知觉流畅性对判断和决策的影响

流畅性是个体对加工信息难易程度的一种主观体验, 它分为知觉流畅性、概念流畅性、提取流畅性等。研究者通过操纵刺激与背景的颜色对比度、刺激的字体类型、清晰程度等因素来控制知觉流畅性, 发现知觉流畅性会影响一系列判断和决策任务, 如命题真实性、类别判断、偏好、熟悉性等。知觉流畅性既可以作为判断的直接线索也可以通过选择不同线索和认知策略来间接影响判断和决策。     

知觉信息先期呈现下两可图的命名和相似判断

在实物图片或轮廓图先期呈现的条件下研究了6岁、9岁、12岁及成人被试对两可图形的命名或相似判断。结果表明：（1）命名项目或相似判断与线索项目有关时,各年龄被试对判断项的命名或相似判断均表现出与线索项目一致的倾向。（2）轮廓图作为线索项目时．命名或相似判断反应时较长;实物作为线索项目时,命名或相似判断反应时较短。无关项目作为为线索项目时．被试命名或相似判断的反应时居中;命名项目或相似判断项目均与线索项目一致时反应时较短;命名项目或相似判断项目均与线索项目不一致时反应时延长。（3）被试命名或相似判断的反应时随其年龄的增长而下降,6岁和9岁儿童的反应时较长;12岁儿童的反应时较短;成人的反应时最短。     

审美概念理解对审美感性水平影响的实验探索

通常认为审美理性对审美感性有消极影响。这至少对认知心理学和人工智能的研究与发展形成了一种障碍。本研究以审美概念理解作为审美理性活动的典型式,对二者的实际关系进行探索。实验对象分为A类普通被试和B类艺术专业被试。结果表明：无论是否通过专门的审美概念学习训练,实验组和对照组的审美概念理解与审美感性水平的发展都呈共同上升趋势：通过学习训练,审美概念理解程度有显著提高,且显著有助于AB两类被试审美感受总水平提高;审美概念理解的“合理性”（正确性与精确性）是对审美感性各因素影响的显著因子,而其“事实例举”对于审美感性中的审美感知、审美联想、审美情感等是显著因子。A类小学5年级被试的审美感知和审美情感、B类大学美术专业2年级被试的审美感知,实验前后无显著差异,这表明审美理性对审美感性所具有的积极影响,在一定条件下是有限的。     

Philosophical Works as Objects of Aesthetic Judgment

This paper draws attention to the fact that works of philosophy are often judged by aesthetic criteria. This raises the question of whether philosophical writings may properly be regarded as suitable objects of aesthetic judgement in a strong sense; namely, that judging their worth qua works of philosophy is an aesthetic endeavour. The paper argues in the affirmative with the aid of a Kantian account of aesthetic judgement. Judging a work of philosophy by the means chosen may be regarded as subjecting it to criticism by criteria established within a philosophical aesthetic.     

Rethinking our Maxims: Perceptual Salience and Practical Judgment in Kantian Ethics

Some contemporary Kantians have argued that one could not be virtuous without having internalized certain patterns of awareness that permit one to identify and respond reliably to moral reasons for action. I agree, but I argue that this insight requires unrecognized, farreaching, and thoroughly welcome changes in the traditional Kantian understanding of maxims and virtues. In particular, it implies that one's characteristic emotions and desires will partly determine one's maxims, and hence the praiseworthiness of one's actions. I try to show this by pointing out an instability in the Kantian understanding of maxims. On the one hand, maxims are thought of as consciously affirmed, subjective principles of action. On the other hand, Kantians claim that nothing counts as an action, nor as morally assessable, unless it has a maxim. One cannot take both thoughts seriously without implausibly constricting the range of behavior that counts as action, hence as morally assessable. This difficulty can be overcome, I suggest, by jettisoning the idea that maxims must be consciously affirmed, and by stressing the way in which maxims are grounded in the pruning and shaping of one's emotions and desires during socialization. This opens the door to a rich Kantian theory of virtue. It also raises questions about the scope and ground of our moral responsibility, which I address at the end of the paper.     

