Dynamical analysis, chaos suppression and electronic implementation of the synchronous reluctance motor without external inputs are investigated in this paper. The different dynamical behaviors found in the SynRM without external inputs are illustrated in the two parameters largest Lyapunov exponent diagrams, one parameter bifurcation diagram, and phase portraits. The three single controllers are designed to suppress the chaotic behaviors found in SynRM without external inputs. The three proposed single controllers are simple and easy to implement. Numerical simulation results show (...) that the three proposed single controllers are effective. Finally, the dynamical behaviors found in the SynRM without external inputs and the physical feasibility of the three proposed single controllers are validated through circuit implementation on OrCAD-PSpice software. (shrink)

Neurons encode and transmit signals through chemical synaptic or electrical synaptic connections in the actual nervous system. Exploring the biophysical properties of coupling channels is of great significance for further understanding the rhythm transitions of neural network electrical activity patterns and preventing neurological diseases. From the perspective of biophysics, the activation of magnetic field coupling is the result of the continuous release and propagation of intracellular and extracellular ions, which is very similar to the activation of chemical synaptic coupling through (...) the continuous release of neurotransmitters. In this article, an induction coil is used to connect two HR neurons to stimulate the effect of magnetic field coupling. It is inevitable that time delays can affect the coupling process in the transmission of information, and it should be considered in the coupled model. Firstly, the firing characteristics and bifurcation modes of two coupled HR neurons are studied by using one parameter and two parameters bifurcation. With the increase of propagation delay and coupling gain, the chaotic state of neurons disappears and the high-period window decreases due to the influence of energy transfer between neurons. Then, the synchronization patterns of two HR neurons with different stimulation are analyzed by error diagrams and time series diagrams. It is confirmed that the synchronous pattern has certain regularity and is related not only to the neurons with large stimulation current but also to the time delay and coupling gain. The research conclusions of this article will provide the corresponding theoretical basis for medical experiments. (shrink)

The pioneering analysis of synchronicity was given by Jung, yet despite the concept's momentous significance in Jung's work, and despite the widespread dissemination of the term 'synchronicity' even within pop culture, synchronicity is often badly misconstrued and remains "perhaps the least understood of Jung's theories". Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making has already been hailed as the most important analysis of synchronicity since Jung himself.

Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observational training contexts using a novel dance sequence. Using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis, movement time-series were recorded for novice (...) dancers who either synchronised with (n = 22) or observed and then imitated (n = 20) an expert dancer. Participants performed a 16-count choreographed dance sequence for 20 trials assisted by the expert, followed by one final, unassisted performance trial. Although end-state performance did not significantly differ between synchronous and non-synchronous learners, a significant decline in performance quality from imitation to independent replication was shown for synchronous learners. A non-significant positive trend in performance accuracy was shown for non-synchronous learners. For all participants, better imitative performance across training trials led to better end-state performance, but only for the accuracy (and not timing) of movement reproduction. Collectively, the results suggest that synchronous learners came to rely on a realtime mapping process between visual input from the expert and their own visual and proprioceptive intrinsic feedback, to the detriment of learning. Thus, the act of synchronising alone does not ensure an appropriate training context for advanced sequence learning. (shrink)

With fascinating historical anecdotes and incisive scientific analysis, this important work combines ancient thought with modern theory to reveal a new way of viewing our universe that can expand our awareness, our lives, and may well point the way to a new science for the twenty-first century.

The question “What makes a group of simultaneous experiences the experiences of a single person?” has been nearly ignored in the philosophical literature for the past few decades. The most common answer to this much neglected question is “Two simultaneous experiences belong to a single person if there is a common consciousness or awareness of them.” However, consciousness and awareness are difficult concepts to analyze, so that little of substance has been said of the answer. Recently, Oaklander has argued that (...) the awareness answer is deficient for a different reason, claiming that it fails because “it ultimately rests on an analysis of the unity of consciousness that is itself circular or otherwise inadequate” Oaklander 1987, p. 525). Oaklander's criticism is especially interesting because, according to it, the awareness account of synchronic personal identity falls prey to the main problem facing the memory account of diachronic identity, namely the problem of branching. In this paper, I shall argue that there is no important symmetry. Whatever its other flaws may be, the awareness account is immune to the branching problem; its immunity is due to formal differences between synchronic and diachronic identity. (shrink)

In `Underestimating Self-Control' (1997a), I argued that Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith (1996) underestimate our capacity for synchronic self-control. They argued for a solution to a puzzle about such self-control that features non-actional exercises' of self-control. I argued in response that `a more robust, actional exercise of self-control is open to agents in scenarios of the sort in question' (1997a: 119). They disagree (Kennett and Smith 1997).In Mele 1997a, I resisted the temptation to criticize Kennett and Smith's attempted resolution, (...) because I thought it better to concentrate on sketching an alternative resolution. Here, I will argue that the resolution they offer is problematic and reply to their criticism (1997) of my suggested resolution. (shrink)

