This paper investigates Negative Concord, arguing that it results from a systematic lexical ambiguity: the items that participate in Negative Concord ("n-words" in Laka's 1990 terminology) are ambiguous between negative polarity items and their genuinely negative counterparts. I try to show that on empirical grounds the proposed account compares favorably with other analyses that shy away from ambiguity. I furthermore suggest that the ambiguity is not implausible conceptually because it can be viewed as reflecting (...) an intermediate stage of the Jespersen Cycle. Negative Concord can be observed in many languages. The data discussed here are taken from Romance, primarily Spanish. (shrink)

In the Linguistics Companion, Blackwell, Oxford. Available in on-line encyclopedia.

This paper addresses the two interpretations that a combination ofnegative indefinites can get in concord languages like French:a concord reading, which amounts to a single negation, and a doublenegation reading. We develop an analysis within a polyadic framework,where a sequence of negative indefinites can be interpreted as aniteration of quantifiers or via resumption. The first option leadsto a scopal relation, interpreted as double negation. The secondoption leads to the construction of a polyadic negative quantifiercorresponding to the (...) concord reading. Given that sentential negationparticipates in negative concord, we develop an extension of thepolyadic approach which can deal with non-variable binding operators,treating the contribution of negation in a concord context assemantically empty. Our semantic analysis, incorporated into agrammatical analysis formulated in HPSG, crucially relies on theassumption that quantifiers can be combined in more than one wayupon retrieval from the quantifier store. We also considercross-linguistic variation regarding the participation ofsentential negation in negative concord. (shrink)

Concord describes a natural language phenomenon in which a single logical meaning is expressed syntactically on multiple lexical items. The canonical example is negative concord, in which multiple negative expressions are used, but a single negation is interpreted. Formally similar phenomena have been observed for the redundant marking of distributivity and definiteness. Inspired by recent dynamic analyses of these latter two phenomena, we extend a similar dynamic analysis to negative concord. We propose that (...) class='Hi'>negative concord items introduce a discourse referent, but then test that no discourse referent has been introduced in any assignment. These apparently contradictory requirements are licensed with split scope around negation: introduction occurs below negation; the test appears above it. The analysis successfully predicts that negative concord items must be licensed by a sufficiently local negative operator. We further show that modulation of what is at-issue can account for cases in which NC items themselves carry negative force. (shrink)

Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn’t warn nobody about the floods (meaning “the news anchor warned nobody”), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn’t warn anybody about the floods, are prescriptively correct. Because acceptability is often equated with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in “Standard” or standardized English (...) (SE). However, it is possible that SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g., nobody ), NPIs (e.g., anybody), and bare plurals (e.g., people ), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants’ acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any -NPIs in English. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that a general theory of negative concord (NC) should allow for the possibility of NC involving scoping of a universal quantifier above negation. I propose that Greek NC instantiates this option. Greek n-words will be analyzed as polarity sensitive universal quantifiers which need negation in order to be licensed, but must raise above negation in order to yield the scoping ∀¬. This gives the correct interpretation of NC structures as general (...) class='Hi'>negative statements. The effect is achieved by application of QR, and the account is fully compositional, as only sentence negation is the vehicle of logical negation ¬. Greek n-words are also compared to nwords in Romance, Slavic, and Hungarian. This analysis, if correct, has two important.. (shrink)

Positive polarity items (PPIs) are generally thought to have the boring property that they cannot scope below negation. The starting point of the paper is the observation that their distribution is significantly more complex; specifically, someone/something-type PPIs share properties with negative polarity items (NPIs). First, these PPIs are disallowed in the same environments that license yet type NPIs; second, adding any NPI-licenser rescues the illegitimate constellation. This leads to the conclusion that these PPIs have the combined properties of yet-type (...) and ever-type NPIs: what appears to be a prohibition is nothing but “halfway licensing”. The paper goes on to propose a unification of the analyses of rescuable PPIs, NPIs, and negative concord, and questions the grounding of polarity sensitivity in the scalar or the referential semantics of the items involved. (shrink)

The impacts of COVID-19 may be magnified in a shared environment like the household, especially with people spending extended time at home during the pandemic. Family resilience is the ability of a family to adapt to crisis and can be a protective factor against stress and negative affect. While there have been calls to address family resilience during the pandemic, there is a lack of empirical study on its benefit. In this dyadic observational study, we sought to investigate the (...) concordance of family members’ psychological responses to COVID-19, whether dyad members’ risk factors mutually affected each other’s psychological responses, and importantly, whether family resilience was a significant factor in these responses. A total of 200 family dyads from the same household completed the Family Resilience Assessment Scale and questionnaires on COVID-19 threat perception, impacts, and exposure. We found concordant dyad responses for COVID-19 threat perception, but not for psychological impact. Using the Actor-Partner-Interdependence Model framework, we found that one’s psychological impact was affected by the financial impact from both dyad members. After controlling for risk factors and demographic covariates, we found that family resilience significantly associated with lower COVID-19 psychological impact, though not with threat perception. The findings suggest that both family and individual factors need to be addressed and there may be benefit in addressing multilevel risk and protective factors using an ecological systems approach, which may help prepare the population for future crises. (shrink)

Based on the novel data collected through original fieldwork on five syntactic phenomena (the position of the finite verb in embedded clauses, in sentences with a modal verb, negative concord, position of focused light/heavy objects in main clauses with a complex tense, scrambling) in the heritage language Mòcheno, we show that i) there exist two populations – one exhibiting intra-speaker variation between German and Italian word orders, and one lacking it; ii) these two populations are the result of (...) diatopic variation and, to a lesser extent, of diastratic variation. The results reached through quantitative statistical analysis are partially convergent with those arrived at by traditional theoretical syntax on Mòcheno, but our analysis has allowed us to shed new light on a series of so-far neglected or poorly understood phenomena. More specifically, we discovered that there exists micro-variation fed by diastratic (age) variation within the Roveda variety, which represents the only case in Mòcheno in which age is a relevant factor in determining variation. We also showed that the traditional claim that the Palù variety is “more German” than the other Mòcheno variety is surely to be confirmed, but we could refine it by showing that German word orders are also accepted by speakers of other varieties and that the acceptability of these word orders in competition with the Italian syntax is not fed by the age of speakers (no diastratic variation). Finally, we showed that the acceptance of German word orders across speakers varies according to the phenomenon investigated: negation is the phenomenon in which German word orders are more likely to be accepted, whereas embedded clauses are the phenomenon in which German word orders are more likely to be rejected. (shrink)

