We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

The last decades have seen major advances in the study of gestures both in humans and non-human primates. In this paper, we seriously examine the idea that there may be gestural form types that are shared across great ape species, including humans, which may underlie gestural universals, both in form and meaning. We focus on one case study, the hand fling gesture common to chimpanzees and humans, and provide a semantic analysis of this gesture.

We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

This paper pursues the idea that human and non-human great apes share a common set of directive (imperative) gestures and their meanings. We investigate gestures that are multifunctional, in that they have different effects in different contexts, focusing on non-human ape gestures that communicate “Stop that” in some contexts, and “Move away” in others. What may superficially appear to be lexical ambiguity can be derived from a single abstract lexical entry, “Not X!”, concluded to be a candidate for a universal (...) building block of meaning, shared by human and non-human great apes, reflections of which may also be found in the pragmatic gestures in humans. (shrink)

This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology interfaces with de se and de re interpretations, and highlights a correlation between strong pronouns and de re interpretations, and weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for the idea of a dedicated de (...) se LF as argued for by Percus and Sauerland. (shrink)

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g., distinguishing (...) between a de se reading and a de re reading. Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense. (shrink)

This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology interfaces with de se and de re interpretations, and highlights a correlation between strong pronouns and de re interpretations, and weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for the idea of a dedicated de (...) se LF as argued for by Percus and Sauerland. (shrink)

This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology interfaces with de se and de re interpretations, and highlights a correlation between strong pronouns and de re interpretations, and weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for the idea of a dedicated de (...) se LF as argued for by Percus and Sauerland. (shrink)

This volume explores the continuing relevance of Syntactic Structures to contemporary research in generative syntax. The contributions examine the ideas that changed the way that syntax is studied and that still have a lasting effect on contemporary work in generative syntax. Topics include formal foundations, the syntax-semantics interface, the autonomy of syntax, methods of data analysis, and detailed discussions of the role of transformations. New commentary from Noam Chomsky is included.

The grammatical paradigm used to be a model for entire areas of cognitive science. Its primary tenet was that theories are axiomatic-like systems. A secondary tenet was that their predictions should be tested quickly and in great detail with introspective judgments. While the grammatical paradigm now often seems passé, we argue that in fact it continues to be as efficient as ever. Formal models are essential because they are explicit, highly predictive, and typically modular. They make numerous critical predictions, which (...) must be tested efficiently; introspective judgments do just this. We further argue that the grammatical paradigm continues to be fruitful. Within linguistics, implicature theory is a recent example, with a combination of formal explicitness, modularity, and interaction with experimental work. Beyond traditional linguistics, the grammatical paradigm has proven fruitful in the study of gestures and emojis; literature (“Free Indirect Discourse”); picture semantics and comics; music and dance cognition; and even reasoning and concepts. We argue, however, that the grammatical paradigm must be adapted to contemporary cognitive science. Computational methods are essential to derive quantitative predictions from formal models (Bayesian pragmatics is an example). And data collection techniques offer an ever richer continuum of options, from introspective judgments to large-scale experiments, which makes it possible to optimize the cost/benefit ratio of the empirical methods that are chosen to test theories. (shrink)

Striking similarities across ape gestural repertoires suggest shared phylogenetic origins that likely provided a foundation for the emergence of language. We pilot a novel approach for exploring possible semantic universals across human and nonhuman ape species. In a forced‐choice task, n = 300 participants watched 10 chimpanzee gesture forms performed by a human and chose from responses that paralleled inferred meanings for chimpanzee gestures. Participants agreed on a single meaning for nine gesture forms; in six of these the agreed form‐meaning (...) pair response(s) matched those established for chimpanzees. Such shared understanding suggests apes' (including humans') gesturing shares deep evolutionary origins. (shrink)

The inhuman in the humanities : Darwin and the ends of man -- Deleuze, Bergson, and the concept of life -- Bergson, Deleuze, and difference -- Feminism, materialism, and freedom -- The future of feminist theory : dreams for new knowledges -- Differences disturbing identity : Deleuze and feminism -- Irigaray and the ontology of sexual difference -- Darwin and the split between natural and sexual selection -- Sexual difference as sexual selection : Irigarayan reflections on Darwin -- Art and (...) the animal -- Living art and the art of life : women's painting from the western desert. (shrink)

Grosz gives a critical overview of Lacan's work from a feminist perspective. Discussing previous attempts to give a feminist reading of his work, she argues for women's autonomy based on an indifference to the Lacanian phallus.

