Systematicity redux

One of the main challenges that Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn (Cognition 28:3–71, 1988) posed for any connectionist theory of cognitive architecture is to explain the systematicity of thought without implementing a Language of Thought (LOT) architecture. The systematicity challenge presents a dilemma: if connectionism cannot explain the systematicity of thought, then it fails to offer an adequate theory of cognitive architecture; and if it explains the systematicity of thought by implementing a LOT architecture, then it fails to offer an alternative to the LOT hypothesis. Given that thought is systematic, connectionism can offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis only if it can meet the challenge. Although some critics tried to meet the challenge, others argued that it need not be met since thought is not in fact systematic; and some claimed not to even understand the claim that thought is systematic. I do not here examine attempts to answer the challenge. Instead, I defend the challenge itself by explicating the notion of systematicity in a way that I hope makes clear that thought is indeed systematic, and so that to offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis, connectionism must meet the challenge.     

管子经济思想散论

管仲的经济思想主要体现在《管子》中的《轻重》诸篇中。管予经济思想的特点是：重视人民普遍的生活需求,把国库存在的意义与人民的生活需求联系在一起考虑,对于暴富现象,他们认为是造成贫富不均的因素,国家的作用是要限制暴富,均衡人民的生活水平,这些都与现代西方的经济观点接近。     

尚秉和易学思想考

尚秉和是我国上世纪易学泰斗,其身后留下的《焦氏易林注》、《焦氏易诂》、《周易尚氏学》等系列易著,至今仍是学人治易的重要参考书。为了帮助今人了解尚氏其人其作,本文对尚氏生平行状及其易学思想作一番全面、深入的探考。     

试论《周易》中的生命哲学

《周易》在中国哲学中具有重要的地位,对中国传统文化产生了深远的影响。不管是儒家思想还是道家思想,皆与《周易》有千丝万缕的联系。而《易传》对《周易》古经的系统化解读,则从根本上将本为卜筮之书的《周易》提升为哲学与人生智慧之书。《易传》哲学的核心则是其所阐释的天人合一的生命哲学。受《易传》的影响,中国传统文化也以关注个体生命形下存在与形上存在的合一,乃至整个宇宙生命的有机运行为核心。《周易》将整个宇宙视为一个有机的生命体,在阴阳交互作用中这一生命体一直处于“生生不息”的状态中。这一宇宙生成论将分别表征天地的乾坤两卦作为创生世界万物的基元,而人则是天地人三才中的重要一员。《易传》的这一思想突出了人的主体性地位。而人若要充分发挥其主体性地位,则需要以“诚”为媒介,通过“进德修业”、“继善成性”来实现人与天的德性的合一,同时又要“与时偕行”,实现人与天的自然的合一。前者被后世的儒家所继承与发扬,而后者则为后世道教、中医学等所借鉴。《周易》所宣扬的天人合一的思想与西方占主导地位的主客二分的思想迥异,而与在西方被边缘化的历程哲学有内在的相通之处。基于西方主客二分观念的科学思想虽极大地促进了生产力的发展,但由此而导致的人的身心的分裂及环境污染等问题亦不容忽视。《周易》中的天人合一思想与历程哲学在弥补西方科学思想的不足方面可以发挥重要的作用。     

Imagining human enhancement: whose future,which rationality?

This article critically evaluates bettering human life. Because this involves lives that do not exist yet, the article investigates human eugenics and enhancement through the social prism of ‘the imaginary’ (defined ‘as a set of assumptions and concepts for thinking and speaking about human enhancement and its future direction’) [1]. “Exploring basic assumptions underlying the idea of human enhancement” investigates underlying assumptions and claims for human enhancement. Firstly, human eugenics and enhancement entangles a factual as well as a normative claim about what improvement/betterment maybe constitutive of. Secondly, claims about what a better life is, is often a future orientated claim about whether certain kinds of life that do not exist yet should ever exist. Moral images of thought are introduced and how they work to make normative judgments about lives that do not exist. This implicates the moral problem of difference, where an image of a ‘better’ life—classically expressed in eugenics as a ‘superior’ and/or ‘normal’ life—necessarily entails inferiority and/or deviance from a norm. “Moral imagination in contemporary fiction and the history of old eugenics”, introduces moral images in history of eugenics and demonstrates how examples fall foul of the problem. “The new (liberal) eugenics and the moral image of therapy” examines progress in contemporary debates, the move from authoritarian to non-authoritarian eugenics (human enhancement), and how, to some extent, this has solved the problem of difference, through liberal defence of personal choice. “The heart of the eugenic issue” suggests that personal choice in liberal non-authoritarian eugenics is not immune to basic drive behind all eugenic arguments; desire as lack which is expressed as the continual dissatisfaction of not having our future expectations met.

