Esta investigación se presenta como un aporte a los estudios culturales de Rapa Nui a partir de un análisis de caso: la serie de fotografías de 1914 que documentan un evento multitudinario en Rapa Nui y donde varias personas aparecen disfrazadas con máscaras de lona. Complementando diversas fuentes y métodos –como fotografías, dibujos, análisis visual, bibliografía y entrevistas–, este artículo busca esclarecer el contexto y los sentidos posibles de lo que hemos denominado como una escena-puzzle, esto es, una escena de (...) la cual se intenta reconstruir una imagen general buscando fragmentos en diferentes fuentes de información. En este trabajo de desenmascaramiento representamos este evento como una fiesta de carácter nacional que incluyó elementos del repertorio cultural contemporáneo de las personas rapanui. (shrink)

Over the past 10 years, Cognitive Linguistics has taken a quantitative turn. Yet, concerns have been raised that this preoccupation with quantification and modelling may not bring us any closer to understanding how language works. We show that this objection is unfounded, especially if we rely on modelling techniques based on biologically and psychologically plausible learning algorithms. These make it possible to take a quantitative approach, while generating and testing specific hypotheses that will advance our understanding of how knowledge of (...) language emerges from exposure to usage. (shrink)

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics reexamines the notions of uniformity and variability within morphological systems from a cognitive linguistic standpoint. It challenges traditional perspectives that regard morphological variability as mere deviations from the norm, suggesting instead that such variability is systematic and shaped by external influences including language acquisition and processing constraints. The contributions in this issue promote a shift from isolated analysis to a holistic view of paradigms, classes, and systems, advocating for a framework where morphological structures are (...) seen as integral to communicative and functional aspects of language. By accounting for the broad adaptive dynamics of language systems, the complex interplay between uniformity and variability is revealed as an inherent aspect of language usage. (shrink)

The brain adapts to changes that take place in the body. Deprivation of input results in size reduction of cortical representations, whereas an increase in input results in an increase of representational space. Amputation forms one of the most dramatic disturbances of the integrity of the body. The brain adapts in many ways to this breakdown of the afferent–efferent equilibrium. However, almost all studies focus on the sensorimotor consequences. It is not known whether adaptation takes place also at other “levels” (...) in the system. The present study addresses the question whether amputees dream about their intact body, as before the amputation, or about the body after the amputation and whether the dream content was a function of time since the amputation and type of amputation. The results show that the majority of the dreamers reported dreams about their intact body although the mean time that elapsed since the amputation was twelve years. There is no clear relation with the type of amputation. The results give modest evidence for the existence of a basic neural representation of the body that is, at least, partly genetically determined and by this relatively insensitive for changes in the sensory input. (shrink)

Tax abuse by multinational extractive corporations should be an important subject of attention for global justice because it exacerbates the unjust global distribution of resources and contributes to the resource curse. The amounts of taxes at stake dwarf the current levels of international aid. This abuse is not necessarily unlawful but is enabled by the interaction of complex international tax rules. It is “abuse” because it contravenes a number of theoretical understandings of global tax justice, several of which are explored (...) here: egalitarianism, two variants of restitution-based justifications and corporate citizenship. Within each of these justificatory frames, global justice in the resource context requires restoring a fair share of the benefits from natural resources to the impoverished populations of resource-rich countries. Justice, thus understood, can and should be achieved through the effective taxation of extractive companies. This article is a first step toward filling a lacuna in the literature on taxation and development, which tends to encourage decreased taxation in order to promote foreign investment, to the exclusion of concerns about justice and which conceives taxation as a purely domestic issue, not one involving international rules that have the effect of distributing revenue among nation states. (shrink)

Theo Verbeek provides the first book-length examination of the initial reception of Descartes’s written works. Drawing on his research of primary materials written in Dutch and Latin and found in libraries all over Europe, even including the Soviet Union, Theo Verbeek opens a period of Descartes’s life and of the development of Cartesian philosophy that has been virtually closed since Descartes’s death. Verbeek’s aim is to provide as complete a picture as possible of the discussions that accompanied the introduction of (...) Descartes’s philosophy into Dutch universities, especially those in Utrecht and Leiden, and to analyze some of the major problems that philosophy raised in the eyes of Aristotelian philosophers and orthodox theologians. The period covered extends from 1637, the year in which Descartes published his _Discours de la Méthode, _until his death in 1650. Verbeek demonstrates how Cartesian philosophy moved successfully into the schools and universities of Holland and how this resulted in a real evolution of Descartes’s thought beyond the somewhat dogmatic position of Descartes himself. Verbeek further argues that this progression was an essential step in the universal propagation of Cartesian philosophy throughout Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. As he details the disputes between Cartesians and anti-Cartesians in Holland, Verbeek shows how the questions raised were related on the one hand to religious conflicts between the Remonstrants and the Orthodox Calvinists and on the other hand to political conflicts between more liberal factions fighting for the union of church and state to enhance religious control of society in general. Contending that Descartes and Cartesian philosophy were central to the development of the modern Dutch state, Verbeek illuminates the role they played in Dutch political, religious, and intellectual life. (shrink)

Inleiding tot de Franse filosoof (1596-1650) vanuit de historische context van zijn denken: de Hollandse Republiek in de 17e eeuw.

