From the Same Planet: Reply to Commentaries

This reply offers clarification of the author's thesis. What was originally a reciprocal, pleasurable experience for each sex of mutual interpenetration with the preoedipal mother devolves into a split, gendered polarity. The specific form this takes for a boy—repudiation of identification with the mother and with maternal qualities—is seen to be detrimental to male development. I theorize a culturally normative, gender-specific neurosis caused not by maternal care but by the difficulty in male development of continuing to incorporate the surplus pleasures of maternal penetration given a problematic model of masculinity. My aim in “Unlawful Entry” is not to reverse gendered power relations but to forward their elimination.     

Doubts about ordinary language in ethics

Many writers assume one of the major functions (if not the major function) of ethical theory is to analyze the “ordinary language”; of moral discourse. This paper argues that different social groups develop quite different concepts of values; that there are many “ordinary languages.”; What analysts often in practice arc concerned with is middle‐class ethical usage. In addition, it is argued that widely accepted moral usages may be incorrect because they are based on faulty empirical generalizations, pre‐scientific opinions, or socially‐determined prejudices. “Ordinary language”; needs to be viewed critically, therefore, rather than to be assumed as correct.     

From lisp machine to language lab

A general method is described for using a Lisp Machine to study reading as it takes place. The method involves simulating, on the machine’s CRT, a moving window that passes through the text being read. The speed and direction of the window can be controlled by the reader, or test probes can be coordinated within the text viewed. The method allows reading to occur in an easily monitored environment, and the reader can respond to the material being read in a flexible manner. Suggestions for programming the Lisp Machine are provided which lead to improved overall execution speed and constancy of runtime for specific pieces of code in on-line experiments.     

From prespeech to language: The influence of caregiver-child interaction

Communication is considered a function based on reciprocity and communicativeness with a human partner, the child's participation and capacity, and the adult's adaptiveness and interpreting enable differentiation of messages and meanings. Major precursors of pre-speech communication acts of infants, as suggested by Bruner, are presented, taking into consideration caregiver's mode of interpreting the infant's communication intent, joint referential devices, and strategies for enlisting in joint activity.     

From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: the early development of everyday psychology

We provide evidence for the claim that before young children construe human action in terms of beliefs and desires they understand action only in terms of simple desires. This type of naive psychology--a simple desire psychology--constitutes a coherent understanding of human action, but it differs from the belief--desire psychology of slightly older children and adults. In this paper we characterize what we mean by a simple desire psychology and report two experiments. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that 2-year-old can predict actions and reactions related to simple desires. In Experiment 2 we demonstrate that many 2-year-old pass desire reasoning tasks while at the same time failing belief reasoning tasks that are passed by slightly older children, and that are as comparable as possible to the desire tasks they pass with ease.     

The origin of language: A scientific approach to the study of man

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man.     

From demonstration to theory in embodied language comprehension: A review

Recent findings in psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience present a challenge to current amodal theories by suggesting that cognitive states are not disembodied in language comprehension. Accumulating behavioral evidence supporting this view is reviewed from research on processing of language describing concrete and abstract concepts. The extant embodied theories that support either a strong or a moderate embodied view are then presented, as are the perspectives that define how the researchers discuss the role of sensory-motor grounding in language processing. The article concludes by discussing several lines of research that might help distinguish between various theoretical approaches and resolve some of the fundamental issues that fuel much of the debate in the field.     

Media representations of environmental issues: From scientific to political discourse

IntroductionThe media is considered to be a social agent that intervenes in the elaboration of social representations of environmental issues.ObjectiveThis research analyses media representations of environmental issues and how they have been constructed and transformed from the Rio Summit in 1992 to 2006. The authors adopted a constructionist approach based on the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961/1976) to describe the generation of information by the mass media.MethodA sample of 1039 news articles from two Spanish newspapers (La Vanguardia and El País) was analysed. The period of study ranged from the Rio Earth Summit to several years after the Johannesburg Summit (1992–2006), and the study analyses both the content and form of the environmental news.ResultsThis longitudinal study shows not only an increase in environmental news during the period of analysis but also an increased variety of themes addressed and represented. The results evidence significant urban problems in recent years. The environment has shifted from being associated with nature to being predominately associated with the urban environment.ConclusionThe results suggest that there has been a movement from scientific to political discourse and a change towards greater reflection and social recognition of the relevance of environmental issues.     

How Best to Prevent Future Persons From Suffering: A Reply to Benatar

Abstract

David Benatar claims that everyone was seriously harmed by coming into existence. To spare future persons from this suffering, we should cease having children, Benatar argues, with the result that humanity would gradually go extinct. Benatar’s claim of universal serious harm is baseless. Each year, an estimated 94% of children born throughout the world do not have a serious birth defect. Furthermore, studies show that most people do not experience chronic pain. Although nearly everyone experiences acute pain and discomforts, such as thirst, these experiences have instrumental value. For example, when a person picks up a hot object, in response to the pain, the person releases the object, thereby preventing serious harm. The standard that Benatar uses to evaluate the quality of our lives is arbitrary, as I will demonstrate. His proposal that we phase humanity out of existence by ceasing to have children is misguided and an overreaction to the problem of human suffering. The ‘threshold conception of harm’, which is a targeted approach for preventing future persons from suffering, is a more sensible approach.     

从《科普法》到《科学素质纲要》

(一)五年前,《中华人民共和国科学技术普及法》(以下简称《科普法》)于2002年6月29日由全国人大九届常委会第28次会议通过,并于同日发布实施。这标志着我国科普工作进入了法制化、规范化的新阶段。《科普