How many words—and which ones—are sufficient to define all other words? When dictionaries are analyzed as directed graphs with links from defining words to defined words, they reveal a latent structure. Recursively removing all words that are reachable by definition but that do not define any further words reduces the dictionary to a Kernel of about 10% of its size. This is still not the smallest number of words that can define all the rest. About 75% of the Kernel turns (...) out to be its Core, a “Strongly Connected Subset” of words with a definitional path to and from any pair of its words and no word's definition depending on a word outside the set. But the Core cannot define all the rest of the dictionary. The 25% of the Kernel surrounding the Core consists of small strongly connected subsets of words: the Satellites. The size of the smallest set of words that can define all the rest—the graph's “minimum feedback vertex set” or MinSet—is about 1% of the dictionary, about 15% of the Kernel, and part-Core/part-Satellite. But every dictionary has a huge number of MinSets. The Core words are learned earlier, more frequent, and less concrete than the Satellites, which are in turn learned earlier, more frequent, but more concrete than the rest of the Dictionary. In principle, only one MinSet's words would need to be grounded through the sensorimotor capacity to recognize and categorize their referents. In a dual-code sensorimotor/symbolic model of the mental lexicon, the symbolic code could do all the rest through recombinatory definition. (shrink)

Curso de Geografia de Jean-Jacques Rousseau integra o X volume da edição de OEuvres complètes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Édition thématique du Tricentenaire, Slatkine/Honoré Champion (2012), subintitulado Escritos Científicos. Para esta tradução, além do texto consagrado na edição do tricentenário, também utilizamos a edição norte-americana dos textos de Rousseau organizada por Christopher Kelly, intitulada Autobiographical, scientific, religious, moral, and literary writings (2007). Preservamos, integralmente, as indispensáveis notas ao texto em língua francesa, que são de autoria de Christophe Van Staen.

The Afro-Brazilian connections between the coast of West Africa and Brazil date back to the transatlantic slave trade and the Muslim uprising in Bahia in 1933. After this major rebellion, many former slaves returned to West Africa bearing a large Brazilian cultural imprint consisting of architectural skills, culinary traditions, and song and dance. They also brought back Brazilian names and cosmopolitan outlooks. From Africa, enslaved Africans carried with them to Brazil philosophical and cosmological outlooks and indeed, culture generally. Some of (...) these cross-fertilizations are what are interrogated in this intellectual and cultural exchange. (shrink)

Este artigo investiga como o diálogo de Michel Foucault - em sua última fase - com Immanuel Kant, sobre a questão da Aufklärung, permite uma reavaliação da perspectiva do pensador francês sobre conceitos como poder, liberdade e autonomia. Propõe sumariamente que a divisão entre "ontologia do presente" e "ontologia de nós mesmos" seria similar à distinção realizada na Metafisica dos Costumes, entre Doutrina do Direito e Doutrina da Virtude.

Logic and linguistics have engaged in a many-faceted dialogue since the very beginnings of both disciplines in Antiquity. While participants may have had diverse views over the ages, arguably, the dialogue has always revolved around the relationship between human thought and natural language. While there are those who see these two domains as one and the same, or as a case of one-directional influence , we beg to differ. To us, the long historical tradition of authors such as Arnauld, Boole, (...) Turing, or Jespersen demonstrates the much richer perspectives on language and reasoning that are needed, including connections with intelligence and computability.Another major historical theme in the above dialogue are similarities or convergences between natural and artificial languages. It is clear that natural languages are not only semantically broader, but also much closer to human communication than artificial languages, and so linguistic grammars have long dealt with a larger set of problems than logical formalism. This specal issue of JoLLI consists six selected papers presented in the "Logic and Linguisics" Workshop in UNI-LOG 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, plus two papers by invited authors: Johan van Benthem, and Marcus Kracht and Uno Klein. It contains a number of samples of what is intriguing and promising work at the interfaces of logic and language. (shrink)