Davidson on the Impossibility of Psychophysical Laws

Donald Davidsons classic argument for the impossibility of reducing mental events to physicallistic ones is analyzed and formalized in relational logic. This makes evident the scope of Davidsons argument, and shows that he is essentially offering a negative transcendental argument, i.e., and argument to the impossibility of certain kinds of logical relations. Some final speculations are offered as to why such a move might, nevertheless, have a measure of plausibility.     

Measurability And Physical Laws

I propose and motivate a new account of fundamental physical laws, the Measurability Account of Laws (MAL). This account has a distinctive logical form, in that it takes the primary nomological concept to be that of a law relative to a given theory, and defines a law simpliciter as a law relative to some true theory. What makes a proposition a law relative to a theory is that it plays an indispensable role in demonstrating that some quantity posited by that theory is measurable. In Section 1, I motivate the project of seeking a philosophical account of fundamental physical laws, as opposed to laws of nature in general. In Section 2, I motivate seeking an account with the distinctive logical form of the MAL. In Section 3, I present the MAL and illustrate the way it works by applying it to a simple example.     

“社会矛盾与社会和谐”笔谈——“矛盾”是合理解读“社会和谐”的关键

自从关于“建构社会主义和谐社会”理论提出以来,“社会矛盾与社会和谐”的关系问题就成为学界关注的热点。不同的学者依据于各自的学术资源和经验感受,对于问题作出了各自不同的阐述。这是十分有意义的工作。它不仅扩展着人们的思维,也必将有益于实践。以学术的维度关注现实重大理论问题,是人文社会科学学者应尽的职责。有鉴于此,本期刊发了这组笔谈,并期待着学界朋友的进一步参与,共同推进社会主义和谐社会理论的完善与发展。[编者按]     

Truthlikeness,Rationality And Scientific Method

I. A. Kieseppä's criticism of the methodological use of the theory of verisimilitude, and D. B. Resnik's arguments against the explanation of scientific method by appeal to scientific aims are critically considered. Since the notion of verisimilitude was introduced as an attempt to show that science can be seen as a rational enterprise in the pursuit of truth, defenders of the verisimilitude programme need to show that scientific norms can be interpreted (at least in principle) as rules that try to increase the degree of truthlikeness of scientific theories. This possibility is explored for several approaches to the problem of verisimilitude.     

Perceptual Skill And Social Structure

Visual perception relies on stored information and environmental associations to arrive at a determinate representation of the world. This opens up the disturbing possibility that our visual experiences could themselves be subject to a kind of racial bias, simply in virtue of accurately encoding previously encountered environmental regularities. This possibility raises the following question: what, if anything, is wrong with beliefs grounded upon these prejudicial experiences? They are consistent with a range of epistemic norms, including evidentialist and reliabilist standards for justification. I argue that we will struggle to locate a flaw with these sorts of perceptual beliefs so long as we focus our analysis at the level of the individual and her response to information. We should instead broaden our analysis to include the social structure within which the individual is located. Doing so lets us identify a problem with the way in which unjust social structures in particular “gerrymander” the regularities an individual is exposed to, and by extension the priors their visual system draws on. I argue that in this way, social structures can cap perceptual skill.     

辅助生殖技术与社会公正

从生命伦理学的角度看,以解决不育问题为最初目的的辅助生殖技术,实质上是实现社会公正的一种重要手段,但现实辅助生殖技术服务却也导致了一些社会不公正现象.就此提出某些实现辅助生殖技术服务社会公正的途径有重要意义.     

科学态度科学精神社会道德--读朱清时论藏传佛教

俗谚说:“隔行如隔山”。我对于自然科学缺乏起码的专业知识,现在却不得不讲些与自然科学领域有关的事。我们老祖宗为幼儿写的启蒙的读物中言:“教不严,师之惰”,最近有点新的理解———如果教师不能严格自律,应该受到批评和自我批评。之所以写下这些话,与读了两篇文章有关。一篇叫《从藏传佛教到认知科学的崭新链接》,是用对话形式发表在网站上,记中国科技大学校长的高见;另一篇名《中医是复杂科学》,是这位校长以科学院院士署名的,发表在本年度9月16日《中国中医药报》上。前一篇涉及藏传佛教问题,后一篇涉及哲学科学方法论问题。初步印象…     

Davidson on Causal Relevance

Davidson argues that mental properties are causally relevant properties. I argue that Davidson cannot appeal to ceteris paribus causal laws to ensure that these properties are causally relevant, if he wishes to retain his argument for anomalous monism. Second, I argue that the appeal to supervenience cannot, by itself, give us an account of the causal relevancy of mental properties. I argue that, while mental properties may indeed 'make a difference' to the causally efficacious properties of events, this is not sufficient to show that mental properties are causally relevant.     

Structural realism and Davidson

Structural realism is an attempt to balance the competing demands of the No Miracles Argument and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction. In this paper I trace the development of the structuralist idea through the work of one of its leading advocates, John Worrall. I suggest that properly thought through what the structuralist is offering or should be offering is not an account of how to divide up a theory into two parts—structure and ontology—but (perhaps surprisingly) a certain kind of theory of meaning—semantic holism. I explain how a version of structural realism can be developed using Davidson’s theory of meaning and some advantages this has over the Ramsey-sentence version of structuralism.