We explored the differential impact of auditory information and written contextual information on the recognition of verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Based on relevance theory, we predicted that speakers would provide acoustic disambiguation cues when speaking in situations that lack other sources of information, such as a visual channel. We further predicted that listeners would use this information, in addition to context, when interpreting the utterances. People were presented with spontaneously produced ironic and nonironic utterances from radio talk shows in (...) written or auditory form, with or without written contextual information. When the utterances were read without written contextual information, all utterances were rated as equally ironic. But when they were heard as opposed to read, or when they were presented in irony-biasing contexts, originally ironic utterances were rated as more sarcastic than originally nonironic utterances. This evidence suggests both acoustic and contextual information are used when inferring ironic intent in spontaneous speech, and validates previous manipulations of intonation in studies of irony understanding. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of two claims: (a) that Scope Shifting Operations (Quantifier Raising and Quantifier Lowering) are restricted by economy considerations, and (b) that the relevant economy considerations compare syntactic derivations that end up interpretively identical. These ideas are shown to solve several puzzles having to do with the interaction of scope with VP ellipsis, coordination, and the interpretation of bare plurals. Further, the paper suggests a way of dealing with the otherwise puzzling clause-boundedness of Quantifier Raising.

The author discusses the ways in which she finds the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center protocol for procuring organs from "non-heart-beating cadaver donors" medically and morally questionable and irreverent. She also identifies some of the factors that contributed to the composition of this troubling protocol, and to its institutional approval.

Much has been written in recent years on environmental ethics relating to the more general 'natural' environment but little specifically written about ethics of the built environment. Ethics and the Built Environment responds to this need and offers a debate on the ethical dimension of building in all its forms from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and approaches. This book should be of interest to architects, students of building and building design, environmentalists, politicians and general readers with an interest in (...) ethics. (shrink)

Scholarly open-access publishing has made it easier for researchers to discover and report academic misconduct such as plagiarism. However, as the website Retraction Watch shows, plagiarism is by no means limited to open-access journals. Moreover, various web-based services provide plagiarism detection software, facilitating one’s ability to detect pirated content. Upon discovering plagiarism, some are compelled to report it, but being a plagiarism whistleblower is inherently stressful and can leave one vulnerable to criticism and retaliation by colleagues and others. Reporting plagiarism (...) can also draw the threat of legal action. This article draws upon our experiences as plagiarism whistleblowers with several goals in mind: to help would-be whistleblowers be better prepared for making well-founded allegations, to give whistleblowers some idea of what they can expect when reporting plagiarism, and to give suggestions for reducing whistleblowers’ vulnerability to threats and stress. (shrink)

This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It presents the history of science as a discipline emerging in the twentieth century from an intellectual and political context of great complexity, and concludes with a plea for tolerance and pluralism in historiographical methods and approaches.

This manuscript reports on a landmark symposium on the ethical, legal and technical challenges of xenotransplantation in the UK. King’s College London, with endorsement from the British Transplantation Society (BTS), and the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT), brought together a group of experts in xenotransplantation science, ethics and law to discuss the ethical, regulatory and technical challenges surrounding translating xenotransplantation into the clinical setting. The symposium was the first of its kind in the UK for 20 years. This paper (...) summarises the content of the expert lectures showcasing the progress which has been made in xenotransplantation including—the history of xenotransplantation, advances in gene edited animals and progress towards clinical xenotransplantation. We then set out the ethical and legal issues still to be resolved. Finally, we report the themes of the roundtable discussion highlighting areas of consensus and controversy. While the detail of the legal discussion was directed towards the UK, the principles and summary reported here are intended to be applicable to any jurisdiction seeking to implement clinical xenotransplantation. (shrink)

Today’s panel is about the expanding boundary of population health policy, what that expanding boundary has to do with law, and what kinds of challenges and opportunities come out of it. What I want to do for the next few minutes is talk to you about the notion of population health as it exists where law and policy are made, rather than where it exists in a spectacular international theoretical literature. Then I want to introduce our panelists. In the process, (...) I will explain why the Honorable John Nilson, is not with us, which tells you a great deal about not only the real world of the politics of population health, but also about the kind of trouble you can get into if you are a first class lawyer involved in population health. (shrink)

