In two eye-tracking studies we investigated the influence of Mandarin numeral classifiers – a grammatical category in the language – on online overt attention. Mandarin speakers were presented with simple sentences through headphones while their eye-movements to objects presented on a computer screen were monitored. The crucial question is what participants look at while listening to a pre-specified target noun. If classifier categories influence Mandarin speakers' general conceptual processing, then on hearing the target noun they should look at objects that (...) are members of the same classifier category – even when the classifier is not explicitly present. The data show that when participants heard a classifier they shifted overt attention significantly more to classifiermatch objects than to distractor objects, but when the classifier was not explicitly presented in speech, overt attention to classifier-match objects and distractor objects did not differ. This suggests that although classifier distinctions do influence eye-gaze behavior, they do so only during linguistic processing of that distinction and not in moment-to-moment general conceptual processing. (shrink)

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing.

Coherent covariation appears to be a powerful explanatory factor accounting for a range of phenomena in semantic cognition. But its role in accounting for the crosslinguistic facts is less clear. Variation in naming, within the same semantic domain, raises vexing questions about the necessary parameters needed to account for the basic facts underlying categorization.

Our understanding of dual-process models of cognition may benefit from a consideration of language processing, as language comprehension involves fast and slow processes analogous to those used for reasoning. More specifically, De Neys's criticisms of the exclusivity assumption and the fast-to-slow switch mechanism are consistent with findings from the literature on the construction and revision of linguistic interpretations.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 10, October 2022.

We present a visual world eye-tracking study on Tseltal (a Mayan language) and investigate whether verbal information can be used to anticipate an upcoming referent. Basic word order in transitive sentences in Tseltal is Verb–Object–Subject (VOS). The verb is usually encountered first, making argument structure and syntactic information available at the outset, which should facilitate anticipation of the post-verbal arguments. Tseltal speakers listened to verb-initial sentences with either an object-predictive verb (e.g., “eat”) or a general verb (e.g., “look for”) (e.g., (...) “Ya slo’/sle ta stukel on te kereme,” Is eating/is looking (for) by himself the avocado the boy/ “The boy is eating/is looking (for) an avocado by himself”) while seeing a visual display showing one potential referent (e.g., avocado) and three distractors (e.g., bag, toy car, coffee grinder). We manipulated verb type (predictive vs. general) and recorded participants' eye movements while they listened and inspected the visual scene. Participants’ fixations to the target referent were analyzed using multilevel logistic regression models. Shortly after hearing the predictive verb, participants fixated the target object before it was mentioned. In contrast, when the verb was general, fixations to the target only started to increase once the object was heard. Our results suggest that Tseltal hearers pre-activate semantic features of the grammatical object prior to its linguistic expression. This provides evidence from a verb-initial language for online incremental semantic interpretation and anticipatory processing during language comprehension. These processes are comparable to the ones identified in subject-initial languages, which is consistent with the notion that different languages follow similar universal processing principles. (shrink)

You know that a two-child family has a son. What is the probability that the family has two sons? And what is this probability if you know that the family has a son born on a Tuesday? The former question has been widely discussed previously. The latter adds a new puzzling twist to the situation. In both cases the answer should depend on the specifics of the assumed underlying procedure by which the given information has been obtained. Quantitative analysis, assuming (...) one scenario, shows that the information on the son's day of birth changes the target probability. However, the relevance of being born on Tuesday to the question of the children's genders seems bizarre, since the same would be true for any other day. This apparent paradox is further probed in an attempt to alleviate the ensuing psychological difficulty. (shrink)

Many people share the intuition that by turning to works of literature something can be learned about the world. One way to explain the epistemic access to the world that fictional literature provides is by comparing it to thought experiments. Both? thought experiments and works of fiction? might be seen as imaginative exercises which help to find out what would or could happen if certain conditions were met. This comparison of fictional literature with thought experiments provides the point of departure (...) for the contributions in our volume. It contributes to the discussion of an approach that has quite recently entered the field of the philosophy of literature. (shrink)

Falk Wunderlich präsentiert einen grundlegend neuen Ansatz zum Verständnis der Kant'schen Bewusstseinstheorie. Im ersten Teil bietet er eine detaillierte Rekonstruktion der bewusstseinstheoretischen Diskussionen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Rekonstruktion des Geflechts von Diskussionen, in dessen Kontext sich Kants Überlegungen bewegen. Auf diese zeitgenössischen Debatten werden im zweiten Teil Kants bewusstseinstheoretische Ansätze bezogen. Der Autor vertritt die These, dass Kant die zeitgenössischen Standardansichten über Bewusstsein, Apperzeption und Selbstbewusstsein entgegen dem Anschein nur einschränkt modifiziert und ihre begrifflichen Grundlagen (...) beibehält. Schließlich wird vor dem Hintergrund dieser Kontextualisierung eine alternative Interpretation der transzendentalen Deduktion entwickelt. (shrink)

