L ’article examine des armoiries situées sur la margelle d’un puits dans la forteresse médiévale d’Arta. Ces armoiries ont été publiées en 1936 par A. Orlandos, qui les a attribuées à la famille italienne dite des Orsini, présente à Arta au xive s. L ’article démontre qu’il faut, au contraire, les attribuer à une autre famille italienne, celle des Tocco, ayant régné à Arta de 1416 à 1449. Il décrit leur composition associant aux armoiries de la famille Tocco elle‑même celles (...) des princes de Tarente, empereurs titulaires de Constantinople, ainsi que la célèbre aigle bicéphale byzantine. Il étudie la signification des armoiries en les replaçant dans le contexte de l’héraldique familiale des Tocco, de celle des familles occidentales liées au monde byzantin et de celle de Byzance. Enfin, il étudie leur postérité dans les armoiries ultérieures des descendants de la famille. (shrink)

In this vivid and incisive guide, philosophy comes to life. Using the central idea of causality as a guiding principle, Brendan Wilson shows how the history of philosophy becomes a very clear and natural sequence of events. The resulting perspective reveals the deep connections between the problems of science, mind and reality, freedom and responsibility, knowledge, language, truth and religion. Newcomers to philosophy will be able to engage with the great questions and ideas of the western tradition. The writing (...) is clear and jargon-free, while the 'short-chapter' format gives the reader time to pause and think at each step along the way. Style and layout put accessibility first and the many illustrations include explanatory diagrams and drawings as well as pictures of philosophers from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. Key Features Encourages critical and independent thinking Written in an engaging, non-technical style Makes clear sense of philosophy's rich and complex history Presents a distinctive argument Provides a wide range of case studies and examples from philosophy, science and law Text Features Chapter overviews Chapter sub-headings for ease of use Carefully-chosen quotations from philosophers ancient and modern End of chapter discussion points An open and attractive page layout Lavish and relevant illustrations, including photographs, diagrams, explanatory boxes and drawings. (shrink)

En esta investigación fenomenológica nos proponemos caracterizar las dimensiones del espacio habitado (el mundo familiar, el mundo extraño y el espacio intersticial entre ambos, desarrollado por la teoría psicoanalítica) a partir de la categoría schmitziana de atmósfera como fenómeno afectivo. Esta tarea revelará la ontología de los espacios no-extensionales que constituyen un aspecto esencial de la experiencia del habitar. En particular, nos concentraremos en la descripción positiva de las atmósferas del espacio intersticial, buscando resaltar su naturaleza productiva.

La profundización del análisis de la relación entre el yo y la afección, propia de los estudios tardíos de Husserl sobre el campo de la pasividad, implica el abandono del esquema estático según el cual el sentido resulta de la acción del yo sobre una materia inerte. El giro genético de la fenomenología pone a la luz los procesos de constitución de la materia y su incidencia sobre el acto de donación de sentido.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) makes use of explicit procedures for grading evidence for causal claims. Normally, these procedures categorise evidence of correlation produced by statistical trials as better evidence for a causal claim than evidence of mechanisms produced by other methods. We argue, in contrast, that evidence of mechanisms needs to be viewed as complementary to, rather than inferior to, evidence of correlation. In this paper we first set out the case for treating evidence of mechanisms alongside evidence of correlation in (...) explicit protocols for evaluating evidence. Next we provide case studies which exemplify the ways in which evidence of mechanisms complements evidence of correlation in practice. Finally, we put forward some general considerations as to how the two sorts of evidence can be more closely integrated by EBM. (shrink)

The change from static to genetic perspective involves an enlargement of the phenomenological field. The main subject is not anymore the description of the essential notes of a phenomenon but rather the search for its origins. New levels of objects and consciousness arise as consequence of this new approach. The structures of subjectivity revealed by the genetic inquiry constitute the field of passivity.

