<Emphasis Type="Italic">Wh</Emphasis>-Questions,Universal Statements and Free Choice Inferences in Child Mandarin

This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s comprehension of wh-questions, universal statements and free choice inferences. Previous research has found that Mandarin-speaking children assign a universal interpretation to sentences with a wh-word (e.g., shei ‘who’) followed by the adverbial quantifier dou ‘all’ (Zhou in Appl Psycholinguist 36:411–435, 2013). Children also compute free choice inferences in sentences that contain a modal verb in addition to a wh-word and dou (Zhou, in: Nakayama, Su, Huang (eds.) Studies in Chinese and Japanese language acquisition: in honour of Stephen Crain. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 223–235, 2017). The present study used a Question-Statement Task to assess children’s interpretation of sentences containing shei + dou, both with and without the modal verb beiyunxu ‘was allowed to’, as well as the contrast between sentences with shei + dou, which are statements for adults, versus ones with dou + shei, which are wh-questions for adults. The 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking child participants exhibited adult-like linguistic knowledge of the semantics and pragmatics of wh-words, the adverbial quantifier dou, and the deontic modal verb beiyunxu.     

A Definition Framework for the Terms <Emphasis Type="Italic">Nanomaterial</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Nanoparticle</Emphasis>

Scientific writings and policy documents define the terms nanomaterial and nanoparticle in various ways. This variation is considered problematic because the absence of a shared definition is understood as potentially hindering nanomaterial knowledge production and regulation. Another view is that the existence of a shared definition may itself cause problems, as rigid definitions arguably exclude important aspects of the studied phenomena. The aim of this paper is to inform this state of disagreement by providing analytical concepts for a systematic understanding of how, and even whether, nanomaterial and nanoparticle could and should be defined. To do this, we review definitions of nanomaterial and nanoparticle presented in research articles and policy documents. Definitions were identified by first conducting a Scopus search and then tracing cited definitions back to their sources. In total, 36 definitions were identified. Theories of definition from philosophy and linguistics provide analytical guidance for structuring and categorizing the identified definitions, and the main analytical dimensions of the definitions are then identified and discussed. Finally, we propose a framework for understanding the process of defining nanomaterial and nanoparticle. This framework considers both the generality needed for a shared understanding (by suggesting proto-definitions of nanomaterial and nanoparticle) and the level of precision required for different purposes (by allowing for various explications of the proto-definitions).     

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.     

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.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Yin-Yang</Emphasis> and the Heart-Mind

The East Asian notion of a heart-mind (Chinese xin 心, Japanese kokoro こころ, and Korean maum ??) is arguably more accurate to our psychology than the Western term “mind” and its equivalents are: the latter term implies the possibility of psychological functioning in the absence of all emotion, and it can be shown that that is impossible. But then it turns out that we can update the traditional Chinese notions of yin 陰 and yang 陽 in such a way as to help us philosophically explain how our functioning psychology involves emotion and why any possible psychology has to rest on such a basis. Yin-yang is the essence of heart-mind, and heart-mind is essential to any functioning psychology.     

A Presuppositional Account of Causal and Temporal Interpretations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis>

Despite extensive studies, the issue concerning the pragmatic mechanisms leading to causal and temporal interpretations of and remains problematic and has not yet been addressed in its totality within one framework. This paper proposes a solution based on presuppositional mechanisms built into a comprehensive analysis that accounts for both the various interpretations of and-sentences as well as those of other types of sentences involving similar interpretations. This account is a specific part of a unified solution to the knotty problem of different manners of conveying causal and temporal relations both with connectives and also with juxtaposed sentences. It is formulated within the Relevance Nomological Model which provides a general framework for the analysis of causal constructions such as the connective because and why-questions.     

The Problem of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bildung</Emphasis> and the Basic Structure of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bildungstheorie</Emphasis>

In this article, an attempt is made to introduce a systematization of the loosely connected group of authors called Bildungstheorie. This ought to not only be of significance for German-speaking educational science, for the concept of Bildung is also increasingly used internationally for the formulation and development of pedagogical issues. It is proposed that the concept of complexity could be suitable for bringing attention to common presuppositions in the theoretical dealing with the problem of Bildung. The thesis is that Bildung in theories of Bildung is described from various perspectives as complex, meaning it is an open and uncertain interplay of components irreducibly associated with planning and governance problems. As this thesis is corroborated by means of selected positions within Bildungstheorie, evidence is provided that complexity in educational science—differently than it may seem at first glance—is not for the first time today a theme of importance. Rather, it is demonstrated that a nascent discipline-specific complexity research can be linked to already existing traditions.     