空间图式加工促进方向性时间表述的理解

时间表征是否具有空间方向性？本研究通过考察66名研究生时间表述实时加工中的空间引导效应来回答这个问题。实验一表明：空间垂直方向性图式促进被试加工含有空间词汇的时间表述;实验二表明：两种空间方向性图式,即水平方向性图式和垂直方向性图式,都促进被试加工含有纯时问词汇的时间表述。实验结果证实了时间表征具有空间方向性,并为“抽象思维以感知一动觉经验为基础”这一论点提供心理学证据。     

Beyond Dichotomy—Towards Creative Synthesis

There are two ways for overcoming limitations of methods used in psychology, as Toomela (Integr. Physiol. Behav. Sci. doi:, 2007) points out. These are inventing new methods of research, and looking back into the history of methodological thought for new ideas. Though he limited the former as if it is a quantitative area and he declared to take the latter path, his paper actually advocates the need to create new methodology for understanding the human psyche through historical approach. We discuss problems of sampling and generalization in that context, and suggest a new way to creative synthesis through elaboration of qualitative methodologies. To us this direction constitutes an updated version of the German–Austrian methodology exactly as Toomela suggests.

Constructive Thought Strategies and Job Satisfaction: A Preliminary Examination

In order to examine the potential of constructive thought strategies for enhancing employee job satisfaction, an existing dispositional model of job satisfaction was expanded and tested. Structural equation modeling techniques indicated significant relationships among constructive thought strategies, dysfunctional thought processes, subjective well-being, and job satisfaction. In addition, two competing models were examined to test for the full or partial mediation of the effects of constructive thought strategies on job satisfaction. The implications of these findings for constructive thought strategy training interventions are discussed, along with directions for future research efforts.     

The case against neuropsychoanalysis: On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientifi c trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse

The authors offer a critical examination of the claims of the proponents of the growing neuropsychoanalytic trend, that neuroscientifi c fi ndings are relevant and important for the development and justifi cation of psychoanalytic theory and practice. They bring to light some of the intuitions that have led to the popularity of the neuropsychoanalytic claims and the fallacies that underlie these claims and intuitions. They argue that it is crucial at this time to articulate the case against the neuropsychoanalytic trend because, underlying the debate over the relevance of neuroscience to psychoanalysis, there lies a struggle over the essential nature of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Relying on a biologistic perspective, whereby only what is biological is real, this new trend in effect offers a vision of psychoanalysis that limits the signifi cance of the unique psychoanalytic concern with the understanding of meanings and the role of discourse in discerning and justifying these meanings.     

Thinking with,and about,patients too scared to think: Can non‐interpretive maneuvers stimulate refl ective thought?

Patients incapable of higher-order (symbolic) thinking can often not tolerate evidence of the analyst's separate existence, particularly when that 'otherness' becomes evident in the process of the analyst's refl ecting upon and interpreting how the patient experiences or represents the analyst. The patient's intolerance of the analyst's efforts to think (refl ect upon and interpret) renders the usual psychoanalytic maneuvers employed to stimulate refl ective thought ineffective with such patients. Such patients have to learn to tolerate multiple perspectives before they can allow the analyst, or themselves, to think in the other's presence. The author presents two clinical vignettes that illustrate how the analyst's efforts to think about the patient were experienced by the patient as both intolerably distancing and as rejecting of an aspect of the patient's subjective reality. Working psychoanalytically with such patients requires the analyst to forgo the use of narrow interpretations that elucidate unconscious meanings and motives in favor of alternate technical maneuvers capable of facilitating the development of symbolic thinking and refl ective thought (insightfulness). These maneuvers include a demonstration of the analyst's willingness and ability to withstand (rather than 'interpret away') how he is being psychically represented by the patient, without becoming destroyed by, or lost within, the patient's characterization of him. Beside modeling a tolerance of alternate perspectives of one's self, other non-interpretive maneuvers that help facilitate the development of self-refl ective thought include: stimulating the patient's curiosity about the workings of his own mind by identifying incompletely understood behaviors or reactions worthy of greater psychological understanding, and insinuating doubt about the adequacy of the patient's explanations of such phenomena.