科学的统一

1.分类与系统论自有了科学以来,自有了欧洲哲学以来,人们就梦想着科学的统一,梦想着能有一个统一的科学体系。即使在科学哲学创立之前,希腊人的思想就发展到了这一步,即认为甚至科学和哲学也能构成一种哲学的统一。这种观点的影响早已烟消云散了。今天,在这种观点一度占支配地位的那些领域中,我们不断发现了一些未曾阐述清楚的经验关系和系统关系。我们不再讨论科学(与或不与哲学)的统一,而是讨论学科性、多学科性和学科间性,抚昔追今,我们所探讨的知识秩序已不再能用知识本     

罗素与实用主义者

罗素与他曾遇见过的,并就哲学问题进行过交流的好几位实用主义哲学家相互影响。这些相互影响同罗素与他的朋友和合作者如摩尔、怀特海、维特根斯坦等之间的相互影响性质不同。这是一种敌对的性质。事实上罗素与唯心主义者的相互影响也是如此。不同的地方只在于罗素本人曾经历新黑格尔主义这一阶段。至于就实用主义来说,罗素自始至终把它作为对手,实用主义者的主张对他来说是不相容的。尽管罗素自己思想发展过程中在这一点上没有改变过,但是,正如我们将看到的,他思想上的变化使他比他自己承认的更接近这些实用主义的观点。1896年,罗素在他第一次访问美国时结识了詹姆斯和皮尔斯。后来罗素又从W.维尔比(Welb     

创造性思维与创造力培养的概念

创造性思维是适应性思维或称重新概念化。其绝大部分不是外显行为,而是内隐的认知。我们日常大部分认知和行为是自动化的。它们满足着我们的日常需要。而满足我们需要的方式有一定导向,甚至变得刻板严格。在我们日常生活的所有方面,象饮食社交、宗教艺术、学术训练等等,我们都发展了动作的、自动化的认知和行为来满足基本的需要。我们去餐馆吃饭来满足饥饿的需要,与亲属的社会交往在家庭团聚中已经仪式化,我们的医生每月     

系统属性的产生问题

《哲学问题》1992年第2期上刊登了C.и.雅科夫连柯一篇内容丰富的文章《论自然界中的组织作用和破坏(随机的)作用,该期还登载了B.и.阿尔申诺夫和я.и.斯维尔斯基的文章《从涵义的读出到涵义的产生》。按照编辑部的意图,后一篇文章大概是前一篇文章的评论。但我以为,这篇文章并没有起到多大的评论作用,因为这篇论涵义的有趣     

人对动物有道德义务吗?

自从10年以前彼得·辛格的《动物解放》一书出版以来,在英国人的书籍中便对动物的道德处境的问题展开了激烈的讨论,在这期间,这个问题也在我们国家引起了较大的重视。从历史上看,这种关心无疑是对于自然的新意识的结果,而这种对于自然的新意识又是由于那些不能再忽视的生态问题产生的。可是按照事情的性质,我们这里所谈的与两个不同的问题有关。适当同自然环境打交道的问题是个我们共同的切身利益的问题,不是一种“生态     

Effects of differences between stimuli, responses, and reinforcer rates on conditional discrimination performance

In a discrete-trial conditional discrimination procedure, 4 pigeons obtained food reinforcers by pecking a key with a short latency on trials signaled by one stimulus and by pecking the same key with a long latency on trials signaled by a second stimulus. The physical difference between the two stimuli and the temporal separation between the latency values required for reinforcement were varied factorially over four sets of conditions, and the ratio of reinforcer rates for short and long latencies was varied within each set of conditions. Stimulus discrimination varied directly with both stimulus and response differences and was unaffected by the reinforcer ratio. Sensitivity to reinforcement, estimated by generalized-matching-law fits to the data within each set of conditions, varied directly with the response difference but inversely with the stimulus difference arranged between sets of conditions. Because variations in stimulus differences, response differences, and reinforcer differences did not have equivalent effects, these findings question the functional equivalence of the three terms of the discriminated operant: antecedent stimuli, behavior, and consequences.     

The stroop effect and the myth of automaticity

A widespread view in cognition is that once acquired through extensive practice, mental skills such as reading are automatic. Lexical and semantic analyses of single words are said to be uncontrollable in the sense that they cannot be prevented. Over the past 60 years, apparently convincing support for this assumption has come from hundreds of experiments in which skilled readers have processed an irrelevant word in the Stroop task despite explicit instructions not to, even when so doing would hurt color identification performance. This basic effect was replicated in two experiments, which also showed that a considerable amount of semantic processing is locally controlled by elements of the task. For example, simply coloring a single letter instead of the whole word eliminated the Stroop effect. This outcome flies in the face of any automaticity account in which specified processes cannot be prevented from being set in motion, but it is consistent with the venerable idea that mental set is a powerful determinant of performance.     

Language-specific listening

Languages differ in their phonological structure and physcholinguists have begun to explore the conseqence, of this fact for speech perception. We review research documenting that listeners attune their perceptual processes finaly to exploit the phonological regularities of their nativ language. As a consequence, these perceptual process are fill-adapted to listening to languages that do not display such, regularities. Thus, not only do late language-learners have trouble speaking a second language, also they do not hear it as native speakers do; worse, they apply their native language listening prosedures which may actually interfere with successful processing of the non-native input. We also present data from studies on infants showing that the initial attuning occurs early in life; very yong infants are sensitive to the relevant phonological regularities which distinguish different languages, and quickly distinguish the native language of their environment from languages with different regularities.