According to current hierarchies of evidence for EBM, evidence of correlation is always more important than evidence of mechanisms when evaluating and establishing causal claims. We argue that evidence of mechanisms needs to be treated alongside evidence of correlation. This is for three reasons. First, correlation is always a fallible indicator of causation, subject in particular to the problem of confounding; evidence of mechanisms can in some cases be more important than evidence of correlation when assessing a causal claim. Second, (...) evidence of mechanisms is often required in order to obtain evidence of correlation. Third, evidence of mechanisms is often required in order to generalise and apply causal claims. While the EBM movement has been enormously successful in making explicit and critically examining one aspect of our evidential practice, i.e., evidence of correlation, we wish to extend this line of work to make explicit and critically examine a second aspect of our evidential practices: evidence of mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper draws on data from Work and Care During COVID-19, an online survey of Australians during pandemic lockdown in May 2020. It focuses on how subsamples of lesbian, gay, and bisexual mothers and fathers in couples and single mothers subjectively experienced unpaid work and care during lockdown compared with heterosexual mothers and fathers in couples, and with partnered mothers, respectively. During the pandemic, nonheterosexual fathers’ subjective reports were less negative than those of their heterosexual counterparts, but differences between heterosexual (...) and lesbian/bisexual mothers were more mixed. Unlike their partnered counterparts, more single mothers reported feeling satisfied than before with their balance of paid and unpaid work and how they spent their time overall during the pandemic, perhaps because they avoided partnership conflicts and particularly benefited from relaxed commuting and child care deadlines. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay will explore the constitution of a transcendental theory of space through an examination of the notion of spatial synthesis in the works of Husserl, Paliard, and Deleuze. First, we shall explore the constitution of the sensorial fields in Husserl’s phenomenology. In Husserlian terms, space is not originally an empty form that can eventually be filled with a certain empirical content. Accordingly, the philosopher claims that spatiality is a consequence of the immanent synthesis of sensations. Then, we will (...) move on to Jacques Paliard’s psychology of perception, where we will find both aesthetic and noetic synthesis as transcendental conditions for the perception of space. Lastly, we will explore Deleuze’s theory of intensive space, specifically the concept of depth developed in a dialogue with Paliard. This comparative analysis shows that purely intensive fields of individuation are a transcendental a priori for the perception of an extensive space. (shrink)

Mechanistic philosophy of science views a large part of scientific activity as engaged in modelling mechanisms. While science textbooks tend to offer qualitative models of mechanisms, there is increasing demand for models from which one can draw quantitative predictions and explanations. Casini et al. (Theoria 26(1):5–33, 2011) put forward the Recursive Bayesian Networks (RBN) formalism as well suited to this end. The RBN formalism is an extension of the standard Bayesian net formalism, an extension that allows for modelling the hierarchical (...) nature of mechanisms. Like the standard Bayesian net formalism, it models causal relationships using directed acyclic graphs. Given this appeal to acyclicity, causal cycles pose a prima facie problem for the RBN approach. This paper argues that the problem is a significant one given the ubiquity of causal cycles in mechanisms, but that the problem can be solved by combining two sorts of solution strategy in a judicious way. (shrink)

This collection presents significant contributions from an international network project on mathematical cultures, including essays from leading scholars in the history and philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education.​ Mathematics has universal standards of validity. Nevertheless, there are local styles in mathematical research and teaching, and great variation in the place of mathematics in the larger cultures that mathematical practitioners belong to. The reflections on mathematical cultures collected in this book are of interest to mathematicians, philosophers, historians, sociologists, cognitive scientists and (...) mathematics educators. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone exponer los momentos centrales de la teoría husserliana de la apodicticidad, señalar sus dificultades y ofrecer un principio de solución para los problemas más acuciantes. En relación con lo último, la idea rectora que conduce las consideraciones siguientes es que la apodicticidad que Husserl reclama para el yo debe comprenderse a la luz de la síntesis temporal y, en especial, de las notas que son propias del presente viviente. The current paper seeks to expound the (...) principal aspects of the husserlian theory of apodicticity, to present its dificulties and to offer a posible solution to its mains problems. In conection to the latter the directive idea that leads the followings considerations is that we must understand the apodicticity of the "I" in terms of the temporal synthesis, in particular, in the characteristics features of the living present. (shrink)

