The current study investigates the effects of green advertising and a corporation’s environmental performance on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. A 3 × 3 (firm’s environmental performance and its advertising efforts as independent variables) experiment using n = 302 subjects was conducted. Results indicate that the negative effect of a firm’s low performance on brand attitudes becomes stronger in the presence of green advertising compared to general corporate advertising and no advertising. Further, when the firm’s environmental performance is high, both (...) green and general corporate advertising result in more unfavorable brand attitudes than no advertising. The study’s counter-intuitive findings are explained by attribution theory. (shrink)

I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others' behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentions addressed to them. Thus, learning about actual modes of (...) communication benefits from, and is guided by, infants' preparedness to detect infant-directed ostensive communication. (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)

Heyes's proposed study for testing whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind is too strong because it requires that the animals apply mental concepts to the interpretation of both their own experiences and the behaviours of others, and too weak because dispositional rather than representational understanding of “ seeing ” is sufficient to pass it.

The Speech Act of Referring. According to the speech-act theory whenever we utter a sentence, we perform two acts: the act of referring and that of predicating. By referring, we set out an object that we speak of, and by predicating, we attribute a feature to the object. My paper is a short presentation of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning and Bertrand Russell's theory of description. I will try to outline the core concepts and thoughts/arguments that even today define the (...) debate about reference in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

We review studies of an evolution operator ℒ for a discrete Langevin equation with a strongly hyperbolic classical dynamics and a Gaussian noise. The leading eigenvalue of ℒ yields a physically measurable property of the dynamical system, the escape rate from the repeller. The spectrum of the evolution operator ℒ in the weak noise limit can be computed in several ways. A method using a local matrix representation of the operator allows to push the corrections to the escape rate up (...) to order eight in the noise expansion parameter. These corrections then appear to form a divergent series. Actually, via a cumulant expansion, they relate to analogous divergent series for other quantities, the traces of the evolution operators ℒn. Using an integral representation of the evolution operator ℒ, we then investigate the high order corrections to the latter traces. Their asymptotic behavior is found to be controlled by sub-dominant saddle points previously neglected in the perturbative expansion, and to be ultimately described by a kind of trace formula. (shrink)

Barresi & Moore fail to provide a satisfactory account for the development of social understanding because of (1) their ambiguous characterization of the relationship between the intentional schema and shared intentional activities, (2) their underestimation of the representational capacities of infants, and (3) their overreliance on the simulationist assumption that understanding others is tantamount to sharing their experience.

The aim of this paper is to provide a logic-based conceptual analysis of the twin paradox (TwP) theorem within a first-order logic framework. A geometrical characterization of TwP and its variants is given. It is shown that TwP is not logically equivalent to the assumption of the slowing down of moving clocks, and the lack of TwP is not logically equivalent to the Newtonian assumption of absolute time. The logical connection between TwP and a symmetry axiom of special relativity is (...) also studied. (shrink)

Discussions of the exilic body in Hollywood cinema have tended to focus on the personal trajectories of émigré actors in the context of the broader history of the industry in which they achieved st...

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too (...) narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner. (shrink)

According to recent work in experimental philosophy, folk intuitions concerning various metaphysical issues are heavily teleological. The experiments in question, which belong to a broader research program in psychology about ‘promiscuous teleology’, have featured prominently in debates about the methodology of metaphysics, with some authors claiming that the folk’s teleological bias debunks everyday intuitions concerning composition, persistence, and organisms. The present paper argues for a possibility that is very rarely discussed in that debate, namely the idea that the folk’s intuitions (...) could be veridical. Our argument is based on an emerging naturalistic theory of biological functions called “the organismic view”. The gist of the organismic view is that biological systems are characterized by a special circular causal regime where each part of the system contributes to the boundary conditions of some other parts, as well as of the whole. We argue that teleological folk intuitions are veridical in the biological domain under such a view, and they are veridical in the social and artefactual domains under coherent extensions of the organismic view. (shrink)

The Limits of the Formal Treatment of Language. Within the philosophy of language, there is a distinction between the natural language philosophers and the ideal language philosophers. The distinction is drawn based on the way these philosophers reflect on language and the world. Natural language philosophers stress the context-based feature of meaning, while the ideal language philosophers emphasize the context-free feature of meaning. In my study I want to show that that even within the formal study of language, in the (...) apparent absence of any context, the notions of valuation and interpretation help us to understand the meaning of sentences. (shrink)

