Sociolinguists study the interaction between language and society. Variationist sociolinguistics — the subfield of sociolinguistics which is the focus of this issue — uses empirical and quantitative methods to study the production and perception of linguistic variation. Linguistic variation refers to how speakers choose between linguistic forms that say the same thing in different ways, with the variants differing in their social meaning. For example, how frequently someone says fishin’ or fishing depends on a number of factors, such as the (...) speaker's regional and social background and the formality of the speech event. Likewise, if listeners are asked to use a rating scale make judgements about speakers who say fishin’ or fishing, their ratings depend on what other social characteristics are attributed to the speaker. This issue aims to reflect the growing number of interactions that bring variationist sociolinguistics into contact of different branches of cognitive science. After presenting current trends in sociolinguistics, we identify five areas of contact between the two fields: cognitive sociolinguistics, sociolinguistic cognition, acquisition of variation, computational modeling, and a comparative approach of variation in animal communication. We then explain the benefits of interdisciplinary work: fostering the study of variability and cultural diversity in cognition; bringing together data and modeling; understanding the cognitive mechanisms through which sociolinguistic variation is processed; examining indexical meaning; exploring links between different levels of grammar; and improving methods of data collection and analysis. Finally we explain how the articles in this issue contribute to each of these benefits. We conclude by suggesting that sociolinguistics holds a strategic position for facing the challenge of building theories of language through integrating its linguistic, cognitive, and social aspects at the collective and individual levels. (shrink)

Buson, Nardy, Muller & Chevrot (2018) report two experiments ‐ a repetition task and a judgment task ‐ based on the phenomenon of sociolinguistic restoration. When people repeat utterances mixing standard and non‐standard variants, they make them homogeneous. The results suggest that coherent cognitive representation of the sociolinguistic varieties influences the reconstruction of the mixed heard utterance during the repetition. Using the repetition task could help understanding how sociolinguistic cues are organized in memory.

Nous présentons une étude originale en cours visant la compréhension des relations entre variations sociolinguistiques et réseau social. Sa démarche empirique repose sur le recueil de données sociales et langagières massives et longitudinales au sein d’une école maternelle. Environ 200 individus (enfants et adultes) sont équipés une semaine par mois pendant 3 ans de capteurs qui enregistrent en continu à la fois leurs interactions verbales et leurs contacts sociaux. Dans cet article, à visée principalement méthodologique, nous exposons les dispositifs mis (...) en place pour le recueil et les procédures mises en œuvre pour la transcription et l’annotation de données orales massives. Enfin, nous présentons les potentialités offertes par ce type de recueil pour affiner, automatiser et systématiser l’analyse variationniste des relations entre réseau social et variations sociolinguistiques. (shrink)

Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our ...

In this paper, I introduce the idea that some important parts of contemporary pure mathematics are moving away from what I call the extensional point of view. More specifically, these fields are based on criteria of identity that are not extensional. After presenting a few cases, I concentrate on homotopy theory where the situation is particularly clear. Moreover, homotopy types are arguably fundamental entities of geometry, thus of a large portion of mathematics, and potentially to all mathematics, at least according (...) to some speculative research programs. (shrink)

In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these...

An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers (...) of cybernetics—some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science. (shrink)

A Study of the History and Philosophy of Category Theory Jean-Pierre Marquis. to say that objects are dispensable in geometry. What is claimed is that the specific nature of the objects used is irrelevant. To use the terminology already ...

It is commonly assumed across the language sciences that some semantic participant information is lexically encoded in the representation of verbs and some is not. In this paper, we propose that semantic obligatoriness and verb class specificity are criteria which influence whether semantic information is lexically encoded. We present a comprehensive survey of the English verbal lexicon, a sentence continuation study, and an on-line sentence processing study which confirm that both factors play a role in the lexical encoding of participant (...) information. (shrink)

1 INSERM-CEA Unit 562, Cognitive Neuroimaging, Service Hospitalier Fre´de´ric Joliot, Orsay, France, 2 CNRS URA2182 Re´cepteurs and Cognition, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.

