NAMING THE UNNAMEABLE: THE BEING OF THE TAO

The Tao Te Ching begins enigmatically with the following lines:
The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.     

ENDURANTISM, DIACHRONIC VAGUENESS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MANY

Abstract: A plausible desideratum for an account of the nature of objects, at, and across time, is that it accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness without locating vagueness in the world. A series of arguments have attempted to show that while universalist perdurantism – which combines a perdurantist account of persistence with an unrestricted mereological account of composition – meets this desideratum, endurantist accounts do not. If endurantists reject unrestricted composition then they must hold that vagueness is ontological. But if they embrace unrestricted composition they are faced with the problem of the many, and cannot plausibly accommodate vagueness. This paper disambiguates two related sub-problems of the problem of the many, and argues that universalist perdurantism is not superior to universalist endurantism with respect to either of these.     

THE VAGUENESS ARGUMENT FOR MEREOLOGICAL UNIVERSALISM*

Abstract:  In this paper, I critically discuss one of the more influential arguments for mereological universalism, what I will call 'the Vagueness Argument'. I argue that a premise of the Vagueness Argument is not well supported and that there are at least two good reasons for thinking that the premise in question is false.     

SCHIFFER ON VAGUENESS

Abstract:  I go through, and criticize, Stephen Schiffer's account of vagueness and the sorites paradox. I discuss his notion of a happy-face solution to a paradox, his appeal to vagueness-related partial belief, his claim that indeterminacy is a psychological notion, and his view that the sorites premise and the inference rule of modus ponens are indeterminate.     

SCIENCE AND SEMANTICS: THE CASE OF VAGUENESS AND SUPERVALUATION*

Abstract: It is widely assumed that the methods and results of science have no place among the data to which our semantics of vague predicates must answer. This despite the fact that it is well known that such prototypical vague predicates as ‘is bald’ play a central role in scientific research (e.g. the research that established Rogaine as a treatment for baldness). I argue here that the assumption is false and costly: in particular, I argue one cannot accept either supervaluationist semantics, or the criticism of that semantics offered by Fodor and Lepore, without having to abandon accepted, and unexceptionable, scientific methodology.     

中-英双语者英语命名图片的一致性

选用中-英双语者对Snodgrass和Vanderwart的标准图片库中的224张图片进行了英语(第二语言)命名一致性研究,最后得到了131张图片的英语命名一致性百分数、概念一致性百分数及H值.建立了这些图片的英语命名一致性常模.本研究还考察了图片命名一致性与图片命名反应时和错误率的关系,结果发现,H值、命名一致性百分数及概念一致性百分数与图片命名反应时、错误率之间均呈现显著的相关,其中命名一致性百分数和概念一致性在预测图片命名反应时和错误率时起重要作用.     

BRINGING COMPUTATIONAL MODELS OF WORD NAMING DOWN TO THE ITEM LEVEL

Abstract— Early noncomputational models of word recognition have topically attempted to account for effects of categorical factors such as word frequency (high vs low) and spelling-to-sound regularity (regular vs irregular) More recent computational models that adhere to general connections: principles hold the promise of being sensitive to underlying item differences that are only approximated by these categorical factors In contrast to earlier models, these connectionist models provide predictions of performance for individual items In the present study, we used the item-level estimates from two connectionist models (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996, Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989) to predict naming latencies on the individual items on which the models were trained The results indicate that the models capture, at best, slightly more variance than simple log frequency and substantially less than the combined predictive power of log frequency, neighborhood density, and orthographic length. The discussion focuses on the importance of examining the item-level performance of word-naming models and possible approaches that may improve the models' sensitivity to such item differences     

THE PREVENIENCE AND PHENOMENALITY OF GRACE, OR, THE ANTERIORITY OF THE POSTERIOR

This article argues the possibility of a phenomenology of Grace on the basis of response. Its key phenomenological interlocutor is Emmanuel Levinas.
The theology of grace might be said to be the fundamental theological doctrine, embracing as it does all other theologies, yet the theology of grace has been a focus of theological debate and dispute throughout history.
This article suggests that Levinas' ethical metaphysics, when applied to theology, gives theology a new phenomenological voice in which the theology of grace might be articulated.
It begins by arguing the significance of the ordinary and the everyday and the sincerity of intentional life in the world, and then proceeds to develop the notion of the prevenience of grace ( gratia praeveniens ) in terms of Levinas notion of the posteriority of the anterior/anteriority of the posterior. Grace is known in its effects.     

