Hackneying hybridity? Fending off ‘foreignness’, Khoja Community and hybridisation in The Magic of Saida

In the context of colonialism, religion and culture, the theory of cultural hybridity has assumed paramount importance due to its ineluctable nature. However, as most critics and theorists have suggested, the concept gestures at the precedence and prior existence of purity and this perception is exceedingly contentious. This article examines the various layers of hybridisation, Khoja Community (specifically Ismaili faith) and the complexities that it inherently contains and focuses on the argument that while Hybridity is contestable due to its ever-shifting connotations and inherent ambiguity, the so-called ‘differences’ in textual representation, culture and religion, actually move forward towards a homogenous state. To study the subject, the study focuses on the narrative, The Magic of Saida, by M. G. Vassanji. Like his trajectory through continents, his characters too traverse the oceans, and explore in new lands through the forces of acculturation and hybridisation. Despite, the seemingly forces of admixture, what is palpable is the ability of readers to discern the ‘differences’ in the intermixed format. If the differences are ostensible in hybridised version, can the resulting creation be called hybridised? This paper investigates this idea and is premised on how the theory is self-contradicting.     

语义信息复杂度对二语者英语被动句加工的影响

采用英语所独有且非常重要的句法结构——被动语态作为语言材料,选取某些可以在句子中的词汇顺序基本没有变化的情况下转换为汉语句式（汉语“被”字句）的“直译型”被动句以及必须根据其意义进行句式转换方能形成相应的汉语句式（汉语主动句）的“意译型”被动句作为实验材料,探讨了在动词语义复杂条件下二语熟练度（包括晚期中等熟练者和高熟练者）对被动句加工过程的影响。结果表明：高熟练者正确率均高于中等熟练者,说明在动词语义复杂的情况下熟练度依然可以预测英语被动句实时加工的程度和水平。此时,语义违例的正确率最高、反应时最短,句法违例句则与之相反。双违例引发的N400效应显著,正确句和句法违例均未引发负向的N400;高熟练者P600的波幅明显高于中等熟练者,句法违例和双违例引发的P600效应最显著。行为指标支持语言间句法加工相似性效应——直译句反应快、正确率高。ERP数据则得出了与之相反的结果：直译句比意译句诱发出更大的N400效应,意译句则引发了较大的P600。上述结果进一步说明二语熟练度对语言间句法加工相似性效应具有很强的调节作用。     

基于门户理论视角下的青少年物质成瘾

青少年物质成瘾行为受到普遍的关注, 成瘾物质滥用的机制一直是学者们探讨和研究的焦点。门户理论提出青少年发展成严重药物滥用者的过程存在顺序和阶段特征, 合法物质的使用会增加发展为非法药物使用的风险, 这种顺序效应得到了实证研究的支持。本研究在综述以往研究的基础上发现, 基于门户理论视角下青少年药物使用存在顺序效应, 但以往研究仍然存在一些不足, 例如药物使用顺序的不固定, 解释范围有限, 内在机制不清楚以及各种影响因素缺乏整合等。未来可以扩展研究对象和范围, 以深入研究顺序效应的内在机制。     

Flexible spatial mapping of different notations of numbers in Chinese readers

The spatial component of numerical and ordinal information has been explored in previous research. However, how such mapping emerges and how it is affected by the learning experience are issues still under debate. In the current study, we examined the orientation of the mental number line for different numerical notations (e.g., “1”, “—-”, “”) in Chinese readers. Our data demonstrated that Arabic numbers are mentally aligned horizontally with a left-to-right directionality, while Chinese number words are aligned vertically with a top-to-bottom directionality. These findings indicate that different notations of the same concept have flexible mappings within space, which is plausibly shaped by the dominant context in which the numerical notations appear.     

Imagination,Pop Culture and Ministry with Youth and Young Adults1

Abstract : In this article I raise the question of whether and how Christians can become captive to a kind of constricted imagination, and how this does not serve the church well in its work with youth and young adults. I draw on examples from pop music (Kanye West, U2) to portray the theological logic of ‘check‐list Christianity.’ As an alternative, I follow C. S. Lewis in reorienting the perspective from deciding if some cultural object (song, movie, TV show) is good or bad, to asking what sort of people we become by attending to this or that cultural object; specifically, does it enlarge our being‐before‐God or not? This requires that we also view pop culture as the domain of God's work in Christ, and that we confess that God is already working reconciliation in the midst of the world.     

Wayne Martin on judgment

Wayne Martin’s Theories of Judgment marks a significant advance in the philosophical analysis of judgment. He understands that the domain of judgment is so large that it allows only a selective treatment. We can expand Martin’s insight by acknowledging that this domain is, in fact, hypercomplex and therefore unsurveyable in Wittgenstein’s sense. Martin’s treatment of judgments can, however, be extended in a number of directions. Of particular importance is it to understand the linguistic aspect of theoretical judgments, the challenges to the synthetic conception of judgment constituted not only by existential, but also by impersonal and negative judgments, and the exploration of the links between the notions of judgment and truth.

Synchrnoic consciousness from a neurological point of view: the philosophical foundations for neuroethics

Daniel Kolak’s theory of synchronic consciousness according to which the entire range of dissociative phenomena, from pathologies such as MPD and schizophrenia to normal dream states, are best explained in terms of consciousness becoming simultaneously identified as many selves, has revolutionary therapeutic implications for neurology and psychiatry. All these selves, according to Kolak—even the purely imaginary ones that exist as such only in our dreams—are not just conscious but also self-conscious, with beliefs, intentions, living lives informed by memories (confabulatory, in the case of the fictional ones) and personal histories. Kolak’s derivation of psychiatrically relevant aspects of his theory—a neurological rendition of a Kantian transcendental argument—can be given a straightforward neurological, and therefore open to scientific scrutiny, interpretation that would then more easily lend itself to the clinical setting in which these perplexing phenomena, along with their purveyors, must live and cope. This will be the main focus of this paper.     

The Scientific Untraceability of Phenomenal Consciousness

It is a common conviction among philosophers who hold that phenomenal properties, qualia, are distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional properties, that it is possible to trace the neural correlates of these properties. The main purpose of this paper is to present a challenge to this view, and to show that if “non-cognitive” phenomenal properties exist at all, they lie beyond the reach of neuroscience. In the final section it will be suggested that they also lie beyond the reach of psychology, so that they may be said to lie beyond the reach of science.

The step to rationality: the efficacy of thought experiments in science, ethics, and free will

Examples from Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and others suggest that fundamental laws of physics were—or, at least, could have been—discovered by experiments performed not in the physical world but only in the mind. Although problematic for a strict empiricist, the evolutionary emergence in humans of deeply internalized implicit knowledge of abstract principles of transformation and symmetry may have been crucial for humankind's step to rationality—including the discovery of universal principles of mathematics, physics, ethics, and an account of free will that is compatible with determinism.