Statements are always under the threat of the potential counter-question How do you know? To pre-empt this question, language users often indicate what kind of access they had to the communicated content: Their own perception, inference from other information, 'hearsay', etc. Such expressions, grammatical or lexical, have been studied in recent years under the cover term of evidentiality research. The present volume contributes 11 new studies to this flourishing field, all exploring evidential phenomena in a range of languages (Dutch, Estonian, (...) Finnish, French, German, Khalkha Mongolian, Spanish, Tibetan, Yurakaré), using a variety of methodologies. Evidential meaning is discussed in relation to other semantic dimensions, such as epistemic modality, semantic roles, commitment, quotative meaning, and tense. The volume is of interest to scholars and students who are interested in up-to-date methods and frameworks for studying evidential meaning and the various ways it is expressed in the languages of the world. (shrink)

Background Speech understanding may rely not only on auditory, but also on visual information. Non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques can expose the neural processes underlying the integration of multisensory processes required for speech understanding in humans. Nevertheless, noise (from fMRI) limits the usefulness in auditory experiments, and electromagnetic artefacts caused by electronic implants worn by subjects can severely distort the scans (EEG, fMRI). Therefore, we assessed audio-visual activation of temporal cortex with a silent, optical neuroimaging technique: functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Methods (...) We studied temporal cortical activation as represented by concentration changes of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in four, easy-to-apply fNIRS optical channels of 33 normal-hearing adult subjects and 5 post-lingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users in response to supra-threshold unisensory auditory and visual, as well as to congruent auditory-visual speech stimuli. Results Activation effects were not visible from single fNIRS channels. However, by discounting physiological noise through reference channel subtraction, auditory, visual and audiovisual speech stimuli evoked concentration changes for all sensory modalities in both cohorts (p<0.001). Auditory stimulation evoked larger concentration changes than visual stimuli (p<0.001). A saturation effect was observed for the audiovisual condition. Conclusions Physiological, systemic noise can be removed from fNIRS signals by reference channel subtraction. The observed multisensory enhancement of an auditory cortical channel can be plausibly described by a simple addition of the auditory and visual signals with saturation. (shrink)

BackgroundAcrophobia is a specific phobia characterized by a severe fear of heights. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of two therapies that may ameliorate symptoms of acrophobia and anxiety sensitivity, i.e., virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy with a Waiting List Control Condition (WLCC).MethodsWe applied a three-armed randomized controlled pre-post-test design with 45 female adolescent students. Students who met DSM-5 criteria for acrophobia were randomly assigned to either VRET (...) (N = 15;Mage = 17.26; SD = 1.32), EMDR (N = 15;Mage = 17.15; SD = 1.57), or a WLCC (N = 15;Mage = 17.50; SD = 1.26). The study groups were evaluated one week before the intervention and one week after the last intervention session regarding symptoms of acrophobia (Severity Measure for Acrophobia) and anxiety sensitivity (Anxiety Sensitivity Index).ResultsThe data showed that both the application of VRET and EMDR therapy were associated with significantly reduced symptoms of acrophobia (d = 1.03 for VRET and d = 1.08 for EMDR) and anxiety sensitivity (d = 1.15 for VRET and d = 1.13 for EMDR) in comparison to the Waiting List.LimitationsThe sample consisted only of adolescent women. Due to the recognizable differences between the two interventions, the therapists and the participants were not blind to the conditions.ConclusionThe results suggest that both VRET and EMDR are interventions that can significantly improve symptoms of acrophobia and anxiety sensitivity in female adolescents.Clinical Trial Registrationhttps://www.irct.ir/trial/57391, identifier: IRCT20210213050343N1. (shrink)