UK universities have gone through drastic changes driven by the marketization of higher education. From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, Fairclough hypothesizes that university discourse will be colonized by business discourse. While a number of studies have been conducted, to my knowledge no study has compared university discourse and business discourse both synchronically and diachronically. This article compares how employer organizations are discursively constructed synchronically and diachronically in 240 academic and business job advertisements. The analytical frameworks are transitivity (...) analysis and modality. The results indicate that academic job advertisements have changed from not mentioning organizations to discursively constructing organizations in a promotional manner like business job advertisements. In addition, universities reframe themselves as businesses, entrepreneurs and service providers. This article contends that universities should be selective in adopting business discourse and maintain their identity as educational institutions. (shrink)

Sociological studies of work and time have argued that academic temporalities are increasingly rationalized and rendered accountable, resulting in a divergence of planned and experienced time in academic work. Shared research facilities that provide platform technologies to large user pools are no exception to this, as its administrations seek to increase the profitability of limited instrument time. Based on an ethnographic study of three facilities at an American university, this article examines how diverging rhythms are enacted in organizational schedules and (...) instrument work and kept aligned on the laboratory floor. Drawing insights from time studies and repair sociology, I argue that although technologies of time accounting provide powerful templates for action, they become effective only through ongoing “synchronization” work. Synchronization calls attention to discrete techniques and work practices, such as the adjustment of users’ bodies, user expectations, or work processes, that technical staff draw upon to resolve slippages between organizational rhythms and the temporal realities of data collection. This analysis suggests that technicians’ local and embodied practices not only affect their own professional roles but also organizational stability and productivity in time-sensitive environments. (shrink)

Executive characteristics have a significant impact on corporate decision-making, corporate sustainable behavior, and stock market performance, which may influence the corporations’ sustainable development in the long run. The role of returnee talents in the corporate sustainable development has received extensive academic attention. Using data of Chinese A-share listed companies over the period of 2008–2018, we find that there is a negative relationship between executives’ foreign experience and stock price synchronicity. We also prove that corporate social responsibility has a significant mediating (...) effect on the relationship between returnee executives and stock price synchronicity. The returnee executives tend to pursue long-term sustainable activities and improve CSR engagement quality, thereby reducing stock price synchronicity. Our extended analysis reveals that the benefit of returnee executives is more pronounced for non-SOEs and for firms located in regions with a low degree of marketization. This study has some implications for the Chinese firms in relation to their CSR information disclosure behavior, and it gives suggestions to strengthen capital market efficiency for the sustainable development of corporations. (shrink)

This book is the first collective volume specifically devoted to the multifaceted phenomenon of intensification, which has been traditionally regarded as related to the expression of degree, scaling a quality downwards or upwards. In spite of the large amount of studies on intensifiers, there is still a need for the characterization of intensification as a distinct functional category in the domain of modification. The eighteen papers of the volume contribute to this aim with a new approach (mainly corpus-based). They focus (...) on intensification from different perspectives (both synchronic and diachronic) and theoretical frameworks, concern ancient languages (Hittite, Greek, Latin) and modern languages (mainly Italian, German, English, Kiswahili), and involve different levels of analysis. They also identify and examine different types of intensifiers, applied to different forms and structures, such as adverbs, adjectives, evaluative affixes, discourse markers, reduplication, exclamative clauses, coordination, prosodic elements, and shed light on issues which have not been extensively studied so far. (shrink)

Recently, social neurosciences have been interested in the investigation of neurophysiological responses related to the experience of positive emotions, such as gratitude, during social interactions. Specifically, the aim of the present research was to investigate whether gratitude related to gift exchange could favor cooperative behavior and bond construction, by improving behavioral and autonomic responsivity. At this regard, the autonomic synchronization and behavioral performance of 16 friends coupled in dyads were recorded during a joint attentional task. Gift exchange could be occurred (...) either at the beginning or in the middle of the task. For the recording of simultaneous autonomic activity [heart rate and skin conductance level ], a hyperscanning biofeedback paradigm was used. Intra-subjective analysis showed an increase in behavioral [accuracy ] and autonomic responses when the gift exchange took place at the beginning of the task rather than in the middle. Moreover, inter-subjective analysis revealed an increase in behavioral performance and greater autonomic synchronization of HR index. The present research, therefore, shows how gratitude and trust experienced following gift exchange can modify participants’ reactions by creating a shared cognition and the adoption of joint strategies. (shrink)

Recent philosophical discourse on emergence has developed with particular concern for the distinction between weak and strong emergence and with the primary focus on detailed analysis of the concept of supervenience. However, in the last decade and as a new departure, attention has been devoted to the distinction between synchronic and diachronic emergence. In this philosophical context, there is an ongoing general belief that these two concepts are so different that it is impossible to establish for them a (...) general unifying framework. It is the purpose of this paper to support an alternative view, i.e. that these concepts are different but not mutually exclusive, and that attending to appearance and persistence can, in this context, lead to an acceptable unifying framework for these two, differing concepts of emergence. (shrink)

