亨佩尔确证悖论及其解决方案探析

To solve the highly counterintuitive paradox of confirmation represented by the statement, “A pair of red shoes confirms that all ravens are black,” Hempel employed a strategy that retained the equivalence condition but abandoned Nicod’s irrelevance condition. However, his use of the equivalence condition is fairly ad hoc, raising doubts about its applicability to this problem. Furthermore, applying the irrelevance condition from Nicod’s criterion does not necessarily lead to paradoxes, nor does discarding it prevent the emergence of paradoxes. Hempel’s approach fails to adequately resolve the paradox. __________ Translated from Ziran Bianzhengfa Yanjiu 自然辩证法研究 (Studies in Dialectics of Nature), 2005, (8): 33–37     

TIME AND ETERNITY: HYMNIC,BIBLICAL, SCIENTIFIC,AND THEOLOGICAL VIEWS

The book Time and Eternity, the English version of Zeit und Ewigkeit, by Antje Jackelén, contains scientific and theological treatments of these two topics, starting with the usage of such ideas in German, Swedish, and English hymns. This essay describes her work and explains how the scientific ideas provide a coherent framework for understanding the place of time.     

Essential self-adjointness: implications for determinism and the classical–quantum correspondence

It is argued that seemingly “merely technical” issues about the existence and uniqueness of self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators in quantum mechanics have interesting implications for foundations problems in classical and quantum physics. For example, pursuing these technical issues reveals a sense in which quantum mechanics can cure some of the forms of indeterminism that crop up in classical mechanics; and at the same time it reveals the possibility of a form of indeterminism in quantum mechanics that is quite distinct from the indeterminism of state vector collapse. More generally, the examples considered indicate that the classical–quantum correspondence is more intricate and delicate than is generally appreciated. The aim of the article is to give a series of examples that reveal why the technical issues about self-adjointness are relevant to the philosophy of science and that help to make the issues accessible to philosophers of science.     

God, Determinism, and Action: Perspectives from Physics

Recent articles by Michael Heller, Carl Helrich, Peter Hodgson, Jeffrey Koperski, and Nicholas Saunders present a challenge to much current thinking on God, divine action, and cosmology. In the process, they also reveal underlying assumptions and current problems, especially in the debate over physics and divine action. In particular, three issues come up that need to be addressed further. First, what is the status of determinism, and what can physics contribute? Second, what kind of divine action are we talking about? Third, what is the relationship between God and time, and how does this affect claims about the personhood of God? While these essays present necessary critiques and interesting, positive proposals, they also reveal unresolved tensions that need to be addressed.     

God, Chaos, and the Quantum Dice

A recent noninterventionist account of divine agency has been proposed that marries the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics to the instability of chaos theory. On this account, God is able to bring about observable effects in the macroscopic world by determining the outcome of quantum events. When this determination occurs in the presence of chaos, the ability to influence large systems is multiplied. This paper argues that, although the proposal is highly intuitive, current research in dynamics shows that it is far less plausible than previously thought. Chaos coupled to quantum mechanics proves to be a shaky foundation for models of divine agency.     

The Nature of Physical Reality

This account of the dynamical theory of chaos leads to a metaphysical picture of a world with an open future, in which the laws of physics are emergent-downward approximations to a more subtle and supple reality and in which there is downward causation through information input as well as upward causation through energy input. Such a metaphysical picture can accommodate both human and divine agency.     

心理差异量对儿童青少年分类活动影响的研究

本研究选择自制的、被试从前未看过的墨渍图为实验材料,探讨心理差异量对分类活动的影响。以４０名１１－２０岁儿童青少年为被试,一方面使用速示仪测量墨渍图之间的心理差异量,一方面要求被试对墨渍图进行自由分类,并说明理由。结果发现：①心理差异量直接影响分类结果。②心理差异量在１１岁、１４岁与１７岁、２０岁之间存在着非常显著的差异（Ｐ〈０．０１）。③分类标准的选择的年龄差异主要表现在分类标准的复杂性方面。     

Syntactical Constraints on Definitions

This essay considers arguments for and against syntactical constraints on the proper formalization of definitions, originally owing to Alfred Tarski. It discusses and refutes an application of the constraints generalized to include a prohibition against not only object‐place but also predicate‐place variables in higher‐order logic in a criticism of a recent effort to define the concept of heterologicality in a strengthened derivation of Grelling's paradox within type theory requirements. If the objections were correct, they would offer a more general moral for the proper formal definition of terms in philosophical logic. The criticism nevertheless seems mistaken both in the substance and specific application with respect to legitimate synctactical constraints on definitions of key concepts in the case of Grelling's paradox. As such, the critique provides no justification for overturning previous conclusions concerning the possibility of resurrecting a type‐observant version of Grelling's heterologicality paradox.     

IN ALGORITHMS WE TRUST: MAGICAL THINKING,SUPERINTELLIGENT AI AND QUANTUM COMPUTING

This article analyzes current attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing and argues that they represent a modern-day form of magical thinking. It proposes that AI and quantum computing are thus excellent examples of the ways that traditional distinctions between religion, science, and magic fail to account for the vibrancy and energy that surround modern technologies.     

IS QUANTUM INDETERMINISM REAL? THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Quantum mechanics (QM) studies physical phenomena on a microscopic scale. These phenomena are far beyond the reach of our observation, and the connection between QM's mathematical formalism and the experimental results is very indirect. Furthermore, quantum indeterminism defies common sense. Microphysical experiments have shown that, according to the empirical context, electrons and quanta of light behave as waves and other times as particles, even though it is impossible to design an experiment that manifests both behaviors at the same time. Unlike Newtonian physics, the properties of quantum systems (position, velocity, energy, time, etc.) are not all well‐defined simultaneously. Moreover, quantum systems are not characterized by their properties, but by a wave function. Although one of the principles of the theory is the uncertainty principle, the trajectory of the wave function is controlled by the deterministic Schrödinger equations. But what is the wave function? Like other theories of the physical sciences, quantum theory assigns states to systems. The wave function is a particular mathematical representation of the quantum state of a physical system, which contains information about the possible states of the system and the respective probabilities of each state.