Hand Position and Response Assignment Modulate the Activation of the Valence‐Space Conceptual Metaphor

Conceptual metaphor is ubiquitous in language and thought, as we usually reason and talk about abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones via metaphorical mappings that are hypothesized to arise from our embodied experience. One pervasive example is the conceptual projection of valence onto space, which flexibly recruits the vertical and lateral spatial frames to gain structure (e.g., good is up ‐bad is down and good is right ‐bad is left ). In the current study, we used a valence judgment task to explore the role that exogenous bodily cues (namely response hand positions) play in the allocation of spatial attention and the modulation of conceptual congruency effects. Experiment 1 showed that congruency effects along the vertical axis are weakened when task conditions (i.e., the use of vertical visual cues, on the one hand, and the horizontal alignment of responses, on the other) draw attention to both the vertical and lateral axes making them simultaneously salient. Experiment 2 evidenced that the vertical alignment of participants’ hands while responding to the task—regardless of the location of their dominant hand—facilitates the judgment of positive and negative‐valence words, as long as participants respond in a metaphor–congruent manner (i.e., up responses are good and down responses are bad). Overall, these results support the claim that source domain representations are dynamically activated in response to the context and that bodily states are an integral part of that context.     

Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

This paper concerns an investigation of the manner in which typicality constrains graded membership in antonymous dimensional adjectives such as short/tall and cheap/expensive using the conceptual spaces framework. In this framework, items are organized in a space comprised of one or more dimensions along which they can be compared. The items’ graded membership is established by their relative proximity in this space to the prototypical instances of contrasting concepts. Because dimensional adjectives can be applied to an indefinite variety of things and grammatically have no upper bound to serve as cognitive reference point, they have been argued to lack prototypes. We present the results of an empirical study showing that the conceptual spaces framework can nevertheless be extended successfully to dimensional adjectives by complementing them with a comparison class argument (such as short/tall for an adult man and cheap/expensive for a smartphone), allowing participants to retrieve meaningful prototypical instances, which can be used to establish membership degree. Since dimensional adjectives are subjective, we investigate how the framework can accommodate interindividual variability in membership degree judgments. We find that the predictions of the framework significantly improve if prototypical instances themselves are assumed to come with a gradient instead of being considered equally typical, thereby providing a more fine‐grained account of typicality and furthering the development of the conceptual spaces framework.     

The revisionist's rubric: conceptual engineering and the discontinuity objection

This paper is about conceptual engineering (CE). Specifically, it discusses a common objection to CE, which I call the Discontinuity Objection. According to the Discontinuity Objection, CE leads to problematic discontinuities in subject and/or inquiry – making it philosophically uninteresting or irrelevant. I argue that a conceptual engineer can dismiss the Discontinuity Objection by showing that the pre-engineering concept persists through the proposed changes. In other words, the Discontinuity Objection does not apply if the proposal involves identity-preserving changes. Two existing views on identity-preserving changes are considered and rejected. I then argue that an identity-preserving conceptual change is one that allows the concept to continue to perform its function. A concept’s function is its job, its point and purpose, its role in a conceptual repertoire. In a slogan: Preserve a concept’s function, and you preserve the concept itself; preserve the concept, and you preserve the subject. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of this view.     

Why conceptual competence won’t help the non-naturalist epistemologist

Abstract

Non-naturalist normative realists face an epistemological objection: They must explain how their preferred route of justification ensures a non-accidental connection between justified moral beliefs and the normative truths. One strategy for meeting this challenge begins by pointing out that we are semantically or conceptually competent in our use of the normative terms, and then argues that this competence guarantees the non-accidental truth of some of our first-order normative beliefs. In this paper, I argue against this strategy by illustrating that this competence based strategy undermines the non-naturalist’s ability to capture the robustly normative content of our moral beliefs.     

The Contingency of Creation and Modern Science

The Bible reveals a free, contingent act of the triune, personal God as the origin of the world. This paper explores the fruitfulness of taking the contingency of creation as the starting-point for our thinking about the natural world. We will see that the contingency of creation implies a conception of the natural order which is in harmony with modern science. It is the foundation for the experimental method and the use of mathematics, provides an understanding of contingent laws of nature, shows that natural order is open to historical evolution, and makes room for chance and novelty.     

