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Keywords: psychological reality of language; mental representation; sentence processing; computational parsing models; personal and subpersonal states
In this paper, I argue for a modified version of what Devitt (2006) calls the Representational Thesis (RT). According to RT, syntactic rules or principles are psychologically real, in the sense that they are represented in the mind/brain of every linguistically competent speaker/hearer. I present a range of behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the claim that the human sentence processing mechanism constructs mental representations of the syntactic properties of linguistic stimuli. I then survey a range of psychologically plausible computational models of comprehension and show that they are all committed to RT. I go on to sketch a framework for thinking about the nature of the representations involved in sentence processing. My claim is that these are best characterized not as propositional attitudes but, rather, as subpersonal states. Moreover, the representational properties of these states are determined by their functional role, not solely by their causal or nomological relations to mind-independent objects and properties. Finally, I distinguish between explicit and implicit representations and argue, contra Devitt (2006), that the latter can be drawn on “as data” by the algorithms that constitute our sentence processing routines. I conclude that Devitt’s skepticism concerning the psychological reality of grammars cannot be sustained.
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Keywords: Morphological content; doxastic justification; chromatic illumination; attention
In the formation of epistemically justified beliefs, what is the role of attention, and what is the role (if any) of non-attentional aspects of cognition? We will here argue that there is an essential role for certain non-attentional aspects. These involve epistemically relevant background information that is implicit in the standing structure of an epistemic agent’s cognitive architecture and that does not get explicitly represented during belief-forming cognitive processing. Since such “morphological content” (as we call it) does not become explicit during belief formation, it cannot be information that is within the scope of attention. Nevertheless, it does exert a subtle influence on the character of conscious experience, rather than operating in a purely unconscious way.
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Keywords: Humean supervenience; supervenience; microphysics; David Lewis; reductionism
Here is a view at least much like Lewis’s “Humean supervenience,” and in any case highly influential—in that some endorse it, and many more worry that it is true. All truths about the world are fixed by the pattern of instantiation, by individual points in space-time, of the “perfectly natural properties” posited by end-of-inquiry physics. In part, this view denies independent variability: the world could not have been different from how it actually is, in the ways depicted by common sense and the special sciences, without differing in the punctiform instantiation of fundamental physical properties. In part, it makes an ontological claim: what it is for one of the objects recognized by common sense or special sciences to be there in the world, bearing the properties attributed by a true description, is “nothing over and above” the obtaining of fundamental physical properties at points, and fundamental physical relations among points. I argue that this view is untenable. I concede that for every true claim in familiar discourses, there is a state of affairs at the level of fundamental microphysics that is the truth-maker—some state of affairs sufficient for truth in the familiar claim. The problem is that the view needs to posit not just truth-makers at the level of microphysics, but truth-conditions—states of affairs the obtaining of which is required for truth in any familiar claim, and the failure of which renders the familiar claim false. That is, the view must posit necessary conditions, at the level of microparticles, for truth in familiar claims. This it cannot plausibly do.
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Keywords: francophony; France; French; language;
The essay is a reply to an article on this topic written by N. Manolescu in issue no. 11/2001 of România literarã. Comments on the "adpotion" by the Romanian aristocracy of French language, "manners and culture" and the effects of this process.
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Keywords: communist historiography; visual representation; authenticity
The article explores the implications of communist representations of history as it relates to representation and evidence in historical theory. It investigates the attempts of the party historians to establish a historical connection between the “counterrevolutions” of 1919 and 1956: as they argued, the counterrevolution that had been born in 1919 and ruled the country until 1945 and, subsequently, been forced “underground” by the Soviet Red Army and the new communist power, was able to “resurrect itself ” once again in 1956. It examines how they attempted to authenticate this historical abstraction through various historical, mostly visual, records: photography, film and exhibitions. The article argues that an unusual attitude towards evidence prevailed in these historical works. Although communist historians boasted of referring to an abundance of original source material, their narrative frames of representation proved to be fictitious: sources were selected not in order to draw conclusions regarding historical processes, but instead to illustrate various pre-figured abstract constructions of history. The aim of this method was to maintain the separation of the empirical source base and the philosophical-theological imagination surrounding the meanings of history in order to unbind the latter from evidence and tie it to political ideologies and commitments.
