THE ELUSIVENESS OF POETIC MEANING

Various aspects of poetic meaning are discussed, centred on the relation of form and content. A C Bradley's thesis of form-content identity, suitably reformulated, is defended against criticisms by Peter Kivy. It is argued that the unity of form-content is not discovered in poetry so much as demanded of it when poetry is read 'as poetry'. A shift of emphasis from talking about 'meaning' in poetry to talking about 'content' is promoted, as is a more prominent role for 'experience' in characterising responses to poetry and its value. It is argued that the key to poetic meaning lies less in a theory of meaning, more in a theory of poetry, where what matters are modes of reading poetry. Content-identity in poetry is said to be 'interest-relative' such that no absolute answer, independent of the interests of the questioner, can determine when a poem and a paraphrase have the same content. Interpretation of poetry need not focus exclusively on meaning, but on ways in which the experience of a poem can be heightened.     

THE MEANING OF MS.

When Ms. was first introduced as an alternative to Miss or Mrs. it was perceived as a radical feminist innovation. Today, its use is unremarkable, even normative. This study examines two aspects of the meaning of Ms.: changes in its connotative meaning over time, and its current comparability to other titles. Female (n = 83) and male (n = 54) college students rated courtesy titles (Ms., Miss, Mrs., Mr.) on a set of bipolar adjective pairs composing a semantic differential scale in an exact replication of a 1978 study. Of the four titles, the largest change in meaning over time was for Ms., and the direction of the change was positive. These results document the social assimilation of a new gender-related concept.     

HUMANISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

This paper addresses two related questions: 1. Does human life have a purpose? and 2. Is human life intrinsically valuable? Clearly human beings have personal, communal and common purposes, but we cannot know whether there is an external transcendent purpose in addition to these. However the argument that mundane purposes are meaningless without transcendent purposes, though valid, rests on false premises. There are four ways of explaining the intrinsic value of life. The first (pantheism) is the idea that human life is sacred because everything is sacred. A second is that life is intrinsically valuable because something else is valuable and indeed sacred – the idea, for instance, that mankind is made in the image of God. The third is that human life lacks value because of its contrast with the sanctity of the gods. The humanistic explanation is that human life as such has intrinsic value. There are (at least) six reasons for holding that human life is intrinsically valuable; these reasons are given.     

EVOLUTION AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Abstract. The last century has witnessed a succession of revolutionary transformations in the discipline of biology. However, the rapid expansion of our understanding of life and its nature has had curiously little impact on the way that questions about life and its significance have been discussed by philosophers. This paper explores the answers that biology provides to central questions about our existence, and it examines why the substitution of causal explanations for teleological ones appears natural and satisfying in the case of physical theory but meets widespread resistance in the case of biology.     

THE DANTO-WOLLHEIM MEANING THEORY OF ART

Arthur Danto in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and Richard Wollheim in Painting as an Art have each advanced a certain meaning theory of art (MT), more specifically, a theory according to which something is a work of art just in case it expresses a proposition. The first part of this essay sets out that view in more detail, with textual support that Danto and Wollheim do in fact hold that theory. The second part offers reasons against accepting MT. (1) There seem to be persuasive counterexamples to MT: objects that are clearly works of art but which do not appear to exhibit any tendency towards propositionality. (2) Neither theorist provides an explanation as to why someone with something to say would choose to, as it were, hide his thought behind a painting. (3) MT will force a theory of the evaluation of art that parallels the evaluation of (say) scientific or philosophical thought. Artworks will be judged according to the profundity of the thoughts they express rather than by their aesthetic features – which would make Duchamp a greater artist than Monet!     

元认知研究的理论意义

简要介绍了弗劳威尔、布朗等人的元认知理论和斯登伯格的元成份理论。这些理论的基本思想是一致的──重视认知主体对自身认知活动的计划、监控、评价和调节。元认知思想与皮亚杰的形式运算、自我调节以及平衡化思想有着深刻的内在一致性。而且,无认知的本质可以用控制论思想加以说明。     

分类过程中汉字的语义提取(Ⅰ)

语义提取是认知心理学研究的重要领域之一。本研究从语词的意义与概念统一的观点出发,运用快速分类的方法,对汉字单字词范畴语义的提取做了初步的探讨。本研究的结果表明,汉字形声字的义符在汉字单字词的语义提取中具有重要的作用,这种作用在肯定和否定的反应里都存在:在肯定的反应里,当义符标明词的类属时起促进作用,当义符与词义不一致时起干扰作用;在否定的反应里,义符对语义判断有干扰作用。实验结果还表明,语义距离与词频在语义提取中也有重要的作用。     

分类过程中汉字的语义提取(Ⅱ)

本研究是对汉字分类过程中语义提取的进一步探索,主要研究汉字双字词的语义提取。本研究的结果表明:(1)义符的作用在双字词的语义提取中依然存在,其趋势与在单字词中的情形是一致的。(2)被试在加工双字词时所采用的是平行加工的方式。(3)在汉字的语义提取中,被试头脑中的高级信息也有重要的作用。