To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English-Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In a (...) novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12 to 13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12 to 13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17 to 18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language. (shrink)

Depuis sa fondation comme discipline indépendante, la psychologie semble contourner les questions épistémologiques constitutives d’une science de l’esprit. Cet article s’attache à présenter brièvement quelques-unes de ces questions, à travers la psychologie historique d’Ignace Meyerson.

En danse comme dans les autres arts – même en science – écrit Hélène Marquié, le premier pas pour les études de genre est de donner de la visibilité aux femmes dans l’archive historique afin de reconstruire une histoire « mixte » (p. 218). L’auteure explique que c’est seulement avec les rapports de 2006 et de 2009 sur « l’accès égal » des hommes et des femmes aux performances et aux structures chorégraphiques que le féminisme à tonalité politique a commencé (...) à s’implanter dans la danse françai... (shrink)

: In his landmark book, Peirce's Theory of Signs, T. L. Short argues that music signifies as a pure icon. A pure icon, according to Peirce, is not a likeness. It "does not draw any distinction between itself and its object" (EP2:163), and it "serves as a sign solely and simply by exhibiting the quality it serves to signify" (EP2:306). In music, this quality consists of the specifically musical feelings or ideas contained in the piece in question, and such musical (...) feelings are properly interpreted by means of an emotional interpretant rather than an energetic or logical one. Short, following Peirce, is correct in maintaining that music primarily signifies feeling-content whose proper means of expression is musical and whose proper interpretation by the listener involves the generation of a corresponding feeling. Nonetheless, musical signification is not purely iconic. Responding to the musical feelings presented in a work requires previous acquaintance with its style tradition, and this acquaintance involves logical interpretants. In addition, the integral temporality of music calls into question the possibility of its being purely iconic. (shrink)

Part I: Consciousness and the metaphysics of experience. Orientations. What I believe. The privacy of experience. Final causes. The importance of subjectivity : an inaugural lecture. Is consciousness mysterious? Consciousness. The distinctiveness of American philosophy. The world of description and the world of acquaintance -- Part II: The metaphysics of time and the absolute. The unreality of time. Ideal immortality. Russell and Bradley on relations. The self and its world in Bradley and Husserl. Absolute idealism. Pantheism -- Part III: Ethics, (...) animal rights, and the environment. The greatest happiness principle. Is the esse of intrinsic value percipi? Pleasure, pain and value. Metaphysics, physicalism, and animal rights. Vivisection, morals, medicine : commentary from an antivivisectionist philosopher. Non-human rights : an idealist perspective. Are there intrinsic values in nature? An idealist's prayer for the world. (shrink)

In the traditional form of canonical quantization, certain field components (not having “conjugate” momenta) must be regarded as noncanonical. This long-known distinction enters modern gauge theories, when they are canonically quantized as by Kugo and Ojima. We avoid that peculiarity by not using any conjugate “momenta” at all. In our formulation, canonical quantization can be related to Feynman's path integral.

It has been more than sixty years since R. D. Collison Black published his Economic Thought and the Irish Question, a book which ever since has been widely regarded as a classic in the history of e...

I defend the view that propositional knowledge can be defined as follows: A knows that p if and only if A believes that p because p. Spelling out the meaning of 'because' in this formula results in a causal-explanatory view of knowledge.

If skepticism is once again fashionable, then much of the credit must go to Peter Unger who gives a sustained defense of an ultra-pyrrhonian position in his book, Ignorance: A case for Skepticism. Starting with a version of the traditional argument that we know nothing about the external world, Unger plunges deeper into skeptical waters by next arguing that there is at most hardly anything which we know to be so; and he scarcely pauses before proceeding to defend the stronger (...) conclusion of ‘universal ignorance,’ the thesis that nobody ever knows anything to be the case. I view Unger's thesis and the arguments that led him to it as a challenge to be overcome, not by an appeal to dogmatism - which Unger sees as the only alternative to skepticism - but by recourse to hard-biting arguments of the sort in which Unger himself puts his faith. In what follows I shall attempt to restate Unger's three main skeptical arguments with a view to showing that their bite is not nearly so hard as he imagines. (shrink)