Obstetric ultrasound is the well-recognized prenatal test used to visualize and determine the condition of a pregnant woman and her fetus. Apart from the clinical application, some businesses have started promoting the use of fetal ultrasound machines for nonmedical reasons. Non-medical fetal ultrasound (also known as ‘keepsake’ ultrasound) is defined as using ultrasound to view, take a picture, or determine the sex of a fetus without a medical indication. Notwithstanding the guidelines and warnings regarding ultrasound safety issued by governments and (...) professional bodies, the absence of scientifically proven physical harm to fetuses from this procedure seems to provide these businesses with grounds for rapid expansion. However, this argument is too simplistic because current epidemiological evidence is not synchronous with advancing ultrasound technology. As non-medical fetal ultrasound has aroused very significant public attention, a thorough ethical analysis of this topic is essential. Using a multifaceted approach, we analyse the ethical perspective of non-medical fetal ultrasound in terms of the expectant mother, the fetus and health professionals. After applying four major theories of ethics and principles (the precautionary principle; theories of consequentialism and impartiality; duty-based theory; and rights-based theories), we conclude that obstetric ultrasound practice is ethically justifiable only if the indication for its use is based on medical evidence. Non-medical fetal ultrasound can be considered ethically unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the ethical analysis of this issue is time dependent owing to rapid advancements in ultrasound technology and the safety issue. The role of health professionals in ensuring that obstetric ultrasound is an ethically justifiable practice is also discussed. (shrink)

With the development of distributed networks, the remote controllability of the distributed energy objects and the vulnerability of user-side information security protection measures make distributed energy objects extremely vulnerable to malicious control by attackers. Hence, the large-scale loads may produce abnormal operation performance, such as load casting/dropping synchronously or frequent and synchronous casting and dropping, and hence, it can threaten the security and stable operation of the distribution networks. First, we analyze the security threats faced by industrial controllable load, civil (...) controllable load, and the gains and losses of attacks on the distribution networks. Considering the factors of cyber attacks, we propose a control model and cyber attack model in active distribution networks. And, three types of attacks that the target suffered are defined on the basis of “on” and “off” modes for control. Then, the controllable load was maliciously controlled as the research object, and a suitable scenario is selected. The impact of malicious control of the controllable load on the power supply reliability and power quality of the distribution networks are simulated and analyzed, and risk consequences for different types of attacks are provided. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed contrastive frame semantic analysis of arriving events in English and Spanish, attested through a corpus study. The framework and methodology of our research follows the FrameNet II Research Project housed at ICSI. First, we present a formal description of the Arriving frame as a subframe of the Motion frame: arriving encodes a basic subpart of our conceptualization of motion, namely the transition from moving to arriving at a goal. Second, we carry out a cross-linguistic (...) analysis of this frame, based on a corpus study of English and Spanish arriving predicates. A first assumption would suggest that these two languages share a basic abstract frame description for arriving events. While acknowledging this, we yet show that at a lexical level the particular lexicalization patterns of each language influence the way speakers bring onto stage the different participants of the scene. We discuss this issue through a study of implicit frame elements, conflation and incorporation patterns, profiling, and deixis. Third, we briefly introduce the question of polysemy for those predicates that participate in the arriving frame. Arguably, the spatial meaning of arriving is the core sense from which a set of sense extensions derives, pointing to a wide range of independent frames (e.g. Cognition frame, Achievement frame, etc.) This fact can be attested in both languages in a parallel way. The different senses can be described synchronically in terms of frame semantics, while motivation for them is to be found in the cognitive processes of Metaphor (across frames), and Fictive Motion (within frame). (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are (...) better aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

In this article I argue that phenomenal intentionality fundamentally consists in a horizonality structure, rather than in a relation to a representational content or the determination of accuracy conditions. I provide a distinctive modal model of intentionality that conceives of phenomenal intentionality as the enjoyment of a plus ultra that points beyond what is actual. The directedness of intentionality on the world, thus, consists in “pointing ahead” to possibilities. The principal difficulty for the modal model is logical: the most obvious (...) way of implementing such a structure results in an analogue of Russell’s paradox. However, this paradox can be avoided by fine-tuning the modal logic deployed in this setting. This way of fine-tuning the logic ultimately amounts to intuitive benefits. For, it captures the intensional character of intentionality, since the way that our mental states refer to things is conception-dependent. Moreover, the way I interpret the modal model leads to a conception of intentionality as a feature of dynamic, diachronic patterns in the way that mental acts subjectively appear, rather than as a synchronic property. We ought to think of intentionality as fundamentally a temporal, subjective determination. In a generalization on Sellars’ approach to concepts, I hold that phenomenally intentional mental presentations involve modal laws and are inconceivable without them. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are (...) better aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