(2) Peter wollte Potsdam nicht verlassen bevor das Projekt in ruhigem Fahrwasser war. There are other well-known examples of non-interpreted negation, viz. cases of so-called negative concord in Slavic and Romance languages, but also in dialects of German and English. But arguably, in those cases the “superfluous” negation has to be present for grammatical reasons, which is not the case here. I will show that the negation is in fact interpreted, and that, due to a complex interplay of (...) semantic and pragmatic factors, we do get truth conditions for the two sentences that are not quite identical, but very similar. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of understanding locality restrictions on the distribution of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) as a consequence of covert movement. The present proposal restates Linebarger’s Immediate Scope Constraint in terms of morphology-driven checking requirements. These requirements cannot be met if a blocking element intervenes between the NPI feature and its morphosemantic licenser at Logical Form (LF). The empirical generalization is that the class of NPI ‘blocking expressions’ (a.k.a. ‘interveners’) overlaps to a large extent with (...) interveners identified in wh-questions. Therefore, the same grammatical checking mechanisms operating in that domain, rather than the presence of an implicature, are here shown to be responsible both for apparent violations to Linebarger’s constraint (contra Linebarger) and for intervention effects (contra Krifka, 1995, and Chierchia, 2004). This approach is argued to be superior on empirical grounds as it predicts facts that are left unaccounted for in a theory like Linebarger’s, where pragmatics rescues otherwise ill-formed structures. In addition, the proposal allows us to view the locality constraints operating in the domain of NPI-licensing as an instance of more general (though yet to be fully understood) principles of the grammar whose effects are attested in other domains, such as wh-questions in German, Discourselinked (D-linked) wh-questions in English, and Negative Concord (NC) configurations (e.g. in Italian and French). (shrink)

The authors explore Carnap’s (1931) famous critique of Heidegger’s metaphysics and argue that, from the perspective of contemporary formal semantics of natural language, Carnap’s criticism is not convincing. Moreover, they provide direct empirical objections to Carnap’s criticism. In particular, using empirical evidence from languages like Russian that have negative concord, they show that Heidegger cannot be accused of assigning illegitimate logical forms to his sentences about Nothing because terms like “Nothing” can be used non-quantificationally and the fact that (...) it is not clear how their reference is established cannot be the reason why the corresponding sentences are ungrammatical (as Carnap seemed to suggest). The authors also critically discuss the view that natural language is insensitive to meaninglessness or contradiction. With reference to the work of J. Gajewsky, they show that this view is not true either. As a result of this investigation, they arrive at a position that an appeal to ungrammaticality like the one proposed by Carnap does not provide legitimate evidence against metaphysics. This conclusion relates to some recent criticism of the so-called non-analytical philosophers that can be traced back to Carnap’s paper. (shrink)

This paper considers negative triggers and the interpretation of simple sentences containing more than one occurrence of those items . In the most typical interpretations those sentences have more negative expressions than negations in their semantic representation. It is first shown that this compositionality problem remains in current approaches. A principled algorithm for deriving the representation of sentences with multiple negative quantifiers in a DRT framework is then introduced. The algorithm is under the control of an on-line (...) check-in, keeping the complexity of negation auto-embedding below a threshold of complexity. This mechanism is seen as a competence limitation imposing the ‘abrogation of compositionality’ observed in the so-called negative concord readings . A solution to the compositionality problem is thus proposed, which is based on a control on the processing input motivated by a limitation of the processing mechanism itself. (shrink)

The article explores the religious and philosophical origins of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s ideas of “honesty with oneself,” “omnilateral liberation,” and “concordism.” Two treatises, Vidrodzhennia natsii (Rebirth of a Nation, 1919–1920) and Konkordyzm. Systema buduvannia shchastia (Concordism. A System of Building Happiness, 1938–1945), illustrate the development of Vynnychenko’s worldview. In the first work, social revolution was considered as the answer to human problems, while, in the second, such a solution was found in becoming one with the universe. Despite his negative attitude (...) towards religion, Volodymyr Vynnychenko actively used religious images and patterns in his writings. For instance, criticizing Christianity for its dogmatism, he nevertheless created his codex of thirteen rules of concordism, which had to harmonize the unbalanced forces of mankind with the universe. In this context, particular attention is paid to the significant influence of pagan concepts on Vynnychenko’s thinking. (shrink)

Kierkegaard and Luther reveals what Kierkegaard lauded, lanced, missed, and misjudged of Luther and spotlights the concord the two actually shared, namely, the negative yet necessary role that Christian suffering (Anfechtung) plays in Christian life.

