This volume suggests a novel treatment of context in the analysis of everyday interaction. On a theoretical level, it advocates a switch of focus from 'context' as a preestablished, monolithic category which constringes co-participants' verbal and nonverbal behaviour, to an active notion of 'contextualization': in order to make oneself understood, participants have to establish and maintain those shared contextual frames which in turn are relevant to the local interpretation of their verbal and nonverbal activities. On an empirical level, the volume (...) contains exemplary analyses that show how participants employ 'contextualization cues' of prosodic (rhythm, intonation, tempo, etc.) or nonverbal (gaze, gesture, etc.) nature in order to 'achieve context'.The volume is also an appraisal of the theory of contextualization developed by John Gumperz. In their contributions, researchers from various schools of research, such as conversation analysis, micro-ethnography, phonetics/phonology and metapragmatics, relate their work to this theory. (shrink)

The past twenty years have witnessed extensive collaborative research between computer scientists, logicians, linguists, philosophers, and psychologists. These interdisciplinary studies stem from the realization that researchers drawn from all fields are studying the same problem. Specifically, a common concern amongst researchers today is how logic sheds light on the nature of information. Ancient questions concerning how humans communicate, reason and decide, and modern questions about how computers should communicate, reason and decide are of prime interest to researchers in various disciplines. (...) _Words, Proofs and Diagrams_ is a collection of papers covering active research areas at the interface of logic, computer science, and linguistics. Readers of the volume will find traditional research on process logics, issues in formal semantics, and language processing. In addition, the volume also highlights a particularly new area where all three disciplines meet—the study of images and graphics as information carriers and the diagrammatic reasoning supported by them. (shrink)

Previous studies have highlighted that temporal source memory can be influenced by factors such as the individual’s age and the emotional valence of the event to be remembered. In this study, we investigated how the different points of view (POVs) from which an event is presented could interact with the relationship between age-related differences and emotional valence on temporal source memory. One hundred and forty-one younger adults (aged 18–30) and 90 older adults (aged 65–74) were presented with a series of (...) emotional videos shot from different POVs (first vs. third-person) in three sessions. In the fourth session, participants were asked to indicate in which session (1, 2, or 3) they viewed each video. The results indicated that the first-person POV amplified the effects of the emotional valence on temporal source memory. Only in this experimental condition, older adults “pushed away” negative stimuli by perceiving them as more distant in time, and “kept closer” positive stimuli by perceiving them as more recent. In comparison, younger adults “kept closer” positive stimuli. These findings add to the existing literature on the positivity effect on temporal source memory and highlighted the importance of considering the POV in relation to the emotional valence. (shrink)

Previous studies consistently showed age-related differences in temporal judgment and temporal memory. Importantly, emotional valence plays a crucial role in older adults’ information processing. In this study, we examined the effects of emotions at the intersection between time and memory, analysing age-related differences in a temporal source memory task. Twenty-five younger adults (age range 18–35), 25 old adults (age range 65–74), and 25 old–old adults (age range 75–84) saw a series of emotional pictures in three sessions separated by a one-day (...) rest period. In the fourth session, participants were asked to indicate in which session (1, 2, or 3) they saw each picture. Results showed that old–old adults tended to collocate negative pictures distant in time, while positive stimuli were remembered as more recent than real, compared to neutral pictures. To a lower extent, people over 65 showed the same pattern of results. In contrast, emotional valence did not affect younger adults’ temporal positioning of stimuli. Current findings fit well with the Socio-Emotional Selectivity Theory’s assumptions and extended the literature on the positivity effect to temporal source memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought PAUL OSKAR KRISTELLER WITHIN THE VAST AND COMPLEX area of Renaissance philosophy, the thought of Pietro Pomponazzi and of the entire Italian school of Aristotelianism of which he is the best known representative has not yet been studied in all its aspects? Apart from a number of recent studies, mostly Italian or American, there is an important (...) body of French studies on the subject that are distinguished by their ample documentation and by a general and consistent tendency of interpretation and that have exercised a predominant influence in this field of research. The fountainhead of this French scholarship on Renaissance Aristotelianism is E. Renan's book on Averroes and Averroism, a remarkable achievement for its time, and a classical study still worth reading after more than a hundred years have passed since it was first published. 2 It is generally recognized that Renan's conclusions about Averroes himself and about the Latin Averroism of the thirteenth century have been superseded by the later studies of P. Mandonnet and others? It is less well known that, for the This paper was read many years ago at the New England Conference on the Renaissance at Brown University, and at the Universit~ de Fribourg. It was published as "El Mito del Ateismo Renacentista y la Tradici6n Francesa del Librepensamiento" in Notas y Estudios de Filoso]la, ed. Prof. Juan Adolfo Vazquez, IV, 13 (Tucums Argentina, 1953), pp. 1-14. The present version has been only slightly revised, and I hope to return to the subject on a later occasion. Among recent studies, I should like to mention G. Spini, Ricerca dei l.,ibertini (Rome, 1950) and D. C. Allen Doubt's Boundless Sea (Baltimore, 1964), who follow on the whole the view criticized in this paper, and L. Febvre, Le problhme del lincroyance au XVI ~ si~cle (Paris, 1947) and R. H. Popkin, "Skepticism and the Counter-Reformation in France," Archiv ]iir Re]ormationsgeschichte LI (1960), 58-88, who seem to concur with my view. See also a paper by Popkin~"Skepticism, Theology and the Scientific Method in the 17th century," in Problem8 in the Phdosophy o] Science, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1968). 1See now B. Nardi, Saggi sull'Aristotelismo Padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence, 1958) and Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence, 1965); J. H. Randall, The School o] Padua and the Emergence o] Modern Science (Padua, 1961); P. Pomponazzi, De ]ato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione, ed. R. Lemay (Lugano, 1957); Tractatus de immortalitate animae, ed. G. Morra (Bologna, 1954); Corsi inediLi dell'insegnamento padovano I, Super libello de substantia orbis et quaestiones quattuor, ed. A. Poppi (Padua, 1966); P. O. Kristeller, "A New Manuscript Source for Pomponazzi's Theory of the Soul from his Paduan Period," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, V: 2 (16, 1951), 144-157,and "Two Unpublished Questions on the Soul by Pietro Pomponazzi," Medievalia et Humanistica, IX (1955), 76-101,and X (1956), 151. See also: G. Di Napoli, L'immortalit~ dell'anima nel Rinascimento (Turin, 1963); E. GiN ~L,, 3 son, Autour de Pomponazzi, Archives d histoire doctrinale et litt~raire du Moyen Age, c,,,, LXIII (1961, pub. 1962), 163-279and Laffaire de limmortalit~ de ls ~ Venise au debut 9,, du XVI si~cle, in Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano, ed. V. Branca (Florence, 1963), 31-61. Relevant are also the unpublished Columbia dissertations by William F. Edwards (on Zabarella), Martin Pine (on Pomponazzi and his critics) and Edward Mahoney (on Agostino Nifo). Averro$s et l Averro~me (Paris, 1852). 8Siger de Brabant et l'averroisme latin au XIII ~ si$cle (2nd ed.; Paris, 1908-11); F. Van [233] 234 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY history of Italian Aristotelianism after the thirteenth century, this book by Renan has never been completely superseded, but still constitutes the general basis for a large part of the later literature on the subject. Recent studies have added numerous details, but have failed to correct numerous errors and misconceptions. The main thesis of Renan's book on which we shall focus our attention in this paper is the following: Paduan Averroism... (shrink)

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)