The interaction between cavity modes and optical transitions leads to new coupled light-matter states in which the energy is periodically exchanged between the matter states and the optical mode. Here we present experimental evidence of optical strong coupling between modes of individual sub-wavelength metamaterial nanocavities and engineered optical transitions in semiconductor heterostructures. We show that this behaviour is generic by extending the results from the mid-infrared to the near-infrared. Using mid-infrared structures, we demonstrate that the light-matter coupling occurs at the (...) single resonator level and with extremely small interaction volumes. We calculate a mode volume of 4.9 × 10 from which we infer that only ~2,400 electrons per resonator participate in this energy exchange process. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractWhereas clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) exists in all eukaryotic cells, we first detect classical dynamin in Ichthyosporid, a single-cell, metazoan precursor. Based on a key functional residue in its pleckstrin homology domain, we speculate that the evolution of metazoan dynamin coincided with the specialized need for regulated CME during neurotransmission.

This paper critically surveys Adorno's dialectical-philosophical perspective of communication, which addresses a question and a quest for humanity: "How is communication possible?" In my view, any discussion of Adorno's view on communication should start with his distinction of two concepts: mediation and communication. Mediation involves the ideological critique of illusory relations of objectivity. Communication, defined by Adorno as the never-ending confrontation and reconciliation between subjectivity and objectivity, comes after the epistemological critique of objective mediation. Therefore, the quest for communication always (...) involves a never-ending wrestling between subject and object, particular and universal, experience and information. As Adorno would argue, true communication is "a result not an illusion o f (non-) identity of self and others. If any authentic mediated communication is humanly possible, it is because such communication is inscribed in a dialectical-dialogical process and it can only be accomplished momentarily. (shrink)

The surface grammar of reports such as ‘I have a pain in my leg’ suggests that pains are objects which are spatially located in parts of the body. We show that the parallel construction is not available in Mandarin. Further, four philosophically important grammatical features of such reports cannot be reproduced. This suggests that arguments and puzzles surrounding such reports may be tracking artefacts of English, rather than philosophically significant features of the world.

The theme arises from the legal-academic movement "Law and Literature". This newly developed field should aim at two major goals, first, to investigate the meaning of law in a social context by questioning how the characters appearing in literary works understand and behave themselves to the law, and second, to find out a theoretical solution of the methodological question whether and to what extent the legal text can be interpreted objectively in comparison with the question how literary works should be (...) interpreted. The subject of justice and injustice has been covered not only in treatises of law and philosophy, but also in many works of literature: On the one hand, poets and writers have been outraged at the social conditions of their time. On the other hand, some of them have also contributed fundamental reflections on the idea of justice itself. (shrink)

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing foregrounds the East Asian cultural beliefs and practices that shape the environmental consciousness of the twenty-first century. In highlighting such influences, this anthology also foregrounds the closely related new and exciting directions in ecocriticism.