Fueled by ever-growing amounts of (digital) data and advances in artificial intelligence, decision-making in contemporary societies is increasingly delegated to automated processes. Drawing from social science theories and from the emerging body of research about algorithmic appreciation and algorithmic perceptions, the current study explores the extent to which personal characteristics can be linked to perceptions of automated decision-making by AI, and the boundary conditions of these perceptions, namely the extent to which such perceptions differ across media, (public) health, and judicial (...) contexts. Data from a scenario-based survey experiment with a national sample (N = 958) show that people are by and large concerned about risks and have mixed opinions about fairness and usefulness of automated decision-making at a societal level, with general attitudes influenced by individual characteristics. Interestingly, decisions taken automatically by AI were often evaluated on par or even better than human experts for specific decisions. Theoretical and societal implications about these findings are discussed. (shrink)

3 in philosophy, and therefore in metaphilosophy, cannot be based on rules that avoid spending time on pseudo-problems. Of course, this implies that, if one succeeds in demonstrating convincingly the pseudo-character of a problem by giving its 'solution', the time spent on it need not be seen as wasted. We conclude this section with a brief statement of the criteria for concept explication as they have been formulated in several places by Carnap, Hempel and Stegmiiller. Hempel's account is still very (...) adequate for a detailed introduction. The process of explication starts with the identification of one or more vague and, perhaps, ambiguous concepts, the so-called explicanda. Next, one tries to disentangle the ambiguities. This, however, need not be possible at once. Ultimately the explicanda are to be replaced by certain counterparts, the so-called explicata, which have to conform to four requirements. They have to be as precise as possible and as simple as possible. In addition, they have to be useful in the sense that they give rise to the formulation of theories and the solution of problems. The three requirements of preciseness, simplicity and usefulness. have of course to be pursued in all concept formation. (shrink)

A sharp contrast had recently been drawn by one of our Cambridge Professors between Bertrand Russell and Broad1 in respect of their characters and their intellectual and moral careers. We have been told that Russell was several times in prison, married and divorced several times, had several mistresses, was frequently short of money, and very unstable in changing his philosophical views. As far as I know Broad was never in prison for anything. Again, so far from marrying several times, he (...) tells us with some satisfaction in his Autobiography that there was ‘never any risk’ of his ‘catching his foot in the man-trap of matrimony.’ This was one of the reasons why, in contrast with Russell, he was never short of money. Other reasons were that his tastes were simple, and that like his West Country philosophical forerunner, John Locke, and evidently like his Director of Studies, McTaggart, he paid great attention to investment. He was determined to save and invest enough to make himself ‘as soon as possible independent of the vicissitudes of employment’. (shrink)

In European thought a fairly general tradition has existed as to the necessary and even sacred character of any legitimate authority. Though excesses were condemned as contrary to justice, and though theories about the right of revoluion existed, in practice the concept of authority was considered as having its justification in itself. The Platonic version of this belief is that justice in the ruler consists in his conformity to preestablished and divine laws. This conviction was for the first time seriously (...) challenged in our century, as a consequence of the fact that large-scale crimes had become possible because millions of people had delegated the responsibility for their actions to authorities in command. It was Karl Popper who identified this Western tradition as an heritage from Plato. His views went contrary to the standard interpretation of Plato by the majority of classical scholars, who took great pains to refute Popper's work, though with little succes. The originality of Popper's work is twofold. Plato's theories about justice in the state were historically interpreted as representing the mentality of the closed society in opposition to that of a more developed and open type of society. Moreover, Popper was the first to give an analysis of the philosopher's unconscious motives by interpreting, on psycho-analytical principles, a wide range of significant passages in Plato's work. (shrink)

Essay over de relatie van de Franse wijsgeer Descartes (1596-1650) met de universiteit van Utrecht.

David Theo Goldberg engages Achille Mbembe in a wide-ranging conversation on the key lines of analysis of Mbembe’s book, The Critique of Black Reason. The discussion ranges across a broad swath of key themes: the constitutive feature of racisms in the making of modernity and modern capitalism as conceived through the global black experience; the African and French archives in constituting, resisting, and refashioning ‘black reason’ and its multiple registers; the centrality of slavery to this constitution and resistance; thinghood and (...) humanity; liberalism as the basis for racial pessimism. The discussion closes with Mbembe’s plea for a shared being and an exchange about repair and reparation. (shrink)