Volume 74 in the series Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung -/- Die vor-autonome und noch nicht auf das Feld der Künste beschränkte Ästhetik des ›langen 18. Jahrhunderts‹ strebte eine interdisziplinäre und internationale Kommunikationspraxis an, die eine universelle Verständigung unter den Menschen ermöglichen sollte. -/- Der Band versammelt Beiträge zu der europäischen Geschichte dieser anthropologisch ausgerichteten ästhetischen Kommunikation. Die Aufsätze der ersten Sektion beschäftigen sich mit der zeitgenössichen Theorie der ästhetischen Wissensvermittlung: Es wird die fachübergreifende (Proto-) Ästhetik Shaftesburys und Addisons, die (...) Sprachtheorie von Coleridge bzw. die schwierige Einbürgerüng der Disziplin ›Ästhetik‹ in Frankreich thematisiert. Im zweiten Teil beschäftigen sich zwei Aufsätze mit der Kommunikation durch Bilder, anhand der Analyse von Gemälden Jean-Siméon Chardins und Caspar David Friedrichs. Die Bedeutung des Bild- und Erzählstoffes ›Herkules am Scheideweg‹ für Wielands ästhetische Kommunikation wird hier ebenfalls behandelt. Die dritte Sektion enthält Untersuchungen zu zwei wichtigen Gattungen der ästhetischen Kommunikation. Es werden zunächst unterschiedliche Varianten des Genres Traumerzählung bei Johann Gottlob Krüger und Mihály Vörösmarty beleuchtet. Der Band schließt mit der Analyse von József Eötvös’ Künstlerroman Der Karthäuser. -/- Die Fallstudien tragen zu dem besseren Verständnis einer Ästhetik bei, die die Bildung der Menschen durch intersubjektive Kommunikation vorantreiben wollte. (shrink)

In natural sciences, the most interesting and relevant questions are the so-called why-questions. There are several different approaches to why-questions and explanations in the literature, however, most of the literature deals with why-questions about particular events, such as ``Why did Adam eat the apple?''. Even the best known theory of explanation, Hempel's covering law model, is designed for explaining particular events. Here we only deal with purely theoretical why-questions about general phenomena of physics, for instance ``Why can no observer move (...) faster than light?'' or ``Why are Kepler's laws valid?''. Here we are not going to develop a whole new theory of why-questions in physics. We will just touch upon some ideas and examples relevant to our subject. (shrink)

Intelligent sensors should be seamlessly, securely, and trustworthy interconnected to enable automated high-level smart applications. Semantic metadata can provide contextual information to support the accessibility of these features, making it easier for machines and humans to process the sensory data and achieve interoperability. The unique overview of sensor ontologies according to the semantic needs of the layers of IoT solutions can serve a guideline of engineers and researchers interested in the development of intelligent sensor-based solutions. The explored trends show that (...) ontologies will play an even more essential role in interlinked IoT systems as interoperability and the generation of controlled linkable data sources should be based on semantically enriched sensory data. (shrink)

Many argued (Accardi and Fedullo, Pitowsky) that Kolmogorov's axioms of classical probability theory are incompatible with quantum probabilities, and that this is the reason for the violation of Bell's inequalities. Szabó showed that, in fact, these inequalities are not violated by the experimentally observed frequencies if we consider the real, “effective” frequencies. We prove in this work a theorem which generalizes this results: “effective” frequencies associated to quantum events always admit a Kolmogorovian representation, when these events are collected through different (...) experimental setups, the choice of which obeys a classical distribution. (shrink)

For simplicity, most of the literature introduces the concept of definitional equivalence only for disjoint languages. In a recent paper, Barrett and Halvorson introduce a straightforward generalization to non-disjoint languages and they show that their generalization is not equivalent to intertranslatability in general. In this paper, we show that their generalization is not transitive and hence it is not an equivalence relation. Then we introduce another formalization of definitional equivalence due to Andréka and Németi which is equivalent to the Barrett–Halvorson (...) generalization in the case of disjoint languages. We show that the Andréka–Németi generalization is the smallest equivalence relation containing the Barrett–Halvorson generalization and it is equivalent to intertranslatability, which is another definition for definitional equivalence, even for non-disjoint languages. Finally, we investigate which definitions for definitional equivalences remain equivalent when we generalize them for theories in non-disjoint languages. (shrink)