This paper critically surveys Adorno's dialectical-philosophical perspective of communication, which addresses a question and a quest for humanity: "How is communication possible?" In my view, any discussion of Adorno's view on communication should start with his distinction of two concepts: mediation and communication. Mediation involves the ideological critique of illusory relations of objectivity. Communication, defined by Adorno as the never-ending confrontation and reconciliation between subjectivity and objectivity, comes after the epistemological critique of objective mediation. Therefore, the quest for communication always (...) involves a never-ending wrestling between subject and object, particular and universal, experience and information. As Adorno would argue, true communication is "a result not an illusion o f (non-) identity of self and others. If any authentic mediated communication is humanly possible, it is because such communication is inscribed in a dialectical-dialogical process and it can only be accomplished momentarily. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Habermas's social-philosophical exploration of the public sphere in the age of mass communication, which addresses a key question: "Is the public possible in the sociohistorical formation of the mass public sphere?" In his genealogical analysis of different public spheres from feudal to modern times, Habermas indicates that the emergence of inter-subjectivity is historically based upon the dichotomy of private / public (subjective/objective). He emphasizes the opposition of the "subjective side" of rationality to its "objective side" while (...) dealing with the public spheres in different historical periods. Habermas points out that the notion of the public can exist only at the face-to-face level communication. It is impossible for the (impersonal) masses to construct any sense of publicness, since there are no historical and social conditions in which the masses of working class can establish an "autonomous private sphere" outside of material production and consumption, as the bourgeoisie did. In this way, Habermas ambivalently argues that the public is not possible in the mass public sphere. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Habermas's social-philosophical exploration of the public sphere in the age of mass communication, which addresses a key question: "Is the public possible in the sociohistorical formation of the mass public sphere?" In his genealogical analysis of different public spheres from feudal to modern times, Habermas indicates that the emergence of inter-subjectivity is historically based upon the dichotomy of private / public (subjective/objective). He emphasizes the opposition of the "subjective side" of rationality to its "objective side" while (...) dealing with the public spheres in different historical periods. Habermas points out that the notion of the public can exist only at the face-to-face level communication. It is impossible for the (impersonal) masses to construct any sense of publicness, since there are no historical and social conditions in which the masses of working class can establish an "autonomous private sphere" outside of material production and consumption, as the bourgeoisie did. In this way, Habermas ambivalently argues that the public is not possible in the mass public sphere. (shrink)

Yang Guorong is a contemporary philosopher with little need for introduction—and not only because he has been introduced here before.1 Professor Yang’s decades of prolific scholarship cover nearly...

Putnam and Burge have been viewed as launching a joint attack on individualism, the view that the content of one's psychological state is determined by what is in the head . Putnam argues that meanings are not in the head while Burge argues that beliefs are not in the head either, and both have come up with convincing arguments against individualism. It is generally conceived that Putnam's view is a version of physical externalism, which argues that factors in the physical (...) environment play a role in determining the meanings of natural kind terms. Burge, on the other hand, is regarded as following up Putnam's argument to bring in factors in the social environment for the determination of belief. Burge's view has been commonly referred to as 'social externalism.' The general consensus in the field is that physical externalism and social externalism are compatible views. Furthermore, both Putnam and Burge seem to endorse each other’s position for the most part. In this paper, however, I shall argue against this general view to show that the two theories are deep down incompatible. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the foundations of physical externalism and social externalism and argue that these foundations are incompatible. Physical externalism is based on a direct reference theory of natural-kind terms, while social externalism is based on a description theory of natural-kind terms. Thus, physical externalism and social externalism are incompatible just in the same way that the direct reference theory of proper names is incompatible with the description theory of proper names. My argument will proceed as follows. In (...) Section One, I shall explain what the two theses say and spell out my suspicion. In Section Two, I shall take a look at the initial setups for physical externalism and social externalism by examining Putnam’s and Burge’s original arguments. Finally in Section Three, I shall explain that the real incompatibility comes to lie in the different assumptions on which the two theories are based. I will present some thought experiments to highlight this incompatibility. (shrink)

Confucianism advocates the lofty moral ideal of “humane love” (ren ai 仁愛) and condemns immoral actions. Strangely enough, however, Mencius, a “paradigmatic Confucian intellectual” who believed that “a true man cannot be corrupted by wealth, subdued by power, or affected by poverty” (Tu 1989a: 15), highly commended such typically corrupt actions as bending the law for the benefit of relatives or appointing people by mere nepotism when he talked about Shun 舜 in the text of the Mencius. In the first (...) four sections of this article, I will address the issue of how Confucianism encourages a special kind of corruption through its fundamentally consanguineous affection. Then, in the remaining sections, I will try to respond to some criticisms of my views by a few Chinese scholars. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to explore the structure of the exercise in the second part of the Parmenides. In analyzing the transitional section, I claim that in addition to diairesis, there is another method of division, namely, cross-division, which Porphyry terms chiasmus. On this basis, I explain how Plato uses chiasmus to divide the exercise into eight hypotheses, in which the subjects of the paired hypotheses (I–VI, II–V, III–VII, and IV–VIII) are the same and those of the nonpaired hypotheses (...) differ. In closing, I reconstruct the universal scheme of the exercise on the basis of Plato’s use of chiasmus. (shrink)