In this paper we address an important issue in the development of an adequate formal theory of underspecified semantics. The tension between expressive power and computational tractability poses an acute problem for any such theory. Generating the full set of resolved scope readings from an underspecified representation produces a combinatorial explosion that undermines the efficiency of these representations. Moreover, Ebert (2005) shows that most current theories of underspecified semantic representation suffer from expressive incompleteness. In previous work we present an account (...) of underspecified scope representations within Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order theory for natural language semantics. We review this account, and we show that filters applied to the underspecified-scope terms of PTCT permit expressive completeness. While they do not solve the general complexity problem, they do significantly reduce the search space for computing the full set of resolved scope readings in non-worst cases. We explore the role of filters in achieving expressive completeness, and their relationship to the complexity involved in producing full interpretations from underspecified representations. This paper is dedicated to Jim Lambek. (shrink)

Schopenhauer had important things to say about ethics in both normative and meta-ethical senses, but his impact on the evolution of moral theory has been minimized by the unfortunate neglect of his philosophy in general. A contemporary assessment of his ethical views reveals that they are both imaginative and interesting, not least because they challenge assumptions held by more canonical figures in the history of philosophy, both before and after his time. Since the roots of ethics are currently being vigorously (...) re-examined, it is regrettable that Schopenhauer's ideas have been omitted from mainstream discussion in the field. I attempt to remedy this lack by investigating how his ethics of compassion contributes to the following areas: reconciling ethics with strict determinism; naturalizing ethics; developing the philosophy of education; seeking inner peace and world peace; re-visioning our relationship with non-human animals and the environment. As this list indicates, Schopenhauer's moral theory has relevance for a much wider audience, beyond the limited sphere of professional philosophy. And because the world is in dire need of moral rejuvenation, any inspiration provided by a major thinker such as Schopenhauer should be heartily welcomed. While certain internal problems are posed by his metaphysical and epistemological doctrines, we can see past these in order to appropriate the living insights still to be found in Schopenhauer's ethical thought. (shrink)

This new heuristic model of perceptual analysis raises interesting issues but in the end falls short. Its arguments are more in the Cartesian than Gestalt tradition. Much of the argument is based on setting up theoretical straw men and ignores well known perceptual and brain science. Arguments are reviewed in light of known physiology and traditional Gestalt theory.

• Why does wh-movement proceed through the left edge of CP? • Logic of a common answer: Things would go wrong otherwise.

In The Book on Adler and “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth,” Kierkegaard relies on logical reasoning and grammatical analysis in order to arrive at categorical normative conclusions against the use of religious belief and authority as a justification for ethical action. These arguments demonstrate that some types of moral knowledge can be arrived at through reason/logic, despite Kierkegaard’s efforts to separate the spheres of logic and existence. Kierkegaard thereby (...) offers a strong critique of both moral exceptionalism and an ethics of conviction, a critique which—as the paper argues—is not incompatible with his existential and Christian ethics. (shrink)

Mercier and Sperber (M&S) suggest that human reasoning is reflective and has evolved to support social interaction. Cognitive agents benefit from being able to reflect on their beliefs whether they are acting alone or socially. A formal framework for argumentation that has emerged from research on artificial cognitive systems that parallels M&S's proposals may shed light on mental processes that underpin social interactions.

The tension between expressive power and computational tractability poses an acute problem for theories of underspecified semantic representation. In previous work we have presented an account of underspecified scope representations within Property Theory with Curry Typing, an intensional first-order theory for natural language semantics. Here we show how filters applied to the underspecified-scope terms of PTCT permit both expressive completeness and the reduction of computational complexity in a significant class of non-worst case scenarios.

We present Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types. We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like “most.” We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a type-theoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic analyses of (...) this phenomenon. (shrink)