Pablo Gilabert and Holly Lawford-Smith have, both in collaboration and individually, provided a compelling account of feasibility, which states that feasibility is both ‘binary’ and ‘scalar’, and both ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’. This two-dimensional analysis, however, has been the subject of four major criticisms: it has been argued that it rests upon a false distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ constraints, that it ignores the importance of intentional action, and that diachronic feasibility is incoherent and insensitive to the existence of (...) epistemic limitations. In this paper, I will argue that such objections do not undermine the persuasiveness of Gilabert and Lawford-Smith’s analysis. Nevertheless, I will contend that the latter is susceptible to two other challenges. First, it mistakenly appeals to morality, and, second, it lacks an analysis of ability. I will maintain, however, that such criticisms can be addressed and that a revised version of the account should be adopted. (shrink)

Objections to functional explanations of awareness assert that although functional systems may be adequate to explain behavior, including verbal behavior consisting of assertions of awareness by an individual, they cannot provide for the existence of phenomenal awareness. In this paper, a theory of awareness is proposed that counters this assertion by incorporating two advances: (1) a formal definition of representation, expressed in a functional notation: Newell's Representation Law, and 2) the introduction of real time into the analysis of awareness. (...) This leads to the definition of phenomenal awareness as existing whenever an object contains an autonomously updated configuration satisfying the Representation Law with respect to some aspects of its environment. The relational aspect of the Representation Law permits the development of multiple levels of awareness, which provides for the existence of illusions and hallucinations, and permits the identification of a new measure, accuracy of awareness . The relational perspective also permits the incorporation of referential concepts into the framework. Qualia can then be identified with referentially opaque elements of awareness. The functional form of the Representation Law is linked to neurophysiology and the underlying phenomena of chemistry and physics by phenomena involving activity-dependent connectivity. (shrink)

When conversing and collaborating in everyday situations, people naturally and interactively align their behaviors with each other across various communication channels, including speech, gesture, posture, and gaze. Having access to a partner's referential gaze behavior has been shown to be particularly important in achieving collaborative outcomes, but the process in which people's gaze behaviors unfold over the course of an interaction and become tightly coordinated is not well understood. In this paper, we present work to develop a deeper and more (...) nuanced understanding of coordinated referential gaze in collaborating dyads. We recruited 13 dyads to participate in a collaborative sandwich-making task and used dual mobile eye tracking to synchronously record each participant's gaze behavior. We used a relatively new analysis technique—epistemic network analysis—to jointly model the gaze behaviors of both conversational participants. In this analysis, network nodes represent gaze targets for each participant, and edge strengths convey the likelihood of simultaneous gaze to the connected target nodes during a given time-slice. We divided collaborative task sequences into discrete phases to examine how the networks of shared gaze evolved over longer time windows. We conducted three separate analyses of the data to reveal (1) properties and patterns of how gaze coordination unfolds throughout an interaction sequence, (2) optimal time lags of gaze alignment within a dyad at different phases of the interaction, and (3) differences in gaze coordination patterns for interaction sequences that lead to breakdowns and repairs. In addition to contributing to the growing body of knowledge on the coordination of gaze behaviors in joint activities, this work has implications for the design of future technologies that engage in situated interactions with human users. (shrink)

The present work discusses the complex nature of the term ‘gender’ in legal discourse, in the wake of the recent pushbacks that the 2011 Istanbul Convention has received from anti-feminist movements and nations that have not signed/ratified the document or have withdrawn from it. Though its original aim was to protect women’s rights, the debate has eventually surfaced deeply-rooted problems linked to gender-related vocabulary. For this reason, the study will analyse the use of the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ in the (...) 1995 UN Beijing Declaration, the 1998 Rome Statute, and the 2011 Istanbul Convention, from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. It aims to provide a critical comparison of the definitions, translations, and interpretations of the term ‘gender’, in an attempt to overcome some of the issues involved in the harmonisation of EU documentation, which could certainly help guarantee fundamental rights and convince more states to sign/ratify the Convention, or at least, not allow them to use issues not related to women’s rights to not accept the document. The interpretation of gender-related violence is still ‘in progress’, and the lack of harmonisation could eventually hinder fundamental human rights instead of helping the Istanbul Convention save lives. (shrink)

