Extending new verbs is important in becoming a productive speaker of a language. Prior results show children have difficulty extending verbs when they have seen events with varied agents. This study further examines the impact of variability on verb learning and asks whether variability interacts with event complexity or differs by language. Children in the United States, China, Korea, and Singapore learned verbs linked to simple and complex events. Sets of events included one or three agents, and children were asked (...) to extend the verb at test. Children learning verbs linked to simple movements performed similarly across conditions. However, children learning verbs linked to events with multiple objects were less successful if those events were enacted by multiple agents. A follow-up study rules out an influence of event order. Overall, similar patterns of results emerged across languages, suggesting common cognitive processes support children's verb learning. (shrink)

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that (...) civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions. (shrink)

What I refer to is how our thought in inventing, designing, modifying, and using machines carries over into acts we do not consciously associate with them—like writing or reading poetry. An airplane in flight may be “pure poetry,” or a Ferrari “a poem in steel”; it intrigues me to consider that beneath such object comparisons an object-of-thought connection may be made. Or in other words, there may be really something to a hackneyed compliment like “poem in steel.” My preference for (...) thought form over object form makes me less interested in machines that we can see than in those that we can’t, and it makes me direct my inquiry along two lines, concerning two questions about invisibility. The first involves the history of technology: How is it that machines “disappear”—become less visible, impinge less and less upon popular consciousness? The effect cannot be imputed entirely to familiarity. The second involves the history of literature: If machines have disappeared, are there “disappeared”—or “invisible”—machines in literature? It is reasonably clear that we go to considerable lengths to hide the machines that surround us and that we choose, or our artists choose, insofar as such choice can be located, to restrict the appearance of machines in art.3 Commonly their restricted appearance in art is understood as a kind of resistance to some form of machine takeover, while their concealment has only uncommonly received analysis and is not generally discussed in context with the matter of artistic representation. But we do accept, at least in theory, the idea that style of living and style in literature are connected. If the machine penetrates our style of living, then—and this is the end of my inquiry—these invisibilities are of interest to literary criticism, for they have something to do with the way literature is written, with whether or not, that is, writers choose to describe machines, use them as characters, or give them any role at all to play in surface structure. Since the artist often works to reveal what his society works to conceal and since the postmodern period has so far been one of crisis in the relations between society and technology, we may expect to find in postmodern fiction, or in writing to come, some greater revelation or simple exposure of the workings, than we could have seen before. 3. I use “restrict” in a statistical sense, for since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution there have been artists to celebrate the machine; today’s hyperrealist movement offers contemporary examples. These artists—Tom Blackwell, Ron Kleemann, Ralph Goings, and others—work a transformation like that of Andy Warhol with the pop object. They present not so much a celebration as an effort to turn looking into seeing, here directed at automobiles in particular, so much a part of everyday life as to have become indistinguishable from one another and as a species from the other parts of the semiurban landscape—the mailbox, the front lawn, the visiting relatives staring into the camera. Strother B. Purdy is the author of The Hole in the Fabric: Science, Contemporary Literature, and Henry James. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Stalingrad and My Lai: A Literary-Political Speculation” and “Reply to Lawrence W. Hyman. (shrink)

