The term āśraya is used in manifold ways in the Abhidharmakośa and its bhāṣya. This comes from the fact that its basic meaning, indicating anything on which something else depends or rests, is quite generic. Despite the plasticity of its usage, we can find some recurring and distinct technical applications of the term in the AK, which I explore in my paper. First, I look at its usage of characterising a member of various asymmetric dependence relationships on which the arising (...) and sometimes also the persistence of the other relatum depends. Through examining the nature of various āśraya-āśrita dependence relations the AK discusses, I show that āśraya stands for an entity that determines the fundamental nature of the thing it supports. In the second half of the paper, I move on to those occurrences of the term where āśraya has a specific referent. While āśraya can refer to the six sense faculties individually, it can also stand for them collectively pointing towards its widespread meaning as ‘psychophysical basis’. In this context, the focus often shifts either to the material or the mental elements that make up a sentient being. I will dedicate special attention to the discussion of the transformation of the basis, where, on my reading, it is more natural to interpret āśraya as referring primarily to the mind, with its bodily connotations being marginal. (shrink)

The contemporary agonist thinker, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflicts are constitutive of politics. However, this position raises the question that concerns the survival of order and the proper types of conflicts in democracies. Although Mouffe is not consensus-oriented, consensus plays a role in her theory when the democratic order is at stake. This suggests that there is a theoretical terrain between the opposing poles of conflict and consensus. This can be discussed with the help of concepts and theories that seem (...) to be standing between the two, namely compromise, debate and the borders of democracy. I will argue that we can reveal this position with the theoretical analysis of compromise in the works of F. R. Ankersmit on the historical origin of representative democracy, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson on the role of compromise in divided communities. J. S. Mill’s view of colliding opinions offers a moderate agonistic understanding of politics, while the concept of debate plays a similar role for Márton Szabó, a contemporary Hungarian political theorist. Finally, Mouffe’s position stands at the conflictual end of this spectrum, although conflicts are delimited on the normative ground of democracy. (shrink)

Un des objectifs des niveaux élémentaire et indépendant du Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues (CECRL) est d’amener l’apprenant — alors qu’il n’est pas encore un utilisateur autonome de la langue — à être capable d’interagir dans les situations authentiques de la vie quotidienne. Or, la plupart des matériaux pédagogiques consacrés à ces niveaux ne présentent qu’un échantillonnage partiel et souvent incomplet du langage authentique. Dans cet article, nous proposons une méthodologie dédiée, d’une part, à la construction de (...) corpus thématiques à des fins pédagogiques aux niveaux A1+ à B1 du CECRL et, d’autre part, à l’identification du vocabulaire-clé associé.Notre approche repose sur une sélection thématique de textes allemands selon les sujets définis par le CECRL afin de créer (1) un corpus ciblé et (2) de taille relativement faible, (3) regroupant des textes (quasi-)authentiques, adaptés aux niveaux des apprenants. En accord avec les résultats issus de la linguistique de corpus, soulignant la place centrale des unités multi-lexicales (UML) dans la construction du vocabulaire, le vocabulaire-clé tiré de cette collection consiste en UML plutôt qu’en mots individuels. Le procédé de sélection est illustré à travers l’exemple concret d’un sous-thème de la catégorie « Essen und Trinken » (Nourriture) du CECRL formé à partir d’un corpus de critiques de restaurants. Nous concluons par le constat que cette approche empirique peut mener à un changement dans la perception de la nature du vocabulaire-clé susceptible d’être présenté aux apprenants aux niveaux de compétences linguistiques inférieurs. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of (...) the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

Despite their central role in the construction and development of the market for virtues as well as in the design, implementation, and evaluation of corporate sustainability strategies and governmental sustainability policies, sustainability consultants remain at best “hidden” corporate change agents. In this paper, we bring sustainability consultants back to the fore to account for how these actors discreetly regulate and shape contemporary sustainability transformations from the outside-in. We do so first by unpacking various roles of consultants as engineers, market builders, (...) power vehicles, boundary workers, issue translators, and soft regulators; then we conceptualize how, through these roles, they contribute to empowering, legitimizing but also potentially supplanting and undermining the activities of corporate change agents operating inside corporations. We finally propose some research orientations for studying further the role of sustainability consultants in corporate transformations toward sustainability. (shrink)