On Quantum Propensities: Two Arguments Revisited

Peter Milne and Neal Grossman have argued against Popper's propensity interpretation of quantum mechanics, by appeal to the two-slit experiment and to the distinction between mixtures and superpositions, respectively. In this paper I show that a different propensity interpretation successfully meets their objections. According to this interpretation, the possession of a quantum propensity by a quantum system is independent of the experimental set-ups designed to test it, even though its manifestations are not.     

Contemporary Arguments Against Nonsexist Language: Blaubergs (1980) Revisited

Two studies investigated whether undergraduatesenrolled in sport management classes at a midwesternuniversity supported or resisted nonsexist language.Resistive statements were classified using arguments identified by Blaubergs (1980). In Study 1, 82primarily Caucasian students reacted to a videotapeabout language. Half (48%) supported nonsexist language;32% were ambivalent; 21% were opposed to nonsexist language. The negative comments fit 7 ofBlaubergs' 8 categories after 2 were modified; 2additional categories (Sexism is Acceptable andHostility toward Proponents of Change) emerged. In Study2, 164 primarily Caucasian undergraduates speculatedon why others resisted nonsexist language. Theircomments led to the addition of 2 more new categories:Tradition and Lack of Understanding. The finalmodification of Blaubergs' classic arguments contains 12categories that should be useful in studying resistanceto nonsexist language.     

人类胚胎的道德地位

胚胎干细胞技术的发展带来了干细胞来源的伦理争论,提出了如何看待"胚胎道德地位"的问题。围绕这一问题,有三种观点,它们分别从生物性、理性功能以及人的潜能性来界定胚胎的道德地位。通过对三种观点的分析,本文强调坚持人的尊严原则,是推动新兴生物技术发展的核心和归宿。     

Metaphysical Realism and Objectivity: Some Theoretical Reflections

In this paper we aim to show an intrinsic contradiction of contemporary Metaphysical Realism by focusing on the relation between the subject and the object. Metaphysical Realism considers facts and objects as being empirical, and therefore they are considered in relation to the subject, while at the same time facts are assumed to belong to an autonomous and independent reality. However, if a real object is considered to be independent from the subject, once it enters in a relation with the latter, a real object must undergo an intrinsic transformation. However, since an object cannot avoid this transformation then recovering the real or “absolute” object from the perceived object is not possible. In this way, the inherent contradiction of the “absolute” as being determined, i.e., defined by virtue of a limit, is revealed.     

Locke's Essay, Book I: The Question-Begging Status of the Anti-Nativist Arguments

In this paper I argue against the received view that the anti-nativist arguments of Book I of Locke's Essay conclusively challenge nativism. I begin by reconstructing the chief argument of Book I and its corollary arguments. I call attention to their dependence on (what I label) "the Awareness Principle", viz. , the view that there are no ideas in the mind of which the mind either isn't currently aware or hasn't been aware in the past. I then argue that the arguments' dependence on this principle is question begging on two counts. Unless this principle is defended, Locke's arguments beg the question against Descartes and Leibniz because their nativism implies the denial of the Awareness Principle. And even when Locke defended the principle, his arguments remain question begging because they presuppose the empiricism they aim to prove. The disclosure of the question-begging status of these arguments debunks a seemingly powerful way of attacking nativism.     

论证的基于标记的论据状态(英文)

本文针对抽象论证体系中的论据状态给出了一种基于标记的定义方法。与基于扩张的传统方法相比,此定义能够更加细致准确地描述论据状态。同时,本文对论据状态的等级进行了定义和区分,并把该等级作为接受或驳斥论据的依据。由于该方法基于标准论证体系定义,在实现上使用了已有的基于论证的证明方法,因此,该定义与以往的抽象论证体系是完全兼容的。     

Televised Models of Female Achievement Revisited: Some Progress

In a previous study which analyzed the content of a sample of 1972 primetime television programming, Manes and Melnyk (1974) concluded that television portrayed employment and marriage as incompatible life-styles for women. The present study applied the same content analysis procedures to a sample of 1978 prime-time television programming. Results indicated that female characters employed outside the home were significantly less likely to be married than were employed male characters ( p <.001), a finding which replicated the result obtained previously. In contrast to the 1972 results, however, analyses of the 1978 data revealed that employed married women were not significantly less likely than either their male counterparts or unemployed housewives to be depicted as successfully married.     