This book offers a unique perspective on Zionism. The author, a geneticist by training, focuses on science, rather than history. He looks at the claims that Jews constitute a people with common biological roots. An argument that helps provide justification for the aspirations of this political movement dedicated to the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. His study explores two issues. The first considers the assertion that there is a biology of the Jews. The second deals with attempts (...) to integrate this idea into a consistent history. Both issues unfolded against the background of a romantic national culture of Western Europe in the 19th century: Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe, began to believe these notions and soon they took the lead in the re-formulation of Jewish and Zionist existence. The author does not intend to present a comprehensive picture of the biological literature of the origins of a people and the blood relations between them. He also recognizes that the subject is emotionally-loaded. The book does, however, present a profound mediation on three overlapping questions: What is special or unique to the Jews? Who were the genuine Jews? And how can one identify Jews? This volume is a revised and edited English version of Tzionut Vehabiologia shel Hayehudim, published in 2006. (shrink)

Das Verhältnis von Glauben und Denken kann als Angelpunkt und Motor der neuzeitlichen Geschichte begriffen werden. Walter Falks Werk zeigt in singulärer Weise, auf welchen teilweise verdrängten Fundamenten der wissenschaftliche Fortschrittsglaube beruhte und bietet eine kritische Analyse der 'Legitimität der Neuzeit', die ebenbürtig neben den großen Arbeiten von Hans Blumenberg, Michel Foucault oder Joachim Ritter bestehen kann. Walter Falk geht anhand der Metapher von der Weltmaschine, die sich seit 1770 in verschiedenen Texten und in Modifikationen findet, der Fortschrittsgeschichte und (...) ihrer Kritiker nach. So entwirft er, vor dem Hintergrund einer neuartigen Epochendeutung ein geistesgeschichtliches Panorama, das von Comte und Schlegel und Kleist bis zu Kafka und Heidegger reicht. Das Buch zeigt vor dem Hintergrund der Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, wie die Gestalt des personalen Gottes in den großen geistes- und naturwissenschaftlichen Innovationsschüben der Moderne zunehmend wieder in den Blick genommen wurde. Dabei erfahren die Ansätze von Foucault, Konrad Lorenz oder René Girard eine eigenwillige und profilierte, Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften innovativ miteinander verbindende Deutung. Das eigentliche Interesse des Buches ist aber nicht historischer Natur. Falk demonstriert eindrucksvoll, wie Glauben und Denken in der Gegenwart zugleich differenziert und integriert werden müssen, um auf der Höhe der Moderne wieder fruchtbar in ein Gespräch kommen zu können. (shrink)

Physics is the most fundamental of the sciences and its main purpose is to explain how the world works on the smallest as well as the largest scales. This book outlines the most important discoveries and technical development in the field of physics during the past two decades. The reader will learn the basics of the major theories that form the backbone of the current understanding of the universe through descriptions of the latest findings in particle physics, quantum optics, structure (...) of matter or astrophysics. The book also explains how devices such as lasers or particle accelerators work. (shrink)

Kant's rationale for making self-respect an immediately clear precondition for action grounded in freedom is in need of thoroughgoing revision, since it fails to consider the phenomenological content and the actual origin of reflexive self-reference. On the basis of a history of the concept and a systematic reconstruction of affirmative relations to the self, the author proposes an alternative explanation. According to Bornmüller, moral insight should once again be properly regarded as emerging from a self-referential individual subject.

Developments in the sequencing of whole genomes and in simultaneously surveying many thousands of transcription and translation products of specific cells have ushered in a conceptual revolution in genetics that rationally introduces top-down, holistic analyses. This emphasized the futility of attempts to reduce genes to structurally discrete entities along the genome, and the need to return to Johannsen's definition of a gene as 'something' that refers to an invariant entity of inheritance and development. We may view genes either as generic (...) terms for units of inheritance whose referents are pragmatic ad hoc and context-dependent, or as (epistemologically) representing entities of cell functions. It is cellular functions that determine the structural referents along the DNA. Structures that happened to secure specific functions that were essential for or conducive to the survival of cells were selected for. With natural selection being the etiological background of genes as functions, genes obtain again their theoretical role as intervening variables, abstractive variables that purely 'summarize' characters. The importance of DNA sequences is that of all possible phenotypes these are the most basic ones from which we can read off the genotype directly. (shrink)

