泛文化的自尊需要：基于中国人的研究证据

自尊需要是否具有跨文化普遍性是文化心理学领域近10年来争论最为激烈的问题之一。围绕这一争议, 本文从6个方面对国内外基于中国人的自尊研究进行了梳理、整合和解读。结果显示：1)自尊作为一种结构在中国和西方是类似的; 2)中国人的自尊是存在积极偏差的; 3)高自尊对中国人是有益的; 4)中国人需要、努力且策略性地维护和促进自尊; 5)中国人只是在自尊的认知成分上水平比西方人低, 情感成分上不低; 6)自尊的文化差异可以由动机或需要本身以外的与文化密切相关的因素解释, 比如：谦虚、趋中的反应偏向、朴素的辩证认知风格等。这些证据表明：自尊需要具有跨文化普遍性, 但其表达、促进和维护因文化而异。     

Towards a cognitive theory of existential meaning

The capacity to attribute meaning to personal experiences may rest on a specialized cognitive system enabling this form of causal reasoning. Close examination of these attributional tendencies suggests that this system may be distinct from those underlying other forms of causal reasoning such as a “theory of mind” system in the behavioral domain, a folk physics system in the physical domain, and a folk biology system in the biological domain. A fourth, existential domain, an abstract ontological frame within which the subjective, narrative self is envisioned to be contained, may have driven the construction of an intuitive capacity in humans that encourages them to search for the underlying purpose or reason for having had certain life experiences. This system likely has specific, definable operational rules that are responsible for activating such explanatory searches. In addition, it appears anchored to a general intentionality system that promotes the attribution of teleological purpose and higher-order mental states to an abstract agency that is envisioned to cause events and personal experiences. Identifying the component parts of this specialized cognitive system through empirical investigations can help researchers to reconstruct both its evolutionary phylogeny and to track its developmental emergence.     

Too Good to Be True? Using Realism to Enhance Applicant Attraction

Research that has examined the effects of realism on pre-hire outcomes has suggested that it does not harm recruitment. We present evidence that realistic information may, under certain circumstances, increase organizational attractiveness. Participants (N = 225) evaluated one of two recruitment messages, positive only or realistic, and reported their perceptions of organizational attractiveness, source credibility, and perceptions of the challenge inherent in the job. Consistent with our hypothesis, the realistic recruitment message led to higher organizational attractiveness than the positive only message. Contrary to expectations, however, this effect appears to be mediated through perceptions of challenge in the job, rather than perceptions of source credibility.     

Routes to Triviality

It is known that a number of inference principles can be used to trivialise the axioms of naïve comprehension – the axioms underlying the naïve theory of sets. In this paper we systematise and extend these known results, to provide a number of general classes of axioms responsible for trivialising naïve comprehension.     

An Argument For Metaphysical Realism

This paper presents an argument for metaphysical realism, understood as the claim that the world has structure that would exist even if our cognitive activities never did. The argument is based on the existence of a structured world at a time when it was still possible that we would never evolve. But the interpretation of its premises introduces subtleties: whether, for example, these premises are to be understood as assertions about the world or about our evidence, internally or externally, via assertibility conditions or truth conditions – and what sorts of beings are included in the `we' upon whose cognitions the antirealist supposes the structure of the world to depend. I argue that antirealism can provide no defensible, fully articulated interpretation of the premises that either shows them not to be true or defeats the reasoning. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论牟宗三哲学中的易学研究

牟宗三的易学研究为的是从易学中发见与解析中国哲学、中国思想,旨在抉发中国的玄学与道德哲学,而不是作一种历史的研究。他从哲学上为《周易》的解释提供了一个逻辑符号论的模型,为中国古典思想的现代诠释作出了首开先河的有益尝试;他对易学的“实在论的价值论”或“超越的内在”的价值论的诠释,与康德、维特根斯坦关于道德世界的“超越的外在论”不同;他对易之道德世界的分析与解释也是极其形式化的逻辑的。在这些分析与解释中,《周易》的“逻辑世界”或“符号世界”变成了语义的价值世界,或者说,作为“数理物理”世界的《周易》变成了价值论的道德世界。无论是在叙述方式,或内容的阐释与解析上,牟氏的这项研究都是十分新颖的,为国内所未有。但是,牟氏的易学研究只是他学思的开端起步,相对于他的逻辑研究来说,易学研究构成了他的哲学思想发展进路的前逻辑起点,而非逻辑起点,具有形式的象征意义。     

Naïve Comprehension and Contracting Implications

In his paper [6], Greg Restall conjectured that a logic supports a naïve comprehension scheme if and only if it is robustly contraction free, that is, if and only if no contracting connective is definable in terms of the primitive connectives of the logic. In this paper, we present infinitely many counterexamples to Restall's conjecture, in the form of purely implicational logics which are robustly contraction free, but which trivialize naïve comprehension.     

Schrödinger's Cat and Divine Action: Some Comments on the Use of Quantum Uncertainty to Allow for God's Action in the World

I present results of recent work in the field of quantum optics and relate this work to discussions about the theory of quantum mechanics and God's divine action in the world. Experiments involving atomic decay, relevant to event uncertainty in quantum mechanics, as well as experiments aimed at elucidating the so–called Schrödinger's–cat paradox, help clarify apparent ambiguities or paradoxes that I believe are at the heart of renewed attempts to locate God within our constructed physical theories and tend to narrow the gaps proposed as an opening for divine action. Some problems arise because of imprecise use of nonmathematical language to force quantum mechanics into an intuitive "classical" framework.     

A developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts

Previous research indicates that the ontological status that adults attribute to categories varies systematically by domain. For example, adults view distinctions between different animal species as natural and objective, but view distinctions between different kinds of furniture as more conventionalized and subjective. The present work (N = 435; ages 5-18) examined the effects of domain, age, and cultural context on beliefs about the naturalness vs. conventionality of categories. Results demonstrate that young children, like adults, view animal categories as natural kinds, but artifact categories as more conventionalized. For human social categories (gender and race), beliefs about naturalness and conventionality were predicted by interactions between cultural context and age. Implications for the origins of social categories and theories of conceptual development will be discussed.