Evolution‐revolution and the cosmos

The purpose of this paper is to sketch some remarks about the evolution of psychology within contemporary cognitive sciences and its consequences on the definition of the object of a (one) scientific psychology. Arguments are stated on empirical experience from interdisciplinary research and on experimental investigations in psycholinguistics and knowledge representation.     

Discontinuities in early development of the understanding of physical causality

Research on early physical reasoning has shown surprising discontinuities in developmental trajectories. Infants possess some skills that seem to disappear and then re-emerge in childhood. It has been suggested that prediction skills required in search tasks might cause these discontinuities (Keen, 2003). We tested 3.5- to 5-year-olds’ understanding of collision events using a forced-choice paradigm with reduced prediction demands. Although the group as a whole performed at chance level, when the preschoolers were subdivided into three age groups, the oldest group performed above chance level. These findings suggest that it is unlikely to be prediction skills that affect young preschoolers’ performance on physical reasoning tasks. The findings lend support to a task-demand hypothesis, which proposes that discontinuities in developmental trajectories can be explained by differences in the extent to which cognitive processes are required by the different tasks.     

Lexical-semantic body knowledge in 5- to 11-year-old children: How spatial body representation influences body semantics

This study addresses the relation between lexico-semantic body knowledge (i.e., body semantics) and spatial body representation (i.e., structural body representation) by analyzing naming performances as a function of body structural topography. One hundred and forty-one children ranging from 5 years 2 months to 10 years 5 months old were asked to provide a lexical label for isolated body part pictures. We compared the children’s naming performances according to the location of the body parts (body parts vs. head features and also upper vs. lower limbs) or to their involvement in motor skills (distal segments, joints, and broader body parts). The results showed that the children’s naming performance was better for facial body parts than for other body parts. Furthermore, it was found that the naming of body parts was better for body parts related to action. These findings suggest that the development of a spatial body representation shapes the elaboration of semantic body representation processing. Moreover, this influence was not limited to younger children. In our discussion of these results, we focus on the important role of action in the development of body representations and semantic organization.     

THE ROMANTIC CONNECTION: NEURATH,THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL,AND HEIDEGGER,PART TWO

Commentators commonly assume that Descartes regards it as a function of the passions to inform us or teach us which things are beneficial and which are harmful. As a result, they tend to infer that Descartes regards the passions as an appropriate guide to what is beneficial or harmful. In this paper I argue that this conception of the role of the passions in Descartes is mistaken. First, in spite of a number of texts appearing to show the contrary, I argue that Descartes does not regard it as the role of the passions to inform us about what is beneficial or harmful. Second, although Descartes calls the passions good and useful, I argue that Descartes does not think we should allow ourselves to be guided by them. When we recognize that the function of the passions is largely motivational and not informative, we can more easily understand Descartes's practical advice in The Passions of the Soul that happiness requires us to guide our passions instead of letting our passions guide us.     

Representation,Presentation and the Epistemic Role of Perceptual Experience

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the representational theory of perception, on which the world is represented as being a certain way in perceptual experience, cannot explain how there can be a genuinely epistemic connection between experience and belief. I try to show that we are positively required to deny that perceptual consciousness is contentful if we want to make its fitness for epistemic duties intelligible. (So versions of the representational theory on which experience has a merely causal purchase on belief are not considered.) But my aim is not just negative. I try to defeat representationalism in such a way as to motivate a robustly presentational theory of perception. According to such a theory, perceptions are relations not between a subject and a content but between a subject and an ordinary object (such that if the relation holds at t, an appropriate subject and object must exist at t, and the object must be presented to the subject). I end by sketching an account of perceptual experience that is meant to show that, contrary to a very popular misconception, there is a way to conceive perceptual consciousness as relational and presentational (not intentional and representational) that does not succumb to the celebrated ‘myth of the Given’.     

临床实习的法律规范问题调查及对策

通过问卷对来自四川大学华西医院等6所不同层次医疗机构的475名实习医生进行调查,发现身份不合法、患者不配合、义务履行不充分、管理不规范是目前实习中的主要问题.提出在优化实习资源、加强实习生教育的基础上,通过建立《实习医师资格考试制度》、成立“临床实习管理规范委员会”,确立实习规范化的法律依据和制度框架,促进我国医学教育和卫生事业的良性发展.     

No Role of Initial Problem Representation in Insight Problem Solving

The literature on insight problems—problems that supposedly can only be solved by rejection of an initial faulty problem representation and sudden comprehension of another, nonobvious representation (restructuring)—suggests that the size of initial representations affects the very process of problem solving. Large initial representations impose systematic, analytical search, whereas only small representations promote intuitive, associative processes assumed by some theorists to underpin insight. In a group of 353 young healthy participants, 6 previously validated insight problems were applied in either a small or large initial representation variant. Results demonstrated no reliable difference in performance between the problem variants with regard to (a) solution accuracy, (b) self-reported insight accompanying solutions, (c) effects of fatigue, (d) correlations with another 6 small representation-size problems, and (e) correlations with working memory capacity (which were notable). This outcome suggests that the size of initial faulty representation plays no role in insight problem solving process, supporting the account assuming its strong similarity to systematic, analytical problem solving.     

The Good of New Age Goods

Critical writing on cultural appropriation and commodification is often predicated on the assumption that the transformation of cultural goods into commodities is essentially a process of alienation: of consumers from themselves and of indigenous people from their cultural products. The consumption of indigenous practices and images by practitioners of New Age and alternative spiritualities has been the subject of particularly harsh criticism, with ‘New Agers’ excoriated as exploitative culture thieves. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research into the use of commodified images of Australian Aboriginal people by practitioners of New Age and alternative spiritualities—and by Aboriginal people themselves—to suggest that the producers and consumers of such goods, and indeed the goods themselves, have a greater agency than is commonly recognised. I argue that, many critics of cultural and spiritual commodification fail to recognise or fail to take seriously, the meaning cultural goods can acquire when removed from the market place and personalised by their consumers. More to the point, the suggestion that such transformations are inherently alienating tends to elide the involvement of indigenous people in the production of imagery that complements (as well as competes with) New Age representations.     

我观故我在？— 从橡胶手错觉对自我身体所有权的探讨

橡胶手错觉是一种能将非自我的肢体感知为自我的肢体的反应。继发现橡胶手错觉现象后,研究者通过操纵自变量以及观测不同的因变量,得到了大量新的研究结果。橡胶手错觉的出现与强度受到时间、空间和手姿势的影响。橡胶手错觉的产生机制为单纯的多感觉整合或多感觉整合与身体表征共同作用的结果。未来研究侧重于被试取样、研究策略以及医学领域中瘫痪患者的认知神经康复和截肢病人的假肢控制方面。