How can one be a good person? That, in essence, is the question I ask in this dissertation. More specifically, I ask how we, in general, can best go about the complex and never-ending task of trying to figure out what we should do and then do it. I answer that question in four articles, each dealing with an aspect of the model of morality presented by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The title of the dissertation, ‘How (...) to be a good sentimentalist’, thus refers to that particular philosophical framework. However, the answers I give should be relevant to any person concerned with how to be a good person. The first article, Moral Tuning, deals with the first part of the question, namely how we can best go about figuring out what it is that we should and should not do. Specifically, it deals with the question of whether, and if so how, individuals like you and I can critically reflect upon the norms of our own society, sorting the chaff of merely conventional norms from the wheat of genuinely moral ones. In brief, it is the question of whether we as individuals are autonomous in our relation to the norms of our own society. In answering this question, my co-authors and I argue that Smith’s use of musical metaphors in TMS, words like tone, pitch, and concord, can be understood as elements of an analogical model of morality. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith’s musical metaphors, which have seen music as an aesthetic object, we draw on recent developments in musicology to argue that music may also be construed as a practice. Construing the source domain of this analogical model as musical practice allows us to construe the target domain also as a practice—as moral tuning. This in turn allows us to argue that moral autonomy consists in realising the freedom inherent in the constant need to translate norms into action, and in so doing, to interpret and reinterpret, not only the actions, but the norms themselves. In other words, following the norms of our own society already implies that we are autonomous in relation to them. Being good sentimentalists thus begins with realising that we are free to question and reshape the moral standard of our own society. The second article, Love Redirected, deals with the second part of the question, namely how we can best go about doing what we already think we should do. This, then, is a question of moral motivation, more specifically a question about the difference between genuinely moral motivation and other kinds of motivation, like a selfish desire for praise. Smith himself argues that we not only desire the actual praise of other people, but to be worthy of their praise, to be ‘praiseworthy’. The desire to be praiseworthy, the ‘love of praiseworthiness’ is then the genuinely moral motivation, for it aims at nothing but the satisfaction of having done the right thing. The trouble with Smith’s answer is that he does not adequately connect his claim about praiseworthiness to the rest of his model. This has lead to some confusion in the secondary literature, and in the first part of Love Redirected, I seek to end this confusion by combining what Smith says in the various editions of TMS into a coherent argument for how the desire to be praiseworthy comes from redirecting our desire for praise from other people towards the ideal of the ‘impartial spectator’. I then go on to show how this reading also fits with modern psychological research on the moral development of children. Finally, I conclude that this redirection of our desire for praise requires not just negative, but positive emotional reinforcement. Therefore, becoming good sentimentalists involves taking pleasure in our moral successes, no less than we are pained at our failures. The third article, The Practical Impossibility of Being both Impartial and Well-informed, makes a first pass at dealing with the idea of the impartial spectator itself, an idea that is central to the answers given in the two first articles. The problem with the impartial spectator is that she is also supposed to be well-informed about those she judges. However, the demands of impartiality and of understanding pull in opposite directions: To be well-informed—to properly understand the situation and character of the person we judge—we must, typically, be sufficiently physically close to that person to see with our own eyes what they are going through. At the same time, this kind of physical closeness tends to entangle us in the kinds of emotional bonds that hinder an impartial evaluation. One might think that this tension could be eased or eliminated by relying less on physical closeness and more on the powers of our imagination to, as Smith frequently puts it, ‘bring home to us’ the situation of the person we are judging. However, using Construal Level Theory, I argue that merely imagining someone’s situation in detail and/or taking their perspective produces a similar effect to physical closeness, and hence that the tension between understanding and impartiality is practically inescapable. To be good sentimentalists, we must therefore recognise our limitations, and give up on the illusion of ever being fully understanding and perfectly impartial at the same time. The fourth article, The Partially Impartial Spectator as an Ethical Ideal, makes a second pass at dealing with the idea, or rather ideal, of the impartial spectator. It begins with the recognition that we frequently fail to be impartial spectators, both of others, and of ourselves. This is especially true in those cases where our views conflict with those of someone else. Building on research detailing the various ways in which cognitive and affective biases impact our perception of the world, our reasoning about our own views, and our ability to resolve disputes with others, I argue that merely trying harder to be impartial spectators is liable to backfire, rendering us just as biased as ever, to which is added an unshakeable confidence that we were right all along. Therefore, I go on to argue, we must try smarter. Trying smarter, I conclude, involves aiming for something less ideal, more achievable, and, most importantly, humbler, namely to be partially impartial spectators. Being a good sentimentalist thus beings with realising our freedom to interpret, continues in our taking pleasure in our moral successes, pauses at the realisation that we will never be truly impartial spectators, and ends with a commitment to continued improvement under the lodestar of the ideal of the partially impartial spectator. (shrink)

This article reports on a corpus-based study of the English translation of Wang Anyi’s award-winning novel, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow [长恨歌, Chang Hen Ge] from the perspective of style. Using the keyword and concordance functions of corpus software packages AntConc and ParaConc, this research focuses on how the translator’s style reveals itself in the target text as well as how the style of the source text is represented in the TT. Findings show that the translators have a preference for (...) contracted negative verb forms and expressions such as “bit” over “little,” making the text more colloquial. In general, the rendering of the ST style tends not to be entirely faithful. A distinction between reader-centered and text-centered keywords is made. While the reader-centered ST keywords are, as expected, largely altered, the translation of text-centered ST keywords is also rewritten, contrary to expectations. Presumably, the translators tended to reduce the ambiguity of the ST, resulting in a more explicit TT. The article argues that the translators chose to rewrite the translation to make it more understandable for the target audience since it concerned a work from a source culture very different from the target culture. (shrink)

