A reason to be rational

This essay argues that in spite of the powerful arguments by Kolodny and Broome there is a reason to be rational. The suggested reason to be rational is that if an agent complies with rational requirements the people around him, as well as he himself, will be able to explain and predict his attitudes. Rationality allows us to make sense of an agent’s attitudes in terms of his other attitudes. This form of explainability is valuable, because it provides us with greater comprehension as regards an agent’s attitudes. Thus, I argue that there is an instrumental reason to be rational.     

Development of the deontic advantage in reasoning: Reply to Cummins

In response to Cummins’s report that comments on our article (Dack & Astington, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2011, Vol. 110, pp. 94–114), this article clarifies our perspective on what constitutes the deontic advantage, and notes similarities and differences between Cummins’s perspective and our own. Like Cummins, we believe that young children are capable of deontic reasoning and that methodological factors alone cannot explain this ability. However, we maintain that it is important to be precise about methodology in order to facilitate investigation of how the deontic advantage changes over developmental time, and this question is our main interest, although as yet incompletely answered. Contrary to Cummins, we do not think that existing data can speak to the issue of the potential innateness of deontic reasoning. We also disagree with Cummins’s perspective on norm versus normative proposition and with some of her comparisons between deontic and epistemic phenomena.     

Jung as psychologist of religion and Jung as philosopher of religion

Abstract: Is it possible to be both a psychologist and a philosopher? Is it possible for a psychologist, or more generally a social scientist, to use social scientific findings to make philosophical claims? Specifically, is it possible for a social scientist to use social scientific findings to determine the existence of God? Did Jung profess to be only a psychologist or also a philosopher? If he professed to be both, did he enlist his psychological findings to make philosophical claims? Specifically, did he enlist his psychological findings to determine the existence of God?     

《易经》“用”字试解

《易经》卦爻辞中"用"字句有两种句法格式,一是"用+名词或名词性词组",二是"用+动词或动词性词组"。从"用"字词义与词性的发展来看,有一个从具体义向抽象义,从实词向虚词转变的过程,而《易经》文本正是此一过程的过渡阶段。通过对《易经》"用"字含义和用法的分析,我们可以纠正对某些含"用"字卦爻辞的误解与误读。     

论达尔文的最佳解释推理

科学研究需要正确的思维方法的指导,而最佳解释推理就是一种重要的思维方法。达尔文运用最佳解释推理论证通过自然选择而进化的理论最为成功,在《物种起源》中,达尔文以解释力、解释的一致性为基础,引用大量事实,充分比较了自然选择理论与上帝的独立创造说或神创论,符合最佳解释推理模型的评价标准。     

《论语》文体形式的文化阐释

《论语》是以“语”体和“子曰”等形式记录孔子的言论,建构孔子的话语权威和思想价值体系的。“子曰”形式最宜于孔子独自式地直接阐发自己的思想,“问——子曰”形式由于受到孔子“礼”和“仁”的规范,导致与孔子对话的真正主体缺席,而成为孔子建构自己话语权威的有效言说方式。孔子重视“言”的作用,但反对“巧言”。孔子不期望论辩,面对论辩他往往先预设道德判断,然后否定欲辩者,从而最终否定论辩本身。对孔子来说,“巧言”和“沦辩”会使自己的话语权威和思想价值体系面临被解构的威胁。     

Führt die evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie in einen Relativismus?

This essay is a discussion of Eve-Marie Engels' view on Evolutionary Epistemology (EE). In the first part two of the main doctrines of EE are criticized: (1.) that validity of human knowledge is to be explained as the result of evolutionary adaptation; yet (2.), that human cognitive capacities had been adequate to our ancestors life conditions but fail in relevant situations of modern world. In the second part the concept of reality underlying EE's adaptational view is discussed and compared with Jean Piaget's concept of reality. Finally, it is held that some of the questions recently raised by proponents of EE, far from being new, have been dealt with already in historical epistemology.

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Diese Arbeit entstand im Rahmen des Projekts Nr. 11-2224.87 des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds.     

Explanation versus accommodation: Reply to Bowers (2010)

Bowers (2010) presented a critique of the account of masked priming presented by Norris and Kinoshita (2008) based on the Bayesian Reader model of visual word recognition (Norris, 2006). In this reply, we point out that: (1) Bowers' criticisms are based on his misunderstanding of both the Bayesian or ideal-observer approach, and the theoretical claims made in Norris and Kinoshita, and (2) Bowers' alternative account of the key data presented in Norris and Kinoshita relies on a series of ad hoc assumptions that are combined in different proportions to postdict any pattern of data.     

When functions and causes compete

The discounting principle states that ‘the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are present’ (Kelley, 1972 Kelley, H. H. 1972. “Attribution theory in social psychology”. In Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behaviour, Edited by: Jones, E., Kanouse, D., Kelley, H., Nisbett, R., Valins, S. and Weiner, B. 1–26. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.  [Google Scholar], p. 8). The principle has only been tested with cases where the two explanations are of the same kind (i.e., causal explanations). However, explanations of properties of objects, people, or events often involve functions. Zebras have stripes in order to be better camouflaged. Humans have eyebrows to keep sweat from running into their eyes. Adrenaline is secreted in order to modulate fight and flight responses. Thus, what happens when we are faced with two different kinds of explanation for the same property: one functional and one causal? People evaluated explanations of properties for natural kinds and artefacts. Functional explanations were discounted in favour of causal explanations, however this was only true for properties of artefacts. The presence of an alternative explanation for properties of natural kinds did not affect the plausibility of either kind of explanation.     

Alief and Explanation

This article critiques the much‐discussed notion of alief recently introduced by Tamar Gendler. The narrow goal is to show that the notion is explanatorily unnecessary; the broader goal is to demonstrate the importance of making explicit one's explanatory framework when offering a philosophical account of the mind. After introducing the concept of alief and the examples Gendler characterizes in terms of it, the article examines the explanatory framework within which appeal to such a concept can seem necessary. This framework, it argues, is a generalization of the belief‐desire account of action. Although Gendler introduces the notion of alief in an attempt to move beyond the belief‐desire account, it argues that she nevertheless works within a generalized version of its explanatory structure. Once the framework is made explicit, we find no explanatory need that requires introducing the notion of alief into our account of the mind.