The article compares views of C.G. Jung and N.O. Lossky on the nature of time, including in the context of contemporary to them physical theories - quantum mechanics by W. Pauli and relativistic physics by A. Einstein. In particular, the author points to the similarity of ideas of both thinkers that the psyche relativizes time not only subjectively, but also objectively. Jung and Lossky provide this statement with a similar empirical basis, for example, the researches of T. Flournoy, as well (...) as similar theoretical arguments by postulating a fundamental acausal principle of the connection of all things, which is better suited for describing psychic and some physical phenomena than the classical causal explanation. In analytical psychology, such a principle is synchronicity, in hierarchical personalism - gnoseological coordination. Both concepts are genetically related to the G.W. Leibniz idea of pre-established harmony, which was reinterpreted by Jung and Lossky through different worldview foundations. Jung in his reasoning relied on the transcendental idealism of I. Kant, the principle of complementarity and the discoveries of quantum mechanics, Lossky - on intuitivism, the principle of subordination and on his own interpretation of Einsteins theories. Jung comes to the conclusion that the psyche has a timeless character, and Lossky comes to the conclusion that it has a super-temporal character. Jungs timelessness indicates the transcendental nature of psyche and the strive to get away from the classical causal explanation, saving it according to the principle of complementarity only to consider the phenomenal side of being and mainly physical processes. One of the pioneers of quantum mechanics Pauli was of the same opinion in general. Because of there is nothing transcendent in hierarchical personalism, Losskys super-temporality is of a strive to find a deeper basis for occurring in time processes, and, according to the principle of subordination, to include time in the hierarchical structure of the universe, prescribing for it a role of one of the two key forms of psychic and psycho-material processes characteristic of a certain stage of being. (shrink)

The perception of meaningful patterns in random arrangements and unrelated events takes place in our everyday lives, coined apophenia, synchronicity, or the experience of meaningful coincidences. However, we do not know yet what predicts this phenomenon. To investigate this, we re-analyzed a combined data set of two daily diary studies with a total of N = 169 participants (mean age 29.95 years; 54 men). We investigated if positive or negative affect (PA, NA) predicts the number of meaningful coincidences on the (...) following day (or vice versa). By means of a cross-lagged multilevel modelling approach (Bayesian estimation) we evaluated with which of two theoretical assumptions the data are more in line. First, if meaningful coincidences are facilitated by a broader and more flexible thinking style, PA should positively predict meaningful coincidences at the following day. However, if the experience of meaningful coincidences signifies a strategy to cope with negative feeling states, NA should predict the experience of meaningful coincidences during the following day. In favour of a more flexible thinking style, we found that PA predicted the number of perceived coincidences the following day. We did not find any effect for NA, and therefore, no evidence arguing for the coping mechanism hypothesis of meaningful coincidences. (shrink)

Evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs) are events during which individuals at a given level of organization (particles) interact to form higher-level entities (collectives) which are then recognized as new individuals at that level. ETIs are intimately related to levels of selection, which, following Okasha, can be approached from two different perspectives. One, referred to as ‘synchronic’, asks whether selection occurs at the collective level while the partitioning of particles into collectives is taken for granted. The other, referred to as (...) ‘diachronic’, asks about the origins of the partitioning of particles into collectives. After having presented the two perspectives and a classical formalism used to deal with the levels-of-selection question in the literature, namely the multilevel version of the Price equation, I show that because this formalism treats the levels-of-selection question from a synchronic perspective, it is inadequate to explain ETIs. This is because a fundamental aspect of ETIs is the origin of collectives. From there, I develop a framework for levels of selection compatible with the diachronic perspective. This framework relies on the distinction between what I call, on the one hand, a ‘functional aggregative collective trait’, and on the other hand, a ‘functional non-aggregative collective trait’. After having presented this distinction, I implement it in the Price equation, leading to a new statistical partitioning of this equation which, I argue, represents a causal decomposition more relevant for ETIs. Finally, I exploit this partitioning to explain the critical stages of an ETI. In addition to its explanatory power, a measure of the degree of functional non-aggregativity could be used as a proxy for the degree of individuality of a collective. (shrink)

This study explores the online education action for defeating COVID-19 in China from the perspectives of the system, mechanism and mode. In particular, the policy development of online education in China during the epidemic includes the education informatization policy, the online education system, and the online education mechanism in China. The online education and teaching mode during the epidemic involve the synchronous live class-based teaching mode, asynchronous recording and broadcasting teaching mode, online flipped classroom teaching mode, and online tutoring-based teaching (...) mode. Both characteristics and trends of online education in China during the epidemic have been explored in this study. In addition, the problems, discussions and remarks are also offered. (shrink)

Though formal metascience has made rapid advances over the past few decades, it has seldom been seen to contribute much to the rational reconstruction of scientic development; for the most part, logical concepts have found application in the synchronic analysis of scientic theories. It should be important, therefore, to consider to what extent diachronic or dynamic aspects of scientic theorizing may also be captured within the connes of a formal metascientic framework, and what tools are best suited for (...) constructing a general model of theory dynamics. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language, emerging in communities of DeafBlind signers in the US who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels—a practice known as “protactile.” In the first part of the paper, we report on a synchronic analysis of recent data, identifying four types of “taps,” which have taken on different functions in protacitle language and communication. In the second part of the paper, we report on a diachronic analysis (...) of data collected over the past 8 years. This analysis reveals the emergence of a new kind of “propriotactic” tap, which has been co-opted by the emerging phonological system of protactile language. We link the emergence of this unit to both demonstrative taps, and backchanneling taps, both of which emerged earlier. We show how these forms are all undergirded by an attention-modulation function, more or less backgrounded, and operating across different semiotic systems. In doing so, we contribute not only to what is known about demonstratives in tactile languages, but also to what is known about the role of demonstratives in the emergence of new languages. (shrink)