IntroductionCerebral visual impairment results from damage to cerebral visual processing structures. It is the most common cause of pediatric visual impairment in developed countries and rising in prevalence in developing nations. There is currently limited understanding on how neurologic, developmental, and ophthalmic factors predict outcome for pediatric CVI.MethodA retrospective manual chart review of pediatric CVI patients seen at the tertiary pediatric hospital neurology and neuro-ophthalmology service between 2010 and 2019 was conducted. Patients were stratified into severity groups, and followed over (...) time to identify outcome predictors. Collected baseline characteristics included perinatal, genetic, developmental, and neurologic history, along with neuroimaging and fundoscopic findings on examination. Longitudinal data collected included age, seizure control, and type of therapy received. Linear mixed-effect models were used for longitudinal CVI grade outcome analysis.ResultsA total of 249 individuals spanning 779 patient visits were identified. Mean age at diagnosis was 18.8 ± 16.8 months. About 64.3% were born at term age. Perinatal history revealed hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in 16.5%, intraventricular hemorrhage in 11.6%, and seizures in 21.7%. At presentation, 60.3% had a diagnosis of cerebral palsy and 84.7% had developmental delay. Among all subjects, 78.6% had epilepsy; 33.8% had an epileptic encephalopathy, with spasms/hypsarrhythmia being most common. Abnormal neuroimaging was present in 93.8%. Genetic anomalies were present in 26.9%. Baseline visual examination revealed no blink-to-light in 24.5%; only BTL in 34.5%, fixation/tracking in 26.5%, and optokinetic drum follow in 14.4%. Longitudinal data analysis showed that perinatal history of HIE, a positive epilepsy history, using multiple epilepsy medications, cerebral palsy, and abnormal fundoscopic findings were all negatively associated with CVI grade change over time. After controlling for significant confounders, receiving any type of therapy [early childhood intervention, physical and occupational therapy, refractive error correction or glasses] was significantly associated with longitudinal improvement in CVI grade compared to patients who did not receive any therapy, with glasses yielding the largest benefit.ConclusionThis study offers extensive insights into neurologic, developmental and ophthalmologic features in patients with moderate to severe CVI. In concordance with previous findings, aspects of perinatal history and epilepsy/seizure control may help inform severity and prognosis in the general neurology or ophthalmology clinic. Conversely, these aspects, as well as genetic and specific epilepsy traits may alert vision health care providers in the clinic to pursue visual evaluation in at-risk individuals. Longitudinal follow-up of CVI patients showed that interventional therapies demonstrated vision function improvement greater than no therapy and maturational development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BALTHASAR AND ECKHART: THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND CATHOLICITY CYRIL O'REGAN Yale University New Haven, Connecticut Or pleas'd to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a Fault, and hesitate Dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous Foe and a suspitious Friend 1 THE TENDENCY to avoid exclusion is a mark of the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. It represents an identifying habit, an incorrigible feature (...) of style and sensibility. His texts in which theologians, philosophers, poets, dramatists, and saints are christianly praised give testimony to a catholicity that barely brooks limits. Not only in true Gospel fashion are a multitude invited to the eschatological banquet, they constitute the vast medium of tradition, in which Maximus the Confessor rubs shoulders with Plato, in the company of Claudel, Calderon, and Therese of Lisieux. At different times Balthasar thinks of the tradition as one huge symphony in which notes sound only to be transcended and as a conversation between particular perspectives on the great mystery of redemption, no one of which is final and which meet only in the infinity of their object. The decision for plurality and variety in the tradition certainly validates difference and counts against its reduction.2 Yet at the same time tradition, precisely as a matter of variety, exhibits a measure of coherence or concordance that pro1 These couplets are from Alexander Pope's poem Atticus. See Minor Poems, ed. Norman Ault, completed by John Butt (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 143. 2 See, for example, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 39, 187, 251. 203 204 CYRIL O'REGAN hibits difference from becoming truly excessive. It is this prohibition of excessive difference in Balthasar's reading of tradition that I would like to examine here. I take as my case study of Balthasar's rhetoric of reading his conflicted response to Meister Eckhart, about whose inclusion in the Christian tradition Balthasar expresses no doubts, yet whose theological message is such as to cause anxiety. We shall occupy ourselves in this paper with the way in which Eckhart's nonnegotiable inclusion within the tradition serves to repress the account of those features that present a fundamental challenge, that represent difference that would make the Christian field radically heterogeneous. In the first two sections, focusing mainly on the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (=GL),3 I shall offer outlines of both the positive and negative contributions Eckhart is deemed to have made to the theological tradition. Though I do not wish to give the impression of Scholastic pro and contra, Balthasar's positive remarks being imbricated with the negative and vice versa, it will be suggested that the elements adduced in both cases constitute mirror images of each other. Balthasar takes a bifocal, though not stereoscopic, view of a group of five elements: aesthetic disposition, the sameness of Being and God, the whylessness of the divine, Gelassenheit, and Gottesgeburt. This group is in effect read twice, once in a way that affirms and confirms Eckhart's unproblematic inclusion in the tradition (section 1), and again in a way that, in the light of basic Christian principles, raises serious questions about such inclusion (section 2). In a final section the question is raised whether the conflict in interpretation suggests a deeper underlying conflict between Balthasarian commitment to Catholic theological principles and catholicity. I. BALTHASAR'S AFFIRMATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART On the surface there is little reservation about the approbation Eckhart receives in the fifth volume of The Glory of the 3 The Glory ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. S, The Realm ofMetaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, C.R.V., John Saward, and Rowan Williams, ed. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). BALTHASAR AND ECKHART 205 Lord. If the depths of Balthasar's analyses of the medievals in his volumes on metaphysics (vols. 4 & 5) never reach the level of his account of Anselm and Bonaventure in volume two, it would be caviling to suggest that his intention at the... (shrink)

The centenary of the Louvain Institute of Philosophy (which was founded to contribute to a renewal of philosophy within the Christian community „by adhering as closely as possible to the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas”) is the occasion for a critical examination of the particular form of Thomism developed by Désiré Mercier, the first president of the Institute. In Mercier's view, the appeal to Thomas can not be a submission to tradition or authority. Since philosophy is always a personal, free, rational (...) investigation, the only reason for adhering to a certain doctrine, is its intrinsic philosophical value. The mean argument for preferring Thomas „in philosophicis” is the fact that he „combines observation and rational-speculation, analysis and synthesis”, whereby all empirical facts are integrated and made intelligible in a larger metaphysical frame. By so doing Thomas avoids the extremes of empiricism, which leads to materialism, and idealism, which goes hand in hand with dualistic spiritualism. One may doubt whether this is a good characteristic of the „essence of Thomism”. However, Mercier follows Thomas, not so much for any original doctrine, but because he best represents the great scholastic tradition starting from Aristotle. This tradition should not be admired as an ideal of perfection that cannot be improved upon, but should be further developed and renewed, especially by integrating the achievements of modern experimental investigations within it. (Besides the sciences, we should expect not too much from modern philosophy, except in the discussion of the „critical problem”). Mercier thus bases his philosophical option for Thomism on his judgment that it better than any other philosophy offers a metaphysical synthesis within which the investigations of the modern sciences can be integrated, while at the same time being in concordance with the Christian view on man and world. However, when one studies the Thomism as elaborated in Mercier's manuals, it turns out that his attempt at integration fails. For there is no intrinsic link between the scientific findings he considers and the philosophical theses he develops. Herein lies the inherent weakness of the neo-scholastic construction as it was advocated by Mercier. When one defends Thomism by arguing that it offers a „comprehensive synthesis of all knowledge”', and at the same time one stresses the autonomy of scientific inquiry without apologetic intentions, one can expect that as these sciences develop, there will also arise the need for new conceptual schemes and new philosophical models which better fit these new findings. At that moment Thomistic doctrine also seems to fall away as a superfluous superstructure. One can argue that Mercier too easily understood philosophy as a „natural complement” of the sciences and that for that reason he could not really succeed in renewing Thomism. Most neothomists will try to base their option for Thomas upon the originality of his metaphysics. But this search for the „essence of Thomism” is problematic. At the end of the paper it is argued that no intrinsic philosophical arguments can be given for a normative preference for Thomas. The demand to philosophize „ad mentem Thomae” only makes sense when the relation of reason to faith is considered. As É. Gilson has shown, most neothomists were reluctant to develop this argument, except in a negative way : to argue for the autonomy of their philosophical (thomistic) arguments (although they were, in fact, motivated by a religious interest). (shrink)