This article is an interview with Elizabeth Grosz by Kathryn Yusoff and Nigel Clark. It primarily addresses Grosz’s approaches to ‘geopower’, and the discussion encompasses an exploration of her ideas on biopolitics, inhuman forces and material experimentation. Grosz describes geopower as a force that subtends the possibility of politics. The interview is accompanied by a brief contextualizing introduction examining the themes of geophilosophy and the inhumanities in Grosz’s work.

Although the equally pervasive and abstract concept of space has generated a vast body of disciplines, time, and the related idea of "becoming" (transforming, ...

"The location of the author’s investigations, the body itself rather than the sphere of subjective representations of self and of function in cultures, is wholly new.... I believe this work will be a landmark in future feminist thinking." —Alphonso Lingis "This is a text of rare erudition and intellectual force. It will not only introduce feminists to an enriching set of theoretical perspectives but sets a high critical standard for feminist dialogues on the status of the body." —Judith Butler Volatile (...) Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is not opposed to or in conflict with culture. Human biology is inherently social and has no pure or natural "origin" outside of culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is "incomplete" and thus subject to the endless rewriting and social inscription that constitute all sign systems. Examining the theories of Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. on the subject of the body, Elizabeth Grosz concludes that the body they theorize is male. These thinkers are not providing an account of "human" corporeality but of male corporeality. Grosz then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women—menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause. Her examination of female experience lays the groundwork for developing theories of sexed corporeality rather than merely rectifying flawed models of male theorists. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the nature and problems of business and define one aspect of the business environment. We then propose a framework based on augmented soft systems methodology and object technology that captures both the soft and hard aspects of a business environment within the context of organisational culture. We also briefly discuss cognitive informatics and its relevance to understanding problems and solutions. Pólya's work, which is based around solving mathematical problems, is considered within the context of information (...) systems development. We propose a generic reusable business object model based on general systems theory. We also show how these approaches can be integrated to provide a strategy for understanding business problems and developing integrated solutions. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of female embodiment and its relation to the phenomenon of religion. It explains religious beliefs, acts, and events in terms of the worship of the female body. By elucidating this standpoint, this essay hopes to reclaim the centrality of the female body and its importance in the study of philosophy of religion.

In this conversation, which took place across several months in the year 2021, Elizabeth Grosz describes her position with respect to “new materialism” and “the material turn”: while she emphasizes the necessity of materialist thought in the current situation marked by a global pandemic, she also stresses the equal importance of what she calls “the incorporeal”: an excess in and of matter, materiality’s heterogeneous virtuality, differentiality and becoming-other. Grosz describes the incorporeal as mutually implicated with materiality in a (...) way that eschews both monism and dualism. The conversation roughly follows five topics: 1. How does one conceive of ontology without fixity? 2. How does matter “make sense”? 3. Can we think sexual differences beyond cisgender binarism and oppositional dualism? 4. What are the ethico-political implications of a materialist thought predicated on becoming and immanence? 5. Is psychoanalysis compatible with materialism, and is there a materiality of the unconscious? In the course of this exceptional interview, Grosz discusses the works of Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Sigmund Freud, Luce Irigaray, Karen Barad, Friedrich Nietzsche, and of course Gilles Deleuze, among many others... (shrink)

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)

Marking a ground-breaking moment in the debate surrounding bodies and "body politics," Elizabeth Grosz's Space, Time and Perversion contends that only by resituating and rethinking the body will feminism and cultural analysis effect and unsettle the knowledges, disciplines and institutions which have controlled, regulated and managed the body both ideologically and materially. Exploring the fields of architecture, philosophy, and--in a controversial way--queer theory, Grosz shows how these fields have conceptually stripped bodies of their specificity, their corporeality, and the (...) vestigal traces of their production as bodies. Her tour de corpe investigates the work of Michel Foucault, Teresa de Lauretis, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler and Alphonso Lingis. Grosz considers their work by examining the ways in which the functioning of bodies transforms understandings of space and time, knowledge and desire. Begining with an exposition of the epistemological implications of bodily and sexual difference, Grosz examines the effects such knowledge have on the reception of meaning. She looks at the relationship between the knowledge of difference and the way that knowledge validates, affirms, avows and valorizes subjects. Grosz then extends this analysis to an investigation of the relationship between space, time, bodies and the spatial "arts" such as architecuture, urban planning and geography. In the last section, Grosz moves toward a radical consideration of bodies and their relationship to transgression and perversity. Controversially showing the ways in which "queer" theory fails to offer a truly transformative conception of bodies and their politics, Grosz finds "queer" a reactive category "which sees itself in opposition to a straight norm and thus defines itself in terms of this norm." Consequentially, "queer" theory inherits the acceptance of an entire range of sexual practices, without "asking what they share and without taking into account the profound tension that may exist among these practices." Grosz's Space, Time and Perversity is a diverse and incisive collection of essays from a renowned feminist philosopher. (shrink)