Ouyi Zhixu was an eminent Chinese Buddhist monk who, contrary to his contemporaries, believed karma could be changed. Through vows, divination, repentance rituals, and ascetic acts such as burning and blood writing, he sought to alter what others understood as inevitable and inescapable. Drawing attention to Ouyi's unique reshaping of religious practice, _Living Karma_ reasserts the significance of an overlooked individual in the modern development of Chinese Buddhism. While Buddhist studies scholarship tends to privilege textual analysis, _Living Karma_ promotes (...) a balanced study of ritual practice and writing, treating Ouyi's texts as ritual objects and his reading and writing as religious acts. Each chapter addresses a specific religious practice--writing, divination, repentance, vows, and bodily rituals--offering first a diachronic overview of each practice within the history of Chinese Buddhism and then a synchronic analysis of each phenomenon through close readings of Ouyi's work. This book sheds much-needed light on a little-known figure and his representation of karma, which proved to be a seminal innovation in the religious thought of late imperial China. (shrink)

The ‘harsh’ decision in Ezra 10:1–44 and Nehemiah 13:23–31 to terminate marriages with ‘foreign’ women falls strange on modern ears. This article reads these sections against the background of identity formation in Ezra-Nehemiah. It is proposed that these two passages should be studied on more than just one level. It states that synchronic, literary-redactional and socio-historical methods are to be combined in an effort to better understand why marriages were dissolved in Ezra and Nehemiah.

In the context of the current heated debate surrounding the pervasive influence of the English language and Anglo-American culture on other languages, as well as the widespread purist attitude towards some contact-induced language change phenomena, both abroad and in Romania, our article discusses the situation of English lexical borrowings in present-day Romanian, focusing on the perception and processing of the so-calledluxury Anglicisms(Sections 2and3) by young Romanian native speakers, in an attempt to see whether such an analysis can help clarify (...) their acceptability and diffusion across our target population. We propose an alternative cognitive, psycholinguistic approach to the study of contact-induced lexical borrowings, aiming to show that there is no difference in the young Romanian native speakers’ processing of sentences containing luxury Anglicisms and their established Romanian counterparts. Such findings may support our claim that the acceptability and diffusion of such Anglicisms are pervasive across our target population, even if the official position generally condemns such uses, considering them gratuitous and a burden in communication, even making it unintelligible sometimes.Our analysis starts from the observation that most (but not all) Romanian academics, whether linguists or not, tend to embrace a purist attitude, while on the other hand young Romanians accept such Anglicisms and tend to use them extensively. In fact, such uses are not limited to young people, who have been the subjects of our research, but are the ‘norm’ in daily conversations and elsewhere across the general population (Stoichițoiu Ichim 2006). Thus, there seems to be a gap between the actual acceptability and diffusion of luxury Anglicisms among Romanians and the ‘official’ recommendations. Based on the results of a sensicality task, meant to show how 188 Romanians, aged 18–22, process and perceive sentences with or without luxury Anglicisms (seeSection 6), we will try to show that luxury Anglicisms are accepted and, by recurrent use, diffused among the Romanian community. For a more accurate picture of their diffusion, the findings will be further correlated with data fromCoRoLa, the only official corpus ofpresent-day Romanian (beginning 1989) made available under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, as well as a corpus currently in the making, and the Internet (seeSection 7).Besides showing that luxury Anglicisms cannot really be blamed for burdening or impairing processing, and thus communication, and explaining why such uses should not be censured or disapproved, we hope that our study of acceptability and diffusion will demonstrate that we are dealing with a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that can be better understood by going beyond a diachronic and synchronic analysis of particular words and a frequency count, and should incorporate more experimental data.Last but not least, we suggest that, on the practical side, such experimental studies as the one described here could be used as an additional criterion for the lexicographic inclusion of lexical borrowings. (shrink)

A further reply to Trent Dougherty, author of Evidentialism and its Discontents, on a range of issues that evidentialists like Dougherty and Feldman, and pragmatists like myself have very different views about. These issues include a regarding a proper understanding of epistemic normativity and its relationship with doxastic responsibility. Pragmatists and virtue theorists are champions of the diachronic. The norms which should advise our ethics of belief are primarily diachronic; neither is the diachronic irrelevant to analysis of knowledge (which (...) would be to neglect the causal etiology of belief). My reply tries to articulate the relative importance of synchronic and diachronic concerns with epistemic agency, both with respect to well-founded belief, as with respect to the ‘ethics of belief’ and ‘epistemology of disagreement,’ both concerned with giving guidance. Inquiry itself is diachronic, and epistemology on the pragmatist and virtue theoretical approaches in the theory of inquiry. Thus I reiterate that the reduction of epistemic normativity to synchronic evidential fit shows the inadequacy of Dougherty's (and of Conee and Feldman's) account and the need to move from internalist evidentialism to virtue responsibilism. (shrink)