Cet article tente de montrer que la révolution qui s’est produite en Égypte était porteuse d’un projet politique libéral-démocrate. Les groupes révolutionnaires et les opposants au régime de Moubarak ont réussi à mobiliser des couches sociales substantielles en 2011 en demandant le respect des droits humains de base et la représentation de la volonté du peuple. La forte présence d’ouvriers mécontents, de classes moyennes appauvries et de populations urbaines défavorisées dans le mouvement de protestation n’a jamais débouché sur un projet (...) politique visant un changement économique et social. Leurs revendications sont restées figées dans une économie morale nassériste où les revendications économiques et sociales sont en grande partie apolitiques et totalement dissociées de la démocratisation des relations entre la société et l’État. L’absence de projet de changement socio-politique a privé le processus révolutionnaire d’une large et solide coalition sociale. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada “tabiat” kavramının sözlük ve terim anlamı analiz edilmiş ve ona ilişkin bazı Meşşâî İslam filozoflarının görüşlerine yer verilmiştir. “Tabiat” sözcüğünü karşılamak üzere Türkçede kullanılan “tabiat” ve “doğa” sözcükleri arasında bir karşılaştırma yapılmıştır. “Tabiat”ın Meşşâî İslam filozofları tarafından isim olarak kullanıldığı varlık alanı hakkında bilgi verilmiş ve İbn Sina ile İbn Rüşd arasında cereyan eden tabiatın ispatının gerekip gerekmeyeceği tartışmasına değinilmiştir. Cisimlerde görülen hareket ve sükunun kaynağı olması bakımından “tabiat”ın nelere delalet ettiği hususunda İbn Sina’nın görüşleri Aristo ile mukayeseli (...) olarak sunulmuştur. Daha sonra bir terim olarak “tabiat”ın filozoflar tarafından yapılan tanımı ortaya konulmuştur. İslam felsefesinde önemli bir yere sahip olan “tabiat” kavramına Meşşâî İslam filozoflarının yükledikleri anlam ve onu kullanma biçimleri, Aristo’dan farklıdır. Özellikle her türlü oluş ve hareketin kaynağını açıklamak amacıyla kullandıkları “tabiat” kavramı etimolojik açıdan tüm nedenleri Allah’a ulaştırmaya imkan sağlamaktadır. Ayrıca kavramın, “tabiat – tabiat ötesi” ayrımına dayanak teşkil ettiği de bilinmektedir. Makalenin amacı, “tabiat” kavramının günümüzde yeni teorilerle ilişkili olarak kullanılma imkanlarını belirginleştirmektir. (shrink)

PurposeThe relation between fear of childbirth and gestational age is inconclusive, and self-reported need for help regarding this fear has never been investigated. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and course of FoC according to gestational age, to identify risk factors for the development of FoC, the influence of this fear on preferred mode of delivery, and self-reported need for help.MethodsNulliparous pregnant women of all gestational ages completed an online survey. The study consisted of a cross-sectional and a longitudinal (...) analysis. Women who completed the survey in the first or second trimester were approached again in their third trimester. The Wijma Delivery Expectancy Questionnaire Version A was used with a cut-off score ≥ 85 to define presence of fear of childbirth. Questionnaires indexing social support, anxiety, symptoms of depression, preferred mode of delivery, and self-reported need for help were included.ResultsIn total, 364 women were enrolled at T0, and 118 out of 184 eligible women were included in the longitudinal analysis. Point prevalence of FoC at T0 was 18.4% with no significant difference between trimesters. In the longitudinal sample, the prevalence of FoC decreased from 18.6% to 11.0%, p = 0.004. Although mean scores for FoC decreased significantly, p < 0.001, scores increased in 41 women. The presence of FoC was associated with elevated anxiety, less family support, prenatal care of the obstetrician by choice, preference for a cesarean section, and for pain relief. Women with FoC were more likely to actively seek for help compared to women without FoC.ConclusionWhile FoC is common in each trimester, prevalence decreases over the course of pregnancy. Women with FoC are often actively seeking for help, suggesting that this fear should be addressed better, and help should be offered accordingly. (shrink)

An examination of British and French weights exchanged between the Royal Society and the Académie royale des sciences in the 1730s has led to a re‐assessment of the Elizabethan troy standards from the Exchequer and the suggestion that the mass of the troy pound has been revised upwards. In turn this is used to support the idea of an evolutionary relationship between the early bullion ounces of England, France, and the Low Countries.

In the last section of his Introduction to the Human Sciences Dilthey claims that from its very beginnings western metaphysics has been oriented towards a panlogistic goal that received its most adequate formulation in Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. According to Dilthey, this principle leaves little or no room for the sovereignity of the will and the personal freedom that man finds within his self-consciousness and lived experiences. In this paper we argue that Dilthey gives a rather one-sided and somewhat (...) distorted view not only of the goal of modern metaphysics, but also of the essence of human freedom. As a matter of fact the great metaphysicians of the 17th and 18th centuries considered the solution of the problem of human freedom the cornerstone of all metaphysics. However, unlike Dilthey, they sought to understand human freedom within the conceptual framework of grounds and reasons, thereby giving these notions a depth and a differentiation that are completely overlooked by Dilthey. (shrink)