Naturalism and Normativity

Synthetic naturalism is a form of moral realism which holds that we can discover a posteriori that moral properties exist and are natural properties. On this view moral discourse earns the right to be construed realistically because it meets the conditions that license realism about any discourse, that properties it represents as existing pull their weight in empirical explanations of our observations of the world. I argue that naturalism is an inadequate metaphysics of moral value, because parallel arguments to those used by the naturalist to establish the reality of 'moral' properties and their normativity for persons of sympathetic temperament can be constructed, which would equally demonstrate the reality of normatively antagonistic value properties, and their normativity for differently psychologically constituted agents. Since moral discourse implicitly denies that there are such diverse and competing normative truths the strategy fails to establish moral realism.     

知觉或记忆条件下对连续变化刺激的相似判断

控制不同材料(图形和字母)的大小、位置和长宽比连续变化,在标准和待判断刺激同时(知觉任务)或相继呈现(记忆任务)两种条件下进行相似判断的实验研究。结论为(1)任务方式对图形的相似判断有非常显著的影响;(2)知觉任务中相似判断的反应时非常显著地长于记忆任务中的反应时;(3)对材料各种特征的相似判断和加工速度差异非常显著．某些特征在相似表征中有较重要的作用。     

Realism and Political Normativity

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - A prevailing understanding of realism, chiefly among its critics, casts realists as those who seek a ‘distinctively political normativity’, where...     

Natural and Ethical Normativity

In this paper, I argue that ethical normativity can be grounded in the natural normativity of organisms without being reducible to it. Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot both offer forms of neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalism; I argue that both accounts have gaps that point toward the need for a constructive virtue ethics grounded in natural normativity. Similarly, Korsgaard's constructivist ethics ignores the ongoing relevance of natural norms in human ethical life. I thus offer an account according to which the self‐shaping activity of human organisms supplements and transforms natural normativity, giving rise to ethical norms. Such an account grounds human ethical distinctiveness in rationality without excluding nonrational humans from the ethical community. In the final section of the paper, I argue that ethical standards can be discovered (or hidden) through human activities, thus allowing for gradual progression (or regression) in ethical knowledge, both on individual and cultural levels.     

Semantic Primitivism and Normativity

Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism appears as a serious threat to the idea that there could be meaning-constituting facts. Some people argue that the only viable response is to adopt semantic primitivism (SP). SP is the doctrine that meaning-facts are sui generis and irreducibly semantic. The idea is that by allowing such primitive semantic facts into our ontology Kripke's sceptical paradox cannot arise. I argue that SP is untenable in spite of its apparent resourcefulness. No version of SP can account for the normative and practical aspects of meaning while remaining non-reductive. A sparse, basic SP does not adequately deal with the sceptical paradox. A richer SP, with an added intuitive epistemology, can only explain the practical aspect of meaning by aligning itself with reductive use-based accounts of meaning. SP with essential relations between meanings and meaning-bearers could possibly avoid these problems, but we have no reason to think such a version of SP is really non-reductive. I conclude that Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism should not lead us to adopt SP, instead we should re-examine use-based, dispositionalist accounts of meaning.     

Semantic Normativity

Philosophical Studies -     

Normativity and Interpersonal Reasons

What is one who takes normativity seriously to do if normativity can neither be discovered lurking out there in the world independently of us nor can it be sufficiently grasped from a merely explanatory perspective? One option is to accept that the normative challenge cannot be met and to retreat to some form of moral skepticism. Another possibility has recently been proposed by Christine Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity where she aims to develop an account of normativity which is grounded in autonomy. Furthermore, she argues that on her account reasons are "essentially public" and that this captures how it is that we can obligate one another. In this paper I argue that there is a serious tension between her account of normativity and the publicity of reasons-namely, that if reasons are essentially public, then it is not possible for individuals to legislate laws for themselves. However, I then argue that if we revise her conception of normativity such that it is understood to involve collective rather than individual legislation that it may then be possible to account for interpersonal reasons.     

Explaining Practical Normativity

Ethical non-naturalists often charge that their naturalist competitors cannot adequately explain the distinctive normativity of moral or more broadly practical concepts. I argue that the force of the charge is mitigated, because non-naturalism is ultimately committed to a kind of mysterianism about the metaphysics of practical norms that possesses limited explanatory power. I then show that focusing on comparative judgments about the explanatory power of various metaethical theories raises additional problems for the non-naturalist, and suggest grounds for optimism that a naturalistic realist about practical normativity will ultimately be able to explain the distinctive normativity of practical norms. I then show that radical pluralism or particularism about the structure of normative ethics would complicate the naturalistic strategy that I defend. This suggests a perhaps surprising way in which the resolution of the debate between ethical naturalists and non-naturalists may rest in part on the answers to substantive normative questions.