Working through the end of civilization

This is an account of how a civilization works through the problems it faces when it is threatened with destruction. It focuses on the example of the Crow Nation, an Indian tribe of the northwest plains of North America, and their last great chief Plenty Coups. Psychoanalytic ideas play a crucial role in explaining how a creative response was possible. In particular, their collective use of dream-visions and dream-interpretation made possible the creation of a new ego ideal for the tribe. This allowed for the transformation of traditional allocations of shame and humiliation. It also allowed for the possibility of transformation of psychological structure. And it opened up new possibilities for what might count as flourishing as a Crow. Conversely, the threat of civilizational collapse allows us to see new possibilities for the conceptual development of psychoanalysis. In particular, psychoanalysis needs to recognize that destruction can occur at the level of the culture while the individuals are not physically harmed. The psychological states of these individuals can be various and complex and cannot be neatly summed up under the category of trauma. A culture can be devastated, while there is no one-to-one relation to the psychological states of the individuals who participate in that culture. It is also true that a collapse of a way of life makes a variety of psychological states impossible. Coming to understand these phenomena is essential to understanding how a culture works through threats to its very existence.     

Meaning and Interpretation. I

The paper is an attempt at a logical explication of some crucial notions of current general semantics and pragmatics. A general, axiomatic, formal-logical theory of meaning and interpretation is outlined in this paper.In the theory, accordingto the token-type distinction of Peirce, language is formalised on two levels: first as a language of token-objects (understood as material, empirical, enduring through time-and space objects) and then – as a language of type-objects (understood as abstract objects, as classes of tokens). The basic concepts of the theory, i.e. the notions: meaning, denotation and interpretation of well-formed expressions (wfes) of the language are formalised on the type-level, by utilising some semantic-pragmatic primitive notions introduced on the token-level. The paper is divided into two parts.In Part Ia theoryof meaningand denotation is proposed, and in Part II - its expansion to the theory of meaning and interpretation is presented.The meaninga wfe is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of using types (cf. Ajdukiewicz [1934], Wittgenstein [1953]). The concept of denotation is defined by means of the relation of referring which holds between wfe-types and objects of reality described by the given language. Presented by Wojciech Buszkowski     

A conceptual metaphor framework for the teaching of mathematics

Word problems in mathematics seem to constantly pose learning difficulties for all kinds of students. Recent work in math education (for example, [Lakoff, G. &; Nuñez, R. E. (2000). Where mathematics comes from: How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being. New York: Basic Books]) suggests that the difficulties stem from an inability on the part of students to decipher the metaphorical properties of the language in which such problems are cast. A 2003 pilot study [Danesi, M. (2003a). Semiotica, 145, 71–83] confirmed this hypothesis in an anecdotal way. This paper reviews the implications of that study and of a follow-up one that is described here as well, in the light of how the metaphorical analysis of word problems allows learners to overcome typical difficulties in word problem-solving by teaching them how to flesh out the underlying concepts and convert them into appropriate representations.     

Stress assignment in aphasia: word and non-word reading and non-word repetition

This paper investigates stress assignment in Dutch aphasic patients in non-word repetition, as well as in real-word and non-word reading. Performance on the non-word reading task was similar for the aphasic patients and the control group, as mainly regular stress was assigned to the targets. However, there were group differences on the real-word reading and non-word repetition tasks. Unlike the non-brain-damaged group, the patients showed a strong regularization tendency in their repetition of irregular patterns. The patients' stress error patterns suggest an impairment in retention or retrieval of targets with irregular stress patterns. Limited verbal short-term memory is proposed as a possible underlying cause for the stress difficulties.     

Causal relations drive young children's induction, naming, and categorization

A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early category-based induction is an artifact of perceptual cues provided by experimenters. We tested these accounts against the prediction that different relations (causal versus non-causal) determine the types of perceptual similarity by which children generalize. Young children were asked to label, to infer novel properties, and to project future appearances of a novel animal that varied in two opposite respects: (1) how much it looked like another animal whose name and properties were known, and (2) how much its parents looked like parents of another animal whose name and properties were known. When exemplar origins were known, children generalized to exemplars with similar origins rather than with similar appearances; when origins were unknown, children generalized to exemplars with similar appearances. Results indicate even young children possess the cognitive control to choose the similarities that best predict accurate generalizations.     

整体与部分的意义关系对汉字知觉的影响

以汉字为材料研究整体与部分之间的意义关系对知觉的影响。实验1采用整体/局部的等级模式。结果表明,整体与部分的意义关系影响整体与部分的知觉。实验2采用启动范式,启动字部件与目标字有意义关系。结果表明,启动字部件对有意义联系的目标字有启动效应。整个研究表明,汉字知觉中存在由整体到部分和由部分到整体的双向平行加工,整体与部分的意义关系影响字词整体与部分的知觉。     

The existential cost of economic insecurity: Threatened financial security undercuts meaning

Financial security (i.e., a person’s sense that they can afford the things they need now and in the foreseeable future) contributes to psychological health and well-being. In the present research, we explored the implications of financial security for perceptions of meaning in life. In Study 1, we found that perceptions of financial insecurity predicted perceptions of meaning in life above and beyond income. Further, income only predicted perceptions of meaning to the extent that it was associated with reduced financial insecurity. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that financial security threats undermined perceptions of meaning in life. Taken together, these studies suggest that maintaining financial security is important for a sense of meaning in life.     

Between Darwin and Hegel: On Dewey's Concept of Experience

"Experience" is so central to Dewey's philosophy that one must,first of all,understand what he means by the term.Diverging from the traditional conception of experience,Dewey's understanding involves two dimensions,namely,naturalism and historicism;in this,it can be seen as the unification of Darwinism and Hegelianism.Without attending to its dimension of naturalism,one would ignore experience's basic character,namely that of receptivity,while without attending to the aspect of historicism,one would ignore experience's dimension of meaning,its character of spontaneity.Dewey's notion of experience is unique.Its true value can be seen more clearly in comparison with the conceptions of experience advanced by Quine and McDowell.     

Masked form priming is moderated by the size of the letter-order-free orthographic neighbourhood

University students made lexical decisions to targets preceded by masked primes. In Experiment 1, transposed-letter primes were used also in the sandwich priming paradigm, in which the target is briefly pre-presented prior to the prime. The priming effects in the masked paradigm, but not in the sandwich paradigm, were moderated by the density of the letter-order-free neighbourhood of the target. In Experiment 2, letter-order-free neighbour prime words produced a priming cost in masked priming. These results are consistent with the idea that sandwich priming attenuates letter-order-free neighbour competition in target identification. Unexpectedly, no priming cost was produced by conventional (letter-position-preserving) word neighbour primes. Order-free neighbours may produce facilitation of target processing less, and more variably, than conventional neighbours.     

Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory and the Distinction between Representing and Depicting

In this paper, I draw attention to the often-overlooked Tractarian distinction between representing (darstellen) and depicting (abbilden), provide a clear account of it and examine how it affects our understanding of the notions of ‘being a picture’, meaningfulness, truth, and falsity in the Tractatus. I also look at the recent debate in the literature on the notion of truth and show that Glock’s claim that the official theory of the Tractatus is to be accounted in terms of obtainment only and deflationary accounts such as Hacker’s derive from a failure to notice the distinction between representing and depicting (in the case of Glock) or a misconception of depicting (in the case of Hacker). Finally, I argue against the idea that either representing or depicting should be dispensed with. Both are necessary for Wittgenstein to account for every case of a proposition being a picture of reality.