have context-sensitive constituents, but rather because they sometimes have no constituents at all. The argument to be rejected depends on the assumption that one can only assign propositional contents to representations if one starts by assigning sub-propositional contents to atomic representations. I give some philosophical arguments and present a counterexample to show that this assumption is mistaken.

This article proposes a neurobiologically motivated theory of meaning as internal representation that holds on to the principle of compositionality, but negates the principle of semantic constituency. The approach builds on neurobiological findings regarding topologically structured cortical feature maps and the mechanism of object-related binding by neuronal synchronization. It incorporates the Gestalt principles of psychology and is implemented by recurrent neural networks. The semantics to be developed is structurally analogous to some variant of model-theoretical semantics. The semantics to be developed (...) is a neuro-emulative model-theoretical semantics of a first-order language. The model-theoretical semantics is merely denotational and does not imply anything about the structures of the mind or the underlying neural mechanisms that enable producing and comprehend meaningful expressions. The relation between a mental representation and its content is some form of causal-informational covariation. (shrink)

In his, ‘Descartes' Ontology of Thought’, Alan Nelson presents, on Descartes' behalf, a compositional theory of mental representation according to which the content of any mental representation is either simple or is entirely constituted by a combination of innate simples. Here the simples are our ideas of God, thought, extension, and union. My objection will be that it is simply ludicrous to think that any four simples are adequate to the task of combining to constitute all of human thought, (...) and that the simples God, thought, extension, and union are particularly ill suited to it. (shrink)

Vector-based models of word meaning have become increasingly popular in cognitive science. The appeal of these models lies in their ability to represent meaning simply by using distributional information under the assumption that words occurring within similar contexts are semantically similar. Despite their widespread use, vector-based models are typically directed at representing words in isolation, and methods for constructing representations for phrases or sentences have received little attention in the literature. This is in marked contrast to experimental evidence (e.g., (...) in sentential priming) suggesting that semantic similarity is more complex than simply a relation between isolated words. This article proposes a framework for representing the meaning of word combinations in vector space. Central to our approach is vector composition, which we operationalize in terms of additive and multiplicative functions. Under this framework, we introduce a wide range of composition models that we evaluate empirically on a phrase similarity task. (shrink)

We define mereologically invariant composition as the relation between a whole object and its parts when the object retains the same parts during a time interval. We argue that mereologically invariant composition is identity between a whole and its parts taken collectively. Our reason is that parts and wholes are equivalent measurements of a portion of reality at different scales in the precise sense employed by measurement theory. The purpose of these scales is the numerical representation of primitive relations between (...) quantities of being. To show this, we prove representation and uniqueness theorems for composition. Thus, mereologically invariant composition is trans-scalar identity. (shrink)

Moderate composition as identity holds that there is a generalized identity relation, “being the same portion of reality,” of which composition and numerical identity are distinct species. Composition is a genuine kind of identity; but unlike numerical identity, it fails to satisfy Leibniz’s Law. A composite whole and its parts differ with respect to their numerical properties: the whole is one; the parts (collectively) are many. Moderate composition as identity faces the challenge: how, in the absence of Leibniz’s Law, can (...) one characterize what counts as a genuine kind of identity? This paper explores a promising answer: a genuine kind of identity must satisfy a version of Leibniz’s Law restricted to properties that ascribe qualitative character. Strong composition as identity holds that there is only one identity relation, that it satisfies Leibniz’s Law, and that the parts are identical with the whole that they compose. Strong composition as identity faces the challenge of showing that numerical properties do not provide counterexamples to Leibniz’s Law, and doing so in a way that is compatible with the framework of plural logic that is needed to formulate the theory. The most promising way to do this is to hold that plural logic is fundamental at the level of our representations, but not fundamental at the level of being. At the level of being, portions of reality cannot be characterized as either singular or plural. It turns out that the proposed moderate theory and the proposed strong theory are one and the same. In spite of its many attractions, I reject it. The main issue has to do with whether slice-sensitive emergent properties are possible. I argue that they are, making use both of specific examples and general principles of modal plenitude. I do not claim that my arguments are irresistible. But they cannot be evaded as easily as a related argument against strong composition as identity given by Kris McDaniel. I critically examine McDaniel’s argument to pave the way for my own. (shrink)