Many models of word recognition assume that processing proceeds sequentially from analysis of form to analysis of meaning. In the context of morphological processing, this implies that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings. Some interpret the apparent absence of differences in recognition latencies to targets (SNEAK) in form and semantically similar (sneaky-SNEAK) and in form similar and semantically dissimilar (sneaker-SNEAK) prime contexts at an SOA of 48 ms as consistent with this claim. (...) To determine the time course over which degree of semantic similarity between morphologically structured primes and their targets influences recognition in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared facilitation for the same targets after semantically similar and dissimilar primes across a range of SOAs. The effect of shared semantics on recognition latency increased linearly with SOA when long SOAs were intermixed (Exp. 1) and latencies were significantly faster after semantically similar than dissimilar primes at homogeneous SOAs of 48 ms (Exp. 2) and 34 ms (Exp. 3). Results limit the scope of form-then-semantics models of recognition and demonstrate that semantics influences even the very early stages of recognition. Finally, once general behavior across trials has been accounted for, we fail to provide evidence for individual differences in morphological processing that can be linked to measures of reading proficiency. (shrink)

The Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy has gained prominence as an agricultural R&D agenda of the European Union. Specific research policies are justified as necessary to create a KBBE for societal progress. Playing the role of a master narrative, the KBBE attracts rival visions; each favours a different diagnosis of unsustainable agriculture and its remedies in agro-food innovation. Each vision links a technoscientific paradigm with a quality paradigm: the dominant life sciences vision combines converging technologies with decomposability, while a marginal one combines agro-ecology (...) with integral product integrity. From these divergent visions, rival stakeholder networks contend for influence over research policies and priorities, especially within the Framework Programme 7 on Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology, which has aimed to promote a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy. Although the FAFB programme has favoured a life sciences vision, agro-ecological approaches have gained a presence, thus overcoming their general lock-out from agricultural research agendas. In their own way, each rival paradigm emphasises the need for collective systems to gather information for linking producers with users, as a rationale for the public sector to fund distinctive research priorities. (shrink)

The theoretical notion of ‘construal’ captures the idea that the way in which we describe a scene reflects our conceptualization of it. Relying on the concept of ception – which conjoins conception and perception – we operationalized construal and employed a Visual World Paradigm to establish which aspects of linguistic scene description modulate visual scene perception, thereby affecting event conception. By analysing viewing behaviour after alternating ways of describing location (prepositions), agentivity (active/passive voice) and transfer (NP/pp datives), we found that (...) the linguistic construal of a scene affects its spontaneous visual perception in two ways: either by determining the order in which the components of a scene are accessed or by modulating the distribution of attention over the components, making them more or less salient than they naturally are. We also found evidence for the existence of a cline in the construal effect with stronger expressive differences, such as the prepositional manipulation, inducing more prominent changes in visual perception than the dative manipulation. We discuss the claims language can lay to affecting visual information uptake and hence conceptualization of a static scene in the light of these results. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION When Karl Popper published in' his definition of closer-to-the- truth this was an important intellectual event, but not a shocking one. ...

Attempts to use Big Data to transform car insurance pricing in France have failed. Why? Three possible explanations are discussed: organisational and cognitive inertia, normative preventions, and deliberate strategy. This article finds that moral or political reluctance has played only a secondary role in the failure of telematics devices. More important has been the deployment of an experimental strategy that has resulted in the conclusion that in the short and medium term at least, the use of big data to rate (...) car insurance is not profitable. There are too many organisational and cognitive barriers to the smooth adoption of innovation. All insurers note they all arrived at this conclusion. An implicit consensus therefore remains to retain the old business model. (shrink)

Tournai is a town of intermediate dimensions with a regional vocation ; since a few years it has had to face serious budgetary problems. These are primarily due to a relative absence of resources as opposed to a constant growth of the financial burdens, actually stemming from this regional vocation.Therefore, the intention to start from the existing entity and to create a larger entity which ought to be financially viable, is quite right. In this respect, the governmental merger plan aims (...) at reassembling Tournai - as the core of the mergers - with the neighbouring communes that actually are the town's suburbs, and with the recently created industrial areas. Moreover, merging Tournai with the rural communes serving as abuffer between Tournai and the French border, the new entity will directly touch the "urban community" Lille - a major pole of attraction from the economic and commercial as well as from the cultural point of view.A particular care to keep an equilibrium among rural and urban population accounts for the absorption of several communes that are rather distant and have no direct links with Tournai. Finally, there has been an underlying concern to ensure that in the new entity the christian-democratic and the socialist party would have an almost equal weight and the Walloon Gathering would have a chance to break through ; this seems to explain the fact that Antoing and its peripheral communes, having a socialist majority, have been kept out of the merging operation, one has on the contrary merged several rural communes with a clear christian-democratic tendency, and the government eventually decided to realize a maximum merger which is supposed to electorally favour the Wallon Gathering. (shrink)

There are two principles which bear the name Frege''sprinciple: the principle of compositionality, and the contextprinciple. The aim of this contribution is to investigate whether thisis justified: did Frege accept both principles at the same time, did hehold the one principle but not the other, or did he, at some moment,change his opinion? The conclusion is as follows. There is a developmentin Frege''s position. In the period of Grundlagen he followed to a strict form of contextuality. He repeatedcontextuality in later (...) writings, but became less strict. From 1914 on,pushed by the needs of research, he comes close to compositionality. Buthe could never make the final step toward compositionality forprincipled reasons, therefore he always would reject compositionality. (shrink)