自然语言处理中的哲学问题

分析了哲学上的理性主义和经验主义及其在自然语言处理的研究中的影响,对比了自然语言处理中基于规则的理性主义方法和基于统计的经验主义方法的优点和缺点,主张把这两种方法结合起来以推动自然处理研究的发展。本文还分析了哲学中知识本体的概念发展到知识本体工程的过程,说明了哲学对于自然语言处理的深刻影响。     

Caricatures,Myths, and White Lies

Pedagogical situations require white lies: in teaching philosophy we make decisions about what to omit, what to emphasise, and what to distort. This article considers when it is permissible to distort the historical record, arguing for a tempered respect for the historical facts. It focuses on the rationalist/empiricist distinction, which still frames most undergraduate early modern courses despite failing to capture the intellectual history of that period. It draws an analogy with Michael Strevens's view on idealisation in causal explanation to distinguish between myths and caricatures. Myths are distortions of the historical record that undermine students' understanding of the past, despite having other pedagogical benefits (being illuminative of some other period, or helping uptake of philosophical skills and methods). Caricatures are distortions that either increase or are indifferent to understanding of the past. Mythmaking, the article argues, is unjustified.     

Experience and Life as Ever‐Present Constraints on Knowledge

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind‐independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.     

Children Cover Your Eyes: Masculine Honor and the Role of Blind Patriotism in Teaching National Allegiance to Posterity

Identifying strongly with the nation could entail a willingness to criticize the country or a refusal to do so. The studies reported here examine the extent to which masculine honor inspires the latter and, in turn, motivates teaching allegiance to youth in a manner that could discourage national criticism. Whereas Study 1 provides an initial test of this idea by evaluating blind patriotism's ability to mediate the link between honor endorsement and general support for allegiance education (e.g., singing the National Anthem at school functions), Studies 2 and 3 do so more decisively by focusing on more severe outcomes such as punishing students who refuse to pledge loyalty to the United States. The predicted pattern of mediation occurred in every case, even when honor endorsers were experimentally induced to feel anger toward the country (Study 3). Explanations for this latter finding are discussed and include the role of identity fusion in honor endorsers’ commitment to the nation and the potential for real and enduring governmental threats to weaken or eliminate the pattern of mediation observed.     

The Prevalence of Coping Behaviour,Posttraumatic Growth and Psychological Well-Being in Women who Experienced Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study investigated the prevalence of coping behaviour, posttraumatic growth and psychological well-being in adult South African women (n=60, mean age=32, ethnicity=70% European, 28% African and 2% Asian descent). Specifically, the study considered the prevalence of constructive coping, posttraumatic growth and psychological well-being with a history of childhood sexual abuse. All participants self-reported being sexually abused before the age of 18 years. They completed measures of coping, posttraumatic growth, and psychological well-being, in a cross-sectional survey design. Results showed moderate to high correlations among scales indicating conceptual coherence as indicators of constructive coping, posttraumatic growth and psychological wellness. About 58% of participants manifested constructive coping, 60% manifested posttraumatic growth, and 42% manifested psychological well-being. These women survivors of childhood sexual abuse had higher levels of posttraumatic growth than reported in previous studies.     

Experimental Studies in Ocular Behavior: II. Ocular Inadequacies in Epileptic Patients

The Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values and the Brown Modification of the Thouless Test of Religious Orthodoxy were administered to 120 male and female students in introductory psychology. Measures of anxiety, self-esteem, authoritarianism, and humanitarianism were also administered to the Ss in an effort to determine whether the two measures of religiosity would yield different personality and attitude profiles of the “religious” individual. A significant positive correlation was found between authoritarianism and the Thouless Test and between humanitarianism and the Study of Values religious measure. All other correlations involving the two measures of religiosity were found to be nonsignificant. These findings lend support to the notion that using two divergent measures of religiosity does result in the formation of different profiles of the “religious” individual.     

Constructive Theology,the Cross of Christ,and the Praxis of Liberation

The article relates Paul Hinlicky's project of critical dogmatics to the constructive work of two Reformed theologians, Jürgen Moltmann's The Crucified God (1972) and Mark Lewis Taylor's The Executed God (2001/2015). After highlighting central tenets of Hinlicky's paradigm I discuss and compare the monographs by Moltmann and Taylor, weighing their similarities and differences. I conclude by pointing out the shared interest of critical dogmatics and constructive theology.     

CONFESSIONS OF A PRACTICING NATURALISTIC THEIST: A RESPONSE TO HARDWICK,PEDERSON, AND PETERSON

Abstract. In my response to the comments of Charley Hardwick, Ann Pederson, and Greg Peterson, I continue the narrative, confessional mode of my writing in Dancing with the Sacred. First, I sketch some methodological decisions underlying my naturalistic, evolutionary, practical theology. I then respond to the encouraging suggestions of my commentators by further developing my ideas about naturalism, mystery, creativity as God, the place of ecological responsibility in my thinking, sin, and eschatology. I offer suggestions as to how I might widen the practical applications of my theology beyond environmental and medical ethics to other areas of moral responsibility in relation to the creative process. I do all this with much appreciation for the care and careful critical reflection that my commentators have devoted to my thinking.     

TRANSCENDENTALISM OR EMPIRICISM? A DISCUSSION OF A PROBLEM RAISED IN E. O. WILSON'S BOOK CONSILIENCE

Abstract. E. O. Wilson writes that the “choice between transcendentalism and empiricism” is this century's “version of the struggle for men's soul” (1998, 240). The transcendentalist argues for theism—that there is a God, a creator of the world. The empiricist instead makes the point that the notion of God, including morality and ethics, are adaptive structures of human evolution. Before entering the debate of the transcendentalist/empiricist controversy I analyze how things exist and suggest that all that is exists as united diversity, as identity in difference. I argue that oneness by itself is intangible because wholes are concrete only through their tangible parts. I briefly discuss this understanding of existence in the realm of art to show that transcendence and immanence are not mutually exclusive but constitute each other. I conclude that existence, the hypostasis of unity in diversity, might be seen as a gift from absolute existence. In this view, the world might reveal itself as a gift that reflects the trinitarian existence of the Giver.