Damascius of Damascus, last ‘Platonic successor’ in Athens, is rarely compared to one of his masters, namely Ammonius, the philosopher of Alexandria. When scholars do compare the two Neoplatonist philosophers, they usually focus on the negative picture of Ammonius, which is drawn by Damascius in his Philosophical History. In this paper, I argue that Damascius admired Ammonius’ intellectual endeavours and espoused a basic feature of the philosophical exegesis of his master, namely his concordism regarding the philosophies of Plato and (...) Aristotle, as is evident in Damascius’ surviving work on Plato and his (fragmentarily preserved) treatise On Time. Damascius’ downgrading of Ammonius came about rather as a disappointment, which is however by no means fully justified. (shrink)

The essay analyses the originality of Machiavelli's reflection about the conflict under the Prince's government, in order to point out concordances and differences with the role - more extensively studied - of conflict within a republic. The questions analysed are, first of ali, the Prince's necessity of foreseeing the institutional structures for the regulation of conflict; then, the issue of alliances for the Prince who, having taken the power with the support of the great or of the people, needs popular (...) support to maintain it; finally, the nature of the popular desire of not being oppressed, and particularly the fact that it is not only a negative desire, but rather contains an active tension to defend liberty. -/- . (shrink)

This article presents the results of an analysis of the large-scale processed texts of Arabic newspapers in the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Arabic Corpus Project. I adopted methods modified from the Biber Connor Upton Approach to retrieve the expanded concordances of the lexical units almarᵓa and alnisāᵓ from the corpus. The extracted text reveals the discursive patterns regarding a number of topics which are discussed in Arabic newspapers, namely, socio-culture and eco-politics. The results of the study show (...) how and why topics related to Arab women are discursively constructed, revealing negative patterns with regard to the topics discrimination, the veil, sports, male guardianship, driving, pro-divorce settlements and municipal elections, and positive patterns concerning the topics marital status, violence, education, travel, sexual harassment, the removal of male guardianship, employment, ministerial election and political participation. The specific case of the topic veil is subsequently analysed in more detail and the results reveal that the topic is associated with negative patterns within a wider socio-cultural discourse. (shrink)