Shun argues that the distinction between first and third person is ill-suited to explain the complexities of anger. In this commentary, I first argue that, while the distinction is not uniquely important in characterizing anger and its variations, it can be distinctively important in illuminating the nature and normative significance of different forms of anger. Indeed, Shun’s own characterizations of anger in the paper seem to presuppose this importance. Secondly, I show that there are two related but distinct ways in (...) which one’s anger is ‘personally involved’: the first concerns how the offence is registered (e.g., whether it is perceived as targeting oneself), and the second concerns one’s emotional uptake of the offence. Lastly, I propose an alternative interpretation of Zhu Xi’s distinction between anger that ‘resides in things’ and anger that ‘resides in the self’, where the emphasis is not on whether anger is an appropriate response to a situation but on whether anger is properly encapsulated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Awful Patriotism: Richard Rorty and the Politics of KnowingDavid Palumbo-Liu* (bio)Richard Rorty. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998.This essay addresses the current debates surrounding what some have labeled the Two Lefts: a “cultural left” and an activist left. 1 Debate over this “divide” has made many strange bedfellows, but perhaps none quite so unheimlich as “liberal leftist” Richard Rorty and cultural conservative Harold (...) Bloom. To be sure, Rorty has often alluded to Bloom’s work, especially Bloom’s notion of “strong poets,” but in his most recent book, Rorty has appropriated Bloom in a particularly telling manner. In 1994, Harold Bloom published his polemic The Western Canon. At once eloquent and pathetic, it pressed all the right buttons. Bloom succinctly (or shall we say, reductively?) deployed his version of the “aesthetic” against any other approach. Cultural conservatives were gratified that someone of Bloom’s stature had done them the service of voicing their interests in a highly visible and contestatory manner; more moderate sorts squirmed uncomfortably at Bloom’s unabashed elitism and the shrillness of his tone; theorists and cultural studies folks were outraged at Bloom’s absolute ignorance of their work and his resort to parody instead of anything vaguely resembling an engaged critique; and ethnic, minority, queer, and feminist critics had more than enough to be insulted by in his racist and sexist arrogance. So far out is Bloom’s jeremiad that it probably came close to realizing his worst nightmare—it may have driven students screaming into all those horrid cultural studies classes to find out what was so seductive, so powerful as to corner The Canon. So I didn’t worry too much about The Western Canon. That is, until I read Richard Rorty’s essay “The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature” and its companion pieces in Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. What was Rorty, a self-proclaimed leftist, doing, calling to his aid the social and cultural archconservative Harold Bloom?In the first part of my essay I ponder this strange alliance, particularly as it joins forces against ethnic studies (to be sure, its common target is more generally “theory” of any stripe or color, but I want specifically to address the issue of ethnic literary study). Rorty adapts Bloom’s School of Resentment to characterize what he calls a certain, bad “knowingness,” against which he poses “hope” and “inspiration.” I want to examine more closely the nature and content of that destructive “knowledge,” for it becomes clear that [End Page 37] this knowledge is for Rorty the recognition of Otherness as a politically (as opposed to “merely” ontologically) functional identity. This knowledge is disturbing to Rorty and deeply informs his notions of “patriotism” and Americanism. For him, such knowledge impedes the formation of a leftist politics. It is precisely the disjunction between the “knowing” discourse of the cultural left obsessed with identity politics and an activist political left (modeled after the old reformist left) that troubles Rorty.My essay will be largely devoted to showing how Rorty’s recent work develops his earlier work on “ethnocentrism” into an “Americanism” that erodes precisely the liberal foundations of that earlier work and discloses the weakness of its claims. I understand this development as compelled by a certain impatience with identity politics that is shared by a number of liberal and leftist critics of American political society, an impatience fueled perhaps not so much by a conservative threat as by a perceived threat from “within” progressive politics. Basically, I ask, how and why are knowledge and recognition of “difference” taken to immobilize progressive politics? To frame that same question in a slightly different manner—what is the presumed content of that “progressive” politics, and what assumptions do we have to make in order to arrive at that point of view?Against the rather odd Bloom/Rorty pairing, set against “knowledge,” one would naturally seek out an enemies list for possible allies. Rorty in fact begins his essay by providing us with one in the figure of Fredric Jameson, an archpractitioner of theory whose “antiromantic” skepticism Rorty finds both debilitating and... (shrink)

