Liberal naturalism and the scientific image of the world

ABSTRACT

This paper distinguishes between the theoretical scientific image (of the posits of the successful sciences) and the practical scientific image (which, besides explanatory posits, includes everything presupposed by the practices of doing science (e.g. scientists, funding agencies, laboratories, chairs and other artifacts, linguistic communication, a just and democratic ethos). The popular idea that there is a conceptual clash between the scientific and manifest images of the world is revealed as largely illusory. From the perspective of a liberal naturalism, the placement problem for ‘problematic’ entities or truths is not solved but dissolved. Persons, say, are not posits of any explanatory science, but beings acknowledged as rational agencies in second-personal space. Core elements of the manifest image (e.g. persons) are more deeply rooted in our conceptual scheme than any version of the scientific image.     

SPACE,TIME, AND CAUSALITY

The characters of space, time, and causality are issues that are constrained by physics but that require also acts of metaphysical decision. Relativity theory is consistent both with the idea of an a temporal block universe and with a temporal universe of true becoming. Science's account of causal properties is patchy and does not imply the closure of the universe to other forms of causal influence. Intrinsic unpredictabilities offer opportunities for metaphysical conjecture concerning the form that such additional causal principles might take. Different theological understandings of how God relates to time afford legitimate criteria for differing metaphysical decisions about the nature of temporality.     

肝癌时间生物学研究的启示

在临床一线工作中发现肝癌病人就诊率有一定的时间现象,而在时间生物学理论启发下开拓了肝癌时间生物学研究的创新思路,体会到新科学理论是一把开启科学思维的金钥匙,但还必须善于用在科学实践上。在“对立统一”哲学原理的启发下,根据爱因斯坦“弯曲时空”原理找到气候差异很大的不同经纬度区域的肝癌临床时间生物学特征是否为同一性的论证方法。根据“对立统一”哲学原理,对肝癌细胞内正/负向癌基因进行对应表达实验研究,探索肝癌时间生物学特征的分子机制。对肝癌时间生物学研究最终目标进行了哲理性思考。     

A shadow concept

The author focuses on the signifi cance of preconscious thinking, and its relationship to what we think of as unconscious fantasies. He reopens Freud's forgotten struggle with preconscious thinking, while he explores preconscious thinking as the basis for thinking about psychoanalytic treatment. This includes our goals in bringing an idea to the analysand's attention, and the role of transitional space where thoughts and feelings can be played with.     

Children in genocide: Extreme traumatization and the ‘affect propeller’1

The author bases this paper on extensive research concerning children in genocide with a starting point in the Holocaust and in the genocide in Rwanda 1994. She demonstrates indicators for psychological phenomena concerning the child survivors' affect regulating that appeared in life histories presented in videotaped in‐depth interviews. The psychological phenomena concern experiences of persecution and ways of coming to terms with recurring memory images and affects. The interviews that have been analysed in detail form a basis for an emerging conceptual model about trauma‐ and generational‐linking processes within each individual‐the ‘affect propeller’. An overall conclusion from this study is that past traumatic experiences are recovered not as memories in the usual sense of the word, but as affects invading the present. Accordingly, affects seem to tell the story of the past traumatic experiences.     

A physicalist reinterpretion of ‘phenomenal’ spaces

This paper argues that phenomenal or internal metrical spaces are redundant posits. It is shown that we need not posit an internal space-time frame, as the physical space-time suffices to explain geometrical perception, memory and planning. More than the internal space-time frame, the idea of a phenomenal colour space has lent credibility to the idea of internal spaces. It is argued that there is no phenomenal colour space that underlies the various psychophysical colour spaces; it is parasitic upon physical and psychophysical colour spaces. The argumentation is further extended to other sensory spaces and generalised quality spaces.     

Bisecting the mental number line in near and far space

Much evidence suggests that common posterior parietal mechanisms underlie the orientation of attention in physical space and along the mental number line. For example, the small leftward bias (pseudoneglect) found in paper-and-pencil line bisection is also found when participants “bisect” number pairs, estimating (without calculating) the number midway between two others. For bisection of physical lines, pseudoneglect has been found to shift rightward as lines are moved from near space (immediately surrounding the body) to far space. We investigated whether the presentation of stimuli in near or far space also modulated spatial attention for the mental number line. Participants bisected physical lines or number pairs presented at four distances (60, 120, 180, 240 cm). Clear rightward shifts in bias were observed for both tasks. Furthermore, the rate at which this shift occurred in the two tasks, as measured by least-squares regression slopes, was significantly correlated across participants, suggesting that the transition from near to far distances induced a common modulation of lateral attention in physical and numerical space. These results demonstrate a tight coupling between number and physical space, and show that even such prototypically abstract concepts as number are modulated by our on-line interactions with the world.     

Dissimilarity, Quasimetric, Metric

Dissimilarity is a function that assigns to every pair of stimuli a nonnegative number vanishing if and only if two stimuli are identical, and that satisfies the following two conditions called the intrinsic uniform continuity and the chain property, respectively: it is uniformly continuous with respect to the uniformity it induces, and, given a set of stimulus chains (finite sequences of stimuli), the dissimilarity between their initial and terminal elements converges to zero if the chains’ length (the sum of the dissimilarities between their successive elements) converges to zero. The four properties axiomatizing this notion are shown to be mutually independent. Any conventional, symmetric metric is a dissimilarity function. A quasimetric (satisfying all metric axioms except for symmetry) is a dissimilarity function if and only if it is symmetric in the small. It is proposed to reserve the term metric (not necessarily symmetric) for such quasimetrics. A real-valued binary function satisfies the chain property if and only if whenever its value is sufficiently small it majorates some quasimetric and converges to zero whenever this quasimetric does. The function is a dissimilarity function if, in addition, this quasimetric is a metric with respect to which the function is uniformly continuous.     

La reprise d’études universitaires : entre continuité et rupture

The presented study pursued the objective to analyze the dialectic break/continuity susceptible to cross the transition of resumption of studies to the university, of the decision-making in the real-life experience of the first one-month of training. For that purpose, two models were summoned, that of motivations Push/Pull, Antipush/Antipull of Mullet, Lunch, Lemaire, Raiff and Barthorpe (2000) and that of the transitional processes proposed by Perret-Clermont and Zittoun (2002), as well as the concept of perceived social support completed of the notion of perceived social brake. The analysis of semi-directive conversations led with 10 adults in resumption of studies in a university of Île-de-France first brought to the foreground four motivational, certain dynamics more marked with the seal of the break (early or consummate), others more registered in a professional continuity (to develop or to install). Then, the analysis identified the most notable upheavals of the experience of the first months of training (identity plan and management of the various spheres of activity). Finally, it appeared that the social supports perceived, although important throughout the transition, vary in nature and function in each of the two periods of transition studied (decision, beginning of training). The results are particularly discussed in terms of Amartya Sen's capability approach.     

The development of spatial category representations from 4 to 7 years

Representation of spatial categories was assessed in 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds. Across nine spatial categories (In, On, Under, In Front, Behind, Above, Below, Left, and Right), children were asked to pick the odd‐one‐out from four images, three of which displayed the same spatial relationship between two objects, and one which showed a different spatial relationship. Results support our proposed model of spatial category representation. Children progressed through three levels of understanding: from rigid (level 1), to abstract (level 2) to broad (including non‐prototypical category exemplars) (level 3) understanding of spatial category membership. This developmental pattern was common to all spatial categories, and the ages at which children reached each level varied across categories, in line with the order in which category representations emerge in infancy.