Interprofessional collaboration involves some kind of knowledge sharing, which is essential and will be important in the future in regard to the opportunities and challenges in practices for delivering safe and effective health care. Nursing assistants are seldom mentioned as a group of health care workers that contribute to interprofessional collaboration in health care practice. The aim of this ethnographic study was to explore how the nursing assistants’ knowledge can be shared in a team on a spinal cord injury rehabilitation (...) ward. Using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, we captured different aspects of interprofessional collaboration in health care. The findings reveal how knowledge was shared between professionals, depending on different kinds of practice architecture. These specific cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements enabled possibilities through which nursing assistants’ knowledge informed other practices, and others’ knowledge informed the practice of nursing assistants. By studying what health care professionals actually do and say in practice, we found that the nursing assistants could make a valuable contribution of knowledge to the team. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit stellt Bertrand Russell als politischen Menschen vor und untersucht Erschließungspotentiale für die politische Bildung von heute. Hierbei sind Leitfragen von Bedeutung, wie: Welche Ereignisse bedingten Russells Lebensweg, wie kam er zu seinen politischen Ansichten und seinem Engagement? Wie lässt sich seine politische Philosophie verorten und systematisieren? Wie sieht seine pädagogische Konzeption aus und wie steht diese im Zusammenhang mit seinen politischen Überzeugungen? Wie ist Russells Wirkungsgeschichte zu beurteilen? Inwiefern eröffnen sich mit der Person Russell, seinen Schriften und mit (...) seinem politischen Handeln Erschließungschancen für politische Bildung? Inwieweit kann Russell als Vorbild für einen politischen Aktivbürger dienen? (shrink)

English summary: This volume presents twenty-one previously unpublished texts from the estate of the Munich and Vienna based systematic theologian Falk Wagner (1939-1998). These papers, which were mainly written during his time in Munich, address matters in philosophical theology and social ethics. The texts demonstrate in many different ways how the young Wagner was developing a philosophical-theological concept against a background of the challenges of modern times. This volume provides a revealing supplement to the published works of this theologian. (...) German description: Der Band prasentiert 21 bislang unpublizierte Texte aus dem Nachlass des Munchener und Wiener systematischen Theologen Falk Wagner (1939-1998). Diese Nachlassmaterialien, welche vorwiegend aus dessen Munchener Zeit stammen, sind Themen der philosophischen Theologie sowie der Sozialethik gewidmet. Facettenreich dokumentieren die vorgelegten Texte, wie der junge Wagner an der Ausarbeitung einer philosophisch-theologischen Konzeption vor dem Hintergrund der Problemanforderungen der Moderne arbeitet. Der Band bietet ein aufschlussreiches Seitenstuck zu den publizierten Werken des Theologen. (shrink)

This volume provides new sources of knowledge based on Michael Otte’s fundamental insight that understanding the problems of mathematics education – how to teach, how to learn, how to communicate, how to do, and how to represent ...

The writings of Weber and Taylor have some strong affinities. Both start from the anthropological idea that man evaluates his position in the world and constitutes the social world by values. Their analyses of values aim at an understanding of those intersubjective meanings that have constituted western modernity. But, at the same time, their anthropological starting point leads to different interpretations of modernity. Historically, both argue that rationalization (as instrumental rationality) is one of the most influential Kulturbedeutung of modernity. Weber's (...) thesis of rationalization is, however, entangled in a paradox. Overemphasizing the rationalized elements of modernity, he fails scientifically to grasp certain counter-movements in modernity, such as individuation, subjectivity and new life forms. Taylor, investigating the moral sources of expressivism, shows that these life forms are an inherent part of modernity. Yet his method of articulating the sources of modernity is insufficient to transform it towards a causal explanation of behaviour in everyday life. (shrink)

This article explores the tensions between geopolitics and human rights under present conditions of world politics. It takes notes of the rise of human rights as a discourse in international law, and draws attention to the use of this discourse by powerful states, especially the United States, to validate non-defensive uses of force. It also notes the role of the media in facilitating the geopolitical agenda associated with exerting pressure on some conditions but exempting other situations as serious or more (...) so . This article also discusses the reliance on the human rights discourse by oppressed groups and by countries in the South, and the emergence of a counter-hegemonic tradition in human rights that challenges geopolitical projects in a variety of settings. The main conclusion is that neither an uncritical endorsement nor a cynical dismissal of human rights is appropriate at this time.Keywords: human rights; geopolitics; hegemony; counter-hegemony; international law. (shrink)