Frege’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Begriffsschrift</Emphasis> as a <Emphasis Type="Italic">lingua characteristica</Emphasis>

In this paper I suggest an answer to the question of what Frege means when he says that his logical system, the Begriffsschrift, is like the language Leibniz sketched, a lingua characteristica, and not merely a logical calculus. According to the nineteenth century studies, Leibniz’s lingua characteristica was supposed to be a language with which the truths of science and the constitution of its concepts could be accurately expressed. I argue that this is exactly what the Begriffsschrift is: it is a language, since, unlike calculi, its sentential expressions express truths, and it is a characteristic language, since the meaning of its complex expressions depend only on the meanings of their constituents and on the way they are put together. In fact it is in itself already a science composed in accordance with the Classical Model of Science. What makes the Begriffsschrift so special is that Frege is able to accomplish these goals with using only grammatical or syncategorematic terms and so has a medium with which he can try to show analyticity of the theorems of arithmetic.     

That in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Martyā</Emphasis> Which is <Emphasis Type="Italic">Amṛta</Emphasis>: a Dialog with Ramchandra Gandhi

This philosophical meditation, which deals with death as question, presence, and even teacher, begins with Ramchandra Gandhi’s (RCG’s) penetrating essay ‘On Meriting Death.’ What does it mean ‘to merit’ death? To provide an answer, I travel through RCG’s corpus, in dialog with contemporary theorists such as Sri Aurobindo, Daya Krishna, and Mukund Lath. RCG implies that the question about ‘meriting’ death, and life, is not and cannot be ‘personal’ or ‘isolated’. For X to die, is for his close and distant samāj a matter of losing him and living without him. Hence meriting death, as also life, is a joint venture which involves deep understanding regarding non-isolation as the heart of the human situation. RCG’s creative thinking, or svarāj in ideas, reaches its peak when he dares to offer an answer of his own to the piercing question kim ā?caryam, ‘what is amazing?’ raised in the Yak?a-pra?na episode of the Mahābhārata. For RCG, the heart of the matter is not the ‘ungraspability’ of one’s unavoidable death, or the perennial search for ‘permanence’ in vain, but our failure to perceive ‘that in the martyā which is am?ta,’ i.e., a sense of solidarity in the face of death, connecting ‘I and Thou,’ which he derives from the icchā m?tyu of his grandfather, the famous Mahatma.     

Don’t Ever Do That! Long-term Duties in <Emphasis Type="Italic">PD</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis></Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>

This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer’s Propositional Deontic Logic (PD _e L), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: “Never do that”, or “Do this someday”. In this paper, we will investigate how to amend PD _e L so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a duality between these two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Æternus Est:</Emphasis> Divinity as a Conceptual Necessity in the Principle of Causation

The modern belief that mindless forces can be ultimate efficient causes of natural events is a conceptual impossibility. The logically ultimate cause of any change, the something that is ultimately making it occur in the present moment, is either a mind or not. More specifically, the cause either chooses to act or it does not. By choice here, I mean an act of free will in the libertarian sense. Where there is choosing in this sense there must be a mind. And when we say that an agent acts thus freely, we mean that it acts without being causally determined to act by anything beyond itself. However, this is conceptually indistinguishable from the idea of an ultimate efficient cause. To say that an agent is the ultimate cause in a causal chain is, by definition, to say that it acts without being caused to act by anything beyond itself. It is the head of the causal chain. It is, therefore, a matter of conceptual necessity that ultimate causes be minds, a fact that we have been blind to since the Scientific Revolution on the bad analogy of machines. Thus, every force ultimately governing the universe must be a mind corresponding either to the polytheist’s or the monotheist’s generic definition of divinity, and monotheism’s eternal mind will always be the most complete and justifiable explanation for the existence of the universe as a whole, even for the existence of the gods themselves.     

Cache protection strategies of a non-social food-caching corvid,Clark’s nutcracker (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nucifraga</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">columbiana</Emphasis>)

Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana), a non-social corvid, cache much of their food in order to survive periods of resource uncertainty. These caches are at risk as they are subject to pilferage from other animals including conspecifics. Potentially, nutcrackers can ensure the safety of these caches by keeping track of whether they have been observed making a cache and subsequently engage in cache protection strategies—strategies that have been shown by other members of the corvid family (e.g., scrub-jays and ravens). Behaviors including creating more caches, eating a higher proportion of seeds, and re-caching existing compromised sites have been shown in laboratory settings with social corvids and have provided preliminary evidence of the complex cognitive abilities of corvids. In the present study, Clark’s nutcrackers are shown to engage in similar cache protection behaviors when observed by a conspecific. Furthermore, we show that these behaviors are a result of social, rather than associative, cues.     