Pétra: Atlas archéologique et épigraphique, vol. 1: De Bãb as-Siq au Wãdi al-Farasah. By Laïla Nehmé. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2012. Pp. 266, 51 plts., maps. €50.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa? John Keenan’s and Lai Pai-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of IncarnationThomas CattoiThe starting point of this paper is a critique of John Keenan’s so-called “Mahāyāna Christology” in The Meaning of Christ, in light of Lai Pai-chiu’s “Chinese” response to Keenan’s position. My argument is that Lai correctly construes the Chalcedonian definition as a critique (...) of Hellenist ontology, but fails to critique Keenan’s crucial contention that this same definition ratifies the subjugation of lived spiritual experience to abstract philosophical speculation. I also claim that Lai does not engage Keenan’s flawed use, in his constructive Christology, of the teaching of the Buddha-bodies, which in my opinion could provide an apposite template for the development of a Tibetan contextual Christology. My paper has a twofold purpose: on one hand, I sketch the contours of a possible Tibetan theology of incarnation; on the other hand, I offer a few methodological reflections on the role of classical doctrinal definitions in the development of new contextual theologies.The burden of this paper is to offer a few suggestions toward the formulation of a culturally contextual theology of incarnation, which uses the resources of Mahāyāna speculation on the embodiment of the Buddha. My starting point is Lai’s critique of Keenan’s well-known 1989 volume The Meaning of Christ, in which Keenan sets out to critique traditional Hellenist Chalcedonian Christology and argues for an alternative articulation of the hypostatic union based on the Mahāyāna teaching of the Buddha-bodies.1 Lai’s article revisits Keenan’s critique and argues that the Chalcedonian definition, far from canonizing the uncritical appropriation of a school of thought, evidences the profound limitations of philosophical discourse. Keenan’s underlying contention that traditional Christology subjects the Christian message to the strictures of alien categories is thus deconstructed, although Lai goes on to offer yet one more Christological synthesis based on the Chinese understanding of Buddha nature. In my paper I concur with Lai’s reading of Chalcedonian categories, which I regard [End Page 13] as more accurate and fruitful than Keenan’s, but I also argue that Lai fails to engage the totality of Keenan’s argument and therefore does not appreciate the deeper flaws in Keenan’s appropriation of the Buddhakāya teaching. My constructive suggestion toward the end of this paper is that such teaching could actually provide a most useful template for the development of a “Tibetan” theology of incarnation, which would remain in continuity with the Chalcedonian tradition, and yet resort to the linguistic and philosophical categories of the local culture.Theologians wishing to develop contextual articulations of Christian doctrine often meet considerable resistance, since their emphasis on the culturally contingent nature of traditional formulas is seen as a challenge to their continuing normative character. As early as 1969, Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity expressed serious reservations about the growing tendency to “de-Hellenize” Christian theology and strongly reasserted the enduring “providential” character of traditional Trinitarian and Christological formulas.2 At the same time, the development of a postcolonial Christianity in many Asian and African countries could not but call for inculturated expressions of the Christian faith that embedded the Christian message in the categories of the local culture. Theologian Stephen B. Bevans begins his work Models of Contextual Theology claiming that in the contemporary world, “the contextualization of [Christian] theology [...] is really a theological imperative.” 3 The understanding of theology as an objective and unchanging science of faith is thus superseded by a new approach that gives pride of place to the religious experience of the individual and the community where he or she lives, operates, and worships.4 Bevans’s call for a contextual theology views the “experience of the present” as the ultimately normative benchmark against which the “experience of the past” is assessed, in the search for a new synthesis rooted in a particular cultural and social location.5The development of new Christological formulas that use the resources of Asian Buddhist culture is thus possible only after the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Zhuangzi:Personal Freedom and/or Incongruity of Names?Paul J. D'Ambrosio (bio)Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom (hereafter Origins) has sparked much scholarly debate. Already numerous presentations, various types of discussions, and reviews have appeared based on Origins. The present review focuses specifically on the Zhuangzi chapter. The entire project actually began, Jiang writes, fifteen years ago as a book on (...) the Zhuangzi. Through his research Jiang realized he needed to learn more about the objects of philosophical ridicule and critique in the Zhuangzi. Origins is the result of this decade-and-a-half study.Origins provides a somewhat novel framework for reading Warring States period philosophy. Summarizing the basic structure of his project Jiang writes: "I make the case that the philosophical dialectics between the partialist humaneness and imperialist justice formed the fundamental dynamics underlying the mainstream moral-political project during the classic period, with the musing on personal freedom as the outlier" (p. 35). As Karyn Lai puts it, Origins revolves around a "predictable set of inherited pre-Qin texts associated with key figures, traditionally called the "Masters" (zi 子) text" (Lai 2022, p. 181). Some models inherited by the "masters," such as yinyang 陰陽 thinking or ming 名 (names) and shi 實 (actualities), are nearly absent in Origins and would cast new light on the project as well [End Page 458] as the tradition. In this review I will first outline Jiang's reading of the Zhuangzi before considering how a richer appreciation of the Chinese tradition, especially its own methodological tools, frameworks, and concepts, could bolster the exciting contributions Origins stands to make. We will start with Jiang's big picture view of the Zhuangzi.In Origins the Zhuangzi is taken to be a completely unique text. It does not engage in the moral and political discourse the other "masters" texts are subsumed by, and instead of supporting either partialist humaneness or impartialist justice it "muses" on personal freedom. Jiang defines: "Personal freedom is understood as the appreciation and cultivation of personal space wherein one can be left alone and enjoy the company of like-minded friends without being entangled in the sociopolitical world" (p. 36). There are two significant points to note about Jiang's understanding of freedom. First, it is almost a word-for-character definition of how the "Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove" have been described by many. Research on these philosophical works could significantly enrich Jiang's reading, albeit from a different angle. Second, Guo Xiang's 郭象 (d. 312) emphasis on, and philosophical explorations of, du 獨 (an interconnected type of "lone") would further fill out how freedom and relationality—which are both attributed to the Zhuangzi by Jiang—are connected.In addition to a "fierce advocacy for personal freedom" Jiang classifies the Zhuangzi as a "singular outlier" for ridiculing the "misguided character of [the contestations between humaneness and justice] and warn[ing] against their potential for inhumanity and injustice" (p. 49). Indeed, the Zhuangzi does demonstrate that these discussions can elicit "the very opposite of what was intended by the participants of the mainstream discourse" (p. 49). Its criticisms are even more penetrating when we appreciate its deeper point about "names being the guests of actualities" (Zhuangzi 1:4). From this perspective the Zhuangzi is not against systems of humaneness or justice as such. It rather points out that humaneness does not have a single referent, nor could that referent be reliably distinguished. The name "humane" does not guarantee humane action, or really anything in particular. The same is true for "justice." We will return to these points below.Jiang's chapter on the Zhuangzi begins by defending moral and political readings of the text. It is an outlier from the perspective of the "humanity-justice" framework, but this only means that the moral-political discourse Zhuangists were engaged in was different. The result was that already by the early Han and by the time of Sima Qian 司馬遷 (d. 86 b.c.e.) "Zhuangzi's teachings were … of little use to contemporary political discourse" (p. 288). Jiang should be delighted to know that the Wei-Jin period, which had inestimable... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global economy, with numerous companies suffering losses and shutting down. However, some companies proved to be resilient, being able to sustain their economic performance despite the pandemic. The study aims to explain the sustainable economic performance of companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The relationships between empowering leadership, innovative work behavior, organizational readiness to change, and sustainable economic performance were assessed. The data were collected via an online questionnaire from January 2021 to March 2021, during the (...) height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. The respondents were Russian companies’ employees holding management positions, competent to objectively assess organizational circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 337 was used in the analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted using SPSS AMOS. The structural model was tested with standardized parameter estimates, standard errors, and p-values calculated. The findings of the study suggest that innovative work behavior and organizational readiness to learn have a direct influence on sustainable economic performance. The findings also suggest that empowering leadership impacts innovative work behavior but not sustainable economic performance. The mediation analysis indicates that innovative work behavior is a mediator between empowering leadership and sustainable economic performance, whereas organizational readiness to learn is not a moderator. The study adds to the leadership and sustainability body of knowledge and contributes to the research on the COVID-19 pandemic in the organizational context. (shrink)