The year 1964 witnessed the polemics on "one divides into two" and "two combine into one" conducted in China's theoretical circles. Due to the sabotage of the "theoretical authority" and people like Guan Feng, this academic discussion was turned into a political mass criticism of the latter. During the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao and the "gang of four" subjected comrades who advocated the theory of "two combine into one" or endorsed some of its viewpoints to brutal political persecution. Criticism of (...) the theory was a political frame-up. However, I think we should conduct realistic discussion and evaluation of it again as a theoretical issue, in the spirit of fostering democracy and "letting a hundred schools of thought contend." To my way of thinking, "two combine into one" is neither a metaphysical proposition nor a comprehensive generalization of the law of the unity of opposites. It is the generalization of the identity of contradiction in its first meaning. (shrink)

This paper will investigate the roots of intentionality in Aristotle’s theory of perception and assess the accuracy of Brentano’s proposed location of intentionality in Aristotle. When introducing intentionality into contemporary philosophy, Brentano attributed it to Aristotle, whose theory of psychology he believed to reveal the characteristics of intentional inexistence. After setting up a working definition of intentionality that stresses such features as immanent content and intentional directedness, I will then clarify Aristotle’s theory of perception with regard to these two characteristics. (...) I draw the conclusion that we can only find the roots of immanent content in Aristotle’s perceptual theory. For him, directedness moves from the sensible object to the sensitive soul, and thus it does not correspond to what contemporary philosophers define as intentional directedness. (shrink)

Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal (...) facts might be properly judged to be non-standard in Newcomb problems leads to a dilemma for Causalism. One horn embraces a subjectivist understanding of causation, in a sense analogous to Lewis's own subjectivist conception of objective chance. In this case the analogy with chance reveals a terminological choice point, such that either (i) CDT is completely reconciled with EDT, or (ii) EDT takes precedence in the cases in which the two theories give different recommendations. The other horn of the dilemma rejects subjectivism, but now the analogy with chance suggests that it is simply mysterious why causation so construed should constrain rational action. (shrink)

In many-valued logic the decision of functional completeness is a basic and important problem, and the thorough solution to this problem depends on determining all maximal closed sets in the set of many-valued logic functions. It includes three famous problems, i.e., to determine all maximal closed sets in the set of the total, of the partial and of the unary many-valued logic functions, respectively. The first two problems have been completely solved , and the solution to the third problem boils (...) down to determining all maximal subgroups in the k-degree symmetric group Sk, which is an open problem in the finite group theory. In this paper, all maximal closed sets in the set of unary p-valued logic functions are determined, where p is a prime. (shrink)

