Temporal Anaphora with Spanish <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Imperfecto</Emphasis>

This paper argues against the assumption that Spanish—and more generally Romance—imperfective past (IMP) is an intrinsically anaphoric tense. It is a widely accepted view that IMP requires a temporal discourse antecedent to be licensed. My aim is to show that such requirement is not actually in force when IMP combines with a stative/atelic predicate. In fact, with stative/atelic predicates, IMP (a) is acceptable in isolated sentences with no suitable antecedent available, (b) is able to access implicit assumptions that are not available with telic predicates—but do not behave as real antecedents, and (c) does not trigger certain perspectivisation effects that depend on the existence of a temporal antecedent. As a result, an asymmetry arises between continuous and habitual interpretations of IMP, which do not require retrieving a temporal antecedent, and progressive and narrative interpretations, which do need an accessible antecedent. Thus, the relevance of a discourse antecedent varies according to the lexical aspect of the predicate and the corresponding interpretations, and the alleged anaphoric nature of IMP cannot be a feature of its semantics: it is rather pragmatically derived from imperfectivity.     

The Power of Belnap: Sequent Systems for <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">SIXTEEN</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Bold">3</Emphasis></Subscript>

The trilattice SIXTEEN₃\textit{SIXTEEN}_3 is a natural generalization of the well-known bilattice FOUR₂\textit{FOUR}_2. Cut-free, sound and complete sequent calculi for truth entailment and falsity entailment in SIXTEEN₃\textit{SIXTEEN}_3 are presented.     

Combinations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Stit</Emphasis> with <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ought</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Know</Emphasis>

This paper presents a short survey of recent developments in stit theories, with an emphasis on combinations of stit and deontic logic, and those of stit and epistemic logic.     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Special Topic:</Emphasis> Creativity in Christianity and Confucianism

In order respectfully and adequately to compare Confucian and Christian conceptions of creativity, it is necessary to have proper comparative categories. Put roughly, we need to know what creativity is in order to see how Confucianism and Christianity have various versions of it. In respect of what do they agree or differ? So the first order of business is to put forward, however briefly, a theory of creativity in light of which comparisons can be made. Creativity, of course, is a very complicated notion in the West and in East Asia. Two philosophical topics can reveal something of its complication: the problem of the one and the many, and the nature of change.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ziran</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Wuwei</Emphasis> in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Daodejing</Emphasis>: An Ethical Assessment

In Daoist philosophy, the self is understood as an individual interdependent with others, and situated within a broader environment. Within this framework, the concept ziran is frequently understood in terms of naturalness or nature while wuwei is explained in terms of non-oppressive government. In many existing accounts, little is done to connect these two key Daoist concepts. Here, I suggest that wuwei and ziran are correlated, ethical, concepts. Together, they provide a unifying ethical framework for understanding the philosophy of the Daodejing. I explore the meaning of ziran as self-so-ness or, in human terms, as pertaining to an individual’s spontaneity. The appropriate response to the spontaneity of individuals is to avoid, insofar as possible, imposing or using restrictive norms and methods, that is, wuwei. According to this view, ziran and wuwei offer an account of ethics that attends to core notions of interdependent selfhood, including mutuality, relationality, interdependence, symbiosis, and responsiveness.     

Deontological evidentialism and <Emphasis Type="Italic">ought</Emphasis> implies <Emphasis Type="Italic">can</Emphasis>

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that S ought to form or maintain S’s beliefs in accordance with S’s evidence. A promising argument for this view turns on the premise that consideration c is a normative reason for S to form or maintain a belief that p only if c is evidence that p is true. In this paper, I discuss the surprising relation between a recently influential argument for this key premise and the principle that ought implies can. I argue that anyone who antecedently accepts or rejects this principle already has a reason to resist either this argument’s premises or its role in support of deontological evidentialism.     