This seventh volume of Collected Papers includes 70 papers comprising 974 pages on (theoretic and applied) neutrosophics, written between 2013-2021 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 122 co-authors from 22 countries: Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Abdel-Nasser Hussian, C. Alexander, Mumtaz Ali, Yaman Akbulut, Amir Abdullah, Amira S. Ashour, Assia Bakali, Kousik Bhattacharya, Kainat Bibi, R. N. Boyd, Ümit Budak, Lulu Cai, Cenap Özel, Chang Su Kim, Victor Christianto, Chunlai Du, Chunxin Bo, Rituparna Chutia, Cu Nguyen Giap, Dao The (...) Son, Vinayak Devvrat, Arindam Dey, Partha Pratim Dey, Fahad Alsharari, Feng Yongfei, S. Ganesan, Shivam Ghildiyal, Bibhas C. Giri, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ahmed Refaat Hawas, Hoang Viet Long, Le Hoang Son, Hongbo Wang, Hongnian Yu, Mihaiela Iliescu, Saeid Jafari, Temitope Gbolahan Jaiyeola, Naeem Jan, R. Jeevitha, Jun Ye, Anup Khan, Madad Khan, Salma Khan, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Kifayat Ullah, Kishore Kumar P.K., Sujit Kumar De, Prasun Kumar Nayak, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, Luong Thi Hong Lan, Anam Luqman, Luu Quoc Dat, Tahir Mahmood, Hafsa M. Malik, Nivetha Martin, Mai Mohamed, Parimala Mani, Mingcong Deng, Mohammed A. Al Shumrani, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Talea, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Gulistan, Farshid Mofidnakhaei, Muhammad Shoaib, Muhammad Riaz, Karthika Muthusamy, Nabeela Ishfaq, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Sumera Naz, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Nguyen Tho Thong, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Noor ul Amin, Dragan Pamučar, Gabrijela Popović, S. Krishna Prabha, Surapati Pramanik, Priya R, Qiaoyan Li, Yaser Saber, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Saleem Abdullah, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Abdulkadir Sengür, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Shahbaz Ali, Shahzaib Ashraf, Shouzhen Zeng, Shio Gai Quek, Shuangwu Zhu, Shumaiza, Sidra Sayed, Sohail Iqbal, Songtao Shao, Sundas Shahzadi, Dragiša Stanujkić, Željko Stević, Udhayakumar Ramalingam, Zunaira Rashid, Hossein Rashmanlou, Rajkumar Verma, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Desmond Jun Yi Tey, Selçuk Topal, Naveed Yaqoob, Yanhui Guo, Yee Fei Gan, Yingcang Ma, Young Bae Jun, Yuping Lai, Hafiz Abdul Wahab, Wei Yang, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Lemnaouar Zedam. (shrink)