Introduction My fluid thinking began when Professor Laurence-Berger invited me to co-edit a panel of articles on Chinese Temporalities for the French academic journal Temporalités, centering on the relationship between the concept of Chinese temporalities and the several manifestations of China as a modern, national, political entity. I myself define the concept of temporalities in terms of its methodological meanings, by emphasizing its multidimensional nature: first of all, the concept of t...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly expected to disrupt the ordinary functioning of society. From how we fight wars or govern society, to how we work and play, and from how we create to how we teach and learn, there is almost no field of human activity which is believed to be entirely immune from the impact of this emerging technology. This poses a multifaceted problem when it comes to designing and understanding regulatory responses to AI. This article aims to: (i) (...) defend the need for a novel conceptual model for understanding the systemic legal disruption caused by new technologies such as AI; (ii) to situate this model in relation to preceding debates about the interaction of regulation with new technologies (particularly the ‘cyberlaw’ and ‘robolaw’ debates); and (iii) to set out a detailed model for understanding the legal disruption precipitated by AI, examining both pathways stemming from new affordances that can give rise to a regulatory ‘disruptive moment’, as well as the Legal Development, Displacement or Destruction that can ensue. The article proposes that this model of legal disruption can be broadly generalisable to understanding the legal effects and challenges of other emerging technologies. (shrink)

Despite the productivity of basic cancer research, cancer continues to be a health burden to society because this research has not yielded corresponding clinical applications. Many proposed solutions to this dilemma have revolved around implementing organizational and policy changes related to cancer research. Here I argue for a different solution: a new conceptualization of causation in cancer. Neither the standard molecular biomarker approaches nor evolutionary biology approaches to cancer fully capture its complex causal dynamics, even when considered jointly. These approaches (...) map on to Ernst Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction, which is an inadequate conceptualization of causation in biological systems and makes it difficult to connect developmental and evolutionary viewpoints. I propose looking to evolutionary developmental biology to overcome the distinction and integrate the proximate and ultimate causal frameworks. I use the concepts of modularity and evolvability to show how an EvoDevo perspective can be manifested in cancer translational research. This perspective on causation in cancer is better suited for integrating the complexity of current empirical results and can facilitate novel developments in the investigation and clinical treatment of cancer. (shrink)

When I say that the Chinese people have woken up, I mainly mean that young Chinese intellectuals have woken up. It is increasingly evident that they have shaken off the "worship-America" mentality that had its beginnings in the 1980s; today, they dare to criticize the United States spontaneously, and have no fear of being rejected for a visa to the United States or for a "green card.".

I thought the organizer had invited me primarily to let everyone take a rest while I spoke, because what I had to say was relatively simple and superficial. I would be talking not about academic subjects, but mostly about my personal impressions.

In this essay I review four recent monographs on Chinese American history: Xiao-huang Yin's Chinese American Literature since the 1850s, Madeline Hsu's Dreaming of Gold, Dream of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, Young Chen's Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community, and Xiaojian Zhao's Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940-1965. Based on both English- and Chinese-language sources, the authors of these four books explore migration processes and the social origins of Chinese immigrants (...) from an international perspective and they reinterpret the cultural values of immigrants as fundamentally open, engaged, and cosmopolitan. Moreover, they characterize the Chinese American community as a dynamic, fluid, and flexible global network and place Chinese America in a larger historical context beyond that of a single nation. They have seriously challenged the American-centered and nation-based research paradigm and promoted a more transnational, transcultural, and multilingual approach to the history of Asian American experience. (shrink)

The mental: [I] The unconscious: A totally unconscious man has a mind and the mind is in various states. ___ He does not lack knowledge and beliefs. ___ He may be credited with memories and skills. ___ He may be credited with likes and dislikes, attitudes and emotions, current desires and current aims and purposes. He may be said to have certain traits of character and temperament. He may be said to be in certain moods..... [The mental states of a (...) totally unconscious person are thus "causally quiescent": ___ knowledge and beliefs may be said to be causally quiescent while they are not producing any mental effect in the person.]. (shrink)