Color and intensity discrimination in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Xenopus laevis</Emphasis> tadpoles

Investigations into the physiology of Xenopus laevis have the potential to greatly accelerate biomedical research, especially concerning neural plasticity and sensory systems, but are limited by the lack of available information on behavioral learning in this species. Here, we attempt to lay the foundations for a behavioral assay in Xenopus that can be used in conjunction with biological manipulations. We tested cohorts of Xenopus tadpoles across four light-mediated active-avoidance experiments, using either wavelength or intensity as the salient discriminative cue. In the wavelength task, we determine a baseline learning rate and characterize retention of learning, identifying active extinction effects as far more potent than the passage of time in the loss of behavior. In the intensity task, we examine the effects of varying differences between the discriminative stimuli on acquisition and extinction and identify a critical range of intensity differences where learning changes. The results of our experiments demonstrate that Xenopus is a tractable model organism for cognitive research and can learn a variety of associative tasks in the laboratory settings. These data reveal new aspects of the Xenopus larval visual processing system and facilitate future research between cognitive methods and biological/chemical manipulations to study mechanisms of brain structure and function.     

Understanding Mind/Body Medicine from Muslim Religious Practices of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Salat</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dhikr</Emphasis>

There has been an increasing medical interest in Muslim religious practices in promoting well-being. Central to Muslim religious practices are salat (prayer) and dhikr (chanting). These two religious forms may be argued as comprising elements of mind/body medicine due to their positive effect on the psychoneuroimmunological response. The aim of this article was to further understand the mind/body aspects of Muslim salat and dhikr.     

The codification of intersubjectivity in the diachronic change <Emphasis Type="Italic">AD locative</Emphasis> &gt; <Emphasis Type="Italic">A</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">D</Emphasis>) <Emphasis Type="Italic">indirect object</Emphasis> in Spanish

The principal aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between intersubjectivity and grammar. We argue that intersubjectivity represents, on the one hand, a prerequisite for the development of language as a symbolic system, and therefore also for the development of grammar. Furthermore, we attempt to show that language, and especially grammar, codify intersubjectivity. That is to say, grammatical constructions represent the intersubjective interactions that situated agents maintain in different pragmatic contects. We call this phenomenon the meta-representational capacity of language. Our main object of analysis is the development of the ditransitive construction (give something to someone - dar algo a alguien) in the Spanish language. The evolution of this construction makes it clear that there is an important correlation between the degree of complexity of the codified intersubjective interaction and grammatically obligatory nature and the prominence of the grammatical construction that codifies it: the greater the complexity, the greater its obligatoriness, and vice versa.     

On the Concept of Well-Being in Japan: Feeling <Emphasis Type="Italic">Shiawase </Emphasis>as Hedonic Well-Being and Feeling <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ikigai</Emphasis> as Eudaimonic Well-Being

This study clarified characteristics of well-being in Japan, specifically differences between feeling shiawase and feeling ikigai, to elucidate how they relate to eudaimonic well-being and hedonic well-being. Participants were 846 Japanese in their 30s (418 men, 428 women), who responded to a web-based survey. Questionnaire items comprised level of shiawase/ikigai, the presence of a difference between feeling shiawase and feeling ikigai, and, in an open-ended question, the difference between feeling shiawase and feeling ikigai. Results revealed that feeling shiawase is primarily characterized by such feelings as delight and peace; it is oriented toward the present. Feeling ikigai entails actions of devoting oneself to pursuits one enjoys and is associated with feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment. Furthermore, it includes awareness of values such as the purpose of life and the meaning of existence; it is future oriented, as in goal seeking. This study verifies that for Japanese, feeling shiawase is close to hedonic well-being and feeling ikigai is close to eudaimonic well-being. This suggests that it is important to approach Japanese well-being not in technical terms such as eudaimonic well-being; rather, Japanese well-being should be comprehended in terms of ikigai which is an aspect of daily conversation in Japan.     

The Hidden Set-Theoretical Paradox of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Tractatus</Emphasis>

We are familiar with various set-theoretical paradoxes such as Cantor's paradox, Burali-Forti's paradox, Russell's paradox, Russell-Myhill paradox and Kaplan's paradox. In fact, there is another new possible set-theoretical paradox hiding itself in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1989). From the Tractatus’s Picture theory of language (hereafter LP) we can strictly infer the two contradictory propositions simultaneously: (a) the world and the language are equinumerous; (b) the world and the language are not equinumerous. I call this antinomy the world-language paradox. Based on a rigorous analysis of the Tractatus, with the help of the technical resources of Cantor’s naive set theory (Cantor in Mathematische Annalen, 46, 481–512, 1895, Mathematische Annalen, 49, 207–246, 1897) and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (hereafter ZFC) (Jech 2006: 3–15; Kunen 1992: xv–xvi; Bagaria 2008: 619–622), I outline the world-language paradox and assess the unique possible solution plan, i.e., the mathematical plan utilizing ‘infinity’. I conclude that Wittgenstein cannot solve the hidden set-theoretical paradox of the Tractatus successfully unless he gives up his finitism.     

The Nature of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Stimmungen</Emphasis>

This essay comprises two chapters from the first part of Bollnow’s book on moods (Das Wesen der Stimmungen), namely the second chapter on the concept of Stimmung and the third chapter on Stimmungen as the sustaining foundation of the soul. It argues that moods constitute the simplest and most original form in which human life comes to know itself. Moods are understood as a specific harmony between, first, the inner and outer world; second, the states of the body and the soul; and, third, the individual faculties of the soul. Moods differ from emotions in the narrow sense, which are always intentionally directed towards a specific object, whereas moods do not have any specific object; they are states of being, structuring and coloring human existence as a whole. Hence, no system of moods is provided, but their extensive diversity is indicated. Furthermore, transient, unsteady, or “moody” moods (Launen) are distinguished from persistent or basic moods (beständige Lebensstimmungen).     