It is argued that a number of important, and seemingly disparate, types of representation are species of a single relation, here called structural representation, that can be described in detail and studied in a way that is of considerable philosophical interest. A structural representation depends on the existence of a common structure between a representation and that which it represents, and it is important because it allows us to reason directly about the representation in order to draw conclusions about the (...) phenomenon that it depicts. The present goal is to give a general and precise account of structural representation, then to use that account to illuminate several problems of current philosophical interest — including some that do not initially seem to involve representation at all. In particular, it is argued that ontological reductions (like that of the natural numbers to sets), compositional accounts of semantics, several important sorts of mental representation, and (perhaps) possible worlds semantics for intensional logics are all species of structural representation and are fruitfully studied in the framework developed here. (shrink)

Rhetoric, Composition, Life is written for teacher-scholars of rhetoric and composition who grapple with the following question: Can my teaching not only make a positive difference in the lives of my students but also, in so doing, contribute to making the world a better place? This dissertation argues that in order to be able to answer this question in the affirmative with a greater sense of possibility for the future, that a re-understanding of how the world and its populations or (...) multiplicities of "actors" co-exist is necessary. Such conceptual work is needed because, under the influence of critical pedagogy, teacher-scholars in rhetoric and composition have placed too much emphasis on consciousness and its role in the dynamics of subjectivity, agency, and social transformation. In an effort to open a new space for thought and pedagogy in rhetoric and composition, Rhetoric, Composition, Life engages in a protracted performance of encounter and response with the work of Martin Heidegger. The dissertation argues that Heidegger's thought not only invites us to think of the aforementioned issues in more ecological and existential-affective terms, but does so in a way that is rooted in and extends a concept at the heart of Aristotle's ethics and politics: phronesis. What emerges from the project is an ethos of pedagogy and politics rooted in the phronetic dynamics of "question-ability" and "response-ability," one that attends to and works with-in dynamics and rhythms of power, life, temporality, agency, and social change from a non-representational, ecological, and existential-affective perspective. (shrink)

The democratic criteria for representation in the European Union are complex since its representation involves several delegation mechanisms and institutions. This paper develops institutional design principles for the representation of peoples and individuals and suggests reform options of the European Union on the basis of the theory of multilateral democracy. In particular, it addresses how the equality of individuals can be realised in EU representation while guaranteeing the mutual recognition of peoples. Unlike strict intergovernmental institutions, the EU requires an additional (...) and independent legislative chamber in which individuals are directly represented. However, strict equality of individuals cannot be the guiding principle for this chamber. In order to avoid the overruling of peoples through supranational majorities, it is necessary to bind the chamber's composition by a principle of degressive proportionality. The representation of peoples, on the other hand, needs to be connected to their domestic democratic institutions. (shrink)

The social sciences face a problem of sample non-representation, where the majority of samples consist of undergraduate students from Euro-American institutions. The problem has been identified for decades with little trend of improvement. In this paper, I trace the history of sampling theory. The dominant framework, called the design-based approach, takes random sampling as the gold standard. The idea is that a sampling procedure that is maximally uninformative prevents samplers from introducing arbitrary bias, thus preserving sample representation. I show how (...) this framework, while good in theory, faces many challenges in application. Instead, I advocate for an alternative framework, called the model-based approach to sampling, where representative samples are those balanced in composition, however they were drawn. I argue that the model-based framework is more appropriate in the social sciences because it allows for systematic assessment of imperfect samples and methodical improvement in resource-limited scientific contexts. I end with practical proposals of improving sample quality in the social sciences. (shrink)

We discuss two key assumptions of Levelt et al.'s model of lexical retrieval: (1) the nondecompositional character of concepts and (2) lemmas as purely syntactic representations. These assumptions fail to capture the broader role of lemmas, which we propose as that of lexical–semantic representations binding (compositional) semantics with phonology (or orthography).

