A feminist study of language and its rules argues that men have shaped it in order to instill their own prejudices and viewpoints on society, and shows how male-slanted language affects all women's lives.

Human group size seemingly has no limit, with many individuals living alongside thousands – even millions – of others. Non-human primate groups, on the other hand, cannot be sustained past a certain, relatively small size. I propose that Pascal Boyer's model of ownership psychology may offer an explanation for such a significant divergence.

A balanced survey of the most important historical and contemporary topics in the philosophy of mind.

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of (...) specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

In an article “Countering a Counter-intuitive Probability” [4], Lynn E. Rose discusses a question in conditional probability, claiming that the following problem posed by Copi [1] is usually incorrectly solved:Remove all cards except aces and kings from a deck, so that only eight cards remain, of which four are aces and four are kings. From this abbreviated deck, deal two cards to a friend. If he looks at his cards and announces that his hand contains an ace, what is the (...) probability that both his cards are aces? If he announces instead that one of his cards is the ace of spades, what is the probability then that both his cards are aces? (shrink)

This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical (...) marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticals has come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this as a means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing – and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary (biopolitical) ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularly in respect of improving one’s productive performance through cognitive enhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker’s productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system. (shrink)

John Buridan's Sophismata contains some of the most interesting puzzles and paradoxes of any of the many surviving medieval informal logic manuals. Buridan's purpose is not only to illustrate and challenge Aristotelian syllogistic with difficulties of interpretation, but also in part to lay logical philosophical foundations for a radically nominalistic ontology in the tradition of William of Ockham.

(1979). From endorsement to disintegration: Progressive education from the golden age to the green paper. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 191-209.

What kind of Theory of Music and Theory of Metric was taught to the young Pindar or the young Sophocles? So far are we from an answer to this question that we do not even know how far extra study was necessary, or usual, for the professional poet as compared with the ordinary educated Greek citizen. The interdependence of music and metric in lyric poetry gave complexity to the word-rhythms but kept the study of music, the subordinate partner, theoretically simple. (...) Doubtless by the time the young poet had learnt by heart the words of past masters of lyric verse, sung or accompanied them on the lyre, and danced them in choir or κ⋯μος, he had absorbed by practice and somewhat rule-of-thumb methods of training a great deal of the τ⋯χενη which his calling would require. He would have to learn, in common with the χοροδιδ⋯σκαλος, how to read and write a simple score, and so he must know the symbols of pitch in such scales as were then in use. The notation of arsis and thesis may have been required too, and if we knew that this was so, and how he was taught to apply it, we might be in a much better position to assess the kind of theory he learnt. But of one thing we may be sure: genius apart, it was his practical training, as performer and spectator, rather than theoretical teaching which gave his ear its cunning and technical skill to compose new rhythms. (shrink)

Based on an original synthesis of the work of Marx and Bergson, the key theorists of capitalism and creativity, the book presents an astonishing analysis of ...

The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede (...) progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute. (shrink)

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are typically members of the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) family with diverse roles in embryonic development. At least five genes with homology to BMPs are expressed during Xenopus development, along with their receptors and intracellular signalling pathways. The evidence suggests that BMPs have roles to play in both mesoderm induction and dorsoventral patterning. Studies in Xenopus have also identified a number of inhibitory binding proteins for the classical BMPs, encoded by genes such as chordin and (...) noggin. These proteins appear to be responsible for establishing a morphogen gradient of BMP4 activity, which specifies different dorsoventral fates in early gastrulae. An emerging theme is that inhibition of BMP signalling is an important mechanism regulating cell fate decisions in early development. BioEssays 21:751–760, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

GUILLERMO E. ROSADO HADDOCK, The Young Carnap's Unknown Master: Husserl's Influence onDer Raum and Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008. xii + 138 pp. £50.00. I...

This article introduces the Special Issue and its focus on research in language evolution with emphasis on theory as well as computational and robotic modeling. A key theme is based on the growth of evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo. The Special Issue consists of 13 articles organized in two sections: A) Theoretical foundations and B) Modeling and simulation studies. All the papers are interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing work in biological and linguistic foundations for the study of language evolution as well (...) as a variety of computational and robotic modeling efforts shedding light on how language may be developed and may have evolved. (shrink)