This paper argues for a largely unnoted distinction between relational and modal components in the lexical semantics of verbs. Wehypothesize that many verbs encode two kinds of semantic information:a relationship among participants in a situation and a subset ofcircumstances or time indices at which this relationship isevaluated. The latter we term sublexical modality.We show that linking regularities between semantic arguments andsyntactic functions provide corroborating evidence in favor of thissemantic distinction, noting cases in which the semantic groundingof linking through participant-role properties (...) apparently fails. Thissemantic grounding can be preserved, however, once we abstractaway from sublexical modality in lexical semantic representations.Semantically-based linking constraints are insensitive to the sublexicalmodality component of lexical entries and depend only on informationin a predicator's situational core. (shrink)

Les grands paradigmes des sciences humaines ont été constitués, au fil de l’histoire, par l’éviction progressive de la dimension affective des objets et méthodes scientifiques. Après un long désintérêt, pour partie dû à la préoccupation de l’objectivation des phénomènes retenus par l’analyse sociologique, mais aussi à l’hypostase du social, qui a trouvé notamment chez Durkheim un accomplissement encore plus accentué que dans la plupart des conceptions holistes, la question des émotions est l’...

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us (...) defenseless against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece that takesus far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon, and reveals a culture ofslavery, of blood sacrifice, of perpetual and ritualized warfare, of ceremonial hunting andecstasies.In his provocative discussions of various institutions and practices including war,marriage, and the city state, Vernant unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection ofthe religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. He concludes with a genealogy ofthe study (...) of myth from antiquity to the present, and offers a critique of structuralism.Jean-PierreVernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France inParis. (shrink)

The development of a scientific theory of mind was thus significantly delayed."--BOOK JACKET.

Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans. These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans sometimes appear in science-fiction as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans. This book will look into the question "Can machines think?" followed by "Can humans extend their lifespan and keep up with (...) machines?" In other words, do we (humans) have to modify ourselves to be bionic humans, to co-exist and make the most of machines in future? (shrink)

A formalism is introduced to represent the connective organization of an evolving neuronal network and the effects of environment on this organization by stabilization or degeneration of labile synapses associated with functioning. Learning, or the acquisition of an associative property, is related to a characteristic variability of the connective organization: the interaction of the environment with the genetic program is printed as a particular pattern of such organization through neuronal functioning. An application of the theory to the development of the (...) neuromuscular junction is proposed and the basic selective aspect of learning emphasized. (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore les liens entre le recours à la véracité de Dieu et les notions de certitude «métaphysique» et «morale» chez Descartes. Pour cela, je montre le rôle qu'elles jouent dans sa preuve de l'existence du monde extérieur, sa position sur l'existence d'autres esprits et celle sur l'«animal-machine». Descartes se sert de la véracité de Dieu dans le premier cas, maispas dans le deuxième ni le troisième. Je suggere que c'est parce que faire à nouveau appel à la véracité (...) de Dieu dans le cas des autres esprits aurait mis en péril sa doctrine de l'animal-machine. Je conclus en me penchant sur des passages de Descartes qui pourraient sembler incompatibles avec l'inter prétation que je fais du rôle important quejoue la certitude morale dans sa philosophic. (shrink)

There exists reasoning popularly characterized as "prejudiced" that may nevertheless be both sound and prudential, and this reasoning involves the application of exactly the same inductive correlational strategies applied without moral objection in non -human cases. While such reasoning may be rationally unobjectionable, it may yet be morally objectionable because its methods inherently entail a risk of unfairness to others. This raises the interesting philosophical possibility that arguments may be a ppraised and found wanting on other than rational grounds, that (...) arguments may be subject to moral defects in addition to defects of rationality. (shrink)

Building on the storytelling, political storytelling, and religious storytelling literatures, I examined the role religious stories play in the formation of revolutionary convictions. This study’s primary sources of data are volumes I, II, and III of The Gospel in Solentiname, a historical record of religious discussions that took place in an isolated campesino community at a seminary-like setting under a growing national revolutionary scenario in 1970s Nicaragua. My analysis of these discussions reveals that religious discourse based on stories of prophecy, (...) Christian virtue, miracles, and social challenges to revolutionary action allowed story-users to assert, explore, and promote models of action and moral orientation consistent with the making of revolution. (shrink)

As scholars have shown, acceptance is key to the success of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme. While many studies adopt a static cost-benefit perspective, few address the social process leading to acceptance. Drawing on Suchman (1995), this article examines the legitimacy process underlying the acceptance of a PES in agriculture. In particular, the role of collective action in the legitimisation process is analysed, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of discourse analysis. Data from an agro-environmental PES scheme (...) in France on water quality shows that acceptance depends on the normative and cognitive legitimacy that actors confer upon a public policy. (shrink)

In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories.