A deficit in the number of organs available for transplantation persists even with an increase in donation rates. One possible choice of donor for organs that appears under-referred and/or unaccepted is patients with primary brain tumours. In spite of advances in the treatment of high-grade primary central nervous system (CNS) tumours, the prognosis remains dire. A working group on organs from donors with primary CNS tumours showed that the risk of transmission is small and outweighs the benefits of waiting for (...) a normal donor, in survival and organ life-years, with caveats. This paper explores the possibility that, if information on organ donation were made available to patients and their families with knowledge of their inevitable fate, perhaps some will choose to donate. It would be explained that to achieve this, elective ventilation would be performed in their final moments. This would obviate the consent question because of an advance statement. It is accepted that these are sensitive matters and there will be logistic issues. This will need discussion with the public and other professionals, but it could increase the number of donors and can be extrapolated to encompass other primary CNS tumours. (shrink)

The natural replacement of damaged cells by stem cells occurs actively and often in adult tissues, especially rapidly dividing cells such as blood cells. An exciting case in Boston, however, posits a kind of natural stem cell therapy provided to a mother by her fetus—long after the fetus is born. Because there is a profound lack of medical intervention, this therapy seems natural enough and is unlikely to be morally suspect. Nevertheless, we feel morally uncertain when we consider giving this (...) type of therapy to patients who would not naturally receive it. Much has been written about the ethics of stem cell research and therapy; this paper will focus on how recent advances in biotechnology and biological understandings of development narrow the debate. Here, the author briefly reviews current stem cell research practices, revisits the natural stem cell therapy case for moral evaluation, and ultimately demonstrates the importance of permissible stem cell research and therapy, even absent an agreement about the definition of when embryonic life begins.Although one promising technology, blighted ovum utilisation, uses fertilised but developmentally bankrupt eggs, it is argued that utilisation of unfertilised eggs to derive totipotent stem cells obviates the moral debate over when life begins. There are two existing technologies that fulfil this criterion: somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenic stem cell derivation. Although these technologies are far from therapeutic, concerns over the morality of embryonic stem cell derivation should not hinder their advancement. (shrink)

Instead of treating art as a unique creation that requires reason and refined taste to appreciate, Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially architecture, music, and painting-is born from the disruptive forces of sexual selection. She approaches art as a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire, and in doing so, finds that the meaning of art comes from the intensities and sensations it inspires, not just its intention and aesthetic. By regarding our most cultured human accomplishments as (...) the result of the excessive, nonfunctional forces of sexual attraction and seduction, Grosz encourages us to see art as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling living bodies to experience and transform the universe. Art can be understood as a way for bodies to augment themselves and their capacity for perception and affection-a way to grow and evolve through sensation. Through this framework, which knits together the theories of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jakob von Uexküll, we are able to grasp art's deep animal lineage. Grosz argues that art is not tied to the predictable and known but to new futures not contained in the present. Its animal affiliations ensure that art is intensely political and charged with the creation of new worlds and new forms of living. According to Grosz, art is the way in which life experiments with materiality, or nature, in order to bring about change. (shrink)

