The article presents Almalech’s Color Theory. The author uses an interdisciplinary approach to decode logical and associative meanings of colors. The development of the interdisciplinary method has two major phases. The first is related to the detection of universal, regional and national meanings in two traditional rites of passage (funeral and wedding). Colors in folklore are visual colors. The second phase deals with colors in natural languages. The colors in natural language are linguistic colors. Three linguistic objects have been differentiated: (...) Basic Color Terms (white, black, red etc.), Prototype Terms (light, darkness, sun, fire, blood, sky, sea etc.), Prototype Rival Terms (linen, cherry, duckling, ruby, sapphire etc.). Studies have been conducted on Bulgarian novels and the Bible. Comparison of visual and verbal color lead to a small list of universal meanings, e.g. ‘purity’, ‘immaculate’ (for white), ‘fresh’, ‘youth’, ‘life’, ‘eternity’ (for green). The comparative study on Hebrew and Indo-European worldviews reflects the perception and understanding of the Old Testament – before and after translation. In addition to linguistic and semiotic dimensions, theological, hermeneutical, and cultural aspects are also taken into consideration. (shrink)

Theories of writing and mind have proposed that the uses of literacy give rise to a distinct repertoire of cognitive skills, attitudes, and concepts. This paper reconsiders the earliest lexical lists of the Ancient Near East as one type of evidence on writing and mind. Past and present conceptions of the lists are briefly reviewed. Early views cast the lists as reflecting a Sumerian mentality or a uniquely literate mode of thought, while recent accounts suggest they may simply be routine (...) scribal exercises. A view from the philosophy of science, on which lists are considered a sub-type of ordering system, suggests a way of aligning a scribal practice account with aspects of earlier views by articulating the nature of list entries and the intentions of the list makers. On this account, the Ancient Near Eastern lists can be seen both as uniquely literate and as uniquely informative on the role of writing in mind. (shrink)

Theories of writing and mind have proposed that the uses of literacy give rise to a distinct repertoire of cognitive skills, attitudes, and concepts. This paper reconsiders the earliest lexical lists of the Ancient Near East as one type of evidence on writing and mind. Past and present conceptions of the lists are briefly reviewed. Early views cast the lists as reflecting a Sumerian mentality or a uniquely literate mode of thought, while recent accounts suggest they may simply be routine (...) scribal exercises. A view from the philosophy of science, on which lists are considered a sub-type of ordering system, suggests a way of aligning a scribal practice account with aspects of earlier views by articulating the nature of list entries and the intentions of the list makers. On this account, the Ancient Near Eastern lists can be seen both as uniquely literate and as uniquely informative on the role of writing in mind. (shrink)

In this essay, I challenge the egocentric tradition which privileges the standpoint of an isolated individual, and propose a speech-based dialogical approach as an alternative. Considering that the egocentric tradition can be deciphered in part by analyzing the distortions undergone by pronominal discourse in the language of classical philosophy, I reexamine the pragmatics of ordinary language featuring the pronoun I in an effort to recover a more relational understanding of persons. I develop such an analysis of the deep grammar of (...) pronominal discourse under the heading of ‘I–you connectedness’. I–you connectedness emphasizes the communicative structure of experience, in particular the phenomenological importance of the addressee, the inseparability of ‘I’ and ‘You’, and the nature of the alternation between them. I–you connectedness is the best thematized within living speech, which is invariably oriented towards an interlocutor, and animated by mutual address. Yet, I–you connectedness extends beyond living speech to other modalities of meaning, notably thinking and writing, where one notes a similar orientation to a living, imagined, or virtual addressee. I–you connectedness extends, therefore, beyond discursive experience, and captures the deep dialogic dimension of meaning in pre-linguistic and extra-linguistic life. I briefly consider its implications for theoretical and practical issues within robotics and AI. (shrink)

The article considers the theme of Bildung and the educational process in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, with reference to the philosophical tradition in which his ideas stand. This tradition is traced through the work of Hegel, von Humboldt and the Marburg neo-Kantian Paul Natorp. It is shown that Bakhtin’s central essays on the novel are permeated with ideas about education, and that the strengths and weakness of the ideas can be understood only with reference to their philosophical sources. What (...) becomes apparent is the need to root Bakhtin’s illuminating reflections on the relationship between language, world view and the educative role played by the novel in an account of the institutional structure of the society in which they are embedded. (shrink)

Dialogical Self Theory brings together traditions about the self and about dialogue within an inspiring framework that highlights processes and insists on human beings' relatedness to Others. From this general dynamization of the self several challenging topics result, such as stability within dynamics, the self's uniqueness within polyphonic collectivities, and its plurality and recognizability within developmental movements. Recently, one can observe the formulation of a desideratum that could precisely resolve some of these challenges. Several scholars are looking for a kind (...) of thirdness that reaches beyond the inter-subjects and introduces a mid-level located before the social. Interestingly, this is linked to issues of form, more easy to acknowledge e.g. on an institutional level. This discussion is important for it promises a dialogical articulation of polyphonic sociality with dialogic individuality, of stability and dynamics, of recognizability within change. I view this articulation realized through an aspect that gives the self performances the quality of the social by simultaneously keeping their subjective quality, thus differentiating the self's dialogicality: form – “wandering” language forms. I will address language as the third aspect, the formative medium of the dialogical selves per-formations, leading to a decidedly public notion of the DS, which includes Plessner's notion of “excentric positionality”. (shrink)