The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene. However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip-art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye-movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. In (...) Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real-world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real-world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate. Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co-presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real-world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object-based visual indices. (shrink)

This article mounts a defense of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) from various criticisms made in Russell Sbriglia and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology Subject Lessons. Along with Sbriglia and Žižek’s own Introduction to the volume, the article responds to the chapters by Todd McGowan, Adrian Johnston, and Molly Anne Rothenberg, the three in which my own version of OOO is most frequently discussed.

This essay looks to re-evaluate sculptor Richard Serra’s famous claim that “to remove the work is to destroy it.” Using OOO, and particularly Graham Harman’s interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s tool analysis, in order to analyze the now famous moment when Tilted Arc was de-installed from Federal Plaza, Manhattan in 1989, this paper argues that the work was not in fact destroyed but rather that its ontological autonomy was even more absolutely revealed in that moment as such. Although it is the (...) case that art objects and sites are prone to discursive co-construction and evaluation, it is this analysis’ claim that they both are possessive of a deep, substantive form also, a form resistant to appropriation. Tilted Arc therefore revealed something even more insidious and dangerous to those who opposed it than the power of art to speak back to its surroundings. Rather, it uncovered the substantive objecthood of the site itself. (shrink)

This article concerns the ontological status of the performing body. What if it were not considered derivative in relation to any kind of discursive construction or any kind of pre-existent materiality or force? What if it were taken as a starting point of our attempts to understand the linguistic and material aspects of our bodily co-existence? If so, our ideas of what a body can do while performing, and what it consists of, have to change radically. The anatomy of the (...) performing body is studied through a series of scenic experiments and practical examples, and the argumentation rests on the evidence thus provided. On the philosophical level the discussion focuses on ’object-oriented ontology’ and its representatives. The indications are that our understanding of objects, objectivity and things in general is based on our understanding of bodies as linguistic entities. Becoming a performing body means becoming a linguistic body, and vice versa. This does not take us back to ‘transcendentalism’ or ‘correlationism’, however. The equality of all things, claimed by ‘ooo’ proponents, can only be achieved via the medium of the performing body as an equalizing instance. (shrink)

Early in his 1993 book Tarrying with the Negative, Slavoj Žižek asks contemporary philosophy to “repeat the Kantian gesture.” The implication is that (much like Plato did with the Sophists) Kant accepted the critique of metaphysics made by David Hume, affirming it in an unexpected positive sense. The analogous gesture for a would-be Kant in our time would be to accept deconstruction’s insistence on the contingency of meaning while treating contingency not as a failing, but as the very stuff of (...) truth itself. For Žižek this is precisely what Jacques Lacan has already done, and this makes Lacan the pivotal thinker of our era. Yet as we follow Žižek’s pursuit of this theme in his recent article “The Parallax of Ontology” (an extract from his book Sex and the Failed Absolute), we catch sight of a new direction in Žižek’s thinking. His previous model of parallax in terms of two separate and irreconcilable realities seems to shift toward a new emphasis on the differential becoming of the two, rather than their paradoxical co-existence. (shrink)

Most everyday tasks involve multiple modalities, which raises the question of how the processing of these modalities is coordinated by the cognitive system. In this paper, we focus on the coordination of visual attention and linguistic processing during speaking. Previous research has shown that objects in a visual scene are fixated before they are mentioned, leading us to hypothesize that the scan pattern of a participant can be used to predict what he or she will say. We test this hypothesis (...) using a data set of cued scene descriptions of photo-realistic scenes. We demonstrate that similar scan patterns are correlated with similar sentences, within and between visual scenes; and that this correlation holds for three phases of the language production process (target identification, sentence planning, and speaking). We also present a simple algorithm that uses scan patterns to accurately predict associated sentences by utilizing similarity-based retrieval. (shrink)

When people communicate, they coordinate a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors. This process of coordination is called alignment, and it is assumed to be fundamental to successful communication. In this paper, we question this assumption and investigate whether disalignment is a more successful strategy in some cases. More specifically, we hypothesize that alignment correlates with task success only when communication is interactive. We present results from a spot-the-difference task in which dyads of interlocutors have to decide whether they (...) are viewing the same scene or not. Interactivity was manipulated in three conditions by increasing the amount of information shared between interlocutors. We use recurrence quantification analysis to measure the alignment between the scan-patterns of the interlocutors. We found that interlocutors who could not exchange feedback aligned their gaze more, and that increased gaze alignment correlated with decreased task success in this case. When feedback was possible, in contrast, interlocutors utilized it to better organize their joint search strategy by diversifying visual attention. This is evidenced by reduced overall alignment in the minimal feedback and full dialogue conditions. However, only the dyads engaged in a full dialogue increased their gaze alignment over time to achieve successful performances. These results suggest that alignment per se does not imply communicative success, as most models of dialogue assume. Rather, the effect of alignment depends on the type of alignment, on the goals of the task, and on the presence of feedback. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss Armstrong’s account of attachment-based claims to natural resources, the kind of rights that follow from attachment-based claims, and the limits we should impose on such claims. We hope to clarify how and why attachment matters in the discourse on resource rights by presenting three challenges to Armstrong’s theory. First, we question the normative basis for certain attachment claims, by trying to distinguish more clearly between different kinds of attachment and other kinds of claims. Second, we (...) highlight the need to supplement Armstrong’s account with a theory of how to weigh different attachment claims so as to establish the normative standing that different kinds of attachment claims should have. Third, we propose that sustainability must be a necessary requirement for making attachment claims to natural resources legitimate. Based on these three challenges and the solutions we propose, we argue that attachment claims are on the one hand narrower than Armstrong suggests, while on the other hand they can justify more far-reaching rights to control than Armstrong initially considers, because of the particular weight that certain attachment claims have. (shrink)