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Abolish the Past Once and for All. A kommunista aszketizmus esztétikája [The Aesthetic of Communist Asceticism]. By Dávid Szolláth. Reviewed by Tamás Kisantal Tudomány és ideológia között. Tanulmányok az 1945 utáni történetírás történetéről [Between Scholarship and Ideology. Essays on the History of the post-1945 Historiography]. By Vilmos Erős and Ádám Takács. Reviewed by Anna Birkás The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide. By Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár. Reviewed by Ferenc Laczó Gendered Artistic Positions and Social Voices: Politics, Cinema and the Visual Arts in State-Socialist and Post-Socialist Hungary. By Beata Hock. Reviewed by Péter Apor Vezércsel. Kádár János mindennapjai [King’s Gambit. The Everyday Life of János Kádár]. By György Majtényi. Reviewed by Tibor Takács Politikai rendőrség a Rákosi-korszakban [Political Police in the Rákosi Era]. By Rolf Müller. Reviewed by Éva Tulipán Trianon Again and Again. Rozpad Uhorska a Trianonská mierová zmluva. K politikám pamäti na Slovensku a v Maďarsku. [The Disintegration of Historical Hungary and the Trianon Peace Treaty. Politics of Memory in Slovakia and Hungary.] Edited by Miroslav Michela and László Vörös. Bratislava: Reviewed by Csaba Zahorán Rozpad Uhorska a Trianonská mierová zmluva. K politikám pamäti na Slovensku a v Maďarsku. [The Disintegration of Historical Hungary and the Trianon Peace Treaty. Politics of Memory in Slovakia and Hungary.] Edited by Miroslav Michela and László Vörös. Bratislava: Reviewed by Adam Hudek
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Keywords: adaptive interpretation; reliability of the historical sources; Gerard Labuda; Jerzy Topolski; surveillance; Security Service; secret political police
Over the course of the last decade, the disclosure in Poland of information regarding the secret collaboration of public figures with the Security Services (SB) has triggered emotional discussions on the reliability of the archival records stored in the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Analysis of these discussions enables one to draw a distinction between two opposing views. According to the first, documents stored in the archives of the IPN are incomplete and devoid of accurate information. According to the second, documents produced by the repressive apparatus of the communist state constitute a new type of historical source and contain reliable information. However, these discussions concerning the reliability of “files” lack methodological rigor and precision. I consider the reliability of the “files” in the light of Gerard Labuda and Jerzy Topolski’s concepts of historical sources. According to this analysis, the “files” do not constitute a new type of historical source requiring a radical rethinking of existing classifications and new interpretive methods. However, one precondition of an adequate interpretation is the acknowledgment of the purpose for which they were created and the functions they played in the communist state. The repressive apparatus collected, selected and stored information on society if they considered this information useful in the maintenance of political control over society. Ignorance of or failure to acknowledge this specific social praxis (and its different forms: manipulation, disintegration, misinformation, etc.) performed by the secret political police is one of the reasons for methodical and heuristic errors committed by historians: the uncritical application of the vision of social life and processes presented in these sources for the construction of the historical narrative.
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Keywords: Finland; Estonia; Finno-Ugric studies; historical linguistics; ethnicity; nationalism
Finno-Ugricity is one of the linguistic concepts whose meaning and usage have been extended beyond the boundaries of linguistics and applied in identity-building projects. The geographically and historically related cases of Finland and Estonia provide a good illustration of the uses of linguistic scholarship in the service of nationalism. More elusive than ties of “Slavic kinship” and not as easily translatable into a pan-ethnic ideology, the concept of Finno-Ugric kinship has nevertheless had a steady presence in the development of Finnish and Estonian identities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, entangling the two countries’ linguistic traditions in a web of national engagements. In both cases, the original idea of linguistic kinship was subject to non-linguistic interpretations so as to highlight and contextualize various aspects of the Finnish and Estonian self-images, notions of collective past, and cultural heritage. In both cases, the concept proved highly flexible.
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Keywords: Macedonia; national identity; archeology; modernity
In the Republic of Macedonia, the use of archaeology to support the construction of national identity is a relatively new phenomenon, but it has been steadily growing since the declaration of independence in 1991. In sharp contrast to the nationbuilding process of the Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgarians, whose main ideological components were drawn from a “glorious past,” Macedonian nationalism in the mid-twentieth century looked to an equally “glorious future.” This paper analyzes the construction of popular archaeology in the Republic of Macedonia, and particularly the creative mechanisms driving it, its relation with the national and international academic world, its spread to a public of non-specialists through new media, its reception by society and its political utilization in constructing the national identity.
