中国传统女性伦理与礼仪及其现代价值

中国传统女性伦理与礼仪内容庞杂,糟粕精华并存。现代女性伦理与礼仪建设应当摒弃其中维护男性特权,束缚女性人身自由的非人道性的糟粕,承继其中具有现代价值的精华,从而建立人道、文明、科学的现代女性伦理与礼仪新体系。     

Kant's One World: Interpreting 'Transcendental Idealism'

The relationship between divine and created causality was widely discussed in medieval and early modern philosophy. Contemporary scholars of these discussions typically stake out three possible positions: occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere-conservationism. It is regularly claimed that virtually no medieval thinker adopted the final view which denies that God is an immediate active cause of creaturely actions. The main aim of this paper is to further understanding of the medieval causality debate, and particularly the mere-conservationist position, by analysing Peter John Olivi's neglected defence of it. The paper also includes discussion of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for concurrentism and an analysis of whether Olivi's objections refute his position.     

Descartes on the Identity of Passion and Action

According to the standard Aristotelian doctrine of the identity of passion and action (I_pa), a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a distinction of reason, and both passion and action are located in the patient. Descartes has recently been interpreted by some scholars to be rejecting I_pa in favor of a view that throws into contention a dualistic interpretation of his philosophy of mind. This article contends that Descartes did hold I_pa, albeit expressed in his own metaphysical vocabulary of substance and mode. On this interpretation, (1) a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a conceptual distinction or distinction of reason and (2) the passion and the action constitute one and the same mode which is locatedin the patient. This result is significant first, because it shows Descartes's retention of a fundamentally Aristotelian understanding of the metaphysical categories of passion and action and second, because it removes some of the support for recent interpretations on which Descartes is seen in the Passions of the Soul to diverge from a dualistic view of mind and body.     

Lost in Translation? The Need for ‘Upstream Engagement’ with Nanotechnology on Trial

Nowadays, the criticism of the so-called ‘deficit model’ and the need for ‘upstream engagement’ in science and technology are becoming part of the master narratives of public policies in many countries, especially concerning nanotechnology. This may be considered as a major success for STS scholars, whose research results have largely contributed to this change, especially those concerning the GMO controversies. Some STS scholars thus move from a position of distant and critical observers to the role of experts in social engineering or advisers of policy-makers. However, in their enthusiasm concerning the expected benefits of upstream engagement, institutions, TA practitioners and social scientists seem to ignore some important limitations as well as the implicit framing assumptions of the concept. Based on an experience made by a group of social scientists in the Grenoble area—one of the major ‘nanodistricts’ in Europe—our paper shows that the ‘upstream engagement’ concept is still embedded in a linear model of innovation and is not very useful to anyone pursuing the co-production of innovations. It is especially true when socio-technical networks are already aligned by powerful actors and a worldwide agenda as in the case of nanotechnology. In order to give an opportunity for public engagement to have a larger impact on decision-making, we propose an alternative approach, which combines Actor–Network Theory (ANT), as an analytical tool, with the reflexive and ongoing implementation of public participation. Public engagement is probably one of the critical loci where STS scholars must reflect on the articulation between the knowledge they produce and public policies in action.     

Descartes on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities

ABSTRACT

Descartes did not use the terms ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities, but a similar distinction emerges from his texts: certain qualities of objects (such as size and shape) are intrinsic properties of matter, whereas others (like colours and smells) are products of the interaction with a perceiver. A common interpretation states that the division between primary and secondary qualities is explained by the way in which we are acquainted with them: an idea of a primary quality is similar to its physical causes, and it is clearly and distinctly perceived by the intellect. An idea of a secondary quality is dissimilar to its physical causes and it is obscurely and confusedly perceived by the senses. This view receives the name of ‘bifurcation reading’ (Simmons, A. ‘Descartes on the Cognitive Structure of Sensory Experience’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXVII, no. 3 (November 2003)). While it integrates well some textual occurrences, it creates a problematic fragmentation within single acts of perception. This paper contends that this reading is incorrect. It presents several arguments for the claim that the distinction of qualities is due to the different ways in which our ideas of them misrepresent their physical causes. Then, Descartes’ dissimilarity thesis between physical objects and our ideas of them remains a structural feature of his theory of sensory perception and not a local phenomenon affecting only ideas of secondary qualities.     