The Quantificational Domain of <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">dou</Emphasis>: An Experimental Study

Which NP does all associate with in e.g. “The pandas, the children all saw”—the pandas, the children, or both? The intuition of adult Mandarin Chinese native speakers regarding the interpretation of the adverbial quantifier dou ‘all’ remains unclear and controversial, and various incommensurate theories of domain selection have been proposed. These studies may have failed to yield clear results because they used testing materials in which the interpretation of dou is confounded with other principles of NP interpretation (e.g. zhexie xiaohai ‘these children’ is truth-functionally synonymous with ‘all these children’). To address these concerns, we present the first set of experimental studies on adult knowledge and use of syntactic constraints on the quantifier domain of dou. The results support the hypothesis that dou can take one and only one c-commanding NP as its domain, but falsify interesting theoretical accounts that assume a strict locality constraint on dou quantification.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ceteris</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Paribus</Emphasis> Qualifiers

Antecedent-strengthening, a trivially valid inference of classical logic of the form: P → Q ? (P & R) → Q, has a counterpart in everyday reasoning that often fails. A plausible solution to the problem involves assuming an implicit ceteris paribus (CP) qualifier that can be explicated as an additional conjunct in the antecedent of the premise. The qualifier can be explicated as ‘everything else relevant remains unchanged’ or alternatively as ‘nothing interferes’. The qualifier appears most prominently in the context of the discussion of laws in the sciences, where these laws are often expressed with a CP qualifier. From an analysis of the qualifier’s role in the problem of antecedent-strengthening, we can learn more about CP qualifiers in general and in their application to the laws used in the sciences.     

The exemplarities of artworks: Heidegger, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Shoes</Emphasis>, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pixar</Emphasis>

Heidegger’s essays “The Origin of the Work of Art” and “The Question Concerning Technology” provide a revealing insight into the importance of exemplarity to artworks. Originally the notion that exemplarity is essential to art is Kantian: As Kant puts it, since originality can produce “original nonsense, [beautiful art’s] products must be models, i.e. exemplary.” However, what Heidegger recognizes is that even if exemplarity allows us to take art seriously in spite of its excesses, it exposes the artwork to new dangers: on the one hand, to the “world withdrawal of the work” as occurs in consignment to the museum shelf, and on the other, to the conditions of Enframing as “challenging-forth,” under which art is taken as a means to an end—dangers which point to the division of artworks between “fine” art and “popular” art. Since Heidegger’s approach favors the former, we will try to gain new critical insight by considering his arguments in the light of a “popular” work that allows us to formulate an exemplarity of popular art as the necessary complement to that of traditional art. By means of an understanding of the exemplarities (in the plural) of artworks, we will be able to reconsider the significance of Heidegger’s notions of reliability, Enframing, and poiesis for our current technological conditions.

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">what</Emphasis> and the <Emphasis Type="Italic">how</Emphasis> of metaphorical imagining,Part One

We humans are remarkably interested in and skilled at games of make believe, games whose rules make what we are called on to imagine depend on what’s actually perceivably true about things and people that have what it takes to assume various fictional roles and that thereby function in the games as props. For the most part we play these games on an improvised pickup basis, working out the rules we play by in the very act of playing by them. Part of what makes this coordinative feat possible are signals to the effect that as the speaker sees things, the rules and available props are such that this or that role is assumed by this or that prop, or props of this or that kind. Metaphors are make believe signals put to ambitious prop-characterizing use outside the game they serve to initiate, sustain, or otherwise regulate. Metaphoric competence is one manifestation of make believe competence.     

Revalidation of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sat</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Chit</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ananda</Emphasis> Scale

Sat-Chit-Ananda is an indigenous construct that refers to absolute bliss and consciousness. The present study aimed to strengthen the psychometric properties of the newly developed Sat-Chit-Ananda scale (Singh et al. in Int J Vedic Found Manag 1(2):54–74, 2014). A total of 398 students aged 17–36 years (mean age = 21.33 years, SD = 2.2, 70% males) participated in this study. An exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analysis was computed for the 17-item scale. Its’ concurrent validity was established by assessing its correlation with other well-being measures, namely Flourishing (Diener et al. in Soc Indic Res 97:143–156 2010) and Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (Diener et al. 2010). Satisfactory results were obtained from both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Sat-Chit-Ananda and its factors were found to be significantly positively correlated with Flourishing and Positive Experiences and were negatively correlated with Negative Experiences. Thus, the validity of the Sat-Chit-Ananda (Singh et al. 2014) scale stands further substantiated—offering this scale as a promising new assessment tool.