中学力学问题表征体系的动态特征

基于McDenott和Larkin的基本假设,该文提出了力学问题的表征体系,并用口语报告分析法实证研究了力学问题表征体系的动态特征。结果表明：问题解决者在解决力学问题过程中一般将建立4个不同层次的表征,并且在物理和数学表征层次所占时间显著多于在文字和朴素表征层次的时间。     

Gravity is not the only ruler for falling events: Young children stop making the gravity error after receiving additional perceptual information about the tubes mechanism

Young children seem to operate under the assumption that objects always fall in a straight vertical line. When asked to search for a ball dropped down an S-shaped opaque tube, they repeatedly search directly below. Hood proposed that children have difficulty in inhibiting their prepotent expectation that objects fall in a straight line (Hood, 1995). We asked whether the inability to inhibit this prepotent response is the only factor determining children’s performance on the tubes task. In one condition the openings to the tubes were covered by chimneys, whereas in another condition the openings were visible. When first tested with the apparatus, children performed better when the openings were visible. Furthermore, children’s performance on equally complex configurations (i.e., with or without chimneys) was modulated by their previous experience. Thus, children’s understanding of the tubes mechanism seems to play an important role in addition to inhibitory control.     

ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN REDUCTIVE AND NONREDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM

Abtract: This article argues that the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalists is best characterized as a disagreement about which properties are natural. Among other things, natural properties are those that characterize the world completely. All physicalists accept the “completeness of physics,” but this claim contains a subtle ambiguity, which results in two conceptions of natural properties. Reductive physicalists should assert, while nonreductive physicalists should deny, that a single set of low‐level physical properties is natural in both of these senses. This way of drawing the distinction succeeds where previous approaches have failed and illuminates why the debate about reductionism is important.     

The organization and dissolution of semantic-conceptual knowledge: Is the ‘amodal hub’ the only plausible model?

In recent years, the anatomical and functional bases of conceptual activity have attracted a growing interest. In particular, Patterson and Lambon-Ralph have proposed the existence, in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, of a mechanism (the 'amodal semantic hub') supporting the interactive activation of semantic representations in all modalities and for all semantic categories. The aim of then present paper is to discuss this model, arguing against the notion of an 'amodal' semantic hub, because we maintain, in agreement with the Damasio's construct of 'higher-order convergence zone', that a continuum exists between perceptual information and conceptual representations, whereas the 'amodal' account views perceptual informations only as a channel through which abstract semantic knowledge can be activated. According to our model, semantic organization can be better explained by two orthogonal higher-order convergence systems, concerning, on one hand, the right vs. left hemisphere and, on the other hand, the ventral vs. dorsal processing pathways. This model posits that conceptual representations may be mainly based upon perceptual activities in the right hemisphere and upon verbal mediation in the left side of the brain. It also assumes that conceptual knowledge based on the convergence of highly processed visual information with other perceptual data (and mainly concerning living categories) may be bilaterally represented in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, whereas knowledge based on the integration of visual data with action schemata (namely knowledge of actions, body parts and artefacts) may be more represented in the left fronto-temporo-parietal areas.     

Embodied metaphor and the “true” self: Priming entity expansion and protection influences intrinsic self-expressions in self-perceptions and interpersonal behavior

Drawing on conceptual metaphor perspectives and embodied cognition theories, we proposed that the intrinsic self-concept-who people think they truly are-is represented metaphorically as a physical entity, and that expressions of the intrinsic self-concept are therefore conceptualized in terms of entity activity. Using an empirical strategy for experimentally investigating conceptual metaphor, we tested whether exposure to pictorial primes depicting entity expansion and protection produces metaphor-consistent effects on self-perceptions and interpersonal behaviors expressive of the intrinsic self-concept. In Study 1, participants primed with entity expansion perceived themselves as more self-actualized and less concerned with satisfying extrinsic contingencies of self-esteem. Study 2 showed that this effect was mediated by the increased accessibility of the concept entity expansion. In Study 3, expansion-primed participants conformed less to other people's opinions. In Study 4, participants primed with entity protection were less willing to disclose intimate, but not non-intimate, self-knowledge to a stranger.