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

Independence Friendly Logic, introduced by Hintikka, is a logic in which a quantifier can be marked for being independent of other quantifiers. Dependence logic, introduced by Väänänen, is a logic with the complementary approach: for a quantifier it can be indicated on which quantifiers it depends. These logics are claimed to be useful for many phenomena, for instance natural language semantics. In this contribution we will compare these two logics by investigating their application in a compositional analysis of the (...) de dicto - de re ambiguity in natural language. It will be argued that Independence Friendly logic is suitable, whereas Dependence Logic is not. (shrink)

Traditionally, the structure of a language is revealed by constructing an appropriate theory of meaning for that language, which exhibits how – and whether – the meaning of sentences in the language depends upon the meaning of their parts. In this paper, I argue that whether – and how – what pictures represent depends on what their parts represent should likewise by revealed by the construction of appropriate theories of representation for the symbol system of those pictures. This generalisation, I (...) argue, reveals a much cited disanalogy between depiction and description is illusory: the structure of pictures, like language, is compositional. (shrink)

The representationist maintains that an experience represents a state of affairs. To elaborate, a stimulus of one’s sensorium produces, according to her, a “phenomenal composite” made up of “phenomenal properties” that are the typical effects of certain mind-independent features of the world, which are thereby represented. It is such features, via their phenomenal representatives, of which the subject of an experience would become aware were she to engage in introspection. So, one might ask, what state of affairs would be represented (...) by an illusory experience, that is, one to which no state of affairs in the vicinity of its subject corresponds? The answer, according to the standard defense of representationism (SD), is the same state of affairs that would obtain in its subject’s surroundings if it were veridical. (shrink)

We propose that rapid eye movement (REM) and slow-wave sleep contribute differently to the formation of episodic memories. REM sleep is important for building up invariant object representations that eventually recur to gamma-band oscillations in the neocortex. In contrast, slow-wave sleep is more directly involved in the consolidation of episodic memories through replay of sequential neural activity in hippocampal place cells.

The representational arts seem friendly territory for “symbol” theories of aesthetics. Much of the initial resistance one may feel to the idea that a Mondrian composition or a Scarlatti sonata is a symbol evaporates when we switch to a portrait of Mozart, Michelangelo’s Pietá, or Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. These representational works have reference to things outside themselves. The portrait is a picture of Mozart; the Pietá is a sculpture of Christ and his Mother; A Tale of Two (...) Cities is about London, Paris, and the French Revolution. It is natural enough to consider the relation between these works and what they are of or about a semantic one. And if the representational is to be understood in terms of this semantic relation it is reasonable to hold that to be representational is to be a symbol of a certain kind. (shrink)

There has been much interest in the possibility of connectionist models whose representations can be endowed with compositional structure, and a variety of such models have been proposed. These models typically use distributed representations that arise from the functional composition of constituent parts. Functional composition and decomposition alone, however, yield only an implementation of classical symbolic theories. This paper explores the possibility of moving beyond implementation by exploiting holistic structure-sensitive operations on distributed representations. An experiment is (...) performed using Pollack’s Recursive Auto-Associative Memory. RAAM is used to construct distributed representations of syntactically structured sentences. A feed-forward network is then trained to operate directly on these representations, modeling syn- tactic transformations of the represented sentences. Successful training and generalization is obtained, demonstrating that the implicit structure present in these representations can be used for a kind of structure-sensitive processing unique to the connectionist domain. (shrink)

How best to think about quantum systems under permutation invariance is a question that has received a great deal of attention in the literature. But very little attention has been paid to taking seriously the proposal that permutation invariance reflects a representational redundancy in the formalism. Under such a proposal, it is far from obvious how a constituent quantum system is represented. Consequently, it is also far from obvious how quantum systems compose to form assemblies, i.e. what is the formal (...) structure of their relations of parthood, overlap and fusion. In this paper, I explore one proposal for the case of fermions and their assemblies. According to this proposal, fermionic assemblies which are not entangled—in some heterodox, but natural sense of ‘entangled’—provide a prima facie counterexample to classical mereology. This result is puzzling; but, I argue, no more intolerable than any other available interpretative option. (shrink)

Ont été sollicités pour évaluer les articles de ce numéro : Dominique Abry Florentina Fredet Enrica Galazzi Bertrand Lauret Régine Llorca Grégory Miras Chiara Molinari Christos Nikou (responsable du c...