A critical analysis of Diana Fuss's Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference and Elizabeth Grosz's Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Of Being-Two: IntroductionPheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grosz (bio)The decade or so spanning the later 1970s to the mid-1980s witnessed the growing importance of “sexual difference” in Anglo-American academic discourse in the humanities and the “soft” social sciences. Both as an interpretive principle in textual criticism and literary theory and as a critical framework for the analysis of social and political structures and cultural formations, sexual difference provided (...) a fertile conceptual ground from which the disinterested universalism claimed by patriarchal and phallocentric knowledges could be put into question. However, in the past decade, the primacy of sexual difference as a critical principle has itself been called into question for eliding other collective forms of difference such as race, class, and sexuality.In a sense, this fracturing or fissuring of the conceptual ground of feminist theory can be seen as a logical outcome of the concept of “difference” itself, which endlessly proliferates into a multiplicity of sometimes conflictual forms. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the fissuring of “sexual difference” within academic discourse also reflects and expresses (albeit a little belatedly) broader sociological and political events: the rise in the 1970s of what the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has described as new antisystemic movements or “new social movements.”By the 1970s one began to speak in the plural of the “new social movements.” The shift from the grammatical singular to the plural provides a crucial clue to the nature of the process. For the “movement,” if it was ever organizationally singular, soon became multiple, if not necessarily fractionated. That is to say, there emerged a whole series of movements, each organized around a specific theme or focus—movements of “ethnic minorities” or “immigrants,” womens’ movements, ecology movements, antiwar movements, gay and lesbian movements, movements of the handicapped and of the aged (or pensioners).... The key theme of the new movements in the West was the forgotten people—the ethnic underclasses, the women, the gays, the aged, et cetera.[41–42]Due caution should, of course, be exercised concerning the many mediations between theory and practice. Nevertheless, this connection between the fissuring of sexual difference in academic theoretical critique and the pluralized nature of the new social movements that emerged in the 1970s necessarily raises the question of whether the contemporary political world has become too complex for sexual difference to serve as a primary critical-analytical and practical principle. Put another way, does sexual difference have continuing pertinence as an effective mechanism and/or ideal horizon for ethical and political transformation? What political future(s), if any, does sexual difference have?As editors of this special issue of diacritics, we have chosen to address these questions about the political future of sexual difference through a critical consideration of the work of one of the most intriguing and original of the present generation of European philosophers, Luce Irigaray. The theoretical question of sexual difference is [End Page 3] indissociable from Irigaray’s writing. The initial posing of the question of sexual difference in the Anglo-American academy coincided with, and was given added impetus by, the translation of Irigaray’s early works into English as part of the corpus of writings that became known as “French feminism.” 1 But what makes it especially apposite to center a special issue on the political future of sexual difference around Irigaray is her continuing insistence on the fundamental nature and, indeed, the infrastructural status of sexual difference to human existence as a whole. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, originally published in 1984, Irigaray suggests that sexual difference is the fundamental ethical question of the contemporary era:Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our “salvation” if we thought it through. But, whether I turn to philosophy, to science, or to religion, I find this underlying issue still cries out in vain for our attention.[ESD 5]In subsequent, more politically oriented texts, Irigaray has not only reaffirmed this initial suggestion. She has made the... (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles (...) (including women’s rights, a shared opposition to genetically modified crops, and a demand for agriculture to be removed from current international trade agreements). In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

This study examines the endogenous relation between corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance by focusing on a common strategy of corporate tax avoidance, i.e., establishing entities in offshore tax havens. Using hand-collected data on a sample of U.S. firms, we find that firms’ CSR ratings increase substantially in the two years after they first open tax haven affiliates. We provide evidence by using the controlled foreign corporations look-through rule enacted by Congress in 2006 that facilitates offshore profit shifting. We find (...) that firms that are affected by the CFC legislation increase their CSR practices in response. Overall, our results are consistent with the risk management theory, which argues that firms hedge against the potential negative consequences of aggressive tax avoidance practices through an increase in positive CSR activities. (shrink)

A new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.

Introducing the work of three French feminists - Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Michele L Doeuff - "Sexual Subversions" provides access to the work of these writers. In doing so this book raises some key issues of relevance to feminist research, addressing debates around the nature of feminist theory; the relationship between feminist thinking theory; the relationship between feminist thinking and male-dominated areas of knowledge; the strategies appropriate for developing non-patriarchal or woman-centered knowledges. No book on French feminists would be (...) complete without including the contributions of Kristeva and Irigaray. The inclusion of Le Doeuff's work, which brings a different perspective to bear on the question of sexual difference, provides a counterbalance to literary appropriations of French feminism by Anglo-American readerships. Kristeva, Irigaray and Le Doeuff are the focal points of this study, precisely because each highlights the differences of the others, revealing the frameworks to which the others are committed. Nevertheless, while these writers do not present a common political or theoretical position or form a school, each does address the question of women's autonomy from male definition, affirms the sexual specificity of women, seeks out a femininity women can use to question the patriarchal norms and ideals of femininity and rejects the preordained positions patriarchy allots to woman. This book is intended for students and researchers in women's studies, philosophy and feminism. (shrink)

Darwinian matters : life, force and change -- Biological difference -- The evolution of sex and race -- Nietzsche's Darwin -- History and the untimely -- The eternal return and the overman -- Bergsonian differences -- The philosophy of life -- Intuition and the virtual -- The future.

Concept formation is complex cognitive phenomenon which has been only partially modelIed in Cognitive Psychology and AI. Following a detailed and critical evaluation of such models we conclude that their main shortcoming of not being able to explain the nature of the semantics of concepts is because they fail to take into account the role of learning in concept formation. As a radical alternative it is proposed that a more (semantically) complete model would necessarily have to give an account of (...) how concepts are formed as a result of agent-environment interaction, that is mediated by an agents action in its environment and feedback from it. Such a shift in focus renders the investigation of the nature of concept formation as a complex and dynamic adaptive system. In accordance with this shift in perspective we propose and describe a novel methodological approach and a computational model that would support simple concept formation in an autonomous agent, which enables us to investigate concept formation in a more comprehensive manner. Overall we provide a compelling justification of the efficacy of such an ecological approach to the study of concept formation. (shrink)