<傲慢与偏见>中的心理效应

<正>一次偶然的机会,读了简·奥斯丁的《傲慢与偏见》,它给我留下深深的印象,不由使我想到了心理学中的两个效应。一、首因效应首因效应也称第一印象,是人与人第一次交往中给人留下的印象,它在对方的头脑中形成并占据着主导地位。它并非总是正确,但却总是最鲜明、最牢固的,并且决定着以后双方交往的过程。人,总是先入为主,傲慢,偏见,这两个毋庸置疑的贬义词,让简·奥斯丁的作品成为精致的象征,一时     

Evidence suggests vocal production learning in a cross-fostered Risso’s dolphin (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Grampus</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">griseus</Emphasis>)

Vocal learning is a rare skill in mammals, and we have limited information about the contexts in which they use it. Previous studies suggested that cetaceans in general are skilled at imitating sounds, but only few species have been studied to date. To expand this investigation to another species and to investigate the possible influence of the social environment on vocal learning, we studied the whistle repertoire of a female Risso’s dolphin (Grampus griseus) that was stranded at an early age and was subsequently raised in a group of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). We show that this cross-fostered animal produced vocal signals more akin to those of its Tursiops poolmates than those of Risso’s dolphins in the wild. This is one of very few systematic cross-fostering studies in cetaceans and the first to suggest vocal production learning in the Risso’s dolphin. Our findings also suggest that social experience is a major factor in the development of the vocal repertoire in this species.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">‘No Time to be Lost!’</Emphasis>

Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) remains a major cause of death and disability afflicting mostly young adult males and elderly people, resulting in high economic costs to society. Therapeutic approaches focus on reducing the risk on secondary brain injury. Specific ethical issues pertaining in clinical testing of pharmacological neuroprotective agents in TBI include the emergency nature of the research, the incapacity of the patients to informed consent before inclusion, short therapeutic time windows, and a risk-benefit ratio based on concept that in relation to the severity of the trauma, significant adverse side effects may be acceptable for possible beneficial treatments. Randomized controlled phase III trials investigating the safety and efficacy of agents in TBI with promising benefit, conducted in acute emergency situations with short therapeutic time windows, should allow randomization under deferred consent or waiver of consent. Making progress in knowledge of treatment in acute neurological and other intensive care conditions is only possible if national regulations and legislations allow waiver of consent or deferred consent for clinical trials.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">W</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Bold">ang</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Bold">Fuzhi’s Criticism of Buddhism and Its Limitations</Emphasis>

Wang Fuzhi’s 王夫之 remarks on Buddhism have not been given sufficient attention despite increasing research on him. The few works on this topic either focus on just one aspect of his view of Buddhism or fail to disclose the purpose and uniqueness of his attack of it. This essay analyzes his view of Buddhism comprehensively, in particular his insight into the paradox of Buddhist universal love and his rejection of Buddhist retribution and reincarnation from Confucian righteousness and qi 氣-monism. In addition, it also explores the reason, context, and limitations of his criticism, that is, his reaction to the popular approach of “understanding Confucian classics through learning Buddhism” in the late Ming 明, his response to Zongmi’s 宗密 criticism of Confucian cosmology and human nature, and his misunderstanding of some Buddhist concepts. Yet his criticism is still illuminating to our understanding of the interaction of Confucianism with Buddhism and other religions.     

On the Consistency of a Plural Theory of Frege’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Grundgesetze</Emphasis>

PG (Plural Grundgesetze) is a predicative monadic second-order system which is aimed to derive second-order Peano arithmetic. It exploits the notion of plural quantification and a few Fregean devices, among which the infamous Basic Law V. In this paper, a model-theoretical consistency proof for the system PG is provided.     

基于CSSCI对<心理科学>的定量分析

依据南京大学中国社会科学研究评价中心研制的<中文社会科学引文索引>(CSSCI)(1998、1999)光盘数据库,对<心理科学>的发文、引文情况及载文被CSSCI(1998、1999)来源期刊的引用情况进行统计分析和评价,同时给出了同行专家对该刊的定性评价结果.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">What is ?Curriculum Theorizing</Emphasis>: for a People Yet to Come

What is ?Curriculum Theory articulates the problematic of difference, diversity, and multiplicity in contemporary curriculum thought. More specifically, this essay argues that the conceptualization of difference that dominates the contemporary curriculum landscape is inadequate to either the task of ontological experimentation or the creation of non-representational ways for thinking a life. Despite the ostensible radicality ascribed to the curricular ideas of difference and multiplicity, What is ?Curriculum Theory argues that these ideas remain wed to an structural or identitarian logic that derives difference from the a priori conditions of the possible. Further, this essay argues that the orthodox conceptualization of difference in contemporary curriculum studies is complicit with the capitalist commitment to quantitative multiplicity, or rather, the proliferation of ‘multiple consumer choices’. Following this problematic, the task of this paper is oriented to the conceptualization of difference adequate to the creation of a people yet-to-come, or rather, a people for which no prior image exists. To accomplish this, What is ?Curriculum Theory draws upon Deleuze’s Bergsonism in order to advance a conceptualization of difference that breaks from modes of dialectical negation and contradiction particular to the tyranny of representational thinking. Articulating an image of difference that no longer accords to the possible, this essay composes a thought experiment conceptualizing a pedagogical life in a manner that explicates the transversal relationship between the actual (what is) and the virtual (what is not-yet).     

Leading a conspecific away from food in ravens (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Corvus corax</Emphasis>)?

Active misleading of conspecifics has been described as a social strategy mainly for primates. Here we report a raven leading a competitor away from food in a social foraging task. Four individuals had to search and compete for hidden food at color-marked clusters of artificial food caches. At the beginning of the experiment, a subordinate male found and exploited the majority of the food. As a result, the dominant male displaced him from the already opened boxes. The subordinate male then developed a pattern, when the loss of reward to the dominant got high, of moving to unrewarded clusters and opening boxes there. This diversion often led the dominant to approach those unrewarded clusters and the subordinate then had a head start for exploiting the rewarded boxes. Subsequently, however, the dominant male learned not to follow the subordinate to unrewarded clusters and eventually started searching for the reward himself. These interactions between the two males illustrate the ravens' potential for deceptively manipulating conspecifics. We discuss under which circumstances ravens might use this capacity.