continent. 2.3 (2012): 218–223 Vijay Prashad. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter . Oakland: AK Press. 2012. 271pp, pbk. $14.95 ISBN-13: 978-1849351126. Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a class entitled, quite simply, “Corporations,” taught by Vijay Prashad at Trinity College. Over the course of the semester, I was amazed at the extent of Prashad’s knowledge, and the complexity and erudition of his style. He has since authored a number of classic books that have gained recognition throughout the world. The Darker (...) Nations , a peoples’ history of the Third World, sent defibrillating shockwaves through an academic world that had almost forgotten the epic scope and historic dignity of the non-aligned movement and post-colonial struggles. In his recent, award-winning work, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , Prashad delves into his capacious knowledge of the Third World to excavate the discourses and narratives surrounding the upheavals of 2011. “Revolutions have no specific timetable,” states Prashad in the opening line of this exciting and provocative look at contemporary events. Instantly, an atmosphere of suspense emerges. The reader is alerted to the problem of history. Does the making of history then involve a suspension of historical time, or is it a continuous narrative structure into which events must eventually be integrated? Arab Spring, Libyan Winter shows that the answer to the question, “How is history made?” lies just as easily in the asking. The first half of the book works through the events that transpired to bring about the explosive popular uprisings of Arab Spring: Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But the events are not put together in a cohesive, chronological fashion. Using an uncommonly gripping style more akin to the folk-story motif of the djeli than to traditionally Orientalist academia, Prashad suspends a given situation, points out its components, and traces back the characters and genealogies that define each link before resuming a narrative. Every moment is an end to itself, and an origin of something different. Thus, the making of history becomes the suspension of its own progress, it’s catastrophic 'stability,' in a process of differentiation through inclusion. Empirically, one might suggest that history is a condition of time, and by extension, of the subject, but history is also an eminent producer of the Subject and her concept of time through memory and narrative. Hence, history is often overdetermined by a dominant narrative of the sovereign. The apparently chaotic composition of Prashad’s historicity is, then, an interstitial morphology of resistance. It illustrates that the time to act for the revolutionary lies in the gaps within the dominant historical realities. It points out the sorties of signifiers constituting nothing in the obliterated ruins of history. Through such illuminations, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter breaks through “the surface of history” to elaborate revolution’s snapping synapses, exploding interruptions and breaches, connecting flows. Messianic Politics It is tempting to think, 'History is either singular, or it is diffuse. It is either one coherent factual narrative, or it is comprised of the aletheia of the multitude.' Yet the reader finds Prashad examining the structure of history on multiple levels. For Prashad, world history is shaped by geographically defined political movements, such as communism or national liberation, with historical agents like the working class for the former and the nationalist militant for the latter. Religion, however, is another matter: “Religion has an unshakable eschatology which a post-utopian secular politics lacks.” Within the telos of religion, there appears on the horizon the image of Benjamin’s thoughts on messianic time—time as “a small fissure in the continuous catastrophe,” a break with history, may contain an ultimate redemption of the human beyond the political power struggle. Succoring the split between geo-political and utopian-religious (messianic) time in the context of Arab Spring, Prashad indicates that the base of “the deep desire and commitment to some form of democracy” is forged by the affinity between eschatological Islamist politics with the People. To think about the Subject of messianic time in the context of the lack of a “coherent timetable” for emancipatory politics, it is perhaps best to return to the modern tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose prefigurative blending of liberation theology and emancipatory politics became most important during his works of 1963, the climactic year of “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the March on Washington, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In “The Letter,” King states the point bluntly: Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The timing of rebellious action must not be a part of history. It must change history. The kairos appears spontaneous and untimely in its convulsive, shocking presence, yet it is, deeper still, a path, a longue durée , forged through diligent and rigorous praxis. King put a finer point on the path of historic liberation in his declaration in his 1963 speech at Western Michigan University: “[T]ime is neutral.... Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time. Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels on inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.” Time, then, exists in “the neutral,” while action must turn to the kairos , not only of taking time, but taking the right time. By turning our relation to time into kairos , we move time from its context within history to a duration between histories—the longue dure?e of Messianic time. The implementation of neutrality in this context suggests a broad space of time to extend through the valley of positive and negative. In Roland Barthes’s lectures from 1978, the neutral takes place in this minimal distance of non-conflict that exists outside of two extremes. It is, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, “the non-general, the non-generic, as well as the non-specific.” For Blanchot, the neutrality of time permeates life as death, impassive and beyond control; such is the neutrality of messianic time, which permeates the charge of history, changing the "I" into the "one." The neutrality of time therefore implicates history in a case against extremism, showing that the work of the radical is not to tend to any particular side, but to have the time to navigate through the terrible terrain of history by altering its course, its patterns and rhythms of movement, connection, sociality. Hence, one does not simply “make history,” one alters the course of history in accordance to “the right time.” The historical path toward emerging power is transmitted as a gesture to the outside of history, against history; a gesture as simple as reaching out. Thus a counterhistory, to use Foucault’s term, is brought forward as the guide of time past a point of no return, a Rubicon, the point where the normal path of history falls to the past. The subject, who must be the only true agent of history, facilitates time through helpfulness, and both the Subject and her history become decentered in relation to one another. Yet history negates the neutrality of time. As Barthes discloses, although the neutral is the “thought and practice of the nonconflictual, it is nevertheless bound to assertion, to conflict, in order to make itself heard.” Engaged with history, time is charged with a destiny, and becomes an opposition. As Prashad insists, “For Arab lands, the events of early 2011 were not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old.” The emergence of the Subject during Arab Spring did not conceive of a new history, but changed the path of history toward a different destiny. “Historical grievances combined with inflationary pressures now met with the subjective sense that victory might be at hand—this was not simply a protest to scream into the wind, but a protest to actually remove autocrats from their positions of authority. The facts of resistance had given way to the expectation of revolutionary change.” The negativity of this charge toward “revolutionary destiny” rendered control, as a positive force, seriously lacking. The lack of control lies in the problem that the Subject is not totally detemporalized or timeless, but untimely in her presence. The Subject is untimely, because her work is visionary, and it is only through such visionary work that the Rubicon can be crossed. Still, the crossing of this border is haunted by anxiety over an impending disaster that lays in wait. It is only through the form of what Benjamin calls divine violence, captivated not with the justice of the means, but the ends—the transformation of history—that a revelation of history’s traumatic foundations can be liberated, and patterns and rhythms of time developed throughout obscured traditions awakened. In this situation, the Subject appears to be outside of right, but setting the state to rights. Because her position is correct, in-so-far as the rebelling subject rebels due to a lack of recognition, her representation appears outside of the norm, which is mistaken as right. Therefore, such visionary work must be carried out through obscured traditions, underground, away from the surveillance of empire. Explaining his method from the start along the lines of Marx’s metaphor of the mole, Prashad insists, “It is the burrowing that is essential, not simply the emergence onto the surface of history.” