国外隐喻的理论研究与实践应用

关于隐喻的研究和应用在各个领域都有体现,并且呈现日趋增多的趋势,迄今隐喻已经成为工业心理学研究的一项重要课题。文章介绍了国外隐喻的理论发展、隐喻在各个领域的应用研究,以及总结了目前隐喻研究中所存在的一些问题。隐喻理论从早期的局限于语言修辞的传统理论到具有广泛意义的现代认知理论,从揭示隐喻“靶”事物和“源”事物内在关系的相互作用理论到隐喻对事物逼真性的构造理论,这一系列的概念、理论发展和演化过程充分体现了隐喻在人类的认知和语言发展中的所具有的重要意义。随着理论研究的深入,隐喻在各个领域的应用也越来越普遍,这些领域包括网络技术、工程设计、人机交互、组织行为、企业管理等。然而目前对隐喻应用和研究仍旧存在一些局限性,例如研究者的工作大都局限于描述性和解释性的研究,在使用隐喻思想进行的设计和评价时也仍旧缺乏一个操作性的参照基准,因此更为全面和深入地探讨对于隐喻的进一步研究和应用有十分重要的意义。文章以此为出发点,通过提供隐喻研究和应用一个整体的框架,为进一步研究提供一些参考和启示。     

关系-表征复杂性模型的检验

目前有关问题难度的观点多是不全面的,在综合前人研究的基础上提出了关系-表征复杂性模型。在该模型里,区分了问题难度和问题解决难度两个概念,二者的本质分别是关系复杂性和表征复杂性;关系复杂性包括水平复杂性和等级复杂性,表征复杂性相应地包括表征广度和表征深度。以172名小学高年级学生为被试,以长方形面积问题方面的三种测验收集的数据对该模型的内部和外部效度进行了检验,结果表明它能够有效解释问题（解决）难度,区分优、中、差三类学生所能达到的表征复杂性。这说明该模型有理论价值     

Science and Religion: Some Demarcation Criteria

Discussions on the congruence, compatibility, and contradictions between science and religion have been going on since the rise of modern science. In our own times, there are many efforts to build bridges of harmony between the two. Most of these are anchored to particular religious traditions or denominations and also (often) to specific disciplines, notably cosmology, physics, and biology. Though these discussions serve commendable purposes for members of specific faiths and/or disciplines, they are also, for precisely this reason, of restricted appeal. There are not too many discussions of the topic that consider science and religion from a global perspective. It will therefore be useful to define science and religion in terms of their unique characteristics, draw the line of demarcation between them, and show where they overlap. This is what this paper attempts to do.     

The Genesis of Mind and Spirit

Spiritual life is made possible by the evolution of a human neuropsychology that requires social interdependence for its development. Extensive neuroplasticity requires experiential shaping throughout life. The evolution of frontal cortex hypertrophy suggests that much of this shaping is produced by a socially constructed virtual reality, extending beyond immediate experience. Prefrontal colonization makes possible the social scaffolding of neuroregulation, including the emotional attachments necessary for moral life. Cognitive independence from immediate environments enables symbioses with external memory systems, producing novel forms of socially constituted experience and making possible the transformative effect of religious systems upon individual biologies and psychologies.     

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MACHINE

Abstract. We consider only the relationship of consciousness to physical reality, whether physical reality is interpreted as the brain, artificial intelligence, or the universe as a whole. The difficulties with starting the analysis with physical reality on the one hand and with consciousness on the other are delineated. We consider how one may derive from the other. Concepts of universal or pure consciousness versus local or ego consciousness are explored with the possibility that consciousness may be physically creative. We examine whether artificial intelligence can possess consciousness as an extension of the interrelationship between consciousness and the brain or material reality.     

Computers,information and ethics: A review of issues and literature

Editorial note:The following bibliographic survey of computer ethics is intended as a general introduction useful to guide both preliminary research and course development. It is the first of a series that Carl Mitcham will be doing on a number of specific discussions of ethics in science and technology. Future installments are projected on nuclear ethics, engineering ethics, ethics in scientific research, and biomedical ethics. With this [book] I issue “a call to arms.” The world needs much more discussion and writing on the social and ethical issues surrounding computing. I hope readers .... will take up the challenge.     

The effect of prompting and reinforcement of activity in elderly demented inpatients

On a ward for 24 psychogeriatric patients, 18 were randomly assigned to three groups with different experimental conditions. The first group was prompted and reinforced for different activities; the second was only prompted; and the third served as a control group. Activities, both the trained ones and others, were continuously monitored throughout the five week study. The results showed a clear increase in the trained activities after training. The prompting condition was effective, and the addition of reinforcement did not add any to the effects. There was no generalization to untrained activities, and the effects did not last at the 1 hr or 21 hr assessments, but was clearly visible at 5 min after training. Time seemed to be more important than place, i.e. the effect ceased with elapsed time, not because of changes in the situation.     

Immersion and the illusion of presence in virtual reality

This commentary briefly reviews the history of virtual reality and its use for psychology research, and clarifies the concepts of immersion and the illusion of presence.     

The non-symbolic level of psychical reality

Freud introduced the concept of psychical reality as a consequence of abandoning the theory of seduction, and although this meant a turning point in his theoretical thinking he never defined the concept concisely and systematically. Thus it is possible to delineate at least two meanings of psychical reality that run through Freud´s writings as well as the writings of contemporary analysts. On the one hand psychical reality encompasses the whole field of subjective experiences. On the other, it is understood more narrowly as a transformation of experiences in the unconscious.

Substituting the idea of different meanings ascribed to Freud´s concept this article proposes to differentiate between levels in the psyche with the main focus on the unconscious level of the dream and of phantasy and the real unconscious. Starting from the most superficial level of subjective reality the text moves to that of fantasy formation illustrated by primarily Freud´s text on `A child is being beaten´. Adding Laplanche´s translational model the article ends up at the deepest level represented by the late Lacan and his concept of the real Unconscious.

The paper concludes that the term real points to something exceeding symbolization and the imaginary—thus escaping comprehension—and yet is absolutely indispensable to the organization of unconscious processes.