In his classic book “the Foundations of Statistics” Savage developed a formal system of rational decision making. The system is based on (i) a set of possible states of the world, (ii) a set of consequences, (iii) a set of acts, which are functions from states to consequences, and (iv) a preference relation over the acts, which represents the preferences of an idealized rational agent. The goal and the culmination of the enterprise is a representation theorem: Any preference relation that (...) satisfies certain arguably acceptable postulates determines a (finitely additive) probability distribution over the states and a utility assignment to the consequences, such that the preferences among acts are determined by their expected utilities. Additional problematic assumptions are however required in Savage's proofs. First, there is a Boolean algebra of events (sets of states) which determines the richness of the set of acts. The probabilities are assigned to members of this algebra. Savage's proof requires that this be a σ-algebra (i.e., closed under infinite countable unions and intersections), which makes for an extremely rich preference relation. On Savage's view we should not require subjective probabilities to be σ-additive. He therefore finds the insistence on a σ-algebra peculiar and is unhappy with it. But he sees no way of avoiding it. Second, the assignment of utilities requires the constant act assumption: for every consequence there is a constant act, which produces that consequence in every state. This assumption is known to be highly counterintuitive. The present work contains two mathematical results. The first, and the more difficult one, shows that the σ-algebra assumption can be dropped. The second states that, as long as utilities are assigned to finite gambles only, the constant act assumption can be replaced by the more plausible and much weaker assumption that there are at least two non-equivalent constant acts. The second result also employs a novel way of deriving utilities in Savage-style systems -- without appealing to von Neumann-Morgenstern lotteries. The paper discusses the notion of “idealized agent" that underlies Savage's approach, and argues that the simplified system, which is adequate for all the actual purposes for which the system is designed, involves a more realistic notion of an idealized agent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Leonard Tan and Mengchen Lu, “‘I Wish to Be Wordless’: Philosophizing Through the Chinese Guqin.”Chiao-Wei Liu“I wish to be wordless” connects Chinese philosophical thinking to music education at large. Through discussions of values associated with the Chinese instrument guqin, Leonard Tan and Mengchen Lu exemplified “how music serves as ‘Truth tool’ in the Chinese philosophical tradition.” Specifically, the authors explored four ideas: “Search for Truth” (求真), “Search (...) for Harmony” (求和), “Search for Ethical Awakening” (求覺), and “Search for Sagehood” (求聖). These ideas embody insights from three major Chinese philosophical traditions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Time prevents me from exploring the complex issues related to the interpretation and translation of classical Chinese texts, but I will attempt to focus on some of the authors’ arguments and how they relate to the practice of music learning and teaching in the classroom.1Quoting Confucius in their article title, Tan and Lu called attention to the suspicion of language found in the conversation between Confucius and his disciple. Extending the argument, the authors referred to Daoist philosophers and argued that although language can transmit wisdom, words remain limited in their ability to capture “the grand unity of the whole” and thus can “detract us [End Page 199] away from Truth.” Tan and Lu suggested that music, unlike language, serves as a truth “tool” and allows one to arrive at the Dao (Truth). Truth is conceived as a way of understanding the world, “a universal order, a new world perspective....” I agree with the authors about the limitations of language in capturing the complexity of human experiences, yet I am perplexed at how Truth is interpreted throughout the article.For example, in their discussion of “Search for Truth,” Tan and Lu related the art of playing the guqin to the Buddhist notion of mingxin jianxing (明心見性), clearing the heart-mind, seeing the inner-self, and locating Truth within the guqin player. Truth here is framed as good moral qualities residing within one’s innermost self (xing 性). Based on Li Zhi’s argument, Tan and Lu stated that “since a guqin player is all about her heart-mind and one’s music is all about the musician, music is the heart-mind of the musician.” Assuming that the heart-mind of the guqin player and the music are one, Tan and Lu suggested that when music and the musician’s innermost self are in sync, the musician may be able to attain spiritual Enlightenment. The example of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, no. 1 helps readers learn that Truth does not reside within the performer or the music, but is located in the space where the two are in sync: “An ‘authentic’ performance of Chopin is one that is not only ‘true’ to Chopin and the stylistic conventions of his times, but also ‘true’ to the performer’s innermost being.”While Tan and Lu’s argument places Truth in both music and the innermost self (xing) of the performers, herein lies an assumption that qualities aligned with the music are ethically good, whereas those that differ are not. The search for Truth is thus a task of refusing any potential influence by “unethical thoughts” in order to stay true to the music. Recognizing the existing norms guiding various music traditions, I wonder how ethical and unethical thoughts are understood in music classrooms. As a music teacher, if unethical thoughts are interpreted as materials and expressions that are different or irrelevant to the music work, how do music teachers make sense of students’ feelings—whether they are the longing for a sense of belonging in the school ensemble or the desire to excel in certain aspects of school life? Are these feelings or desires “unethical” because they are separate from the musical work? If all acts dedicated to the faithful representation of the music work are considered ethical, how about the different needs of different students?Furthermore, in describing “Search for Ethical Awakening,” Tan and Lu stated that music written for the guqin is often associated with moral stories. Learning about the stories associated with music would be mandatory for performers to be morally and spiritually attuned to the composer. While I agree with the authors... (shrink)

