagel Festschrift, Kant's notion of intuition (Anschauung) is examined. It is argued that for Kant the immediate relation which an intuition has to its object is a mere corollary to its singularity. It does not presuppose (as Parsons suggests) any presence of the object to the mind. This is shown, e.g., by the Prolegomena § 8, where the objects of intuitions a priori are denied by Kant to be so present. They yield knowledge, not in virtue of their immediacy but in virtue of their ideality.