J. J. Lang

Recent research in Diachronic Construction Grammar and Creative Construction Grammar has begun to uncover nongradual cases of linguistic creativity. Two gaps nevertheless remain: the scarcity of documented cases of radical and rapid innovation in core grammar, and the need to specify the converging mechanisms by which such innovation arises and spreads in real time. This study addresses both through the Anticanonical Passive Construction (APC) in Chinese, in the form [bèi X], where X violates conventional passivization constraints. As a form-meaning innovation in core grammar, the APC radically retools the canonical passive into a resource for the satirical construal of subjects as undergoing coercion, loss of agency, and distortion of truth. Combining corpus and survey data, we show that the APC spread rapidly, admitted a wide range of canonically non-passivizable predicates, and is represented in native-speaker knowledge as both interpretable and productively extendable. We explain this development through three converging mechanisms: cognitive biases, including anomaly-triggered grammatical surprise and heightened attention to negative events; joint affect, which facilitates interpretive uptake; and platform amplification, whereby digital affordances and incentives accelerate diffusion. The study expands current accounts of constructionalization by documenting and explaining a core-grammatical innovation in real time.

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of empirical evidence, makes testable predictions concerning both the presence and the quality of experience, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate formulation of the axioms as postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system’s irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience.

Chapters 4 through 7 focused on collective decision-making problems (in particular, voting) with the default assumption that all agents are concerned with the outcome as a whole, and therefore, all agents are expected to have, and to express, preferences over all alternatives. We now consider another subfield of collective decision-making where every agent will be only concerned by a part of the outcome: There are a set of resources, or goods, to be allocated to the agents, each agent is only concerned with the share she will get, and as a consequence, will only express her preferences over sets of resources (and not over all allocations).

Die umfassende und sekundenschnelle online-Verfügbarkeit digitaler Inhalte hat die Vorgehensweisen bei der Informationsbeschaffung sowohl während des Studiums als auch im Berufsleben drastisch verändert. Daher ist es wichtig, im Studium Kompetenzen hinsichtlich digitaler Methoden und Techniken und deren Einsatz in interdisziplinärer Kommunikation und beim wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zu entwickeln. Bisher ist allerdings der „Le(e/h)rraum“ der forschungsnahen Lehre im strukturierten Zusammenspiel verschiedener Disziplinen und Fachrichtungen im Hochschulbereich nur wenig genutzt bzw. „leer“. Dabei bietet er ein großes Potential für die Vermittlung von interdisziplinären, -professionellen und -kulturellen Kompetenzen und Fähigkeiten. Empfehlungen und mögliche Bestandteile zur Nutzung eines solchen Le(e/h)rraums werden aufgezeigt und anhand des forschungsnahen Lehr- und Lernprojekts „(Natur)Wissenschaft und Technik in der Medizin – NWTmed“ an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen erläutert.

Based on “laws” of contagion and similarity, it is understood that people tend to believe that meanings associated with one object may be transferred onto another, and the meanings of the first may “contaminate” the second. The perceived contamination may influence the individual’s way of interacting with the object. We aimed to produce a rich description of individual differences that predict intuitive judgments in response to scenarios involving activation of contagion heuristics. Adolescents and adults in Germany completed a survey and provided rated responses to hypothetical scenarios. They also gave open-ended remarks on one scenario: whether they would wear a sweater that had belonged to Adolf Hitler if they were cold. Content analysis produced a composite description of reflections with insights into historical consciousness in contemporary Germany. Also examined was the extent to which quantitative responses were related to demographics, personality characteristics, supernatural beliefs, and responses to other scenarios.

L’intervention que reprend cet article porte sur un cadre-dispositif singulier de thérapie familiale basé sur l’épistémologie psychanalytique groupale. Ce cadre est singulier dans la mesure où il a été tenté d’articuler un travail entre groupe de thérapeutes et néo-groupe. La réflexion développée ici s’origine dans la clinique des auteurs : lorsqu’ils parlent en groupe d’une famille, la règle d’association libre les amène fréquemment à évoquer une autre famille rencontrée précédemment en séance. Quelle est la nature et la fonction de cette résonance? L’article pose l’hypothèse d’un nouveau contre-transfert : le contre-transfert transfamilial. Une vignette clinique permet d’illustrer le cheminement qui a conduit les auteurs à y aboutir.

Several tasks in artificial intelligence require the ability to find models about knowledge dynamics. They include belief revision, fusion and belief merging, and abduction. In this paper, we exploit the algebraic framework of mathematical morphology in the context of propositional logic and define operations such as dilation or erosion of a set of formulas. We derive concrete operators, based on a semantic approach, that have an intuitive interpretation and that are formally well behaved, to perform revision, fusion and abduction. Computation and tractability are addressed, and simple examples illustrate the main results.

Das Subjekt ist einer der zentralen Begriffe der Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften überhaupt, gleichzeitig jedoch auch einer, der besonders schwierig zu fassen ist. Nicht nur lassen sich philosophiehistorisch stark variierende Bedeutungen desselben ausmachen, darüber hinaus stellt es eine besondere Herausforderung dar, das Subjekt ins Verhältnis zu anderen zentralen Begriffen der Philosophie zu setzen, wie etwa Person, Selbst, Ich, Substanz, Gehirn und Individuum. Die weit verbreitete Unklarheit über diesen Begriff und seine doch nicht zu leugnende Relevanz gaben uns Anlass zu diesem Projekt - die ihm inne liegenden Spannungsverhältnisse den Ausgangspunkt. Subject is one of the most central concepts in contemporary philosophy and the humanities, though at the same time one which is especially hard to grasp. Not only does the meaning of this concept vary throughout history, furthermore it poses a great challenge to determine its relation to concepts such as mind, the self and the individual. The ambiguity of this concept, its inherent relationship of tension as well as its undeniable relevance, gave us occasion for this project.

The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear, anger, horror, shame and hatred. Yet we don't understand enough about how 'ordinary' emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces, deeply involved in the history of mass violence. Drawing on recent insights from philosophy, psychology, history, and the social sciences, this volume examines the emotions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Editors Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang have brought together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature, value, and role of emotions as they relate to the causes and dynamics of mass atrocities. The result is a new perspective on the social, political, and moral dimensions of emotions in the history of collective violence and its aftermath.