Intrinsicality and Hyperintensionality

The standard counterexamples to David Lewis’s account of intrinsicality involve two sorts of properties: identity properties and necessary properties. Proponents of the account have attempted to deflect these counterexamples in a number of ways. This paper argues that none of these moves are legitimate. Furthermore, this paper argues that no account along the lines of Lewis’s can succeed, for an adequate account of intrinsicality must be sensitive to hyperintensional distinctions among properties.     

Co‐Hyperintensionality

Co‐hyperintensionality, or hyperintensional equivalence, is a relation holding between two or more contents that can be substituted in a hyperintensional context salva veritate. I argue that two strategies used to provide criteria for co‐hyperintensionality (appeal to some form of impossible worlds, or to structural or procedural equivalence of propositions) fail. I argue that there is no generalized notion of co‐hyperintensionality that meets plausible desiderata, by showing that the opposite thesis leads to falsity. As a conclusion, I suggest to take co‐hyperintensionality as a primitive and I provide a general criterion of co‐hyperintensionality whose content depends on each hyperintensional notion we aim to formalize.     

Richard (Routley) Sylvan: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics

Richard Sylvan (né Routley) was one of Australasia's most prolific and systematic philosophers. Though known for his innovative work in logic and metaphysics, the astonishing breadth of his philosophical endeavours included almost all reaches of philosophy. Taking the view that very basic assumptions of mainstream philosophy were fundamentally mistaken, he sought radical change across a wide range of theories. However, his view of the centrality of logic and recognition of the possibilities opened up by logical innovation in the fundamental areas of metaphysics resulted in his working primarily in these two, closely connected fields. It is this work in logic and metaphysics that is the main focus of what follows.     

"北斗八女"考——另附汉译密教佛经中南斗北斗之汉化分析

汉译密教佛经中直接以北斗为题材的经文集中出现在盛唐,其中印度来华僧人金刚智所译<北斗七星念诵仪轨>经中,有"北斗八女"字样,同经文标题"北斗七星"相异,在<大正藏>所选用的几个版本经文中也有所同异.笔者比对相关文献考得此"北斗八女"并非"北斗七星"之讹写,其背后是道教的北辰北斗崇拜对密教的影响.比较僧一行撰写的<北斗七星护摩法>,可从中看出密教经文在北斗崇拜上的进一步汉化:不但形式上更接近道教经文,同时此经中首次出现对"火星入南斗"这一传统天象的攘灾之法,是将中土星占内容融入密教佛经中的一条明证,也是天学家身份的僧一行特殊的综合工作.笔者认为金刚智的译文,保留了唐以前道教对密教在北斗崇拜上的影响,而僧一行的工作,是对密教佛经的二次汉化.对这一过程的分析,有助于辨别北斗经文的成文时间上的前后顺序,也有助于理解史传及笔记故事中北斗所具有的丰富内涵.     

萨满教星辰崇拜与北方天文学的萌芽

星辰崇拜是萨满教古老的崇拜观念,祭星仪式在北方一些民族中从远古延续至今,反映并记录了北方先民对星辰以及星空格局的认识。北方先民基于长期的生产生活实践积累起来的极具实证和实用价值的星象天文学知识,相当一部分是通过萨满教崇奉的星辰神和祭星仪式传承下来的,尽管其中充满神秘色彩,并有许多局限,但却因此而积累了许多天文学知识,从而丰富了我国天文学的宝库。本文以民族学田野调查资料为基础,论述了萨满教星辰崇拜观念、萨满教星图及其在实践中的应用等问题,探讨了原始宗教萨满教与自然科学的关系,提出了北方萨满教星图与中国古代星占术迥然不同的特征。     

Draw a Star and Make it Perfect: Incremental Processing of Telicity

Predicates like “coloring-the-star” denote events that have a temporal duration and a culmination point (telos). When combined with perfective aspect (e.g., “Valeria has colored the star”), a culmination inference arises implying that the action has stopped, and the star is fully colored. While the perfective aspect is known to constrain the conceptualization of the event as telic, many reading studies have demonstrated that readers do not make early commitments as to whether the event is bounded or unbounded. A few visual-world studies tested the processing of telic predicates during online sentence processing, demonstrating an early integration of aspectual and temporal cues. By employing the visual-world paradigm, we tested the incremental processing of the perfective aspect in Italian in two eye-tracking studies in which listeners heard durative predicates in the perfective form in a scenario showing a completed and a non-completed event. Differently from previous studies, we compared telic durative predicates such as “coloring-the-star” to punctual predicates such as “lighting-the-candle.” While for punctual predicates, the inferences of telicity (the event has a telos) and of culmination (the telos is reached) are lexically encoded in the perfective verb, for durative predicates, the degree of event completion (visually encoded) needs to be integrated with perfective aspect (linguistically encoded) for the culmination inference derivation. By modulating the interaction of visual and linguistic stimuli across the two experiments, we show that the verb's perfective aspect triggers the culmination inference incrementally during sentence processing, offering novel evidence for the continuous integration of linguistic processing with real-world visual information.     