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a book on uncharted networks of time, spread out over the 252 pages like an elaborate spider’s web of passages intertwining with and overwhelming the machinery of the state. Although untimely, Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan, or a Facebook or Twitter revolution. Prashad notes that the government’s suspension of these tools led to further radicalism by furthering communications through face-to-face encounters. In existential terms, Arab Spring might be thought of as a revolution of Being over techne , an uprising of the unchartable, infinite potential of the Other. The name of this Other is found in Chance. The faith of the revolution lies in the proper decentering of the subject, its giving to the Other of time, for only with respect to time does history actually appear on the horizon of the subject, rather than as an imposition. This time of historical agency appears as a moment when anything can happen—a revolutionary truth event where everything comes into question while being realized in its Otherness as a community of the people begins anew in the streets amidst discourse, friendship, reconfigurations of hegemony, and a becoming of a constituent power. Throwing a wrench into the gears of the “cobwebbed tradition” of Orientalism, the decentering of history in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a defining quality of its impassioned revolutionary cry. But perhaps the most paradigmatic points of the book emerge from the unexpected voices. To make the connection between the particular manifestations of revolutionary demands to the general historic terms of revolution, Prashad quotes an anonymous young Egyptian in Tahrir Square, who reminds us, “[T]he French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” Far from timelessness, the historicization of Arab Spring must exist precisely within the most uncanny appearance of time, as something that does not appear to come from the natural state of time as we know it, but in arriving has completely transformed the way that we understand time. Strange Monsters Revolution is never as simple as a revolt from below against a rusting structure of elites trying to remain in power. As with the French Revolution, Arab Spring consisted of complex familial ties, outside interests, and religious factions fighting alongside, often in awkward juxtaposition to, liberals, working class parties, farmers, and students. It is perhaps because of this historically difficult and incongruous composition that the Arabic word for revolution is thawra , referring to the image of the bull, or thawr , which has religious significance as a pagan deity for the Ancient Semitic tribes and Cartheginians. If Daniel Guérin was correct in saying, “Anarchism and Marxism drink from the same spring,” then it is quite a different oasis that drove the thirsty beast of revolution through what Prashad calls, “the Libyan labyrinth.” Recalling Bataille’s Acéphale, the intestinal labyrinth gains significance as the mode of metabolism and rumination in which, “(the Acephale) has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words, as a monster.” Unraveling the discourse of the revolution, the flows of power and hegemony—from Qaddafi’s nationalist coup in 1969 to the wars with Chad from 1978 to 1987, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s to, finally, the War on Terror—we find that the metabolic process of Libyan Winter ends in the production of oil. In a process of what Prashad calls “involution,” Qaddafi’s bellicose policies, along with his attempts to nationalize Islam together with oil, mutated the source of his power, turning his house against itself. Already a divided nation, with its two major cities on opposite geographic sides of the country, Libya became split between two opposed political powers—liberal reformists and staunch nationalists—as Qaddafi’s political disengagement manifested through what can only be described in psychoanalytic terms as a recursive passage a l’act (mysteriously calling Wikipedia “Kleenex,” declaring that opponents drank hallucinogens with their instant coffee, and so on). Prashad declares, “The mercurial style that Qaddafi adopted was not about his personality alone, but also a leader’s natural response to a system that relied upon power brokers whose own loyalty… did not have any ideological commitment to the system.” As in the case of other nations during Arab Spring, the true expression of revolt was an outward exposition of what had inwardly been happening in microcosmic societies throughout the realm—from indigenous tribes to political parties, for a century, the people, partly motivated by (and in resistance to) economic impositions of development, had been changing the traditional social compositions and participating in what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls, “the relative autonomy of the movement from the leaders.” It was this empowerment of political reconfigurations taking place under the context of new democratic assemblages that shocked the elites and evoked such a powerful response. Unlike Qaddafi’s awkward policy choices and rants, real acts of power from the West were clear and decisive. Prashad sets the stages of war and diplomacy, far removed from the deserts, mountains, and cities that forged the backdrop of popular politics. Taking place under the now-classic architecture of the “four pillars” of US interests—oil, the War on Terror, Israel, and the circumvention of Iranian hegemony—we find elites rubbing elbows in “Heliopolist cocktail parties and hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya” as well as the Concorde-Lafayette hotel in Paris, which provides the setting for a meeting of anti-Qaddafi figures consolidating their power. These scenes are buttressed with the careful portraiture of key historical actors. As Prashad brings the stage of history to life, we find the diplomats and liberals like Frank Wisner, whose career has brought him from Enron in the late 1990s to the Obama Administration, under the aegis of which he was meeting with Mubarak about military support during Arab Spring. We spy the provocateurs, for instance, gauche cavalier , Bernard Henri-Levy, who telephones Sarkozy from Benghazi about the need for more NATO air strikes. We follow the rebel military establishment as it suffers mysterious deaths and even more mysterious assents (like that of apparent CIA cohort, Khalifa Hifter). In each of these intriguing characters, we find different representations of the security state biopolitique: an oil-injected reification that drives Arab Spring from the resentment of rising food prices to the brink of implosion in Libyan Winter. Reminiscent of the scenes of Cold War soirées represented in old Bond films, the aristocratic fight for oil against democracy that was Libyan Winter presents a harsh truth that the new global crisis is simply the continuation of the old history: the global exploitation of capitalism waged against the imagination of the people. As Benjamin laments, “The labyrinth is the right path for the person who always arrives early enough at his destination. This destination is the marketplace.” Yet, “(t)he labyrinth is the habitat of… a humanity (a class) which does not want to know where its destiny is taking it.” Thus, the labyrinth leads, like the desert, only further into itself. As Blanchot explains, “The desert is even less certain than the world; it is never anything but the approach to the desert.” Only the visionary can take time out of the involution toward oblivion. It is here, in this approach to and escape from history, that we find ourselves within Benjamin’s Golgotha, Blanchot’s desert: A space of indeterminate uncertainty where we become familiar only with our own exile. Blanchot writes, “For the moderated and moderate man, the room, the desert, and the world are strictly determined places. For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite, even if he knows that it is not, all the more so since he knows it.” The desert, as allegory, provides an eschatology, a mortality in the destiny of Arab Spring. But any allegory of nature might lead to a labyrinthine eschatology (for example, in Bachelard, the forest presents "a limitless world"); the prescience of the untimely is always an uncanny acceptance of the infinite within the finite—the outside of what is understood. Transgenerational and occupied with the image of the future, the untimely makes otherness its home as it proceeds toward liberation. In the work of helping time navigate this dangerous passage of history, Prashad illustrates that the more violent break with history may have occurred in the peaceable struggles of Tahrir Square, and not in the military clashes of Qaddafi with his former Generals who defected to the CIA and NATO countries. It might be possible to suggest, then, that in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the historical subject of the people was drawn together in a Dionysian dance of different rhythms in the marvelous realm of the ancients, while we fear that the case of Libya suggests an Apollonian future where time, itself, may lay dying under the machinic hand of history. The properly Nietzschean inversion would follow: time is dead, for history has killed it. Yet, if time is dead, struck down in Golgotha, exposed in the desert, mauled by the thawra , it is only in the present sense that it is rendered impossible outside of the context into which the untimely has thrown us. Thus, if history becomes an art of revolution, life as being-towards-death (death as the provocation of the neutrality of time) becomes what Benjamin calls “the allegory of resurrection” through the glorious ruins of history. Prashad ends his work with a rousing finale: “The time of the impossible has presented itself. In Egypt, where the appetite for the possibilities of the future are greatest, the people continue to assert themselves into Tahrir Square and other places, pushing to reinvigorate a Revolution that must not die… For them the slogan is simple: Down with the Present. Long live the Future. May it be so.&rdquo. (shrink)

