In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called 'evidentiality', and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while (...) others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category in its own right, and not a subcategory of epistemic or some other modality, nor of tense-aspect. Every language has some way of referring to the source of information, but not every language has grammatical evidentiality. In English expressions such as I guess, they say, I hear that, the alleged are not obligatory and do not constitute a grammatical system. Similar expressions in other languages may provide historical sources for evidentials. True evidentials, by contrast, form a grammatical system. In the North Arawak language Tariana an expression such as "the dog bit the man" must be augmented by a grammatical suffix indicating whether the event was seen, or heard, or assumed, or reported. This book provides the first exhaustive cross-linguistic typological study of how languages deal with the marking of information source. Examples are drawn from over 500 languages from all over the world, several of them based on the author's original fieldwork. Professor Aikhenvald also considers the role evidentiality plays in human cognition, and the ways in which evidentiality influences human perception of the world.. This is an important book on an intriguing subject. It will interest anthropologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, as well as linguists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toleration and Justice in the Laozi:Engaging with Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early ChinaAi Yuan (bio)IntroductionThis review article engages with Tao Jiang's ground-breaking monograph on the Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China with particular focus on the articulation of toleration and justice in the Laozi (otherwise called the Daodejing).1 Jiang discusses a naturalistic turn and the re-alignment of values in the Laozi, resulting in a naturalization (...) of justice (impartiality) by rejecting artificial humaneness and rigid hierarchical moral-political structures. In this Laozian just world, there is no room for human intervention and rigid top-down enforcement of values, thus leaving justice to naturalized Heaven or Dao as the ultimate source of the cosmos.Based on Jiang's interpretative context, I show that there is a twofold justification for the "paradoxical" and "elusive"2 value of political toleration.3 A negative expression of toleration focuses on non-interference with choices, and non-enforcement of values toward those whom one reasonably disagrees with and regards as morally wrong. Such an attitude of toleration results in practical advantages such as avoiding entrenchment in bloodshed, abandonment, and deprivation.A positive expression of toleration operating in the Laozian ideal world requires equal protection of people as capable knowers, including those to whom we object. Such protection includes their ways of expression and an unbiased recognition of them as equally capable knowers so that they are heard without bias and prejudice. Such a kind of toleration is revealed as a constituent component of justice since it enables equal contribution toward the shaping of society without discrimination. In other words, toleration is seen as naturalized justice in a Laozian world within which no one is "being wronged with the capacity as a knower"—a kind of epistemic justice articulated by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007).4 [End Page 466]This article discusses how Jiang's political reconstruction of Laozian philosophy contains the seeds for a discussion of toleration, a value associated with distributive justice and against epistemic injustice. First, it introduces Jiang's arguments on a naturalization of justice and impartiality as Heavenly attributes in the Laozi. Second, it articulates the value of tolerance in the Laozi. Finally, I compare Laozian toleration with Confucian toleration using youwei- wuwei metaethical criticism.Moral-Political Philosophy in the LaoziJiang's interpretative framework about the origins of distributive justice in the Laozi starts with a discussion of the cosmogonic-mystical worldviews that signal "a new understanding of the nature of the cosmos, as well as a broad reorientation in the Heaven-human relationship in the mid-Warring States period" (p. 192). Differing from the interests in the origins of human culture or civilization in the Ru and Mo traditions, Jiang agrees with Franklin Perkins and identifies a "cosmogonic turn" in the late fourth century b.c. that reveals a demotion of anthropomorphic Heaven. By paring Heaven with earth and accordingly decentering human beings in the intellectual discourse, the Laozi directs equal values to the ten thousand things, with humans as just one among them (Perkins 2016, quoted in Jiang 2021, p. 196).5 Laozi's philosophy thus stands out by rejecting Heaven as caring for human affairs while taking Dao as the ultimate origin of the cosmos, as claimed in chapter 5 of the received text: "Heaven and earth are not humane; they treat ten-thousand things in the world as straw dogs; the sage is not humane; he treats people as straw dogs" (p. 199).With Jiang's reading of a naturalistic heaven, we see a re-alignment between cosmos and the human since sage-rulers follow the Heaven-Dao. The Laozian Dao is "self-so-ing" (ziran 自然), "accommodating" (rong 容), and "impartial" (gong 公), and thus marks a sharp contrast to Confucian familial bias resulting in "actively intervening in human affairs on behalf of the (certain) humans by appointing them to carry out its mission" (p. 200). With the sage emulating the ultimate Dao, the Laozi replaces the Confucian anthropocentric Heaven, which focuses on partiality (qin 親) and humaneness (ren 仁).This Laozian understanding of the cosmos also grounds its philosophical departure from Mohism despite both having a political... (shrink)

In the treatise On the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky divided the creation of art into three categories, the ultimate one of which is called Composition. In this article, I argue that Kandinsky’s classification is similar and comparable to the principle of semi-abstract Chinese freehand brushwork summarized by Zheng Xie in the Inscriptions on Painting - Bamboo. In an attempt to clarify the core of Kandinsky’s strategy of abstraction, i.e. the transformation from painting to writing, I then connect it with (...) the evolution of Chinese characters and the aesthetic theory of Chinese calligraphy, which is also in accord with Kandinsky’s idea of internal necessity and the spirit in art. Through this aesthetic dialogue across time and space, this article aims to bring a new dimension to the understanding of Western abstractionism from the perspective of the oriental philosophy of art. (shrink)