This article turns to the issue of political representation that I argue is central to all forms of political thought and practice of the modern period. Taking political representation as its object, I argue that its crisis—that comes to a head in the travails of the Weimar Republic—provided the opportunity for forms of neoliberal representation to displace political representation with purportedly “neutral”, non-partisan and thus “fair” representational tools. In contrast, I seek to develop the idea of “self-representation” with a discussion (...) of paths not chosen at Weimar and via Italianoperaismo’s reflections on “class composition”, which combines collective self-representation with political organization. Representing each member of a collective to another as it develops epistemic and cartographic tools, it constructs group solidarity, organization and the capacity to act as it reclaims the collectivity alienated in modern political forms of representation and excluded from neoliberal ones. (shrink)

The representationist maintains that an experience represents a state of affairs. To elaborate, a stimulus of one’s sensorium produces, according to her, a “phenomenal composite” made up of “phenomenal properties” that are the typical effects of certain mind-independent features of the world, which are thereby represented. It is such features, via their phenomenal representatives, of which the subject of an experience would become aware were she to engage in introspection. So, one might ask, what state of affairs would be represented (...) by an illusory experience, that is, one to which no state of affairs in the vicinity of its subject corresponds? The answer, according to the standard defense of representationism (SD), is the same state of affairs that would obtain in its subject’s surroundings if it were veridical. (shrink)

Evidence suggests a limited contribution to the total research output in leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals by researchers from the developing world. Editorial bias, quality of scientific research produced and language barriers have been attributed as possible causes for this phenomenon. The aim of this study was to understand the prevalence of editorial board members based out of low and lower-middle income countries in leading journals in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology. The top 21 journals in the field of (...) obstetrics and gynaecology were selected based on their impact factor, SCImago ranking and literature search. The composition of the editorial boards of these journals was studied based on World Bank Income Criteria to understand the representation status of researchers from low and lower-middle income countries. A total of 1315 board members make up the editorial composition of leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals. The majority of these editors belong to high-income countries (n = 1148; 87.3%). Low (n = 6; 0.45%) and lower-middle income (n = 55; 4.18%) countries make up for a very minuscule proportion of editorial board members. Only a meagre 9 out of 21 journals have editorial board members from these countries (42.85%). Low and low-middle countries have poor representation in the editorial boards of leading obstetrics and gynaecology journals. Poor representation in research from these countries has grave consequences for a large proportion of the global population and multidisciplinary collaborative efforts must be taken to rapidly change this statistic with immediate effect. (shrink)

Mental capacities for perceiving, remembering, thinking, and planning involve the processing of structured mental representations. A compositional semantics of such representations would explain how the content of any given representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their mode of combination. While many have argued that semantic theories of mental representations would have broad value for understanding the mind, there have been few attempts to develop such theories in a systematic and empirically constrained way. (...) This paper contributes to that end by developing a semantics for a ‘fragment’ of our mental representational system: the visual system’s representations of the bounding contours of objects. At least three distinct kinds of composition are involved in such representations: ‘concatenation’, ‘feature composition’, and ‘contour composition’. I sketch the constraints on and semantics of each of these. This account has three principal payoffs. First, it models a working framework for compositionally ascribing structure and content to perceptual representations, while highlighting core kinds of evidence that bear on such ascriptions. Second, it shows how a compositional semantics of perception can be compatible with holistic, or Gestalt, phenomena, which are often taken to show that the whole percept is ‘other than the sum of its parts’. Finally, the account illuminates the format of a key type of perceptual representation, bringing out the ways in which contour representations exhibit domain-specific form of the sort that is typical of structured icons such as diagrams and maps, in contrast to typical discursive representations of logic and language. (shrink)