Journal of the History of Biology provides a fifty-year long record for examining the evolution of the history of biology as a scholarly discipline. In this paper, we present a new dataset and preliminary quantitative analysis of the thematic content of JHB from the perspectives of geography, organisms, and thematic fields. The geographic diversity of authors whose work appears in JHB has increased steadily since 1968, but the geographic coverage of the content of JHB articles remains strongly lopsided toward the (...) United States, United Kingdom, and western Europe and has diversified much less dramatically over time. The taxonomic diversity of organisms discussed in JHB increased steadily between 1968 and the late 1990s but declined in later years, mirroring broader patterns of diversification previously reported in the biomedical research literature. Finally, we used a combination of topic modeling and nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques to develop a model of multi-article fields within JHB. We found evidence for directional changes in the representation of fields on multiple scales. The diversity of JHB with regard to the representation of thematic fields has increased overall, with most of that diversification occurring in recent years. Drawing on the dataset generated in the course of this analysis, as well as web services in the emerging digital history and philosophy of science ecosystem, we have developed an interactive web platform for exploring the content of JHB, and we provide a brief overview of the platform in this article. As a whole, the data and analyses presented here provide a starting-place for further critical reflection on the evolution of the history of biology over the past half-century. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Buddhist inquiry into the natural world proceeds from a radically different point of departure than western science, and its methods differ correspondingly. Early pioneers of the scientific revolution, including Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, expressed an initial interest in the nature of physical objects most far removed from human subjectivity: such issues as the relative motions of the sun and earth, the surface of the moon, and the revolutions of the planets. And a central principle of scientific naturalism is (...) the pure objectification of the natural world, free of any contamination of subjectivity. This principle of objectivism demands that science deals with empirical facts testable by empirical methods entailing testability by third-person means; and such facts must, therefore, be public rather than private, which is to say, they must be accessible to more than one observer. (shrink)

This paper traces the background to R. A. Fisher's multi-factorial theory of inheritance. It is argued that the traditional account is incomplete, and that Karl Pearson's well-known pre-Fisherian objections to the theory were in fact overcome by Pearson himself. It is further argued that Pearson's stated reasons for not accepting his own achievement has to be seen as a rationalization, standing in for deeper-seated metaphysical objections to the Mendelian paradigm of a type not readily discussed in a formal scientific paper. (...) The apparent, post-Fisherian, continued acceptance of Pearson's objections is presented as an interesting problem for the historian and sociologist. (shrink)

