"本质"的双重含义:自然科学与人文科学——黑格尔、狄尔泰、胡塞尔之间的一点链接

Early in Aristotle’s terminology, and ever since, “essence” has been conceived as having two meanings, namely “universality” and “individuality”. According to the tradition of thought that has dominated throughout the history of Western philosophy, “essence” unequivocally refers to “universality”. As a matter of fact, however, “universality” cannot cover Aristotle’s definition and formulation of “essence”: Essence is what makes a thing “happen to be this thing.” “Individuality” should be the deep meaning of “essence”. By means of an analysis of some relevant Western thoughts and a review of cultural realities, it can be concluded that the difference between the attitudes toward things of the natural sciences and the humane sciences mainly lies in the fact that the former focus on the pursuit of universal regularity, whereas the latter go after the value and significance of human life. The movement from natural things to cultural things is a process in which essence shifts from universality to individuality. It is the author’s contention that what should be stressed in the fields of human culture and society is the construction of an ideal society that is “harmonious yet not identical”, on the basis of respecting and developing individual peculiarity and otherness. Translated by Zhang Lin from Beijing daxue xuebao 北京大学学报 (Journal of Peking University), 2007, (11): 23–29     

Attachment between humans and dogs

The special relationship that dogs have developed with humans has been studied not only from the social sciences perspective, but also from the perspectives of psychology and human medicine. Recently, in cognitive science, it has been suggested that dogs may have acquired the superior cognitive ability to communicate with humans, particularly using human-like visual cues during evolution, and that emotional bonding has developed between humans and dogs by means of similar social cues. This article discusses the biological aspects of human-dog attachment. Attachment requires the distinction of a specific figure using species-specific social cues and specific responses to the figure, brought about by neuroendocrinological homeostatic functions as well as behavioral aspects. It has been shown that dogs can distinguish a particular human figure (e.g. the owner) and exhibit specific autonomic reactions. Moreover, when dogs gaze at their owners, the latter's urinary oxytocin levels increase after the interaction. This understanding of the biological aspect of interspecies attachment suggests the possible elements that form the basis of cross-species empathy and the development of evolutionary cognitive abilities that may depend on not merely their genetic dendrogram.     

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: CATEGORIZING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES USING TWELVE ARCHETYPES

Abstract: Comparative political philosophy can be stimulated by imposing a categorization scheme on possible varieties of political philosophies. This article develops a categorization scheme using four essential features of political philosophies, resulting in twelve archetypal political philosophies. The four essential features selected are a political philosophy's views concerning human nature, the proper function of morality, the best form of society, and the highest responsibility of citizenship. The twelve archetypal political philosophies range from the communal (Rousseau), the democratic (J. S. Mill), the representative (Aristotle), the aristocratic (Plato), and the autocratic (Calvin), along with seven more archetypes: the aloof anarchy, social anarchy, contractarian, progressive, natural law, sage ruler, and tyrannical political forms. A wide variety of Western political philosophers are assigned their places within this categorization scheme to illustrate its utility and comprehensiveness.     

COSMOPOLITANISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS: RADICALISM IN A GLOBAL AGE

Abstract: The cosmopolitan imagination constructs a world order in which the idea of human rights is an operative principle of justice. Does it also construct an idealisation of human rights? The radicality of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, as developed by Kant, lay in its analysis of the roots of organised violence in the modern world and its visionary programme for changing the world. Today, the temptation that faces the cosmopolitan imagination is to turn itself into an endorsement of the existing order of human rights without a corresponding critical analysis of the roots of contemporary violence. Is the critical idealism associated with Kantian cosmopolitanism at risk of transmutation into an uncritical positivism? We find two prevailing approaches: either the constitutional framework of the existing world order is presented as the realisation of the cosmopolitan vision, or cosmopolitanism is turned into a utopian vision of a world order in which power is subordinated to the rule of international law. I suggest that the difficulties associated with both wings of cosmopolitanism threaten the legitimacy of the project and call for an understanding and culture of human rights that is less exclusively "conceptual" and more firmly grounded in social theory.     

