Kant on Complete Determination and Infinite Judgement

In the Transcendental Ideal Kant discusses the principle of complete determination: for every object and every predicate A, the object is either determinately A or not-A. He claims this principle is synthetic, but it appears to follow from the principle of excluded middle, which is analytic. He also makes a puzzling claim in support of its syntheticity: that it represents individual objects as deriving their possibility from the whole of possibility. This raises a puzzle about why Kant regarded it as synthetic, and what his explanatory claim means. I argue that the principle of complete determination does not follow from the principle of excluded middle because the externally negated or ‘negative’ judgement ‘Not (S is P)’ does not entail the internally negated or ‘infinite’ judgement ‘S is not-P.’ Kant's puzzling explanatory claim means that empirical objects are determined by the content of the totality of experience. This entails that empirical objects are completely determinate if and only if the totality of experience has a completely determinate content. I argue that it is not a priori whether experience has such a completely determinate content and thus not analytic that objects obey the principle of complete determination.     

Leaping Ahead of Heidegger: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Being and Time

Abstract

This article challenges Honneth’s reading of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory (2001/2010). Focusing on Hegel’s method, I argue that this text hardly offers support for the theory of mutual recognition that Honneth purports to derive from it. After critically considering Honneth’s interpretation of Hegel’s account of the family and civil society, I argue that Hegel’s text does not warrant Honneth’s tacit identification of mutual recognition with symmetrical instances of mutual recognition, let alone his subsequent projection of symmetrical forms of mutual recognition onto the various spheres of the Philosophy of Right as a whole. I conclude by indicating an alternative way in which Hegel’s text might be used to understand contemporary society.     

A Moorean paradox of desire

A prevalent assumption among philosophers who believe that people can intentionally deceive themselves (intentionalists) is that they accomplish this by controlling what evidence they attend to. This article is concerned primarily with the evaluation of this claim, which we may call ‘attentionalism’. According to attentionalism, when one justifiably believes/suspects that not-p but wishes to make oneself believe that p, one may do this by shifting attention away from the considerations supportive of the belief that not-p and onto considerations supportive of the belief that p. The details of this theory are elaborated, its theoretical importance is pointed out, and it is argued that the strategy is supposed to work by leading to the repression of one's knowledge of the unwelcome considerations. However, I then show that the assumption that this is possible is opposed by the balance of a relevant body of empirical research, namely, the thought-suppression literature, and so intentionalism about self-deception cannot find vindication in the attentional theory.     

浅析神经外科中的诊疗思路和思维方式

应该注重培训年轻医生在临床中学会应用哲学思想和思维方式,真正认识事物的本质。这对于诊断、治疗、科研、创新有事半功倍的作用,可避免片面性、盲目性,减少医源性偏差与失误,提高治愈率和生活质量。一般通过三种思维方式即理论、工程及评价思维思考疾病,如蛛网膜下腔出血的病因、临床特点、检查方法、诊疗思路、预后和转归,最终达到预期的疗效。     

ON MARTIN EGER'S "A TALE OF TWO CONTROVERSIES"

Abstract. Criticisms are presented against Eger's challenge to the demarcation between the natural sciences and ethics. Arguments are given both against his endorsement of the "new" philosophy of science and against his rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. However, his educational recommendations are reinforced rather than weakened by these criticisms     

骨科疾病诊治中的临床思维

医学哲学是对医学科学成就总的概括,并以此为基础探讨生命活动和病程的一般规律,研究医学科学的思维方式,直至疾病预防、诊断治疗。同时研究辩证规律和范畴在医学科学中的表现,从而指导骨科医师解决在骨科疾病诊治中遇到的诸多问题,并有助于形成正确的临床思维。结合临床工作体会,探讨医学哲学在骨科疾病诊治临床思维中的应用。     

On the study of foreign philosophy in Chinese cultural construction and its future

Since the “Conference on Foreign Philosophy” held in Wuhu in October 1978, the study of foreign philosophy in China has undergone a prosperous stage. This article discusses the significance of the study of foreign philosophy in the context of renovation, transformation and remolding of Chinese contemporary culture, explores the role of the discipline in the context of Chinese cultural construction, and anticipates the future of this discipline. A cross-cultural perspective is needed for a proper understanding of the significance of the learning and study of foreign philosophy in Chinese cultural construction; otherwise we might fall into cultural conservationism. Secondly, to make philosophy and social sciences prosperous is also a task for foreign philosophy studies, and whether or not foreign philosophy can be well studied should be a mark of the prosperousness of the construction of Chinese culture. Finally, philosophy is a product of human beings and should eventually serve human beings. Chinese culture should open itself up to the world and so should foreign philosophy studies in China. __________ Translated from Jiangxi Shehui Kexue 江西社会科学 (Jiangxi Social Sciences), 2005 (2) by Chen Yuehua & Ma Minghui     

One hundred and fifty years of philosophy

Looking back from 2049 over one-hundred and fifty years of philosophy, a student's essay reveals what became of rival strands in Western philosophy – with a sidelong glance at the special Topoi issue on the theme “Philosophy: What is to be Done?” that was published almost half a century earlier.     

The place of human values in the language of science: Kuhn,Saussure, and structuralism

The current paradigm in medicine generally distinguishes between genetic and environmental causes of disease. Although the word paradigm has become a commonplace, the theories of Thomas Kuhn have not received much attention in the journals of medicine. Kuhn's structuralist method differs radically from the daily activities of the scientific method itself. Using linguistic theory, this essay offers a structuralist reading of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Our purpose is to highlight the similarities between these structuralist models of science and language. In part, we focus on the logic that enables Kuhn to assert the priority of perception over interpretation in the history of science. To illustrate some of these issues, we refer to the distinction between environmental and genetic causes of disease. While the activity of scientific research results in the revision of concepts in science, the production of significant differences that shape our knowledge is in part a social and linguistic process.     

McDowell on Kant: Redrawing the Bounds of Sense

John McDowell's Mind and World is a notable attempt to redirect the interest of analytic philosophers toward certain themes in Kantian and more recent continental thought. Only thus, he believes, can we move beyond the various failed attempts – by Quine, Davidson, Rorty, and others – to achieve a naturalised epistemology that casts off the various residual "dogmas" of old-style logical empiricism. In particular, McDowell suggests that we return to Kant's ideas of "spontaneity" and "receptivity" as the two jointly operative powers of mind which enable thought to transcend the otherwise unbridgeable gulf between sensuous intuitions and concepts of understanding. However, this project miscarries for several reasons. Chief among them is the highly problematical nature of Kant's claims, taken over by McDowell without reference to their later treatment at the hands of subjective and objective idealists. Hence he tends to fall back into different versions of the same mind/world dualism. I then question McDowell's idea that Kant can be "naturalised" by reinterpreting those claims from a more hermeneutic or communitarian standpoint with its sources in Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Gadamer. For the result is to deprive Kant's philosophy of its distinctively critical dimension not only with regard to epistemological issues but also in relation to matters of ethical and sociopolitical judgement.