English mass noun phrases & count noun phrases differ only minimally grammatically. The basis for the difference is ascribed to a difference in the features +/-CT. These features serve the morphosyntactic function of determining the available options for the assigment of grammatical number, itself determined by the features +/-PL: +CT places no restriction on the available options, while -CT, in the unmarked case, restricts the available options to -PL. They also serve the semantic function of determining the sort of denotation (...) associated with demonstrative & quantified noun phrases. The feature -CT requires that the associated denotation be the set whose sole member is the greatest aggregate of which the noun phrase or noun is true; the feature +CT requires that the associated denotation be the set whose members are all & only those minimal aggregates of which the noun phrase or noun is true. At the same time, neither mass NPs nor count NPs that are arguments of a predicate have their predicate evaluated with respect to their denotations. Rather, the predicate is evaluated with respect to an aggregation, a set of aggregates constructed from the denotation of the noun phrase that is an argument of the predicate. 3 Tables, 4 Figures, 74 References. AA. (shrink)

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to debates concerning general scientific methodology and theory choice, the demarcation of science from non-science, the nature of probability and quantum mechanics, and the methodology of the social sciences. His work is notable for its wide influence both within the philosophy of science, within science itself, and within a broader social context. Popper’s early work attempts to solve the problem of (...) demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. While Popper recognizes that scientists can and do hold onto theories in the face of failed predictions when there are no predictively superior rivals to turn to. He holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific. Among other things, Popper argues that his falsificationist proposal allows for a solution of the problem of induction, since inductive reasoning plays no role in his account of theory choice. Along with his general proposals regarding falsification and scientific methodology, Popper is notable for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences. Popper defends a propensity theory of probability, according to which probabilities are interpreted as objective, mind-independent properties of experimental setups. Popper then uses this theory to provide a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, though its applicability goes beyond this specific case. With respect to the social sciences, Popper argued against the historicist attempt to formulate universal laws covering the whole of human history and instead argued in favor of methodological individualism and situational logic. Table of Contents 1. Background 2. Falsification and the Criterion of Demarcation a. Popper on Physics and Psychoanalysis b. Auxiliary and Ad Hoc Hypotheses c. Basic Sentences and the Role of Convention d. Induction, Corroboration, and Verisimilitude 3. Criticisms of Falsificationism 4. Realism, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability 5. Methodology in the Social Sciences 6. Popper’s Legacy 7. References and Further Reading a. Primary Sources b. Secondary Sources -/- . (shrink)

For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

The metaphor of scaffolding has become current in discussions of the cognitive help we get from artefacts, environmental affordances and each other. Consideration of mathematical tools and representations indicates that in these cases at least (and plausibly for others), scaffolding is the wrong picture, because scaffolding in good order is immobile, temporary and crude. Mathematical representations can be manipulated, are not temporary structures to aid development, and are refined. Reflection on examples from elementary algebra indicates that Menary is on the (...) right track with his ‘enculturation’ view of mathematical cognition. Moreover, these examples allow us to elaborate his remarks on the uniqueness of mathematical representations and their role in the emergence of new thoughts. (shrink)

Brendan Wilson leads the reader through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, revealing a new clarity, singleness of purpose and contemporary relevance in this acknowledged masterpiece.

This paper argues that promises are proposals in joint practical deliberation, the activity of deciding together what to do. More precisely: to promise to ϕ is to propose (in a particular way) to decide together with your addressee(s) that you will ϕ. I defend this deliberative theory by showing that the activity of joint practical deliberation naturally gives rise to a speech act with exactly the same properties as promises. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding (...) one's own actions turns out to have the very same normative effects, under the very same conditions, as a promise. I submit that this cannot be a coincidence: we should conclude that promises and the relevant kind of proposals in joint practical deliberation are one and the same. (shrink)

This book illustrates the profound implications of Gabriel Marcel's unique existentialist approach to epistemology not only for traditional themes in his work concerning ethics and the transcendent, but also for epistemological issues, concerning the objectivity of knowledge, the problem of skepticism, and the nature of non-conceptual knowledge, among others. There are also chapters of dialogue with philosophers, Jacques Maritain and Martin Buber. In focusing on these themes, the book makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on Marcel.Brendan Sweetman, a (...) native of Dublin, Ireland, is Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, USA. His books include Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity, 2006) and Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum Books, 2007). He has coauthored or coedited several other books, including Truth and Religious Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), and Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 1992). Professor Sweetman has published more than fifty articles and reviews in a variety of collections and journals, including International Philosophical Quarterly, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, and Review of Metaphysics. He writes regularly in the areas of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, political philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