日本拒绝上学概念的演变和原因探讨

拒绝上学指学生不是由于家庭贫困或生病,而是由于某种心理、情绪、身体或社会的原因而不去学校的现象。欧美最早进行研究,日本进行了五十多年的研究。该文介绍日本此现象的称呼从“学校恐怖症”、“拒绝上学”到“不去上学”的演变;日本学者从家庭、学校、社会方面对此现象进行的归因;拒绝上学的行为机制,如分离焦虑、情绪障碍、家庭关系不良;还介绍了日本教育部使用的小泉英二的分类。最后提示该现象在我国发展的可能性     

An investigation of resurgence of reinforced behavioral variability in humans

The present study examined resurgence of reinforced variability in college students, who completed a 3-phase computer-based variability task. In the first phase, baseline, points were delivered for drawing rectangles that sufficiently differed from previous rectangles in terms of a target dimension (size or location, counterbalanced) but were sufficiently similar in terms of the alternative dimension. In the second phase, alternative, points were only delivered for rectangles that were sufficiently different in terms of the alternative dimension, but repetitive in terms of the target dimension. In the third phase, extinction, no points were delivered. In baseline, participants made rectangles that were highly varied in terms of the target dimension and less varied in terms of the alternative dimension, and vice versa in the alternative phase. During extinction, levels of variability increased for the target dimension, providing evidence for resurgence of reinforced variability of a specific dimension of behavior. However, levels of variability also remained high for the alternative dimension, indicating that extinction-induced response variability may also have impacted the results. Although future research is needed to explore other explanations, the results of this study replicate prior research with pigeons and provide some support for the notion of variability as an operant.     

Individual differences in preference for risky behaviors during courtship

Engaging in risky behaviors is a sexual signalling strategy that men use to procure mates. The present study investigates men’s preferences for engaging in risky behaviors (along with women’s preferences for their male partner’s risky behavior) within dating couples. We investigated associations between relationship length, self-perceived attractiveness, sociosexuality orientation, and preference for risky behaviors in a sample of 256 couples. Results indicated that men had stronger preferences for risky behaviors than their partner’s ideal preference. Furthermore, relationship length was associated with a decline in women’s preference for their partner’s risk-taking, but not men’s preference for their own risk-taking. Self-perceived attractiveness was negatively associated with risk preference, and sociosexuality orientation was not directly related to risk preference. Female preferences for less intense male risky behaviors could reflect the need of paternal investment which is required for offspring care. Decreased male sexual signalling could account for lower preferences of risky behaviors in females who are involved in longer lasting romantic relationships.     

The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

Human rights are claimed to be innate and based on moral principles. Human rights attitudes have been shown to be related to political ideology, but there have been few studies investigating their relationship with morality. Using moral foundations theory, we examine whether morals can predict human rights attitudes across two studies. The first study used questionnaires to show that human rights are based exclusively on individualizing moral foundations; however, increases in individualizing and decreases in binding foundations predict increases in human rights endorsement. Moral foundations also mediated the relationship between political identification and human rights. Both individualizing and binding foundations performed a role in explaining the lower endorsement of human rights by conservatives as compared to liberals. The second study used textual analysis of newspaper articles to show that human-rights-related articles contained more moral language than other articles, in particular for the individualizing foundations. Conservative newspapers had a greater use of binding foundations in human rights articles than liberal newspapers.     

Individual Differences in Learning Abilities Impact Structure Addition: Better Learners Create More Structured Languages

Over the last decade, iterated learning studies have provided compelling evidence for the claim that linguistic structure can emerge from non-structured input, through the process of transmission. However, it is unclear whether individuals differ in their tendency to add structure, an issue with implications for understanding who are the agents of change. Here, we identify and test two contrasting predictions: The first sees learning as a pre-requisite for structure addition, and predicts a positive correlation between learning accuracy and structure addition, whereas the second maintains that it is those learners who struggle with learning and reproducing their input who add structure to it. This prediction is hard to test in standard iterated learning paradigms since each learner is exposed to a different input, and since structure and accuracy are computed using the same test items. Here, we test these contrasting predictions in two experiments using a one-generation artificial language learning paradigm designed to provide independent measures of learning accuracy and structure addition. Adults (N = 48 in each study) were exposed to a semi-regular language (with probabilistic structure) and had to learn it: Learning was assessed using seen items, whereas structure addition was calculated over unseen items. In both studies, we find a strong positive correlation between individuals' ability to learn the language and their tendency to add structure to it: Better learners also produced more structured languages. These findings suggest a strong link between learning and generalization. We discuss the implications of these findings for iterated language models and theories of language change more generally.     

A Forward Bias in Human Profile-Oriented Portraits

The spatial composition of human portraits obeys historically changing cultural norms. We show that it is also affected by cognitive factors that cause greater spontaneous attention to what is in front rather in the back of an agent. Scenes with more space in front of a directed object are both more often produced and judged as more aesthetically pleasant. This leads to the prediction that, in profile-oriented human portraits, compositions with more space in front of depicted agents (a “forward bias”) should be over-represented. By analyzing a large dataset (total N of 1,831 paintings by 582 unique identified European painters from the 15th to the 20th century), we found evidence of this forward bias: Painters tended to put more free space in front of, rather than behind, the sitters. Additionally, we found evidence that this forward bias became stronger when cultural norms of spatial composition favoring centering became less stringent.