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Keywords: visual history; illustrated histories; April uprising; portrait photography; carte-de-visite; national heroes
Historical photography has always played a crucial role in historiography, in the creation of collective memory, and in the perpetuation of historical traditions. Of all the photographic genres, portrait photography is the most prevalent genre and remains the “vera icon” of illustrated histories. The significance of portrait photography in historiography is amply illustrated by its use in the creation of so-called “Bulgarian national heroes,” historical figures that acquired an almost mythic significance largely through their depictions in photographic portraits. In this article I examine the specific use of this particular photographic genre in Bulgarian illustrated histories and provide analyses of the motifs and symbols of the portraits themselves, both as historical primary sources and as epistemological instruments that have had a decisive and continuous influence on the historical process of the creation of “true” national heroes. My aim is to outline the genesis of these photographic portraits in order to shed light on the process of their framing within the historical imagination as authentic representations.
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Keywords: social research; sociology; social report; documentary film; Eastern Europe; epistemology; sociology of knowledge; ethical vocation
The article explores how, given the absence of a proper public sphere, twentieth-century Hungarian social research began to use the notion of “reality” in populist socio-reports, the documentary films of the 1970s, and sociological debates. These discussions all shared the assumption that contemporary political elites ignored the “real” conditions of society. Thus it was the duty of social research (socio-reports or sociology proper) to reveal these facts in a manner that was free of ideology. Whereas in North America and Western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s the notion of a directly accessible “reality” had been thrown into question, in Hungary scholarship insisted on this kind of cognitive realism because of social and political reasons. As they argued, “reality” was to be interpreted not as a universal epistemological category, but according to particular terms of the sociology of knowledge. This article explores how the detection of “reality” and “facts” became an ethical vocation within these interrogatory frameworks.
More...George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, New York, Howard Ferting, 1975, (Giordano Altarozzi); Alina Ioana Șuta Bogățean, Habitat și alimentație în societatea rurală românească din Transilvania de la Revoluția Pașoptistă la Marea Unire din 1918, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Argonaut, 2012(Cornel Sigmirean); Self-determination and Sovereignty in Europe. From Historical Legacies to the EU external role, edited by Stefano Bianchini, Ravenna, Longo Editore, 2013, (Alberto Becherelli).
More...Keywords: Laudatio; Professor Giovanna Motta; Doctor Honoris Causa Title
Laudatio in Honor of Professor Giovanna Motta on the Occasion of the Award of the Doctor Honoris Causa Title of “Petru Maior” University of Tîrgu Mureş
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Keywords: theatre; contemporary art; institutional theory of art; psychical distance; institutional transition
Current processes in international theatre practice have been so different in artistic sense that they could hardly be combined in some unity. But there is anothercriterion, not purely artistic, according to which artistically different phenomena of contemporary theatre could be united in wholeness. It is an institutional kind of criterion. Contemporary state of theatre as a kind of art could not be clearly described and then productively investigated without interpretation of those strong and deep transformations that have happened to theatre as a kind of societal institution. The thing is that researchers usually do observe artistic and societal qualities of art separately. Of course, it is one of the results of knowledge coming into depth and getting specialized, but sometimes it seems as if in development of art there were two divided processes – artistic, on the one hand, and societal, on the other hand. In reality, this development is one and whole total process with many various aspects. To keep in mind the unity of artistic and societal transformations of theatrical art is the challenge for methodological discourse within any aesthetic investigation in this field. Institutional theory of art, according to the author’s point of view, is the very case of methodological attitude that allows a researcher stay realistic in relation to the abovementioned unity. There is the key point that demonstrates it – the approach of the institutional theory of art to the problem of psychical distance between performance and spectators, its historical institutionalization in the phenomenon of classical and the following changes within this institutional state that finally brought theatre from classical to non-classical aesthetic regime. Institutional theory looks at this transition as artistic in the inspiriting causes, but societal is focused on fixation of their results. So, this theory allows an aesthetic observer keep the balance on the blade of the artistic and the societal contents of the institutional state of contemporary theatre. This article is the author’s attempt to point out the most significant institutional changes in contemporary theatre.