In this article, we present ethnographic material collected among the Telengits, mainly in the Kosh-Agach district of the Republic of Altai (Russian Federation). Analysis of Telengit concepts and practices shows a person as a complex network of relations and therefore a composite entity. Each of the terms that the Telengits use and which could be translated as 'soul' corresponds to various aspects, potentialities, and powers of a person; at the same time, a person is also a part of a larger (...) composite entity — Altai. It is easier to grasp the Telengit way of acting and conceptualizing the world if we see those notions as tools that help people to come to terms with particular situations and tasks and not as a structured set of mental representations. (shrink)

En commandant à Rubens un cycle exclusivement consacré à sa gloire, Marie de Médicis entend affirmer à toute l’Europe son retour au pouvoir. Au-delà du récit biographique, l’œuvre picturale délivre un message politique fort qui justifie, et légitime, la reine mère dans le gouvernement. Pour parvenir à ses fins, et donner d’elle-même l’image d’une souveraine toute puissante sans transgresser ouvertement les principes monarchiques, Marie de Médicis joue de toutes ses qualités, de femme, de reine, de mère, dans un cycle complexe (...) qui articule le registre narratif sur le registre institutionnel, et mêle figures allégoriques et compositions historiques. En ce début de XVIIe siècle, c’est bien le problème de la représentation d’une femme de pouvoir qui est alors posé. (shrink)

BackgroundThe underrepresentation of scholarly works from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in academic literature is a documented concern, attributed partly to editorial biases. This trend, prevalent across various disciplines, has been less explored in the context of medical ethics journals. This study aimed to examine the composition of editorial board members (EBM) in high-impact medical ethics journals and to evaluate the extent of international diversity within these editorial teams.MethodsThis study incorporated an analysis of 16 high-impact medical ethics journals. Information regarding (...) the EBM of these journals was systematically gathered and categorized based on the World Bank’s country income classifications. An in-depth examination of the editorial board compositions was then conducted.ResultsThe study identified 669 EBM across the selected journals. A predominant 89.84% (601) of these members were from high-income countries (HICs), with upper-middle-income countries contributing 7.47% (50) and lower-middle-income countries 2.69% (18). No EBM were associated with low-income countries. A regional breakdown indicated that North America was the most represented area, accounting for 48.88% (327), followed by Europe & Central Asia (27.50%, 184), East Asia & Pacific (13.45%, 90), Latin America & Caribbean (4.63%, 31), Sub-Saharan Africa (4.19%, 28), Middle East & North Africa (0.75%, 5), and South Asia (0.60%, 4). In total, these EBMs hailed from 46 different countries, with the United States representing the largest proportion (43.80%, 293), followed by the United Kingdom (13.15%, 88), Australia (7.92%, 53), Germany (6.73%, 45), and Canada (5.08%, 34).ConclusionsThere is a significant lack of international representation within the EBM of high-impact medical ethics journals. The majority of editors in this field are affiliated with HICs, leading to a severe underrepresentation of LMICs within the editorial boards. (shrink)

The representation of propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.) and the analysis of natural-language, propositional-attitude reports presents difficult problems for cognitive science and artificial intelligence. In particular, various representational approaches to attitudes involve the incorrect “imputation,” to cognitive agents, of the use of artificial theory-laden notions. Interesting cases of this problem are shown to occur in several approaches to attitudes. The imputation problem is shown to arise from the way that representational approaches explicate properties and relationships, and in particular from the (...) way they explicate propositional attitudes themselves. Another factor contributing to imputation is the compositional nature of typical semantic approaches to propositional-attitude reports. Some strategies for avoiding undesirable imputation are examined. One of the main conclusions is that the importance of imputations that arise in a representation scheme depends strongly on the use to which the scheme is put -- on whether, for instance, the scheme is used as part of a formal, objective account of natural language, or is used rather as a representational tool within an agent. (shrink)