1 Hesiod's Myth of the Races: An Essay in Structural Analysis Hesiod's poem ' Works and Days' begins with the telling of two myths. ...

If such a thing as nanoethics is possible, it can only develop by confronting the great questions of moral philosophy, thus avoiding the pitfalls so common to regional ethics. We identify and analyze some of these pitfalls: the restriction of ethics to prudence understood as rational risk management; the reduction of ethics to cost/benefit analysis; the confusion of technique with technology and of human nature with the human condition. Once these points have been clarified, it is possible to take up (...) some weighty philosophical and metaphysical questions which are not new, but which need to be raised anew with respect to nanotechnologies: the artificialization of nature; the question of limits; the role of religion; the finiteness of the human condition as something with a beginning and an end; the relationship between knowledge and know-how; the foundations of ethics. (shrink)

This paper aims to connect philosophy of chemistry, green chemistry, and moral philosophy. We first characterize chemistry by underlining how chemists: co-define chemical bodies, operations, and transformations; always refer to active and context-sensitive bodies to explain the reactions under study; and develop strategies that require and intertwine with a molecular whole, its parts, and the surroundings at the same time within an explanation. We will then point out how green chemists are transforming their current activities in order to act upon (...) the world without jeopardizing life. This part will allow us to highlight that green chemistry follows the three aforementioned characteristics while including the world as a partner, as well as biodegradability and sustainability concerns, into chemical practices. In the third part of this paper, we will show how moral philosophy can help green chemists: identify the consequentialist assumptions that ground their reasoning; and widen the scope of their ethical considerations by integrating the notion of care and that of vulnerability into their arguments. In the fourth part of the paper, we will emphasize how, in return, this investigation could help philosophers querying consequentialism as soon as the consequences of chemical activities over the world are taken into account. Furthermore, we will point out how the philosophy of chemistry provides philosophers with new arguments concerning the key debate about the ‘intrinsic value’ of life, ecosystems and the Earth, in environmental ethics. To conclude, we will highlight how mesology, that is to say the study of ‘milieux’, and the concept of ‘ecumeme’ proposed by the philosopher and geographer Augustin Berque, could become important both for green chemists and moral philosophers in order to investigate our relationships with the Earth. (shrink)

Starting from a nonlinear relativistic Klein-Gordon equation derived from the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics (proposed by Bohm-Vigier, (1) Nelson, (2) de Broglie, (3) Guerra et al. (4) ), one can construct joint wave and particle, soliton-like solutions, which follow the average de Broglie-Bohm (5) real trajectories associated with linear solutions of the usual Schrödinger and Klein-Gordon equations.

Prosocial compensation is a corporate social responsibility practice that involves donating money to a charitable cause on behalf of customers as a means to compensate them for their loss after a service failure. In order to determine the effectiveness of PC, we carried out three experiments while also comparing its effectiveness within private and public settings. Experiment 1 focused on the signaling effects of communicating the promise to offer PC to potential customers in the event of service failure. Results show (...) that, in both private and public settings, PC has positive effects on corporate image, credibility, and word-of-mouth intent. More significantly, PC improved one’s CSR image, whereas more tangible compensation, such as a gift voucher, did not. Experiments 2A and 2B focused on the effects of offering PC after a service failure on perceptions of justice. Results show that PC contributes to perceived distributive justice, procedural justice, and post-recovery satisfaction in both private and public settings. Our study showed that PC could be a relevant new CSR practice for organizations wanting to enhance theirs CSR image while contributing to fulfilling their ethical and philanthropic CSR responsibilities. We discuss the implications of our findings and offer several avenues for follow-up research on this initial study on PC. (shrink)