Recent work in moral philosophy has emphasized the foundational role played by interpersonal accountability in the analysis of moral concepts such as moral right and wrong, moral obligation and duty, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility (Darwall 2006; 2013a; 2013b). Extending this framework to the field of moral psychology, we hypothesize that our moral attitudes, emotions, and motives are also best understood as based in accountability. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, we argue that the implicit aim of the central (...) moral motives and emotions is to hold people - whether oneself or others - accountable for compliance with the demands of morality. Moral condemnation is based in a motive to get perpetrators to hold themselves accountable for their wrongdoing, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere retributive motive to make perpetrators suffer (�2). And moral conscience is based in a genuine motive to hold oneself accountable for behaving in accordance with moral demands, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere egoistic motive to appear moral to others (�3). The accountability-based theory of the moral motives and emotions we offer provides better explanations of the extant empirical data than any of the major alternative theories of moral motivation. Moreover, conceiving of moral psychology in this way gives us a new and illuminating perspective on what makes morality distinctive: its essential connection to our practice of holding one another accountable (�4). (shrink)

Over 115 000 people are waiting for life-saving organ transplants, of whom a small fraction will receive transplants and many others will die while waiting. Existing efforts to expand the number of available organs, including increasing the number of registered donors and procuring organs in uncontrolled environments, are crucial but unlikely to address the shortage in the near future and will not improve donor/recipient compatibility or organ quality. If successful, organ bioengineering can solve the shortage and improve functional outcomes. Studying (...) manufactured organs in animal models has produced valuable data, but is not sufficient to understand viability in humans. Before risking manufactured organ experimentation in living humans, study of bioengineered organs in recently deceased humans would facilitate evaluation of the function of engineered tissues and the complex interactions between the host and the transplanted tissue. Although such studies do not pose risk to human subjects, they pose unique ethical challenges concerning the previous wishes of the deceased, rights of surviving family members, effective operation and fair distribution of medical services, and public transparency. This article investigates the ethical, legal and social considerations in performing engineered organ research on the recently deceased. (shrink)

One way to challenge the substantiveness of a particular philosophical issue is to argue that those who debate the issue are engaged in a merely verbal dispute. For example, it has been maintained that the apparent disagreement over the mind/brain identity thesis is a merely verbal dispute, and thus that there is no substantive question of whether or not mental properties are identical to neurological properties. The goal of this paper is to help clarify the relationship between mere verbalness and (...) substantiveness. I first argue that we should see mere verbalness as a certain kind of discourse defect that arises when the parties differ as to what each takes to be the immediate question under discussion. I then argue that mere verbalness, so understood, does not imply that the question either party is attempting to address is a non-substantive one. Even if it turns out that the parties to the mind/brain dispute are addressing subtly different questions, these might both be substantive questions to which their respective metaphysical views provide substantive answers. One reason it is tempting to reach deflationary conclusions from the charge of mere verbalness is that we fail to distinguish it from the claim that a sentence under dispute is, in a certain sense, indisputable. Another reason is that we fail to distinguish mere verbalness from a certain sort of indeterminacy. While indisputability and indeterminacy plausibly capture forms of nonsubstantiveness, I argue that mere verbalness is insufficient to establish either indisputability or indeterminacy. (shrink)

Hyde claims that the trickster spirit is necessary for the renewal of culture, and that he lives only in the ‘complex terrain of polytheism’. Fortunately for those of us in monotheistic cultures, Weber gives reasons for thinking that polytheism is making a return, albeit in a new, disenchanted form. The plan of this paper is to elaborate some basic notions from Weber, to explore Hyde’s thesis in more detail and then to take up the question of the plurality of spirits (...) both around and within us and whether the trickster is one of them. Weber has three roles in this argument. First, he theorises rationalisation, disenchantment and bureaucracy; second, he offers an argument that in a certain sense polytheism is returning ; and third, he presents a way to translate the mytho-poetic register in which Hyde works into terms acceptable to social science of a more materialist bent. The claim of the paper is that polytheism as a practical attitude means recognising that there are diverse and contradictory ethical orders built into the world around us and active with our psyches. Weber explains why this is especially difficult for us, and Hyde offers us the hope that we may be tricky enough to cope. (shrink)

The view that a mathematical proof is a sketch of or recipe for a formal derivation requires the proof to function as an argument that there is a suitable derivation. This is a mathematical conclusion, and to avoid a regress we require some other account of how the proof can establish it.