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions, representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working through a number of diverse debates (...) and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process that includes aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a collective, cultural revolution as its antidote. (shrink)

Split preorders are preordering relations on a domain whose composition is defined in a particular way by splitting the domain into two disjoint subsets. These relations and the associated composition arise in categorial proof theory in connection with coherence theorems. Here split preorders are represented isomorphically in the category whose arrows are binary relations and whose composition is defined in the usual way. This representation is related to a classical result of representation theory due to Richard Brauer.

Key ingredients in discourse meaning are reference markers: objects in the formal representation that the discourse is about. It is well-known that reference markers are not like first order variables. Indeed, it is the received view that reference markers are like the variables in imperative programming languages. However, in a computational semantics of discourse that treats reference markers as ‘dynamically bound’ variables, every noun phrase will get linked to a dynamic variable, so it will give rise to a marker index. (...) Where do these indices come from? How do we handle them when combining (or ‘merging’) pieces of discourse? We will argue that reference markers are better treated as indices into context, and we will present a theory of context and context extension based on this view. In context semantics, noun phrases do not come with fixed indices, so the merge problem does not arise. This solves a vexing issue with coordination that causes trouble for all current versions of compositional discourse representation theory. (shrink)

A new vectorial representation for the successive Lorentz transformations has recently been proved very convenient to achieve a straightforward treatment of the Thomas rotation effect. Such a representation rests on equivalent forms for the pure Lorentz transformation and SLT whose physical meaning escaped us. The present paper fills this gap in by showing that those equivalent forms could represent appropriate world lines, lines and planes of simultaneity. Those geometric elements are particularly convenient to build up two new graphical representations (...) for the SLT: the first rests on that equivalent form for the SLT, while the second takes the SLT as a PLT preceded or followed by a Thomas rotation and uses the equivalent form for the PLT. As an application, the SLT Lorentz contraction formulas are derived for the first time. The dependence of the SLTLC on the Thomas rotation is put in evidence. The SLTLC along directions transverse and parallel to the composite velocity is studied. Original SLT Minkowski diagrams are given for the first time. (shrink)

We describe a unified framework for the understanding of structure representation in primate vision. A model derived from this framework is shown to be effectively systematic in that it has the ability to interpret and associate together objects that are related through a rearrangement of common “middle-scale” parts, represented as image fragments. The model addresses the same concerns as previous work on compositional representation through the use of what+where receptive fields and attentional gain modulation. It does not require prior (...) exposure to the individual parts, and avoids the need for abstract symbolic binding. (shrink)

I argue that the intellectualist account of knowledge-how, according to which agents have the knowledge-how to \ in virtue of standing in an appropriate relation to a proposition, is only half right. On the composition view defended here, knowledge-how at least typically requires both propositional knowledge and motor representations. Motor representations are not mere dispositions to behavior because they have representational content, and they play a central role in realizing the intelligence in knowledge-how. But since motor representations (...) are not propositional, propositional knowledge is not sufficient for knowledge-how. (shrink)

I argue that maps do not feature predication, as analyzed by Frege and Tarski. I take as my foil (Casati and Varzi, Parts and places, 1999), which attributes predication to maps. I argue that the details of Casati and Varzi’s own semantics militate against this attribution. Casati and Varzi emphasize what I call the Absence Intuition: if a marker representing some property (such as mountainous terrain) appears on a map, then absence of that marker from a map coordinate signifies absence (...) of the corresponding property from the corresponding location. Predication elicits nothing like the Absence Intuition. “F(a)” does not, in general, signify that objects other than a lack property F. On the basis of this asymmetry, I argue that attaching a marker to map coordinates is a different mode of semantic composition than attaching a predicate to a singular term. (shrink)