The paper presents a general critique of the use of conceptual frameworks in design, illustrated by the well known synchronous/asynchronous, co-located/non-co-located framework. It argues that while frameworks are a necessary and inevitable starting point for design, the business of tailoring and adapting them to specific situations need not be ad hoc.Triggering artefacts are a way of systematically challenging both designers' preunderstandings and the conservatism of work practice. Experiences from the Great Belt tunnel and bridge project are used to illustrate howtriggering (...) artefacts change themodality of designing for change. (shrink)

Despite traditionally having been studied within the field of Musicology, the analysis of music in film should be approached as an aesthetic study of the relationship between «image» and «music» which is central to the cinematographic framework. From this interdisciplinary perspective numerous theoretical and methodological issues emerge. The aim of this article is to investigate, using both a synchronic and diachronic focus, some of the key issues arising from this joint music-image approach, in an attempt to develop a (...) theoretical framework for a joint aesthetic of music and image: a study of «cinematographic expression» that brings together the visual and the sound dimensions and which we call the «musicalised image», a neologism of our own creation. (shrink)

Hiromatsu Wataru’s philosophical thought revolves around an analysis of what he calls the “fourfold structure.” According to Hiromatsu, all phenomena in the world are structured in such a fourfold manner that “a given presents itself as something to someone as Someone,” and these four moments of the phenomenon are not independent elements, but exist only as terms of the functional relationship. This paper surveys and critically examines this theory of the fourfold structure, and shows, in particular, how this theory, (...) while largely presented as synchronic structural analysis, contains some conceptual motifs going beyond the synchronic framework. Specifically, with a focus on the process in which there arises a meaning common to different phenomenal givens and to different knowers, my analysis suggests the way in which phenomena are dynamically structured and thereby displaced in meaning as well as in the knowers’ role relationship. (shrink)

In his project of going beyond the “modern worldview,” Hiromatsu Wataru attached great importance to Ernst Mach’s philosophical thought and Einstein’s theory of relativity as challenging the premises of modern philosophy, which he characterized as substantialist and bound by the subject / object schema. This paper surveys Hiromatsu’s analysis of Mach’s phenomenalist element-monism, specifically his critique of Mach’s insufficient break with modern philosophy; his inquiry into Einstein’s relativity theory with a focus on its intersubjective cognitive structure; and the way (...) he extends his views on these themes to a general ontological-epistemological theory of the “fourfold structure.” Finally, it examines questions about Hiromatsu’s arguments regarding the tension between the dimensions of synchronic structure and structuring movement. An earlier version of this paper can be found as “Philosophers” in John T. Blackmore, Itagaki Ryōichi, and Tanaka Setsuko, eds., Ernst Mach’s Influence Spreads, 425–76. (shrink)

Evidentialism as Earl Conee and Richard Feldman present it is a philosophy with distinct aspects or sides: Evidentialism as a conceptual analysis of epistemic justification, and as a prescriptive ethics of belief. I argue that Conee and Feldman's ethics of belief has 'weak roots and sour fruits.' It has "weak roots" because it is premised on their account of epistemic justification qua synchronic rationality, and this is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Also, Conee and Feldman's thesis O2 (...) (An agent ought to always have just exactly that attitude towards a proposition supported by his / her evidence at that particular moment) is not support by in their “Ethics of Belief” article by V3 (Being synchronically rational at every moment is uniformly what it is to constitute epistemic success and to maximize epistemic value). That austere ethics of belief has "sour fruits" because the austere evidentialist ethic of belief is unable to support reasonable disagreement, and conflates psychographic contrareity epistemic fault or irrationality. The "hard line" and universal agnostic suspension it takes as the only rational stances of disagreement are really caricatures of different extreme responses to contrareity found among dogmatists and skeptics, respectively. I contrast this with John Rawls' understanding of "reasonable pluralism" and of the many sources of faultless disagreement over what Rawls termed comprehensive conceptions of the good. (shrink)