Illusions that produce perceptual suppression despite constant retinal input are used to manipulate visual consciousness. Here we report on a powerful variant of existing techniques, Continuous Flash Suppression. Distinct images flashed successively around 10 Hz into one eye reliably suppress an image presented to the other eye. Compared to binocular rivalry, the duration of perceptual suppression increased more than 10-fold. Using this tool we show that the strength of the negative afterimage of an adaptor was reduced by half when (...) it was perceptually suppressed by input from the other eye. The more likely the adaptor was completely suppressed, the larger the reduction of the afterimage intensity. Paradoxically, trial-to-trial visibility of the adaptor did not correlate with the degree of suppression. Our results imply that formation of afterimages involves neuronal structures that access input from both eyes, but that do not correspond directly to the neuronal correlates of perceptual awareness. (shrink)

In the space of barely more than five years, with the publication of four pathbreaking books, Slavoj Žižek has earned the reputation of being one of the most arresting, insightful, and scandalous thinkers in recent memory. Perhaps more than any other single author, his writings have constituted the most compelling evidence available for recognizing Jacques Lacan as the preemient philosopher of our time. In _Tarrying with the Negative_, Žižek challenges the contemporary critique of ideology, and in doing so opens the (...) way for a new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and ethnic struggle. Are we, Žižek asks, confined to a postmodern universe in which truth is reduced to the contingent effect of various discursive practices and where our subjectivity is dispersed through a multitude of ideological positions? _No_ is his answer, and the way out is a return to philosophy. This revisit to German Idealism allows Žižek to recast the critique of ideology as a tool for disclosing the dynamic of our society, a crucial aspect of which is the debate over nationalism, particularly as it has developed in the Balkans—Žižek's home. He brings the debate over nationalism into the sphere of contemporary cultural politics, breaking the impasse centered on nationalisms simultaneously fascistic and anticolonial aspirations. Provocatively, Žižek argues that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of our own enjoyment. Using examples from popular culture and high theory to illuminate each other—opera, film noir, capitalist universalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism—this work testifies to the fact that, far more radically than the postmodern sophists, Kant and Hegel are our contemporaries. (shrink)

Non-classical negations may fail to be contradictory-forming operators in more than one way, and they often fail also to respect fundamental meta-logical properties such as the replacement property. Such drawbacks are witnessed by intricate semantics and proof systems, whose philosophical interpretations and computational properties are found wanting. In this paper we investigate congruential non-classical negations that live inside very natural systems of normal modal logics over complete distributive lattices; these logics are further enriched by adjustment connectives that may be used (...) for handling reasoning under uncertainty caused by inconsistency or undeterminedness. Using such straightforward semantics, we study the classes of frames characterized by seriality, reflexivity, functionality, symmetry, transitivity, and some combinations thereof, and discuss what they reveal about sub-classical properties of negation. To the logics thereby characterized we apply a general mechanism that allows one to endow them with analytic ordinary sequent systems, most of which are even cut-free. We also investigate the exact circumstances that allow for classical negation to be explicitly defined inside our logics. (shrink)

Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to (...) the paradox: conversion, control, compensatory, meta-response, catharsis, and rich experience theories. (shrink)

Existing research on the financial implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for firms has predominantly focused on positive aspects of CSR, overlooking that firms also undertake actions and initiatives that qualify as negative CSR. Moreover, studies in this area have not investigated how both positive and negative CSR affect the financial risk of firms. As such, in this research, the authors provide a framework linking both positive and negative CSR to idiosyncratic risk of firms. While investigating these (...) relationships, the authors also analyze the moderating role of financial leverage of firms. Overall, analysis of secondary information for firms from multiple industries over the years 2000–2009 shows that CSR has a significant effect on the idiosyncratic risk of firms, with positive CSR reducing risk and negative CSR increasing it. Results also show that the reduction in risk from positive CSR is not guaranteed, with firms having high levels of financial leverage witnessing lower idiosyncratic risk reduction. (shrink)

We tested whether the impact of an organizational transgression on consumer sentiment differs depending on whether the organization is a nonprofit. Competing hypotheses were tested: that people expect higher ethical standards from a nonprofit than a commercial organization, and so having this expectation violated generates a harsher response and that a nonprofit’s reputation as a moral entity buffers it against the negative consequences of transgressions. In three experiments participants were told that an organization had engaged in fraud, exploitation of (...) women, or unethical labor practices. Consistent with the moral disillusionment hypothesis, decreases in consumer trust post-transgression were greater when the organization was described as nonprofit, an effect that was mediated by expectancy violations. This drop in trust then flowed through to consumer intentions and consumer word of mouth intentions. No support was found for the moral insurance hypothesis. Results confirm that nonprofits are penalized more harshly than commercial organizations when they breach consumer trust. (shrink)

Nguyen argues that only his radically pragmatic account and Sterken’s indexical account can capture what we call the positive data. We present some new data, which we call the negative data, and argue that no theory of generics on the market is compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. We develop a novel version of the indexical account and show that it captures both the positive data and the negative data. In particular, we argue (...) that there is a semantic constraint that, in any context, the semantic value of GEN is upward monotone and non-symmetric. On the other hand, the pragmatic account has difficulty accommodating the negative data. This is because no pragmatic principles have been developed that can explain the negative data. In the paper, we focus on only the pragmatic account and the indexical account, but our discussion has broad implications for the debate on generics: any empirically adequate accounts of generics must be flexible enough to accommodate the positive data and yet constrained enough to accommodate the negative data. (shrink)

(2009). How automatic is “automatic vigilance”? The role of working memory in attentional interference of negative information. Cognition & Emotion: Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 1106-1117.

Negative disjunctivists like Mike Martin and Bill Fish understand hallucinations in purely epistemic terms, and do not attribute phenomenal character to these visual misfires. However, the approaches by Martin and Fish are importantly different, and there has been little systematic work on how negative disjunctivism is motivated. In this paper, I argue for a version of negative disjunctivism that centers on the idea that perception involves the exercise of a fallible self-conscious capacity. I claim that this at (...) once explains hallucinations in purely negative terms that are close to Martin’s approach, while at the same time providing negative disjunctivism with an explanatory basis that Fish attempts to provide and Martin’s view lacks. (shrink)

In problem solving research insights into the relationship between monitoring and control in the transfer of complex skills remain impoverished. To address this, in four experiments participants solved two complex control tasks that were identical in structure but varied in presentation format. Participants learnt either to solve the second task, based on their original learning phase from the first task, or learnt to solve the second task, based on another participant’s learning phase. Experiment 1 showed that, under conditions in which (...) participants’ learning phase was experienced twice, performance deteriorated in the second task. In contrast, when the learning phases in the first and second tasks differed, performance improved in the second task. Experiment 2 introduced instructional manipulations that induced the same response patterns as Experiment 1. In Experiment 3 further manipulations were introduced that biased the way participants evaluated the learning phase in the second task. In Experiment 4, judgments of self-efficacy were shown to track control performance. The implications of these findings for theories of complex skill acquisition are discussed. (shrink)

An influential argument due to Elliott Sober, subsequently strengthened by Denis Walsh and Joel Pust, moves from plausible premises to the bold conclusion that natural selection cannot explain the traits of individual organisms. If the argument were sound, the explanatory scope of selection would depend, surprisingly, on metaphysical considerations concerning origin essentialism. I show that the Sober-Walsh-Pust argument rests on a flawed counterfactual criterion for explanatory relevance. I further show that a more defensible criterion for explanatory relevance recently proposed by (...) Michael Strevens lends support to the view that natural selection can be relevant to the explanation of individual traits. (shrink)