TRANSVALUATIONISM ABOUT VAGUENESS: A PROGRESS REPORT

The philosophical account of vagueness I call “transvaluationism” makes three fundamental claims. First, vagueness is logically incoherent in a certain way: it essentially involves mutually unsatisfiable requirements that govern vague language, vague thought‐content, and putative vague objects and properties. Second, vagueness in language and thought (i.e., semantic vagueness) is a genuine phenomenon despite possessing this form of incoherence—and is viable, legitimate, and indeed indispensable. Third, vagueness as a feature of objects, properties, or relations (i.e., ontological vagueness) is impossible, because of the mutually unsatisfiable conditions that such putative items would have to meet. In this paper I set forth the core claims of transvaluationism in a way that acknowledges and explicitly addresses a challenging critique by Timothy Williamson of my prior attempts to articulate and defend this approach to vagueness. I sketch my favored approach to truth and ontological commitment, and I explain how it accommodates the impossibility of ontological vagueness. I argue that any approach to the logic and semantics of vagueness that both (i) eschews epistemicism and (ii) thoroughly avoids positing any arbitrary sharp boundaries (either first‐order or higher‐order) will have to be not an alternative to transvaluationism but an implementation of it. I sketch my reasons for repudiating epistemicism. I briefly describe my current thinking about how to accommodate intentional mental properties with vague content within an ontology that eschews ontological vagueness. And I revisit the idea, which played a key role in my earlier articulations of transvaluationism, that moral conflicts provide an illuminating model for understanding vagueness.     

3—6岁白、哈尼族与汉族儿童的颜色命名能力的发展

探讨了云南地区白族与哈尼族３—６岁儿童的颜色命名能力发展,并与北京地区汉族同龄儿童作了比较。实验结果表明,不同民族的儿童的颜色命名能力都伴随年龄增长而逐步提高;但汉族儿童的颜色命名能力发展略高于哈尼族与白族同龄儿童。总的来看,儿童对不同颜色正确命名能力的发展有着共同的规律性,即黑、白、红三色较易正确命名,其次是黄、绿、蓝三色较难正确命名,命名正确率最低的颜色是橙与紫。     

VERY LONG-LASTING PRIMING IN PICTURE NAMING

Abstract— A form of long-lasting repetition priming has been demonstrated by faster naming of pictures repeated from a prior exposure than new pictures. This facilitation is independent of explicit memory in both normal subjects (Mitchell & Brown, 1988) and amnesic patients (Cave & Squire. 1992). Using picture naming, the current study demonstrated that priming could be detected with delays of between 6 and 48 weeks between the initial exposure and the priming test. Recognition memory was also above chance at these delays, but performance on the two tests appeared independent. These results show that a single stimulus exposure can have very long-lasting effects. Accounts of repetition priming as a form of implicit memory will have to accommodate long-lasting changes in stimulus processing based on a single exposure.     

SQUEEZING AND STRETCHING: HOW VAGUENESS CAN OUTRUN BORDERLINENESS

The paper develops a critical dialectic with respect to the nowadays dominant approach in the theory of vagueness, an approach whose main tenet is that it is in the nature of the vagueness of an expression to present borderline cases of application, conceived of as enjoying some kind of distinctive normative status. Borderlineness is used to explain the basic phenomena of vagueness, such as, for example, our ignorance of the location of cut-offs in a soritical series. Every particular theory of vagueness exemplifying the approach makes use, in the vague object language, of a definiteness operator which, however substantially interpreted, unavoidably inherits the vagueness of the expressions on which it operates ('higher-order vagueness'). It is first argued that finite soritical series force a surprising collapse result concerning a particular set of expressions involving the definiteness operator. It is then shown that, under two highly plausible assumptions about higher-order vagueness (the existence of 'absolutely definitely' positive and negative cases and the 'radical' character of higher-order vagueness itself), the collapse result implies the inadequacy of the dominant approach as a theory of vagueness, as its main tenet can be, at best, not absolutely definitely true.