We define ordinal representations in the simply typed lambda calculus, and consider the ordinal functions representable with respect to these notations. The results of this paper have the same flavor as those of Schwichtenberg and Statman on numeric functions representable in the simply typed lambda calculus. We define four families of ordinal notations; in order of increasing generality of the type of notation, the representable functions consist of the closure under composition of successor and α ωα, addition and α (...) ωα, addition and multiplication, and addition, multiplication, and a “weak” discriminator. (shrink)

Formal ontologies are nowadays widely considered a standard tool for knowledge representation and reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this context, they are expected to play an important role in helping automated processes to access information. Namely: they are expected to provide a formal structure able to explicate the relationships between different concepts/terms, thus allowing intelligent agents to interpret, correctly, the semantics of the web resources improving the performances of the search technologies. Here we take into account a problem regarding (...) Knowledge Representation in general, and ontology based representations in particular; namely: the fact that knowledge modeling seems to be constrained between conflicting requirements, such as compositionality, on the one hand and the need to represent prototypical information on the other. In particular, most common sense concepts seem not to be captured by the stringent semantics expressed by such formalisms as, for example, Description Logics (which are the formalisms on which the ontology languages have been built). The aim of this work is to analyse this problem, suggesting a possible solution suitable for formal ontologies and semantic web representations. The questions guiding this research, in fact, have been: is it possible to provide a formal representational framework which, for the same concept, combines both the classical modelling view (accounting for compositional information) and defeasible, prototypical knowledge ? Is it possible to propose a modelling architecture able to provide different type of reasoning (e.g. classical deductive reasoning for the compositional component and a non monotonic reasoning for the prototypical one)? We suggest a possible answer to these questions proposing a modelling framework able to represent, within the semantic web languages, a multilevel representation of conceptual information, integrating both classical and non classical (typicality based) information. Within this framework we hypothesise, at least in principle, the coexistence of multiple reasoning processes involving the different levels of representation. (shrink)

Suppose we take a picture containing a full image of a duck and slice it right through, leaving some of the duck image on one slice and some of it on the other. How many duck images will we be left with? Received theories of pictorial representation presuppose that a surface cannot come to contain new images just by changing its physical relations with other surfaces, such as physical continuity. But as it turns out, this is in tension with received (...) theories’ approach to incomplete images. I address three views with respect to the circumstances in which incomplete images of X represent X. 1. A liberal, non-restrictive view: ‘Iff they meet relevant requirements posed by received theory of pictorial representation.’ 2. Moderate restrictions of this view and 3. A fully restrictive view. After investigating challenges for the liberal view, I end up supporting it. The main challenges rest on the fact that only the fully restrictive view can plausibly accommodate some principles that seem inherent to our theory of representation. For instance: only this view accommodates received theories’ presupposition that the representational properties of a surface depend on its configurational properties such that new images may appear on a surface only if its configurational properties have changed. Since the liberal view is overall more plausible than the restrictive view, I reject this presupposition and bear the consequences. (shrink)

We present a geometrical analysis of the principles that lay at the basis of Categorial Grammar and of the Lambek Calculus. In Abrusci it is shown that the basic properties known as Residuation laws can be characterized in the framework of Cyclic Multiplicative Linear Logic, a purely non-commutative fragment of Linear Logic. We present a summary of this result and, pursuing this line of investigation, we analyze a well-known set of categorial grammar laws: Monotonicity, Application, Expansion, Type-raising, Composition, Geach laws (...) and Switching laws. (shrink)