Star Performers in Twenty‐First Century Organizations

We argue that changes in the nature of work in 21st‐century organizations have led to the emergence of star performers—a few individuals who contribute a disproportionate amount of output. We describe how stars negate the long‐held belief that the distribution of individual performance is normal and, instead, suggest an underlying power law distribution. In addition, we offer 9 propositions to guide future empirical research on star performers and an underlying power law distribution of individual performance. We describe how the presence of stars is likely to affect all individual‐, team‐, and firm‐level management theories addressing individual performance directly or indirectly, but focus on specific implications for those addressing human capital, turnover, compensation, downsizing, leadership, teamwork, corporate entrepreneurship, and microfoundations of strategy. In addition, we discuss methodological considerations necessary to carry out our proposed research agenda. Finally, we discuss how a consideration of star performers has important implications for management practice.     

The Moment of a Star: The Ethics of Narration

The main theme of the following presentation of Ric?ur's philosophical preoccupations with religion is the interrelationship between reflection and revelation. In a first section, Ric?ur's philosophical profile is outlined in order to indicate the tone between sadness and joy, negativity and affirmation, in which religion has its existential and philosophical ambience. The following part discusses the pertinence of Ric?ur's position in light of contemporary debates about divine otherness and kenosis. Finally, a third section examines the antagonism between philosophy of reflection and biblical revelation, which marks the range and limits of Ric?ur's hermeneutic philosophy. The kind of dependency or heteronomy implied in religion, especially in the biblical idea of the absolute as an external truth-event, presents a genuine challenge to both phenomenology and hermeneutics. This problem is addressed in Ric?ur's theories of revelation and testimony.     

Ankle muscles activation and postural stability with Star Excursion Balance Test in healthy individuals

IntroductionThe ankle joint, a part of the kinetic chain of the lower limb, plays a significant role in the maintenance of postural stability during bipedal and unipedal balancing activities. This study aimed to evaluate the neuromuscular control of the ankle joint and the postural stability while executing the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), by recording the EMG activity of the extrinsic ankle musculature and the displacement of the center of pressure (CoP).MethodsThe EMG activity of the tibialis anterior (TA), the peroneus brevis (PB) and the medial and lateral gastrocnemius (GM, GL), along with the anteroposterior and mediolateral displacements (APd and MLd) of CoP as well as the plantar pressure distribution of the supportive lower limb were recorded during reaching to the eight directions of SEBT in 29 healthy, physically active college students (15 males and 14 females; mean ± SD of age 25.6 ± 4.5 yrs.; height: 172.5 ± 8.2 cm; body weight: 67.7 ± 13.6 kg; and BMI: 22.6 ± 2.9 kg/m²).ResultsThe tibialis anterior muscle demonstrated the greatest EMG activity during SEBT, followed by the PB, GL and GM muscles. The increased EMG activity of TA and PB during the execution of all posterior-oriented and lateral directions coincided with a decreased APd of CoP and increased reaching distances. The opposite occurred during the execution of all the anterior-oriented and medial directions. The differences among the directions of SEBT regarding the EMG activity of GL, GM and the mediolateral displacement of CoP were, in general, not significant.ConclusionsThe neuromuscular control of the ankle joint and the associated postural stability during SEBT was highly depended upon the activation level of TA and PB, which should be considered by clinicians and sports specialists when using this test for screening and/or rehabilitation purposes.     

对"网络红人"形成原因的伦理反思

从木子美现身网络并以"迅雷不及掩耳"之势走红开始,"网络红人"已越来越成为人们所关注的对象."网络红人"的出现,既有客观的主体虚拟的原因,也有主体自身的角色变换及相关主体的评价失衡原因,因而"网络红人"的形成实际上是网络社会发展的必然产物,它不仅是技术的产物,也是人与人之间新的伦理关系的产物,是新的利益关系的产物.     

Revisiting Confucian Jen Ethics and Feminist Care Ethics: A Reply to Daniel Star and Lijun Yuan

At two fronts I defend my 1994 article. I argue that differences between Confucian jen ethics and feminist care ethics do not preclude their shared commonalities in comparison with Kantian. utilitarian, and contractarian ethics, and that Confucians do care. I also argue that Confucianism is capable of changing its rules to reflect its renewed understanding of jen, that care ethics is feminist, and that similarities between Confucian and care ethics have significant implications.