The Physical: Empirical, not Metaphysical

Intuitively, physicalism is the thesis that there’s nothing ‘over and above’ the physical. Going beyond this intuitive formulation requires an account of what it is for a property, kind, relation, or object to be a physical one. Here I defend an unfamiliar implementation of the familiar strategy of defining physical properties, etc. as those posited by the complete and ideal physical theory. That implementation ties being a physical theory to being a theory with the hallmarks of scientific theories and then identifies physical theories among the scientific ones by their characteristic subject matter, roughly, the world’s relatively fundamental elements. I then argue that, fully fleshed out, such an account is able to satisfy an array of constraints on any account of the physical, as well as avoid a number of prima facie objections, without imposing Wilson’s No Fundamental Mentality Constraint.     

Unmentionables and Ineffables: An Interpretation of Some Fregean Metaphysical and Semantical Discourse

Philosophical Studies -     

Foundations of Academic Freedom: Making New Sense of Some Aging Arguments

The article distinguishes between the various arguments traditionally offered as justifications for the principle of academic freedom. Four main arguments are identified, three consequentialist in nature (the argument from truth, the democratic argument, the argument from autonomy), and one nonconsequentialist (a variant of the autonomy argument). The article also concentrates on the specific form these arguments must take in order to establish academic freedom as a principle distinct from the more general principles of freedom of expression and intellectual freedom.     

The Expansion of Epistemology: The Metaphysical vs. the Practical Approach

From the perspective of world philosophy, one phenomenon of the 20th century is quite intriguing. Certain philosophers in China as well as in the West, finding the traditional conception of epistemology too narrow-minded, argued that its scope should be expanded. The Chinese way of expanding epistemology might be called the metaphysical approach, and the Western way the practical approach. In this article, I will first give an outline of both approaches and then try to demonstrate that a substantial dialogue can be created between them. By focusing on the problem of the articulation of what we know, I will make the metaphysical approach and the practical approach engage each other and thus prove to be mutually complementary.     

The Inaugural Address: Perception and Metaphysical Scepticism

In this paper I introduce and critically examine a paradox about perceiving that is in some ways analogous to the paradox about meaning which Kripke puts forward in his exegesis of Wittgenstein's views on Rule-following.
When applied to vision, the paradox of perceiving raises a metaphysical scepticism about which object a person is seeing if he looks, for example, at an apple on a tree directly in front of him. Physical objects can be seen when their appearance is distorted in various ways by illusions. The question therefore arises as to how can we answer the sceptic who suggests the following: although the viewer appears to be seeing the green apple in front of him, he is actually suffering a bizarre illusion of a blue car situated somewhere behind him. The sceptic is not concerned with epistemic problems about how we know which object, if any, the subject is seeing; the sceptic is raising the more fundamental question: what fact of the matter underlies a person's perceptual relation to the physical world, in virtue of which that person may be justified in arriving at a perceptual belief about the environment?
Among the various different issues raised by the sceptic, I focus on the question: what determines the perceiving relation? I canvass a number of possible proposals in answer to it, concentrating mainly on two opposed accounts: the Disjunctive View and the Causal Theory of Perception. I argue in particular for the following two claims:
that the paradox highlights the fact that the Disjunctive View fails to provide a coherent positive account of what perceiving is.
that the problem of 'deviant causal chains', often thought to raise particular difficulties for the Causal theorist, can also be raised against other accounts of perception, including versions of the Disjunctive View.
I conclude that unless the Causal Theory of Perception can be upheld, there will be no way of answering the sceptic.     

“无”的主题——《老子》形上思想的深层意蕴

《老子》形上学思想的主题是“无”。“无”是最具普遍性、深刻性、本原性的命题 ,“无”之规定不是任意的 ,在“混成”和“象”、“应当”、“言说”三个维度上被限定 ,具体展开为“道”形上学 (包括宇宙论 )、道德形上学和“言语”形上学 ,在中国哲学史构筑起一个相当完整的形上学体系。