Creative thinking and collective mobilisation in the Muslim world

ABSTRACT

To what extent does openness to new ideas and creativity (ONIC) help explain the elite-challenging collective mobilisation in the Muslim world? Are religious Muslims who are open to creative and innovative thinking more or less likely to engage in pro-democratic collective action? Analysing 16 Muslim-majority countries, this study advances the debate of Muslim contentious politics by systematically examining the extent to which ONIC explains the variation in high-risk, pro-democratic collective mobilisation. A quad-dimensional analysis of creativity indicates that ONIC is an empirically distinctive measure to capture openness and creative thinking. The evidence further suggests that, ceteris paribus, Islamic religiosity and ONIC are not mutually exclusive and that both are positively associated with collective protests. Notably, ONIC does appear to intervene to mediate the positive relationship between Islam and engagement in high-risk collective action, implying that the effects of religiosity may not be independent from how Muslims position themselves towards being open to novel ideas or creativity. The findings also demonstrate that an individual-level ONIC may be boosting the likelihood of protest engagement among more devout individuals in Islamic societies.     

Retrieval of names in face and object naming in an interference study

Two experiments using the interference paradigm are reported. In the first experiment, the participants spoke aloud the names of celebrities and the names of objects when presented with pictures while hearing distractors. In the case of proper names, we replicated the data obtained by Izaute and Bonin (2001) using the interference paradigm with a proper name written naming task. In the case of common names, the results replicated those obtained by Shriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990). In the second experiment, the participants produced the names of celebrities when presented with their faces while hearing distractors that were either proper names associated with the celebrities (associate condition), that belonged to a different professional category (different condition), or that corresponded to the proper names of the celebrities (identical condition). For negative SOAs, “associate” distractors were found to increase latencies compared to the “different category” condition. The implications of the findings for proper name retrieval are briefly discussed.     

Adapting to test structure: Letting testing teach what to learn

We propose that we encode and store information as a function of the particular ways we have used similar information in the past. More specifically, we contend that the experience of retrieval can serve as a powerful cue to the most effective ways to encode similar information in comparable future learning episodes. To explore these ideas, we did two studies in which all participants went through study–test cycles of single category lists while we manipulated the nature of the recognition tests. The recognition tests either included only same-category lures or only different-category lures. The experience of repeated testing leads participants to avoid conceptual-based strategies but only when conceptual knowledge was poorly diagnostic for recognition (i.e., in the same-category lures condition). In a second study with a similar manipulation, we showed that repeated testing with lures from the same category as study items improved performance in a final recall surprise test compared to conditions in which different-category lures were used. Such a difference is akin to the one obtained when encoding instructions focus on distinctive item features compared to cases in which the focus is on relational processing. We suggest that testing requirements lead to adaptive changes at encoding.     

Fear conditioning and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone persons

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and may share similar deficits in the processing of emotional stimuli. High anxiety is associated with a failure in the acquisition and extinction of fear conditioning. Despite the supposed common deficits, no research has been conducted on fear acquisition and extinction in depression. The main aim of the present study was to investigate and compare fear acquisition and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone participants. Non-clinical anxious, depressive, anxious-depressive and control participants performed a fear discrimination task. During acquisition, the CS+ predicted an aversive event (unconditioned stimulus, US) and the CS? safety (no US). During extinction, the CS+ was no longer followed by the US, rendering it (temporarily) into a safety signal. On each CS participants rated their US expectancy; skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured throughout. The expectancy scores indicated that high anxiety resulted in less safety learning during acquisition and extinction; no effect of depression was observed. SCRs showed that high-anxiety persons displayed less discrimination learning (CS+ minus CS?) during acquisition than low-anxiety persons. During extinction, high-depression persons demonstrated more discriminative SCR than low-depression persons. The observed discrepancies in response patterns of high-anxiety and -depression persons seem to indicate distinctive information processing of emotional stimuli.