The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good

Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this "the value problem." I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is that not all instances of true belief seem to be good on balance, so even if a given instance of knowing p is better than merely truly believing p , not all instances of knowing will be good enough to explain why knowledge has received so much attention in the history of philosophy. The article aims to answer two questions: (1) What makes knowing p better than merely truly believing p ? The answer involves an exploration of the connection between believing and the agency of the knower. Knowing is an act in which the knower gets credit for achieving truth. (2) What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. In the best kinds of knowing, the knower not only gets credit for getting the truth but also gets credit for getting a desirable truth. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life.     

孟子对传统天命报应论的创造性转化--兼论性善论的价值合理性

在建立以性善论为核心的道德天命观过程中,文化根基的问题观照和传统文化的资源借续是孟子的理论立足点。通过以性善言天善、以心性的价值合理性印证天命的价值理性和“德福合一”的新解释,孟子重建了人的道德信仰,完成了对天命报应论的全新构想。心性的价值合理性与天命的价值理性之间的相互印证,是孟子性善论及其天命观中最有创意的理论运思。     

当代农民价值取向现状的调查研究

本研究测量了来自江苏、福建、山东、辽宁、内蒙古和陕西 6个省份的586名农民的价值取向 ,并对其在年龄、教育水平、省份和婚姻状况等方面的特点进行了分析 ,结果表明 :(1 )中国农民的价值取向总体上是积极向上的 ,他们在重视正义公理、公共利益和法律规范的同时 ,也重视学习工作的重要价值 ;(2 )不同亚群体农民的价值取向之间存在一定的差异。     

Mattering at the Intersection of Psychology,Philosophy, and Politics

Mattering is an ideal state of affairs consisting of two complementary psychological experiences: feeling valued and adding value. Human beings can feel valued by, and add value to, self, others, work, and community. To make sure that the need for mattering is fulfilled, we must balance feeling valued with adding value. Moreover, we must balance adding value to self with adding value to others. Unfortunately, the dominant neoliberal philosophy does not support the values required to ensure the experience of mattering. Whereas a healthy and fair society would require equilibrium among values for personal, relational, and collective well-being, the dominant philosophy in many parts of the world favors personal at the expense of relational and collective values. Neoliberal economic and social policies have resulted in diminished sense of mattering for millions of people. Some people respond to cultural pressures to achieve higher status by becoming depressive or aggressive. Some marginalized groups, in turn, support xenophobic, nationalistic, and populist policies in an effort to regain a sense of mattering. To make sure that everyone matters, we must align the psychology, philosophy, and politics of mattering. The political struggle for a just and equitable distribution of mattering takes place in social movements and the policy arena. The perils and promises of these efforts are considered.     

The role of response readiness in subliminal visuomotor processes

The present study aims to examine the impact of response readiness on visuomotor processes triggered by subliminal stimuli using a mixed paradigm involving the masked prime paradigm and a foreperiod paradigm. Experiment 1 ensured that response readiness was successfully manipulated in the mixed paradigm. Importantly, Experiment 2 found that the negative compatibility effect (NCE; a behavioral indicator of subliminal visuomotor processes) disappeared and that response time lost its power to modulate the compatibility effect (CE) with reduced response readiness (due to temporal uncertainty). These results of CEs both independent of response latency and across different levels of response latency indicate that response readiness is a prerequisite for obtaining the NCE. The findings suggest that automatic processing of subliminal stimuli is susceptible to top-down control for reducing the interference of irrelevant information, which ensures a high degree of adaptability and flexibility of our cognitive system in interactions with the changing environment.     

西方环境伦理学的整体主义诉求与困惑--现代系统整体论的启示

在西方环境伦理学中，生态中心论具有强烈的整体主义诉求。认为，人类只是自然整体中的一个成员和后来者；生态系统的价值具有内在性和优先性；人类对自然生态系统负有直接的、终极的道德责任和义务。这些观点受到一些学者的质疑。系统整体论理念和复杂性研究对生态系统与人类的关系，系统的目的性，整体的价值等问题提供了一定的支持和启示。     

The Axiology of Moral Experience

This paper clarifies the nature of moral experience, examines its evidential role in supporting moral judgments, and argues that moral experiences can be among the things having intrinsic value. Moral experience is compared with aesthetic experience and contrasted with its close relative, non-moral experience combined with moral beliefs. The concluding sections explore the case for the organicity of intrinsic value and the kind of role such value can play in grounding moral obligation.     

Do incompatible arguments cause extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments? The role of congruence between argument compatibility and argument quality

Previous studies have demonstrated that arguments incompatible with prior beliefs are subjected to more extensive refutational processing, scrutinized longer, and judged to be weaker than arguments compatible with prior beliefs. However, this study suggests whether extensive processing is implemented when evaluating arguments is not decided by argument compatibility, but by congruence between two evaluating tendencies elicited by both argument compatibility and argument quality. Consistent with this perspective, the results of two experiments show that relative to congruent arguments, participants judged arguments eliciting incongruent evaluating tendencies as less extreme in strength, spent more time, and felt more hesitant generating strength judgments for them. The results also show that it is mainly incongruent arguments, not congruent arguments, whose strength ratings were more closely associated with the perceived personal importance of the issue, which intensified the tendency to evaluate arguments depending on argument compatibility. These results suggest that it is the incongruity between argument compatibility and argument quality, and not simply the argument compatibility, that plays a more important role in activating an extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments.     

The power of subliminal and supraliminal eye contact on social decision making: An individual-difference perspective

We conducted two experiments to explore how social decision making is influenced by the interaction of eye contact and social value orientation (SVO). Specifically, participants with a Prosocial (Prosocials) or a Proself (Proselfs) SVO played Prisoner Dilemma games with a computer partner following supraliminal (Experiment 1) and subliminal (Experiment 2) direct gaze from that partner. Results showed that participants made more cooperative decisions after supraliminal eye contact than no eye contact, and the effect only existed for the Prosocials but not for the Proselfs. Nevertheless, when the computer partner made a subliminal eye contact with the participants, although more cooperative choices were found among the Prosocials following subliminal eye contact, relative to no contact, the Proselfs demonstrated reduced cooperation rates. These findings suggest that Prosocials and Proselfs interpreted eye contact in distinct ways at different levels of awareness, which led to various social decision making.