The Logical Style of Confucius’ Analects

Considered from a logical point of view, Confucius’ Analects contain many implicit forms of reasoning and argumentation. This is shown first by analyzing the phenomenon of parallelism: direct parallelism is often a way of hinting at a general assertion, whereas anti-parallelism hides dilemmas, generalizations and modal notions of “moral preference.” The Analects also have various types of conditionals, ranging from material implications, to modalized implications, and counterfactual conditionals, which are the germs of implicit reasoning, concluding with a moral recommendation. Analogies are particularly abundant and a presentation of three examples suggests that, beyond their explicative role, they also involve moral recommendations. The implicit logic of The Analects requires an active, albeit unconscious participation of the reader, which could be an important element in explaining the enduring influence of the text.     

Toward the use of approach/avoidance tendencies as attitude measures: Individual- and group-level variability of the ingroup bias

Approach/avoidance paradigms could constitute an interesting alternative in measuring intergroup attitudes, notably if they overcome one criticism often addressed toward classic indirect tasks: Measuring attitudes beyond the influence of cultural knowledge. Using intergroup stimuli and a population likely to be exposed to a similar cultural knowledge, we observed two informative results regarding this issue: Approach/avoidance effects measured by the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST) varied across participants (i.e., consistent with the variability of intergroup attitudes; Experiment 1) and both participants of dominant and non-dominant groups produced an ingroup bias (Experiment 2). A last experiment (Experiment 3) showed that compatibility scores in the VAAST predict trustworthiness ratings of the ingroup/outgroup. This experiment also investigated potential differences between the VAAST and the IAT. These results suggest that approach/avoidance tasks (notably the VAAST) could be relevant to assess personal attitudes when it comes to normatively sensitive topics.     

Sequential adjustments before and after partial errors

In choice reaction time tasks, subjects speed up before making an error, but slow down afterward to prevent the occurrence of a new error. In some trials, the correct response is preceded by an incorrect electromyographic (EMG) activation too small to reach the response threshold. In this article, we show that these incorrect EMG activations give rise to the same sequential effects as overt errors: Before a trial containing an incorrect EMG activation, subjects speed up, whereas after that trial, they slow down. These activations reflect errors that have been detected, inhibited, and corrected in time. As such, they index the involvement of online executive control.     

Influence of social conditions in song sharing in the adult canary

In songbirds, experience of social and environmental cues during a discrete period after birth may dramatically influence song learning. In the canary, the ability to learn new songs is assumed to persist throughout life. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether social context could guide changes in adult song. Three groups of canaries were kept in different social and temporal conditions. Results showed that the multiple hierarchical levels of the canary song structure were affected by social environment: songs of males housed together for 2 years were more similar than those of males that spent the same time in individual cages in regard to acoustic parameters, syllable repertoire and repertoire of sequences of two-syllable types. However, social housing did not result in the emergence of a group-specific vocal signature within songs. In conclusion, these results suggested that under the influence of social factors, a copying process could allow adult canaries to adjust, at least in part, their songs to those of other individuals.     

Memory for words location in writing

In two experiments, we investigated memory for words location after writing a text. Experiment 1 demonstrated the existence of a memory for words location in writing by showing that participants who first composed a text and were then asked to locate words extracted from their text performed above a chance level established using a computer simulation, and better than participants who did not compose a text but were told the subject of the text. Experiment 2 showed that memory for words location in writing is mainly supported by a visuospatial representation of the text, as indicated by the lower recall of words location by participants who performed a visuospatial concurrent task at the time of the composition, compared with participants who performed a verbal concurrent task. The findings highlight the role of a spatial representation of the physical layout of the text and the role of such a memory in the writing process.

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Is Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 Ultimately a Confucian or Buddhist?

Liang Shuming has been proclaimed the forerunner of Contemporary Neo-Confucianism. However, assessing Liang’s identity appears a much more complicated task. Taking a closer look at his copious writings on religion, this paper shows how Liang conceived the role of religion at the different steps of humanity’s quest. Applying this frame of understanding to twentieth century China, Liang saw a discrepancy between the task required in our present time and what the future was holding. Therefore, while he engaged the world in a certain way, he was still holding privately another belief. This “secret” of Liang reshuffles traditional boundaries between the secular and transcendence.     

Semantic numerical representation in blind subjects: the role of vision in the spatial format of the mental number line

Does vision play a role in the elaboration of the semantic representation of small and large numerosities, notably in its spatial format? To investigate this issue, we decided to compare in the auditory modality the performance of congenitally and early blind people with that of a sighted control group, in two number comparison tasks (to 5 and to 55) and in one parity judgement task. Blind and sighted participants presented exactly the same distance and SNARC (Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes) effects, indicating that they share the same semantic numerical representation. In consequence, our results suggest that the spatial dimension of the numerical representation is not necessarily attributable to the visual modality and that the absence of vision does not preclude the elaboration of this representation for 1-digit (Experiment 1) and 2-digit numerosities (Experiment 2). Moreover, as classical semantic numerical effects were observed in the auditory modality, the postulate of the amodal nature of the mental number line for both small and large magnitudes was reinforced.     

Valued Relations Aggregation with the Borda Method

The Borda method is a well-known method used to aggregate a profile of crisp binary relations into one weak order. We present a generalization of the Borda method, allowing it to aggregate a profile of valued relations. We give a characterization of the Borda method in this context and we show some links with the PROMETHEE method.     

Models for a paraconsistent set theory

In this paper the existence of natural models for a paraconsistent version of naive set theory is discussed. These stand apart from the previous attempts due to the presence of some non-monotonic ingredients in the comprehension scheme they fulfill. Particularly, it is proved here that allowing the equality relation in formulae defining sets, within an extensional universe, compels the use of non-monotonic operators. By reviewing the preceding attempts, we show how our models can naturally be obtained as fixed points of some functor acting on a suitable category (stressing the use of fixed-point arguments in obtaining such alternative semantics).     

Before and after the vocabulary spurt: two modes of word acquisition?

This paper focuses on early lexical development, and especially the period around 18 months known as the vocabulary spurt. We first propose that this period corresponds to a shift from an associationist to a referential lexical acquisition mechanism following the developmental coupling of specific pre‐linguistic and cognitive abilities. This latter mechanism would allow the acquisition of genuine words, i.e. links between phonetically specified sound patterns and object categories. We then review the literature on early lexical acquisition by typically developing infants and infants with Down and Williams syndrome, and report some data that were recently collected on this issue. We conclude that the data so far are congruent with our proposal, but because they remain insufficient, we propose some future research that focuses on the relation between pre‐linguistic and cognitive developments.