Shahriar S. Afshar claimed that his 2007 modified version of the double-slit experiment violates complementarity. He makes two modifications to the standard double-slit experiment. First, he adds a wire grid that is placed in between the slits and the screen at locations of interference minima. The second modification is to place a converging lens just after the wire grid. The idea is that the wire grid implies the existence of interference minima, while the lens can simultaneously obtain which-way information. More (...) recently, Cramer argued that the experiment bolstered the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum mechanics. His argument scrutinizes Bohr’s complementarity in favor of TIQM. We analyze this experiment by simulation using the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics and find that it agrees with the wave-particle duality relation given by Englert, Greenberg and Yasin. We conclude that the use of Afshar’s experiment to provide a testbed for quantum mechanical interpretations is limited. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a new logic-based understanding of the connection between classical kinematics and relativistic kinematics. We show that the axioms of special relativity can be interpreted in the language of classical kinematics. This means that there is a logical translation function from the language of special relativity to the language of classical kinematics which translates the axioms of special relativity into consequences of classical kinematics. We will also show that if we distinguish a class (...) of observers in special relativity and exclude the non-slower-than light observers from classical kinematics by an extra axiom, then the two theories become definitionally equivalent. Furthermore, we show that classical kinematics is definitionally equivalent to classical kinematics with only slower-than-light inertial observers, and hence by transitivity of definitional equivalence that special relativity theory extended with “Ether” is definitionally equivalent to classical kinematics. So within an axiomatic framework of mathematical logic, wee xplicitly show that the transition from classical kinematics to relativistic kinematics is the knowledge acquisition that there is no “Ether”, accompanied by a redefinition of the concepts of time and space. (shrink)

The past is undeniably special for human beings. To a large extent, both individuals and collectives define themselves through history. Moreover, humans seem to have a special way of cognitively representing the past: episodic memory. As opposed to other ways of representing knowledge, remembering the past in episodic memory brings with it the ability to become a witness. Episodic memory allows us to determine what of our knowledge about the past comes from our own experience and thereby what parts of (...) the past we can give testimony about. In this article, we aim to give an account of the special status of the past by asking why humans have developed the ability to give testimony about it. We argue that the past is special for human beings because it is regularly, and often principally, the only thing that can determine present social realities such as commitments, entitlements, and obligations. Because the social effects of the past often do not leave physical traces behind, remembering the past and the ability to bear testimony it brings is necessary for coordinating social realities with other individuals. (shrink)

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, autonoetic character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs (...) about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events. (shrink)

The paper investigates and refines the proportionalist solution to the causal exclusion problem developed by Menzies and List. First and foremost, it explores the implications of their inter-level compatibility result. It is highlighted that in theory the inter-level causal compatibility of realizer and realized properties allows for scenarios where the higher-level property is multiply realized. By developing concrete illustrations, the paper proves this to be an empirically plausible option. Further non-trivial implications of the framework are unpacked to show that the (...) sensitivity of causal relations to background conditions is as important in deciding on the existence and the direction of exclusion as sensitivity to the realization of the cause. This insight also opens the way to further refinements: a richer reconceptualization of upwards exclusion and a plausible answer to a critic of the Menzies and List project. (shrink)

There is no room for pragmatic expectations about communicative interactions in core cognition. Spelke takes the combinatorial power of the human language faculty to overcome the limits of core cognition. The question is: Why should the combinatorial power of the human language faculty support infants' pragmatic expectations not merely about speech, but also about nonverbal communicative interactions?

Although the centrosome was first described over 100 years ago, we still know relatively little of the molecular mechanisms responsible for its functions. Recently, members of a novel family of centrosomal proteins have been identified in a wide variety of organisms. The transforming acidic coiled‐coil‐containing (TACC) proteins all appear to play important roles in cell division and cellular organisation in both embryonic and somatic systems. These closely related molecules have been implicated in microtubule stabilisation, acentrosomal spindle assembly, translational regulation, haematopoietic (...) development and cancer progression. In this review, I summarise what we already know of this protein family and will use the TACC proteins to illustrate the many facets that centrosomes have developed during the course of evolution. BioEssays 24:915–925, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues, in addition to other things, that the ontological arguments Polanyi provided for his ontological realism with respect to the levels of reality are insufficient. Although Margitay shows this correctly in the case of arguments from boundary conditions, his arguments are not that convincing against the unidentifyability thesis, the thesis that entity kinds on higher levels cannot be identified with descriptions given on lower levels. I argue that here Polányi relies (...) on a version of the multiple realizeability thesis and this argument can be reformulated in a stronger version against which the counterargument Margitay provides is insufficient. (shrink)