In recent years, with the development of society and the rapid development of the animation industry, people are paying more and more attention to and requirements for animation production. As an indispensable part of animation production, picture composition plays a major role in animation production. It can give full play to the application of color matching and light and shadow design and enhance the depth and space of the animation screen. Tone space conversion refers to the conversion or representation of (...) color data in one color space into corresponding data in another color space. Its purpose is to distinguish and process color components such as hue and saturation in an image. This article first introduces the domestic and foreign research status of digital image preprocessing and analyzes the basic principles of several color space conversions in detail. Then, several color space conversion algorithms are studied, and the performance of the algorithms is compared and analyzed. The paper focuses on the hardware implementation and optimization of the algorithm for converting RGB color space into HSI color space to meet the real-time requirements. This article focuses on the mutual conversion between the RGB tone space and the HSI tone space and describes in detail how each color component in the HSI tone space is converted from the three RGB color components from a geometric perspective, and then the conversion is derived, and several general conversion methods of RGB to HSI tone space are introduced; two conversion methods of geometric derivation method and standard modulus algorithm are implemented in the software, and the comparison verification is carried out, and the comparison is made from the perspective of hardware implementation. The pros and cons of the two methods are discussed. Finally, the paper summarizes the shortcomings in the design and proposes further research directions in the future. (shrink)

Writing and reading are closely related and are thus likely to have a common orthographic representation. A fundamental question in the literature on the production of written Chinese characters concerns the structure of orthographic representations. We report on a Chinese character handwriting pedagogical corpus involving a class of 22 persons, 232 composite character types, 1,913 tokens, and 13,057 stroke records, together with the inter-stroke interval, which reflects the parallel processing of multilevel orthographic representation during the writing execution, and 50 (...) orthographic variables from the whole character, logographeme, and stroke. The results of regression analyses show that orthographic representation has a hierarchy and that different representational levels are active simultaneously. In the multilevel structure of orthographic representation, the representation of the logographeme is absolutely dominant. Writing and reading have both commonalities and individual differences in their orthographic representations. The online processing of the logographeme unit probably occurs at the ISI before the initial stroke of the current logographeme, which may also cascade to the first subsequent logographeme. In addition, we propose a new effective character structure unit for describing orthographic complexity. (shrink)

In multiethnic and multi-religious democracies, the chronic danger is that candidates will engage in “identity politics,” appealing to one locally preponderant ethnic group against other groups. The usual formulas for composing multiethnic democracies—ethnic federalism and/or proportional representation—often exacerbate the problem, ethnicizing political campaigns and carving up the national legislature into ethnic blocs, each beholden only to its own group. An alternative approach—what I call “dispersed constituency democracy”—is to match each legislative seat with a constituency that reflects the overall ethnic composition (...) of the society in question, so as to encourage candidates to reach across ethnic divisions rather than play to locally preponderant ones. I propose a simple way to do this, and explore the likely consequences for national electoral campaigns and legislative dynamics over a range of demographic circumstances. I also consider supplemental devices for protecting minority rights that would be made possible by the proposed constituency system. (shrink)

The meaning of most words in language depends on their context. Understanding how the human brain extracts contextualized meaning, and identifying where in the brain this takes place, remain important scientific challenges. But technological and computational advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence now provide unprecedented opportunities to study the human brain in action as language is read and understood. Recent contextualized language models seem to be able to capture homonymic meaning variation (“bat”, in a baseball vs. a vampire context), as (...) well as more nuanced differences of meaning—for example, polysemous words such as “book”, which can be interpreted in distinct but related senses (“explain a book”, information, vs. “open a book”, object) whose differences are fine‐grained. We study these subtle differences in lexical meaning along the concrete/abstract dimension, as they are triggered by verb‐noun semantic composition. We analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activations elicited by Italian verb phrases containing nouns whose interpretation is affected by the verb to different degrees. By using a contextualized language model and human concreteness ratings, we shed light on where in the brain such fine‐grained meaning variation takes place and how it is coded. Our results show that phrase concreteness judgments and the contextualized model can predict BOLD activation associated with semantic composition within the language network. Importantly, representations derived from a complex, nonlinear composition process consistently outperform simpler composition approaches. This is compatible with a holistic view of semantic composition in the brain, where semantic representations are modified by the process of composition itself. When looking at individual brain areas, we find that encoding performance is statistically significant, although with differing patterns of results, suggesting differential involvement, in the posterior superior temporal sulcus, inferior frontal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe, and in motor areas previously associated with processing of concreteness/abstractness. (shrink)