The late Imre Lakatos once hoped to found a school of dialectical philosophy of mathematics. The aim of this paper is to ask what that might possibly mean. But Lakatos's philosophy has serious shortcomings. The paper elaborates a conception of dialectical philosophy of mathematics that repairs these defects and considers the work of three philosophers who in some measure fit the description: Yehuda Rav, Mary Leng and David Corfield.

Internalists and externalists disagree over how intimately normative judgment and motivation are linked. Proponents on both sides typically try to settle the issue by descriptively interpreting our concept of a normative judgment. Unfortunately, this approach has resulted in deep and apparently intractable disagreement. It is time to consider alternative strategies. In this paper, I argue that the internalist/externalist debate is particularly ripe for revisionary arguments that evaluate conceptions of normative judgment in light of the costs and benefits of their adoption. (...) I then develop a revisionary case for externalism by identifying three practical hazards that come with internalist conceptions of normative judgment. Along the way, I show how these internalist hazards are mirrored by externalist benefits. I also argue that two potential benefits of internalism are not very beneficial. Together, these considerations give us strong practical reasons to adopt externalist conceptions of normative judgment, regardless of which account is descriptively accurate. (shrink)

La indagación husserliana sobre los animales constituye un importante aporte para pensar tanto la relación del hombre con la naturaleza como el vínculo entre la actividad y la pasividad de la conciencia. Existen dos direcciones de investigación: por una parte, aquellas que toman al nóema “animal” como tema de una descripción fenomenológica y, por otra, las que encuentran en la animalidad un momento en el desarrollo teleológico de la monadología trascendental.

This paper discusses the connection between the actual history of mathematics and Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics, in three parts. The first points to studies by Lakatos and others which support his conception of mathematics and its history. In the second I suggest that the apparent poverty of Lakatosian examples may be due to the way in which the history of mathematics is usually written. The third part argues that Lakatos is right to hold philosophy accountable to history, even if Lakatos's (...) own view of mathematics fails that test. (shrink)

Daly, Brendan I am from Christchurch Diocese, a suffragan diocese of Wellington Archdiocese, a metropolitan see. During the past forty years, one diocesan bishop has resigned and was replaced by his coadjutor. This former coadjutor died soon afterwards. The next bishop resigned and was simultaneously replaced by the appointment of his auxiliary. The next two bishops died and created vacant sees. Usually there are significant time gaps between vacant sees, resulting in each vacancy being a new experience for the (...) key people involved. (shrink)

Daly, Brendan About a month before my ordination as a priest on 7 May 1977, my diocesan bishop asked me to come and see him at his office. He said after my ordination I was going to be appointed to Mairehau parish as an assistant priest. Two weeks later I was making my pre-ordination retreat and the bishop arrived to see me. He was embarrassed and said 'We have a problem. One parish priest won't take the assistant priest that (...) I want to give him, and another assistant priest won't go where he is appointed, so the end result is that you are now going to Addington parish. Is that okay?' I replied 'Yes.' Both parishes were in Christchurch city, and I did not know either parish priest personally, so it really did not matter at all. However, two weeks later at my ordination ceremony, it came time for the promise of obedience. I knelt down before the bishop who asked me did 'I promise him and his successors obedience and respect.' At the same time as he said this I was conscious of the thought going through my mind, 'what does it all mean anyway?'. (shrink)