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Keywords: M. Bakhtin; A. Bučys’ book “Novel and the Present Day”; Lithuanian Soviet novel; Bakhtinian methodology
The paper deals with the analysis of the history of Lithuanian Soviet novel as represented by a literary critic Algimantas Bučys in his book “Novel and the Present Day” (1973, 1977). This book contains a strong Bakhtinian methodological introduction (it addresses Bakhtin’s concept of the novel) and extensive quotes from Bakhtin’s book “Epic and Novel”, in which the novel concept is introduced. Bakhtin’s text was very little known and hard to find back in the 1960s. As it is obvious from the analysis, Bakhtin’s theory plays an ambiguous role in Bučys’ history of the national novel. On the one hand, Bakhtin’s theory provides theoretical grounds for the novelization of genres and is a suitable methodology for research into Lithuanian novel. On the other hand, Bučys uses a dogmatic type of analogy, and the analysis itself is based on comparing rather than on interpretation.
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Keywords: global discourse; secularization; modern consciousness; contemporary values
Global processes include the religious and the secular changes of modern consciousness. Their study implies new theoretical approaches. The depth of global processes is interpreted in the form of various theoretical concepts. It is clear that modern reality in its global expression and actualization – this is an absolutely new philosophical and cultural studies phenomenon. Theoretical approaches of global events are very important in relation with the different experience of modern events that represent new forms of awareness in the global discourse. Global perspective makes it possible to identify diverse sociocultural approaches which appear in common human context of social activity and interpretation of experience. For reflection of global consciousness and new technological thinking the standard methodological divisions prove to be of no use, since the new mental constructs appear not in traditional but in virtual spaces. The situation lacks systemic theoretical discourse, which could define new technological effect on modern code switching in cultures and their shift to secularity. Historically new experience of global cultural changes reflects new experience of technology and the changes call for new criteria and valuation. Religious cultural self-determination and world view in globalized European and world setting is a priority for fundamental and applied research. This new interdisciplinary area requires definition of the newly emerging consciousness within the global modernity, its shifts and the crucial features it demonstrates. This paper analyzes the peculiarities of the modern global consciousness and the new phenomena of global secularism. V. Kavolis theoretical paradigm analyzes the genesis of the secularity and the structural relationships between symbolic structures and the global environment.
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Keywords: nation; state; history; tradition; creation
The article deals with the problem of the paradigmatic changes of the concept of nation, which was going on in the period from the end of the 18th and 19th centuries up to the present time. The ideas of German Romanticism and philosophy as well as those of French Enlightenment created the conceptual background of the traditional understanding considering the nation to be a part of the primeval structure of humankind. French Revolution gave birth to the political concept of nation. In the social sciences of the 20th century, the view dominates that basic circumstances of the appearance of nation in history as a historical subject have been political motives and cultural integration of society stimulated by the spread of the press media and literacy of the population, which took place in the period of disintegration of the feudal multicultural empires and the emergence of the modern national states. The process manifested itself mainly in two different formats: according to the “western” format the nation is defined by the state; according to the “eastern” format, the state is created by the nation. Under the influence of these factors, the nationality as such was transformed into nationalism as a certain form of patriotism. Theories held by some scholars are that nations were created or even “invented” as communities of imagination.
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Keywords: international servitude; a dominant state; a servant state; right in rem
The institute of international servitude is recognized in the theory of International Law, despite the fact that this category is still controversial. The international servitude has been transferred from private law and originated during the feudal time. In this article, the author scrutinizes the international servitude, following international and national judicial decisions. The international servitude was scrutinized for the first time in the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries case by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1910. In this case, the Court decided that the liberty to fish granted to the United States of America by Great Britain was a purely economic right and it did not constitute an international servitude. The Court decided that the doctrine of the international servitude is being but little suited to the principle of sovereignty and has found little support from modern publicists. The Court was criticised for this view many times by the modern publicists of International Law. In the case of Dutch State Servitude in Prussia judged by the Supreme Court of Cologne, it was recognized that the mining rights which belonged to the Government of Holland in the territory of Prussia constituted the international servitude. It was the first time when a national court recognized the existence of the international servitude in International Law. The Permanent Court of International Justice in the SS Wimbledon case did not recognize the right of the S.S. “Wimbledon” to free passage through the Kiel Canal under the terms of Article 380 of the Treaty of Versailles as the international servitude. The judge M. Schücking in the Dissenting Opinion stated that this situation concerned servitudes and must be interpreted restrictively. The International Court of Justice in the Right of Passage over Indian Territory case did not recognized the right to passage over Indian territory for Portugal as the international servitude, but stated it as real right. The Supreme Court of India in the Union of India v. Sukumar Sengupta case stated it as the same right to free passage over Teen Bigha territory, which was granted to Bangladesh by India as the international servitude. International institutions did not recognize the international servitude in their decisions, but national courts did recognize it as an inevitable necessity, which was obvious consideration in some cases.
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