Mathematics is an important foundation for the development of science education. In the past, when instructors taught mathematical concepts of geometry shapes, they usually used traditional textbooks and aids to conduct teaching activities, which resulted in students not being able to understand the principles completely. Nowadays, it has become a trend to integrate emerging technologies into mathematics courses and to use digital instructional aids. Emerging technologies can effectively enhance students’ sensory experience while strengthening their impressions and understandings of subject concepts. (...) In this paper, we apply virtual reality immersive technologies to develop a “virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system,” which is used to teach mathematical geometry concepts. Teachers use the system to develop three basic mathematical geometry learning materials: “Triangular pyramid volume = 1/3 prism volume,” “Cone volume calculation,” and “Triangle center of gravity derivation.” In the experimental activity, the teacher uses virtual reality teaching aids to guide students to learn mathematical geometry concepts in a fun way so that they can achieve the effectiveness of immersive learning. This study explores the impact of using the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system on students’ technology acceptance, learning motivations, and learning performance. The experimental result showed that using the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system can improve the learning motivation and learning performance of students. The findings indicated that the experimental group had better learning outcomes after completing the learning tasks of three geometric units. The experimental group used the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system which can lead to better learning outcomes. According to the ARCS questionnaire, students in the experimental group were confident to understand new subjects. At the same time, the mode of completing the game can effectively give students a sense of accomplishment. The use of emerging technologies in the classroom can be an attractive learning mode for students. (shrink)

"The definitive work by B.K.S. Iyengar, the world's most respected yoga teacher. B.K.S. Iyengar has devoted his life to the practice and study of yoga. It was B.K.S. Iyengar's unique teaching style, bringing precision and clarity to the practice, as well as a mindset of 'yoga for all', which has made it into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. 'Light on Yoga' is widely called 'the bible of yoga' and has served as the source book for generations of yoga students (...) around the world. It is the classic text for all serious students of yoga." --Publisher description. (shrink)

In the paper I offer a brief sketch of one of the sources of utilitarianism. Our biological ancestry is a matter of fact that is not altered by the way we describe ourselves. With philosophical theories it is otherwise. Utilitarianism can be described in ways that make it look as if it is as old as moral philosophy – as J. S. Mill thought it was. For my historical purposes, it is more useful to have an account that brings out (...) what is specific about Benthamism and its descendants. Let us try to make do with the following. First, utilitarianism asserts that the fundamental requirement of morality is that we are to maximize good, for everyone and not just for the agent. This basic principle presupposes that it makes sense to think of aggregating goods to make a total, and of comparing amounts of good thus aggregated. Second, the good to be brought about is located in feelings of pleasure, and the evil to be avoided in feelings of pain. These feelings have inherent value or disvalue regardless of how they are caused to exist and regardless of their own consequences. Third, all moral principles can be derived from the requirement that good be maximized. The principles involved in evaluating agents as well as in giving moral direction to action are nothing but applications of the basic principle. (shrink)

B. Rundle; X—Transitivity and Indirect Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 187–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ says :I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always (...) be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in [‘Some man loves his mother’] and [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun. (shrink)

Business theory and management practices are outgrowths of basic economic principles. To evaluate the proper place of ethics in business, the meaning of ethics as defined by economic theory must be assessed. This paper contends that classical economic thought advocates a nonethical decision-making context and is not functional for a modern complex, interdependent environment.

Do we remember what pain feels like? Investigations into this question have sometimes led to ambiguous or apparently contradictory results. Building on research on pain memory by Rohini Terry and colleagues, I argue that this lack of agreement may be due in part to the difficulty researchers face when trying to convey to their study’s participants the type of memory they are being tasked with recalling. To address this difficulty, I introduce the concept of ‘qualitative memory’, which, arguably, is the (...) sort of memory we have of what red looks like yet lack with respect to pain. I also briefly address a number of consequences the acknowledgment of qualitative memory would potentially have for philosophy, arguing that if we fail to have qualitative memories of certain sensations, such as pain, the standard philosophical accounts of experience, rational choice, and the sources of moral action may all need revision. (shrink)