___ (i) There is a difference between hearing Clyde play the piano and seeing him play the piano. ___ (ii) A perceptual belief that he is playing the piano must also be distinguished from a perceptual experience of this same event.

The paper, as Part I of a two-part series, argues for a hybrid formulation of the semantic view of scientific theories. For stage-setting, it first reviews the elements of the model theory in mathematical logic (on whose foundation the semantic view rests), the syntactic and the semantic view, and the different notions of models used in the practice of science. The paper then argues for an integration of the notions into the semantic view, and thereby offers a hybrid semantic view, (...) which at once secures the view's logical foundations and enhances its applicability. The dilemma of either losing touch with the practice of science or yielding up the benefits of the model theory is thus avoided. (shrink)

For over a century, drawing from observation, at least at the introductory level, has been integral to many secondary and most post-secondary art school programs in Europe and North America. Its place in such programs is understood to develop an ability to see and interpret on a flat surface the real, three-dimensional world; this skill, in turn, provides support to related mental processes such as memory, visualization, and imagination. Where an artist looks when drawing from observation may not be arbitrary (...) and can be observed, quantified, and analyzed. Our interest in examining the first few minutes of the drawing process takes its lead from the novice’s question, "Where should I begin?" Attempting to understand these first few minutes led to a collaborative study between art educators and cognitive-perceptual psychologists: the former interested in implications for practical pedagogy, the latter in applying expertise in eye movement and scientific methodology in service of a specific real-world question. The stated purpose of the study notwithstanding, contrasting histories and practices in art and science provided contexts for discussion beyond the collection and interpretation of data. This article seeks to report upon and further that discussion. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

The book entitled the Huang Ti nei ching [Canonical Works of Huang Ti] has two sections - the "Su Wen" section and the "Ling Shu" section - and each section contains eighty-one articles. It was written by several authors in different historical periods. According to historical records and scholars' studies of the content and context of the book, we can roughly say that it was written in the period between the late years of the Warring States era and the early (...) years of the Eastern Han dynasty. Seven articles in the "Su Wen" section were materials from an "older version" and were merged into the book by Wang Fing in the Tang dynasty. They were probably written by scholars in the Eastern Han period or a little later. The two articles on acupuncture and pathology have been proved forgeries made in the Tang-Sung period. They should not have been included in the book because they contain more idealist dregs than do the other articles. (shrink)

The longitudinal, qualitative study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Chinese university emerging adults by analyzing their personal life stories, reflective journals, and semi-structured interview data collected over a 2-year period. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify five themes: maturity, academic performance, interpersonal communication skills, social support network, and sense of loss. The study found that the growth in emerging adulthood was dynamic, positive, and multifaceted. The study demonstrated that writing personal life stories, as a practice of (...) meaningful literacy instruction in EFL contexts, helped students to record a memorable past, reconcile with the past, and strive for personal growth. These findings suggest that emerging adults’ personal growth be stressed in foreign language teaching to promote Chinese university emerging adults’ growth and development. It is also suggested that personal life stories be used in foreign language teaching under the guidance of meaningful literacy instruction. (shrink)