Categorization does not promote symmetry in Guinea baboons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Papio papio</Emphasis>)

Humans have the capacity to use stimuli interchangeably by forming equivalence classes, and this ability seems to be supported by our language system. According to Sidman and Tailby (Conditional discrimination vs. matching to sample: an expansion of the testing paradigm. J Exp Anal Behav 37:5–22, 1982), the formation of equivalence classes require that three relations are derived among the class members, and past experiments have shown that one of these relations, i.e., symmetry, corresponding to the ability to reverse a relation (if A → B, then B → A), is extremely difficult to obtain in non-human animals. Because language development and the ability to form equivalence classes both co-occur in children with an increased ability to form categories, the current study tested the idea that category learning might promote symmetry in a nonhuman primate species. In Experiment 1, twelve Guinea baboons (Papio papio) were trained to associate 60 pictures of bears and 60 pictures of cars to two category labels, before being tested in symmetry trials. In Experiment 2, symmetry was trained and tested by reversing the association order between labels and pictures, using a new set of stimuli. In both experiments, the baboons successfully demonstrated category discrimination, but had only a weak (though significant) tendency to respond in accordance with symmetry during test trials. Altogether, our results confirm that symmetry is inherently difficult in non-human animals. We discuss possible explanations for such a limitation and give reasons for thinking that the effects of categorization on symmetry should be further investigated.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Self</Emphasis> restated

This is a short summary of the book The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance (Oxford University Press 2012). It introduced an “author meets critics” panel at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting in San Francisco 2016. I try to relate the discussion in the book to recent work that has appeared since its publication.     

The Impact of World Knowledge on the Processing of Mandarin Possessive Reflexive <Emphasis Type="Italic">zijide</Emphasis>

It has long been considered that the Mandarin possessive reflexive zijide can be either locally bound or long distance bound, leading to ambiguity where it fails to exclusively refer back to either long distance binding NP or the local NP. In addition to syntactic factors such as the local versus long distance division, the present study examined the potential influence of general world knowledge on the interpretation of zijide. Three experiments, two offline sentence evaluation tasks and one online sentence reading task, found that zijide could be either facilitated or impeded by world knowledge carried in the NPs of the sentence. The results showed that in some cases, zijide was considered exclusively referring back to the long distance NP. These findings seemed to support the notion of subject orientation effect and demonstrated the influence of world knowledge on the processing of Mandarin possessive reflexive zijide.     

The Fallaciousness of Threats: Character and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ad Baculum</Emphasis>

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.     

Hypothesis Testing of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Q</Emphasis>-matrix

The recent surge of interests in cognitive assessment has led to the development of cognitive diagnosis models. Central to many such models is a specification of the Q-matrix, which relates items to latent attributes that have natural interpretations. In practice, the Q-matrix is usually constructed subjectively by the test designers. This could lead to misspecification, which could result in lack of fit of the underlying statistical model. To test possible misspecification of the Q-matrix, traditional goodness of fit tests, such as the Chi-square test and the likelihood ratio test, may not be applied straightforwardly due to the large number of possible response patterns. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new statistical method to test the goodness fit of the Q-matrix, by constructing test statistics that measure the consistency between a provisional Q-matrix and the observed data for a general family of cognitive diagnosis models. Limiting distributions of the test statistics are derived under the null hypothesis that can be used for obtaining the test p-values. Simulation studies as well as a real data example are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method.     

Interculturality and Early Attachment: A Comparison of Urban/ <Emphasis Type="Italic">Non-Mapuche</Emphasis> and Rural/<Emphasis Type="Italic">Mapuche</Emphasis> Mother-Baby Dyads in Chile

It is well known in the field that culture and context play an important role in child rearing and parenting practices. However, many studies do not address the cultural dimension of attachment, although evidence indicates that aspects of early attachment differ across cultures. With the goal of comparing the quality of mother–baby interactions, this study analyzed attachment behaviors and maternal sensitivity in two settings: urban/non-Mapuche and rural/Mapuche in Chile. The sample was composed of 34 mother-baby dyads (17 urban/non-Mapuche and 17 rural/Mapuche) with 12-month-old children. During a feeding episode, the attachment style of the interaction was assessed with the Attachment during Stress scale, and maternal sensitivity was evaluated with the Child-Adult Relationship Experimental Index-Toddlers (CARE-Index). The groups differed in their interaction attachment style and in affective and proximity modalities: Urban/non-Mapuche mothers tended to have secure and ambivalent attachment styles, and rural/Mapuche mothers tended to have avoidant styles. When educational level is controlled, ethnicity group can explain the differences in mothers’ attachment styles. The findings of the study and their implications are discussed.