I argue that a modern gloss on Aristotle’s notions of Form and Matter not only allows us to escape a dualism of the psychological and the physical, but also results in a plausible sort of materialism. This is because Aristotle held that the essential nature of any psychological state, including perception and human thought, is to be some physical property. I also show that Hilary Putnam and Martha Nussbaum are mistaken in saying that Aristotle was not a materialist, but a (...) functionalist. His functionalism should instead be given a materialistic interpretation, since he holds that only the appropriate sort of matter can realize the human psyche. Aristotle’s functionalism is therefore best viewed as a “causal functionalism,” in which functional descriptions enable us to find the right sort of material embodiment. By sidestepping dualistic assumptions, Aristotle also avoids having to deal with any further notion of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue for the following analysis of a freely willed action: an act is done of one's own free will, if and only if, it is an intentional act performed by one acting as a rational agent from unobstructed reasons, and so situated that he or she has the capacity to forbear from performing it.

I answer objections to my article, "The Time-Gap Argument," made by C. Daniels in his "Seeing Through a Time Gap.".

The author of the article discusses a political discourse of the US president Donald Trump. The political discourse is considered to be a type of discourse based on views and beliefs, the purpose of which is to manipulate the consciousness of the addressee using strategies in order to form certain beliefs. The strategy in this case means the plan of implementation of the communicative task, necessary for effective achievement of the addressee’s goal, realized with the help of certain tactics. The (...) choice of the subject matter is determined by the interest to political communication. The author analyses discourse strategies and markers, stylistic and lexico-grammatical means used as manipulative means in Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech, Victory Speech, and Inaugural Address. Special attention is given to the strategy of improvement, strategy of enhancement, and strategy for evaluation of alternatives. It is known that presidential public addresses are of great importance, therefore communicative skills of politicians and ability to speak in public play a great role in their political career. The analysis of D. Trump’s presidential discourse has revealed the use of discursive manipulative strategies and manipulative markers, numerous repetitions, calls for joint action, the use of ‘unifying vocabulary‘, slogans, inversion. It is noted that the presidential political discourse is an effective means of manipulating the consciousness of the nation and the formation of its outlook. The author concludes that speech manipulation is a complex phenomenon, the effectiveness of which depends on linguistic, psychological, extralinguistic, and social factors. (shrink)

In the article various means that are used for creating the image of Elizabeth II are studied. The choice of the subject matter for the analysis is determined by the interest to the British royal family. The author considers various definitions of the concept ‘image‘ and analyzes its characteristic features. It is noted that image can be positive and negative, controlled and uncontrolled, desired and actual. The image helps to show particular traits of a personality. It is based on the (...) person’s appearance, his or her manners, hobbies, interests, speech peculiarities. It is known that such factors as family environment, sports, pets and hobbies play a great role in the creation of the image. There are the following aspects of the image: professional, social and portrait. Special attention is paid to verbal and non-verbal means of creating an image. The main lexical, phonetic and stylistic characteristic features of the monarch’s Christmas Broadcasts have been singled out. A positive image of the monarch is created with the help of verbal and nonverbal means. The Queen’s public addresses and Christmas broadcasts may serve as an example of verbal means used for image creation. Patriotism, sense of duty, loyalty to traditions, adherence to the rules of Royal etiquette is evident in the communicative behavior of the Queen. It is noted that public addresses play a certain role in the creation of a positive image of the English Queen. (shrink)

Regarded aesthetically the Oedipus Coloneus is unsatisfactory. The plot is episodic, consisting of a series of incidents which, except that they involve a single hero, and are derived from the previous history of that hero or his ancestors, are unrelated. That is to say, while Sophocles has in all his other plays combined the two to perfection, he has here given his content precedence over his art. The aim of this paper is to consider one or two aspects of that (...) subject-matter, which seemed to him to be so important. (shrink)

. This paper examines the association between long-term compensation and corporate social responsibility for 90 publicly traded Canadian firms. Social responsibility is considered to include concerns for social factors and the environment, 564-578; Kane, E. J., 341-359). Long-term compensation attempts to focus executives efforts on optimizing the longer term, which should direct their attention to factors traditionally associated with socially responsible executives. As hypothesized, we found a significant relationship between the long-term compensation and total CSR weakness as well as the (...) product/environmental weakness dimension of CSR. In addition, we found a marginally significant relationship between long-term compensation and total corporate responsibility. Our findings are that executives long-term compensation is associated with a firms environmental actions, and that firms that utilize long-term compensation are more likely to mitigate product/environment weaknesses than those that do not. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

Ṣadr, Muḥammad Bāqir; Islamic philosophy; 20th century.