More Than Words: Place,Discourse and the Struggle over Public Space in Barcelona

The social construction of human-environment relations is a central concern of an emerging tradition of research on place, which extends the so-called “discursive turn” in social psychology. This research highlights the primary role of everyday linguistic practices in the production of place meanings, challenging the prevailing tendency among environmental psychologists to treat place meanings mainly as an expression of individual cognitions. By the same token, in this article we argue that research on human-environment relations also has the potential to enrich the field of discursive psychology, tempting discursive researchers to move beyond their customary focus on verbal and written texts. Specifically, we propose an analytic framework that transcends the dualism between the material and discursive dimensions of human-environment relations. In order to develop this argument, we outline the novel concept of place-assemblage and illustrate its utility by conducting an analysis of a recent conflict over a public space in Barcelona. This analysis shows how discursive constructions of the development of this public space over time were inextricably entwined with other kinds of material and embodied practices—practices through which place meanings were actively performed, reproduced and contested.     

Mapping the psyche-civilization relationship: how overcoming conceptual dualisms can help us better comprehend the trajectory of the human race

Global living standards have increased considerably as a result of the progress brought about by human civilization. However, ecological crises, global nuclear armament and an increasing sense of psychological discontent are among a list of things that bring into question the nature of modernity. Often these large-scale collective issues seem too overwhelming for the individual to ponder in any great depth and thus the question, ‘how are we, as individuals, supposed to address the problems facing broader humanity?’ remains. This paper suggests that it is the underlying conceptual dualisms that prevent an answer to this question, and by mapping the interaction between psyche and civilization, the actions necessary to correct the trajectory of Western civilization may become apparent.     

身体美学的启迪与反思

舒斯特曼提出来的“身体美学”日渐得到人们的重视。利用传统中国哲学和中国医学中所包含的身心一元论思想指导下的身体观来说明身体美学的可能性和重要意义,思考有中国文化特色的身体美学的一个重要特点及其对于当前流行的美容实践的启迪。     

Through Thick and Thin with Ned Block: How <Emphasis Type="Italic">Not</Emphasis> to Rebut the Property Dualism Argument

In “Max Black’s Objection to Mind–Body Identity,” Ned Block seeks to offer a definitive treatment of property dualism arguments that exploit modes of presentation. I will argue that Block’s central response to property dualism is confused. The property dualist can happily grant that mental modes of presentation have a hidden physical nature. What matters for the property dualist is not the hidden physical side of the property, but the apparent mental side. Once that ‘thin’ side is granted, the property dualist has won. I conclude that although Block is wrong to think that the property dualist must argue for so-called thin mental properties, Block, and the physicalist, are able to resist property dualism. But any attempt to bolster this resistance and do more than dogmatically assert the crucial identity runs a serious risk of undermining the physicalism it is meant to save.

AN INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THEOLOGY

A hallmark of Arthur Peacocke's work is his aim of writing theology that is intellectually honest. He believed that intelligibility and meaning are foremost on theology's agenda. Consequently, he focused on ultimate meanings, but he did so by taking into account the scientific knowledge of the world. He faced head‐on the challenge to accept the Christian tradition, at the same time subjecting that tradition to critique and reforming its images and modes of thinking. I survey Peacocke's agenda, his methodology, and the sources of his theological thinking, and how this contributes to understanding the relationship between science and theology. A major result of his approach is the abolition of dualisms, specifically that of the natural and the supernatural. Peacocke's approach to theology has exemplary potential for the debate between those who espouse a radical Enlightenment with its claim to universal principles of reason and radical postmodernists who may appear to fall prey to a relativism that equals nihilism.     

Aristotle,the Intellect,and Cognition

It is argued in this paper that the famous ＂Active Intellect＂ of De Anima 3.5 is not God, as Alexander of Aphrodisias held, but rather an unchanging, eternally cognizing Intellect which serves as the indispensable condition for the operation of human intellect. It is ＂at the door＂ for each individual, ready to flow in as a stream of light--a light which renders potential objects of cognition knowable, just as visible light makes potentially visible objects visible--from outside that door （thyrathen） any time it is opened. Its existence cannot serve, however, as a proof of the immortality of human intellect, since, being unchanging, it can never possess a feature of human intellect which is characterized by nothing if not change, and that is memory.     

The Knowledge Argument against Physicalism: Its Proponents and Its Opponents

The knowledge argument usually takes the form of a thought experiment where the subject, having some psychological deficiency, lacks any introspective data to derive the knowledge of her experience. Most defenders of the knowledge argument see the argument as both a support of dualism and an objection to any full-blooded form of physicalism. However, this paper argues that the knowledge argument against physicalism may be directed, in an exactly parallel form, against reductive dualism; moreover, although most physicalists who are the opponents of the knowledge argument do not give any convincing response to the knowledge argument, some kinds of physicalism can live with the knowledge argument.     

Perry's Legacy: Models of Epistemological Development

This paper compares the different ways that intellectual development has been described by W. Perry (1970) and M. Belenky, B. Clinchy, N. Goldberger, and J. Tarule (1986); M. Baxter Magolda (1992); and P. King and K. Kitchener (1994). The similarities are summarized into a comprehensive, gender-neutral 4-stage model (E. J. West, 1996). The nature of the stages is discussed from both a constructivist-developmental perspective (H. G. Furth, 1981; A. Colby & L. Kohlberg, 1987) and using skill-complexity theory (M. L. Commons, E. J. Trudeau, S. A. Stein, F. A. Richards, & S. R. Krause, 1998; M. L. Commons, D. Danaher-Gilpin, P. M. Miller, & E. A. Goodheart, 2002). Educational implications are proposed.     

Challenging Design: How Best to Account for the World as It Really Is

Evolutionary psychology and intelligent‐design theory both need to be able to account for the empirical world, or the world as it is. This essay is an attempt to clarify the challenges these theories need to meet, if the relevant empirical findings are replicable. There is evidence of change in the biological world and of modularity of mind, and there is a growing body of work that finds evolutionary theory a convincing and fruitful account of the “design” of the mind. Three major empirical findings within evolutionary psychology are presented and discussed. The author claims that Cartesian dualism, as it is usually meant within psychology—a split between body and mind—is false, but that Descartes' original division between body and soul has not been challenged and is not challenged by the evidence that the mind is also a biological entity. The article concludes that the convergence of theology and science is to be found in the onus to discover the truth about the world as it really is, and this calls for an ability on both parts to account for the empirical world.     

The prevalence of mind-body dualism in early China

We present the first large-scale, quantitative examination of mind and body concepts in a set of historical sources by measuring the predictions of folk mind-body dualism against the surviving textual corpus of pre-Qin (pre-221 BCE) China. Our textual analysis found clear patterns in the historically evolving reference of the word xin (heart/heart-mind): It alone of the organs was regularly contrasted with the physical body, and during the Warring States period it became less associated with emotions and increasingly portrayed as the unique locus of "higher" cognitive abilities. We interpret this as a semantic shift toward a shared cognitive bias in response to a vast and rapid expansion of literacy. Our study helps test the proposed universality of folk dualism, adds a new quantitative approach to the methods used in the humanities, and opens up a new and valuable data source for cognitive scientists: the record of dead minds.