Distributional models of semantics learn word meanings from contextual co‐occurrence patterns across a large sample of natural language. Early models, such as LSA and HAL (Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Lund & Burgess, 1996), counted co‐occurrence events; later models, such as BEAGLE (Jones & Mewhort, 2007), replaced counting co‐occurrences with vector accumulation. All of these models learned from positive information only: Words that occur together within a context become related to each other. A recent class of distributional models, referred to as (...) neural embedding models, are based on a prediction process embedded in the functioning of a neural network: Such models predict words that should surround a target word in a given context (e.g., word2vec; Mikolov, Sutskever, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013). An error signal derived from the prediction is used to update each word's representation via backpropagation. However, another key difference in predictive models is their use of negative information in addition to positive information to develop a semantic representation. The models use negative examples to predict words that should not surround a word in a given context. As before, an error signal derived from the prediction prompts an update of the word's representation, a procedure referred to as negative sampling. Standard uses of word2vec recommend a greater or equal ratio of negative to positive sampling. The use of negative information in developing a representation of semantic information is often thought to be intimately associated with word2vec's prediction process. We assess the role of negative information in developing a semantic representation and show that its power does not reflect the use of a prediction mechanism. Finally, we show how negative information can be efficiently integrated into classic count‐based semantic models using parameter‐free analytical transformations. (shrink)

It has become commonplace in the theory of concepts to distinguish between questions about the structure and questions about the ontology of concepts. Structural questions concern the way concepts are composed of, or otherwise related to, other concepts (or non-conceptual constituents), while ontological questions concern the metaphysical nature of concepts: how concepts exist (if they exist); what kind of entities they are. A tacit assumption in discussions about the structure and ontology of concepts seems to be that structural and ontological (...) questions can be treated more or less independently of each other. Correspondingly, it might be assumed that one can rather arbitrarily combine structural analyses of concepts with any hypothesis about their ontological make-up. In this paper, we would like to question this assumption with regard to a particular recent development in the structural analysis of concepts, the so-called frame theory. As a matter of fact, most frame theorists adopt a subjectivist theory of concepts. Yet, subjectivism attracts philosophical criticisms, which originate mainly in the writings of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. While Wittgenstein appreciated the cognitive dimension of concepts, he came to reject the subjectivist’s causal analysis of mental explanation and their ensuing reification of concepts as causally operative mental particulars. Instead, Wittgenstein suggested that concepts are socially imparted norms of classification and inference – i. e., abstractions from collective word-usages and other practices associated with categorizing and higher-order thinking, which may serve as instructions for individual agents on how to discriminate and interact with things of different kinds. Applying the Wittgensteinian critique of subjectivism to the frame analysis, the we not only find that the frame approach quite nicely dovetails with what the pragmatist has to say about concepts and categorization, insofar as frames seem particularly well-suited to depict the defeasible and context-dependent default character of our usual criteria for semantical understanding. Indeed, pragmatism, with its emphasis on the holistic, indeterminate and normative nature of our conceptual activities, seems able to explain why concepts are frames. This shows that there exist at least some interconnections between structural and ontological analyses, which must not be ignored, especially in interdisciplinary investigations on concepts. Even if frame theory is not strictly incompatible with a subjectivist ontology, it does license an abductive inference to a pragmatist ontology of concepts, as frames precisely formalize the insights into our actual conceptual practice that led Wittgenstein to develop his pragmatist view. (shrink)

Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recognized faster than lower frequency words. However, the exact nature of frequency effects has recently been questioned, with some studies finding that contextual information provides a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency ( Adelman et al., 2006 ). Recent work has cemented the importance of these results by demonstrating that a measure of the semantic diversity of the contexts that a word occurs (...) in provides a powerful measure to account for variability in word recognition latency ( Johns et al., 2012, 2015 ; Jones et al., 2012 ). The goal of the current study is to extend this measure to examine bilingualism and aging, where multiple theories use frequency of occurrence of linguistic constructs as central to accounting for empirical results ( Gollan et al., 2008 ; Ramscar et al., 2014 ). A lexical decision experiment was conducted with four groups of subjects: younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals. Consistent with past results, a semantic diversity variable accounted for the greatest amount of variance in the latency data. In addition, the pattern of fits of semantic diversity across multiple corpora suggests that bilinguals and older adults are more sensitive to semantic diversity information than younger monolinguals. (shrink)

_Lakatos: An Introduction_ provides a thorough overview of both Lakatos's thought and his place in twentieth century philosophy. It is an essential and insightful read for students and anyone interested in the philosophy of science.