This paper explores the mechanisms of and motivations for two unconventional comparative constructions in Mandarin: [bi Ni hai Ni] and [bi Ni hai Nj]. They are unconventional in that the item expressing the dimension along which the comparison is made is a noun rather than an adjective. It is shown that [bi Ni hai Ni] emerges (i) by analogy with the conventional comparative construction [bi N hai A] and (ii) by inheriting the nominal feature from an existing construction [Adverb N], (...) which is corroborated by a collexeme analysis. At a more schematic level, the extension A > N observed in [bi N hai A] > [bi Ni hai Ni] may have been modeled on the existing development from [Adverb A] to [Adverb N]. Analogical extension and inheritance also underlie the subsequent development from [bi Ni hai Ni] to [bi Ni hai Nj]. This study not only shows how language changes in a constructional network (including node creation and network reconfiguration), but also sheds light on the nature of horizontal links. It also demonstrates how a synchronically perceived relation between constructions may impact a later, similar language change. (shrink)

In his stimulating recent book Reasons without Persons, Brian Hedden develops a novel theory of rationality that he calls Time-Slice Rationality. One of the main theses of TSR is that all rational requirements are synchronic. We argue here first that this thesis is not well-motivated. We also demonstrate that Hedden is in fact committed to an even stronger claim about the rationality of an agent at a time. Finally, we provide some arguments against the conception of rationality that results (...) from this stronger claim. (shrink)

In recent decades, the analysis of phraseology has made use of the exploration of large corpora as a source of quantitative information about language. This paper intends to present the main lines of work in progress based on this empirical approach to linguistic analysis. In particular, we focus our attention on some problems relating to the morpho-syntactic annotation of corpora. The CORIS/CODIS corpus of contemporary written Italian, developed at CILTA – University of Bologna (Rossini Favretti 2000; Rossini Favretti, (...) Tamburini, De Santis in press), is a synchronic 100-million-word corpus and is being lemmatised and annotated with part-of-speech (POS) tags, in order to increase the quantity of information and improve data retrieval procedures (Tamburini 2000). The aim of POS tagging is to assign each lexical unit to the appropriate word class. Usually the set of tags is pre-established by the linguist, who uses his/her competence to identify the different word classes. The very first experiments we made revealed how the traditional part-of-speech distinctions in Italian (generally based on morphological and semantic criteria) are often inadequate to represent the syntactic features of words in context. It is worth noting that the uncertainties in categorisation contained in Italian grammars and dictionaries reflect a growing difficulty as they move from fundamental linguistic classes, such as nouns and verbs, to more complex classes, such as adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. This latter class, that groups together elements traditionally used to express connections between sentences, appears inadequate when describing cohesive relations in Italian. This phenomenon actually seems to involve other elements traditionally assigned to different classes, such as adverbs, pronouns and interjections. Recent studies proposed the class of ‘connectives’, grouping all words that, apart from their traditional word class, have the function of connecting phrases and contributing to textual cohesion. From this point of view, conjunctions can be considered as part of phrasal connectives, that can in turn be included in the wider category of textual connectives. The aim of this study is to identify elements that can be included in the class of phrasal connectives, using quantitative methods. According to Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) observation that words are linked by dependent probabilities, corroborated by Halliday’s (1991) argument that the grammatical “system” (in Firth’s sense of the term) is essentially probabilistic, quantitative data are introduced in order to provide evidence of relative frequencies. Section 2 presents a description of word-class categorisation from the point of view of grammars and dictionaries arguing that the traditional category of conjunctions is inadequate for capturing the notion of phrasal connective. Section 3 examines the notion of ‘connective’ and suggests a truth-function interpretation of connective behaviour. Section 4 describes the quantitative methods proposed for analysing the distributional properties of lexical units, and section 5 comments on the results obtained by applying such methods drawing some provisional conclusions. (shrink)

The comparative study of synchronic occurrences of a particular construction in interactional corpora from different languages can provide a complete understanding of the development of the construction as a response to some basic intimately associated set of interactional moves and cognitive demands. A comparative formal analysis of lists in Spanish and English conversations shows that in both languages the construction has developed a stylized intonation pattern based on the holding of tones by means of lengthening of nuclear syllables, (...) a durable syntactic organization based on parataxis and an almost identical inventory of lexicalized expressions to index the end of the list. A parallel analysis of lists in their interactional contexts shows that in both English and Spanish conversation the formal properties of lists emerge as adaptations to a recurrent set of communicative tasks. The first type of `framing' lists is used for its incremental structure in the negotiation of common background between interlocutors, whereas the second type of `demonstrative' lists is used for its rhetorical structure to provide evidence for a claim and is directed to obtaining agreement. (shrink)

Problem: The inclusion of the observer into scientific observation entails a vicious circle of having to observe the observer as dependent on observation. Second-order science has to clarify how its underlying circularity can be scientifically conceived. Method: Essayistic and conceptual analysis, sporadically illustrated with agent-based experiments. Results: Second-order science - implying science in general - is fundamentally and ineluctably circular. Implications - The circularity of second-order science asks for analytical methods able to cope with phenomena of complex causation and (...) “synchronous asynchrony,” such as tools for analyzing non-linearly interacting dynamics, decentralized, clustered networks and in general, systems of complex interacting components. Key Words: Observer dependency, second-order science, complexity, information, intentionality. (shrink)