Le réalisme scientifique occupe une place centrale dans le système philosophique de Mario Bunge. Au cœur de cette thèse, on trouve l’affirmation selon laquelle nous pouvons connaître le monde partiellement. Il s’ensuit que les théories scientifiques ne sont pas totalement vraies ou totalement fausses, mais plutôt partiellement vraies et partiellement fausses. Ces énoncés sur la connaissance scientifique, à première vue plausible pour quiconque est familier avec la pratique scientifique, demandent néanmoins à être clarifiés, précisés et, ultimement, à être inclus dans (...) un cadre théorique plus large et rigoureux. Depuis ses toutes premières publications sur ces questions et jusqu’à récemment, Mario Bunge n’a cessé d’interpeller les philosophes afin qu’ils développent une théorie, au sens propre du terme, de la vérité partielle afin de clarifier les enjeux épistémologiques liés au réalisme scientifique. Bunge a lui-même proposé plusieurs parties de cette théorie au fil des années, mais aucune de ces propositions ne l’a satisfait pleinement et la construction de cette théorie demeure un problème entier. Dans ce texte, nous passerons rapidement en revue certaines des approches proposées par Bunge dans ses publications et nous esquisserons certaines pistes qui devraient servir à tout le moins de desiderata pour la construction d’une théorie de la vérité partielle. (shrink)

"This wonderfully eloquent and playful colloquy of two brilliant minds gives new life to the old notion of Dialogue, a sadly forgotten form now.... I "love" this book!

This paper first queries what type of concept of emergence, if any, could be connected with the different chemical activities subsumed under the label ‘quantum chemistry’. In line with Roald Hoffmann, we propose a ‘rotation to research laboratory’ in order to point out how practitioners hold a molecular whole, its parts, and the surroundings together within their various methods when exploring chemical transformation. We then identify some requisite contents that a concept of emergence must incorporate in order to be coherent (...) from the standpoint of the scientific practices involved. In this respect, we finally propose a relational form of emergence which pays attention to the constitutive role of the modes of intervention and to the co-definition of the levels of organization. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a plurality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization but, on the contrary, are considered to be active elements on which the constitution of those patterns depends. What is at stake in this paper is therefore not an ontological form of emergence but an agnostic one which fits what chemists do in their daily work. (shrink)

Structuralism has recently moved center stage in philosophy of mathematics. One of the issues discussed is the underlying logic of mathematical structuralism. In this paper, I want to look at the dual question, namely the underlying structures of logic. Indeed, from a mathematical structuralist standpoint, it makes perfect sense to try to identify the abstract structures underlying logic. We claim that one answer to this question is provided by categorical logic. In fact, we claim that the latter can be seen—and (...) probably should be seen—as being a structuralist approach to logic and it is from this angle that categorical logic is best understood. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Stem cell transplantations from umbilical cord blood, especially if from autologous origin, are often treated with distrust. Not only are the therapeutic effects controversial, but the question of ownership is also hard to answer from an ethical point of view. Furthermore, the extraction of umbilical cord blood is already related to information about the factual and potential health condition of the child and its parents. Arguments and conclusion: The three problems will be discussed separately. Despite certain (...) uncertainties, there are no weighty ethical arguments against the extraction of umbilical cord blood for autologous purposes. The owner of the umbilical cord blood should be the mother. The question of information is not at all typical for this problem area and does not carry more weight here than in other relevant medical situations. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. Stammzellen-Transplantationen aus Nabelschnurblut, vor allem solchen aus autologer Quelle, wird oft mit Misstrauen begegnet. Die therapeutischen Effekte sind umstritten, aber auch die Eigentumsfrage lässt sich aus ethischer Sicht nicht leicht beantworten. Darüber hinaus ist bereits die Gewinnung von Nabelschnurblut mit Informationen über den faktischen und potentiellen Gesundheitszustand des Kindes und seiner Eltern verbunden. Die drei Problemgebiete werden einzeln gewichtet. Trotz bestehender Unsicherheiten stehen der Gewinnung von Nabelschnurblut zu autologen Zwecken keine gravierenden ethischen Argumente entgegen. Eigentümer des Nabelschnurblutes sollte die (...) Mutter sein. Die Informationsfrage ist keineswegs typisch für diesen Problembereich und wiegt hier nicht schwerer als in anderen relevanten medizinischen Situationen. (shrink)