Pretending to cooperate. How speakers hide evasive actions

The paper is based on the following two assumptions. Firstly, evasive utterances are those which are semantically irrelevant to the question they are an answer to. Secondly, they can be divided into two main categories — overt and covert. The question to be asked as regards covert evasion is: How is it possible that an evasive speaker can nevertheless count on her/his utterance being considered cooperative? The objective of this paper is to analyse the means which are used by evasive speakers to pretend that their utterance does cooperatively answer the question and thereby meet its conversational demand. Semantic and pragmatic means were identified as serving the purpose of concealing evasive action. Within the former ones operation within the same topic as the questioner, and, secondly, equipping her/his evasive utterance with some formal characteristics which may indicate its relationship with the question, were listed. On a pragmatic level, the speaker may explicitly or implicitly indicate her/his willingness to answer the question: by statement or implication as well as licenses of uncooperativeness or hedging.     

我爱我的家

家是人们熟悉的一个字眼,熟悉的一个地方。家究竟是什么?不同的人对家的理解也不同,有人说家是人的栖身之所,休养身心的地方,是避风的港湾;有人说家是丈夫的王国,妻子的世界,孩子的乐园;有人说家是……家在人的心里概念是不尽相同的,但相同的是家对每个人都是重要的,因为她是人一生离不开的地方。人可以没有钱、没有权、没有势、没有一切,但不能没有家。家既是重要的,每个人都会爱自己的家,我也一样。     

我要向山举目，我的帮助从何而来？

经文:诗121:1-8 山,是我们熟悉的自然景物。人们喜欢山,因为爱它那多姿多彩的风景,也爱它里面蕴含的宝藏。诗人笔下的山,其高大、巍峨、挺拔、险峻、秀丽,令人神往,给人以遐想;经过艺术家的妙笔,展现在画卷上的山峦、奇峰,使人赏心悦目,陶冶人的性情。许多人喜欢爬山,是为了锻炼身体和意志,并增加对大自然的认识。然而对基督徒来说,山,这一受造之物与我们的信仰又有着千丝万缕的关系。     

Infant sensitivity to shadow motions

Preferential looking experiments investigated 5- and 8-month-old infants' perception and understanding of the motions of a shadow that appeared to be cast by a ball upon a box. When all the surfaces within the display were stationary, infants looked reliably longer when the shadow moved than when the shadow was stationary, indicating that they detected the shadow and its motion. In further experiments, however, infants' looking was not consistent with a sensitivity to the shadow's natural motion: They looked longer at natural events in which the shadow moved with the ball or remained at rest under the moving box than at unnatural events in which the shadow moved with the box or remained at rest under the moving ball. These findings suggest that infants overextend to shadows a principle that applies to material objects: Objects move together if and only if they are in contact. In a final experiment, infants were habituated to a moving shadow that repeatedly violated one aspect of the contact principle. In a subsequent test they failed to infer that the shadow would violate another aspect of the contact principle. Instead, they appeared to suspend all predictions concerning the behavior of the shadow.     

Reply to my Critics

In response to critical discussion of my book, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion, I clarify and develop various aspects of my analysis of jealousy in particular and affectivity in general. In relation to jealousy, I explore the nature of pathology, the role of fantasy and of the rival, and the place of examples and of evolutionary theory. In relation to affectivity, I emphasize the difference between distinguishing emotions from other psychological states and distinguishing among, within and between, particular emotions (where affectivity may not be central). In addition, I emphasize the dangers of a version of G.E. Moore's error in demanding a nonreductive analysis of good in parallel demands for a nonreductive analysis of affectivity.     

Collectible toys and decisions to share: I will gift you one to expand my set

Two studies were used to examine the collecting behaviour of preschool children. Prior studies of collecting have defined the behaviour as exhibited by older children and adults. To understand childhood collecting, existing theoretical perspectives were discussed in terms of how they might apply to children's behaviour as collectors. Results showed that some preschool children are motivated to engage in collecting and possess the developmental capacities required for successful collecting. Individual differences in executive functioning (Study 1, N= 57) and theory of mind (Study 2, N= 46) explained why some preschoolers were more oriented towards collecting than others. Study 2 showed that the motivational pull of collectible toys can be very strong, with some children agreeing to pay the ‘cost’ of sharing with a confederate child in order to obtain a collectible toy. This research highlights similarities and differences between adult and child collecting. Suggestions are provided for parents and for policy considerations regarding the appropriateness of marketing collectible toys to preschoolers.     

Since she's my queen well I must be king

Conclusion Against the ideology of conflict in which uncompromising violence is the winning attribute in the contest for political supremacy and superiority, Plato seeks to balance the oppositions of masculinity and femininity evenly in the single soul, to rethink manliness and allow it to be a disposition developed out of gentleness as well as spiritedness, and allowing men to draw on feminine characteristics to construct a new ideal of human nature. Socrates, we have seen, argues that guardian natures must be both gentle and spirited, and that a harmonious tension between these traits is conducive to the good of the soul and the city. There is no equivalent re-evaluation of womanliness however, no interest in re-evaluating the female role in the generation of children, and no interest in re-assessing the ontological dependencies of form and matter and their relation to reproduction and identity. Plato complicates and allows variations within the logic of gender relations which privilege the male as ideal, but these moves could not remove that structural inequality. Meanwhile, real women continue to be born withsexed bodies on whichgendered meanings are already inscribed (in a variety of different ways as deformed, inchoate, and lacking specificity), providing the ground and matter on which a creative principle gets to work and produces children, ideas and meanings.Ultimately, reason is master of the self in service of which spirit and gentleness are employed, and the inclusion of feminine gentleness into that service is no threat to the dominance of patriarchal hierarchy; both conceptually and empirically, woman and women remain source and resource for the patriarchal order. Reforming gender roles and abolishing the patrilinear genealogy is Plato's well-intentioned aim, but his failure to achieve this is inevitable, I have argued, as long as a specific identity for woman remains untheorised and a maternal genealogy unrecognized. Unless the ideal human being is re-conceptualised, giving a specific identity and value to the different morphologies of male and female humans, ignoring gender will never allow women an equivalentvalue: for, if women may be queens, this necessarily makes men their kings in the ideal republic.A Jonathan Richman song.     

你的话是我脚前的灯是我路上的光——呼召与奉献

旧约时代,有一个人名叫阿摩司,他只不过是个牧羊的,不是先知,也不是先知的门徒。但主的呼召临到他时,他就撇下羊群,远离自己的家乡,来到北国以色列,宣告神的话语,成为先知(摩7:14-15)。还有一人名叫大卫,是一个在旷野牧羊的人,主的呼召临到他,他就不再牧放羊群,被膏立为以色列的君王,牧养上帝的百姓(撇下8:7)。主的呼召临到阿摩司,是为了让他做先知,宣告上帝的话语。主的呼召临到大卫,乃是膏立他为君王,让他治理国家。服侍以色列民。阿摩司和大卫都接受主的呼召,却一个奉献做先知,一个奉献做君王。并没有都去做先知,也没有都去作君王,但主的旨意却成就在两个人的身上。可见,主呼召我们,乃是要在我们身上成就他的旨意。