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, _Sources of Japanese Tradition_, Volume 2, has been considered the authoritative sourcebook for readers and scholars interested in Japan from the eighteenth century to the post-World War II period. Now greatly expanded to include the entire twentieth century, and beginning in 1600, _Sources of Japanese Tradition_ presents writings by modern Japan's most important philosophers, religious figures, writers and political leaders. The volume also offers extensive introductory essays and commentary to assist (...) in understanding the documents' historical settings and significance. Wonderfully varied in its selections, this eagerly anticipated expanded edition has revised many of the texts from the original edition and added a great many not included or translated before. New additions include documents on the postwar era, the importance of education in the process of modernization, and women's issues. Beginning with documents from the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, the collection's essays, manifestos, religious tracts, political documents, and memoirs reflect major Japanese religious, philosophical, social and political movements. Subjects covered include the spread of neo-Confucian and Buddhist teachings, Japanese poetry and aesthetics, and the Meiji Restoration. Other documents reflect the major political trends and events of the period: the abolition of feudalism, agrarian reform, the emergence of poltical parties and liberalism, and the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. The collection also includes Western and Japanese impressions of each other through Western religious missions and commercial and cultural exchanges. These selections underscore Japanese and Western apprehension of and fascination with each other. As Japan entered the twentieth century, new political and social movements -- Marxism, anarchism, socialism, nationalism, and feminism -- entered the national consciousness. Later readings in the collection look at the buildup to war with the United States, military defeat and American occupation. Documents from the postwar period echo Japan's struggle with its own history and its development as a capitalist democracy. (shrink)

Bayard's book appeared in 2007. Word of mouth about it probably reached me at the time, but it did not catch my attention until the day (in 2012, if I am not mistaken) that a young professor, on the verge of burnout, told me how reading it had functioned for him as a kind of therapy. Though a voracious reader, he found himself confronted by ever more recommendations for reading, some from reviewers whose suggestions were felt as obligations and sounded (...) almost like insults. The line between a reading recommendation and an insult is very thin (the interlocutor may feel infantilized). The young professor was particularly irritated by recurrent advice to read Derrida. Must I read De la grammatologie, he asked, because it is vaguely related to the topic I am working on? Why must I quote him? And if I have not read him, must I pretend that I have?In the academic quotation economy, we very often find ourselves lying to the public, pretending we have read authors whom we have not. For a decade, the title of Bayard's book worked for me as a motto I could repeat internally whenever faced with a reading recommendation, especially when it was broad and general (I have often been advised to read Marx or Lacan, for instance, with no further indication of passages that might interest me). Inversely, when I make a recommendation, I add a little comment on Bayard's book, though until recently I have specified that I have not read it myself. I have hoped my comment would reduce the risk of my recommendations being interpreted as obligations or insults.As is the case with many books, Bayard's became important to me well before I decided to read it (in 2022). An interlocutor, reacting to my recommendation of the book without having read it, told me that the book (he had read it) was more than an antidote for academic name-dropping. It was foremost, he added, an investigation into various modes of nonreading. Apart from pure ignorance (when one does not even know that it exists), one can be familiar with a book just by learning bibliographical details and information about its genre and tradition. One can know a book by hearsay (one can speak extensively about it on the basis of remarks that one has heard). One can consult the table of contents furtively or read some pages randomly.Each mode of nonreading enables us to talk differently about a book, and in each we fill the parts of which we are ignorant with peripheral knowledge and imagination. Therefore, nonreading—active nonreading at least—can be more demanding, Bayard argues, than reading itself. Still, what happens when we talk about books that we have not read happens also when we speak about books that we have read, since we never speak of a book as such without adding what we imagine the book to be. Based on this similarity of reading and nonreading, Bayard comes to a paradoxical conclusion typical of French thinkers: each reading, he contends, from the most inattentive to the most intense, is also a form of nonreading. He misses, however, that by the same argument the inverse proposition could also be defended: what he calls nonreading is already a form of reading.During the decade between beginning to think about Bayard's book and actually reading it, I constructed what he calls a “screen book” (livre-écran)—a work of my imagination. But the book I invented was enriched by my eventually reading it. I discovered that it delivered not simply a criticism of our quoting practices but also a celebration of some forms of active nonreading. In Bayard's enthusiasm, however, I believe that he goes too far when he concludes, with Oscar Wilde among others, that it is better not to read the books we review. Often, as was my case with How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read, they turn out to be more original than our fancy is capable of imagining. Hence I have set forth in this review a reason not mentioned by Bayard in favor of discussing books one has not read: doing so may function as a self-reminder. By dint of speaking about a book, one sometimes ends up reading it. (shrink)

Malebranche's conception of imagination is often thought to be entirely contained in Book II of La Recherche de la vérité, which aims at destroying the beliefs and false theories resulting from the untempered use of that faculty. And yet Malebranche shows, in Book VI of the same work, that imagination has an essential function in the construction of science, particularly when it comes to producing geometrical models for phenomena; and it is, from the point of view of cognition, a singular (...) cunning of reason which associates the presence of corporeal affects in the mind, and ideas, which enlighten it without touching it. This conception rests upon unacknowledged quotations from the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, which Malebranche must have had at hand while working on the Recherche. At stake is, for us, the precise understanding of the relation between mathematics and imagination, first in the Regulae and then in the Recherche, in the general context of the project of a universal science or mathesis universalis. (shrink)