This paper establishes several algebraic embedding theorems, each of which asserts that a certain kind of residuated structure can be embedded into a richer one. In almost all cases, the original structure has a compatible involution, which must be preserved by the embedding. The results, in conjunction with previous findings, yield separative axiomatizations of the deducibility relations of various substructural formal systems having double negation and contraposition axioms. The separation theorems go somewhat further than earlier ones in the literature, which (...) either treated fewer subsignatures or focussed on the conservation of theorems only. (shrink)

This collection of quotes demonstrates the elegant simplicity of Ai Weiwei's thoughts on key aspects of his art, politics, and life. A master at communicating powerful ideas in astonishingly few words, Ai Weiwei is known for his innovative use of social media to disseminate his views. The book is organized into six categories: freedom of expression; art and activism; government, power, and moral choices; the digital world; history, the historical moment, and the future; and personal reflections. Together, these quotes span (...) some of the most revealing moments of Ai Weiwei's eventful career-from his risky investigation into student deaths in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to his arbitrary arrest in 2011-providing a window into the mind of one of the world's most electrifying and courageous contemporary artists. Ai Weiwei is one of China's most influential and inspiring figures. Artist, architect, curator, and activist, he has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese government's stance on human rights and democracy. (shrink)

Après les guerres du siècle dernier qui ont remis en cause l'idée de progrès, devant les formes multiples des guerres actuelles, peut-on encore penser la paix aujourd'hui? A l'encontre des idées conservatrices de la paix où cette dernière, conçue comme ordre et stabilité, a souvent été le corrélat des Etats policiers, la pensée de la paix, telle que l'élabore Levinas, relève d'une critique de l'autoritarisme politique et permet d'élaborer un nouveau concept de liberté affranchi de la tutelle des Etats. La (...) paix n'est pas ici une idée abstraite mais porte le sujet hors de toutes les formes de confort moral ou de conformisme politique. C'est à un Levinas neuf que nous avons ici à faire : tout en dialoguant avec la tradition moderne et contemporaine de la philosophie politique, il nous montre que la paix est une forme d'insubordination qui aspire à "désembourgeoiser la révolution". Une lecture intranquille de Levinas. (shrink)

It is proved that the variety of relevant disjunction lattices has the finite embeddability property. It follows that Avron's relevance logic RMImin has a strong form of the finite model property, so it has a solvable deducibility problem. This strengthens Avron's result that RMImin is decidable.

An academic anthology on Jewish studies and education in memory of dr. Avraham Zalkin.

Eksistensi Gambar dalam film menurut Gilles Deleuze adalah kehidupan manusia dan perjalanannya menyatu dengan Tuhan. Ketika manusia menyaksikan film pikirannya tertuju pada objek gambar- gambar yang bergerak sehingga dirinya ikut bersatu dengan realitas yang ada pada film. Otak manusia seperti layar film yang mampu menyingkap realitas dan pikiran manusia mulai tenggelam dan menyatu dengan alam semesta, karena otak manusia mengeluarkan elektron yang bermuatan negatif dari atom-atom kemudian elektron tersebut tertarik dan mengikuti gerakan dari gambar-gambar yang ada di film yang bermuatan (...) positif sehingga munculnya energi listrik dan gelombang, frekuensi cahaya yang mengakibatkan manusia mengalami pencapaian spiritual. Tujuan dari artikel ini adalah untuk membuktikan bahwa segala sesuatu di dunia ini mengalami perubahan dan ketidakpastian sedangkan eksistensi manusia di di dunia ini adalah tidak ada. Di dunia ini yang ada hanya energi dan hukum perubahan alam semesta. Hal itu dikarenakan manusia sudah menyatu dengan Tuhan dan alam semesta. Manusia yang sudah mengalami pencerahan memanifestasikan dirinya dengan mengimajinasikan semua hal tentang kehidupan dunia fisiknya. Dengan demikian, kehidupan di dunia adalah sebuah alam imajinasi atau pikiran saja. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif analitis dan metode deskriptif kuantitatif yang bersifat saintifik dengan mengintegralkan aspek kesenian, filsafat, mistisisme, spiritualisme, fisika klasik, fisika kuantum, mekanika kuantum dan kimia kuantum. Kesimpulan dari tulisan ini adalah manusia mengalami pencerahan dan mengalami perubahan forma atau bentuk dianalisa secara spiritual dan saintifik serta dapat memanifestasikan dan mengaktualisasikan aspek spiritualitasnya dalam bentuk materialisme di berbagai bidang disiplin ilmu seperti politik, ekonomi, geopolitik, kesenian, teknologi, sains, psikologi, agama dan budaya. Dengan demikian, manusia yang sudah tercerahkan dan mengalir energi alam semesta di dalam dirinya menjadi sebuah mesin atau alat pembangkit listrik bertenaga energi spiritual yang termanifestasikan dan terealisasi di dunia fisik. (shrink)

Selections from the sayings of Zhuangzi rendered into cartoon form and translated into English.