The need for European citizens to be more involved in scientific research has emerged from the conclusions of the studies commissioned by the EC and by independent bodies. In the first part of this contribution, I will discuss the question of whether a dialogue between society and science is desirable. I will attempt to claim that at least one of the reasons why the dialogue between science and society should be defended has been underestimated in the course of most of (...) the studies carried out: the fact the scientific knowledge helps to a create a better, more rounded, more aware human being which can only benefit society. Subsequently, I will deal with the various genres of scientific literature. While in modern times, communication of scientific discoveries has been reduced to the article, in the nineteenth century scientists made use of more varied literary forms such as journals, letters and narrative essays which were more accessible to those who were not specialists but nevertheless curious about scientific matters. I believe that these more popular forms of writing helped to close the gap between the public and science. (shrink)

In 1975, the English evolutionist William Donald Hamilton held in Brazil a series of lectures entitled “Population genetics and social behaviour”. The unpublished notes of these conferences—written by Hamilton and recently discovered at the British Library—offer an opportunity to reflect on some of the author’s ideas about evolution. The year of the conference is particularly significant, as it took place shortly after the applications of the Price equation with which Hamilton was able to build a model that included several levels (...) of selection. In this paper I mainly analyse the inaugural lecture in which Hamilton proposes a simple model to disprove the hypothesis supported by the British zoologist C. Vero Wynne-Edwards regarding mechanisms to prevent “over-exploitation of the food supply” in “the interests of the survival of the group”. The document presented here is of great historical interest. Not only because manuscript offers a model that—since it was intended for teaching purposes—had never before appeared in the published version, but also because of the general index of the lectures that accompanies it. The latter allows us to make some hypothetical considerations on the relationship and differences between kin-selection, group-selection and inclusive fitness that Hamilton wanted to present to the attentive, well-prepared audience of the foreign university that had invited him. (shrink)

This paper examines public conflict over the rapid growth of the Tasmanian salmon aquaculture industry and associated environmental and social impacts. By conducting a media analysis, triangulated...

AimsSport specialization is an actual trend in youth athletes, but it can increase injury risk. The aim was to determine the eventual correlation between sports specialization and injury risk in various sports, using a biopsychosocial approach.Methods169 sport-specialized athletes completed [; overall,, ] a self-reported questionnaire regarding sociodemographic, physical-attitudinal, injuries and psychological-attitudinal To analyze data univariate and correlate analyses were used.ResultsOf 169 athletes enrolled, 53% were single-sport specialized. In team sports a high risk of having to remain at rest for up (...) to 1 month because of overuse was observed. Males who suffered direct trauma in the team group were more exposed to that type of injury, and also the type of specialization figured significantly. In addition, interoceptive awareness correlates with injury. This study shows that, even though young athletes seem to be at a high risk of becoming injured, early team sport specialization and a high performance level cannot be considered to be the only risk factors. (shrink)

In his essay From Logos to Mythos, I republished on the twentieth anniversary of its first publication, Most saw in the release of Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie the moment when philology distanced itself from philosophy “refraining strictly from any discussion of what the Greek myths could mean for us, and instead concentrating […] into what the Greek myths could have meant for the Greeks”. This essay analyses the case study offered by the mythological dyad Kronos (Κρόνος) and Chronos (Χρόνος). It (...) highlights some elements that place these two figures at a distance on the philological level but closer on the philosophical one. The essay encourages a dialogue between philological rigour and philosophical use of myth: myth, in its prolificity, is eloquent in every age and a careful understanding of what it meant to the Greeks in its time does not necessarily imply giving up understanding what it may mean to us today. (shrink)

In this paper we present applications of the ACGT Master Ontology (MO) which is a new terminology resource for a transnational network providing data exchange in oncology, emphasizing the integration of both clinical and molecular data. The development of a new ontology was necessary due to problems with existing biomedical ontologies in oncology. The ACGT MO is a test case for the application of best practices in ontology development. This paper provides an overview of the application of the ontology within (...) the ACGT project thus far. (shrink)

Drawing out literal and metaphorical meanings of 'foreignness' this wide-ranging volume offers much to scholars of postcolonial, gender, and cultural studies seeking new approaches to the study of alterity.

"Contra la postmodernidad" entabla una polémica con las principales contribuciones políticas, sociológicas y filosóficas de los últimos tiempos. Comparecen ante el tribunal pensadores como Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Agnes Héller, Toni Negri, Simon Critchley, Gianni Vattimo, Eloy Fernández Porta y Jean-François Lyotard, entre otros. Se discuten las falacias de la economía neoclásica, el fetichismo de la alteridad radical y la retórica de la diferencia. A esto se añade una ardua polémica con aquella forma de filosofía obsesionada con el suicidio de (...) la razón, la muerte de la metafísica y la superación de la Modernidad. También se debate sobre la crisis del proyecto europeo y sobre movimientos sociales recientes como el 15-M o la primavera árabe. La tesis principal del libro afirma que la postmodernidad hace tiempo que llegó a su fin, sus categorías no son aplicables a un tiempo como el nuestro, marcado por una grave crisis económica, ecológica y social. Asistimos al regreso de la lucha de clases, la geopolítica, las estrategias neocoloniales, el populismo y el fundamentalismo étnico, cultural y religioso. En este contexto de grandes transformaciones, la apuesta normativa del postmodernismo resulta intelectualmente muy pobre y políticamente inútil. El afán por las cuestiones culturales e identitarias lleva a que muchos de sus autores olviden deliberadamente el análisis económico del sistema. Por este motivo, el postmodernismo resulta ser, en la mayor parte de los casos, una réplica exacta de la ideología neoliberal. (shrink)