CHARLES LYELL,UNIFORMITARIANISM, AND INTERPRETIVE PRINCIPLES

I examine the development of Charles Lyell's principle of uniformity and its influence on the development of modern geology and biology and argue that distinguishing between philosophical starting points and empirical findings is essential for clarity in the discussion between science and religion. First, I explore Lyell's arguments against catastrophism and how these were both empirically and religiously motivated. I then consider how David Hume's empiricism, theory of causation, and rejection of miracles influenced Lyell. Using these insights, Lyell formulated his principle of uniformity, which he believed was based on current empirical findings, and rejected explanatory hypotheses that used the biblical Flood or other catastrophist accounts as violations of uniform causation and introductions of theological concepts into empirical science. I next examine the influence of Lyell's principle on Charles Darwin. Although Lyell opposed Darwinism for most of his life, Darwin relied heavily on Lyell, as is evidenced by references throughout The Origin of Species. I contend that the most important aspect of Lyell's principle for Darwin is that it makes natural evil (the struggle for survival) a process that has always been occurring rather than something introduced after the Fall as recorded in Genesis. Finally, I discuss the role that uniformity plays for Lyell, Darwin, and modern science as an interpretive principle rather than as an inference from empirical data, and I conclude by noting that keeping the distinction in mind between interpretive principles and empirical findings will help clarify debates between science and religion.     

科学研究的DNA共享与协作精神

股骨头坏死、髋关节脱位是骨科常见病,随着人们生活模式的改变发病率有所上升。对该病的成因、流行病学、病理转归、临床治疗策略与髋关节严重病损后功能重建等问题,学术界存在很大争议。作者提出从生物进化的角度、用自然重建理念做指导,应用髋关节分离牵拉术治疗股骨头坏死、骨盆补充截骨术重建青少年严重病损的髋关节功能人、组合性矫形手术治疗年长儿先天性髋关节脱位,获得了优良效果。因此呼吁:用自然重建理念治疗青少年股骨头坏死、髋关节脱位,降低人工假体置换对此类疾病的手术指证。     

Unfinished business: How completeness affects the impact of emotional states and emotion concepts on social judgment

In two studies, we compared the impact of cold emotion concept primes with induced hot emotional states on subsequent social judgments. We hypothesized that the completeness of the prime episode is an important determinant of whether accessible information will lead to emotionally congruent or incongruent judgments. We extend previous research on knowledge and emotion accessibility effects by demonstrating that the effects of incomplete versus completed prime episodes are independent of whether we prime emotion states or emotion concepts. That is, our results show that both hot and cold affective information activated by incomplete prime episodes leads to assimilation, whereas information activated by completed prime episodes leads to contrast effects. Implications for accessibility research are discussed.     

Category essence or essentially pragmatic? Creator's intention in naming and what's really what

Daily experience is filled with objects that have been created by humans to serve specific purposes. For such objects, the very act of creation may be a key element of how people understand them. But exactly how does creator's intention matter? We evaluated its contribution to two forms of categorization: the name selected for an artifact, and intuitions about what an artifact "really" is. To contrast the possibility that intention serves as an essence (Bloom, P. (1996). Intention, history, and artifact concepts. Cognition, 60, 1-29; Bloom, P. (1998). Theories of artifact categorization. Cognition, 66, 87-93.) determining an artifact's name with the possibility that it matters through its relevance to discourse goals, participants in three experiments read scenarios about people interacting with an artifact and then judged the suitability of different names for it. The intention of the creator was of differing degrees of relevance to the communication, and the relevance of other aspects of the entity varied in a complementary fashion. We found that name selection was altered by the communicative goals of a situation, and name choice was most consistent with creator's intention when the situation made intention relevant to achieving those goals. In a fourth experiment, we used the same scenarios to test the possibility that intention serves as an essence determining intuitions about what an object "really" is. The impact of creator's intention was modulated by the discourse context. These findings suggest that creator's intention influences both name choice and intuitions about what something "really" is by virtue of its impact on how communicative goals are best realized.     

Concept empiricism: a methodological critique

Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key problems: the difficulty of sorting out amodal predictions from neo-empiricist predictions, the difficulty of finding experimental tasks that are not best solved by imagery and the difficulty of generalizing findings concerning a given cognitive process in a given context to other cognitive processes or other contexts. Finally, solutions to these three problems are considered.     

Pandora: A Reasoning Toolbox using Natural Deduction Style

Pandora is a tool for supporting the learning of first ordernatural deduction. It includes a help window, an interactivecontext sensitive tutorial known as the "e-tutor" and facilitiesto save, reload and export to LATEX. Every attempt to applya natural deduction rule is met with either success or a helpfulerror message, providing the student with instant feedback.Detailed electronic logs of student usage are recorded for evaluationpurposes. This paper describes the basic functionality, thee-tutor, our experiences of using the tool in teaching and ourfuture plans.     

The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Darwinism

As a young proponent of "creation science," I rejected Darwinian biology as false, bad, and ugly. Now I defend Darwinism as true, good, and beautiful. Moreover, I now see Darwinism as compatible with the natural piety that arises as one moves from nature to nature's God.     

权力概念加工对视觉空间注意定向的影响：一个ERP证据

概念表征是认知心理学研究的一个重要领域。具身认知理论认为, 在概念加工过程中, 个体会以具身模拟的形式对概念所暗含的空间方位信息进行理解。本研究采用事件相关电位技术, 考察抽象权力概念加工时的激活特点。实验首先要求被试对出现在屏幕中央的词进行权力高/低判断, 接着在屏幕的上方或者下方呈现一个字母(“m”或“n”), 要求被试对目标物进行按键反应。结果发现, 当权力词隐喻的空间特性与目标物出现的位置一致时诱发了一个更大的N1波幅, 不一致时诱发了一个更大的P3波幅。该结果提示, 抽象权力概念加工时会产生自动激活空间上-下意向图示, 对权力词的加工影响了随后字母位置的判断, 并将空间注意指向了与意向图示相一致的位置, 从时间加工进程看, 起始于早期的知觉识别并一直持续到晚期的高级认知加工阶段, 权力概念加工具有内隐性。     

意识是情景记忆加工的必要条件？

在情景记忆的发展历程中,Tulving逐渐地将其与意识相联系。但是,无论来自正常被试的情景记忆中静态的视觉、语词和动态的视觉—动作加工特性方面的研究,还是来自遗忘症患者、婴儿以及动物等方面的情景记忆研究,均表明情景记忆具有无意识特性,这些均与Tulving对情景记忆的界定相矛盾。而情景记忆在人类进化过程中所表现出的自然属性和社会属性,则合理的解释了情景记忆所具有的无意识和意识属性。因此,只有结合情景记忆在人类发展历程所表现出的双重属性,才能宏观、全面地把握情景记忆的整体概貌。