合而为一

信徒合一,教会就会合一,教会合一才能与主合一,只有与主合一才会得上帝的喜悦。经文:约17:11,20—23;弗4:13耶稣在钉十字架之前,有一个很长的祷告在《约翰福音》17章中。这是一个很重要的祷告,表达了他在父上帝面前对自己使命的认可,对门徒的交托,还有最终的愿望,在这个祷告中提到较多的一件事,就是合而为一的事情,这是他对门徒最关切的     

Pigeons' categorization may be exclusively nonanalytic

Recent theoretical and empirical developments in human category learning have differentiated an analytic, rule-based system of category learning from a nonanalytic system that integrates information across stimulus dimensions. In the present study, the researchers applied this theoretical distinction to pigeons' category learning. Pigeons learned to categorize stimuli varying in the tilt and width of their internal striping. The matched category problems had either a unidimensional (rule-based) or multidimensional (information-integration) solution. Whereas humans and nonhuman primates strongly dimensionalize these stimuli and learn rule-based tasks far more quickly than information-integration tasks, pigeons learned the two tasks equally quickly to the same accuracy level. Pigeons may represent a cognitive system in which the commitment to dimensional analysis and category rules was not strongly made. Their performance could suggest the character of the ancestral vertebrate categorization system from which that of primates emerged.     

Thinking may be more than computing

The uncomputable parts of thinking (if there are any) can be studied in much the same spirit that Turing (1950) suggested for the study of its computable parts. We can develop precise accounts of cognitive processes that, although they involve more than computing, can still be modelled on the machines we call ‘computers’. In this paper, I want to suggest some ways that this might be done, using ideas from the mathematical theory of uncomputability (or Recursion Theory). And I want to suggest some uses to which the resulting models might be put. (The reader more interested in the models and their uses than the mathematics and its theorems, might want to skim or skip the mathematical parts.)     

No,one should not believe all truths

In a recent paper, Alexander Greenberg defends a truth norm of belief according to which if one has some doxastic attitude towards p, one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true (da). He responds, in particular, to the ‘blindspot’ objection to truth norms such as da: in the face of true blindspots, such as it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, truth norms such as da are unsatisfiable; they entail that one ought to believe p, but if one does believe p, they entail that it is not the case that one ought to believe p. In this paper, it is argued that Greenberg’s response to the blindspot objection is unsatisfactory.     

Observer memories may not be for everyone

ABSTRACT

Six studies explored the preponderance of people who experience third-person perspective observer memories during autobiographical memory retrieval. The concept of first-person field versus observer memories has been extensively used in the areas of cognitive, social, and clinical psychology. An implicit assumption is the idea that most people use both of these perspectives. What varies are the circumstances that bias people to use one perspective over another for a given autobiographical memory. We challenge that assumption across six studies by showing that, while there are some people who report to regularly have observer memories, there are also those that report to rarely or never have them. These reports were found to be related to levels of reported dissociative experiences. We discuss how this difference in the experience of observer memories may also reflect other innate characteristics, and may correspond to predispositions for various pathologies, including depression, social phobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.     

When religion may be an ethical issue

Though Americans are a religious people, there are times when religion or religious views may confound the ethical process. This article claims that religious values may be expressed as either principles or narratives, then seeks to establish a case for dealing with religious claims as principled narratives. Methods of evaluation are explored and then seven guidelines are offered for dealing with religion in ethics consultations.     

Animals may not be stuck in time

Humans have the ability to mentally travel forward and back in time. They can retrieve vivid memories of past events (episodic memories) and can imagine the future (planning). Although it has been suggested that this is a uniquely human ability, the evidence for subjective time travel in humans is typically based on verbal report and elaboration. Such evidence cannot be obtained from animals. However, we may have indirect evidence for episodic memory and planning. For example, we can show that animals can ‘report’ about their recent past experience when they are unexpectedly asked to do so—performance that is analogous to episodic memory. We can also show that animals use the anticipation of a future event as the basis for a present action—analogous to planning. Thus, we have suggestive evidence that animals may not be stuck in time.     

Shuffling arrays: Appearances may be deceiving

Random permutations of arrays are widely used in experimentation and simulation, and most arrays are shuffled by means of a computer-based algorithm. In this paper, I show that despite theappearance of a random process, a shuffling procedure must be carefully scrutinized to determine whether it actually does produce random shuffles. A general sequence-transformation procedure is developed for evaluating permutation and shuffling schemes. Applying the transformation procedure and using the criteria that all possible sequences must be equally likely and that each object in a shuffled array must be equally likely to occupy each possible position in the shuffled array, we see that one algorithm meets the criteria, while another seemingly adequate algorithm fails to meet the criteria and, in addition, exhibits systematic deviations from randomness.     

