儿童时间认知研究范式：困境与超越

西方实证主义导引下的儿童时间认知研究范式在取得丰硕成果的同时也渐入困境。以四种常见范式为突破口凝炼,困境是：(1)钟表时间认知范式能否涵盖儿童时间认知的全部内容;(2)各范式的使用与不同时间思维间能否有效适配;(3)共同量值系统(common magnitude system, CMS)能否从行为层面为儿童时间认知作出根源性解释;(4)在暂未发现成人时间认知特定脑机制的前提下,儿童时间认知脑机制的探索有多大的必要性与可行性等。诸困境折射出学界对儿童“经验”、“线性”时间的斜重;对“观念”、“周期性”时间的慢轻。中国时文化讲求以时间统摄空、物、人四者为一体,未来研究可将儿童时间认知归置于“时间-事件”背景之中,从具身情境、人际互动、时间言语习得与行为管控等方面超越。     

BICA for AGI

BICAs for AI have been happening for decades, realized within multiple cognitive architectures. What is a BICA for AGI? It requires AI to go beyond the limitations of predicative human language, and of predicative logic based on it; also, above human reportable consciousness, to the subconscious/non-conscious level of human (and machine) mind; and then still beyond it. Within machine cognition this is the sub-symbolic level. It has to gauge gestalts, or patterns, directly from the processes, which goes beyond human-level observational capacities or human-understandable language, even beyond the language of human-readable mathematics (Boltuc, 2018). It requires versatile life-long learning (Siegelmann, 2018). Through complex stochastic processes, it needs to confabulate by creative permutations of multifarious gestalts and to select those with useful applications (Thaler, 1997). This is computing at the edge of chaos (Goertzel, 2006).     

Perceptual consciousness plays no epistemic role

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well‐supported theory of consciousness—higher‐order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world.     

基于SC-IAT的中华民族认同感内隐测量——来自少数民族大学生的数据

以维吾尔族、藏族大学生为被试,通过预实验选定概念词和属性词以使用单类内隐联想测验测量被试的内隐中华民族认同水平,采用问卷测量被试的外显中华民族认同水平,讨论内隐和外显中华民族认同的关系。结果表明,维吾尔族与藏族学生均具有积极的中华民族内隐认同,内隐效应不存在性别和民族差异,且内隐认同与外显认同是相互独立的结构。应通过群际接触等方式不断内化中华民族内隐认同,以促进民族心理融合,加强民族团结进步教育。     

SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS APPROACHES TO MORALITY: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MUTUAL ANATHEMAS

Abstract Many people today believe that scientific and religious approaches to morality are mutually incompatible. Militant secularists claim scientific backing for their claim that the evolution of morality discredits religious conceptions of ethics. Some of their opponents respond with unhelpful apologetics based on fundamentalist views of revelation. This article attempts to provide an alternative option. It argues that public discussion has been excessively influenced by polemics generated by the new atheists. Religious writers have too often resorted to overly simplistic arguments rooted in literalist approaches to the Bible and the religious traditions. More historically conscious methods can avoid implausible claims about both religion and science.     

A Phenomenal Case for Sport

The article attempts to show some limitations to reductive accounts in science and philosophy of body-mind relations, experience and skill. Extensive literature has developed in analytic philosophy of mind recently due to new technology and theories in the neurosciences. In the sporting sciences, there are also attempts to reduce experiences and skills to biology, mechanics, chemistry and physiology. The article argues there are three fundamental problems for reductive accounts that lead to an explanatory gap between the reduction and the conscious experience. First, reductive accounts deal with objective observations; conscious experiences are subjective. Second, subjective experience seems difficult to identify with physical events described by chemistry, biology, mechanics or neurophysiology. Finally, sport involves knowing how and knowing how is also difficult to reduce to propositional knowledge, which is the reductive scientific/philosophical project. The article argues that sport provides an excellent platform to better understand what is wrong with reductive analysis in body-mind relations, since both conscious experience and knowing how are fundamental to sport performance.     

Ego consciousness in the Japanese psyche: culture,myth and disaster

With globalization, modern Western consciousness has spread across the world. This influx has affected the Japanese culture but ego consciousness has emerged through a long history and different course from that of the West. At a personal level, I have been interested in the establishment of a subject in a culture that values homogeneity and to understand this, I reflect on my own history of living in both the East and the West and on my experience practising psychotherapy. To show Japanese collective functioning at its best, I describe the human inter‐connectedness and collaboration during the 2011 disaster. I explore the ‘Nothing’ at the centre of the Japanese psyche, through a reading of Japanese myth, especially the most originary and almost pre‐human stories that come before the anthropomorphized ‘First Parents’. A retelling of this founding story, reveals the multiple iterations over time that manifest in embodied being; this gradual emergence of consciousness is contrasted with Western myths of origin that are more clear and specific. This study attempts to bring awareness of the value and meaning of Eastern consciousness and its centre in the ‘Nothing’.     

The Sociology of Complex Systems: An Overview of Actor-System-Dynamics Theory

This article illustrates the important scientific role that a systems approach might play within the social sciences and humanities, above all through its contribution to a common language, shared conceptualizations, and theoretical integration in the face of the extreme (and growing) fragmentation among the social sciences (and between the social sciences and the natural sciences). The article outlines a systems theoretic approach, actor-system-dynamics (ASD), whose authors have strived to re-establish systems theorizing in the social sciences (after a period of marginalization since the late 1960s). This is done, in part, by showing how key social science concepts are readily incorporated and applied in social system analysis.     

The Holographic Principle of Mind and the Evolution of Consciousness

The Holographic Principle holds that the information in any region of space and time exists on the surface of that region. Layers of the holographic, universal “now” go from the inception of the universe to the present. Universal Consciousness is the timeless source of actuality and mentality. Information is experience, and the expansion of the “now” leads to higher and higher orders of experience in the Universe, with various levels of consciousness emerging from experience. The brain consists of a nested hierarchy of surfaces that range from the most elementary field through the neuron, neural group, and the whole brain. Evidence from the evolution and structure of the brain shows that optimal surface areas in a variety of structures are conserved with respect to underlying surfaces. Microgenesis, the becoming of the mental state through a process of recapitulation of development and evolution, is in full accord with the Holographic Principle. Evidence from a wide variety of contexts indicates the capacity on the mind for total recall of past life events and for access to universal information, indicating connection with the holographic surfaces of prior “nows” and with the Universal holographic boundary. In summation, the Holographic Principle can help us explain the unity and mechanisms of perception, experience, memory, and consciousness.