Automatic stimulus-response associations may be semantically mediated

Three experiments on numerical odd/even judgment are presented. In the first experiment, we show that tachistoscopically presented Arabic primes influence the reaction latencies (RTs) to Arabic targets in two ways: First, RTs to targets are longer when the prime and the target have a different parity status than when they share the same parity status, and second, on compatible trials, RTs are longer when the absolute distance between the prime and the target is larger. Experiments 2 and 3 extend the first finding by showing that the response compatibility effect is also obtained (1) when the primes are not part of the target set and the participants never reacted to them and (2) when the primes are presented in a different modality (verbal numerals) than are the targets (Arabic numerals). On the basis of these results, we conclude that, in masked priming, response codes are automatically activated by stimulus characteristics of the prime and that the activation of response codes is semantically mediated when the primes are meaningful.     

当前需要转变的几个重要观念

21世纪头20年是我国面临的一个重大战略机遇期.对此,学界已经发表了一些文章,从新科技革命、加入WTO、参与全球化交往等方面进行了论证,但还有一个方面也是我们必须考虑和注意的,即这头20年同时也是中国社会转型的一个关键时期.在这个全面开放、全面参与国际交往、面临严峻的国际竞争的形势下,在我国国民经济和物质生产力有了相当的发展、基本告别了物资短缺时代、人民生活基本达到小康水平、市场经济已经使我国社会机制的活力全面激活的条件下,我们应该如何设计和谋划中国的社会运行模式,希望转成一个什么"型态"的社会,在新的世界格局中对自己如何"定位"以及如何实现这种转化,对这些问题我们必须要有相当的自觉性,需要有一定的思想和理论的准备.当前我们的一些讨论从经济上谈的比较多,比如走新型工业化道路、实现跨越式或跳跃式发展、实现可持续发展,等等,而从哲学视角、从整个社会形态演进层面着眼的,相对还比较少,至少是比较肤浅.我以为其中有几个重要观念是需要进行深入研究和转变的.     

What time travelers may be able to do

Kadri Vihvelin, in “What time travelers cannot do” (Philos Stud 81:315–330, 1996), argued that “no time traveler can kill the baby who in fact is her younger self”, because (V1) “if someone would fail to do something, no matter how hard or how many times she tried, then she cannot do it”, and (V2) if a time traveler tried to kill her baby self, she would always fail. Theodore Sider (Philos Stud 110:115–138, 2002) criticized Vihvelin’s argument, and Ira Kiourti (Philos Stud 139:343–352, 2008) criticized both Vihvelin’s argument and Sider’s critique. I present a critique of Vihvelin’s argument different from both Sider’s and Kiourti’s critiques: I argue in a novel way that both V1 and V2 are false. Since Vihvelin’s argument might be understood as providing a challenge to the possibility of time travel, if my critique succeeds then time travel survives such a challenge unscathed.     

How to be a structuralist all the way down

This paper considers the nature and role of axioms from the point of view of the current debates about the status of category theory and, in particular, in relation to the “algebraic” approach to mathematical structuralism. My aim is to show that category theory has as much to say about an algebraic consideration of meta-mathematical analyses of logical structure as it does about mathematical analyses of mathematical structure, without either requiring an assertory mathematical or meta-mathematical background theory as a “foundation”, or turning meta-mathematical analyses of logical concepts into “philosophical” ones. Thus, we can use category theory to frame an interpretation of mathematics according to which we can be structuralists all the way down.     

The face you recognize may not be the one you saw: memory conjunction errors in individuals with or without learning disability

Memory conjunction errors, that is, when a combination of two previously presented stimuli is erroneously recognized as previously having been seen, were investigated in a face recognition task with drawings and photographs in 23 individuals with learning disability, and 18 chronologically age-matched controls without learning disability. Compared to the controls, individuals with learning disability committed significantly more conjunction errors, feature errors (one old and one new component), but had lower correct recognition, when the results were adjusted for different guessing levels. A dual-processing approach gained more support than a binding approach. However, neither of the approaches could explain all of the results. The results of the learning disability group were only partly related to non-verbal intelligence.